IPCC Responds To So-Called “Climategate”
Tweet
Science trumps conservative/oil industry nonsense
In a statement, Professor Thomas Stocker and Professor Qin Dahe, co-chairmen of the IPCC’s working group 1, condemned the act of posting the private e-mails on the internet, but avoided commenting on their content.
They went on to point to a key finding that states: “The warming in the climate system is unequivocal.
“[It] is based on measurements made by many independent institutions worldwide that demonstrate significant changes on land, in the atmosphere, the ocean and in the ice-covered areas of the Earth.
“Through further independent scientific work involving statistical methods and a range of different climate models, these changes have been detected as significant deviations from natural climate variability and have been attributed to the increase of greenhouse gases.”
Since the reported theft of emails from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia, conservative media figures have aggressively claimed that those emails undermine the overwhelming scientific consensus that human activities are causing climate change, dubbing the supposed scandal “Climategate.” But these critics have largely rested their claims on outlandish distortions and misrepresentations of the contents of the stolen emails, greatly undermining their dubious smears.
NASA’s James Hansen on hacked emails: “The contrarians or deniers do not have a scientific leg to stand on. Their aim is to win a public relations battle, or at least get a draw, which may be enough to stymie the actions that are needed to stabilize climate.”
Competitive Enterprise Institute
It postures as an advocate of “sound science” in the development of public policy. However, CEI projects dispute the overwhelming scientific evidence that human induced greenhouse gas emissions are driving climate change. They have a program for “challenging government regulations”, push property rights as a solution to environment problems, opposed US vehicle fuel efficiency standards and been a booster for the drug industry.
36 Responses to “IPCC Responds To So-Called “Climategate””
Jennifer Aniston Reportedly Pregnant With Twins
PHOTOS: Tamara Ecclestone At The Langham Hotel
Red Front? “Center For American Freedom” Logo Echoes Communist Style
Romney Calls For Defunding Planned Parenthood, Wife Was A Donor
GOP Fundraising Email Asks Supporters To “Knock Out” Obama
Romney Comes Up Limp In Nevada
Obama Opens Lead On Romney In New Poll
What Time Is Super Bowl 2012 (Super Bowl XLVI)?
Latest Entries
Why Do Liberals Support Drone Strikes?
Weekly Standard Rolls Out The Iraq Argument For Iran
Equal Polarization, My Ass
Some Crazy Stuff That Happened In World War II
Maryland Republican Campaign Funds Used To Defend Voter Suppression
The Obama Jobs Record In One Graph
Martin O’Malley All In For Marriage Equality
Newt Gingrich, Filled With More Excrement Than Your Average Politician
New Year, Powerline Still Stupid
Thanks Again
Meta
Blogroll
Disclaimer
The views on this site are mine and mine alone, and do not reflect the views of my employer, Media Matters for America
© 2000-2011 Oliver Willis
OW links to the radically Left BBC, his own employer and some global warming (oops “climate change”) propaganda site to prove that ClimateGate is nothing but conservative hogwash. Clearly, Barbara Boxer was right, it’s the hackers fault.
Right, far better I link to an oil industry site, or some blogger whose been taken on oil industry junkets. Please.
Only an idiot would call the BBC “radically left.” Or a conservative moron. Sorry for the repetition.
Should also note that the BBC isn’t doing analysis here. They’re just reporting what the people from IPCC are saying. This is called “the news”.
The right wing war on science continues apace.
Yeah, why would anyone believe that pumping tens of millions of cubic tons of toxic waste into the atmosphere every single day for over one hundred years could possibly have any effect on the environment?
Clearly profits should take priority over something as trivial as the maintenance of the planet.
MGG, defending computer hackers.
Mt. St. Helens laughs at humanity’s carbon output.
IPCC: “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!!!”
Oliver: “Yes sir, yes sir. Three bags full.”
I fear that with an American public as tragically scientifically ignorant as it is, demagogic attacks from politically and financially motivated science deniers, whether they be AGW denialists or ID creationism advocates or anti-vaccination agitators, will probably always work. It is in the nature of science to discuss and debate, and it will always be easy to portray honest disagreement about relatively small details in the science community as “Aha! They don’t have their stories straight – it’s all a crock! We have a simple dogma that can be explained in 3 sentences with no confusing equations… who ya gonna believe?”
I am not sure how exactly to combat well-financed media savvy anti-science propaganda from these people and still do science.
LOL,
Ollie, a little hint, the controversy surrounding “Climategate” centers around the content of the exposed correspondence not the fact that a whistleblower exposed it. Did you actually have a point or is there some sort of propaganda quota you have to hit each day before you can blog about sports, family, vacations etc?
