Future of the Amazon
The Distortion
The latest target of the denial industry is the report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Out of thousands of pages of the report, they've tried to pull out a few small facts and cast doubt on them, hoping to create confusion about the entire report. One of their big issues is to point to one section of the IPCC report about the future of the Amazon that is footnoted to a non-peer review study, and say that it's therefore not true.
The Truth
This is a great example of the tactics they use to cast doubt around the issues of climate change. They think if they start enough confusing fights, people will just assume that everything is in doubt.
Here's the truth: the science the IPCC report was referencing is not controversial in the slightest. It's well-known that rainforests need a lot of rain constantly - that's why they are called rainforests - so if the climate changes, they will flip quickly to being open savannah, a very different ecosystem. This was what the report said, and there's really very little denying it. The IPCC report sourced a non-peer review study for some reason, perhaps because the issue is so non-controversial they didn't think it was an issue, but this is a well-studied phenomenon. And the study they cite was using peer-reviewed studies for all of its data and conclusions, so this is clearly well-researched science.
This is one of the many, many catastrophic effects of climate change that we already have good understanding of, but the well-funded forces of the Big Oil status quo will continue to try to cast doubt on even the most well-established science.
