As a result of Al Gore's “An Inconvenient Truth”, the political debate on global warming and greenhouse gas legislation, and the protests of climate skeptics such as senator James Inhofe (R, OK), along with many other factors, climate change has been a major focus in the news and in popular culture recently. While climatologists and meteorologists are widely in agreement regarding the reality of anthropogenic climate change, climate skeptics and the news media often seek to foster the idea of a “climate change debate”, attempting to make it appear as if there is discord within the scientific community on the reality of human-induced climate change. During the latter half of November 2009, such skeptics have been once again catapulted into the media limelight, thanks to an anonymous hacker who stole and leaked over 160 MB of e-mails and documents from climate scientists at the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit (CRU). While climate change skeptics may claim that these stolen documents lend credibility to their cause, a closer look reveals a different picture.
The e-mail hacking incident and its fallout, dubbed “Climategate” by various (generally conservative) internet and media personalities, began when an anonymous (and as of yet still unidentified) individual hacked into CRU's webserver. This hacker downloaded over 160 MB of data, including more than 1000 e-mails and 3000 documents exchanged between prominent climate scientists. On the afternoon of Nov. 17th, a compendium of these stolen documents were uploaded by an individual working from an IP address located in Turkey to the blog “The Air Vent”, where they were subsequently made freely available to the world.
The release of these e-mails and documents sparked a worldwide news frenzy, catapulting the issue of climate change back to the front page of newspapers and websites. Climate change skeptics pored through the stolen correspondence, and latched on to one particular e-mail sent by the director of the CRU, Dr. Phil Jones, in which he stated “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) amd [sic] from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline. Mike’s series got the annual land and marine values while the other two got April-Sept for NH land N of 20N. The latter two are real for 1999, while the estimate for 1999 for NH combined is +0.44C wrt 61-90. The Global estimate for 1999 with data through Oct is +0.35C cf. 0.57 for 1998.” The climate change skeptics claimed that this e-mail disclosed evidence of tampering with observed climate data to make climate change appear more dire than it really was, to trick the public. However, when the author of the e-mail was given a chance to weigh in on the issue, he clarified that “this [statement] refers to one diagram... used in the World Meteorological Organisation's statement on the status of the global climate in 1999 (WMO-no.913). The diagram consisted of three curves showing 50-year average temperature variations for the last 1000 years. Each curve referred to a scientific paper and a key gives their details. Climate records consist of actual temperature records from the mid-19th century and proxy data (tree rings, coral, ice cores, etc) which go back much further. The green curve on the diagram included proxy data up to 1960 but only actual temperatures from 1961 onwards. This is what is being discussed in the email. The word 'trick' was used here colloquially as in a clever thing to do. It is ludicrous to suggest that it refers to anything untoward.” In other words, while Dr. Jones had edited the chart to make it more persuasive, the underlying data was not changed or tampered with in any way.
In the media frenzy that followed, several prominent climate scientists took the opportunity to provide insight into both the hacking scandal and the important issue of climate change. For example, Dr. James McCarthy, a Harvard professor and former lead author of the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), wrote: “The scientific process depends on open access to methodology, data, and a rigorous peer-review process. The robust exchange of ideas in the peer-reviewed literature regarding climate science is evidence of the high degree of integrity in this process. The body of evidence that human activity is prominent agent in global warming is overwhelming. The content of these a few personal emails has no impact what-so-ever on our overall understanding that human activity is driving dangerous levels of global warming”. Indeed, despite having unfettered access to thousands of documents and candid correspondence between leading climate scientists that were leaked, the only example of questionable science that skeptics could dig up was the editing of a chart in a ten year old WMO publication, lending credibility to Dr. McCarthy's stance that climate science is, on the whole, conducted with great integrity.
In the months to come, climate change will likely remain a hot topic in the news media. In addition to the simmering hacking scandal, the US congress is likely to continue debate over proposed carbon emissions trading (known colloquially as “cap and trade”) legislation which would limit the amount of carbon that industries could produce without facing penalties. Opponents claim that such limits are inefficient in reducing pollution and would be an unwanted burden during a time of economic recession, while their supports claim that such commitments toward emission reduction are necessary steps to address the issues of pollution and climate change (via emission of greenhouse gases). A bill supporting such limits passed the US House of Representatives by a close 219-212 vote earlier this year; this bill would also have to pass a vote in the US Senate before it could be enacted as law. Though the outcome of this debate is uncertain, what can be predicted with certainty is that the political debate regarding how to respond to important issue of climate change will continue for decades to come.
For more information on the climate change e-mail hacking incident, there is a large collection of primary sources linked from the
Wikipedia article on the incident. For more information on the severe weather, including the latest up-to-date weather information and severe weather alerts, tune in to your local NOAA weather radio station (see http://www.weather.gov/nwr/ for more information), or check the weather service website at http://www.weather.gov. And of course, if it's weather data you're looking for, there's no better place than right here on HOOT to find it!
Story is ©
Nate Snook, 2009
