Spin-a-Climategate: a science thriller
As policymakers gather in Copenhagen to discuss ways of combating climate change, skeptics are bragging about exposing a decades-long conspiracy of climatologists and politicians. What went wrong with science?
Here is a short summary of this “Climategate” for those who missed it. An unknown person or persons obtained thousands of emails and documents and some program code from the servers of the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia, in what was described by the university as a “criminal breach”. The earliest messages date back to March 1996; the latest are from November this year.
The emails are the private working correspondence of staff from the leading institution for study of climate change, and some passages cast a huge shadow over the academic practices of the CRU. Indeed, global warming skeptics were quick to cry foul, citing quotes about “Mike’s trick to hide the decline” (quote abridged) and “we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment.” Some interpreted it as evidence of a global scam among climate change alarmists and concluded that global warming didn’t exist at all, “as we already knew.”
CRU officials tried to alleviate the damage from the scandal by pointing out that the data was obtained illegally and saying that in private exchanges scientists use professional jargon, which has been misinterpreted by the media. They also launched a public investigation and Professor Phil Jones, one of the central figures in the scandal, stepped down as CRU director. Other prominent climatologists marred by the email leak are also under scrutiny now.
 Scandalized scientists advised to policymakers at highest level. |
The media bomb may or may not have been timed with the UN’s Copenhagen summit, starting on December 7, where world politicians will discuss how to act on climate change. The discredited scientists’ works featured in previous publications of the UN’s climate change body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). After the scandal, only an unflinching optimist would expect world leaders to vigorously act and curb carbon dioxide emissions.
Still, some reports suggest that the first attempt to make public the controversial emails happened weeks before the Climategate storm hit. And even before the scandal there was reasonable doubt about the outcome of Copenhagen summit. Going globally green is costly and vulnerable to a free-riding strategy on the part of unenthusiastic nations. The mediocre result of the Kyoto protocol is a good example of this.
Not about science
Now skeptics are busy combing through the stolen data for more discrediting evidence and proponents are busy plausibly explaining it. The core of the problem here is that global warming is not about science. Or putting it more accurately, mostly not about science.
Predicting climate is not like building a rocket, which either flies or it doesn’t. Modern climatology’s main weakness is that it relies on computer models, which in their turn rely on insufficient technology. Our computers are not good enough for calculations needed for really complex models, so researchers are forced to simplify them. What parameters should be sacrificed and what taken into account is a big part of the research process.
Also there is certain lack of raw data. Even temperature measurements have only been available for about century and a half at best – and for most locations the time period is much shorter. Earlier temperatures you see on charts like the famous “hockey stick” come from proxies – things like tree rings and bubbles trapped in millennia-old ice – which are interpreted to evaluate temperature in the past. And temperature is just one of the many parameters affecting climate.
 Apocalyptic scenarios make good blockbusters. |
It is not that climatologists are unique in their difficulties. Physicists studying quarks do exactly the same – analyze massive amounts of statistical data from particle accelerators in search for evidence of extremely rare events that should be there in theory. But climatologists enjoy a much stronger interest from the public.
Part of it is people’s subliminal desire to be scared and the media’s willingness to oblige them. A scientific work saying that Earth’s climate is probably getting warmer and that it may, in several hundred years, cause an increase of sea level mutates into a “we’re all gonna drown” headline. And Hollywood would produce an Oscar-winning (for special effects) blockbuster to illustrate the idea.
Another part is the serious ramifications of the work for government policies. The conclusion is that global warming is caused by humans and, to avoid catastrophic consequences, humanity must spend trillions of dollars globally to curb greenhouse gas emissions. Such political decisions involve many interest groups, from oil companies to polar bear preservationists, and it would be naïve to assume that they will not lobby in their own favor, both among politicians and the public.
Vlatimir Kremlev for RT. Click to enlarge.
Finally, the call for global climate change rings the same bells as the many brands of environmentalism and return-to-nature movements. Green ideology has lured much of the electoral base from sinking socialists in the last two decades, and ideology is a beast of belief.
