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climate policy

30 Nov 2011

Leaked Emails Give Sceptics Another Boost

By Edward Miller

head in sand

More damaging emails leaked just prior to climate talks in Durban? Edward Miller wasn't surprised. How should journalists and advocates respond to efforts to sabotage climate policy?

The Climategate scandal broke in November 2009 just before the UN Climate Change Summit in Copenhagen. Hundreds of hacked emails and documents from the Climate Research Unit at East Anglia University were leaked. The emails raised doubt about the strength of scientific evidence for manmade climate, and the mainstream media lapped it up.

And now, just in time to derail the climate talks at Durban, the sceptics have struck again with a fresh batch of leaked emails. Following the Australian parliament’s recent passage of the carbon tax, local sceptics (see here, for example) have stepped up their campaign to get their message out, and this new leak gives them ample ammunition. But does it have to be this way?

Whistleblowers and leakers help maintain a transparent and accountable society, and, provided there is a compelling public interest at stake, illegal procurement shouldn’t preclude availability. In this case the disclosed emails depict four scientists misrepresenting data, withholding other data and even attempting to destroy material subject to a freedom of information request. These actions represent a clear dereliction of the scientific method, and a repudiation of their social responsibility. Given the social and economic costs of pursuing a strategy to mitigate the effects on climate change, it is crucial that our policy is based on the best available data. For this reason, the availability of this leaked information is key.

Still, despite the leaks in 2009, the consensus on climate change within the scientific community didn’t shift. Six committees (the UK House of Commons Science and Technology Committee, the UK Science Assessment Panel, the UK National Science Foundation, Pennsylvania State University, an Independent Climate Change Email Review body and the US Environmental Protection Agency) launched investigations into the affair. Despite criticising the lack of transparency surrounding the data, the scientific consensus about manmade global warming remains unchanged. The case for climate change contains hundreds of different threads of evidence and argument, and these emails addressed only a handful of those. In short, little of our current understanding of climate science was affected by these emails.

The timing is crucial. These sorts of committees take time to assess all the available evidence, and by the time they had returned their findings on the East Anglia emails, the Copenhagen negotiations were over.

Did the Climategate saga weaken the Copenhagen Accord? It’s hard to say for sure — but we were left with an agreement with no legally binding obligations, one that set us down the road to a 4°C increase over the industrial average, twice what the IPCC propounds as necessary for "avoiding dangerous climate change".

While the scientists were unconvinced by the leaks, the public fallout from the scandal was much more severe.

A report from the George Mason University Centre for Climate Change Communication suggests that Climategate "deepened and perhaps solidified the prior observed declines in public beliefs that global warming is happening, human caused, and of serious concern", as well as eroding public trust in the scientific community. Other factors, such as the revelation that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s 2007 Report included an incorrect and improperly sourced claim that the Himalayan glaciers could melt completely by 2035, and periodic bouts of colder weather, exacerbated this.

How can we explain this vast discrepancy of opinion between the scientific community and the general public? A study from the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism showed that during the Copenhagen Summit media coverage tended to under-report climate science itself. Analysing more than 400 print media articles from 12 countries, the study found that articles on the actual science of climate change represented less than 10 per cent of all surveyed reportage, and nearly 80 per cent of the articles mentioned devoted less than 10 per cent of column space to climate science. Our news media shape our understanding of the world, and without reconciling the Climategate revelations with the views of climate scientists themselves, the argument for taking climate change seriously took a serious hit.

Fast-forward to 22 November 2011 and all of a sudden another tranche of 5000 hacked emails (hand-picked from a total of 220,000) are available on a Russian server. As with the Wikileaks cables, without an exhaustive analysis of all the emails it is difficult to know which emails contain the most important revelations.

Most of the major climate sceptic blog sites excitedly venerating these emails have reduced the data down to a few key quotes, such as:

"What if climate change appears to be just mainly a multidecadal natural fluctuation? They’ll kill us probably."

"The results for 400ppm [parts per million carbon in the atmosphere] stabilisation look odd in many cases … As it stands we’ll have to delete the results from the paper if it is to be published."

