Sustasis
Foundation
Michael Mehaffy, Sustasis Managing Director
Recent news coverage has described leaked emails from climate researchers at the University of East Anglia, a major data center for historical temperature records. The researchers appear to have been "sexing up" the data, to make it appear to support a particular set of policy conclusions. There does not, at this stage, appear to have been any falsification of data; rather, the problem is that the data may have been presented in a somewhat distorted way. As we will explain below, if true, this is reprehensible.
Does this mean that the scientific basis for climate change as a real phenomenon, requiring urgent action, is now exposed as a "hoax," as some claim?
In a word, no.
But the matter has certainly shaken the
confidence of ordinary citizens, who are very disturbed to see scientists
presenting data in what may be a misleading light. The question arises,
where are the neutral sources on this? How can we chart our own way through the
distortion and hype that seems to be occurring on all sides, to the reliable
truth, as much we can know it?
There are two dimensions to this - the policy side (that is, what if anything
should be done about a given issue) and then the science side. Of course we
have to be clear on the findings from the latter in order to have any real sense
of the former.
The National Academies are the bodies set up by a Republican (Abraham Lincoln)
to advise the nation on matters of science. They include the National Academy
of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, the Institute of Medicine, and
the National Research Council. They have a very helpful section of their
website on climate change:
http://dels.nas.edu/climatechange/about.shtml
Here is an item on their main page that discusses their recommendation, as well
as that of the science academies of 12 other major industrial countries:
June, 2009--In a joint statement, the science academies of the G8 countries,
plus Brazil, China, India, Mexico, and South Africa, called on their leaders to
"seize all opportunities" to address global climate change that "is happening
even faster than previously estimated." The signers, which include U.S. National
Academy of Sciences President Ralph J. Cicerone, urged nations at the upcoming
Copenhagen climate talks to adopt goals aimed at reducing global emissions by 50
percent by 2050. The academies also urged the G8+5 governments, meeting in Italy
next month, to "lead the transition to an energy efficient and low carbon
economy, and foster innovation and research and development for both mitigation
and adaptation technologies."
What about the current email controversy? Is all of this now discredited?
As noted, a series of emails were leaked from scientists at the University of
East Anglia's Climatic Reserarch Unit, which showed that data were being
manipulated and strategies were being devised for the purposes of winning
political debates. The scientists have defended themselves by saying they were
only trying to overcome other distortions by other scientists in the pay of oil
companies and others.
First, this is appalling and inexcusable, in that the scientists used the
scientific process to engage in political counter-refutation. There must be a
bright line between the two realms. The scientists may have been guilty of
academic fraud, or other very serious misconduct. At the very least, they have
deeply shaken the confidence of the public in the integrity of the scientific
process.
But second, it does not in fact fundamentally alter the picture, which relies on
multiple sources of corroboration - not just the East Anglia team. As the NAS
notes on its home page, the debate over these numbers is an old one, and it is
essentially settled. The recommendations of the NAS and all the other
scientific bodies did not hang on the CRU data alone, but multiple measurements
using different means.
This graph shows data on surface temperature over the last 1000 years as logged
by six different teams, using tree ring data, glacier movement data, bore hole
measurements, and other means of calculating temperature. And there is a tight
convergence over the last 150 years, including the actual recorded measurements
- the black line. (This is the East Anglia data - but as you see, it still
tracks with the others.) Things get fuzzier further back, but there does seem to
have been a warming event about 950, and then a pretty level cooler phase, until
about the last century - with a big spike in the last few decades. As the NAS
report summarizes:
"It can be said with a high level of confidence that global mean surface
temperature was higher during the last few decades of the 20th century than
during any comparable period during the preceding four centuries. This statement
is justified by the consistency of the evidence from a wide variety of
geographically diverse proxies."
So the temperature has gone up almost a degree from its historic baseline, and
appears to be going up more. And there isn't a major change to this
picture, because multiple sources are showing the same pattern. The East
Anglia data (the black line in the chart above) is only one of the data sets.
More significantly, there are close corroborations with rise in CO2 and rise in
temperature, and there is broad consensus on the way this works, in simple
physics terms. So if CO2 is rising significantly - also no controversy about
that - then it follows that we can expect more rising temperatures, in a range
that will be significant over time.
What will the consequences be? Again, we can see from the fossil record and
other historical sources that it is likely to cause some very significant, quite
possibly catastrophic problems - sea level rise, changes in rainfall
pattern, droughts, ocean acidification, increasing extinction (including
fisheries), floods, heat waves, and so on. And as the evidence is getting
clearer, the news is not getting better, but getting worse. (Again, none of
this hangs on what the East Anglia team's data showed.)
So this is not something we want to leave to our grandchildren - or let them
blame us for getting wrong.
Moreover, there is every reason to think that reducing carbon-based fuel use
(the major source of emissions) is a good idea on many fronts - energy
depletion, foreign oil dependence, etc etc. Add to that the real evidence for
climate change, and it becomes more than a good idea. (And so does limiting
deforestation, another major cause of greenhouse gas increase.) And the
alternative - business as usual - begins to look more and more stupid, on many
levels.
If you want the full NAS report on surface temperature over 1,000 years you can
get it here:
http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=11676