In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

1 1 science, media, and the public THE MESSAGE OF CLIMATE CHANGE “Climategate” In the autumn of 2009, as the world was gearing up for a critical summit in Copenhagen on addressing climate change, e-mails and other data were stolen from a server at the Climatic Research Unit (cru) in the United Kingdom. The cru is one of the three key centers where data are continuously gathered from thousands of monitoring stations around the world and analyzed. Some of the stolen e-mails were published by climate change “deniers” who attributed nefarious behavior to the work of the climate scientists involved in these communications, namely that they were fudging data and lying about much of their work.* (Police investigations have not yet uncovered who the hackers were.) The world media seized on this story and started to print accounts that highlighted the claims of the deniers. The story was dubbed, fatuously and wholly unoriginally, “Climategate.” The Wall Street Journal made much of it, saying the e-mails showed that there were efforts to hide data.1 The New York Times said the climate researchers “seem so focused on winning the publicrelations war that they exaggerate their certitude—and ultimately undermine their own cause.”2 Fox News blasted away with both barrels. Fox’s Glenn Beck had this to say: “Deleting e-mails, hiding declines, incorrect data, inadequate systems, redefining scientific peer reviews for their own uses! This is what appears to be going on behind the scenes and literally trillions of dollars of policy decisions are being based on what these guys are telling us. If your gut said, * The term for those who challenge the scientific consensus on climate change was originally “skeptics.” Scientists, realizing that their discipline embraces skepticism—a healthy examination of the data and how it is analyzed—came to regard those who refuse to accept the data and its carefully sifted analysis as denying the reality of climate change. a newer world 2 ‘Wait a minute, this global warming thing sounds like a scam.’ Well, I think you’re seeing it now.”3 The climate blogosphere was in hyperdrive. In the United Kingdom and the United States, conservative politicians called for investigations. The Fifteenth Session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change took place in Copenhagen in December. It did not produce some of the results that many environmentalists and policy makers had hoped for, and some commentators attributed this, in part at least, to the undermining of confidence in climate science by the cru e-mail controversy and subsequent media storm. In a follow-up meeting to Copenhagen in January 2010, adding insult to injury, China’s most senior negotiator on climate change said that we should keep “an open mind on whether global warming was man-made or the result of natural cycles.”4 Meanwhile, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (ipcc), the un body that has been examining climate change since 1989, and which in 2007 shared the Nobel Peace Prize, came under attack as well. In January 2010, criticism was leveled at the ipcc for an inaccuracy in one part of its Fourth Assessment Report, rolled out in 2007. The ipcc response then was to immediately own up to the error and say the standard review process had not been applied properly. “It has, however, recently come to our attention that a paragraph in the 938-page Working Group ii contribution to the underlying assessment refers to poorly substantiated estimates of rate of recession and date for the disappearance of Himalayan glaciers.”5 As with the cru e-mails, the error set off a storm of media coverage, with extensive comment from skeptics and, in particular, personal attacks on the integrity of the ipcc chairman, Rajendra Pachauri. After all the blood had been spilled, all the internal and independent investigations in the United Kingdom and United States proved what the climate scientists at the center of the cru controversy had maintained all along: that their work was thorough and conformed to the rigorous standards of science, that they had not suppressed or “spun” any data or conclusions, and that, above all, the science supporting the deep concern regarding climate change and its impacts was and is rock solid. One independent panel found “no evidence of any deliberate scientific malpractice in any of the work of the Climatic Research Unit.”6 [13.58.39.23] Project MUSE (2024-04-20 03:46 GMT...

Share