A Glimpse at the “Climategate” Emails
There are probably few out there that haven’t heard the term “Climategate” over the last couple of weeks, but 
what I’m not sure people are aware of is what it is and what information these infamous emails contain. So….what the heck is Climategate?
Well, Climategate is another name for the Climatic Research Unit e-mail hacking incident and it is just that. Some unknown souls, that I don’t think were affiliated with the Nixon administration, but evidently are not in strict agreement with the whole idea of climate change, decided to hack into the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia (UEA) in Norwich, England. They stole over 1,000 emails, took phrases out of context, and anonymously disseminated them around the World. Nobody really knows why they did this, but it is believed that is was done in an effort to sabotage the Copenhagen global climate summit which is currently underway. Without going into some drawn-out explanation about this whole thing why don’t we just look at three of the emails uncovered in this little operation.
The emails are mainly between climatologists Phil Jones, the head of the CRU, and Michael E. Mann of Pennsylvania State University, one of the originators of the graph of temperature trends famously named the “hockey stick graph” (seen above).
Email #1: An excerpt from one November 1999 e-mail authored by Phil Jones reads:
- “I’ve just completed Mike’s Naturetrick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie, from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.”
Email #2: Mann e-mail of 11 Mar 2003
As a response to an e-mail indicating that a paper in the scientific journal Climate Research had questioned assertions that the 20th century was abnormally warm, Mann wrote:
- “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.”
Email #3: Trenberth e-mail of 12 Oct 2009
An email written by Kevin Trenberth, a climatologist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, discussed gaps in understanding of recent temperature variations:
- “The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t,”
Of course these comments were taken severely out of context which makes them terribly misleading. And just to make things a little more clear, according to PSU’s Mann, that statistical “trick” that Jones refers to in one e-mail — simply referred to the replacing of proxy temperature data from tree rings in recent years with more accurate data from air temperatures.
What I think we need to understand is that scientist are going to talk to one another in a much different way than they would talk to the general public. In engineering school we used tricks all the time to change loads or make things easier to handle mathematically. Trying to explain this to a bunch of anti-climate change activists, that are at times making death threats on scientists, is needless to say, impossible.
The only email that looked suspicious at all to me is that first one that mentions tricks and hidden information. However, after hearing the explanation, it makes a lot of sense, especially with an engineering background and some familiarity with the method of scientific calculations.
In fact, the only thing that Climategate is exposing in my mind is that we are in a full fledged political war over climate change and it’s not for the right reasons. We have to realize that oil, and other non-renewable sources of energy are huge, huge, huge, business. So yes, this is about money. There are quite a lot of people in this World that have built their careers and fortunes, as well as the career of their children, on non-renewable energy sources. These people are willing to lie, cheat, steal, and perhaps kill to keep their livelihood in tact.
With renewable energy, we have the potential to make oil about as useful as a 1969 VW bug. This would put the fortunes of many very rich people at risk. And we know that when money is involved, people will at times behave in very strange ways. Climategate was certainly one of those strange events.
Tags: Climate Change, climategate, Construction blog, Construction Economics, hockey stick, John Poole
Thanks for showing the other side of this story; not that it is likely to have enough legs to compete with the conservative talk shows. Scientific research is seldom as interesting to the general public as a great big scandal. This information is helpful, however, when discussing with peers.
“This would put the fortunes of many very rich people at risk. And we know that when money is involved, people will at times behave in very strange ways.”
As stated above, the truth will ruin fortunes of either the “non-renewable” or the “renewable” moguls. Both of whom have more to lose than finances. The truth behind global warming, climate change or the next ice age (1970’s) lies somewhere. The truth will never be unearthed, due to the deleting of original scientific information because of “storage limitations”, and the out of context “reporting”.
So, the naysayers have more fuel to add to the “fire” and the upholders have impaired their scientific credibility. Welcome to the solution.
I would agree with Bart. The renewable energy people are as trustworthy as the big oil companies. If the scientist weren’t funded by politicians and their findings were truly unbiased I would have a better time buying into the Al Gore’s b.s.
Climategate has better legs Copenhagen.
