Marquette Warrior: Climategate 2.0 / More E-mails

Saturday, December 03, 2011

Climategate 2.0 / More E-mails

From Forbes:
A new batch of 5,000 emails among scientists central to the assertion that humans are causing a global warming crisis were anonymously released to the public yesterday, igniting a new firestorm of controversy nearly two years to the day after similar emails ignited the Climategate scandal.

Three themes are emerging from the newly released emails: (1) prominent scientists central to the global warming debate are taking measures to conceal rather than disseminate underlying data and discussions; (2) these scientists view global warming as a political “cause” rather than a balanced scientific inquiry and (3) many of these scientists frankly admit to each other that much of the science is weak and dependent on deliberate manipulation of facts and data.

Regarding scientific transparency, a defining characteristic of science is the open sharing of scientific data, theories and procedures so that independent parties, and especially skeptics of a particular theory or hypothesis, can replicate and validate asserted experiments or observations. Emails between Climategate scientists, however, show a concerted effort to hide rather than disseminate underlying evidence and procedures.

“I’ve been told that IPCC is above national FOI [Freedom of Information] Acts. One way to cover yourself and all those working in AR5 would be to delete all emails at the end of the process,”writes Phil Jones, a scientist working with the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), in a newly released email.

“Any work we have done in the past is done on the back of the research grants we get – and has to be well hidden,” Jones writes in another newly released email. “I’ve discussed this with the main funder (U.S. Dept of Energy) in the past and they are happy about not releasing the original station data.”

The original Climategate emails contained similar evidence of destroying information and data that the public would naturally assume would be available according to freedom of information principles. “Mike, can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith [Briffa] re AR4 [UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 4th Assessment]?” Jones wrote to Penn State University scientist Michael Mann in an email released in Climategate 1.0. “Keith will do likewise. … We will be getting Caspar [Ammann] to do likewise. I see that CA [the Climate Audit Web site] claim they discovered the 1945 problem in the Nature paper!!”

The new emails also reveal the scientists’ attempts to politicize the debate and advance predetermined outcomes.

“The trick may be to decide on the main message and use that to guid[e] what’s included and what is left out” of IPCC reports, writes Jonathan Overpeck, coordinating lead author for the IPCC’s most recent climate assessment.

“I gave up on [Georgia Institute of Technology climate professor] Judith Curry a while ago. I don’t know what she thinks she’s doing, but its not helping the cause,” wrote Mann in another newly released email.

“I have been talking w/ folks in the states about finding an investigative journalist to investigate and expose” skeptical scientist Steve McIntyre, Mann writes in another newly released email.

These new emails add weight to Climategate 1.0 emails revealing efforts to politicize the scientific debate. For example, Tom Wigley, a scientist at the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, authored a Climategate 1.0 email asserting that his fellow Climategate scientists “must get rid of” the editor for a peer-reviewed science journal because he published some papers contradicting assertions of a global warming crisis.

More than revealing misconduct and improper motives, the newly released emails additionally reveal frank admissions of the scientific shortcomings of global warming assertions.

“Observations do not show rising temperatures throughout the tropical troposphere unless you accept one single study and approach and discount a wealth of others. This is just downright dangerous. We need to communicate the uncertainty and be honest. Phil, hopefully we can find time to discuss these further if necessary,” writes Peter Thorne of the UK Met Office.

“I also think the science is being manipulated to put a political spin on it which for all our sakes might not be too clever in the long run,” Thorne adds.

“Mike, The Figure you sent is very deceptive … there have been a number of dishonest presentations of model results by individual authors and by IPCC,” Wigley acknowledges.

More damaging emails will likely be uncovered during the next few days as observers pour through the 5,000 emails. What is already clear, however, is the need for more objective research and ethical conduct by the scientists at the heart of the IPCC and the global warming discussion.
So what we have here is a glimpse behind the façade of “science.”

Where “science” is a set of methods about how one knows about the natural world, it’s pretty good and extremely useful.

But when “science” is a social group, rather ingrown, with a distinctive political ideology and distinctive collective interests, no so much.

Here, sociology has trumped the supposed pristine virtues of “science.” We see human nature in full bloom.

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5 Comments:

Blogger jimspice said...

James Taylor, the author of the linked Forbes article, is a Senior Fellow at the Koch funded Heartland Institute. That should be your first clue. If you would follow sources outside your comfort zone, you would realize that these quotes are cherry picked for sensationalistic purposes, and removed completely from their original context, if not misrepresented entirely.

9:26 AM  
Blogger John McAdams said...

Of course you leftists hate the Koch brothers, but I don't care.

You really ought to admit that there has been major misconduct on the part of the "climate scientists," and looking at the e-mails in context shows that to be the case.

8:16 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I just went and looked at the review of the texts to which jimspice linked and I gotta say that it looks like a majority of the apparently damning evidence is only damning because it is edited to look that way.

It seems to me the only way to proceed with a discussion of who is right about this would be for JM to actually respond to that Media Matters piece in some detail rather than simply site what someone else has said, or at least to link to a detailed response of the Media Matters piece.

Until that happens I don't see why jimspice should have to admit to "major misconduct."

Whether or not JM actually takes up this challenge, I would urge anyone who is reading this to go and look at the Media Matters piece, which presents the edited versions along side the actual unedited text of the emails.

1:30 PM  
Blogger Beta Rube said...

The UN and governments around the world dole out more grant money to scientists who come to the "correct" conclusions than the Koch brothers have.

11:16 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

@Beta Rube: That's just an ad hominem argument. In that respect, it is fallacious in the same way that the first statement by jimspice is. However, jimspice at least links to a site where there is some attempt made to engage with the texts of the emails in context.

1:24 AM  

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