Cherry-picked out-of-context private emails and papers...
in no way constitute proof of a big “AGW Hoax” or a “Climategate” smoking gun, as these well known anti-environmental fringe groups like to claim.
Let’s start by getting some perspective on this whole debate:
1) These well known anti-environmentally-biased fringe organizations/people (including CATO, WSJ, James Delingpole, P.J. Gladnick, etc.) making these hyperbolic assertions have NO credibility on the issue.
2) These types of hyped claims ("The Anthropocentric Global Warming Theory is Finished!", "It's All Been Proven to be a Hoax!", blah, blah, blah) by global warming deniers have been made continuously for decades every time any scrap of potentially contrary material has been discovered (or manufactured), regardless of how weak or irrelevant these scraps invariably turn out to be.
3) It’s important to acknowledge that this collection of yet to be authenticated leaked emails and papers (a presumably careful selection of (possibly edited?) correspondence dating back to 1996 and as recently as Nov 12) by only 3 or 4 climate research scientists (out of 2500 climate scientists globally) that, among other things, seem to show them reacting badly to the pressure from skeptics, did not occur in a vacuum. Rather, the long running and viscous campaign waged against climate research scientists by the fossil fuel industry and anti-environmental interests is essential to identify and acknowledge before one can understand the context of the hostile and adversarial environment these scientists were operating in.
4) It is more than likely that in any organization you will find people saying things in private emails with the assumption that they will never be made public, that would embarrass people or that would indicate people talking about things in a flippant/disrespectful manner or openly discussing ideas/proposals that might be considered unethical but never get beyond the discussion phase (i.e., are never implemented). In other words, by stealing private emails, you could easily dig up dirt on just about anyone, whether deserved or not.
5) The timing of this particular episode is highly suspicious - occurring just on the eve of the COP15 Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, as well as the first US Senate debate on a possible new carbon trading regime. There is very good indication that this episode is part of a pre-planed smear campaign by certain interests/individuals who have a history of using dirty tricks against their opponents.
There may or may not be proof of unethical behavior by the few scientists named in these stolen correspondence, and it is an important issue that needs to be investigated. If any proof of such behavior is subsequently discovered, then the individual(s) involved should be reprimanded, and possibly some rules of transparency should be revamped to ensure that the highest quality of scientific ethics and disclosure are adhered to. But, before people make any hasty conclusions about the issue, they first need to make sure that they have a proper understanding of the context and a balanced view of the whole science and debate around AGW and the politicization of such, as well as the key actors, interests, and tactics that have been brought to bear in the history of this extremely politicized debate and ongoing disinformation campaigns.
FULL DISCLOSURE: I have been involved with the environmental movement since the mid-1990's and have a degree in Environmental Studies from UCSC. In 2000 I was working with Greenpeace on the Climate Campaign and got to attend the UN Global Climate Change Talks 2000 (COP-6) in The Hague Netherlands as an observer with 220 other students and youth from the US.
The Importance of Fact Checking and Bias Checking
Before really getting into the nitty gritty of these complex scientific debates and addressing the contents of these stolen papers/emails, it behooves us to proceed with caution and to not just blindly accept any and all claims and opinions being published on the internet, or in the popular media for that matter, on the issue without checking into the biases and credibility of the individuals/entities making such claims. There has been quite a history of certain interest groups and problematic con artists attempting to sway public opinion and manipulate the science on the issue for their own nefarious purposes. There are some groups that should be mentioned in particular that have been heavily involved with disinformation campaigns on the issue:
1) the fossil fuel and related industries
These interests have poured literally billions of dollars into efforts to counter the AGW science and manipulate public opinion. They have created or funded hundreds of organizations that fight against environmental regulations and attempt to sway public opinion away from environmental advocacy, utilizing every dishonest tactic in their bag of disinformation tricks.
ExxonMobil is probably the most notorious and aggressive fossil fuel corporation in this endeavor.
The denial industry by George Monbiot
ExxonMobil is the world's most profitable corporation. Its sales now amount to more than $1bn a day. It makes most of this money from oil, and has more to lose than any other company from efforts to tackle climate change. To safeguard its profits, ExxonMobil needs to sow doubt about whether serious action needs to be taken on climate change. But there are difficulties: it must confront a scientific consensus as strong as that which maintains that smoking causes lung cancer or that HIV causes Aids. So what's its strategy?
