Simple math behind major bison blunder

[Micael]

The WWF and scientists from Yale University claimed an extraordinary large carbon binding effect from European Bison. The Guardian latched on and published an uncritical article about it, leading to more and more publicity. A journalist at a popular science magazine in Sweden, Forskning & Framsteg, however decided to check with other experts if this wasn’t too good to be true, and it turned out it was.

Simple math behind major bison blunder

Environmental activists must become better at scrutinizing science, says F&F’s Per Snaprud after asking questions that led the WWF to withdraw a study.

PUBLICERAD 2024-05-20

Forskning & Framsteg’s Per Snaprud was able to reveal that the The Guardian’s article about Romanian bison as climate saviors was completely off the wall. Now the officials explain what went wrong.
Image: Getty images
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The comment in Swedish: Dundertabbe bakom pinsam miss om visenter

I meet four embarrassed faces in a video meeting. Two of them are researchers at the highly ranked Yale University in the USA, and two represent the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) in the Netherlands. They are here to explain what went wrong.

The background is an article in The Guardian. The British newspaper reported sensational results from a scientific study of European bison in Romania. A herd of 170 animals in the Țarcu Mountains was said to sequester as much carbon dioxide in the soil as the annual emissions from 1.88 million gasoline-powered cars.


”Too good to be true”
An extraordinary claim. A single bison would thus be able to offset the carbon emissions of 11,059 cars. This was based on research done by the Yale researchers on my screen, and funded by the WWF representatives.

When I obtained the report, I sent it to several Swedish experts. They commented the calculations with phrases like ”completely off”, ”too good to be true”, and ”wrong by a factor of one hundred”. So, I published a text questioning The Guardian’s talk about bison as climate heroes.

A few hours later, an email arrived from the press officer of the WWF in the Netherlands, who backtracked. She wrote that the news was being withdrawn ”due to calculations that are incorrect”.

”Embarrasing mistake”
But what exactly went wrong? I ask the most prominent researcher on my screen, Oswald Schmitz, professor of Population and Community Ecology at Yale University. He explains that they had a figure for the soil’s carbon dioxide uptake per square kilometer. That figure was supposed to be multiplied by the number of square kilometers the bison grazed on. Simple math. Unfortunately, the researchers multiplied once too many times. A mistake at elementary school level.

“Yes, it’s embarrassing,” says Oswald Schmitz.

New calculations led to the realization that the number of cars the bison can offset is only just over 2 percent of what The Guardian reported to its readers. Nearly 98 percent of the effect disappeared. And Oswald Schmitz says it was Forskning & Framsteg that made him realize his mistake:

“The questions you sent me, based on your experts’ feedback, made us look at the calculations again.”

The Guardian corrected its article. In an email to Forskning & Framsteg the newspaper’s environment editor explained that another department was responsible for the decision to publish this particular article. I can imagine that the heads of the various departments had a lot to say to each other.

Missed the peer review
An important aspect of the story is the fact that the scientific study behind all of it was unpublished. The project was a collaboration between several organizations: The WWF in the Netherlands, Rewilding Europe, Global Rewilding Alliance, and Yale School of Environment. None of the parties involved thought to submit the manuscript to a scientific journal for peer review before going to the world press. Such a review would very likely have prevented the blunder.

It is especially embarrassing that The Guardian swallowed the flawed calculations hook, line, and sinker. The newspaper maintains a high profile in its climate coverage. The climate crisis even has a special tab in the newspaper’s electronic news reporting. But in this case critical scrutiny was obviously lacking.

In the end, it’s very simple. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. If the evidence is lacking, it’s better to remain silent than to spread confusion.

[Nik_SpeakerToCats]

snark:
Perhaps this, too, will pass into legend per the infamous 'Popeye' spinach iron-assay blunder...
/

[jemhouston]

Any longer, don't trust the science is a wise policy.

Semi related note, has anyone else noted Covid increasing, and Bird Flu are showing up in the news?

[Johnnie Lyle]

Any longer, don't trust the science is a wise policy.

Semi related note, has anyone else noted Covid increasing, and Bird Flu are showing up in the news?

Blind faith in anything is generally a bad policy. Scientific findings should be reviewed critically.

At least in the US, COVID appears to be lowest in early spring and fall, and higher in winter and summer, when people are more likely to be inside and windows closed. So it’s not surprising to see it going up again as we head into summer.

Bird flu is in the news because it has gotten into dairy cows, and then jumped into cats fed milk from infected cows and two humans to date (IIRC, we don’t know how the humans got it). It probably should have been earlier, because it has been a major disaster for poultry farmers.

H5N1 fragments have been detected in milk, and is a possible transmission mechanism. Pasteurization kills the virus, so commercial milk is safe. Raw milk may not be, but raw milk and raw milk cheese could transmit the virus (we don’t know for sure yet), but raw milk is usually riskier anyway, so I wouldn’t recommend drinking it even without the possible influenza transmission.

The good news is that the cows are generally asymptomatic, and the two human cases are mild. So the risk of humans getting it is low right now.

The big concern is that flu is a genetic skank, and it’s possible that a highly pathogenic but not highly infectious strain could swap genes with a more infectious but less pathogenic one, and create a more lethal and more infectious strain.

But, for the moment, it is just a lot of conference calls and work checking up on dairy farm workers if they’re exposed to make sure they don’t get sick, similar to the work currently done on people who are exposed to infected birds. It’s a pain in the ass for everyone involved, but increasingly becoming less so as we learn more and leverage the technology to automate it.

[warshipadmin]

Meanwhile near us

Tests reveal H7N3 in recent Australian high path poultry outbreak
In another Australian avian influenza development, Agriculture Victoria said today that it has confirmed highly pathogenic H7N3 as the cause of poultry deaths in an outbreak at a layer farm near Meredith.

Officials said illnesses in humans who have contact with sick animals are possible, but the overall threat is low.

The department has imposed poultry movement restrictions in the area near the outbreak farm, and it urged bird owners to double down on their biosecurity measures.

Our friend, a chicken farmer, is worried by this one. It's already spread to another farm.

[Johnnie Lyle]

Meanwhile near us

Tests reveal H7N3 in recent Australian high path poultry outbreak
In another Australian avian influenza development, Agriculture Victoria said today that it has confirmed highly pathogenic H7N3 as the cause of poultry deaths in an outbreak at a layer farm near Meredith.

Officials said illnesses in humans who have contact with sick animals are possible, but the overall threat is low.

The department has imposed poultry movement restrictions in the area near the outbreak farm, and it urged bird owners to double down on their biosecurity measures.

Our friend, a chicken farmer, is worried by this one. It's already spread to another farm.

He should be. Avian influenza is bad news, and millions of birds have died or been euthanized here in the states.

It’s an economic devastation for farmers.