I’ll notify the vanished glaciers and drowned polarbears that it’s all a big hoax.
Honestly, the assholes won. Their goal was to delay any meaningful action on climate change when we could have mitigated it a little, but now it’s too late. We’re all strapped into the ride now and we’re all totally fucked. i wouldn’t buy any coastal real estate.
The fuck with the LO-fucking-L. Are you a child?
Meaning what, exactly? That volcanoes produce more CO2 than humans? So what? It is the *increase* in our output that is the problem, not whether our CO2 output is greater or smaller than natural sources.
It’s not just coastal real estate. Its the end of cheap food. It’s millions of refugees from Bangladesh, the Philippines, Indonesia, and … worse…Florida… sweeping the world. It’s about the planet not being able to support the population we have and the chaos that will ensue.
And the controversy does nothing to contradict the scientific evidence. Jack squat. It shows scientists acting like humans, engaged in petty bickering, but it does nothing to undermine the science behind global warming.
Did you actually have a point? Or…etc. etc..
And just what does the content of the emails say?
That climate change isn’t real? Nope.
That there’s millions to be made in climate science? Uh uh.
That climate change is a vast conspiracy to incorporate one world gov’t? (That’s what Beck & Limbaugh have said) Nope.
The emails say that sometimes scientists use salty language and get defensive. This is apparently shaking the foundations of all known knowledge.
Just once, on one issue, I wish the right would approach it seriously rather than take marching orders from Fox/Rush.
SF: Here’s the thing. The earth is a ball of rock floating in space. It is almost entirely warmed by the sun. Without some insulation, that heat radiates away very very quickly. Thankfully, we have an atmosphere that insulates our planet. Gases in the atmosphere keep solar radiation from radiating back into space. We have been adding to one of those gases substantially and at an increasing rate for about a hundred or so years. This would suggest that we are continually adding to our insulating layer. Now, there may be solar flares, or volcanoes, or weird feedback loops we don’t quite get yet, but the dynamic is fairly fucking simple. Sooner or later, it starts getting warmer. This is a problem, because it screws up the ecological systems that keep us fed, it screws up the topography, causing millions to die, or seek better places to live, or take those places by violence from those that already live there. There is a reason to tread carefully here, and I don’t think the burden of proof is on those advising caution at this point.
Is there a reason why you think adding incrementally more C02 to the atmosphere isn’t a problem? Is it because of the bible or some such??
zactly. It’s a serious fucking issue, and not a point scoring exercise. The right has become so lost because of the Rovian emptiness that has consumed it.
A related story is up at http://volokh.com/2009/12/06/debunking-briffas-version-of-the-hockey-stick/
Look, the proper response to critics of scientific findings is to say, “here is the data, do the work yourself”. Scientists can be wrong. They can also be dishonest (see Michael Bellesiles). Luckily, science has a built-in defense, which is the ability of scientists to cross check on each other. Does anyone disagree?
When one scientist, or a small group, say they have made an important finding, but can/will not provide the data so that others can check on their result; and indeed, have acted to insure that others can not check on their work, this is bad science and skepticism of their particular results is the proper response. I believe in global warming. I also believe the East Anglia group and Keith Briffa are guilty of bad science and should be taken to account for it. Oliver and many of his commentators seem to be of the opinion that if you reach the ‘proper result’, the normal rules of transparency should not apply to you.
And nothing could possibly go wrong there. This doesn’t address CO2 directly; but it does speak to the claim that natural changes in the past show climate change poses no threat. Humanity lived under constant threat of extinction from those “natural changes,” until we decided to take the job away from “Mother Earth”.
Just once, on one issue, I wish the right would approach it seriously rather than take marching orders from Fox/Rush.
Some do. And they’re promptly excommunicated. See Johnson, Charles.
D’ya think the change was ENJOYABLE?
AO, you retard, it wasn’t a whistleblower, it was a hacker. He STOLE the e-mails. Didn’t your mommy ever teach you that two wrongs don’t make a right?
Seriously, why do you support pollution so much? Do the fumes give you a high or something?
Mt. St. Helens laughs at humanity’s carbon output.
“The Hardee’s Thick and Juicy Burger already has 300g of fat in it, what’s the harm of deep-frying it?”
Oh, I think the rules of transparency (whatever they are) should apply, and I believe in healthy skepticism. I also believe in the precautionary principle, in not throwing out babies with bathwater, and in ensuring that ad hominem is not used to my personal detriment.
