Colonel_Reb
Hall of Famer
<h1>The great climate change science scandal</h1>
<h2>Leaked emails
have revealed the unwillingness of climate change scientists to engage
in a proper debate with the sceptics who doubt global warming</h2>
<div id="main-article">
<div>
</span>
Jonathan Leake, Environment Editor
</span>
</div>
</div>
<div id="region-column1-layout2"><div id="related-article-s">
The storm began with just four cryptic words. "A miracle has happened,"Â
announced a contributor to Climate Audit, a website devoted to criticising
the science of climate change.
"RC" said nothing more â€" but included a web link that took anyone who clicked
on it to another site, Real Climate.
There, on the morning of November 17, they found a treasure trove: a thousand
or so emails sent or received by Professor Phil Jones, director of the
climatic research unit at the University of East Anglia in Norwich.
Jones is a key player in the science of climate change. His department's
databases on global temperature changes and its measurements have been
crucial in building the case for global warming.
What those emails suggested, however, was that Jones and some colleagues may
have become so convinced of their case that they crossed the line from
objective research into active campaigning.
In one, Jones boasted of using statistical "tricks"Â to obliterate apparent
declines in global temperature. In another he advocated deleting data rather
than handing them to climate sceptics. And in a third he proposed organised
boycotts of journals that had the temerity to publish papers that undermined
the message.
It was a powerful and controversial mix â€" far too powerful for some. Real
Climate is a website designed for scientists who share Jones's belief in
man-made climate change. Within hours the file had been stripped from the
site.
Several hours later, however, it reappeared â€" this time on an obscure Russian
server. Soon it had been copied to a host of other servers, first in Saudi
Arabia and Turkey and then Europe and America.
What's more, the anonymous poster was determined not to be stymied again. He
or she posted comments on climate-sceptic blogs, detailing a dozen of the
best emails and offering web links to the rest. Jones's statistical tricks
were now public property.
Steve McIntyre, a prominent climate sceptic, was amazed. "Words failed me,"Â he
said. Another, Patrick Michaels, declared: "This is not a smoking gun; this
is a mushroom cloud."Â
Inevitably, the affair became nicknamed Climategate. For the scientists,
campaigners and politicians trying to rouse the world to action on climate
change the revelations could hardly have come at a worse time. Next month
global leaders will assemble in Copenhagen to seek limits on carbon
emissions. The last thing they need is renewed doubts about the validity of
the science.
The scandal has also had a huge personal and professional impact on the
scientists. "These have been the worst few days of my professional life,"Â
said Jones. He had to call on the police for protection after receiving
anonymous phone calls and personal threats.
Why should a few emails sent to and from a single research scientist at a
middle-ranking university have so much impact? And most importantly, what
does it tell us about the quality of the research underlying the science of
climate change?
THE hacking scandal is not an isolated event. Instead it is the latest round
of a long-running battle over climate science that goes back to 1990.
That was when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change â€" the group of
scientists that advises governments worldwide â€" published its first set of
reports warning that the Earth faced deadly danger from climate change. A
centrepiece of that report was a set of data showing how the temperature of
the northern hemisphere was rising rapidly.
The problem was that the same figures showed that it had all happened before.
The so-called medieval warm period of about 1,000 years ago saw Britain
covered in vineyards and Viking farmers tending cows in Greenland. For any
good scientist this raised a big question: was the recent warming linked to
humans burning fossil fuels or was it part of a natural cycle?
The researchers set to work and in 1999 a group led by Professor Michael Mann,
a climatologist at Pennsylvania State University, came up with new numbers
showing that the medieval warm period was not so important after all.
Some bits of the Atlantic may have been warm for a while, but the records
suggested that the Pacific had been rather chilly over the same period â€" so
on average there was little change.
Plotted out, Mann's data turned into the famous "hockey stick"Â graph. It
showed northern hemisphere temperatures as staying flat for hundreds of
years and then rising steeply from 1900 until now. The implication was that
this rise would continue, with potentially deadly consequences for humanity.
That vision of continents being hit by droughts and floods while the Arctic
melts away has turned a scientific debate into a highly emotional and
political one. The language used by "warmists"Â and sceptics alike has become
increasingly polarised.
George Monbiot, widely respected as a writer on green issues, has branded
doubters "climate deniers"Â, a phrase uncomfortably close to holocaust
denial. Sceptics, particularly in America, have suggested that scientists
who believe in climate change are part of a global left-wing conspiracy to
divert billions of dollars into green technology.
