The more we look at the email hack at the Climatic Research Institute (CRU), the more it’s obvioulsy an orchestrated campaign to tarnish the reputation of climate scientists.
Comments on our site have suggested that the original theft was actually an inside job by a whistle blower – on the basis that the information looks like the kind of data that would be revealed in response to a “freedom of information” inquiry.
Whatever the source, there’s no doubt that climate change critics – or deniers, if you prefer – seized on the data and made the most of any item that could make it look as if climate scientists were massaging the data.
In the process, of course, they failed to find the really big smoking gun that a conspiracy theory says should be there. There is no email where Dr Phil Jones says “OK, we’re making it up,” or acknowledges bribes from turbine makers.
The realclimate blog – which originally alerted CRU to the theft – says the real interest is what is not in the emails: “no evidence of any worldwide conspiracy, no mention of George Soros nefariously funding climate research, no grand plan to ‘get rid of the MWP [mediaeval warm period]’, 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.”
Without anything more substantial, this is a smear campaign, pure and simple.
The selection of evidence looks similar to the approach of those keen to deny evolution. Science operates on consensus, but critics overstate their opposing views, and require the mainstream to have more than a consensus. If it’s not unanimous, then it’s “just a theory”.
And the timing is obviously designed to interfere with the UN Copenhagen summit, where the world witll be attempting to agree a successor to the Kyoto protocol.
There are two lessons for IT:
1. Protect your data.
There may not be much to do about an internal whistleblower, or determined opponents after your information, but private data should remain private.
If it gets out, it should at least be possible to tell how it got out, and there should be procedures to handle the leak afterwards. Guardian Jobs for instance told everyone who might have been affected by its loss of CV data.
2. After this media storm, you will still have to deal with carbon.
The UK’s carbon reduction commitment (CRC) will require large organisations to account for their greenhouse emissions – and there is a big risk that organisations are not going to be ready in time, or else will try to use inadequate technology.
Other companies will find that CRC impinges on their energy plans – and the details may mean life or death for specific projects.
eWEEK is holding a web seminar on 15 December, during the Copenhagen summit, designed to deal with the issues that carbon accounting will raise for IT departments.
Join us in this interactive event, Carbon Credits, Copenhagen and UK IT.
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You should check the emails again. They do basically contain admissions that 1) the data has been corrupted, deliberately, 2) there has been a conspiracy to gag the skeptics and 3) the chicken littles have been paid a lot of money to run the scam. I guess that makes those who still believe in Global Warming - "Deniers" - As in "denial of reality".
How can you possibly read the emails and then call it a smear campaign? They speak for themselves. Orchestrated? Quite possibly. But an orchestrated campaign does not mean it is untrue. Just as the conclusions of a study funded by Exxon are not true or untrue because of the funding source. Nor is AGW theory true or untrue because its chief spokesperson has made 100?s of millions and stands to make billions from it. It is true or false because of the facts.
Are the Goreiacs actually suggesting that climate change is new? It is the way our planet works. The Arctic was ice free 120,000 years ago. There was thousand plus metre thick ice over most of Canada and much of Europe 10,000 years ago. It was warm and mostly ice free 1000 years ago and cold 400 years ago. Which one of the climates of the past million years would you prefer that we return to? We are not the climate change deniers ? you are. We affirm that the climate is always changing. Right now it?s cooling and 15 years ago it was warming. 50 years ago it was cooling and the news was that we were slipping into an ice age. Incidentally the climate on Mars warmed at the same time ours did and the polar ice caps melted. Do the Goreiacs believe that increased CO2 here affects the climate on Mars?
We climate change agnostics want to spend our tax dollars on the remediation of air, water and soil pollution; clean water and modern sewer systems for Africa, not on burying a natural gas which is causing a rollback of the Sahara Desert and increased plant growth around the world. And certainly not on trading Carbon Credits! That is a completely artificial industry; less utilitarian than Pet Rocks and far less benificial than Hula Hoops.
... and don't see anything yet that couldn't equally be explained by beleagured scientists under attack responding as well as they can.
Data needs processing, and the way the attackers are pouncing on any poorly worded discussion suggests they haven't got anything more profound.
And where is the big pay-off for chicken littles? I'm afraid I still haven't found that in the so-called "ClimateGate".
I'm SURE you looked hard at those e-mails. Funny how you are spouting the same line as the AGW hacks are spouting now that they've been exposed.
Nothing to see here, folks, move along! Nothing but a smear taken out of context.
Skeptics and conspiracy buffs need to understand that even without any CRU data nor the publications of it scientists, there are MULTIPLE lines of evidence for AGW:
1) UAH, RSS, and GISS show warming
2) Rapidly warming Arctic
3) Rapidly decreasing sea ice extent
4) Rapidly thinning sea ice
5) Rising ocean heat content
6) Cooling stratosphere
7) Net increase in downwelling LW
8 ) Net decreasing TOA LW emission
9) Increased species migrations/extinctions
10) Increased severe weather occurrences
11) Glacier mass loss and retreats increasing
12) Rising sea levels
13) Most importantly: rapidly rising human emissions of GHGs that have not been seen in millions of years.
None of these things read emails and have decided to play along in a massive international conspiracy.
Scott A. Mandia, Professor - Meteorology
http://www2.sunysuffolk.edu/mandias/global_warming/
Ahhh history repeats itself...
The title shoule read...
?Purchase Global Warming Carbon Credits? they are better than indulgences trust us it?s scientific this time.?