When one scientist, or a small group, say they have made an important finding, but can/will not provide the data so that others can check on their result; and indeed, have acted to insure that others can not check on their work, this is bad science and skepticism of their particular results is the proper response.
And yet, that is not what the emails reveal. Where is the scientific malfeasance? There is no “hidden data.” Show me one neutral, reputable scientific organization that claims that these emails reveal “bad science” going on at East Anglia. I’ve looked, and I haven’t found one.
There is bitching and moaning about one particular paper that the climate change community feels was poorly peer reviewed and should not have been published. The editor of the journal resigned over the issue (he agreed with the fact that the paper shouldn’t have been published.) There is some whinging that maybe they should leave that paper out of the report, and boycott the journal in question. Neither of which happened.
Then there is the note about the “trick” of leaving a subset of data out of a Nature article. Guess what – the data in question, estimates of global temperatures from tree rings since 1960 – is well-known not to fit in with other, more reliable measurements of temperature, and the authors of the original paper suggest that their colleagues ignore their findings after 1960. The data in question is available for anyone to look up, it is not “hidden.”
There is no smoking gun here.
The thing is, I’ve read countless analyses of the emails by reputable scientists without a horse in the race, explaining why they aren’t as damaging as they might appear to a lay man. I haven’t seen a single skeptic stop and say, “Oh, really? Well I’ll take that into consideration, then.” The response is inevitably, “But, but, the emails proved they lied and hid data!”
It’s the skeptics who won’t listen to rational analysis. Not the scientific community.
No, his answer is simpler than that: It’s because liberals think it’s a problem.
Southern Quaker:
It is my understanding that, challenged now to produce their data so that others may check their work, the East Anglia group says they did not save it all and so can not (they also say some is confidential which is a different problem). I do not say this is scientific malfeasance in in the sense of a conspiracy to destroy data, but I do say it is scientific malfeasence in the sense of incompetent record keeping which destroys the usefulness of their work. When any scientist is asked for either the data he used or the information necessary to recreate the experiment is a workable way and says he can not, he has just made all his work useless. It does not matter that he did everything else perfectly, has a sterling reputation, and 4 nobel prizes sitting in his back pocket; if it is not reproducible, it is not helpful other than in an “here is an interesting topic that others may want to investigate” way. It is not by accident that the leading scientific parody journal is called the ‘Journal of Non Reproducible Results’.
And Gumby, I am glad you agree with me that transparency and reproducibility are such obvious virtues to a scientific endeavor that that to say so is equivalent to saying other well-known cliches. I think you might want to explain this to Oliver and many of his commentators since they seem to have missed it.
Personally, as a believer in global warming, I am mad that the East Anglians were just not ready to meet what should have been anticipated and normal scientific skepticism, and now are giving ammunition to the extreme GW skeptics. To the extent they thought this because they knew that many would overlook science done wrong if it had the right result, the commentators here willing to give them a pass are not helping them (and possibly others) get over this attitude.
Well, “In the aftermath, global temperatures dropped by as much as 28 degrees Fahrenheit and life on Earth plunged deeper into an ice age that lasted around 1,800 years.”
Does your browser use different indentation for responses to a comment?
I thought true Conservatives thought natural disasters were God’s punishment for our impure thoughts and deeds?
Are you actually implying that they are merely part of a natural cycle of Earthly destruction?
This is true. All the e-mails have done is allow the Right to use some sleight of hand and manufactured outrage to change this from a scientific debate-which they absolutely suck at- to a semantic debate- and that’s a realm where they have a well-rehearsed fomula for victory:
Flood the market with Loud and Stupid.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
Funny how the denialist dupes can point to these emails (none of which actually, ya know, dispute global warming), and shriek about how it’s clearly evidence that global warming is a fraud because this much evidence could not possibly be faked, and then turn around and point to the millions of pieces of evidence scientists have accumulated over decades in favor of global warming and shriek “hoax”.
GREENLAND GREENLAND GREENLAND
We have had two other global warming periods in the last two thousand years how is this one different, other than being colder than the previous two?
Cause this time it’s us doing it, we don’t know how to stop it, and we don’t know what the effects are going to be. It’s an uncontrolled experiment on a massive scale, involving everyone.
Yeah, climate change sucks allright. That’s my point, what is yours? That we should heat the earth with CO2 to ward off the next ice age causing volcano? Any idea when that will be? Should we not instead try to avoid creating any climate change disasters in the meantime?
And for pity’s sake, we have not taken the business of climate away from Mother Nature. It’s insanity to suggest we are in control.