A woman reads a newspaper as a ship is seen spraying sand and gravel off the coast near Petten, Netherlands. Natural water currents push the sand into place to strengthen dikes or dunes. In this project, 247 million cubic feet of sand will be pushed landward over several years to strengthen the coastbed in front of a sea-dike. The Dutch government is spending billions of euros annually to prepare for the expected impact of global warming, including rising seas. (AP Photo/Peter Dejong) (AP/FILE)
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Hacked climate emails: conspiracy or tempest in a teapot?
By Pete Spotts | 11.21.09
For all its gee-whiz discoveries and its influence on public policy, science can be a messy, sometimes ugly enterprise.
When the science is paleontology, astronomy, or geophysics, internal politics, thinly or not-so-thinly veiled personal attacks, and water-cooler discussions among influential scientists about whose research is junk and not worth publishing draw a collective yawn from anyone outside the relatively small circle of researchers involved.
When the topic is global warming, however, look out.
This week, more than 169 megabytes worth of global-warming emails and related files were either hacked and/or leaked from computers at the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Center in Britain and released to the world via the Internet.
(If you’re interested in poring through some 169 megabytes of emails and files, you can download 26-megabyte FOI2009.zip from here, then unpack it. You’ll need to set up a free account, then you can download the file.)
The package includes a number of innocuous discussions among the 1,073 emails that span a period from March 1996 to this month. But others treat with disdain colleagues who don’t share the views of the majority or who challenge the way data are analyzed. Some emails give the appearance of fudging data. Others show the authors concerned about the ways their methods or data could be (mis)interpreted by global-warming skeptics.
In yet another email, one researcher influential in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) process vows to keep two sets of results from being included in the group’s widely cited reports “somehow — even if if we have to redefine what the peer review literature is.”
The appearance of these emails and files comes at a time when the US Senate has punted action on a climate and energy bill into next year, and with a major climate summit coming up next month in Copenhagen. Over the past three months — if not longer — it’s become increasingly clear that the meeting will not yield a legally binding climate treaty, as negotiators hoped at a similar meeting in Bali in December 2007.
This confluence of postponements led US Sen. James Inhofe (R) of Oklahoma, a prominent political skeptic of global warming, to announce on the Senate floor last Wednesday: “I proudly declare 2009 as the Year of the Skeptic, the year in which scientists who question the so-called global warming consensus are being heard.”
For researchers directly involved in the email exchanges, such emails really present a picture of the lengths scientists go to ensure the high quality of the science. The exchanges are shocking to some of the rest of us only because they open a window on an enterprise alien to most people. The debates are public in the sense that they crop up in scientific journals. But most people don’t keep science journals handy as reading material for the commute to and from work.
Over at Realclimate.org, several of whose climate-scientist contributors were involved in the pilfered email-exchanges, the “group” explains the collection this way:
…There is a peek into how scientists actually interact and the conflicts show that the community is a far cry from the monolith that is sometimes imagined. People working constructively to improve joint publications; scientists who are friendly and agree on many of the big picture issues, disagreeing at times about details and engaging in ‘robust’ discussions; Scientists expressing frustration at the misrepresentation of their work in politicized arenas and complaining when media reports get it wrong; Scientists resenting the time they have to take out of their research to deal with over-hyped nonsense. None of this should be shocking.
Yet some of the targets of the emails’ ire understandably see things differently. One target, climate researcher John Christy at the University of Alabama at Huntsville, finds the emails reflect a disturbing level of what he terms “group think.” In an email exchange (a polite one), he writes:
These people act in concert to diminish, reject, and otherwise denigrate findings with which they do not agree — and they are able to do so because of their “establishment” positions. This is the preservation of “group think” at its most serious level…. The group represented by the bulk of these emails does indeed have a message to defend. Those of us who see problems with that message are aware of how the data are manufactured and interpreted to support that message — and worse, how these establishment scientists act as gatekeepers for the “consensus” reports to suppress alternative findings.
Another target of email ire, Roger Pielke Sr. at Colorado State University, makes much the same argument. You can read his latest blog post on the subject here.
Neither rejects the notion of a human role in global warming. But they consistently object to the disaster scenarios that permeate the political discussions about global warming. And in Dr. Pielke’s case, the human role extends beyond carbon dioxide to include “forcings” such as land-use change or the production of black-carbon soot from biomass burning.
Nothing in the package appears to overturn the general idea — arrived at via many lines of evidence — that the CO2 humans have been pumping into the atmosphere is warming the planet, nor does anything bolster the notion some put forward of a hoax on the part of climate scientists.
It remains to be seen how the release of the emails and files plays out beyond the circle of people who follow the issue closely and who hold strong views on either side of the issue. It could turn out to be a tempest in a teapot or a PR gotcha for US climate scientists. At the least, it reinforces the maxim: Don’t put into an email information you don’t want to see on the front page of someone’s newspaper (Oops, old medium) web site.