"I find myself in the strange position of being very skeptical of the quality of all present reconstructions, yet sounding like a pro-greenhouse zealot here!"

Viewed alone these quotes hint towards some damning conclusions, just as the Climategate emails did. However when viewed in their proper context, as here, most of the quotes lose their controversial edge.

Still, considering the impact of the emails leaked before Cophenhagen, the threat must be taken seriously, especially with the Durban talks underway. I spoke about this to Richard Dent, a climate change communication and policy consultant with the Climate Communications Forum. He argued that despite the lack of concrete scientific evidence refuting climate change, the two sets of email leaks demonstrate where the media’s loyalties sit right now — with the corporations that continue to dominate our lives and constrain us from tackling climate change.

The media shapes our understanding and our response to social and environmental issues. When events such as these email leaks are actively sensationalised rather than assessed in relation to established scientific data the impetus to act is lost. Environmental advocates need to arm themselves with more than just sound science — they have to brace themselves for the inevitable strike and learn to play the media as well as, or better than, the denial industry.

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This user is a New Matilda supporter.
arf
Posted Wednesday, 30 November 11 at 1:24PM

I think a more productive bit of journalism would be to investigate who might have wished to commission these leaks?

Causa
Posted Wednesday, 30 November 11 at 1:51PM

Yes, the media to a large degree shapes our understanding and our response to social and environmental issues.

The twenty four hour seven days a week hectic “profit driven” news cycle demands sensationalist “headlines” in order to attract the reader’s attention.

Therein lies the problem!

Example: A headlines not unlike this one:
“Leaked Emails Give Sceptics Another Boost”!

@Arf, good idea.

This user is a New Matilda supporter.
Dr Dog
Posted Wednesday, 30 November 11 at 3:31PM

For those who don’t have time to read the emails in their uncontextualised and incomplete form on the Climategate II website here are a few excerpts. Its powerful stuff.

Mann:
OMG did you see Broeker and Karlen get their heads together at the paleo conference? I thought they were going to kiss, lol!

Thorne:
Yeah, WTF is up with that? But when I saw the skeptics faces I nearly LMFAO. They really need to GAFC.

Wigley: Yeah they really are KIA’s, but @TEOTD we have to make sure they don’t get to run the agenda at Copenhagen. If you erase that stuff about the hockey stick graph I will be your BFFL.

Mann:
ROFL! I will BOT Wigley, but make sure the others SH^ or IMHO we are going to be QFI.

calyptorhynchus
Posted Thursday, 01 December 11 at 10:57AM

Edward, this is a very poorly researched article. You fail to mention that all the investigations into the scientists whose e-mails were stolen have concluded that they were merely going about their business as researchers and were doing nothing wrong.

Fortunately the wind seems to have gone out of the denialists sails recently. In 2009 these e-mails caused a ridiculous, manufactured storm of publicity. The current release seems to have fallen completely flat, fortunately.

This user is a New Matilda supporter.
delta
Posted Thursday, 01 December 11 at 1:40PM

How should journalists respond to such leaks? If proven to be accurate they should print them. You are on a very slippery slope if you believe only socially worthy news should be published. ‘Sceptics strike again’ ? Well good luck to them. Scientists willing to distort data, no matter how useful that distortion may be, certainly disturb me. I would be equally disturbed by any journalist who would choose not to publish such material or drown it it waffle.

DonAitkin
Posted Thursday, 01 December 11 at 2:18PM

Don Aitkin

Edward,

I suggest that you really read Joanne Nova’s comments, which you referred to, and consider what you have written in their context. This is serious stuff, and it was serious two years ago, too. Yes, a good deal of it shows people going about their business as most researchers do. But some of it is deeply worrying. If the fuss was about string theory, or how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, it would not matter so much. But given the extraordinary proposals that have been made, and the carbon tax passed in our country, and given that much of the kerfuffle is based on what ‘scientists’ say, these emails make one wonder how reliable their advice has been, and how much notice we should take of it.

