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Climategate 2.0: New E-Mails Rock The Global Warming Debate

A new batch of 5,000 emails among scientists central to the assertion that humans are causing a global warming crisis were anonymously released to the public yesterday, igniting a new firestorm of controversy nearly two years to the day after similar emails ignited the Climategate scandal.

Three themes are emerging from the newly released emails: (1) prominent scientists central to the global warming debate are taking measures to conceal rather than disseminate underlying data and discussions; (2) these scientists view global warming as a political “cause” rather than a balanced scientific inquiry and (3) many of these scientists frankly admit to each other that much of the science is weak and dependent on deliberate manipulation of facts and data.

Regarding scientific transparency, a defining characteristic of science is the open sharing of scientific data, theories and procedures so that independent parties, and especially skeptics of a particular theory or hypothesis, can replicate and validate asserted experiments or observations. Emails between Climategate scientists, however, show a concerted effort to hide rather than disseminate underlying evidence and procedures.

“I’ve been told that IPCC is above national FOI [Freedom of Information] Acts. One way to cover yourself and all those working in AR5 would be to delete all emails at the end of the process,”writes Phil Jones, a scientist working with the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), in a newly released email.

“Any work we have done in the past is done on the back of the research grants we get – and has to be well hidden,” Jones writes in another newly released email. “I’ve discussed this with the main funder (U.S. Dept of Energy) in the past and they are happy about not releasing the original station data.”

The original Climategate emails contained similar evidence of destroying information and data that the public would naturally assume would be available according to freedom of information principles. “Mike, can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith [Briffa] re AR4 [UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 4th Assessment]?” Jones wrote to Penn State University scientist Michael Mann in an email released in Climategate 1.0. “Keith will do likewise. … We will be getting Caspar [Ammann] to do likewise. I see that CA [the Climate Audit Web site] claim they discovered the 1945 problem in the Nature paper!!”

The new emails also reveal the scientists’ attempts to politicize the debate and advance predetermined outcomes.

“The trick may be to decide on the main message and use that to guid[e] what’s included and what is left out” of IPCC reports, writes Jonathan Overpeck, coordinating lead author for the IPCC’s most recent climate assessment.

“I gave up on [Georgia Institute of Technology climate professor] Judith Curry a while ago. I don’t know what she thinks she’s doing, but its not helping the cause,” wrote Mann in another newly released email.

“I have been talking w/ folks in the states about finding an investigative journalist to investigate and expose” skeptical scientist Steve McIntyre, Mann writes in another newly released email.

These new emails add weight to Climategate 1.0 emails revealing efforts to politicize the scientific debate. For example, Tom Wigley, a scientist at the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, authored a Climategate 1.0 email asserting that his fellow Climategate scientists “must get rid of” the editor for a peer-reviewed science journal because he published some papers contradicting assertions of a global warming crisis.

More than revealing misconduct and improper motives, the newly released emails additionally reveal frank admissions of the scientific shortcomings of global warming assertions.

“Observations do not show rising temperatures throughout the tropical troposphere unless you accept one single study and approach and discount a wealth of others. This is just downright dangerous. We need to communicate the uncertainty and be honest. Phil, hopefully we can find time to discuss these further if necessary,” writes Peter Thorne of the UK Met Office.

“I also think the science is being manipulated to put a political spin on it which for all our sakes might not be too clever in the long run,” Thorne adds.

“Mike, The Figure you sent is very deceptive … there have been a number of dishonest presentations of model results by individual authors and by IPCC,” Wigley acknowledges.

More damaging emails will likely be uncovered during the next few days as observers pour through the 5,000 emails. What is already clear, however, is the need for more objective research and ethical conduct by the scientists at the heart of the IPCC and the global warming discussion.

Brewster

Nov 25 2011, 10:47 PM

Posting the same cherry picked crap twice doesn't make it any more true.

And poor gullible Chris still doesn't get it.

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Wow; tough to spin:

Pollack: But it will be very difficult to make the MWP go away in Greenland. …

Why? Since it existed?

[Response: Who is denying the Greenland record? The issue is whether medieval temperatures were globally coherent, and the exact same email you are quoting actually says this:

"In Antarctica things are different, with 1000 years ago cold and the LIA
warm, i.e. anti-correlated (see the 1999 IUGG abstract MC02/E/08-B1 by
Gary Clow). What this demonstrates is that it is possible that many of the
favorite climatic episodes, the MWP, the LIA, may not be global phenomena."

Your cherry-picking of quotes is completely transparent. Pollack is a very serious scientist being honest and frank about the issues (as they stood in Mar 2000!), and you are using his words as cheap parlour trick. This is pathetic. - gavin]

67. I have an ethics question. How can emails from publicly funded scientists asking fellow colleagues to delete emails and dodge FOI requests ever be considered ethical (or legal)? If these are taken out of context, what context could possibly make them acceptable?

Aren’t there record retention laws in academia? [edit]

[Response: We said back in 2009 that asking people to delete emails was ill-advised, and that remains the case (as the Muir-Russell report went into in great detail). But there is no legal requirement to keep all emails - govt. agencies and universities general have policies on document retention but they don't mandate universal archiving of emails. Many of them actually suggest regular deletion of non-essential records (e.g. NASA). - gavin]

{From Wigley} Mike: The Figure you sent is very deceptive [...] there have been a number of dishonest presentations of model results by individual authors and by IPCC

[Response: It was my figure - nothing to do with Mike, and I used it in this RealClimate post. I disagreed (and disagree) with Wigley, as I stated in response at the time (2509)

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Beware of the Heartland Institute: Brought to you in part by the Koch Brothers

As an elected school member in Milwaukee, each month, I receive a stack of polished newspapers from a Chicago-based right-wing ”think tank” called the Heartland Institute. Under the banner of “free market” solutions to education, healthcare, taxes, the environment, telecommunication regulation and budgetary issues the Heartland Institute is a highly funded propaganda publishing house advancing the arguments of the most reactionary elements of corporate America. They are connected to Tea Party activism and see themselves as a “…clearinghouse for the work of 350 other think tanks and advocacy groups.”

Heartland publishes 5 slick monthly newspapers. They are:
•Budget & Tax News
•Environment & Climate News
•Health Care News
•Infotech & Telecom News
•School Reform News

Their claimed audiences are the nation’s 16,700 national, state and local government officials. They wish to affect policy at every level of government in the U.S.

In their most recent expenditure statement they reported spending over $28,132,000 since 1998 receiving funding from right wing foundations including the Heritage Foundation, Cato Institute, Reason Foundation, Manhattan Institute along with corporations and individual. The Koch brothers are supporters.

This dangerous “think tank” represents an ideological movement whose goal is for corporate America to have a free hand to do anything they wish for profit and without regulation. They are working for complete privatization of the public sector and either elimination or privatization of the public’s safety net at the federal, state and local level.

They are key propagandists to the present right wing movement in the U.S, supporting any demand that increases corporate profits and weakens the peoples’ movements and democratic rights.

telcoman

Nov 26 2011, 01:42 AM

The earth is flat. After all it looks flat. Only some wacko scientists are claiming its a ball and the scientific evidence is a straw man and their statements that its round and hanging in space is just a bunch of ad hom as is their contention that it goes around the sun other than vice versa. Everyone can see with their own eyes that the sun i moving each day They need to watch more commentaries on Fox News and then they would know the earth is flat. Just like it looks.