Purloined e-mails don't change the facts

[Louisiana1976]

Stop hyperventilating, all you climate change deniers. The purloined e-mail correspondence published by skeptics last week—portraying some leading climate researchers as petty, vindictive and tremendously eager to make their data fit accepted theories—does not prove that global warming is a fraud.

If I’m wrong, somebody ought to tell the polar ice caps that they’re free to stop melting.

That said, the e-mail episode is more than a major embarrassment for the scientists involved. Most Americans are convinced that climate change is real—a necessary prerequisite for the kinds of huge economic and behavioral adjustments we would have to make to begin seriously limiting carbon emissions. But consensus on the nature and scope of the problem will dissipate, and fast, if experts try to obscure the fact that there’s much about the climate they still don’t know.

Here’s what happened: Someone hacked into the servers at one of the leading academic centers in the field—the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England—and filched a trove of e-mails and documents, which have been posted on numerous Web sites maintained by climate skeptics.

snip

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/purloined_e-mails_dont_change_the_facts_20091127/

[phasma ex machina]

1. Climatic Research Unit emails, data, models, 1996-2009

wikileaks

[Old and In the Way]

2. Good interview with one of the authors at Kos

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/11/26/807934/-Michael-Mann-Responds-to-CRU-Hack

It's rather simple really. If we are wrong, the downside is we're making a cleaner planet for our kids, grandkids, etc. and creating a post industrial energy economy for this country. If they are wrong, the entire Earth is in jeopardy for their willingness to politicize against a scientific consensus.

[Birthmark]

3. When did this happen...

"...make their data fit accepted theories?"

[Overseas]

4. K&R.

Love that part about telling the icecaps they are free to stop melting.

And there is still so much hiding out in the "Scientists Disagree" corner. Well of course they disagree; they are scientists; that's their job.

Sadly, when disturbances to Earth's climatic systems began to be apparent in the late 70's, and scientists issued moderate warnings so as not to be "too alarmist," they were pushed aside. The scenarios didn't sound bad enough to warrant adjusting "free market" practices. Climate scientists were trying to encourage change by instilling hope. Manageable changes could have produced results that would make our capitalist systems more sustainable for future generations. But even those exciting changes that would have created more markets for US manufacturers, like larger government subsidies for alternative energy and conservation technologies, to supplement our use of fossil fuels and leave some for future generations, were not supported by decisive legislation. Things just didn't seem bad enough to stimulate some exciting new industries in the USA, even though we had a much better chance back then to be a world leader in those technologies. Sustaining the subsidies for fossil fuel production and funding brutal warfare to protect our "free market" economy was more important.

Our right wing economic policies dominated by large corporations zoomed past the "Hey, if we just make some modest adjustments we can avoid these moderately alarming consequences." Moderate consequences? Oh well then, let's carry on. Who needs alternative energy and recycling when chemicals and fossil fuels are still so cheap? Corporate leaders managed to get the costs of pollution and warfare excluded from our considerations.

And here we are now, on an accelerated course of climate destabilization with visible evidence all around us. And still experiencing the effects of millions of PR dollars poured into manufacturing dissent-- pretending that climate destabilization by global warming is still under debate.

Al Gore's definitive rebuttal to the "there's always been global warming and cooling" argument, the chart showing those cycles at much lower levels prior to the industrial revolution, has now been reduced to "Al Gore's hockey stick chart" in denial lingo. That's some fancy PR right there.

And then we have the Rapture Right PR. Maybe they see accelerated global warming as evidence that the rapture will be here sooner, and are excitedly saying Bring It On? Those wicked people in the cities will be drowned and The Righteous Ones in middle America will be invited onto spaceships with the exclusive Jesus Plus Nothing crew and whisked away to some other heavenly planet?