Journalismgate
Like Watergate, the real scandal of Climategate was not likely to be found in the communications of those who had their emails illegally hacked (or in the case of Watergate, their phones illegally tapped). Rather, the real scandal can be found by looking to those who were behind the hacking (or wire-tapping), in the first place, and to those who have been so eager to butcher the truth and assault the professional reputations of respected scientists for short-term political gain.
In the aftermath of the stolen CRU emails known as climategate, in which as several independent investigations found nothing nefarious, a larger scandal was revealed. Many people suspected that this scandal was real, but now that we have conclusive evidence that climategate was not the scandal the media made it out to be we have proof.
The scandal I am referring to is, Journalismgate.
Climategate: The scandal that wasn’t, Part 3
Just in case you were not yet convinced by the two previous reports into the CRU email (and the Penn State investigations into Mann’s conduct) the Muir Russell report has been released. This 6 month long investigation tracked down every allegation made against the CRU, and systematically demolished them. Concluding that:
On the specific allegations made against the behaviour of CRU scientists, we find that their rigour and honesty as scientists are not in doubt… In addition, we do not find that their behaviour has prejudiced the balance of advice given to policy makers. In particular, we did not find any evidence of behaviour that might undermine the conclusions of the IPCC assessments.
And specifically about the claim that has, perhaps, had the most legs in the media:
On the allegations that there was subversion of the peer review or editorial process we find no evidence to substantiate this in the three instances examined in detail. On the basis of the independent work we commissioned (see Appendix 5) on the nature of peer review, we conclude that it is not uncommon for strongly opposed and robustly expressed positions to be taken up in heavily contested areas of science. We take the view that such behaviour does not in general threaten the integrity of peer review or publication.
The impression I got from the various people who have actual experience with the peer-review system is the same.
None of this should be surprising to those paying attention as it is the same basic conclusion reached by two other independent investigations.
Once again Michael Mann has been exonerated
The first investigation into Michael Mann’s conduct cleared him on 3 of 4 charges against him. In regards to the 4th charge the investigators didn’t find any evidence against Mann but they felt they were not adequately suited rule on the matter, so they referred judgement until the charge could be properly investigated.
And now it has been, and this what the investigators concluded:
The Investigatory Committee, after careful review of all available evidence, determined that there is no substance to the allegation against Dr. Michael E. Mann, Professor, Department of Meteorology, The Pennsylvania State University. More specifically, the Investigatory Committee determined that Dr. Michael E. Mann did not engage in, nor did he participate in, directly or indirectly, any actions that seriously deviated from accepted practices within the academic community for proposing, conducting, or reporting research, or other scholarly activities.
The decision of the Investigatory Committee was unanimous.
In other words a full exoneration. These investigations into Mann’s conduct were called after the CRU email leak, and along with several investigations in the UK, show that there is no evidence to back up claims that climategate somehow undermines the science supporting global warming.
Phil Jones of CRU defended by prominent climate contrarian
Phil Jones was the man at the center of the CRU email leak last last year. Since then he has been hounded by deniers almost non-stop, but few of them have bothered to ask themselves whether or not the criticisms of Jones are valid. Instead they rabidly jump on any accusation with little regard for whether or not it has any merit.
Interestingly, at the recent denier conference put on by the Heartland Institute (a think tank that denies global warming and the dangers of tobacco smoke) there was a defence of Phil Jones by Roy Spencer a prominent climate contrarian:
"He says he’s not very organised. I’m not very organised myself," said Professor Spencer. "If you asked me to find original data from 20 years ago I’d have great difficulty too.
"We just didn’t realise in those days how important and controversial this would all become – now it would just all be stored on computer. Phil Jones has been looking at climate records for a very long time. Frankly our data set agrees with his, so unless we are all making the same mistake we’re not likely to find out anything new from the data anyway."
Today one can keep large amounts of data with relative ease. 20 years ago that was simply not the case. It is refreshing to hear that from Roy Spencer.
