The scientific conduct of climate researchers has come underincreasing heat in a sprawling online debate over leaked e-mails that, criticssay, raise questions about the arguments that global warming threatens theworld.
The fight comes as leaders of 192 nations prepare to meetDec. 7-18 in Copenhagen to craft an agreement to stem the heat-trapping"greenhouse" gases that feed temperature rise.
Unknown hackers this month stole thousands of e-mails anddocuments, dating from 1996 to 2009, from the United Kingdom's University ofEast Anglia. The university's Climate Research Center has played a key role inadvancing the case that the planet is steadily getting warmer.
In the e-mails, researchers led by the climate center's PhilJones discuss problems with data, models and outside critics of their research.The conclusion of some who have looked at the e-mails, including Sen. JamesInhofe, R-Okla., is that the scientists are ignoring data that question whetherglobal warming is real and that they have conspired to disparage those whoquestion their work.
The controversy gained new momentum last week as Inhofe andothers called for investigations and the University of East Anglia announced an"independent review."
George Monbiot, a well-known environmentalist who writes forthe United Kingdom's newspaper The Guardian, called for re-examination of allthe data discussed in the stolen notes and said Jones "should nowresign" because of a message saying he would keep climate skeptics' papersout of the benchmark 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)report. Jones vows in the e-mail to "keep them out somehow
Says Monbiot: "His message looks awful."
Critics view the temperature record maintained at the EastAnglia climate center as a backbone of warnings that surface temperatures aregoing up with statistical certainty worldwide as predicted by greenhouse gasmeasurements. Misconduct there exposes climate change as a lie, they say. Inhofe,for instance, says the e-mails show researchers "cooked the books" tomake the case for global warming.
"My colleagues and I accept that some of the publishede-mails do not read well," Jones said in a statement. "Some wereclearly written in the heat of the moment; others use colloquialisms frequentlyused between close colleagues."
On Saturday, East Anglia official Trevor Davies said 95% ofthe worldwide weather station data backing the climate center's temperaturerecord are publicly available. "The university will make all the dataaccessible as soon as they are released from a range of non-publicationagreements," he said in a statement.
But Jones and others note that the center's surfacetemperature reconstructions also have been independently mirrored by theNational Climatic Data Center of the National Oceanic and AtmosphericAdministration and at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, showingrising global temperatures from records dating back to 1880.
The case for global warming rests on "all kinds ofevidence," says climate scientist Don Wuebbles of the University ofIllinois in Urbana-Champaign. "Look at what's happening to ice in theArctic. Explain that as 'no global warming.' It doesn't take a genius to see,obviously, warming is happening, e-mails or not."
Further, notes IPCC chief Rajendra Pachauri, the evidencefor warming in the 2007 IPCC report comes from multiple lines of evidencebesides surface temperatures, such as ocean heat, atmospheric water vapor andsea ice. The 2007 report found man-made gases have raised average atmospherictemperatures about 1.3 degrees Fahrenheit since 1905 and probably will raisethem 3 to 7 degrees by 2100, depending on future emission cuts.
"The East Anglia temperature records aren't the coreproblem," says climatologist Patrick Michaels of the Cato Institute inWashington, D.C., which advocates for limited regulation.
Michaels, a skeptic of the worst implications of a warmingclimate, comes under criticism in the e-mails for a 2007 Journal of GeophysicalResearch paper he co-wrote. The paper said that industry and urban heat explainhalf of the temperature rise seen over land. "Attempts to influenceeditors not to publish papers you don't like: That's the real issue,"Michaels says.
"The problem seems to be the circling-of-the-wagonsstrategy developed by small groups of climate researchers in response to thepolitically motivated attacks against climate science," says climateresearcher Judith Curry of Georgia Tech, writing on the ClimateAudit website.
But Pachauri says small groups of researchers "have noability" to decide what gets in or out of the IPCC reports, given theirfour layers of independent review by hundreds of people. "The entirereport-writing process of the IPCC is subjected to extensive and repeated reviewby experts as well as governments," he says.
Scientists have not had any guidance on how they should actin the midst of a scientific controversy like global warming, saysscience-misconduct expert Nicholas Steneck of the University of Michigan, by e-mail."I believe what the CRU e-mails will show when carefully studied is agroup of professionals struggling with the (climate) dilemma."