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Climate change e-mails

Climategate: You should be steamed
Houston Chronicle 2010
Without question, there should be an immediate and thorough investigation of the scientific debauchery revealed by “Climategate.” Particularly disturbing was the way the core IPCC scientists (the believers) marginalized the skeptics of the theory that man-made global warming is large and potentially catastrophic. The e-mails document that the attack on the skeptics was twofold. First, the believers gained control of the main climate-profession journals. This allowed them to block publication of papers written by the skeptics and prohibit unfriendly peer review of their own papers. Second, the skeptics were demonized through false labeling and false accusations.

But who are the skeptics? A few examples reveal that they are numerous and well-qualified.

ClimateGate: Was data faked?
The Atlantic 2009
That is the actual worrying question about CRU, and GISS, and the other scientists working on paleoclimate reconstruction: that they may all be calibrating their findings to each other. That when you get a number that looks like CRU, you don't look so hard to figure out whether it's incorrect as you do when you get a number that doesn't look like CRU--and maybe you adjust the numbers you have to look more like the other "known" datasets. There is always a way to find what you're expecting to find if you look hard enough.

There are other issues: selection bias in the grant process, papers with large results being much more likely to be published than papers with equivocal results, professors preferring students who agree with them, and so forth. I doubt that could amount to faking the entire thing. But it could amplify the magnitude.

Climategate: follow the money
Wall Street Journal 2009
Climategate concerns some of the world's leading climate scientists working in tandem to block freedom of information requests, blackball dissenting scientists, manipulate the peer-review process, and obscure, destroy or massage inconvenient temperature data—facts that were laid bare by last week's disclosure of thousands of emails from the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit, or CRU.

But the deeper question is why the scientists behaved this way to begin with, especially since the science behind man-made global warming is said to be firmly settled. To answer the question, it helps to turn the alarmists' follow-the-money methods right back at them.

Consider the case of Phil Jones, the director of the CRU and the man at the heart of climategate. According to one of the documents hacked from his center, between 2000 and 2006 Mr. Jones was the recipient (or co-recipient) of some $19 million worth of research grants, a sixfold increase over what he'd been awarded in the 1990s.

Climategate: What e-mail really means
The Detroit News 2009
By now, most people are aware of the scandal surrounding the leak of thousands of e-mails and other documents from the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit (CRU). Among these is an e-mail exchange involving several of the world's leading climate scientists, dated October of 2009, in which the admission is made that even their best models cannot account for the last decade of temperature data. "The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't," said Kevin Trenberth, one of the world's preeminent climate scientists and lead author of the 2001 and 2007 IPCC reports.

Significantly for public policy, the admission implies that efforts to reduce carbon dioxide emissions -- including the EPA's endangerment finding, all forms of cap-and-trade-style legislation, and any possible resolution to emerge from the recently convened Copenhagen conference --have no basis in science .

 

 

Comment...

'Climategate' began when hackers broke into a computer system belonging to a highly respected climate research center at Britain's University of East Anglia, stole several thousand e-mails spanning a decade between some of the world's leading climate scientists, and put some of the spiciest ones on the Internet.

The emails were not only embarrassing for those involved but proved to be more damning as they revealed collusion amongst scientists to withhold climate data, foil openness in the debate, silence dissenting opinions and modify data to fit their theories.

The emails--many written by two Coordinating Lead Authors of the UN's 2007 Fourth Assessment Report--underscore the need for the United States to convene its own objective, transparent Climate Truth Commission. It defies common sense that we outsource our climate science to the UN then allow it to serve as both judge (IPCC) and advocate (Kyoto Protocol, Copenhagen).

                                                — Robert Moen
                                                    rmoen@energyplanUSA.com

The global-cooling cover-up
Washington Times 2009
The climate-gate revelations have exposed an unprecedented coordinated attempt by academics to distort research for political ends. Anyone interested in accurate science should be appalled at the manipulation of data "to hide the decline [in temperature]" and deletion of e-mail exchanges and data so as not to reveal information that would support global-warming skeptics. These hacks are not just guilty of bad science. In the United Kingdom, deleting e-mail messages to prevent their disclosure from a Freedom of Information Act request is a crime.

The story has gotten worse since the global-cooling cover-up was exposed through a treasure trove of leaked e-mails. The Climatic Research Unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia has been incredibly influential in the global-warming debate. The CRU claims the world's largest temperature data set, and its research and mathematical models form the basis of the United Nations Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) 2007 report.

Scientists behaving badly
aei.org 2009
A large cache of emails and technical documents from the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia in Britain were made available on a number of Internet file-servers for download by the public--either the work of a hacker or a leak from a whistleblower on the inside. The emails--more than 1,000 of them--reveal a small cabal of scientists who, in the words of MIT's Michael Schrage, engaged in "malice, mischief and Machiavellian maneuverings." In an ironic twist, one of the frequent correspondents in this long e-trail (University of Arizona scientist Jonathan Overpeck) warned several of his colleagues in September, "Please write all emails as though they will be made public." Small wonder why. It's being called Climategate.

Data that should have been made available for inspection by other scientists and outside critics were released only grudgingly, if at all. Perhaps more significant, the email archive also reveals that even inside this small circle of climate scientists--otherwise allied in an effort to whip up a frenzy of international political action to combat global warming--there was considerable disagreement, confusion, doubt, and at times acrimony over the results of their work. In other words, there is far less unanimity or consensus among climate insiders than we have been led to believe. The behavior of the CRU circle has cast a long shadow over the entire climate science community, and many honest scientists will now undeservedly bear the stigma of Climategate unless a full airing of the issues is conducted.

