Documents Raise Questions About Climate Change Validity
Posted on: Sunday, 22 November 2009, 07:00 CST
Tons of private emails and papers supposedly sent between several of the world's top climate scientists in the last 13 years were stolen by hackers and posted online.
The files were taken from the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit, a famous center that focuses on the investigation of natural and anthropogenic global warming.
Climate change disbelievers who have sifted through the emails insist that they offer "smoking gun" proof that several of the climatologists agreed to warp statistics to sustain the opinion that climate change is authentic and a product of humanity.
The authenticity of the emails has not been established and those connected to the documents have no comment so far.
The emails were first pulled from the Internet onto a Russian server, and then sent to several websites. An anonymous statement was attached to the emails.
The statement read: "We feel that climate science is, in the current situation, too important to be kept under wraps. We hereby release a random selection of correspondence, code and documents. Hopefully it will give some insight into the science and the people behind it."
A spokesperson for the University of East Anglia quickly responded to the allegations, saying that: "We are aware that information from a server used for research information in one area of the university has been made available on public websites. Because of the volume of this information we cannot currently confirm that all this material is genuine."
"This information has been obtained and published without our permission and we took immediate action to remove the server in question from operation. We are undertaking a thorough internal investigation and have involved the police in this inquiry."
In one of the controversial emails, dated November 1999, a scientist noted that: "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."
This specific sentence is the target of skeptics, who take this statement as evidence of altering statistics, but nothing has been confirmed.
"It does look incriminating on the surface, but there are lots of single sentences that taken out of context can appear incriminating," Bob Ward, head of policy and communications at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change, said to The Guardian in England. "You can't tell what they are talking about. Scientists say 'trick' not just to mean deception. They mean it as a clever way of doing something - a short cut can be a trick."
The emails have not hugely affected the large amount of evidence that backs the deduction that contemporary climate change is mainly caused by human doings, Ward said.
The emails are mainly about paleoclimate data, which rebuilds past climate figures by pulling information from ice cores and tree rings. "Climate change is based on several lines of evidence, not just paleoclimate data," Ward noted. "At the heart of this is basic physics."
Professor Michael Mann, head of Pennsylvania State University's Earth System Science Center, said: "I'm not going to comment on the content of illegally obtained emails. However, I will say this: both their theft and, I believe, any reproduction of the emails that were obtained on public websites, etc, constitutes serious criminal activity. I'm hoping the perpetrators and their facilitators will be tracked down and prosecuted to the fullest extent the law allows."
Prof Bob Watson, the chief scientific consultant at the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs stated that, "Evidence for climate change is irrefutable. The world's leading scientists overwhelmingly agree what we're experiencing is not down to natural variation."
"With this overwhelming scientific body of evidence failing to take action to tackle climate change would be the wrong thing to do – the impacts here in Britain and across the world will worsen and the economic consequences will be catastrophic."
The controversial emails emerged weeks prior to the large climate-change summit in Copenhagen, Denmark, meant to build the foundation for a new global agreement to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions and battle the ongoing climate change.
The timeline for the agreement has been plagued by the economic slump, which has put environmental topics in the background in a few countries.