The irony: Since the international community first took up the climate issue in a serious way in 1992, the focus of attention has been on the atmospheric effects of pumping long-sequestered carbon into the atmosphere through burning fossil fuels. But that CO2 also is working its way into the oceans, making them more acidic — something that raises its own set of serious challenges.<< The hidden costs of fossil fuels - and biofuels, too | Main
Comments
2. Hilary | 11.21.09
If we assume the anti-global-warming people are right and then they’re wrong, we’re all cooked. If we assume the global-warming-is-real people are right and then they’re wrong, the air will just be cleaner.
3. Mike | 11.21.09
Mr. Spotts who wrote this article is too careful to not step on the toes of the climate scientists who are engaged in junk science, in my opinion.
4. Charles | 11.21.09
Obviously you don’t know your stuff. Carbon dioxide isn’t a pollutant. Ice-core records show that when the levels of carbon dioxide were twenty times higher the earth was cooler. Any scientist worth his salt knows that water vapour is the main greenhouse gas. Controlling water vapour is way beyond man. There is no such thing as man-made global warming.
The ice in the antarctic has actually increased by 45% (source the national snow and ice data centre, University of Colorado). The media shows ice shelfs breaking off to push global warming propaganda but the reality is that ice shelfs grow and break off as part of a natural process. The media don’t show the massive overall ice increase. The earth has been cooling for the last 10 years.
As for the leaks they come hot on the tail of the fraudulent hockey stick effect. These emails are the final nail in the coffin of the global warming hoax. This article is swimming against the tide trying to convince people otherwise.
5. L Scribner | 11.21.09
The toughest part is to correlate the global warming message with the knowledge that we are going through a global cooling cycle.
So we measure ourselves warming even though we are gettng cooler. This does take some yeoman effort to understand.
Could it just be something to do with funding and politics?
6. Samuel Dijk | 11.21.09
I must disagree with Mr. Spotts’ assertion that nothing in these documents “does anything bolster the notion some put forward of a hoax on the part of climate scientists.”
Please look at email 0942777075 , which states ” I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.”
The supporters of global warming claim that “trick” in this case does not carry its typical connotation, but instead means a neat way of doing something. However, in the context of “” I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick . . . to hide the decline,” I cannot believe that “trick” is being used in any sort of specialized context.
I–for one–believes it means what it says: he used a trick to hide data that is unfavorable for his position.
If this isn’t evidence of a hoax, I don’t know what would qualify.
Secondly, look at some of the other emails: in email 1054736277 , Mann writes to Jones, “I think that trying to adopt a timeframe of 2K, rather than the usual 1K, addresses a good earlier point that Peck made w/ regard to the memo, that it would be nice to try to ‘contain’ the putative ‘MWP’ [Medieval Warming Period], even if we don’t yet have a hemispheric mean reconstruction available that far back.” This shows that they were attempting to downplay (”contain”) the extent of the MWP by using data even though he doesn’t have reliable, tested data to support his contention.
What kind of “science” is this?
Third, you have David Parker writing, in email 1105019698 , that ” There is a preference in the atmospheric observations chapter of IPCC AR4 to stay with the 1961-1990 normals. This is partly because a change of normals confuses users, e.g. anomalies will seem less positive than before if we change to newer normals, so the impression of global warming will be muted.”
In other words, does not want to change the time frame because it “confuses users”–that is: “the impression of global warming will be muted.”
From these and other emails, It is apparent that global warming science is the 21st Century’s version of phrenology.
7. GHM | 11.21.09
I do not understand what you are trying to do with this article.
Are you saying that the Ice caps are not melting?
Are you saying that the hole in the atmosphere is not getting bigger?
Are you saying that we should allow more pollution?
Are you saying that its ok to put more Corbin dioxide in the air?
Man you just willing to allow the distraction of our planet to get a story.
8. Ron | 11.21.09
As a long time AGW supporter I must say I found the emails very disturbing.
I spent hours reading them myself. I don’t know if they qualify as “smoking gun” that the AGW science is bust, but I just cannot ignore it.
I feel ashamed for the behavior of our leading scientists. Even more than feeling ashamed – I feel betrayed.
For years I trusted that science will prevail over the unsubstantiated skeptic view. These emails reveal a very disturbing picture of ideology overriding science. Science being bent out of shape to support a hypothesis.
They reveal unbelievable arrogance. These people whom I trusted so much think they are
- above the law (destroying email, refusing FOIA, tax evasion)
- above the data (“hide the decline”, remove the cooling blimp)
- above their peers (get uncomforting journal editors fired, block skeptic publications)
- above the rest of us (manipulate the message, presentation and media)
I am sick to my stomach. I know there are so many other hard working scientists that have not tainted themselves. But this group – Phil Jones, Ken Briffa, Mike Man, Gavin Schmidt have casted a huge shadow of doubt over the entire field and caused a huge damage to the green movement.
I talked with many of my friends who, like most of us, continue to believe in AGW, and we think that as long as these guys continue to lead the science and the IPCC assessments they will continue to taint all of the good work done by thousands of other scientists.
We need to acknowledge that wrong was done. We need to replace the tainted leadership and continue the research without the air of doubt.