Climategate analysis, including excerpts and links to the key emails
assassinationscience.com 2009
Climategate gives us a peephole into the work of the scientists investigating possibly the most important issue ever to face mankind. Instead of seeing large collaborations of meticulous, careful, critical scientists, we instead see a small team of incompetent cowboys, abusing almost every aspect of the framework of science to build a fortress around their “old boys’ club”, to prevent real scientists from seeing the shambles of their “research”. Most people are aghast that this could have happened; and it is only because “climate science” exploded from a relatively tiny corner of academia into a hugely funded industry in a matter of mere years that the perpetrators were able to get away with it for so long.

The gold standard in peer reviewed science?
Rightside News 2009
In 1971, the United States abandoned the gold standard, effectively ending the ability to convert dollars into gold. Now another gold standard has taken its place, i.e., the science produced by the UN's Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

According to NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco, the IPCC is "the gold standard for authoritative scientific information on climate change because of the rigorous way in which they are prepared, reviewed, and approved."

Unfortunately for some, the "gold standard" is at the heart of Climategate. One salient clue to the IPCC's central involvement is the scientists who wrote the troubling emails. They are not of the basement-and-garage variety: they stand on the summit of climate research. Moreover, they are the key contributors to, and lead authors of, the IPCC's major science assessment reports-making them, for better or worse, the architects of the climate change "consensus."

The IPCC's centrality to Climategate is important for several reasons, possibly the most consequential of which is that EPA's endangerment finding is in good measure supported by the IPCC's work (it's also supported by the US Climate Change Science Program, US Global Change Research Program, and the National Research Council, all of which rely heavily on the IPCC and the research of Climategate scientists).

Stolen e-mails embolden climate change skeptics
npr.org 2009
At a critical time, the uproar over stolen e-mails suggesting scientists suppressed contrary views about climate change has emboldened skeptics — including congressional Republicans looking to scuttle President Barack Obama's push for mandatory reductions in greenhouse gases.

One referred to using a "trick" that could be used to "hide the decline" of temperatures. Another disparaged the skeptics, and a scientist said "the last thing I need is news articles claiming to question temperature increases." Yet another complained about "getting hassled by a couple of people" to release temperature data that suggests uncertainties about climate change. "Don't any of you three tell anybody that the UK has a Freedom of Information Act," Phil Jones, the director of climate research unit, wrote in one e-mail.

Biased reporting on Climategate
Washington Times 2009
To judge by recent coverage from Associated Press, the Fourth Estate watchdog has acted like a third-rate pocket pet. Case in point is an 1,800-word AP missive that appeared in hundreds of publications, many carrying it on the front page of their Sunday, Dec. 13 issue with the headline, "Science not faked, but not pretty." AP gave three scientists copies of the controversial e-mails and then asked them about their conclusions. The wire service portrayed the trio of scientists as dismissing or minimizing allegations of scientific fraud when, in fact, the scientists believe no such thing..

 

How to manufacture a climate consensus
Wall Street Journal 2009
Few people understand the real significance of Climategate, the now-famous hacking of emails from the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit (CRU). Most see the contents as demonstrating some arbitrary manipulating of various climate data sources in order to fit preconceived hypotheses (true), or as stonewalling and requesting colleagues to destroy emails to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in the face of potential or actual Freedom of Information requests (also true). But there's something much, much worse going on—a silencing of climate scientists, akin to filtering what goes in the bible, that will have consequences for public policy, including the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) recent categorization of carbon dioxide as a "pollutant."

E-mails embarrassing but they don’t disprove anything
Nashua Telegraph 2009
Skeptics claim a trove of e-mails shows the scientists at the Climate Research Unit of the U.K.’s University of East Anglia were engaging in evidence-tampering, and they are portraying the affair as a major scandal: “Climategate.”

We find such claims to be far wide of the mark. The e-mails (which have been made available by an unidentified individual) do show a few scientists talking frankly among themselves – sometimes being rude, dismissive, insular, or even behaving like jerks. Whether they show anything beyond that is still in doubt.

Some critics claim the e-mails invalidate the conclusions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the world scientific body that reaffirmed in a 2007 report that the Earth is warming, sea levels are rising and that human activity is “very likely” the cause of “most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century.” But the IPCC’s 2007 report, its most recent synthesis of scientific findings from around the globe, incorporates data from three working groups, each of which made use of data from a huge number of sources – of which CRU was only one.

Russian temps turn up heat on warmers
Investors.com 2009
A Russian think tank alleges that climate-change data obtained from that country have been cherry-picked to overstate a rise in temperatures. With Russia accounting for a large portion of the world's land mass, incorrect data there could affect the analysis of global temperatures.

The Russian study is part of the "climategate" fallout regarding the e-mails and other data leaked from the CRU last month. Some of the information appeared to show top climate scientists expressing private doubts about their data and in other cases tweaking them to bolster warming claims.

An analysis of the climate data shows that the data in Russia came from just 25% of the country's meteorological stations and missed about 40% of the country's land mass.

The Copenhagen Concoction
Wall Street Journal 2009
So what exactly is the point of Copenhagen? The question needs to be asked all the more insistently in the wake of last month's disclosure of thousands of documents and emails from the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit (CRU), long considered an authoritative center of temperature data, modeling and forecasts.

The core question raised by the emails is why their authors would behave this way if they are as privately convinced of the strength of their case as they claim in public. The Earth's climate is a profoundly complex system, sensitive, dynamic and subject to a dizzying range of variables interacting in ways that remain poorly understood. Carbon dioxide is only one of those variables. Climate scientists failed to anticipate the absence of warming in the last decade, a point that Kevin Trenberth, head of the Climate Analysis Section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, privately conceded in one of the disclosed emails was a "travesty."