It is no wonder that your average voter would now name former US Vice President Al Gore as a leading expert in climate change before any professional scientist. Or that supporters and opponents of the theory are often referred to as “believers” and “deniers” as if it were a New Age religious teaching (for many it is). Or that among top YouTube videos on climate change you’ll find an almost-ten-minute straight-faced monologue presenting an “undefeatable” argument that by not acting on a true global warming alarm we will lose so much more than by wasting resources to combat a non-existent threat, that the only sensible thing to do is to act. The argument is clearly just as good for anything from a giant meteor impact to zombie apocalypse.
I am very strongly in favor of as wide and rapid a distribution as possible for endorsements. I think the only thing that counts is numbers. The media is going to say "1000 scientists signed" or "1500 signed". No one is going to check if it is 600 with PhDs versus 2000 without. They will mention the prominent ones, but that is a different story.
Conclusion – Forget the screening, forget asking them about their last publication (most will ignore you.) Get those names!
With media hype come more public interest in the issue, plentiful grants from governmental and non-governmental organizations to study it, more papers to be interpreted in a most alarming way by the media. It is a classical positive feedback loop. Climatologists, smart and energetic people they are, know this mechanism well and do their part at spinning the wheel faster. The stolen emails show this well – just read an exerpt by Joseph Alcamo, professor at the Center for Environmental Systems Research and the German University of Kassel on the right.
So is global warming a hoax?
A scandal like this would not be possible for, say, entomologists studying the mating habits of European butterflies. Yet the exposed correspondence is far from being “the final nail in the coffin of Anthropogenic Global Warming” skeptics claim it to be.
There is certainly a lot of dirty laundry in the emails, and those who had an illusion that scientists were living in ivory towers can have it dispelled. Just like members of any corporate community, scientists indulge in intrigue, find unflattering descriptions for their opponents, get angry when outmaneuvered, and even take short cuts for personal benefit. Who would have thought that world-famous experts with healthy salaries had sharp teeth and well-trained elbows?
 Damage done: YouTube search currently suggests “hoax” and “swindle” to be added to “global warming”. |
Does it constitute bad science or a bad job advising policymakers? These questions are for an investigation to answer. But the damage to reputations has already been done. The plotline with a mysterious hacker bravely exposing a secretive cabal of evil scientists and corrupt politicians is too appealing for readers and viewers. Alarmists had the media boomerang return and hit them right in the face.
In the game of spinning public opinion, reputation is crucial, since laymen don’t read original studies and trust others to make judgments for them. Who is to be trusted? Climatologist Michael Mann and colleagues with their temperatures reconstruction or statistician Edward Wegman and colleagues, who criticize them for their methods of processing raw data? RealClimate.org saying that there is a scientific consensus on the anthropogenic nature of global warming? Or ClimateAudit.org saying that consensus is irrelevant in this issue at all?
The pendulum is now likely to swing in favor of skeptics, and they will receive more funding for their research – probably even proportionally more than they would have received from the very beginning if scientific debate over climate change was properly done outside of the media spotlight.
And that is actually good, since alternative explanations of the objective increase of temperatures will receive scientific attention they deserve. And this will allow us receive more accurate and less politicized answers to questions like “Is the current rising temperature trend unusual?”, “Do we cause it?”, “Can we stop it?”, and last but not least “Wouldn’t we end up better off with a warmer Earth?” And if in the end climate alarmists prove to be right in their predictions, support for green technologies be even stronger.
More importantly, Climategate exposed the flaws existing in the mechanisms of modern scientific research. Science is supposed to be unbiased, and in the case of climate change research it is clearly not so. The CRU has already been forced into more transparency. Climategate may be just the case where two wrongs make one right.
Alexandre Antonov, RT
Read also: Junk Science Exposed In Evolutionary Theory
Lord Monckton: Global Warming big scientific fad
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