In what has become the long-running saga of the unsubstantiated claim by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) about the potential effects of global warming on the Amazon rainforest, the fact that George Monbiot has weighed in so heavily to the "Amazongate" issue is perhaps a measure of its importance.
One cannot help but enjoy the irony of Monbiot's apology for troubling his readers over an issue which he claims is "trivial", then spending so much time and effort exploring it.
But the one thing Monbiot has not told us, in his torrent of excoriating verbiage, is quite why "Amazongate" – the name given to the "outing" of the IPCC - is so important. In his rush to condemn those who pointed out the error of the IPCC's ways, and me in particular, he somehow glosses over this essential point.
And that essential point is that the IPCC got it wrong, not once but in several different ways, in making a key assertion about the Amazon rainforests which, when the chips are down, is entirely without foundation.