9. LLL | 11.22.09
What to expect from a “bright green blog”…Certainly not Science neither Journalism but advocacy…
10. David44 | 11.22.09
“For researchers directly involved in the email exchanges, such emails really present a picture of the lengths scientists go to ensure the high quality of the science. The exchanges are shocking to some of the rest of us only because they open a window on an enterprise alien to most people. The debates are public in the sense that they crop up in scientific journals. But most people don’t keep science journals handy as reading material for the commute to and from work.”
You’re either nuts or as corrupt as the charlatans who have perpetrated this travesty. Grieve not for these clowns or their alarmist cause; grieve for science. The damage they have done is incalculable. I’m a scientist. I read scientific journals. Scientists are as human as anyone else, but this behavior is not the norm. This is beyond shameful. It is criminal.
11. Teacher | 11.22.09
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/01/31/ocean-acidification-and-corals/#more-5407
12. WhatACrock | 11.22.09
“Tempest in a Teapot” my ***. These leaked communications are damning evidence of falsified scientific data and collusion to defraud the public. It’s time to face the facts Climate Change Zealots - your false religion is nothing but a scam perpetrated by snake-oil salesmen like Al Gore.
There is no ManBearPig folks. Now, how about focusing on some real environmental issues?
13. WestWright | 11.22.09
Time to wake up! Smell the coffee! This author’s as well as the CSM’s credibility is disappearing quickly and will be lost if you don’t start accurately reporting these events! The emails were released by a whistleblower and they are authentic. The problem for the Climate Alarmist is obvious, The Climate Alarmist are exposed for all and it is FRAUD and has completely corrupted the science. This Climate Change scam will be know as the biggest heist of public funding in history.
14. bart simpson | 11.22.09
Contrary to a widespread opinion, there are few good scientists (you don’t have to go far to see how data is manipulated sometimes; just check the way some of the data presented sometimes at the Hynes Convention Center, a couple hundred yards from your headquarters, has been manipulated ). There are many pseudo-scientists who contribute to the perversion of science, as there are many pseudo-religious people who pervert the message of their religion.
Thank you for trying to show the people that there’s not only the view “****, homini, lupus” but that one should believe in God.
15. Bruce Hodge | 11.22.09
Please give it up! The article’s laughable efforts at “damage control” are so obvious, they are beyond pathetic. The intellectual corruption displayed in the article, together with the Research Center’s (and multiple others’) offenses against the scientific method are destroying any remaining respect we may have for the whole idea of “global warming” (or is it “climate change”, or whatever)? What occurred were not “water cooler discussions”, but rather were broad-based, multi-year efforts by dishonest “scientists” (”politicians” really) infected with monumental arrogance, pushing politically (research grant) funded lies. Any time a “fact” (observation, data, etc.) is “adjusted” to fit a theory (model) there is a lie. “Hockey Stick”, anyone? An unholy alliance between dishonest “science” (can “consenses”, or “broad consensus” be “science”) hysterical politics and bad journalism is sufficient to destroy our lives.
16. GrouchyOldMan | 11.22.09
This is big news even if the emails turn out to be a hoax. IT IS HUGE NEWS if these emails are real. This is too important to be kept under wraps, treat this as though it were the Pentagon Papers redux. That’s how real journalism used to work. Is it any wonder that your subscription revenues are down?
17. don | 11.22.09
A tortured argument that leaves out the science of statistics and how biases running amok can manipulate hypotheses and prove and reprove conventional wisdom that is flat out wrong– shown by the released documents here to be hidden and protected.
The governments’ pushing of planet engineering is just as eloquent and parochial as the Medieval Catholic Church’s influence on astronomy.
If reasonable people cannot transparently set the hypotheses and test them objectively, throw the bumbs out (no matter what their academic pedigree or pay for play status with politicians and start over. We are talking about trllions of dollars and the planets future, and tolerating hidden agendas, data manipulation and two sets of books are cheating our children and grandchildren. Unfortunately, the same goes for the debates on health care and “too big to fail” and “too valuable to fire” financial and tax authorities.
18. Lester Hunt | 11.22.09
I find it incredible that apologists for these people would say, oh, this only looks bad if you are not a scientist and are not familiar with the way science works. No, this is not the way science works! Science can only exist because certain principles are followed, ethical principles about how the debate is to be carried on, and these people are violating these principles. What we see her is a serious violation of professional ethics.
19. Hank | 11.22.09
This article is a shameful whitewash of the serious, even criminal, conspiracy engaged in by the global warming alarmists. Who are the deniers now?
20. Sean | 11.22.09
Charles: “Ice-core records show that when the levels of carbon dioxide were twenty times higher the earth was cooler.”
From where did you pull this non-fact? In reality, ice-core data shows that humans have raised the amount of carbon dioxide to a level well over what has occurred naturally for the last 400,000 years. And no climate scientist disagrees with the fact that CO2 keeps our planet warm. Don’t take my word for it, go look it up. Do a search for “climate change science” or “science of climate change” and inform yourself.
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1. MarkusR | 11.21.09
Tremendous irony in the “skeptics” accusing scientists of groupthink. As this current controversy shows, they are quick to pick up and run with whatever they think they have.