A more cogent criticism is that there has been a reluctance to acknowledge
dissent on the question of climate science. Al Gore, the former US
vice-president turned green campaigner, has described the climate debate as
"settled"Â. Yet the science, say critics, has not been tested to the limit.
This is why the climatic research unit at the University of East Anglia is
so significant.
Its researchers have built up records of how temperatures have changed over
thousands of years. Perhaps the most important is the land and sea
temperature record for the world since the mid-19th century. This is the
database that shows the "unequivocal"Â rise of 0.8C over the last 157 years
on which Mann's hockey stick and much else in climate science depend.
Some critics believe that the unit's findings need to be treated with more
caution, because all the published data have been "corrected" Ã¢â‚¬" meaning they
have been altered to compensate for possible anomalies in the way they were
taken. Such changes are normal; what's controversial is how they are done.
This is compounded by the unwillingness of the unit to release the original
raw data.
David Holland, an engineer from Northampton, is one of a number of sceptics
who believe the unit has got this process wrong. When he submitted a request
for the figures under freedom of information laws he was refused because it
was "not in the public interest"Â.
Others who made similar requests were turned down because they were not
academics, among them McIntyre, a Canadian who runs the Climate Audit
website.
A genuine academic, Ross McKitrick, professor of economics at the University
of Guelph in Canada, also tried. He said: "I was rejected for an entirely
different reason. The [unit] told me they had obtained the data under
confidentiality agreements and so could not supply them. This was odd
because they had already supplied some of them to other academics, but only
those who support the idea of climate change."Â
IT was against this background that the emails were leaked last week,
reinforcing suspicions that scientific objectivity has been sacrificed.
There is unease even among researchers who strongly support the idea that
humans are changing the climate. Roger Pielke, professor of environmental
studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder, said: "Over the last
decade there has been a very political battle between the climate sceptics
and activist scientists.
"It seems to me that the scientists have lost touch with what they were up to.
They saw themselves as in a battle with the sceptics rather than advancing
scientific knowledge."Â
Professor Mike Hulme, a fellow researcher of Jones at the University of East
Anglia and author of Why We Disagree About Climate Change, said: "The
attitudes revealed in the emails do not look good. The tribalism that some
of the leaked emails display is something more usually associated with
social organisation within primitive cultures; it is not attractive when we
find it at work inside science."Â
There could, however, be another reason why the unit rejected requests to see
its data.
This weekend it emerged that the unit has thrown away much of the data. Tucked
away on its website is this statement: "Data storage availability in the
1980s meant that we were not able to keep the multiple sources for some
sites ... We, therefore, do not hold the original raw data but only the
value-added (ie, quality controlled and homogenised) data."Â
If true, it is extraordinary. It means that the data on which a large part of
the world's understanding of climate change is based can never be revisited
or checked. Pielke said: "Can this be serious? It is now impossible to
create a new temperature index from scratch. [The unit] is basically saying,
‘Trust us'."Â
WHERE does this leave the climate debate? While the overwhelming belief of
scientists is that the world is getting warmer and that humanity is
responsible, sceptical voices are increasing.
Lord Lawson, the Tory former chancellor, announced last week the creation of
the Global Warming Policy Foundation, a think tank, to "bring reason,
integrity and balance to a debate that has become seriously unbalanced,
irrationally alarmist, and all too often depressingly intolerant"Â.
Lawson said: "Climate change is not being properly debated because all the
political parties are on the same side, and there is an intolerance towards
anybody who wants to debate it. It has turned climate change from being a
political issue into a secular religion."Â
The public are understandably confused. A recent poll showed that 41% accept
as scientific fact that global warming is taking place and is largely
man-made, while 32% believe the link is unproven and 15% said the world is
not warming.
This weekend many of Jones's colleagues were standing by him. Tim Lenton,
professor of earth system science at UEA, said: "We wouldn't have anything
like the understanding of climate change that we do were it not for the work
of Phil Jones and his colleagues. They have spent decades putting together
the historical temperature record and it is good work."Â
The problem is that, after the past week, both sceptics and the public will
require even more convincing of that.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6936289.ece
As if we needed more evidence of a massive hoax. These facts prove that climate change is a myth, and those who teach it are propagandists.
