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.

Climate change and uncertainty

-->

The recent email hacking at CRU has highlighted the fact that there is always an element of uncertainty in science, especially in such a massively complex project as climate modelling. If scientists were actually attempting to keep certain papers out of the peer-reviewed process, that would have been unscientific. They might have plausibly done this out of an attempt to reduce the uncertainty in the balance of evidence, due to the severity of the issue, perhaps under a misguided assumption that politicians do not cope well with uncertainty... However, we must remember that all politicians must be guided by the precautionary principle; which was sensibly agreed on at Rio in 1992. When the potential consequences of inaction are so globally catastrophic, we would definitely do well to be cautious and avoid them. Ask yourself - if you knew there was a 50% chance of dying when you crossed a road, would you cross it? Politicians have to consider these kind of complex risk probabilities, as we all do in everyday life.

The AR4 Report by the IPCC actually contains many statements instructing the lead authors to exercise caution in the careful use of language to communicate uncertainty. The experts were reminded to consider 'groupthink', and I quote; “be aware of a tendency for a group to converge on an expressed view and become overconfident”. Moreover, experts were told to use careful and cautious judgement in explaining ranges; “If you cannot be confident in the range, use a less precise approach””. The lead authors were also instructed to “use neutral language” and “avoid value laden statements”. Thus, there were firm safeguards on the expression of uncertainty in the IPCC Report. Despite these safeguards, the definitive conclusion was that there was more than a 90% certainty that global warming is anthropogenic.

The Saudi Arabian comment at COP 15, calling for a re-assessment of climate science, is beyond ridiculous. The fact that Saudi Arabia the world's largest oil reserves makes their argument completely transparent. Their comment on this matter just highlights that the email “hack” was a strategic move to derail the climate change negotiations. Support for climate scepticism by Saudi Arabia merely undermines the validity of the 'climategate' position, by showing that those with interests attempt to generate and promote this discussion. The Saudi's would be better off asking for finance than making these comments; since making that comment simultaneously undermined their request for finance.

Also consider this simple thought experiment; what is the worst that could happen if we shift to a lower carbon economy? We would lower our energy bills and transfer over to renewable energy (which humanity will have to do eventually anyway). Moreover, we conserve the oil we have left for plastics and pharmaceuticals, prolonging this valuable resource. What is the worst that could happen if we do nothing and anthropogenic climate change occurs as predicted? Along with potential tipping points and positive feedback mechanisms... the consequences hardly bear thinking about..........