Climate change deniers manufacture controversy

Sometimes I feel compelled to comment on something that is not really worthy of comment or even any real attention at all, simply because everyone persists in talking about it. Likewise, I sometimes feel that I simply have to present arguments on an issue, even when the reality of the situation is so blindingly obvious that anyone who is arguing for the other side is clearly so hopelessly dense (or ideologically committed) that no argument is going to sway them (e.g., Obama's birthplace). I sometimes think I shouldn't say anything about such issues, because in some ways deigning to discuss them perpetuates the idea that they are worth discussing, or that there is something to debate. The problem is that in some cases the underlying issue or a related one is actually important, and allowing the idiots and crazy people to go without any response might conceivably influence more ignorant people in the middle. One instance of this is the "controversy" over the hacked emails written by climate scientists, and the overall issue of human-induced climate change.

Before we get into the "controversy" itself, I'd like to address something else, and that's the name that some people have attached to the hacked email issue, namely "Climategate". Can we give the "something-gate" thing a rest already? Yes, Watergate was a big deal, but does that mean we have to attach the second half of the name of a Washington hotel to every new political scandal since then on to the end of human civilization? We've already heard names like "Contragate", "Monicagate", and who knows how many more. Thankfully most of them are not the most common names for the scandals in question, but they still appear far too often. While we're at it, why not go back and name every political scandal in history whatever-gate? The Teapot Dome scandal, for instance, could be Teapotgate, and so on.... Enough already with the "gates"! [Update: Apparently I'm not the only one who can see the absurdity of this. A March 1, 2010 New York Times article entitled "In Paterson's Attempt to Reassure the Public, a Flashback to That '70s Show" that discusses parallels between Watergate and NY governor David Paterson's interference in an aide's domestic violence case includes a reference to "the enduring journalistic tic of mindlessly attaching the suffix “-gate” to every scandal that comes along."]

As for the emails themselves, for any who don't know, hundreds of private emails were hacked from the University of East Anglia in the UK, home of one of the top climate research centers, and posted on the web. Conspiracy theorists and climate change deniers (those who deny that average global temperatures are rising, or insist that any such warming has nothing to do with human activity) went through these emails and claimed that they came up with evidence that climate scientists were fudging data, engaging in conspiracy to silence opponents, and so forth. Many more sensible people have noted that they were cherry-picking, but it deserves reemphasis. There were hundreds of emails, and yet these people have been harping on no more than half a dozen sentences. That's half a dozen sentences, not even entire emails, out of hundreds of emails, some quite lengthy. This alone shows how desperate they were to find anything they could use.

While a few of the sentences that the nuts (sorry, but it's a convenient shorthand, and it's hard to give these people the respect due to those who have honest questions) dug out may look a little bad to people who don't really think about them, none of them amount to much at all, and that's even more the case considering that they were taken completely out of context. The one most commonly cited is the line "I've just completed Mike's [Mann] trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years [from 1981 onward] and from 1961 for Keith's to hide the decline." One word here that the people who want to cast doubts on the science focus on is "trick". Now as we all know, the verb "trick" means to cheat or deceive, and that's what these people want us to think the word implies. But anyone with even a modicum of grammatical knowledge can see that the "trick" in "Mike's trick" is a noun. While the noun trick sometimes can refer to an action involving deception, it also has many meanings that have nothing to do with deception, such as a specialized skill ("tricks of the trade") or a clever act (as in "my dog can do tricks"). Even taken out of context, it is clear that that is what is meant here. The other part of this sentence that these people seized on was "hide the decline". I will say that "hide" was a poor choice of words, but it's not really relevant. The real question is what decline is being discussed. Is it a decline in actual temperatures? Even out of context, it's clear that it isn't, as the writer (Phil Jones) suggests using the "real temps", that is the actual temperatures, to "hide" the decline in question. As explained on this video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P70SlEqX7oY), the reference is to tree ring data, which matched up well with actual temperatures earlier in the 20th century but then began to diverge from actual temperatures. Why this might be is still something of a mystery, but since the problem the world needs to focus on is the actual temperatures, it is relatively unimportant. In any case, in context it's obvious that this sentence is not referring to any attempt to deceive the world about the real climate situation.

Another example of a sentence taken completely out of context was "We can't account for the lack of warming at the moment, and it's a travesty that we can't.", which as the abovementioned video explains, is simply an expression of frustration with the inadequacy of certain models. Another sentence I saw cited a few times was pme in which Jones says "I would like to see the climate change happen so the science could be proved right." On the face of it, this is not a statement of someone who thinks that the science shows anything other than that global warming is occurring. At most, it might seem to show a little doubt that the science that he clearly believes in will be borne out by events, but it's more likely to be a somewhat cynical hope that more dramatic warming in the near future will erase any doubts (except among the lunatic fringe). Perhaps not the best thing to be hoping for, but perfectly understandable.