The website Exxonsecrets.org, using data found in the company's official documents, lists 124 organisations that have taken money from the company or work closely with those that have. These organisations take a consistent line on climate change: that the science is contradictory, the scientists are split, environmentalists are charlatans, liars or lunatics, and if governments took action to prevent global warming, they would be endangering the global economy for no good reason. The findings these organisations dislike are labelled "junk science". The findings they welcome are labelled "sound science".
I highly recommend reading the full article The Denial Industry
2) right wing free market fanaticism - libertarians, right-wing republicans, the christian right, etc.
The "libertarian"/objectivist ethics are based on unhindered self-determination. Radical self-interest. A view of freedom in which we are all able to be as selfish as we want as long as we don't shit on our neighbors. But of course that involves a tiny little perspective that doesn't view the people outside our field of view as being our neighbors.
Since free market capitalism is the single best way of ruining the environment yet conceived, and since free market capitalism is also the "ideal" of "freedom" as theorized by right-"libertarians" like Ayn Rand and acolytes like Alex Jones, the only choice is between denying the severity of the ecological problem or accepting that free-market capitalism is indeed collective suicide. It's much easier to reject the science than reject one's most cherished beliefs on human freedom (no matter how ridiculous -- and the idea that capitalism has anything to do with freedom is indeed a ridiculous notion).
Examples of right-wing free market fanatic publications/groups involved in the issue:
WALL STREET JOURNAL: this is about the most anti-environmentally-biased major newspaper you could possibly find on the entire planet. Pretty much goes with the philosophy and morals of Wall Street, whose mantra is: Profit above people, the environmental, labor, democracy, community sustainability, or anything else, PERIOD.
CATO INSTITUTE: Funded by right wing wealthy families, right wing foundations, and corporations such as ExxonMobil. According to wikipedia: The Cato Institute is a pro-free market, libertarian think tank headquartered in Washington, D.C.
[...]
Cato has held a number of briefings on global warming with global warming skeptics as panelists. In December 2003, panelists included Patrick Michaels, Robert Balling and John Christy. Balling and Christy have since made statements indicating that global warming is, in fact, related at least some degree to anthropogenic activity.
[...]
Three out of five "Doubters of Global Warming" interviewed by PBS's Frontline were funded by, or had some other institutional connection with, the Institute.
3) Front Groups funded by fossil fuel or other industries and right-wing anti-environmental interests
examples:
The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition (TASSC): according to wikipedia: an industry-funded lobby group which promotes the idea that environmental science on issues including smoking, pesticides and global warming is "junk science", which should be replaced by "sound science". It is operated by Steven Milloy from his home in Potomac, Maryland.
[...]
TASSC was created in 1993 by the APCO Worldwide public relations firm, and was funded by tobacco company Philip Morris (now Altria). TASSC was listed in a confidential Philip Morris memo under "PM Tools to Affect Legislative Decisions".[1]. The leading public advocate of TASSC is Steven Milloy, whose webpage junkscience.com was, until 2006, affiliated with the Cato Institute.
Initially, the primary focus of TASSC was an attempt to discredit research on Environmental Tobacco Smoke as a long-term cause of increased cancer and heart problem rates in the community -- especially among office workers and children living with smoking parents [1]. It subsequently advanced industry-friendly positions on a wide range of topics, including global warming, smoking, phthalates, and pesticides. Later still, they extended the role of TASSC to Europe using Dr George Carlo. TASSC used the label of 'junk science' to criticise work that was unfavorable to the interests of its backers.
[...]
TASSC was only one of many such groups.
The Fossil-Fuel-Funded Denial Industry
Nothing that these 3 or 4 scientists named in Britain's Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia email bruhaha have been caught doing, as indicated by (a fair, contextual interpretation of) these emails comes even close to being comparable to the unethical and criminal behavior that the climate change denial industry has been observed and documented doing for the last 2 decades. The fossil fuel industry has funneled literally billions of dollars into trying to persuade the world that climate change is not taking place by misrepresenting the science and in some cases outright fabricating the science - we’re talking about direct and straight forward scientific fraud. In one instance, they published a paper that was made into a counterfeit National Academy of Sciences Proceedings, copying the font and format, with a forward by a previous chairman of the National Academy of Science, to fraudulently make it look as if it was in fact from that organization. That document has become known as the "Oregon Petition" and purports to contain 17,000 signatures of "scientists" opposing efforts to curb AGW, but in fact is one of the biggest frauds ever perpetrated in an effort to discredit and roll back concern over AGW. See Case Study: The Oregon Petition from sourcewatch.org
This is just one incident among an endless history of dirty tricks that have been utilized by these disinformationists for a long time.
