With Old Man Winter knocking again, EPW Policy Beat is packing up and heading to shelter. But before we leave town, we pause to wonder: Will global warming slash crop production in North Africa by 50 percent by 2020? The IPCC once thought so, but now it's thinking again. The question is: Will EPA?
As London's Sunday Times reported on February 7, Professor Chris Field, "the new lead author of the IPCC's climate impacts team," said "he could find nothing in the [IPCC's Fourth Assessment] report to support" the North Africa crop claim. "The revelation," the Times noted, "follows the IPCC's retraction of a claim that the Himalayan glaciers might all melt by 2035, dubbed 'Glaciergate' by commentators."
As we noted in a recent blogpost, the Himalayan claim was based not a peer-reviewed study, but on a 1999 magazine article, which itself was based on a speculative conversation with an Indian scientist. The more interesting tidbit from our standpoint was the fact that EPA's Technical Support Document (TSD), the scientific basis of EPA's endangerment finding for greenhouse gases, uses the Himalayan example as evidence cited by the IPCC of "regional impacts" caused by global warming. On page 162, EPA states: "Glacier melt in the Himalayas is projected to increase flooding and rock avalanches from destabilized slopes and to affect water resources within the next two to three decades. This will be followed by decreased river flows as the glaciers recede."
As we turned back to the TSD to see whether EPA mentioned the Africa claim, we found this, also on page 162, in a box titled "Africa": "The area suitable for agriculture, the length of growing seasons, and yield potential, particularly along the margins of semi-arid and arid areas, are expected to decrease. This would further adversely affect food security and exacerbate malnutrition in the continent. In some countries, yields from rain-fed agriculture could be reduced by up to 50% by 2020." [Emphasis added]
We trust EPA will initiate the proper administrative procedures to correct the TSD, and to ensure that other sections that rely on the IPCC are cross-checked for errors and other questionable references using non peer-reviewed research.
