Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
Sarah Palin opined that if President Obama
stayed home from the Copenhagen Confer-
ence in 2009 he would have sent the mes-
sage that “the United States will not be a
party to fraudulent scientific practices.”
As it turns out, a parliamentary commit-
tee in Britain cleared the Climategate sci-
entists of all but the charge of unwilling-
ness to share data; three other panels at the
University of Virginia and Penn State even-
tually cleared them as well. Although it is
hard to deny the arrogance of the scientists
involved and their contempt for the norms
of good scientific practice, it turns out that
Climategate was largely a hyped-up me-
dia phenomenon. Mostly the scientists in-
volved were grousing and griping, nothing
more. Nonetheless, the attorney general of
Virginia, who believes that global change
is a myth, is seeking to obtain the research
papers and field data from Michael Mann,
one of the Climategate scientists.
Climategate is an example of the pot
calling the kettle black. Many of the argu-
ments from climate denialist groups are
so blatantly false and deceitful that the
hullabaloo over Climategate is hypocriti-
cal in the extreme. The list of their disin-
genuous claims (some listed at the end of
each chapter) gives them no credible basis
to accuse others of being disingenuous. In
short, there is no conspiracy to exaggerate
or manipulate data or computerized cli-
mate models. Even if an individual instance
of manipulation were to come to light, it
would not change the scientific facts deter-
mined by the community of global climate
change researchers. Sadly, this will not pre-
vent global warming deniers from trying to
exploit these stolen e-mails to further their
own agenda.
the intergovernmental
panel on climate change
The ipcc is the main lightning rod for
much of the criticism by the deniers. In-
deed they have made errors, as would any
panel of more than two thousand scientists
speaking many languages and meeting in a
politically charged atmosphere. Our opin-
ion is that the ipcc, while not perfect, is a
group of largely honest, dedicated research-
ers working for little compensation under
difficult conditions. That a committee of
thousands could agree upon and produce
massive and detailed reports is something
of a miracle.
Mistakes are inevitably made. One se-
rious error (called Glaciergate by some)
was the claim that the Himalayan glaciers
would disappear by 2035. It apparently be-
gan with a misquote by the World Wild-
life Fund in one of its reports. The error
was immediately trumpeted by critics as
another example of ipcc's incompetence
and tendency to exaggerate, and a reason
to question the credibility of all the pan-
el's work. This is another good example of
throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
Glaciergate won't be the last mistake that
will be discovered. Unfortunately each er-
ror, and even each change in forecasts
based on advances in understanding of
