[Vision2020] "Nature" journal: No "Substantive Reasons" to Investigate Climate Scientists: Re: Climate Research E-mail Hack

[Ted Moffett]

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v462/n7273/full/462545a.html
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*Nature* *462*, 545 (3 December 2009) | doi:10.1038/462545a; Published
online 2 December 2009

Climatologists under pressure

Stolen e-mails have revealed no scientific conspiracy, but do highlight ways
in which climate researchers could be better supported in the face of public
scrutiny.

The e-mail archives stolen last month from the Climatic Research Unit at the
University of East Anglia (UEA), UK, have been greeted by the
climate-change-denialist fringe as a propaganda windfall (see page
551<http://www.nature.com/news/2009/091202/full/462551a.html>).
To these denialists, the scientists' scathing remarks about certain
controversial palaeoclimate reconstructions qualify as the proverbial
'smoking gun': proof that mainstream climate researchers have systematically
conspired to suppress evidence contradicting their doctrine that humans are
warming the globe.

This paranoid interpretation would be laughable were it not for the fact
that obstructionist politicians in the US Senate will probably use it next
year as an excuse to stiffen their opposition to the country's much needed
climate bill. Nothing in the e-mails undermines the scientific case that
global warming is real — or that human activities are almost certainly the
cause. That case is supported by multiple, robust lines of evidence,
including several that are completely independent of the climate
reconstructions debated in the e-mails.

First, Earth's cryosphere is changing as one would expect in a warming
climate. These changes include glacier retreat, thinning and areal reduction
of Arctic sea ice, reductions in permafrost and accelerated loss of mass
from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets. Second, the global sea level is
rising. The rise is caused in part by water pouring in from melting glaciers
and ice sheets, but also by thermal expansion as the oceans warm. Third,
decades of biological data on blooming dates and the like suggest that
spring is arriving earlier each year.

Denialists often maintain that these changes are just a symptom of natural
climate variability. But when climate modellers test this assertion by
running their simulations with greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide held
fixed, the results bear little resemblance to the observed warming. The
strong implication is that increased greenhouse-gas emissions have played an
important part in recent warming, meaning that curbing the world's voracious
appetite for carbon is essential (see pages
568<http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v462/n7273/full/462568a.html>and
570 <http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v462/n7273/full/462570a.html>).
Mail trail

A fair reading of the e-mails reveals nothing to support the denialists'
conspiracy theories. In one of the more controversial exchanges, UEA
scientists sharply criticized the quality of two papers that question the
uniqueness of recent global warming (S. McIntyre and R. McKitrick Energy
Environ. 14, 751–771; 2003 <http://dx.doi.org/10.1260/095830503322793632>and W.
Soon and S. Baliunas Clim. Res. 23, 89–110;
2003<http://dx.doi.org/10.3354/cr023089>)
and vowed to keep at least the first paper out of the upcoming Fourth
Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Whatever the e-mail authors may have said to one another in (supposed)
privacy, however, what matters is how they acted. And the fact is that, in
the end, neither they nor the IPCC suppressed anything: when the assessment
report was published in 2007 it referenced and discussed both papers.

If there are benefits to the e-mail theft, one is to highlight yet again the
harassment that denialists inflict on some climate-change researchers, often
in the form of endless, time-consuming demands for information under the US
and UK Freedom of Information Acts. Governments and institutions need to
provide tangible assistance for researchers facing such a burden.

The theft highlights the harassment that denialists inflict on some
climate-change researchers.

The e-mail theft also highlights how difficult it can be for climate
researchers to follow the canons of scientific openness, which require them
to make public the data on which they base their conclusions. This is best
done via open online archives, such as the ones maintained by the IPCC (
http://www.ipcc-data.org) and the US National Climatic Data Center (
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/ncdc.html).
Tricky business

But for much crucial information the reality is very different. Researchers
are barred from publicly releasing meteorological data from many countries
owing to contractual restrictions. Moreover, in countries such as Germany,
France and the United Kingdom, the national meteorological services will
provide data sets only when researchers specifically request them, and only
after a significant delay. The lack of standard formats can also make it
hard to compare and integrate data from different sources. Every aspect of
this situation needs to change: if the current episode does not spur
meteorological services to improve researchers' ease of access, governments
should force them to do so.

The stolen e-mails have prompted queries about whether *Nature* will
investigate some of the researchers' own papers. One e-mail talked of
displaying the data using a 'trick' — slang for a clever (and legitimate)
technique, but a word that denialists have used to accuse the researchers of
fabricating their results. It is *Nature*'s policy to investigate such
matters if there are substantive reasons for concern, but nothing we have
seen so far in the e-mails qualifies.

The UEA responded too slowly to the eruption of coverage in the media, but
deserves credit for now being publicly supportive of the integrity of its
scientists while also holding an independent investigation of its
researchers' compliance with Britain's freedom of information requirements
(see http://go.nature.com/zRBXRP).

In the end, what the UEA e-mails really show is that scientists are human
beings — and that unrelenting opposition to their work can goad them to the
limits of tolerance, and tempt them to act in ways that undermine scientific
values. Yet it is precisely in such circumstances that researchers should
strive to act and communicate professionally, and make their data and
methods available to others, lest they provide their worst critics with
ammunition. After all, the pressures the UEA e-mailers experienced may be
nothing compared with what will emerge as the United States debates a
climate bill next year, and denialists use every means at their disposal to
undermine trust in scientists and science.

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Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett
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