At the very least I think it has to be acknowledged that many of these "man-made global warming skeptics" have intimate ties to extremely powerful energy corporations, groups which obviously have a vested interest in disputing the scientific consensus:
Excerpts from The Heat is on: The Climate Crisis, the Cover-Up, the Prescription, by Ross Gelbspan, published by Addison Wesley Longman, May 1997.
Sellout Scientists:
Industry-funded Skeptics Undermine Global Warming Consensus
Even as global warming intensifies, the evidence is being denied with a ferocious disinformation campaign. This campaign is waged on many fronts: in the media, where public opinion is formed; in the halls of Congress, where laws are made; and in international climate negotiations. In their most important accomplishment, global warming critics have successfully created the general perception that scientists are sharply divided over whether it is taking place at all.
Key to this success has been the effective use of a tiny band of scientists -- principally Drs. Patrick Michaels, Sherwood Idso, Robert Balling, and S. Fred Singer -- who have proven extraordinarily adept at draining the issue of all sense of crisis. Deep-pocketed industry public relations specialists have promoted their opinions through every channel of communication they can reach. They have demanded access to the press for these scientists' views, as a right of journalistic fairness.
Unfortunately, most editors are too uninformed about climate science to resist. They would not accord to tobacco company scientists who dismiss the dangers of smoking the same weight that they accord to world-class lung specialists. But in the area of climate research, few major news stories fail to feature prominently one of these handful of industry-sponsored scientific "greenhouse skeptics."
If the public has been lulled into a state of disinterest, the effect on decision makers has been even more effective. Testimony by industry-sponsored skeptics contributed to the defeat of proposals to increase the cost of fossil-fuel generated power, to cut the climate research budget, and to discredit the scientific findings of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change (IPCC), which represents the consensus of 2,500 scientists.
The rise to prominence of most of these greenhouse skeptics is spelled out in several reports of the Western Fuels Association, a Washington, DC-based nonprofit consortium of coal utilities and suppliers. In its 1994 annual report, Western Fuels declared that "there has been a close to universal impulse in the [fossil fuel] trade association community here in Washington to concede the scientific premise of global warming... We have disagreed, and do disagree, with this strategy."
To counter it, the group said it would support the work of those who challenged the findings of the world's leading scientists. Among them: Dr. Pat Michaels, associate professor of climatology at the University of Virginia; Dr. S. Fred Singer, also of UVA; and Dr. Robert Balling, director of the climatology program at Arizona State University.
Dr. Pat Michaels calls his industry-funded publications serious journals of climate science. However, he ignores the fact that all research sponsored by the federal government is subjected to the exacting requirements of scientific proof through a system of review by other experts. By contrast, Michaels' research is frequently published in industry journals without undergoing this kind of rigorous scientific scrutiny. Michaels has even referenced articles by E. Keith Idso, son of greenhouse skeptic Dr. Sherwood Idso, which were later published in the New American, the newsletter of the John Birch Society. (World Climate Review, Volume 1, Number 4.)
Witness this passage by Michaels in the Fall 1994 issue of World Climate Review: "The fact is that the artifice of climate-change-apocalypse is crumbling faster than Cuba... There is genuine fear in the environmental community about this one, for the decline and fall of such a prominent issue is sure to horribly maim the credibility of the green movement that espoused it so cheerily."
In the winter 1993 issue, he wrote of government-sponsored climate research scientists: "The fact is that virtually every successful academic scientist is a ward of the federal government. One cannot do the research necessary to publish enough to be awarded tenure without appealing to one or another agency for considerable financial support... Yet these and other agencies have their own political agendas."
By attacking these scientists as politically motivated, Michaels succeeded in having his testimony judged as credible by the House Science Committee, and was able to help secure funding cuts for programs to study the global climate.
In May 1995 testimony under oath to the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission, Michaels revealed under oath that he had received more than $165,000 in industry and private funding over the previous five years. Not only did Western Fuels fund two journals that he edited -- his World Climate Review and its successor newsletter World Climate Report -- but it provided a $63,000 grant for his research. Another $49,000 came to Michaels from the German Coal Mining Association and $15,000 from the Edison Electric Institute. Michaels also listed a grant of $40,000 from the western mining company Cyprus Minerals, the largest single funder of the anti-environmental Wise Use movement.
