Has climate change consensus been compromised?

By Alan Journet

Many Americans cheer the underdog. When whistle-blowers report wrongdoing in important places, we feel sympathy for their claims and their cause. However, in the cold, gray light of dawn we must examine the legitimacy of claims and decide whether they or their targets are most credible. We must separate substance from hype.

Reports of the recent break-in at the University of East Anglia to gain personal and private e-mail messages passing between climate scientists regarding their research are an example that requires cool reflection before we accept claims of its importance.

When stories derived from these stolen e-mails were initially broadcast, our concern was more about the significance of their content than the legality of their acquisition. If the claims turn out to be significant, we may forgive the illegal act. If not, we will accept that the perpetrators deserve just penalty.

The confused early report by Robert Tracinski misidentified the United Kingdom's National Meteorological Office "Hadley Centre" as the "Hadley Climate Research Unit at Britain's University of East Anglia." This is like referring to the Cape Girardeau Planning and Zoning Commission as the "Cape Girardeau P&Z Commission of Sikeston." It is nonsense. This gaffe suggests Tracinski is not reliable with details. Readers are left wondering what other important errors exist.

Subsequently, further hyped editorials appeared arguing that these stolen e-mails undermine the scientific basis of the climate change consensus. Furthermore, it is suggested that these e-mails support skeptics' claims that there is no global warming.

With the cool reflection that time now permits, we should ask if the skeptics' claim that this story represents "The Final Nail in the Coffin of Anthropogenic Climate Change" is accurate or merely wishful thinking. Recognizing the impossibility of inferring intent accurately without being inside the minds of the e-mail writers themselves, I will not try offering interpretations.

For the sake of this reflection, let's accept these reports and proceed from there.

The East Anglia Climate Research Unit is just one of many centers where global climate data are assembled and reviewed. It is no more critical than all the other such centers. One such center is our NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, which identifies 2005 as the hottest year on record. This is consistent with the argument of continued warming and denies claims of a decade-long cooling trend. Data confirming climate change and its causes come from thousands of studies worldwide. Notably:

* Our understanding of the heat absorbing properties of critical atmospheric gases has not been altered.

* Atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations produced by our activities are still rising.

* Polar ice packs are still melting faster than the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report suggested.

* North American growing seasons and wildlife species are still shifting north and to higher altitudes.

* Our spring is still arriving earlier and fall arriving later, and the snow arrival at ski resorts is still coming later.

* Ocean temperature rise and coral bleaching continue.

* In October 2009, 18 leading U.S. scientific organizations, including the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Geophysical Union and the American Meteorological Society, endorsed the view that "multiple independent lines of evidence" confirm that human activities are the primary cause for global warming.

Despite this molehill being hyped as a mountain, the reality which surrounds us still confirms -- if we look at it without bias -- that climate change is happening.

Throughout these personal and private e-mails, the reality is that no example of fraud, deception or suppression of data is demonstrated. The e-mail reference, for example, to using a "trick" in the analysis of a data set indicates cheating no more than does the advice of a batting coach that the "trick" to enhancing a batting average is to "keep your eye on the ball." When we evaluate objectively and dispassionately the impact of this event on the conclusions and consensus regarding climate change and its causes, we find the hype is totally overblown.

Maybe we are witnessing the final gambit of a skeptic movement that has been completely discredited by scientific evidence, has found itself losing credibility in the public arena and so resorts to one last attempt at regaining support. Our future depends on our understanding the intellectual emptiness of the current climate change skeptic claims.

Claiming that the climate change consensus is a fraud and the mother of all conspiracies is absurd. Such a claim should be consigned to the same place we send flat-earth ideas.

Alan Journet of Cape Girardeau is a professor in the Department of Biology and Environmental Science Program at Southeast Missouri State University.