Update: Manufacturing a scientific consensus.

A recently retracted climate study highlights the corruption in peer-review within the climate sciences.

After publishing this article I was contacted by Dr. John Christy who shared some more information and documentation with me that I want to share with you. To be honest I was just starting my Ph.D. when the original Climatic Research Unit Email Controversy was taking place so I admit that I am learning more about it in real time. Whenever that happens and I have permission from people that share extra information with me I will share it with you as updates to original articles. You can find the original article at the bottom of this update.

Dr. Christy mentioned that I used the term “exonerated” and that this is not in fact known as “there was never any true cross-examination of the facts by independent panels.”

He also pointed me to an “excellent account of the Hockey Stick probs and fake exonerations written by Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick that has stood up to cross-examination”, which you can find here and concludes.

Climategate did not arise from a few emails being taken “out of context”. It was exactly the opposite. The emails provided behind-the-scenes and very disquieting context for troubling statistical and scientific practices which had, for the most part, already been identified by us and others in published articles in scientific journals and blogs. The contemporary whitewashing and ultimate sanitization by climate academics is itself an interesting and mostly untold story. Climategate exposed bad practices; the fake inquiries whitewashed them, and now the story is being retold so the villains are not only innocent but are to be embraced as heroes. It is an almost classic example of what Alexander Pope famously observed in his Essay on Man (1733) nearly three centuries ago:

Vice is a monster of so frightful mien, As to be hated needs but to be seen; Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face, We first endure, then pity, then embrace.

Dr. Christy also provided his testimony to the House Science, Space and Technology Committee in “which I provided the information I knew of the goings-on, with some appendices which help explain it”, and that can be found here and concluded:

The EPA has relied on “consensus” documents which reflect the views of selected authors who (a) have review-authority (i.e. gatekeeper status and luxury of the “last word”) and (b) often do not consider the broad range of scientific inquiry into this subject.

The popular surface datasets cited by the EPA as indicators of greenhouse impact are poor representatives of the part of the climate system that is indeed affected by greenhouse gases. Rather they largely represent the impact of surface development over land which, then, is misinterpreted as greenhouse warming.

Atmospheric datasets which monitor regions where the GHG impacts should be easily detectable, indicate significantly less warming than models portray, implying that models in general are more sensitive to greenhouse gases than is the real world.

Thus, the foundation of the notion that humanity is threatened or endangered by the climate-consequences of additional CO2 in the atmosphere (which by itself has considerable benefits for the biosphere) is based on (a) inadequate surface datasets and (b) model projections that fail hypothesis testing as they overstate the warming that is occurring.

Finally, Dr. Christy provided a report, chaired by statistics professor, Edward Wegman, chairman of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences committee on theoretical and applied statistics, and submitted to the U.S. House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee that can be found here that concludes:

Overall, our committee believes that Mann’s assessments that the decade of the 1990s was the hottest decade of the millennium and that 1998 was the hottest year of the millennium cannot be supported by his analysis.

After all of this information is taken into account I retract my use of the term ‘exonerated’ in the original article. As a scientist and member of the scientific community, it is essential that we maintain public trust in how we disseminate scientific information. The past, and unfortunately very recent, actions of prominent climate scientists in manipulating scientific data and the peer-review process will have lasting negative effects in all scientific fields.

Original post below:

Climatic Research Unit Email Controversy ("Climategate")…

In November 2009, an anonymous hacker or group of hackers illicitly accessed the servers of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia in the UK. They extracted over a thousand emails and several thousand other documents. Shortly thereafter, these documents were leaked to the public. As CRU is a leading institution in climate research, the emails contained correspondence between many top climate scientists worldwide.

Reporters quickly seized on specific excerpts from the emails, alleging that they revealed misconduct among climate scientists. Several main points of contention emerged:

1. Data Manipulation: Some emails seemed to discuss "tricks" in representing data. Critics claimed this was evidence of data manipulation to exaggerate global warming. However, "trick" was claimed to be used in the sense of a clever method to solve a problem, not deception. You decide.

   I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temperatures to each series for the last 20 years (i.e. from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline. [emphasis added]

   • Phil Jones 11/16/1999

2. Suppression of Skeptical Views: Some emails revealed frustrations with climate skeptics and discussed ways to counter or exclude their perspectives, including pressuring editors of scientific publications. Critics saw this as an attempt to suppress dissenting views.

3. Peer Review: There was evidence in the emails that some scientists were not happy with certain journals or editors that published papers critical of the consensus view on climate change. This led to accusations that the scientists were trying to unduly influence the peer review process.

   So what do we do about this? I think we have to stop considering Climate Research as a legitimate peer-reviewed journal. Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal. We would also need to consider what we tell or request of our more reasonable colleagues who currently sit on the editorial board…

   -Michael E. Mann 03/11/2003

While the scientists at the center of the controversy were largely exonerated, the event had a significant impact on the public perception of climate science. The controversy casts doubt on the integrity of climate scientists and the research they produced. "Climategate" also led to increased calls for transparency, better communication of science to the public, and a reevaluation of some aspects of the peer review process.

Climategate 2.0…