CRU: Sorry Cassandra

Climate scientists have gotten a good dose of the Cassandra syndrome lately. Cassandra, you may recall, was the Trojan seer who saw through the subterfuge of Odysseus and warned her city against the tricky Greeks. Her curse was to see the truth but not be believed. So lately it has been with those warning of anthropogenic global warming (AGW).

A well-financed and politically connected group of professional doubters, liars and ideologically motivated crackpots have taken advantage of the public's short attention span and an apparent slowdown in the recent pace of warming to persuade much of the population that AGW isn't worth worrying about. A couple self-inflicted wounds by AGW Cassandras haven't helped either. First, Al Gore turns out to be pretty darn confused about basic geology and physics. Now, the CRU at the University of East Anglia lets a bunch of emails get hacked and is very slow-footed in responding.

What I have seen, mainly in the denialosphere, is hardly very incriminating, but it does give some plausibility to interpretations that some data was suppressed, that some researchers really don't like the lying snakes of the denialosphere, and that there is some concern about the limitations of the model predictions.

To me, none of this is remotely surprising. People say stuff in email that they shouldn't. Any decent scientist starts the day by doubting his favorite theories. Experimentalists like to keep their data under wraps until they are sure they understand it, especially if they have reason to doubt the conclusions. And a lot of us really do get angry at the professional shills, ideologues, and crackpots that dominate the legions of denial.

Despite this, I have seen nothing from them that seems to cast much doubt on the conclusions of the IPCC.

George Monbiot takes the imbroglio more seriously, and has called for at least one head to roll.

It’s no use pretending that this isn’t a major blow. The emails extracted by a hacker from the climatic research unit at the University of East Anglia could scarcely be more damaging(1). I am now convinced that they are genuine, and I’m dismayed and deeply shaken by them.

Yes, the messages were obtained illegally. Yes, all of us say things in emails that would be excruciating if made public. Yes, some of the comments have been taken out of context. But there are some messages that require no spin to make them look bad. There appears to be evidence here of attempts to prevent scientific data from being released(2,3), and even to destroy material that was subject to a freedom of information request(4).

Worse still, some of the emails suggest efforts to prevent the publication of work by climate sceptics(5,6), or to keep it out of a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change(7). I believe that the head of the unit, Phil Jones, should now resign. Some of the data discussed in the emails should be re-analysed.

Hiding data is bad, and destroying evidence is worse - and both are likely illegal. Trying to prevent the publication of faulty analysis and incorrect science, though, are quite reasonable. We don't want the literature cluttered with errors. The whole purpose of the peer review process is to do just that. On the other hand, the history of science is full of valid papers that were suppressed because of some referee's mistaken prejudices, but because so much hangs on our conclusions about climate science there is a special obligation to ensure that all reasonable points are aired in an open and aboveboard process.

Monbiot doesn't think that the actual scientific (as opposed to public relations) case for AGW has seen serious damage:

But do these revelations justify the sceptics’ claims that this is “the final nail in the coffin” of global warming theory?(8,9) Not at all. They damage the credibility of three or four scientists. They raise questions about the integrity of one or perhaps two out of several hundred lines of evidence. To bury manmade climate change, a far wider conspiracy would have to be revealed.