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University climate hackers: e-mails not the "smoking gun" deniers claim
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A few days after e-mails hacked from secure servers at the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia in eastern England, were widely circulated on the Internet, global warming deniers gleefully declared it was the “smoking gun” that proves what they have believed all along.
According to CBS news, Sen. James Inhofe, an Oklahoma Republican, said on Monday the leaked correspondence suggested researchers "cooked the science to make this thing look as if the science was settled, when all the time of course we knew it was not."
The University of Anglia released a statement condemning the incident, calling it “irresponsible and mischievous.”
Phil Jones, director of the Climate Research Unit, pointed out how the use of one particular word in one e-mail was cited as proof of fraud and he wanted set the record straight. This is the e-mail in question:
“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. Mike’s series got the annual land and marine values while the other two got April-Sept for NH land N of 20N. The latter two are real for 1999, while the estimate for 1999 for NH combined is +0.44C wrt 61-90. The Global estimate for 1999 with data through Oct +is 0.35C cf. 0.57 for 1998.”
The word ‘trick’ was used here colloquially as in a clever thing to do. Jones said, “it is ludicrous to suggest that it refers to anything untoward.”
Anthony Leiserowitz, a social scientist and director of the Yale Project on Climate Change said the e-mails would provide fodder for the small percentage of radical hard-core global warming deniers.
“For that small group, this is like throwing red meat to the wolves,” said Leiserowitz.
George Marshall, founder of Climatedenial.org seems to agree. Marshall wrote on his web site:
“The denial industry (and hordes of climate nerds) has trawled through these e-mails and found sentences which, when removed from context, support their storyline that climate science is being deliberately distorted and exaggerated for a mixed bag of self interested and politicized ends.”
Marshall feels that it has been, “an orchestrated smear campaign and does not require balance or context. The speed with which the emails have been cut apart and fed into existing storylines is remarkable.”
Most scientists agree that the e-mails may represent an embarrassment and may even reflect the realization that scientists are also human beings, but it does not change the fact that the Earth is warming and climate change is already upon us.
Frances Bienecke, president of Natural Resources Defense Council wrote in her new book Clean Energy Common Sense:
“From the Sahara to Central Asia, a belt of dry land growing ever thirstier has seen the first trickles of what refugees International already fears will be wave upon wave of climate refugees on the move in the decades ahead. Closer to home for Americans, the summer of 2009 brought the worst drought in 70 years to Mexico, killing an estimated 50,000 cows and wiping out 17 million acres of cropland.”
Furthermore, in mid November, Melbourne, Australia, a country battling decades of drought--got hammered with a month’s worth of rain in just 17 hours. The continent struggled with horrific bushfire conditions and record breaking temperatures. Climate Change Minister Penny Wong linked the unpredictable weather patterns to the effects of global warming.
“Everyone in Australia thinking about this, this weekend, would work it out that we are among the hottest and driest continents on Earth,” the Prime Minister said.
Meanwhile, the Obama administration is preparing for the Climate Summit in Copenhagen this December. President Obama will be one of 60 presidents and prime ministers along with delegates from 192 countries, who will attend this vital meeting on how best to proceed in replacing the Kyoto Protocol set to expire in 2012.
Every major government on this planet is taking global warming and climate change seriously. Not only due to the scientific evidence, but common sense 101. The planet’s population is approaching 7 billion people, living in industrialized nations that spew out pollution and greenhouse gases on a massive scale. Combined with our current agriculture, farming, and consumption, it is driving Earth’s natural C02 balance so far out of whack that if we don’t take corrective measures the results will be catastrophic for the next 50 generations.
The leaking of selectively chosen e-mails does nothing to invalidate decades of work by thousands of reputable scientists. The evidence is everywhere: melting glaciers, increased storm intensity, spreading deserts, more virulent diseases, increase of damaging insects, water shortages, erratic weather patterns, global wildfire increase, disappearing species, national security concerns, and the health impact on children, the poor and the elderly.
Sorry, deniers, it will take more than a few questionable e-mails to make a case against a wall of climate change evidence, which mostly requires that one just open their eyes and look around.
***Copyright Jean Williams 2009. Permission to reprint up to three paragraphs and link back to this page for full story.
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