Q: How damaging to your argument was the disclosure of e-mails from the Climate Research Unit at East Anglia University?
A: To paraphrase Shakespeare, it’s sound and fury signifying nothing.
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These private exchanges between these scientists do not in any way cause any question about the scientific consensus. But the noise machine built by the climate deniers often seizes on what they can blow out of proportion, so they’ve thought this is a bigger deal than it is.
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What we’re seeing is a set of changes worldwide that just make this discussion over 10-year-old e-mails kind of silly. The entire North Polar ice cap is disappearing before our very eyes. It’s been the size of the continental United States for the last 3 million years and now 40 percent is gone and the rest of it is going. The mountain glaciers are going. We’ve had record storms, droughts, fires, and floods. There is an air of unreality in debating these arcane points when the world is changing in such dramatic ways right in front of our eyes because of global warming.
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If the people that believed the moon landing was staged on a movie lot had access to unlimited money from large carbon polluters or some other special interest who wanted to confuse people into thinking that the moon landing didn’t take place, I’m sure we’d have a robust debate about it right now.
Today, 25 leading U.S. scientists sent an open letter (pdf) to Congress to assure lawmakers that the content of the stolen emails from England’s University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit has no bearing on scientists’ overall understanding that human activity is causing global warming.
“The content of the stolen emails has no impact whatsoever on our overall understanding that human activity is driving dangerous levels of global warming,” the letter states. “Even without including analyses from the UK research center from which the emails were stolen, the body of evidence that underlies our understanding of human-caused global warming remains robust.”
The letter’s signatories include eight members of the National Academy of Sciences, including University of California, Berkeley Professor Inez Fung; University of Washington Professor Edward Miles; and Scripps Institute of Oceanography Professor and Nobel Laureate Mario J. Molina.
Professor Phil Jones has today announced that he will stand aside as Director of the Climatic Research Unit until the completion of an independent Review resulting from allegations following the hacking and publication of emails from the Unit.
Professor Jones said: “What is most important is that CRU continues its world leading research with as little interruption and diversion as possible. After a good deal of consideration I have decided that the best way to achieve this is by stepping aside from the Director’s role during the course of the independent review and am grateful to the University for agreeing to this. The Review process will have my full support.”
Vice-Chancellor Professor Edward Acton said: “I have accepted Professor Jones’s offer to stand aside during this period. It is an important step to ensure that CRU can continue to operate normally and the independent review can conduct its work into the allegations.
“We will announce details of the Independent Review, including its terms of reference, timescale and the chair, within days. I am delighted that Professor Peter Liss, FRS, CBE, will become acting director.”
Crooks and Liars has a video clip of Senator Inhofe making a fool of himself by calling for a probe of the hacked emails. Here is a video of Senator Inhofe being seriously questioned by a CNBC reporter:
I have also added a section on statements from scientists. It will be updated considerably in the days to come. So far it includes the following entries:
The publication of a selection of stolen data is the latest example of a sustained and, in some instances, a vexatious campaign which may have been designed to distract from reasoned debate about the nature of the urgent action which world governments must consider to mitigate, and adapt to, climate change. We are committed to furthering this debate despite being faced with difficult circumstances related to a criminal breach of our security systems and our concern to protect colleagues from the more extreme behaviour of some who have responded in irrational and unpleasant ways to the publication of personal information.
In the frenzy of the past few days, the most vital issue is being overshadowed: we face enormous challenges ahead if we are to continue to live on this planet.
One has to wonder if it is a coincidence that this email correspondence has been stolen and published at this time. This may be a concerted attempt to put a question mark over the science of climate change in the run-up to the Copenhagen talks.
That the world is warming is based on a range of sources: not only temperature records but other indicators such as sea level rise, glacier retreat and less Arctic sea ice.
Our global temperature series tallies with those of other, completely independent, groups of scientists working for NASA and the National Climate Data Center in the United States, among others. Even if you were to ignore our findings, theirs show the same results. The facts speak for themselves; there is no need for anyone to manipulate them.
What they’ve done is search through stolen personal emails—confidential between colleagues who often speak in a language they understand and is often foreign to the outside world. Suddenly, all these are subject to cherry picking. They’ve turned “something innocent into something nefarious.
To sum, it doesn’t reflect badly at all – it reflects badly on the people who are so desperate to discredit global warming that they will unhesitatingly seize on a figure of speech, take it out of context, blow it all out of proportion (notice how quickly the WSJ [Wall Street Journal] got in on this?) and use it for their own predetermined purpose. Now that’s real dishonesty!
This private communication in no way damages the credibility of the AR4 findings.
The entire report writing process of the IPCC is subjected to extensive and repeated review by experts as well as governments,” he added in a written statement to Reuters.
There is, therefore, no possibility of exclusion of any contrarian views, if they have been published in established journals or other publications which are peer reviewed.
I have also added a section on pieces of general interest, which don’t necessarily fit into one of the headings. Here are the current items in that section:
Kevin Grandia observed the other day that Climate Depot — which is published by Marc Morano of Swift Boat conspiracy fame — appeared to be ground zero for the ‘Climategate’ conspiracy. But until today, there had not been any indication that conservative bloggers were actually involved in the criminal activity of hacking the emails.
On the Washington Times’ America’s Morning program today, Senator James Inhofe accused conservative bloggers of illegally hacking into University of East Anglia computers:
Now that was four years ago; so we knew they were cooking the science back then, and you’ve been talking about the, you know, what’s happened recently with the bloggers coming up with what they did, what they…
Jed Babbin, editor of HumanEvents.com, repeated the charge seconds later:
Jed Babbin: Let me interrupt you there Senator, because I think that’s a really important point. Ladies and gentlemen, if you haven’t followed that story, what Senator Inhofe’s talking about, in Britain, a blogger got into some of the official government records about climate change and how the measurements were being taken to show…
To be as clear as possible, I am not accusing conservative bloggers of criminal activity. A Republican Senator and far-right website owner are.
Later in the interview, Senator Inhofe announced that he’ll be calling for an investigation of the United Nations for ‘the way that they cooked the science’:
Senator Inhofe: Well, on this thing, it is pretty serious. And since, you know, Barabara Boxer is the Chairman and I’m the Ranking Member on Environment and Public Works, if nothing happens in the next seven days when we go back into session a week from today that would change this situation, I will call for an investigation. ‘Cause this thing is serious, you think about the literally millions of dollars that have been thrown away on some of this stuff that they came out with.
Melanie Morgan: So what will you be calling for an investigation of?
Senator Inhofe: On the IPCC and on the United Nations on the way that they 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.
Apparently not content with stopping there, Inhofe goes on to praise the criminals for their good timing and for being on the ball:
The interesting part of this is it’s happening right before Copenhagen. And, so, the timing couldn’t be better. Whoever is on the ball in Great Britain, their time was good.
Imagine the outrage that would ensue if the tables were turned. If someone had orchestrated a politically motivated attempt to hack into ExxonMobile’s private emails — and a liberal United States Senator publicly praised them for it — the fallout would be monumental. ‘Mainstream media’ outlets would talk about how shameful and unprofessional it was. Conservative bloggers and pundits would initiate a drumbeat of calls for some sort of public condemnation. Conservative Democrats would probably join the call after a few days, and the Senator would be censured by the end of the week.
But this is Senator Inhofe, who everybody knows is batshit insane, so this will probably go unnoticed.