---
On the Net:
Source: RedOrbit Staff & Wire Reports
Related Articles
- Stolen Climate Emails Creating More Controversy
- FAU Receives NSF Grant to Create Industry/University Cooperative Research Center for Advanced Knowledge Enablement
- Arctic Climate Is Changing Drastically And Rapidly
- Obama Presidency Could Bring Swift Climate Policy Changes
- Northern Climate is Changing for Birds
- Schwarzenegger, McGuinty to Sign Pact on Climate Change, Stem Cell Research
- University Coal Research Program Begins
- Credibility of New Stanford University Energy Research Tainted By ExxonMobil Ties
- Impromptu Memorial Appears at Scale Model of Solar System on National Mall, Says Universities Space Research Association
- University to Research Melting Polar Ice
 |
 |
User Comments (7)
| 7. |
Posted by nbtune on 11/24/2009, 11:47 Kent and others....we can't afford to gamble and DO something. The cost they are talking about would bankrupt us quicker than health care. The earth has been around for quite a while. A few little billions of people are not going to destroy it compared to the trillions of square acres on the planet. You and others have watched too much of the al gore movies and haven't thought logically about it. Read books on the subject, not just scare headlines the biased media puts out. Soon you will know that this is the biggest scam in your lifetime. |
| 6. |
Posted by Hangtime55 on 11/22/2009, 16:51 You know , when Micheal Mann has the bawlls to say that " I believe, any reproduction of the emails that were obtained on public websites, etc, constitutes serious criminal activity. I'm hoping the perpetrators and their facilitators will be tracked down and prosecuted to the fullest extent the law allows." ? ? ? Mann , when he finally admits it , would have been involved in the Most Deceiving Crime in the History of Science if the data that wasn't obtained by , not a hacker , but a Hero in the Anti-Global Climate Change community . Again, more Corruption of all departments and agencies that are involved in the Movement to Economically Destroy the World . Therefore Mr. Mann , in your own words I pray that YOU and your co-conspirators are " tracked down and prosecuted to the fullest extent the law allows." ! ! ! HOW DARE YOU EVEN CONSIDER YOURSELF A VICTIM ! One other thing Mr. Mann , when you stated that the term ' trick ' is a clever way of doing something - a short cut can be a trick in science , the term " Trick " also refers to a Prositute taking Money for a Lewd Act ! Think About That . |
| 5. |
Posted by Harkus McDee on 11/22/2009, 11:30 "If you've always been convinced that climate change is some kind of scam, you'll grasp at anything that seems to confirm your belief..." Including so-called "honest" climate scientists explaining how they're gaming the system, right? I mean, gee, if the facts on "their side" then why do they have to lie? "If you've always been convinced that climate change is real, you'll grasp at anything that seems to confirm your belief..." |
| 4. |
Posted by dmiller on 11/22/2009, 11:24 well it\'s a fact that sun data has never been used, and most of the ice data has either been tampered with or skewed (especially al gores so called \"chart\" where co2 and temp were shown to be complimentary when they weren\'t, there is about a 800 year diffrence between temp rising and then co2). Plus it\'s never put into context, we are no where near as warm as we were during the middle ages just before the little ice age, so we still have some warming to go. Also no one mentions the 600 billion dollar industry of grants that has developed around global warming, best as i can tell there is a finacial incentive for global warming to continue for years. |
| 3. |
Posted by Scott on 11/22/2009, 09:31 If you've always been convinced that climate change is some kind of scam, you'll grasp at anything that seems to confirm your belief, and ignore the huge pile of scientific evidence that contracts your feelings. Skeptical of science, firm believer in things that just ain't true... it must be a strange mental state to inhabit. |
| 2. |
Posted by Charles on 11/22/2009, 09:00 I have always believed this is a feel-good money grab that has been cooked up by some of the most insidious people on earth. The real goal is to capture the wealth of the develped countries and redistribute it. If you would read your history and learn from it, the Vatican and Catholic church for the past 1900years used various religious based theories and decrees to leverage their millions of followers into parting with their valuables in the name of the unseen God OR ELSE he might strike them down. Or worse - not allow them into heaven. LOL Do you see a parallel? Just think , every time a major volcanoe pops off it releases more CO2 and noxious gases than we as a nation produce in 50 years but the world keeps spinning. This has been the case for millions of years. I suppose we better figure out a tax for the volcanoes too so they can buy carbon credits for thier inexcusable actions. (wake up you pathetic sheeple) Lowell is a great guy but altruistic to a fault such that it has him only working internet radio 30 yrs into his \'career\'. Unless you want your home heating/cooling bills to rise 50% EACH - you better stop these jerks now. |
| 1. |
Posted by Kent on 11/22/2009, 08:04 Lowell Ponte,..1976, p. 237: "We simply cannot afford to gamble against this possibility by ignoring it. We cannot risk inaction. Those scientists who say we should ignore the evidence and the theories suggesting Earth is entering a period of climatic instability are acting irresponsibly. The indications that our climate can soon change for the worse are too strong to be reasonably ignored." |
RSS Feeds