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Sunday, December 06, 2009

‘Climategate’ emails: Scientists defend science by Renfrey Clarke

Climate change deniers, conservative politicians and right-wing newspaper columnists were all but incontinent with delight. Flooding the internet in mid-November were thousands of documents and private emails that had been exchanged over more than a decade by prominent climate scientists.

The emails were posted anonymously after hackers penetrated the server of one of Britain’s main climate change research centres, the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia.

What would the emails reveal? Doubts about the climate change case, bullying of scientific dissidents, suppression of evidence, outright scientific fraud?

Even if the messages revealed nothing of the kind, the myth would have taken wing: that the great global warming scam had met with its “Climategate”.

The Australian on November 24 quoted right-wing Liberal Senator Nick Minchin stating: “These emails reveal at least prima facie evidence that supporters of the theory of anthropogenic global warming are going to considerable lengths to doctor evidence and to suppress information and intimidate those who don’t support that theory.”

Adelaide University professor of mining geology and leading climate change denier Ian Plimer was still more categorical. “This substantiates what I hinted at”, Plimer told the Australian. “Here we have the Australian government underpinning the biggest economic decision this country has ever made and it’s all based on fraud.”

But what have the deniers actually trawled from their ocean of stolen messaging?

Probably the most damning single allegation relates to a remark by CRU chief Dr Phil Jones about the use he made of work by a colleague, Dr Michael Mann of the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University.

“I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.”

To believe the denialist bloggers, that is a confession of gross falsification — signed, sealed and delivered. But take its context into account, and the passage becomes completely innocuous.

A “trick”, in the jargon of scientists, is an ingenious way of overcoming a problem. Mann’s “trick” involved juxtaposing observed temperature records to “hide” a false decline implied by tree-ring temperature data known to be partly inaccurate.

What else, then? Might scientists be artificially boosting temperature rises through choosing to believe computer models, rather than the objective evidence?

Dr Kevin Trenberth of the US Center for Atmospheric Research complains in one of the emails that modelling of sea surface temperatures “shows there should be even more warming”.

“We can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment”, Trenberth laments, “and it is a travesty that we can’t”.

The observed data, he surmises, “are surely wrong”, and the observing system, he maintains, is inadequate.

But has Trenberth reacted to the discrepancy by suppressing or “doctoring” evidence? There is no suggestion, in the emails or anywhere else, that he has.

On the falsification of research results — a career-ending offence for scientists — all the scouring through the emails has come up with nothing.

But not to worry. As propagators of the anthropogenic warming myth, the scientists are clearly the sort of people who would do such things.

And for true deniers, that is enough.

Those reading the emails not stuck in a conspiracy theory, meanwhile, have been struck by what is not there. There is no evidence of almost everything denialists have confidently maintained goes on in climate research institutes.

RealClimate site observed on November 20 that the e-mails revealed “no evidence of any worldwide conspiracy, no mention of George Soros nefariously funding climate research … no admission that global warming is a hoax, no evidence of the falsifying of data, and no ‘marching orders’ from our socialist/communist/vegetarian overlords”.

The denialists, of course, are not simply buffoons — and correspondingly, the materials released onto the internet have a darker, almost tragic side. They reveal a very human bitterness among climate scientists at attacks that have intensified in recent years.

Modern-day Galileos, the scientists confront an Inquisition based in wealthy right-wing circles and the “think tanks” that serve them.

The pressures on the scientists are described eloquently in a November 23 Washington Post blog interview with physicist and historian Spencer Weart, who said: “We’ve never before seen a set of people accuse an entire community of scientists of deliberate deception and other professional malfeasance.

To their credit, leading climate scientists have fought back against demands that they make concessions to bad science. A prominent figure in this resistance has been the CRU’s Jones — which perhaps explains why his institute was the target of the hacker attack.

The New Scientist said Jones and Mann in a 2003 exchange of emails discussed urging scientific authors to boycott the journal Climate Research after it published “extremely poor papers” by known denialists.

New Scientist said the journal’s editor-in-chief and half the editorial board resigned over the matter.

In 2004, Jones and Mann discussed ways of blocking two papers, whose content they regarded as unscientific, from being assessed for use in a report of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

In other emails, ways are discussed of keeping temperature data, largely covered by confidentiality agreements, out of the hands of denialists.

As depicted by denialist bloggers, the atmosphere that has arisen inside the climate science community is one of arrogant intolerance, with dissenting voices ruthlessly silenced. But again, an understanding of the context is vital.

In the first place, anthropogenic global warming is no longer just a theory, but established fact. Trenberth was quoted as saying in the November 22 Washington Post that “it is incontrovertible” that the world is warming as a result of human actions.

Predicted by fundamental laws of physics, human-caused global warming has now been demonstrated by real-world evidence so overwhelming, and from so many sources and directions, that refusal to accept it is simply perverse.

There are no legitimate sceptics any more, just the ignorant or wilful deniers.

Second, within the climate science community there is no longer dissent on the basic concept of human-caused global warming. All working climate scientists — that is, those who publish in peer-reviewed journals — now agree anthropogenic warming is real.

The unresolved questions relate to its degree and precise mechanisms. On these, debate is rich and generally cordial.

Third, tolerance is not a virtue in dealing with people out to subject humanity and nature to intolerable risks.

Jones and his colleagues are aware, like few others, that the consequence of failing to combat denialist pseudo-science would very likely be a catastrophe of civilisation-ending proportions.

Finally, climate change deniers, especially in the US and Australia, are hardly isolated and picked-on. Historically they have been well funded, not least by big energy corporations, and they have huge media resources at their disposal.

Disturbingly, they are gaining ground. In a recent Pew Research Center poll in the US, only 36% of respondents felt that human activities lay behind a temperature increase. That was down from 47% in 2006.

