Associated Press:
“My overall interpretation of the scientific basis for (man-made) global warming is unaltered by the contents of these e-mails,” said Gabriel Vecchi, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientist.
Gerald North, a climate scientist at Texas A&M University, headed a National Academy of Sciences study that looked at — and upheld as valid — Mann’s earlier studies that found the 1990s were the hottest years in centuries.
“In my opinion the meaning is much more innocent than might be perceived by others taken out of context. Much of this is overblown,” North said.
Media Matters:
Since the reported theft of emails from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia, conservative media figures have aggressively claimed that those emails undermine the overwhelming scientific consensus that human activities are causing climate change, dubbing the supposed scandal “Climategate.” But these critics have largely rested their claims on outlandish distortions and misrepresentations of the contents of the stolen emails, greatly undermining their dubious smears.
Read the whole thing.
Good to see Mann
going on the offensive:
It’s important to understand here that the timing of this event is rather suspect. We’re one week away from this historic summit in Copenhagen, where leaders from around the world will be meeting to discuss how to combat the threat of human-caused climate change. And going into that meeting, there’s a very robust consensus among the world’s scientists that the problem is real and there’s something that we need to do about it.
Now there is, of course, a group of people and there are special interests who do not want to see any progress made at this summit. And frankly, they don’t have the science on their side. The science behind human-caused climate change is quite solid. The National Academy of Science in the U.S. has weighed in on this…there is in fact a consensus behind the reality of climate change. So, the other side doesn’t have the science on their side, and instead they’ve engaged frankly in what I believe is a smear campaign; stolen emails, taken out of context, mined for single words or phrases that can be twisted and taken out of context, in many cases to completely misrepresent the context of what was being discussed.
…let me stress again that there is nothing in any of these emails that in an way calls into question the consensus of the world’s scientists that the problem of climate change is real and that we need to do something to confront it. So my hope is that people will see through this fairly thinly disguised smear campaign and recognize that in no way does anything in any of these emails call into question the validity of the science behind human-caused climate change.