It is also refreshing to hear Spencer state that different surface temperature records, produced with different methodologies, are in agreement with each other. This replication increases our confidence in them, and is a major reason why the warming of the last century has been called unequivocal.
(h/t Cobey Beck)
Changing the rules after the fact
One of the key criticisms of the Oxburgh inquiry was that it ignored three key papers written by people at CRU, but these papers are only being considered key because they were not investigated. Had they been looked at, other papers would have been declared key.
Scientists have to be right 100% of the time
Yet when it comes to coverage of global warming, we are trapped in the logic of a guerrilla insurgency. The climate scientists have to be right 100 percent of the time, or their 0.01 percent error becomes Glaciergate, and they are frauds. By contrast, the deniers only have to be right 0.01 percent of the time for their narrative–See! The global warming story is falling apart!–to be reinforced by the media. It doesn’t matter that their alternative theories are based on demonstrably false claims, as they are with all the leading "thinkers" in this movement. Look at the Australian geologist Ian Plimer, whose denialism is built on the claim that volcanoes produce more CO2 than humans, even though the US Geological Survey has shown they produce 130 times less. Or Sunday Telegraph columnist Christopher Booker, who says the Arctic sea ice can’t be retreating because each year it comes back a little… in winter.
That is the problem we face in clearly communicating the science. If climate scientists make just one mistake (even one that means that the effects of climate change will be worse), it is taken as proof that global warming is a sham.
Deniers, on the other hand, present a stream of demonstrable false, even contradictory claims, and yet the get a pass in the media. Not only that they continue to repeated falsehoods long after they have been refuted. They have zero accountability for the claims they make, and the media not only gives them a pass, but presents their contradictory talking points them as a genuine alternative ‘in the debate”.
To give these contrarians equal time or space in public discourse on climate change out of a sense of need for journalistic “balance” is as indefensible as, say, granting the Flat Earth Society an equal say with NASA in the design of a new space satellite. It’s plainly inappropriate. But it stubbornly persists nonetheless.
This false balance is not only reprehensible, it represents a serious impediment in our ability to create effective policy to deal with real problems in areas where there are vested special interests opposed to such policy. The question is how do we overcome it?
(h/t Deltoid)
Climategate: the scandal that wasn’t, Part 2
Once again, we see how empty the claims regarding the CRU emails truly are:
Denier double standards
One of the main reasons why I refuse to call deniers, skeptics, is because they constantly and consistently demonstrate double standards. The recent bluster by deniers about a couple minor errors (some of which weren’t even errors at all) in the IPCC, yet silence in regards to the many areas where the IPCC was too conservative is a perfect example of this.
Climategate: the scandal that wasn’t
Despite denier’s hyperbolic claims that the CRU email leak was the “final nail in the coffin of global warming science”, ”the abject corruption of climate science” and “a scandal that is one of the greatest in modern science” and in what should come as no surprise to anyone who has scraped beyond the surface of this saga, CRU and Phil Jones have been cleared of wrong doing (perhaps now the death threats can stop). This may however come as a surprise to those who’s only exposure to this whole affair was with reporters who were more interested in maintaining a sellable narrative, than reporting the truth.
The inquiry by the British house of commons science and technology committee has cleared Jones and CRU, saying that ‘there is no case to answer’:
Amazonian contradictions
Looks like the Amazon(non)gate wont die. And in keeping it alive the deniers are again showing their self-contradictions.
So what happened? It started in 2007, when a study (Saleska et al. 2007, Science) showed that the Amazon actually greened during the drought of 2005. This was an odd responses; no one expected a rainforest to green during a drought, though because the study conclusions were based on satellite imagery, rather than direct observations, there was less certainty in them.
Now, a new study (Samanta et al. 2010, GRL), also using satellite imagery, indicates that the 2005 drought did not cause a greening of the Amazon. So how is this new study being spun by deniers? The same way the 2007 study was spun.
Or as Tim Lambert said “It’s always bad news for the IPCC”. Both studies can’t be bad news for the IPCC, but such contradictions are par for the course in denialist land.
