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Evidence of a desperate push to pump global warming up... and up
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The theory of global warming is 113 years old, supported by huge amounts of evidence and is about as non-controversial as scientific theories can get. It doesn't need my support--but I mention it here as we are busy deconstructing the career work of The Team, a group of climate scientists that apparently has been taking behaviour lessons from--well, pick a rigid, ideological political organisation--any of them will do, left or right.
We have been reporting on the contents of leaked files that have spread all over the Internet. There are 1,000 emails between members of The Team, as well as attachments and computer code. This is the fifth in our series. Click here to read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4.
But while global warming is not controversial, the amplification of its range and extent via feedback loops (where increasing CO2 leads to increasing water vapor and hence increasing temperatures) is controversial. In fact it is unproven.
The feedback theory was introduced conveniently at a time when the U.S. was debating the Kyoto Treaty, and in 1988 proved a convincing way of increasing the stakes in the climate debate. General circulation models originally had the feedback mechanism built into the assumptions, which guaranteed projections of dramatic temperature rises. And in 1998 Michael Mann emerged with a Hockey Stick chart based on proxy reconstructions that appeared to show that the period 1975-1998 was the warmest, not just in history, but stretching back to the last Ice Age.
Mann became defacto leader of The Team, a group of paleoclimatologists and climate scientists who were convinced that the IPCC had been too conservative when they predicted moderate temperature and sea-level rises in the upcoming century. And when Mann's work was essentially discredited by Steve McIntyre and Ross Mckittrick, it became a political necessity to find other proxies that would replace Mann's questionable choices and restore the pristine beauty of the Hockey Stick shape.
And that's what Climate Gate is about. A political imperative pushed scientists into making ever more desperate professional choices on what data to include in their studies, what methods to use to analyse that data, which media sources would give them preferred and friendly treatment, and focussed them on a politcal, not scientific, imperative.
The emails that have recently been released do not call global warming into question. The globe has been warming since the end of the last Ice Age, with minor ups and downs over the past 10,000 years. CO2 introduced by human emissions have contributed to the most recent rise, and if concentrations double from pre-industrial levels (which they almost certainly will), temperatures may average 1 or 2 degrees Celsius more than they would without our contributions.
But for The Team, frantically trying to retain a sense of urgency, trying to influence policy makers and major media outlets, drastic measures were needed. The released emails show clearly that political necessity caused them to cut displays of data series to eliminate evidence of a pause in global warming. A sense of paranoia (clearly shown in many of the emails) caused them to conspire to influence the scientific peer-review process, boycotting scientific journals and trying to get more skeptical editors replaced and urging colleagues not to submit to journals that didn't toe their party line.
They traded scientific discipline for message discipline. They acted like any of a number of Young Turks in a variety of professions, convinced that their goal--maintaining that sense of urgency amongst the public and politicians--was the most important thing they could do. In that, are they much different than the financial gurus who convinced us all that house prises would rise forever, or MBAs who missed their professional ethics classes before leading organisations like Enron to glory? Are they much different than the Blackberry wielding political consultants that have turned Western elections into a choreographed charade?
Recognising that The Team are part of an era and a generation does not excuse their behaviour, or even completely explain it. The scientific principles they abandoned are well-respected and the search for truth has been frequently rewarded--it seems they gave up a lot for a very little. But when we see similar behaviour amongst politicians and businessmen, we shouldn't be overly surprised to find out The Team was as human as the rest of us.
Just the release of the emails to the wider public will serve as sufficient punishment for what they have done. Their careers are changed irrevocably, and the body of work they tried to contribute is probably completely discredited.
The untold billions we have already spent on research, legislation, mitigation and adaptation may not have been wasted--we can still turn them all into effective instruments, as well as good lessons.
Because global warming did not disappear with their reputations. It still needs addressing, even if we now can take a deep breath and say it's not an oncoming train. If we have accelerated some programs and pushed some items up on the agenda based on the scare that The Team tried to throw into us, most of it will be things we needed to do sooner or later.
The true damage is to science. What will we do when a group of scientists comes forward with the next challenge for our civilization? There will be a next challenge, and it will be scientists who point us to it. How will we react? What standards of certainty will we demand prior to action?
One modest proposal that probably seems peripheral, but isn't. Recently, business schools have beefed up their curriculum in regards to professional ethics. Perhaps universities can do the same with science majors.
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