Fighting Back - The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars - page 161

completed 7 —this one having been commissioned by the University of East Anglia to review “key
allegations arising from the series of hacked emails from the Climatic Research Unit.” 8 The
commission, led by Sir Muir Russell, produced an unusually thorough, well-documented 160-page
report. It too found no evidence of scientific wrongdoing on the part of any scientists who had been
tarred with various climategate allegations. Refuting the claim that CRU had somehow rigged its
global temperature estimates or deleted critical data, the committee went through the rather
extraordinary measure of reproducing the global temperature record from scratch, using publically
archived data and methods. CRU scientists were once again criticized for not having been as
forthcoming with requests for data as they could have been, and Jones's 1999 World Meteorological
Organization (WMO) report cover graph depicting past temperature trends was criticized as
potentially “misleading” for merging proxy and instrumental data into a single curve—a conclusion
nobody really disputed. These were minor issues. The panel's conclusions were overall
overwhelmingly exculpatory.
Issued within the same week, these twin final acquittals received reasonably good media
coverage, though nothing approaching in extent the widespread reporting of the original allegations.
Some pundits, such as Howard Kurtz of CNN's Reliable Sources show, argued that many in the media
had been irresponsible by not giving the acquittals the prominence in coverage that had been given to
the original false allegations. 9 But CNN covered my exoneration on The Situation Room , 10 while
CBS News—now partially atoning for its “hide the decline” piece from December—was among the
first to report on my exculpation. 11 Positive coverage was provided by numerous major newspapers
and magazines. 12 Even Fox News, the Pittsburgh News-Tribune, and the Wall Street Journal
reported the exonerations, though the WSJ editorial pages predictably cried “white wash.” 13
Especially gratifying for me personally was the widespread coverage by various regional and local
papers and TV news stations. PennFuture demanded that the Commonwealth Foundation now publicly
apologize to me. 14 While that didn't happen, a cloud that had been hanging over me for the better part
of a year had nonetheless finally lifted. There was true cause for family celebration on the Fourth of
July holiday.
There were nonetheless a few road bumps along the way as the various investigations unfolded.
Climate change deniers, for example, successfully hijacked a small working group (the Energy Sub-
Group) within a respected European scientific organization known as the Institute of Physics (IOP). 15
Using the imprimatur of the IOP, the group made a formal submission to the Muir Russell Commission
filled with standard denier talking points, claiming among other things that the content of the hacked
CRU e-mails revealed “worrying implications” for “scientific integrity in this field.” There was an
immediate outcry from prominent institute members who were deeply troubled by the development, 16
and the IOP disbanded the Energy Sub-Group altogether later that summer. 17
The statistician on the Oxburgh panel, David Hand, caused a bit of trouble with offhand remarks
he chose to make at the press conference announcing the panel's findings. Though our own work did
not fall within the remit of the committee and the hockey stick was not mentioned at all in the report,
Hand commented that “The particular technique [Mann et al.] used exaggerated the size of the blade at
the end of the hockey stick.” This was instant fodder for the denial mill, with papers such as the
Telegraph happily reporting the claim that the “hockey stick was exaggerated.” 18 The statement was
nonsensical, however. The end of the blade of the hockey stick was simply the instrumental
temperature record; there was no way that our reconstruction, or any reconstruction for that matter,