“We have to realize that oil, and other non-renewable sources of energy are huge, huge, huge, business.”
We must also realize that there is plenty to gain from the other side for financial gain, not just those evil evil oil tycoons. There is also the huge gain of the beauracracies that will tax everyone in order to achieve their “purposes”.
Secondly, anyone who looks closely at those who push these bills can see the overwhelming corruption going on behind closed doors. It doesnt take much to tie the peices together.
Lastly, I find it sad that there is no real debate. None publicly at least. The skeptics are instead told to sit down, shut up, and follow the “settled evidence”. That to me is not science. We are witnessing the greatest attempt of control at a global scale (non-military…at least yet) we have ever seen.
@Bart: “The next ice age (1970s)” was a media phenomenon sparked by a single non-scientific article published in NewsWeek, based on one scientist’s musing (not even a hypothesis) that the things they were seeing at the time could, under just the right conditions, instead bring an ice age. His further research showed that it was not likely.
Even at that time, the scientific consensus was that the world was warming, and that by adding layers to the earth’s blanket of CO2, we were likely to warm it further.
“Lastly, I find it sad that there is no real debate. None publicly at least. The skeptics are instead told to sit down, shut up, and follow the “settled evidence”. That to me is not science.”
The only reason deniers might be told to “shut up” is because they have absolutely no credibility whatsoever to be questioning the conclusions already drawn by thousands upon thousands of climate scientists at the top of their fields. It always cracks me up to see a petition from “scientists” questioning global warming — they all have their degrees in medicine, the social sciences, or biology; All of which are terrifically important fields, but don’t have much to do with climate change. This is like a geophysicist trying to weigh in on the latest research in heart transplants… they just don’t know what they’re talking about.
For every study that you can bring about Climate Change (Global Warming with a NEW name), I can bring a study that says it doesn’t exist. I am no genius on this matter, but what I do know is we really do not know anything. Everything is based on a short speculation of a VERY, VERY tiny portion of Earth’s existence. Also, I know that the Earth goes through periods of time when it is hot and then cold. I also know that the Average American can not afford Green Energy. Solar Power or Wind Power will not cut it, and no one can deny that. In addition, the best source of clean power is Nuclear, but again, the green movement hates it. Also with new EPA standards, Coal Plants and Dual Cycle Plants are almost completely clean. But, those are just facts and who wants any of them. Finally, the green movement is completely going the wrong way. If you want it to be successful, than sell it to Corporate America. As a LEED AP, I understand about building quality structures, but you have to sell them as cheaper and more efficient in the long run. Not by having hippies protesting. Lastly, maybe you need a better spokesman. Not someone who lost an election to George Bush or said that he invented the internet. Get someone that actually understands the science, not a career politician.
John,
Thanks for yet another rendition of the NPR / John Stewart / Media Matters talking points. How about at least presenting the other side of the discussion for a little balance and an examination of the issues.
Seems to me that hanging your hat on the “stolen” discussion avoids the issue. All this stuff should be readily available under freedom of information if they are using our resources to study it and want vastly more resources to address it.
Stop throwing away all that money on your energy bill every month! Alternative energy is the key and you will also be saving the environment.
Matt, you’re at your most accurate in this post when you state that you “are no genius on the matter.”
A few enlightening tidbits for you: The term “climate change” is used by scientists (and people who have a clue) instead of “global warming” because it is more accurate to the problem at hand. Yes, overall, the earth is getting warmer, but in the short term that means increased variability in climate for a variety of somewhat complicated reasons you could learn about if you bothered to read up on our planet systems. A super simplified example is the fact that warmer air is capable of holding more moisture, which can mean more snowfall in some places. Some incredibly ignorant people point to increased snowfall and blizzards as “proof” that global warming is false, when in fact it indicates the opposite.
My point is that earth systems are complicated, and while we’re always learning more, the people who have devoted their entire careers to studying our planet’s oceans and atmospheres are all saying the same thing: that earth is getting warmer and that we’re contributing to it. I’m more likely to trust those who actually ARE experts on the topic than a construction guru who probably never took a meteorology class in college, let alone got a doctorate in an earth science field.