Not all climate skeptics are callous mercenaries working for the fossil fuel industry. A couple of other kinds spring to mind. The first are honourable, independent-minded people, taking a little time to check out for themselves -- as surely they should -- how they should understand climate change. The second are people who like to see themselves as outlaw heroes, untrammelled by conventional rules, saving people in distress like 21st century Robin Hoods.
The trouble is, what if this self-appointed savior gets his facts wrong? What if he isn't so much Robin Hood as Hong Kong Phooey?
The climategate hacker sounds like he (or she, or they) belongs to this unfortunate category of misguided saviours. This hacker, you will recall, broke into the private emails of climate scientists at the University of East Anglia and released a first batch of these stolen emails in 2009, on the eve of the UN's Copenhagen climate talks. These emails were selected so as to 'prove' that the scientists were hypocrites, publicly pretending to believe in climate change while privately questioning various aspects of the evidence.
The reality was simpler. The scientists were not phonies: they were only doing what good scientists always do, which is to question themselves and their colleagues as rigorously as possible about their findings. Nine separate enquiries followed. All exonerated the scientists.
Now, just before the start of the 2011 UN climate talks, this time in Durban, South Africa, he has released a further batch: 5,000 emails leftover from the same crop stolen two years before. But this time he reportedly included a clue to his motives: a text file headed "Background and Context" that included remarks like:
"Poverty is a death sentence. Nations must invest $37 trillion in energy technologies by 2030 to stabilize greenhouse gas emissions at sustainable levels."
"Over 2.5 billion people live on less than $2 a day."
" 'One dollar can save a life' -- the opposite must also be true."
So Mr. Secretive Saviour apparently imagines he is sidelining climate change because it diverts attention from eradicating poverty! He couldn't be more misguided. Climate change is the greatest poverty-creator -- ever. If he really cares about eradicating poverty, he should be using his talent for publicity to encourage people to tackle climate change as vigorously as they possibly could.
But it seems to have escaped his notice that it is the poorest and most vulnerable countries that are the most anxious to get ambitious and legally binding action agreed at the UN climate talks. The only people the hacker has been benefiting are those who are actively causing climate change -- the fossil fuel lobby and major polluters. The status quo keeps them in the manner to which they have become accustomed: extraordinarily rich.
He has also got his numbers wrong. The BBC's Richard Black reckons the $37 trillion figure is
... probably derive[d] from the International Energy Agency's World Energy Outlook for 2009, released shortly before the Copenhagen summit... The IEA said the cumulative investment needed to meet the growth in projected energy demand by 2030 was $26 trillion. Keeping CO2 concentrations below 450 parts per million would require an additional $10.5 trillion, they said, because of the more expensive technologies that would be needed... In some reports, these figures were combined to form $37 trillion.
So the purpose of the bulk of $37 trillion was to provide energy for the very people our hacker is so stricken about -- energy they need in order to pull themselves out of poverty. It's nothing to do with climate change. The remaining trillions are there to make sure it's clean energy. Some deniers would argue that that was unnecessary, but who would prefer poor people to get dirty energy?
So how should responsible members of the public respond to this second wave of emails? When the first batch of emails were released in 2009, we were advised not give it the oxygen of publicity. But that simply left the deniers free to spin the climategate story as they pleased. Or should we convey "a collective yawn," as Francesca Grifo of the Union of Concerned Scientists advised? Yawning doesn't seem that different to keeping silent.
Others prefer to ask tough questions. Why hasn't the hacker been caught? Why has so little been invested in catching him? In the past year, says Richard Black, the Norfolk Police have spent the grand sum of £5,649.09 on this investigation. It is reminiscent of the feeble, foot-dragging police investigation into the phone hacking allegations against the News of the World.
The police should take heed of the massive swing in public mood, from shrugs to fury, when people realized that phone-hacking hadn't just bothered a few publicity-hungry celebrities but had caused grievous pain to innocent families like the Dowlers. They should try counting the number of innocent families that have been hurt by the climategate hacker.
UEA's climate scientists have been hounded and falsely vilified because of the hacker's lack of understanding of basic scientific methods. Millions of decent people struggling to come to terms with climate change have been misled by his half-baked information. Most grievously of all, the billions of families who scrape by on less than $2 a day have had their lives put further at risk.
What would most help these impoverished families is for the UN climate talks in Durban to result in a strong climate deal. This hacker attack, timed to derail the process once more by falsely undermining the science, is the last thing they need. If the hacker's moral purpose is to help the poor, then he has scored a spectacular own goal.
Follow Anuradha Vittachi on Twitter: www.twitter.com/oneclimate
Shawn Lawrence Otto: Climate Scientist Wins A Round for America
Climatic Research Unit email controversy - Wikipedia, the free ...
James Delingpole: Climategate 2.0 - WSJ.com
Global Warming is not a Crisis - one debate - 3 protagonists - 3 antagonists speakers. Before: 30% in favour - 57% against - 13% don't knows. After: 46% in favour - 42% against - 12% don't knows. Views were changed by the protagonists’ emphasis on scientific uncertainty and away from opinions formed from the hyperbole of alarmists, with their palpable feet of clay.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9082151
Pollution and particulates from the burning of fossil fuels are responsible for 2 million premature deaths per annum. Everyone can agree on FACTS (more reliable than computer model projections with dubious positive feedbacks) and we should endeavour to deploy clean energy sources.
The heading to this Blog give a perspective on the relative environmental degradation by energy supplied from - Coal - Uranium - Thorium: http://lftrsuk.blogspot.com/
That is how science works, yes. When CERN found that they had measured Neutrinos traveling faster than light they released all of their data so that everyone could check their work. That is how science works.
There are 200,000 more emails ready to be released!
The truth seekers are the scientists investigating the science of climatology.
Orkney continually tries to portray the email theives and hackers as whistleblowers. Well, real honest whistleblowers wouldn't run and hide like these hackers did, and like she does evertime she does one of these drive by attacks.
Reprehensible denier behavior by Orkney.
Source: “IPCC Report Confirms What Businesses Already Know: Extreme Weather & Climate Change Has Economic Impacts” by Mindy Luber, President of CERES, Forbes, Nov 23, 2011
http://www.forbes.com/sites/mindylubber/2011/11/23/ipcc-report-confirms-what-businesses-already-know-extreme-weather-climate-change-has-economic-impacts/
I thoroughly disagree. The second round of hacked emails from the IPCC has Phil Jones, (head of the University of East Anglia’s climatology unit) saying: “I’ve been told that IPCC is above national FOI [Freedom of Information] Acts. One way to cover yourself and all those working in AR5 would be to delete all e-mails at the end of the process.”
In another e-mail, Phil Jones wrote: “Any work we have done in the past is done on the back of the research grants we get -– and has to be well hidden. I’ve discussed this with the main funder (U.S. Dept of Energy) in the past and they are happy about not releasing the original station data.”
Now be honest - does this sound like material that is being rigorously questioned and reviewed? Are you honestly comfortable with the possibility that this science lacks proper review and that enormous amounts of tax dollars worldwide are being earmarked as a result?
“… the important thing is to make sure they’re [the skeptics are] lo[o]sing the PR battle. That’s what the site [RealClimate.org] is about.”