Climate change deniers exposed by the truth

Scientific truth has won three convincing victories over corporate-funded climate change deniers. Independent reports published in the UK and US entirely exonerate two leading climate scientists and their teams – Phil Jones from the University of East Anglia and Michael Mann at Penn State University.

And a comprehensive  review of the 2001 report by the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) confirms that the evidence is not flawed, and the fact of socially-driven climate change is incontrovertible.

The two groups of scientists were subjected to a fake scandal manufactured out of leaked emails, timed to coincide with the UN climate summit at Copenhagen at the end of last year.

Emails were misrepresented to suggest that they knew that Earth is actually getting colder, and could not explain why. One of the emails was in fact a comment by Professor Jones on how designers should present a graph being simplified for use on the cover of a report published in 2000 – before the IPCC report.

The UK enquiry, chaired by former civil servant Sir Muir Russell, reported: "The honesty and rigour of CRU (Climatic Research Unit) as scientists are not in doubt ... We have not found any evidence of behaviour that might undermine the conclusions of the IPCC assessments."

Far from hiding the raw data on which their findings were based, the enquiry found that it “is freely available to any competent researcher”. And to underline the point, the enquiry itself accessed the data and used it to recreate exactly the same findings.

In the US, the science faculty at Penn State University unanimously exonerated Michael Mann and his team. With the UEA researchers, they created the so-called “hockey stick” graph of global warming.

This famous image, used in Al Gore’s film An Inconvenient Truth, draws on evidence from a range of studies and shows the dramatic rise in global warming coincides exactly with the last three decades of corporate globalisation. It induces apoplexy in the climate change deniers and their corporate backers and rubbishing it is a key focus of their activities.

The investigators found no substance to charges made against Mann and his team and added that his emails had been "misrepresented ... (and) completely twisted to imply the opposite of what was actually being said."

So have the deniers shut up? Of course not. Have they disproved the science? Discussing science scientifically is something they assiduously avoid!Instead Myron Ebell of the so-called Competitive Enterprise Institute simply denounces the report as a whitewash, without giving any reasons. And Steve McIntyre of Climate Audit – the main attack dog against the “hockey stick graph” – focuses on the one and only criticism the UK enquiry made.

Muir suggested that deleting emails does not show a great commitment to openness on the part of the UEA team. But who can blame them, since the requests for emails were entirely vexatious.

Of course there is a long history of lying and distortion of scientific research. The corporations have covered up the facts about tobacco and cancer; about GM crops migrating into non-GM; about the side effects and dangers of anti-depressants; about thalidomide. And now they sponsor people to lie about climate change.

As Michael Mann told the BBC last night: “If our work wasn’t important in adding to the weight of evidence we wouldn’t be getting this attention from the professional climate change deniers...I look at all these specious attacks and lies as a testament to the importance of our work.”

Now all the anti-science pundits who claimed the cold winter of 2009/10 means global warming is a lie have gone strangely silent as vast areas of the world suffer terrible heat waves. Temperatures this week rose to 40.3 Celsius in Beijing and 39.4 in New York.

Abraham Lincoln had it right: You can fool some of the people all of the time. You can fool all of the people some of the time. But you can’t fool all of the people, all of the time.

Penny Cole

Environment editor

Holistic view of climate change answer to hackers

It’s time to cut through the confusion generated by the publication of emails hacked from the climate research centre at the University of East Anglia. Even George Monbiot has lost his cool, calling for the centre’s boss Phil Jones to resign because of some remarks in one of the emails.

It is true that the figures suggest that over recent years, measures of air temperature show cooling, not warming and scientists are struggling to explain it. Some say it is due to the effects of El Nino – a weather phenomenon that has its roots in the waters off the coast of South America - and is about to change.

Indeed it may be that 2009 will reverse the trend to be one of the hottest since records began.

But the climate change deniers always pick and choose their indicators, in any case. The fact that there is a flotilla of icebergs in the south Pacific seems to have passed them by. And that the Arctic ice is thinning and breaking up. And that the sea is now so acidic that its ability to absorb carbon is compromised. And that the deforestation of the planet is causing massive emissions in itself and also reducing the planet’s ability to absorb carbon. And that the permafrosts of Siberia are beginning to melt, pouring stored carbon into the atmosphere.

What the deniers are arguing, in effect, is that carbon emissions may be rising but it doesn’t matter and that is patently untrue. In spite of all the political compromises it had to make, the world’s scientists organised in the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change are clear that carbon emissions are damaging to the climate.

Overall rises in air temperature are, in any case, not the be-all-and-end-all in mapping climate change. Also crucial are more localised but undeniable changes in climate which are already affecting people’s lives and livelihoods. Should we just ignore these? Should we close our eyes to extreme weather, drought, forest fires, floods, rising sea levels and farmers forced to switch from crops grown for generations?

The fact that the hacking of the research centre’s emails took place just before the Copenhagen summit on climate change may well be suspicious and politically motivated, but not to worry – the Copenhagen summit is not going to deliver anything in any case.

What we need to hold on to is a holistic conception of the ecological crisis, which understands that the system of production itself is unsustainable.

Wasteful, profit-driven capitalism is creating not only global warming, but also poverty, injustice and the extinction of hundreds of species and eco-systems. To keep capitalism on the road, the whole substance of the planet would need to be sacrificed to it, and that’s the crisis we need to deal with, sooner rather than later.

The shameful numbers game which is going on in advance of Copenhagen shows that the global leaders are prepared to forfeit the lives of millions to the economic status quo that has caused this ecological crisis, in all its diverse forms.

In the last few days both America and China have put a sort of figure on emissions reductions. But since President Obama has already made it clear that there will be no binding agreement at Copenhagen, these are the REALLY meaningless figures we should be worrying about.

We should support Professor Phil Jones and his team at East Anglia and the crucial work they are doing. When rotten politicians and bankers the world over survive scandals and corruption but keep their jobs, why would we sacrifice a group of people who are truly useful?

Penny Cole

Environment editor