In Australia, the corresponding figure in September this year was a far-from-overwhelming 67%.

So when Jones, Mann and others mount a tough, uncompromising fight for scientific rationality, do they deserve to be pilloried? Adelaide University Climate Change Professor Barry Brook has, perhaps, the best take on this question.

On November 27 Brook told Green Left Weekly that anyone who wants to criticise the scientists involved should “first place the contents of their email archive for the last 10 years on a public repository, such that anyone has the opportunity to download it, peruse it, and cherry-pick out-of-context statements”.

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"A petty reason perhaps why novelists more and more try to keep a distance from journalists is that novelists are trying to write the truth and journalists are trying to write fiction." Graham Greene

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It's been a learning experience for me operating this blog but there is an insatiable hunger for alternative news and opinion on a range of issues in Australia that is often ignored or sidelined by the corporate media and an increasing self censored and Murdoch managed ABC.

Journalists and Writers I Like.

"Bread and work and love, the poor man’s trinity, and by all three needs they chain him down." Christina Stead 1902-1983 Seven Poor Men of Sydney

"Every government is run by liars and nothing should be believed." I.F.Stone 1907-89

"I have made more friends for American culture than the State Department. Certainly I have made fewer enemies, but that isn't very difficult." Arthur Miler 1915-2005

"In times of universal deceit, telling the truth will be a revolutionary act." George Orwell 1903-50

"It is not enough for journalists to see themselves as mere messengers without understandig the hidden agendas of the message that surrounds it." John Pilger

"Lots of people who complained about us receiving the MBE received theirs for heroism in the war - for killing people. We received ours for entertaining other people. I'd say we deserve ours more." Joesph Heller 1923-99

"Media is just a word that has come to mean bad journalism." Graham Greene 1904-91

"My experience in the First World War and now the Second World War [his son Barney was killed in the Battle of Singapore] changed my outlook on things. It is hard to believe that there is a God. I feel the Bible is a book written by man but for the purpose of preying on a person’s conscience, and to confuse him. Anyone who taken part in a bayonet charge (and I have) [Gallipoli], and has managed to retain his proper senses, must doubt the truth of the Bible and the powers of God, if one exists. And considering the many hundreds of different religions that there are in this world of ours, and the fact that many religions have caused terrible wars and hatreds throughout the world, and that many religions that have hoarded tremendous wealth and property while people inside and outside religion are starving , it is difficult to remain a believer. No Sir, there is no God, it is only a myth." Albert Facey 1894-1982 A Fortunate Life

"Now take my case. I’m twenty-nine and have two brothers—one in the Liberal Party and one serving six years for rape and arson. My sister Peg is on the streets and Dad lives off her earnings. Mum is pregnant by the boarder and because of this Dad won’t marry her. Last night I got engaged to an ex-prostitute and I wish to be fair to her: should I tell her about my brother in the Liberal Party." David Ireland 1927- The Unknown Industrial Prisoner

"Prime Minster Howard I’ve heard You met George Bush and the Pope too, I understand, Oh I liked the Pope much better, I only had to kiss his hand." L’Amour Denis Kevans 1939-2005

"The first law of journalism-to confirm existing prejudice rather than contradict it." Alexander Cockburn

"The Labour Party [ALP], starting with a band of inspired Socialists, degenerated into a vast machine for capturing political power, but did not know how to use the power when attained except for the profit of individuals[...] Such is the history of all Labour organisations in Australia, and not because they are Australian , but because they are Labour..." Victor Gordon Childe 1892-1957, How Labour Governs

"The trouble with a free market economy is that it requires so many policemen to make it work." Neal Ascherson, 1932- Games with the Shadows, Policing the Marketplace.

"The trouble with America is that when the dollar only earns 6 percent over here, then it gets restless and goes overseas to get 100 percent. Then the flag follows the dollar and the soldiers follow the flag. I wouldn't go to war again as I have done to protect some lousy investment of the bankers. There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defense of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights. War for any other reason is simply a racket. There isn't a trick in the racketeering bag that the military gang is blind to. It has its "finger men" to point out enemies, its "muscle men" to destroy enemies, its "brain men" to plan war preparations, and a "Big Boss" Super-Nationalistic-Capitalism. It may seem odd for me, a military man to adopt such a comparison. Truthfulness compels me to. I spent thirty- three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country's most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle- man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. " Major General Smedley Butler,1881-1940

"What is the crime of robbing a bank compared with the crime of founding one." Bertolt Brecht 1898-1956

"Who is more to be pitied, a writer bound and gagged by policemen or one living in perfect freedom who has nothing more to say?" Kurt Vonnegut 1922-2007

[Battler]" a conscientious person working against many odds to make a living; one whose life is a constant struggle.’ Battlers maybe men or women; black or white. They rarely deal with racism (the negative side of our tradition) because they sympathise with anyone facing adversity or unfair criticism. The term ‘battler’ is a state of mind-a traditional attitude which goes back to the convict era, when the battler was on a flogging to nothing but fiddled around the rules and held his masters in contempt. The battlers are aware that they are being lied to by....politicians; and they suspect that Keating’s warning that Australia could become a banana republic is in fact, happening before their eyes." Frank Hardy 1917-1994. Retreat Australia Fair 1990

I don't respect the law; I have a total irreverence for anything connected with society except that which makes the roads safer, the beer stronger, the food cheaper and the old men and old women warmer in the winter and happier in the summer. Brendan Behan 1923-64

“I do what I do, and write what I write, without calculating what is worth what and so on. Fortunately, I am not a banker or an accountant. I feel that there is a time when a political statement needs to be made and I make it.” Arundhati Roy