An element of the emails that even some who are not climate change deniers focused on was the apparent effort of Jones and others to prevent papers by climate change deniers from being published in journals, and to keep data out of their hands. Apparently they wanted to keep two papers they found objectionable out of the IPCC report (the massive international set of research by a body of international scientists -- winners of the Nobel Peace Prize along with Al Gore -- that concluded that the Earth is warming and that it is highly probable that human activity is a primary cause). While they were wrong to do so, the reports in question apparently did end up being included, and have since been shown to be flawed. The scientists also discuss their irritation at a journal which published a paper from a climate change denier, and threaten to refuse to treat it as a respectable journal as a result. While this may look bad on the surface, it is actually understandable. If a "scientific" journal chose to publish a paper claiming that the Earth was flat, would scientists be expected to continue to treat it as a reputable journal? While that may seem like an extreme example, to many mainstream scientists, some of the more extreme deniers are little better than flat earthers. It is worth mentioning that an editor at the journal in question also quit over its decision to publish the paper the East Anglia scientists criticized.

As for attempts to keep data out of certain people's hands, that was more clearly a case where Jones and any who went along were wrong, but even this is somewhat understandable. After all, look at the absurd liberties some people took in taking the content of these emails out of context. While data should be available to all, it is easy to comprehend the temptation to want to keep it from people who will deliberately twist it. And climate deniers are already well known for that, an example being the attempt to claim the world has been cooling over the last decade, which they only manage by taking a particular year (1997, which due to the effects of El Nino was the hottest on record) as their starting point. This misuse of statistics is debunked in a set of AP reports (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091026/ap_on_bi_ge/us_sci_global_cooling and http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091026/ap_on_sc/us_sci_global_cooling_methodology). So it's easy to imagine why some scientists would be inclined not to let these people get their hands on their data. Likewise the desire expressed in an email to punch out one of the more persistent deniers. While not a laudable desire, it's not hard to understand the level of frustration some climate scientists may feel towards these people. Of course they should only express such emotions privately, not in a public email (oh, wait, these were private emails that their senders didn't expect to be made public...).

A lengthy AP analysis by several people of all these emails (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091212/ap_on_sc/climate_e_mails) also came to the conclusion that there was nothing in them that through doubt on the science, though in an attempt to be even-handed (bending over backward to be so, really), they did criticize the scientists for being a little too petty. But the fact that scientists aren't always rational and unemotional should be no surprise to anyone who knows the history of science, and the petty sniping between scientists such as Isaac Newton and Gottfried von Leibniz, or palentologists Edward Cope and Othniel Marsh, or indeed many scientists holding opposing views on some scientific question. If anything, scientists can be even more childish than many other people, perhaps in some cases due to a certain lack of emotional maturity (though perhaps I should cast aspersions, since I can't claim to be perfect in that area myself).

Regarding why the climate change deniers (at least the more extreme ones) are hardly more worth debating than flat earthers, birthers or people who claim the Moon landing was hoax, I'll have to save that for a subsequent post. But regarding this imaginary controversy, here are a few final thoughts. One, some critics claim the climate scientists' emails show that they are overly dogmatic about their belief in global warming. This may be true to some extent (as just noted, being dogmatic about cherished theories is hardly unknown among scientists), but if mainstream scientists who believe climate change is happening and is caused by humans are dogmatic, then what are their opponents? Secondly, the more extreme commentators who try to claim the emails show a conspiracy to mislead the public are, as demonstrated above, obviously brainless, insane or dishonest (remember that out of hundreds of emails which the senders didn't expect to be made public, the best they could come up with was these few sentences, none of which shows anything like a blatant cover up), but if there's any doubt, I actually saw two of these people go so far as to claim that climate change was part of a conspiracy to create a new socialist world order. One actually fingered the UN as being behind it, which is even more absurd, given that the UN has such a small budget and is so paralyzed by contrary factions that it has trouble managing even realtively small operations, let alone taking over the world. The idea that the huge number of scientists who say global warming is happening (in the wake of this email affair, 1700 UK scientists signed a letter reaffirming their conviction that climate change is real) are all part of vast conspiracy or are only being politically correct to get government grant money (a particularly bizarre claim to make about US scientists, seeing as until recently the US had an administration that preferred to pretend climate change wasn't happening) is ludicrous. If anyone has a major financial stake in manufacturing anything regarding climate change, it's the energy companies that would prefer to deny that their products are causing global warming.

So why should we even pay attention to these people who try to manufacture controversy about the science behind climate change? One reason, unfortunately, is that some of these people are in the US Congress, which is currently one of the biggest obstacles, if not the biggest, to a global climate agreement at Copenhagen. The worst offender is in the Senate, namely James Inhofe, R-OK, but there are also some in the House (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/sci_climate_hearing). People like this may end up preventing the rest of the world from solving this very real problem. So until their constituents wise up and vote them out of office, more sensible people will have to go on wasting time demolishing their absurd claims.