I feel like it’s time to address the ‘Climategate’ issue that’s been hanging over the head of the climate change movement for the past few weeks. As most of you know by now, ‘Climategate’ refers to the thousands of emails from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia that have been hacked and released into the public domain. [1] The content of these emails have attracted attention from climate change skeptics and have created nothing short of an uproar in conservative circles.
The most controversial of the emails is a 1999 email from the head of the CRU, Phil Jones, and it reads: “I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature [the science journal] trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie, from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.” [2]
Climate change skeptics have seized upon the wording of this email to suggest that climate change data is being manipulated by the scientific community. Jones has since resigned his post at the CRU pending an investigation by the university. [3] Admittedly the email doesn’t look good but there is an explanation and this is what RealClimate had to say:
“The paper in question is the Mann, Bradley and Hughes (1998) Nature paper on the original multiproxy temperature reconstruction, and the ‘trick’ is just to plot the instrumental records along with reconstruction so that the context of the recent warming is clear. Scientists often use the term “trick” to refer to a “a good way to deal with a problem”, rather than something that is “secret”, and so there is nothing problematic in this at all. As for the ‘decline’, it is well known that Keith Briffa’s maximum latewood tree ring density proxy diverges from the temperature records after 1960 (this is more commonly known as the “divergence problem”–see e.g. the recent discussion in this paper) and has been discussed in the literature since Briffa et al in Nature in 1998 (Nature, 391, 678-682). Those authors have always recommended not using the post-1960 part of their reconstruction, and so while ‘hiding’ is probably a poor choice of words (since it is ‘hidden’ in plain sight), not using the data in the plot is completely appropriate, as is further research to understand why this happens.” [4]
The reason these emails are important is because of the role the University of East Anglia plays in climate change science. The CRU is one of the world’s leading authorities in reconstructing past climate and temperatures. Not exactly helping the university in these trying times is the news last week that the CRU has ‘thrown away’ most of the raw temperature data on which their predictions are based, leaving only the controlled and homogenized data. [5]
There are other centers doing research similar to the CRU’s, namely NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies. However NASA (the National Aeronautics and Space Administration) has found itself in a bit of hot water recently as well. The agency is being threatened with litigation by a researcher from the ‘Competitive Enterprise Institute’ in an attempt to compel the agency to release data from its Goddard Institute for Space Studies. The researcher, Christopher Horner, has said he suspects the GISS may have ‘manipulated research like East Anglia’s CRU’. The information was requested two years ago under the Freedom Of Information Act and NASA says it’s collecting the information to respond to Horner’s request. [6]
It should be noted that the ‘Competitive Enterprise Institute’ or CEI is a libertarian think-tank dedicated to the principals of a free market economy. Some of the group’s past and present donors include: Exxon Mobil, Pfizer, Ford Motor Company, and Texaco. [7]
Another big player in the climate change data set is NOAA (National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration), so far they have managed to remain unscathed by ‘Climategate’ and the CRU has pointed to their data sets in defence of their own conclusions. [8]
The last major player on the climate change data set scene is Britain’s Met Office. While initially downplaying the ‘Climategate’ incident, the Met Office has since changed its stance saying it will release its temperature data to the public and will go through the last 160 years of data to ensure its accuracy. (The original analysis was done by the CRU.) [9]
The ripples from ‘Climategate’ are being felt far and wide. Mudslinging has broken out on Capitol Hill in the United States where Democratic Representative Ed Markey has stepped up to the defence of environmental legislation saying ‘Climategate shouldn’t stand in the way of the US Congress’ swift enactment of cap and trade’. [10] Markey is the chairman of the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming. He is also the co-author of the American Clean Energy and Security Act (also known as the Waxman-Markey Bill) which is an energy bill that would establish a cap and trade system for carbon trading in the United States. The bill was approved by the House in a vote in June 2009, and it now sits waiting for approval from the Senate. [11] Moderate Republicans are crucial to the bill’s success and the scandal surrounding ‘Climategate’ has led to some prominent Republican Senators seeking to distance themselves from the bill with Politico reporting that even John McCain has become a vocal critic of the bill. [12]
The IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) has released a statement chastising the hacker/s and assuring the public that the science behind its panel’s conclusions is sound. [13] Elsewhere in the UN, Yvo De Boer the Executive Secretary of the UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) has shared similar sentiments saying that while the emails do look bad, the underlying research on global warming is solid. [14]
The timing of the hack, in the run up to the Copenhagen Climate Conference, has raised suspicions as to whodunnit and what their motivations might have been. The Metropolitan Police Service or ‘Scotland Yard’ is currently investigating the incident along with local police in Norfolk. [15]
While it’s easy to get carried away into the intrigue that is ‘Climategate’ it’s best to keep a level head and remain objective. We should remember that climate change is a highly researched issue and one where the scientific community has reached a consensus.
The belief that the scientific community has been driving the climate change debate to serve their own interests is ludicrous at best. Skeptics have often made note of the money that stands to be made by climate change science supporters, but this type of logic ignores the world’s industrialists and their monetary motivations for maintaining the status quo. With that in mind, I would love to read the emails of major oil companies’ CEOs from the past ten years so I could select .001% of them and cite them out of context.
