Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
lighter, and warm currents that have be-
gun, just in the last decade, to melt ice at
the ice sheet margin. In addition there are
new concerns about melting of the East
Antarctic Ice Sheet (chapter 4).
light on the ethics of some climate scien-
tists from East Anglia and their correspon-
dents. The most damning discussions in
the e-mails included apparent threats to
obstruct the peer-review system to block
publication of unwanted papers. It was
unquestionably an example of scientists
venting frustrations and perhaps of sci-
entific arrogance, but there was certainly
more smoke than fire. As the
Guardian
(29
December 2009) aptly characterized it, the
e-mails show sincere researchers struggling
to do good work in a highly politicized en-
vironment and sometimes losing their tem-
pers. Climategate is perhaps best viewed as
another example of the lengths to which
climate deniers backed by corporate inter-
ests will stoop—in this case thievery—to
promote their anti-scientific, pro-industry
agenda.
Patrick Michaels, a senior fellow of the
Cato Institute, one of the dozens of cor-
porate-sponsored organizations dedicated
to the manufacture of doubt, has written
that the e-mails explain why a number of
atmospheric scientists whose views differ
from the majority have had difficulty pub-
lishing in top climate journals. There is no
evidence that any of the e-mails in ques-
tion actually resulted in the suppression of
science. The examples that Michaels noted
of scientists who are having alleged prob-
lems in publishing included himself, Willie
Soon, Roy Spencer, and Sallie Baliunas—all
relentless deniers who have made unsup-
portable statements against global warm-
ing in the past and who pursue their trade
Natural solar variability related to changes
in the Earth's orbit is not understood well
enough to accurately predict long-term natu-
ral changes that will underlie future global
changes caused by humans.
This is the con-
clusion of a study from 2010 headed up
by the climatologist Eelco Rohling. Since
the role of solar variability is imperfectly
known, the projection of future climate
over a century or longer is made more dif-
ficult. It is important to note that some
scientists, particularly Wallace Broecker
of Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, ar-
gue based on past cycles that we are on the
verge of entering a new ice age. If true, the
timing of this climate reversal is unknown,
and some argue that warming caused by
human beings is counteracting any cooling
trends.
the lightning rods
climategate
In November 2009 the bombshell struck.
More than a thousand e-mails were sto-
len from the Climate Research Unit of the
University of East Anglia in Norwich. The
e-mails were a bonanza for deniers who
claimed that they represented a conspiracy
to promote global change. They shed a bad
