Kurt Kleiner's
Organized common sense

I’d been watching the unfolding “Climategate” story out of the corner of my eye for awhile, but only had a chance to dig into some of the emails a few days ago.

It’s no wonder climate change skeptics and deniers have pounced on the leaked emails from climatologists at the University of East Anglia. The researchers come across as cliquish, intolerant of both climate change skeptics and other scientists who disagree with them, and overly protective of their raw data.

What the emails do not show is that climate change is some kind of hoax or conspiracy, although that is what global warming deniers (such as now-freelance conservative Sarah Palin) would have you believe.

The emails, covering a span of 13 years, were stolen from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in the UK, and have since made their way to various sites on the Internet. (Here’s one of the most useful, since it’s searchable).

The email exchanges are among leaders in the climate research field, including Phil Jones (who has temporarily stepped aside as director of CRU), and Michael Mann of Pennsylvania State University.

Although most of the emails are routine back-and-forth over research work, they also include a lot of sniping at other scientists (“The kindest interpretation is that he is a complete idiot …”), at the media, politicians, and of course climate change deniers.

Criticisms have centered on three areas. First, Phil Jones refers to using a “trick” to “hide the decline” in a graph on global temperatures. Although it sounds damning, in context the email has a less sinister interpretation. Jones was working on a chart that showed data from a number of different sources. One of those was a series of temperature estimates from tree-ring data which is known to have diverged from real temperatures after 1960. The trick (as in, “here’s a neat trick”) was simply to include the real temperatures from direct observation, so that the chart wouldn’t show a temperature decline which we know never occurred.

(The tree ring data does present a real problem, since we rely on tree rings for making temperature estimates of past centuries. But it’s a well-known issue, much discussed in the open scientific literature. It’s even got a short-hand name, the “divergence problem.” So to say the problem was somehow being hidden is disingenuous. But out of context, it certainly sounds like something nefarious is going on).

Second, Jones criticizes two published scientific papers, and says, “I can’t see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow – even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is !” In fact, the two papers were discussed in the IPCC report.

Finally, the researchers spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to dodge information requests from skeptics. This is probably the biggest real problem uncovered. Clearly, the data they use should be available to everyone. If nothing else good comes of this, a government clearinghouse that makes all data and computer algorithms available to anyone would be a help.

But it’s worth pointing out what the emails do not show. They do not show some grand conspiracy to pull off a hoax. They do not show some liberal/environmental/anti-capitalist/one-world-government agenda being promoted, evidence be damned.

The strong impression I had is one of good scientists trying to do important work in a strongly politicized field. They feel under constant assault by skeptics, by the media, and even by Congress. If they succumbed to a bunker mentality, it’s because they had spent years under heavy shelling.

There are honest climate change skeptics (although they have varying degrees of expertise and judgment). But if you’re interested in seeing agenda-driven arguments supported by fudged numbers and tortured reasoning, you’ll find most of it on the denier side.