By now you’ve surely heard about the emails leaked from the University of East Anglia 10 days ago that purport to undermine United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. It’s now the Holy Grail of the climate change skeptics: a cabal of corrupt scientists with a political agenda cooked its data, stifled dissent, emasculated the peer-review process and otherwise succeeded in perpetuating a two-decade-long hoax on an unsuspecting world. And it all comes to light on the eve of the next round of climate talks in Copenhagen. How convenient.
I’m not sure anyone can draw that conclusion yet but that hasn’t prevented IPCC skeptics to take the required leaps of faith and logic to prove that they already have. What we learned, at best, is that Dr. Phil Jones from East Anglia has an ego, is thin-skinned, tells his colleagues what he thinks of his critics in colorful language (shocking for a scientist, I know) or is sloppy in his messages (is “trick” the data all it implies or is his subsequent explanation too boring for a sound bite culture?). Saying the emails “look bad” isn’t enough; they’re horrible. In the worst case, he and a couple colleagues manipulated data or stifled dissent to prevent contrary evidence, and corrupted peer reviews to a degree that would be an impeachable offense in other contexts.
What we don’t know is how successful he might have been in skewing the data or in emasculating those who disagreed with him. Not as good a story if those details aren’t found, I know. But why wait before concluding he had. Suppose for a minute that he and like-minded conspirators succeeded. Weren’t these questions and evidence simultaneously examined by others? Or is climate science so static that it doesn’t have multiple avenues for investigation? Are we now supposed to believe that only a relative handful of like-minded conspirators skewed data while a raft of scientists worldwide were too cowed, too beholden to grant-chasing or too politicized to ask questions, raise objections or otherwise invoke their professional integrity? That’s an awful lot of “ifs” to accept at face value, or does one’s skepticism only count when it reinforces closely held beliefs?
The IPCC didn’t exactly help its case by adopting a Tiger Woods style of crisis management, either, focusing on the hacking of the emails (who cares at this point how they were obtained?) or droning on in technical defenses that the lay audience has little interest in, days after its critics set the storyline.
My colleague Warren Causey has blogged on this controversy, reaches a different conclusion and sings high praise for Internet-enforced transparency. The Internet part is undeniable and the world wouldn’t be having this debate without it. And the IPCC wouldn’t have been forced to explain itself, however late. But the Internet doesn’t “do nuance” very well and merely raising the issue of context is sure to get lost.
As of today, Climategate proves the suspicions of the skeptics and gives them the “smoking gun” evidence that they have long craved. IPCC acts like any bureaucracy and its defenders are tone deaf or look like have something to hide. But Climategate leaves me with one nagging question that I can’t possibly answer: how could thousands of scientists, a few dozen countries, and a worldwide “leftist” media crusade pull off such a huge conspiracy – for 21 years? Sorry, but I’m not quite ready to make that leap.
Excellent piece that strips away the noise and replaces it with simple logic. Your thoughts ought to be forwarded to the NYTimes op-ed page forthwith for wider appreciation.
That you work in the energy industry and might well have good reason to cheer any nay-sayers on global warming underscores the value of your rationality and skepticism toward the noise-makers.
It's clear that the "media," in general, have abdicated the role of applying common sense and have treated extreme positions -- however illogical -- as worthy of, as equivalent to, "balance."
Thanks, I'll be tuning in more closely to your blog.
Phil Carson
Long-term global climate changes through natural forces, the infinitesimal proportion of human contribution to carbon dioxide levels and numerous other contrarian pieces of evidence don't make as good a story, or leftist politics, as a fabricated, imminent global catastrophy. You can't devastate free enterprise and impose government control over virtually eveything if you don't have the threat of an impending catastrophe.
In the 3rd paragraph you ask whether other scientists were able to examine the evidence. Correct me if I am wrong, but hasn't that been a major problem with this whole AGW controversy? As far as I have ever heard, independant scientists sought that original data and the computer source codes for many years, and they were never given the chance to confirm or dissprove the AGW theory via the scientific method. Now at least they have the code and can see exactly how much manipulation of the data was being performed.