It is quite extraordinary that with such ties, Michael's testimony at congressional hearings chaired by Rep. Robert Walker (R-Pa.) and Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) was accorded more weight than that of four internationally renowned climate scientists.
The case of Dr. Robert Balling is equally intriguing. A geographer by training, much of Balling's research focused on hydrology, precipitation, water runoff and other Southwestern water and soil-related issues until he was solicited by Western Fuels. Balling has since emerged as one of the most visible and prolific of the climate-change skeptics.
Since 1991, Balling has received, either alone or with colleagues, nearly $300,000 from coal and oil interests in research funding, which he also disclosed for the first time at the Minnesota hearing. In his collaborations with Sherwood Idso, Balling has received about $50,000 from Cyprus, $80,000 from German Coal and $75,000 from British Coal Corp. Two Kuwaiti government foundations have given him a $48,000 grant and unspecified consulting fees and have published his 1992 book, "The Heated Debate," in Arabic. The book was originally published by a conservative think tank, the Pacific Research Institute, one of whose goals is the repeal of environmental regulations.
Among the skeptics, Professor S. Fred Singer stands out for being consistently forthcoming about his funding by large oil interests and conservative groups. Singer is director of the Science and Energy Policy Project at the University of Virginia. During a 1994 appearance on ABC's "Nightline," Singer did not deny having received funding from the Rev. Sun Myung Moon (to whose newspaper, the Washington Times, he is a regular contributor and whose organization has published three of his books). Nor has he apologized for his funding from Exxon, Shell, ARCO, Unocal and Sun Oil. Singer's defense is that his scientific position on global atmospheric issues predates that funding and has not changed because of it.
And it is true that Singer held firm to a similar position on another environmental controversy -- despite overwhelming evidence against his position. Singer once warned the oil companies that they face the same threat as the chemical firms that produced chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), a class of chemicals that was found to be depleting the earth's protective ozone layer. "It took only five years to go from... mandating a simple freeze of production [of CFCs] at 1985 levels, to the 1992 decision of a complete production phase-out -- all on the basis of quite insubstantial science," Singer wrote.
Contrary to his assertion virtually all relevant researchers say the link between CFCs and ozone depletion rests on unassailable scientific evidence. As if to underscore the point, the three scientists who discovered the CFC-ozone link were awarded the Nobel Prize for chemistry. But that did not faze Singer, who proceeded to attack the Nobel committee in the Washington Times. Singer's tantrum against the Nobel committee would be laughable -- except that his views are influential, especially with conservative politicians. Based in part on Singer's work, House Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) and Rep. John Doolittle (R-Calif.) are making an effort to withdraw U.S. participation in the Montreal Protocol, the international compact that mandates an end to production of the chemicals that destroy the ozone layer. Despite the remarkable international consensus on the Montreal Protocol, DeLay used Singer's pronouncements to attribute it merely to "a media scare."
The Disinformation Campaigns of Big Coal -- A Short History
Origins of Fossil Fuel Disinformation Campaigns
From the 1991 "Ice Campaign" run by the coal and utility industries to the Marshall Institute's bogus "Study" of 1998 (which was designed to resemble a National Academy of Sciences document) to the recent efforts of ExxonMobil and Peabody Energy to eviscerate efforts to address the climate crisis, in tandem with the Bush White House, the fossil fuel lobby and its ideological supporters have waged a relentless campaign of deception and disinformation to confuse people about the reality of warming-driven climate change.
In March, 2000, however, the campaign suffered a serious setback when the Global Climate Coalition, the main industry lobbying group, suffered major defections. More than a year after British Petroleum and Shell left the group, it was abandoned by Ford, Daimler-Chrysler, Texaco, The Southern Company, and General Motors. While many of these companies said they still opposed the Kyoto Protocol, their defections nevertheless represented an enormous victory for environmental and religious activists.
The GCC announced it will re-constitute itself as an umbrella group for trade associations rather than individual companies. Since it includes such groups as The American Petroleum Institute, the Automobile Manufacturers' Association and Western Fuels, it is still possible that many auto, coal and oil companies might still support its efforts to prevent the U.S. from taking any meaningful steps to address the climate crisis.
The group has spent more than $63 million to combat any progress toward addressing the climate crisis -- including a $13 million ad campaign in 1997 to support a Senate resolution against ratification of the Kyoto Protocol.