</div></div>
Edited by: Colonel_Reb
<h2>Leaked emails
have revealed the unwillingness of climate change scientists to engage
in a proper debate with the sceptics who doubt global warming</h2>
<div id="main-article">
<div>
</span>
Jonathan Leake, Environment Editor
</span>
</div>
</div>
<div id="region-column1-layout2"><div id="related-article-s">
The storm began with just four cryptic words. "A miracle has happened,"Â
announced a contributor to Climate Audit, a website devoted to criticising
the science of climate change.
"RC" said nothing more â€" but included a web link that took anyone who clicked
on it to another site, Real Climate.
There, on the morning of November 17, they found a treasure trove: a thousand
or so emails sent or received by Professor Phil Jones, director of the
climatic research unit at the University of East Anglia in Norwich.
Jones is a key player in the science of climate change. His department's
databases on global temperature changes and its measurements have been
crucial in building the case for global warming.
What those emails suggested, however, was that Jones and some colleagues may
have become so convinced of their case that they crossed the line from
objective research into active campaigning.
In one, Jones boasted of using statistical "tricks"Â to obliterate apparent
declines in global temperature. In another he advocated deleting data rather
than handing them to climate sceptics. And in a third he proposed organised
boycotts of journals that had the temerity to publish papers that undermined
the message.
It was a powerful and controversial mix â€" far too powerful for some. Real
Climate is a website designed for scientists who share Jones's belief in
man-made climate change. Within hours the file had been stripped from the
site.
Several hours later, however, it reappeared â€" this time on an obscure Russian
server. Soon it had been copied to a host of other servers, first in Saudi
Arabia and Turkey and then Europe and America.
What's more, the anonymous poster was determined not to be stymied again. He
or she posted comments on climate-sceptic blogs, detailing a dozen of the
best emails and offering web links to the rest. Jones's statistical tricks
were now public property.
Steve McIntyre, a prominent climate sceptic, was amazed. "Words failed me,"Â he
said. Another, Patrick Michaels, declared: "This is not a smoking gun; this
is a mushroom cloud."Â
Inevitably, the affair became nicknamed Climategate. For the scientists,
campaigners and politicians trying to rouse the world to action on climate
change the revelations could hardly have come at a worse time. Next month
global leaders will assemble in Copenhagen to seek limits on carbon
emissions. The last thing they need is renewed doubts about the validity of
the science.
The scandal has also had a huge personal and professional impact on the
scientists. "These have been the worst few days of my professional life,"Â
said Jones. He had to call on the police for protection after receiving
anonymous phone calls and personal threats.
Why should a few emails sent to and from a single research scientist at a
middle-ranking university have so much impact? And most importantly, what
does it tell us about the quality of the research underlying the science of
climate change?
THE hacking scandal is not an isolated event. Instead it is the latest round
of a long-running battle over climate science that goes back to 1990.
That was when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change â€" the group of
scientists that advises governments worldwide â€" published its first set of
reports warning that the Earth faced deadly danger from climate change. A
centrepiece of that report was a set of data showing how the temperature of
the northern hemisphere was rising rapidly.
The problem was that the same figures showed that it had all happened before.
The so-called medieval warm period of about 1,000 years ago saw Britain
covered in vineyards and Viking farmers tending cows in Greenland. For any
good scientist this raised a big question: was the recent warming linked to
humans burning fossil fuels or was it part of a natural cycle?
The researchers set to work and in 1999 a group led by Professor Michael Mann,
a climatologist at Pennsylvania State University, came up with new numbers
showing that the medieval warm period was not so important after all.
Some bits of the Atlantic may have been warm for a while, but the records
suggested that the Pacific had been rather chilly over the same period â€" so
on average there was little change.
Plotted out, Mann's data turned into the famous "hockey stick"Â graph. It
showed northern hemisphere temperatures as staying flat for hundreds of
years and then rising steeply from 1900 until now. The implication was that
this rise would continue, with potentially deadly consequences for humanity.
That vision of continents being hit by droughts and floods while the Arctic
melts away has turned a scientific debate into a highly emotional and
political one. The language used by "warmists"Â and sceptics alike has become
increasingly polarised.
George Monbiot, widely respected as a writer on green issues, has branded
doubters "climate deniers"Â, a phrase uncomfortably close to holocaust
denial. Sceptics, particularly in America, have suggested that scientists
who believe in climate change are part of a global left-wing conspiracy to
divert billions of dollars into green technology.
