The world cannot trust scientists who abuse their power
By Gordon Crovitz
For anyone who doubts the power of the Internet to shine light on darkness, the news of the month is how digital technology helped uncover a secretive group of scientists who suppressed data, froze others out of the debate, and flouted freedom-of-information laws. Their behavior was brought to light when more than 1,000 emails,and some 3,500 additional files were published online, many of which boasted about how they suppressed hard questions about their data.
The emails, released by an apparent whistle-blower who used the name “FOI,” were written by scientists at the Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia in England. Its scientists are high-profile campaigners for the theory of global warming.
The findings from East Anglia have been at the core of policy reports by the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The IPCC does not do its own research but compiles information relating to climate change. It has declared the evidence that the globe is warming to be “unequivocal,” a claim routinely cited by lawmakers in the U.S. and elsewhere as authoritative.
The IPCC stresses honest science. According to its Web site, its goal is to “assess on a comprehensive, objective, open and transparent basis the scientific, technical and socio-economic information relevant to understanding the scientific basis of risk of human-induced climate change, its potential impacts and options for adaptation and mitigation.”
The panel, which shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore, now faces the inconvenient truth that it relied on scientists who violated scientific process. In one email, the Climate Research Unit’s director, Phil Jones, wrote Michael Mann of Pennsylvania State University, promising to spike studies that cast doubt on the relationship between human activity and global warming. “I can’t see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report,” he said. He pledged to “keep them out somehow—even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!”
In another email exhange, Mr. Mann wrote to Mr. Jones: “This was the danger of always criticizing the skeptics for not publishing in the ‘peer-reviewed literature.’ Obviously, they found a solution to that—take over a journal! So what do we do about this? I think we have to stop considering ‘Climate Research’ as a legitimate peer-reviewed journal. Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal.”
Other emails include one in which Keith Briffa of the Climate Research Unit told Mr. Mann that “I tried hard to balance the needs of the science and the IPCC, which were not always the same,” and in which Mr. Jones said he had employed Mr. Mann’s “trick” to “hide the decline” in temperatures. A May 2008 email from Mr. Jones with the subject line “IPCC & FOI” asked recipients to “delete any emails you may have had” about data submitted for an IPCC report. The British Freedom of Information Act makes it a crime to delete material subject to an FOI request; such a request had been made earlier that month.
Over the weekend, East Anglia officials disclosed they had disposed years ago of the historic weather data underlying their analysis. This may be one reason they’ve fought information requests. They say they’ll release the data they still have some time next year.
Please, have you a trtanslation in Italian language of this article? Thank you, Valeria Borgia
The global warming has finally ceased. Thank God! I was starting to get a chill.
Wrong assumptions and ego-driven ” research” inevitably embarasses their promoters.
A simple question becomes an simplistic hypothesis which is massaged into an untested “theory” that then is caught up by a fanatical but uninformed fringe who transform the dogmatic media sound bites into a thundering litany for the new faithful.
Trouble is that so many politicians and financial creatives now have enormous vested interests in these wrong assumptions and will do anything not to backpedal or should I say back-peddle their sales pitches to unwashed.
This monumental scandal must be investigated and analysed at all levels so that lessons can be learnt so that the scientific professions can regain some credibility.
And well done to heroic whistle blowers who have cut through all pomposity to the truth.
The next great scare tactic is the Mayan Prophecy for 2012 – just watch how this one gathers momentum!
Well said May Lee. You sound like you are way smarter than I am, I am so glad you tend to agree with me. Otherwise I’d be in deep do do. or is it do-do?
And yes, look for a giant shift of focus from global warming to the 2012 end times prophecies. I agree that is the next great scare, but I think that because it is a convenient ready-in-the-wings distraction from climategate. However, it can only be used temporarily because it has a built-in terminus, just as the millinium scare had. They can only use it until Dec. 2012. The question is, what will be the permanent new scare?
Neil, the next scare is “Global Cooling.” Just like 1975-78. I’d love to have a palm tree rather than an Iceberg in my backyard!!!
Actually there is a reason to fear just that. There are core studies that show the earth cooled very suddenly for hundreds of years. Why? Due to the sudden flow of water from Lake Agassiz (spelling?) when it broke its banks which in turn caused the natural gulf stream of water flow in the North Atlantic to stop. That gulf stream keeps Europe from frezzing, etc. Over a relatively short period of time it caused a global, or mostly global, freeze, which took a long time to reverse itself. So some of the talk about “cooling” may come from this because if Greenland were to shed it’s ice cap one way or another, the same thing could occur. So global warming could indeed suddenly cause a global freeze. The data are all in the core samples.
Rob, as stated Climate “change” is a natural cycle of life. Pure and simple. I guess simplicity is really to simple to comprehend?
Science be damned, eh Paul?
Rob, “bad science be damned.” Agree? eh Rob?
And somehow you are always capable of detecting “bad science”?! You must be a lot smarter than I am.
When over 30,000 people of science state it is not valid, I tend to agree. A friend of mine is a marine biologist and says it is bunk!!
You sure have a lot of convenient friends everywhere. Must be nice. I could source a larger number of scientists who disagree with your 30,000. So then what?
So then we disagree. Very simple.
Very simple, indeed.
Simple it is, simple it will be. The “Truth” is finally coming out without the MSM. Will wonders ever cease?.