I suggest you have alook at that code and come back with a more informed opinion regarding the magnitude of this discovery. As an example, you might check into how they treated the "divergence problem" with tree-ring proxy data. It seems that the instrument temperatures beginning around 1960 or so didn't match up with their proxy tempertures. So what is a good scientist to do? Well, I am not a scientist, and apparently these guys really aren't, either, so they just fudged some numbers and inserted their new instrument data to make a nice smooth upward curve. It looked good for the IPCC reports and media packets, I suppose. Most real scientists would likely throw out the whole set of proxy data, since it obviously wasn't accurate. Or, perhaps they would revise their proxy temperature calculation to something that correlates with actual measurements. Then they could see if the model is useful for predicting future results.
Others much smarter than I have gone into this, so you should do some checking yourself. Please, take the blinders off.
The answer is simple, Bill. Money. Their reputations, careers, even livelihoods might easily come crashing down around their ears were AGW theories disproven and rejected. Frankly, this is the lamest reason I have ever heard for rejecting the Deniers. Have you ever given their views the courtesy you extend to the Warmists? Perhaps, but not that I have ever noticed.
I have been sceptic about global warming, and what is more, it spread from Anglia land -- as it did the current financial crisis.
However, how to explain two following facts, measurable at any time,
- increase of about 50% of CO2 in our air mix , during the last 50 years, from ab. 300 to 450 ppm(Hawai stations)
- flow records at the Indus river show clearly a steady rise of water flow (m3/s) from about 1985 onwards ( from a constant average for the previous 100 years records )
By the way, the snow border on the Andes peaks (Cotopaxi/Ecuador, about Arequipa/Peru) is constantly retreating. I visit such places from time to time (mountain hiking)
A major concern I have with the emphasis on GHGs is that we are not focusing on the other part of the global warming function--heat being put into the atmosphere. In fact, the focus on GHG impact on global warming is generating some "solutions" that will increase the heat input to the environment by significant percentages when it comes to fossil-fuel power plants--specifically CCS (carbon capture and sequestration).
Another concern is that we are being sold a bill of goods on the actual impact of wind- and solar-power(s) as a substitute for fossil-power. These energy sources will be less than reliable at the most critical times. In summer, the time of most impact for a region will be when a high pressure cell has moved in and is moving rather slowly or has become stationary. Under these conditions, the sun beats down almost completely unimpeded by cloud cover. Solar power will work fine during the middle of the day but wind power will be virtually non-existant round-the-clock. Same in thing in the winter if a high moves in and remains stationary--so at night where is the energy for those homes using electricity for heat to come from? In winter, if a front is moving in and people are turning on the heat to remove the growing chill from their homes and places of work, solar power will be virtually non-existant due to cloud cover and wind power will likely be non-existant because the wind velocity is too high for the wind turbines to operate.
We need to keep a lot of focus on efficiency of electricity production--get more from the same amount of fuel.
We also need to keep a lot of focus on the efficiency of electrical uses because no matter the source of electricity, in the end, it pretty much ends up as heat added to the environment, whether it be used for air conditioning, refrigerators, microwave ovens, electric heating, heat pumps, lighting....
Back to the email topic, if I had done the data manipulation the esteemed scholars had done, I would lose my engineering license but Mann is still getting grants. And, there is the famous shot of the adult polar bear with the mangle cub being used as evidence that global warming--specifically anthropological global warming--depleting the food supply for polar bears. I am no animal behavior expert but from animal documentaries, it certainly appears that in virtually all wild carnivorous species, a adult male taking over a new pride, pack, or territory will kill all young cubs he can in order to prevent future competition and to prompt the females into mating. For the global warming proponents to use that photo is disingenuous.
Lastly, let's take a look at the timing of the emphasis of the anthropological global warming movement. Perhaps my observation is wrong but it seems our education system has been, since the '80s in particular, notoriously slanted to liberal causes. There should not be any winners or losers in contests. If a student adds 2 + 2 and comes up with 5, he/she gets partial credit because they wrote the numbers down. That same atmosphere has been used to promote liberal social agendas one of which is global warming. That is one reason wind power has gained such primary popularity despite the fact that every megawatt of wind power we want to consider reliable power must be backed up by a megawatt of fossil or nuclear power to be called upon when the wind is too light or too strong--doubling or tripling down the capital investment if we truly want grid reliability.