The reason is obvious.
The stabilization of the global climate requires a 70 percent cut in our fossil fuel emissions. That magnitude of reduction threatens the survival, in its present form, of the fossil fuel industry -- one of the largest commercial enterprises in history.
Since 1991, the fossil fuel lobby has attacked mainstream climate science, primarily through its use of a tiny handful of "greenhouse skeptics." It has also misrepresented the economics. Most recently, it has attacked the diplomatic foundations of the international climate convention.
The Western Fuels Association -- a $400 million coal cooperative -- is one of the leaders in this campaign of disinformation. Western Fuels has been quite candid about its attack on mainstream science. In one annual report, it declared: "...[T]here has been a close to universal impulse in the [fossil fuel] trade association community in Washington to concede the scientific premise of global warming...while arguing over policy prescriptions that would be the least disruptive to our economy...We have disagreed, and do disagree, with this strategy." As a result, Western Fuels has waged an unceasing war against mainstream science for the last eight years.
The Global Climate Coalition -- a lobbying group that represents fossil fuel, automotive and heavy industry interests -- has also been very active in spreading misleading information about the climate crisis.
A third institution that has contributed significantly public confusion on the climate issue is the George C. Marshall Institute, an extreme, politically conservative institute which maintains that the climate crisis is basically a liberal plot to subvert the U.S. economy.
Taken together, the various campaigns of disinformation have been extraordinarily successful in maintaining a relentless drumbeat of doubt in the public mind about the reality of global climate change.
Most recently, the main purveyors of disinformation on the climate have been funded by ExxonMobil, which funds a number of skeptics and an array of policy institutes which continue either to deny the reality of climate change or to minimize its importance.
By keeping the discussion focused on whether or not there is a problem, the fossil fuel lobby has effectively prevented discussion in the U.S. about what to do about it.
Things to keep in mind:
- There is an overwhelming concensus amongst the World's 2500 climate scientists that Anthropogenic Global Warming is very real and is a serious issue. Thousands of peer-reviewed papers have been published proving AGW
- There is overwhelming physical and empirical evidence from hundreds of independent lines of data/observational evidence that correlate and corroborate each other regarding AGW
- It is very hard to find a single scientist (and there are a relatively few among the 2500 global climate scientists), who disputes the basic facts of Anthropocentric Global Warming, who is without funding from the fossil fuel or related industries.
- Not a single scientist who disputes the basic facts of Anthropocentric Global Warminga has published a peer-reviewed paper - until the 2003 publication of the Soon and Baliunas paper, in which skeptics managed to take over a peer-reviewed journal by buying it from the publisher and then corrupting the peer-review process, prompting the resignation of the chief editor and half the editorial board over the blatant corruption of the peer-review process. See Stormy Times For Climate Research for the whole story.
- The documented manipulation by the Bush Administration and other governments most corrupted by fossil fuel special interests (such as Australia under the John Howard Administration) to re-write the conclusions of the reports on global warming by government scientists in order to downplay/suppress the level of concern/seriousness of the issue of AGW indicates that the elites, if they are involved in manipulation of climate science, have primarily tried to suppress the alarm over AGW rather than exaggerate it, contradicting the claims of pushers of the "AGW is a hoax” hypothesis.
To expect to find evidence of an over-arching global conspiracy by the "NWO elites" to manufacture an "Anthropogenic Global Warming Hoax" in some email discussions between the climate research scientists is naive at best, even if it were true. But nothing contained in the emails provides any evidence whatsoever of any such thing, just potentially bad behavior by a few scientists in response to the harassment from skeptics. Reading through the emails, one finds that there is no evidence of any worldwide conspiracy, no mention of George Soros or the Rockafellers nefariously funding climate research, no grand plan to ‘get rid of the Medieval Warming Period’, no admission that global warming is a hoax, no evidence of the falsifying of data, and no ‘marching orders’ from socialist/communist/vegetarian overlords. The truly paranoid will probably put this down to the hackers also being in on the plot though.
Mainly this is just a really sad development that is sure to intensify the polarization of the whole climate change issue that will create gridlock and prevent any possibility of sensible policy consensus (which is undoubtedly one of the primary goals of those behind this latest episode) and, with Alex Jones' predictable over-hyped sensationalistic BS over the issue, will further discredit 9/11 Truth by association with raving right wing anti-environmentalist, anti-progressive-everything-ist extremists :(
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