Hacked climate e-mails offer flash, but no smoking gun
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A trove of leaked private e-mails to and from leading climate researchers has revealed a shocking and unexpected truth: Scientists are human.
They collaborate on problems in their work, use intemperate language about their critics and worry about making mistakes.
The e-mails, some dating back 13 years, were stolen from a university server in England and posted on the Internet last week. Climate change deniers are hailing them as a “smoking gun” — though exactly what they are supposed to demonstrate seems a bit unclear.
Many of the e-mails discuss technical problems or point to gaps in evidence. Others are unabashedly critical of scientists who, the researchers say, misstate data or reach faulty conclusions.
And some, such as a message that refers to opponents as “idiots,” or another with a photo collage depicting leading global warming deniers on a melting iceberg, frankly are juvenile.
It’s easy to get lost in the details of any scientific debate, which is why it helps to keep your eye on the big picture. Evidence for global climate change is, quite simply, overwhelming. It includes:
• Atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, now at their highest levels in 800,000 years.
• Global average temperatures, which show that the 20th century was the warmest on record, and the years since 2000 were even warmer.
• Melting Arctic sea ice, which since 1980 has declined from about 7 million square kilometers to slightly more than 5 million.
• Rising sea levels, which since 1993 have grown at twice the historical average.
None of that has been seriously challenged. The purloined e-mails focus on more prosaic matters.
Global warming deniers say that in some, scientists discuss deleting e-mails to avoid a Sunshine Law request for their raw data.
That’s not behavior we condone. It shows that even top scientists could learn from political leaders, who have far more sophisticated methods to prevent disclosure.
Deniers point in particular to an e-mail in which a leading researcher describes using a “trick” to “hide” certain data. The researcher, Phil Jones, a British climatologist, was referring to a study that integrated historic records with indirect evidence of global temperatures from things like tree rings and ice cores.
The “trick” involved integrating tree-ring data, which conflicts with historic temperature readings after 1960, with the rest of the evidence. The same “trick” also was used by another researcher to produce what is sometimes called the “hockey stick” graph. It shows temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere over the past 1,000 years, with a sharp increase beginning in the 1990s.
But the “hockey stick” graph was vetted by the National Academies of Science, which endorsed the methods used to create it. The problem of integrating tree-ring data with information from other sources was widely recognized and discussed at the time Mr. Jones published his research and when the Academies reviewed the hockey stick graph. The “trick” wasn’t hidden, and it wasn’t secret.
What’s left is a collection of supposedly private e-mails in which scientists behave badly, not a refutation of the science of climate change.
Luckily, science doesn’t depend on the behavior of scientists for its authority. If it did, we would not have the theory of gravity, whose foundation was laid by Sir Isaac Newton, a man who badly overreacted to critics and dabbled in alchemy.
In the end, it’s the totality of data that matters. Unfortunately for global warming deniers, that evidence is stacked against
I believe one of your fellow proponents might [appropriately] say, keep the faith. As a denier (not skeptic) myself, I’m not suprised by the content of the swiped emails. Further, I have zero expectation that it will put even a chink in the movement; that train has already left the station. In this anti-reason movement, contrary facts are routinely integrated as supporting evidence - something that a little tweak here (move X or scale the Y on the graph), a renaming there (GW -> climate change) will right the ship. Ultimately, I don’t regard the warmers’ particular vehicle as the problem, it’s the proliferation of faith / anti-reason that supports it and a hundred other anti-man efforts that’ll enslave those of us that aren’t killed.
Typical tripe from the ‘editorial board’, slaves to the liberal agenda. The junk science of man made climate change is being exposed for what it is…a big a$$ lie. Truth, like fact, is stubborn. It can’t be surpressed forever and this is a giant opening thru which truth will be set free. This exposure of the purposeful surpression of facts by the so-called scientists is a grand day for truth. Global warming is a lie, and man made climate change is its brother…..as Joe Wilson put it “You Lie”
No smoking gun…….just a SKY ROCKET!!! I also notice that you don’t give credit for that bogus graph. Did that come from these same quacks that release only that which supports their cause. It actually think that is the thermometer on their stove the day they were cooking up some more lies
Wow, my post was removed?!
I want to personally thank the Post-Dispatch for handling the job of making excuses for the lying Scientists and the scam by these Scientists. After all, the Post-Dispatch makes excuses on a Daily basis for all foolish thoughts and programs perpetuated by the left. Its no wonder you have lost so many readers. Lets get back to proven facts instead of calling theories facts.
Evidence for global climate change is, quite simply, overwhelming. It includes: Atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, now at their highest levels in 800,000 years.
Who was tracking concentrations of carbon dioxide 800,000 years ago
I am not a scientist, I am a businessman and I have seen many business plans seeking funding. Almost all of them show hockey stick results. Almost all of them never come true.In business, a hockey stick graph is a standing joke. At my venture capital fund they often joke before the day starts, “who are we seeing first? Bobby Orr or Phil Espisito? (They’re in Boston).
We are currently in our 5th known ice age (geologists define an ice age as the presence of ice caps at the poles.) Humans evolved into a species during this ice age. If humans are causing the warming, what caused the previous 4?
Indirect evidence of CO2 concentrations can be found in the geological record — I can buy that. But to say the 20th century was the warmest year on record? Wasn’t the earth a giant ball of molten rock covered with volcanoes at one point? I suspect it was a bit warmer then…
Be that as it may, I believe the salient point in this discussion is not whether CO2 concentrations are increasing, or whether human activity has contributed. The interesting point is that scientists can’t understand why the last few years have seen a DECREASE in average global temperatures. This is an astounding finding that may indicate the data collection methods are broken, or the theories about what caused a rise in temps last century are wrong.
The editorial hacks at the PD can’t even run a newspaper but they think they can control the weather. The earth is going to heat up and cool down no matter what man does. We can’t stop it and we can’t alter it.