No fraud in hacked climate emails

Potentially of more concern is a discussion of whether the two papers should not be referred to by the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report. The correspondents regarded those papers as deeply flawed. Presumably a line can be drawn somewhere to exclude the most eggregiously flawed or insubstantial papers, particularly if they are not peer-reviewed. There is nothing unethical about the correspondents voicing their opinions and discussing the options. In the end the papers were referred to and discussed in the IPCC report.

The emails also include some impolite language. Science is always contentious, and it is common for scientists in private conversation to use loose and often impolite language regarding some other scientists’ work. Such behaviour is certainly not confined to climate scientists, nor to scientists in general, as our Prime Minister might attest.

The Pew Center report is written by people who know the field well and are well-qualified to put the emails in context. It is not the last word, the two official inquiries will also report in due course.

At this stage it seems that the allegation of fudging is based on a misunderstanding that is readily clarified by people who know the topic. There was no fudging, there was no hiding of an inconvenient trend, the actual temperature data show there was no trend. The allegations of data suppression and deletion are not supported when the situation is clarified. Regarding alleged attempts to muzzle contrary views, there was robust discussion of whether an improperly refereed paper and an unrefereed paper ought to be referred to in an IPCC report. That discussion was not unethical, and in the end the papers were referred to anyway.

The Pew report points out that the data sets in contention comprise only a very small fraction of data relevant to climate change. They have been reproduced independently by other scientists in other countries who reach similar conclusions. There is a great deal of evidence of many kinds that global warming has occurred over the past few decades (nine separate lines of evidence are cited). There is also “very strong” evidence for “human dominance” of the recent warming. The report highlights three lines of evidence for the latter conclusion.

Concomitant warming of the troposphere and cooling of the stratosphere (a greenhouse effect signature).

Without the strong warming effect of human-induced rise in atmospheric greenhouse concentrations, the observed changes in solar activity over the past several decades would have led to a slight cooling of the Earth’s surface.

Climate models reproduce the warming of the past 50 years only when they include the observed rise in atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations.

Thus there is no basis for claims that the case for human-caused global warming has collapsed, nor that these or any climate scientists have been discredited.