<html><head><style type="text/css"><!-- DIV {margin:0px;} --></style></head><body><div style="font-family:times new roman,new york,times,serif;font-size:12pt;color:#000000;"><div>From Newsweek.com:<br><br><article class="article-text">
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<h1 property="dc:title">Newspapers Retract 'Climategate' Claims,
but Damage Still Done</h1>
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<img class="author-image" src="http://www.newsweek.com/content/dam/site/author/sharon_begley.png" alt="Sharon Begley" height="70" width="70">
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<span class="by quiet">by </span><a class="author" typeof="foaf:person" property="dc:creator" rel="foaf:publications" content="Sharon Begley" href="http://www.newsweek.com/authors/sharon-begley.html">Sharon Begley</a><time datetime="2010-06-25" property="dc:created">June 25, 2010</time>
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<span property="dc:creator" class="photo-credit">Greg Rico / AP</span><p class="caption">Vindicated too late? Penn State climatologist Michael
Mann</p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">A lie can get halfway around the world while the
truth is still putting its boots on, as <a target="_blank" href="http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/23633.html">Mark Twain</a> said
(or “before the truth gets a chance to put its pants on,” in <a target="_blank" href="http://www.quotedb.com/quotes/1350">Winston
Churchill’s</a> version), and nowhere has that been more true than in
"climategate." In that highly orchestrated, manufactured scandal,
e-mails hacked from computers at the University of East Anglia’s <a target="_blank" href="http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/">climate-research group</a> were
spread around the Web by activists who deny that human activity is
altering the world’s climate in a dangerous way, and spun so as to
suggest that the scientists had been lying, cheating, and generally
cooking the books.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">But not only did British investigators <a target="_blank" href="http://www.uea.ac.uk/mac/comm/media/press/CRUstatements/oxburgh">clear</a> the
East Anglia scientist at the center of it all, Phil Jones, of
scientific impropriety and dishonesty in April, an investigation at Penn
State <a target="_blank" href="http://www.research.psu.edu/orp/Findings_Mann_Inquiry.pdf">cleared</a> PSU
climatologist <a target="_blank" href="http://www.meteo.psu.edu/%7Emann/Mann/index.html">Michael Mann</a> of
“falsifying or suppressing data, intending to delete or conceal e-mails
and information, and misusing privileged or confidential information”
in February. In perhaps the biggest backpedaling, <i>The Sunday Times</i>
of London, which led the media pack in charging that IPCC reports were
full of egregious (and probably intentional) errors, retracted its
central claim—namely, that the IPCC statement that up to 40 percent of
the Amazonian rainforest could be vulnerable to climate change was
“unsubstantiated.” The <i>Times</i> also admitted that it had totally
twisted the remarks of one forest expert to make it sound as if he
agreed that the IPCC had screwed up, when he said no such thing.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">It’s worth quoting the retraction at some length:</p>
<blockquote>The article "UN climate panel shamed by bogus rainforest
claim" (News, Jan 31) stated that the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change (IPCC) report had included an “unsubstantiated claim”
that up to 40% of the Amazon rainforest could be sensitive to future
changes in rainfall. The IPCC had referenced the claim to a report
prepared for the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) by Andrew Rowell and Peter
Moore, whom the article described as “green campaigners” with “little
scientific expertise.” The article also stated that the authors’
research had been based on a scientific paper that dealt with the impact
of human activity rather than climate change.<br>
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In fact, the IPCC’s Amazon statement is supported by peer-reviewed
scientific evidence. In the case of the WWF report, the figure . . . was
based on research by the respected Amazon Environmental Research
Institute (IPAM) which did relate to the impact of climate change. We
also understand and accept that . . . Dr Moore is an expert in forest
management, and apologise for any suggestion to the contrary.<br>
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The article also quoted criticism of the IPCC’s use of the WWF report by
Dr Simon Lewis, a Royal Society research fellow at the University of
Leeds and leading specialist in tropical forest ecology. We accept that,
in his quoted remarks, Dr Lewis was making the general point that both
the IPCC and WWF should have cited the appropriate peer-reviewed
scientific research literature. As he made clear to us at the time,
including by sending us some of the research literature, Dr Lewis does
not dispute the scientific basis for both the IPCC and the WWF reports’
statements on the potential vulnerability of the Amazon rainforest to
droughts caused by climate change. . . . A version of our article that
had been checked with Dr Lewis underwent significant late editing and so
did not give a fair or accurate account of his views on these points.
We apologise for this.</blockquote>
<p class="MsoNormal">In another retraction you never heard of, a paper
in Frankfurt <a target="_blank" href="http://www.wissenslogs.de/wblogs/blog/klimalounge/medien-check/2010-04-26/frankfurter-rundschau-klimarat-ipcc-africagate">took
back</a> (apologies; the article is available only in German) its
reporting that the IPCC had erred in its assessment of climate impacts
in Africa.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The <em>Times</em>'s criticism of the IPCC—<i>look,
its reports are full of mistakes and shoddy scholarship!</i>—was widely
picked up at the time it ran, and has been an important factor in
turning <a target="_blank" href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/23/british-public-belief-climate-poll">British
public opinion</a> sharply against the established science of climate
change. Don’t expect the recent retractions and exonerations to change
that. One of the strongest, most-repeated findings in the psychology of
belief is that once people have been told <i>X,</i> especially if <i>X</i>
is shocking, if they are later told, “No, we were wrong about <i>X,</i>”
most people still believe <i>X</i>. As Twain and Churchill knew,
sometimes the truth never catches up with the lie, let alone overtakes
it. As I <a target="_blank" href="http://www.newsweek.com/2009/08/24/lies-of-mass-destruction.html">wrote</a> last
summer in a story about why people believe lies even when they’re later
told the truth, sometimes people’s mental processes simply go off the
rails. </p>
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