martyns
Posted Thursday, 01 December 11 at 5:04PM

Edward, stick to your guns. The idiots who dominate our ‘media’ have got the concentration span of a gnat and wouldn’t know truth if it came up and bit them. As is well known these emails were stolen, their contents were thoroughly investigated and disproved. SBS had a good documentary on it some months ago. The latest lot of rehashed rubbish is just a load of Right wing garbage. Whether they like it or not, they have lost the debate. Climate change is known to be real, is increasing and will possibly hasten the demise of humanity on earth, plus a lot of animals and plants on which ‘we’ the lords of creation, depend. We need people to come out and state the truth, so “stick to your guns, Edward” .. and good luck!

gracog
Posted Thursday, 01 December 11 at 5:52PM

‘In this case the disclosed emails depict four scientists misrepresenting data, withholding other data and even attempting to destroy material subject to a freedom of information request.’

This article has plunged New Matilda to new depths of misinformation.
How could a journalist who has done even a smidgeon of research come up with such a statement? There have been at least five independent inquiries into the first release of emails. They have all shown that there was no scientific malpractice. The new emails are even tamer than those.

I suggest, Edward, that you re-write the story with some information that doesn’t come from denier websites.

Dallas Beaufort
Posted Friday, 02 December 11 at 4:49AM

Truth hurts as man made global warming is legitimized its new guise, Climate change and any word variation to suit the lefts spin and funding cycles.

pjb253
Posted Friday, 02 December 11 at 8:16AM

gracog writes:
There have been at least five independent inquiries into the first release of emails. They have all shown that there was no scientific malpractice.

Ross McKitrick, Ph.D
Professor of Environmental Economics, University of Guelph, Canada
writes:
My examination of the Climategate inquiries centers on the extent to which they succeeded in providing credible answers to the above questions. As will be shown, the various inquiries reviewed evidence that leads to an affirmative answer in each case, and in many cases the inquiries themselves report affirmative answers, yet they couched such conclusions in terms that gave the opposite impression. In other cases they simply left the questions unanswered. In some cases they avoided the issues by looking instead at irrelevant questions.

Understanding the Climategate Inquiries

pjb253
Posted Friday, 02 December 11 at 8:19AM

Apologies. The link for Understanding the Climategate Inquiries is:

http://www.rossmckitrick.com/uploads/4/8/0/8/4808045/rmck_climategate.pd…

calyptorhynchus
Posted Friday, 02 December 11 at 8:23AM

pjb253

So Ross McKitrick, Ph.D, Professor of Environmental Economics, University of Guelph, Canada, doesn’t think much of the inquiries.

So what?

The inquiries included very many people with equal, or better, credentials than him.

pjb253
Posted Friday, 02 December 11 at 9:41AM

calyptorhynchus
Do you think there is any correlation between credentials and diligence or honesty?

So what? Unless Edward Miller can refute McKitrick, this New Matilda article is a bit shallow, relying as it does on inquiries that smell worse than the ClimateGate emails they were meant to whitewash.

Michael Kelly, Prince Philip Professor of Technology at the University of Cambridge has credentials and was a member of the Oxburgh Inquiry. His notes on the inquiry contain the following:

(i) I take real exception to having simulation runs described as experiments (without at least the qualification of ‘computer’ experiments). It does a disservice to centuries of real experimentation and allows simulations output to be considered as real data. This last is a very serious matter, as it can lead to the idea that real ‘real data’ might be wrong simply because it disagrees with the models! That is turning centuries of science on its head.

(3) Up to and throughout this exercise, I have remained puzzled how the real humility of the scientists in this area, as evident in their papers, including all these here, and the talks I have heard them give, is morphed into statements of confidence at the 95% level for public consumption through the IPCC process. This does not happen in other subjects of equal importance to humanity, e.g. energy futures or environmental degradation or resource depletion. I can only think it is the ‘authority’ appropriated by the IPCC itself that is the root cause.

(ii) I think it is easy to see how peer review within tight networks can allow new orthodoxies to appear and get established that would not happen if papers were wrtten for and peer reviewed by a wider audience. I have seen it happen elsewhere. This finding may indeed be an important outcome of the present review.

http://www.bishop-hill.net/storage/kelly%20paper.pdf

None of Kelly’s input found its way into the Oxburgh Report.