Climategate - Drawing Blood from a Stone

Once again, climate sceptics have tried to draw attention to uncertainties in climate science by publishing the private emails of climate scientists.

Is there any truth in these allegations of improprietry?

One particular email which has been drawn upon by the media refers to uncertainties in the climate data from the tropics. The statement by scientist Peter Thorne that "we need to communicate the uncertainty and be honest" is taken completely out of context.

What Thorne does say is that "observations do not show rising temperatures throughout the tropical troposphere unless you accept one single study and approach and discount a wealth of others". However, elsewhere in the actual email, Thorne points out that "uncertainties are largest in the tropics and Southern Hemisphere high latitudes where radiosonde coverage is poorest".

It is well known that data coverage in the tropics is poor due to a lack of weather data stations and meteorological records. This means that the temperature and climate change are not well understood in these regions, including phenomenon like the ENSO (El Niño/La Niña-Southern Oscillation).

In fact, this uncertainty actually makes climate change even more dangerous. It means that communties and countries are not able to adapt to the growing challenges and extreme weather events as they occur. Even a sceptical group of scientists recently agreed that global temperature is rising.

The uncertainty and lack of knowledge on certain areas actually makes climate change even more worrying and dangerous as people will be less able to adapt! For example, in this recent book chapter explains that over much of Africa, there is considerable uncertainty about how rainfall patterns will change, an issue affecting millions of farmers.

Is it a coincidence that the hacked emails were posted on a Russian server? Unlikely. Climate change has become a political issue. Putin once joked that climate change is good for Russia, and it certainly seems Russian oil companies are set to benefit from melting Arctic ice, even as the rest of the world burns. So it does not surprise me that the emails were posted on a Russian server.