LITTLE ROCK — Who you gonna believe, some of the world’s foremost experts in the field of climate change or your lyin’ eyes?
That’s the essential question raised by the latest exoneration of those prominent climatologists who were caught exchanging e-mails that sounded less like scientific research than a conspiracy to hide the evidence-and suppress any views contrary to their own.
The conclusion of the latest inquiry into the scandal popularly known as Climategate-the third such investigation by my count-is remarkably similar to the other two: The emails exchanged by scientists at the Climatic Research Unit at dear old East Anglia U. and their colleagues may have been indiscreet in places-just the usual academic backbiting, maybe-but no real scandal. Move on, folks, nothing to see here. And no need to talk about it, either.
Gentle Reader will not be surprised to learn that this Independent Climate Change E-mails Review-begun, bought and paid for by the University of East Anglia-found nothing really questionable going on at the University of East Anglia. Conflict of interest? What conflict of interest?
This was an impartial investigation.
To quote the chairman of the committee that conducted the review, Sir Muir Russell, formerly vice chancellor of the University of Glasgow: “Given the nature of the allegations it is right that someone who has no links to either the university or the climate science community looks at the evidence and makes recommendations based on what they find.” No links? What about another member of the committee, Professor Geoffrey Boulton, who for 18 years was on the faculty of East Anglia’s school of environmental sciences, home of the Climatic Research Unit he was investigating? If that’s not a link, what is? The most questionable aspect of this latest review, it turnsout, is the word Independent in its name.
Talk about verdict first, evidence later: Professor Boulton signed a public declaration last December-long before this “independent” investigation issued its report-concluding that the climatologists at East Anglia “adhere to the highest levels of professional integrity.”
Gentle Reader may judge the level of professional integrity at the Climatic Research Unit himself by reading just a few of the emails sent by its then director, Phil Jones, to some of his fellow climatologists, including these:
I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.
The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t.
As we all know, this isn’t about truth at all, its about plausibly deniable accusations.
PS I’m getting hassled by a couple of people to release the CRU station temperature data. Don’t any of you three tell anybody that the UK has a Freedom of Information Act!
There are other just as juicy transmissions, but you get the (rank) flavor of the whole enterprise.
Whenever data showed up not in accordance with the professor’s theories, it had to be hidden. Ormanipulated. Or tricks played with it. Or just ignored. As for any colleagues who didn’t agree with his views, they were to be treated as heretics, and purged from their posts.
To quote Director Jones on how to handle an editor of a scientific journal who didn’t toe the party line on climate change: “I’ll be emailing the journal to tell them I’m having nothing more to do with it until they rid themselves of this troublesome editor,” namely one Chris de Freitas at the University of Auckland. He’s apparently someone who does have professional integrity, or at least enough to earn Phil Jones’ enmity.
Rule No. 1 in such matters: Whenever someone begins talking about his professional integrity, hold on to your wallet. And when scientists start talking about hiding the evidence, whether of a decline in worldwide temperatures or anything else, you know you’re not dealing with science but advocacy, and not of the most honest kind.
This “independent” review treated these climatologists’ attempt to evade any Freedom of Information requests as just an innocent mistake. Yes, the review admitted, the evidence indicates “that emails might have beendeleted in order to make them unavailable,” but it was an innocent mistake. And ignorance of the law is an excuse. But far from being unaware of the law, one of the emails warns the group not to let anybody know about the existence of Britain’s FOI law.
And there’s scarcely anything innocent about e-mails like this one from Director Jones to his colleague at Penn State, Michael Mann:
“Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith [Briffa] re AR4 [a UN report on climate change]? Keith will do likewise.
. . . can you also email Gene [Wahl of the U.S. Department of Commerce] to do the same. . . . We will be getting Caspar [Amman of the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research] to do likewise.”
Director Jones set the example, emailing later that he had “deleted loads of emails.” If any selfrespecting newspaper in Arkansas discovered “scientists” or anybodyelse trying to get around this state’s FOI Act in so explicit-and coordinated-a fashion, it’s unlikely the paper would interpret these emails as just innocent mistakes. They represent a quite deliberate attempt to destroy embarrassing evidence.
Most of us don’t have the scientific expertise to address the subject of climate change in any authoritative way, but we can certainly tell when scientists are trying to suppress dissent rather than address it, as in these notorious emails. It isn’t science we doubt, but the conduct of the scientists. Those involved in Climategate seem less a collection of scientists than a good-old-boy network.
It was George Bernard Shaw
who defined a profession as “a
conspiracy against the laity.’’ If he had lived to see these emails, he would have had still more evidence for that assertion.
No one who reads thesecompromising emails can miss their clear meaning-unless he’s impervious to the meaning of words or, worse, a kneejerk ideologue who can’t recognize any evidence that controverts the True Faith and its priesthood, which must be defended at all costs.
It’s become standard operating procedure by now: When questions are raised about the ethics of those pushing the holy writ of Global Warming, they are defended not on the basis of the evidence-those scandalous emails-but because of the experts’ expertise, which has been duly certified by the usual degrees, honors, and the good opinion of colleagues who agree with them.
Sometimes just the sheer number of scientists and para-scientists who have reached the same opinion is cited-as if scientific truth were a matter of majority vote.
What we have here is one of the standard logical fallacies: the appeal to authority. And only to authority, not to the evidence itself.
When all this is pointed out, the true believers have a standard response to anyone, scientist or layman, with a different view:
Shut up, they explain.
But we won’t.
Paul Greenberg is editorial page editor of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. E-mail him at: [email protected]
Perspective, Pages 77 on 07/25/2010