Climatologists under pressure (Nature editorial)

[joshcryer]

Climatologists under pressure

Stolen e-mails have revealed no scientific conspiracy, but do highlight ways in which climate researchers could be better supported in the face of public scrutiny.

The e-mail archives stolen last month from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia (UEA), UK, have been greeted by the climate-change-denialist fringe as a propaganda windfall (see page 551). To these denialists, the scientists' scathing remarks about certain controversial palaeoclimate reconstructions qualify as the proverbial 'smoking gun': proof that mainstream climate researchers have systematically conspired to suppress evidence contradicting their doctrine that humans are warming the globe.

This paranoid interpretation would be laughable were it not for the fact that obstructionist politicians in the US Senate will probably use it next year as an excuse to stiffen their opposition to the country's much needed climate bill. Nothing in the e-mails undermines the scientific case that global warming is real — or that human activities are almost certainly the cause. That case is supported by multiple, robust lines of evidence, including several that are completely independent of the climate reconstructions debated in the e-mails.

(...)

Denialists often maintain that these changes are just a symptom of natural climate variability. But when climate modellers test this assertion by running their simulations with greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide held fixed, the results bear little resemblance to the observed warming. The strong implication is that increased greenhouse-gas emissions have played an important part in recent warming, meaning that curbing the world's voracious appetite for carbon is essential (see pages 568 and 570).

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Much more at link: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v462/n7273/full/462545a.html

edit: cleaned up formatting

[timeforpeace]

1. Britain's Met Office has announced a three year review of all climate data. Link below.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6945445.ece

[joshcryer]

3. Unfortunate, as Nature didn't see a need for it. But by all means, as they go over it...

...make it open and available to the public.

[Ghost Dog]

2. Yeah, but that's boring. Let's continue with the climactic research.

Shock! Awe! Emails! NWO!! 2012¡¡11! Hide the Decline WITH rEAL dATA trick!!!¡!

[tabatha]

4. The decline was in tree-ring data analysis

NOT direct temperature readings.
Tree-ring measurement is a secondary tool, and is not a well-developed or well-polished one.

Direct temperature readings have shown a steady increase
again ....
direct temperature readings have shown a steady increase.

This is the problem --- a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

[Ghost Dog]

6. Steady temperature increase directly measured: Real Data, yes.

I conjecture the observed recent tree-ring decline could be due to any of several types of industrial pollution or other environmental stress.

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, yes. But the most vocal, industry-financed deniers are surely deliberately twisting the facts for boneheaded usually ideological/financial reasons, cf: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x220288 .

[joshcryer]

7. Here's the relevant abstract, btw. It has nothing to do with data manipulation:

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v391/n6668/abs/391678a0.html

Indeed, it is done to make the models more accurate.

[Speck Tater]

5. It's irrelevant.

Regardless of the scientific findings, there will never be a global political consensus and a global will to support action in time to do anything meaningful to prevent catastrophic climate change. We are nearly at the point of no return, and as a species, we do not have the foresight, nor the capacity for the scale of cooperative action necessary to correct the problem in time.

All we can do now is adapt as best we can, and take some cold comfort in the fact that the denialists will soon have their smug, ignorant faces smacked by Mother Nature herself.

[tabatha]

8. Yep, that is the only consolation in this thing ---

"denialists will soon have their smug, ignorant faces smacked by Mother Nature herself."

[GliderGuider]

9. It will be interesting to see

how many ways the denialists can find to deny that it's Mother Nature's hand doing the smacking...

Oh, and I'd be completely OK with taking the word "nearly" out of your post...