The unauthorized release of emails from the University of East Anglia in Britain late last year is causing quite a stir in the continuing discourse over global warming. The emails revealed private conversations between prominent scientists who work at the universities’ Climate Research Unit (C.R.U), a well-respected research powerhouse. The leaked documents contain discussions about employing “tricks” to bolster the statistical case for climate change and have been used to assert that the scientific research behind global warming is unreliable and contrived.
The incident, now popularly referred to as ClimateGate, was highly publicized. The New York Times predicted that the evidence behind global warming is “so widely accepted that the hacked material is unlikely to erode the overall argument” (Nov 20th, 2009). However, that does not seem to be the case. ClimateGate and the anticlimatic results of the Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in December has energized skeptics. It was discovered that many of the claims made in the landmark 2007 report by the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which won a Nobel Peace Prize, were not backed by any significant research or statistics. Most notably, they asserted that the Himalayan glaciers would melt completely by 2035. This alarmist prediction was adapted from a decade old interview with a glaciologist for a popular magazine. He claims to have been misquoted, reported the New York Times on February 8th. Recent research suggests, instead, that the glaciers exhibit the potential to survive at least another 300 years. This has provided an opening for skeptics to challenge the widely held belief that human activity is to blame for warming the planet to increasingly hazardous levels.
Another debauched claim was that 55% of the Netherlands is below sea level. The IPCC admitted that the real figure is somewhere around 26%, and issued a note explaining that the 55% included a portion of the country which was “at risk of being flooded”. They apologized for the mistake.
Despite these coarse inaccuracies, Martin Parry, co-chair of the IPCC, defends the report as “robust and rigorous”, telling the UK’s Telegraph on February 15th that he is perplexed by the media’s fixation on what he deems “minor points”. “It is easy to forget the big picture,” he said in the same article, “which is that the volume represents a sound and reliable statement of our knowledge”
Admitting its mistakes won’t get the IPCC off the hook. The disclosure of the errors only added to the flurry of accusations and confusion surrounding global warming research and presented another case of careless or even manipulated science being misrepresented as fact. Robert Watson, a former IPCC chairman, sees a very clear and dangerous bias, noting “the mistakes all appear to have gone in the direction of making it seem like climate change is more serious by overstating the impact. That is worrying,” he told the Telegraph.
Regardless of the Partisan nature of the debate, there is some common ground. In a February 16th Wall Street Journal article, Danish academic Bjorn Lomborg says that though “the standard message that we need to cut a lot of emissions right now or doom is upon us is not correct,” we still need to work together to implement green technology and reduce carbon in the atmosphere. These accusations send a message to the scientific community that they need to improve the quality of their work or be deemed ineffectual by the public.
Related posts:
- UN Climate Change Conference 2009 in Copenhagen addresses countries’ hopes to improve global climate
- Scientists agree that the Earth is warming
- Science and history shed light on climate, says Harvard’s McCormick
- global warming: A focus on one of the hottest environmental issues
- Climate change: A rising issue