A more cogent criticism is that there has been a reluctance to acknowledge
dissent on the question of climate science. Al Gore, the former US
vice-president turned green campaigner, has described the climate debate as
"settled"Â. Yet the science, say critics, has not been tested to the limit.
This is why the climatic research unit at the University of East Anglia is
so significant.
Its researchers have built up records of how temperatures have changed over
thousands of years. Perhaps the most important is the land and sea
temperature record for the world since the mid-19th century. This is the
database that shows the "unequivocal"Â rise of 0.8C over the last 157 years
on which Mann's hockey stick and much else in climate science depend.
Some critics believe that the unit's findings need to be treated with more
caution, because all the published data have been "corrected" Ã¢â‚¬" meaning they
have been altered to compensate for possible anomalies in the way they were
taken. Such changes are normal; what's controversial is how they are done.
This is compounded by the unwillingness of the unit to release the original
raw data.
David Holland, an engineer from Northampton, is one of a number of sceptics
who believe the unit has got this process wrong. When he submitted a request
for the figures under freedom of information laws he was refused because it
was "not in the public interest"Â.
Others who made similar requests were turned down because they were not
academics, among them McIntyre, a Canadian who runs the Climate Audit
website.
A genuine academic, Ross McKitrick, professor of economics at the University
of Guelph in Canada, also tried. He said: "I was rejected for an entirely
different reason. The [unit] told me they had obtained the data under
confidentiality agreements and so could not supply them. This was odd
because they had already supplied some of them to other academics, but only
those who support the idea of climate change."Â
IT was against this background that the emails were leaked last week,
reinforcing suspicions that scientific objectivity has been sacrificed.
There is unease even among researchers who strongly support the idea that
humans are changing the climate. Roger Pielke, professor of environmental
studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder, said: "Over the last
decade there has been a very political battle between the climate sceptics
and activist scientists.
"It seems to me that the scientists have lost touch with what they were up to.
They saw themselves as in a battle with the sceptics rather than advancing
scientific knowledge."Â
Professor Mike Hulme, a fellow researcher of Jones at the University of East
Anglia and author of Why We Disagree About Climate Change, said: "The
attitudes revealed in the emails do not look good. The tribalism that some
of the leaked emails display is something more usually associated with
social organisation within primitive cultures; it is not attractive when we
find it at work inside science."Â
There could, however, be another reason why the unit rejected requests to see
its data.
This weekend it emerged that the unit has thrown away much of the data. Tucked
away on its website is this statement: "Data storage availability in the
1980s meant that we were not able to keep the multiple sources for some
sites ... We, therefore, do not hold the original raw data but only the
value-added (ie, quality controlled and homogenised) data."Â
If true, it is extraordinary. It means that the data on which a large part of
the world's understanding of climate change is based can never be revisited
or checked. Pielke said: "Can this be serious? It is now impossible to
create a new temperature index from scratch. [The unit] is basically saying,
‘Trust us'."Â
WHERE does this leave the climate debate? While the overwhelming belief of
scientists is that the world is getting warmer and that humanity is
responsible, sceptical voices are increasing.
Lord Lawson, the Tory former chancellor, announced last week the creation of
the Global Warming Policy Foundation, a think tank, to "bring reason,
integrity and balance to a debate that has become seriously unbalanced,
irrationally alarmist, and all too often depressingly intolerant"Â.
Lawson said: "Climate change is not being properly debated because all the
political parties are on the same side, and there is an intolerance towards
anybody who wants to debate it. It has turned climate change from being a
political issue into a secular religion."Â
The public are understandably confused. A recent poll showed that 41% accept
as scientific fact that global warming is taking place and is largely
man-made, while 32% believe the link is unproven and 15% said the world is
not warming.
This weekend many of Jones's colleagues were standing by him. Tim Lenton,
professor of earth system science at UEA, said: "We wouldn't have anything
like the understanding of climate change that we do were it not for the work
of Phil Jones and his colleagues. They have spent decades putting together
the historical temperature record and it is good work."Â
The problem is that, after the past week, both sceptics and the public will
require even more convincing of that.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6936289.ece
As if we needed more evidence of a massive hoax. These facts prove that climate change is a myth, and those who teach it are propagandists.
</div></div>
Edited by: Colonel_Reb
