Hacking reality: "Climategate," denialist propaganda, and the truth about climate change

By Michael J.W. Stickings

I've been meaning to post for a while now on the whole "climategate" thing, the supposed scandal uncovered in those hacked e-mails from the University of East Anglia's Climactic Research Unit. Global warming skeptics/denialists on the right are obviously making a big deal of those e-mails. What they seem to think is that they reveal some sort of grand conspiracy to cover up the truth, to fix the evidence around what amounts to a massive hoax, a scandal that undermines the entirety of climate change science. But to me, all they reveal is that there isn't any conspiracy at all, that it's all much ado about very little. Here's TNR's Brad Plumer:

From what I've gathered, the stolen e-mails reveal that climatologists are: a) engaged in a lot of boring and dry data-crunching, b) extremely hostile toward global-warming skeptics like Cato's Pat Michaels, and c) not always nice people.

I think that's exactly right. As is this:

One major question is whether any of the stolen e-mails show that climate scientists are somehow fudging data. And the answer, as best I can tell, is "certainly not."

Some of the e-mails may be "unseemly" -- or, rather, what is contained in some of them is -- and they do at the very least create the impression of impropriety on the part of some climate change scientists, but that's it. What they show is that these scientists are all-too-human, that there is politics within the scientific community, and that the scientific community isn't a monolith of unitary thought. There is disagreement, there is bitterness, and there is pettiness, but there is no overriding "fraud" -- and there is no scandal. (Make sure to read Brad's post in full for context.)

Skeptics/denialists are making so much of this, and predictably so, and they will no doubt continue to select decontextualized points to back up their indefensible case. It is essential, as always, to push back. Here's an excellent post on "climategate," quoted in full, by Alan Colmes:

Climate scientists who just released "The Copenhagen Diagnosis" say ice sheets are melting at an increased rate, and future sea-level rise will be higher than previously forecast. But scientific evidence means nothing to those with an anti-global warming agenda, who point to illegally hacked mails to try to prove that global warming is a hoax. Sadly for them, the anti-global-warming hysteria isn't all it's cracked up to be.

The ugly part of this has more to do with scientists jockeying for position and arguing over how to best put forth their theories in a contentious political climate. The uglier part is those who are distorting this for the purpose of advancing anti-environmental theories. RealClimate puts it in perspective.

More interesting is what is not contained in the emails. There is no evidence of any worldwide conspiracy, no mention of George Soros nefariously funding climate research, no grand plan to 'get rid of the MWP', no admission that global warming is a hoax, no evidence of the falsifying of data, and no 'marching orders' from our socialist/communist/vegetarian overlords. The truly paranoid will put this down to the hackers also being in on the plot though.

Instead, there is a peek into how scientists actually interact and the conflicts show that the community is a far cry from the monolith that is sometimes imagined. People working constructively to improve joint publications; scientists who are friendly and agree on many of the big picture issues, disagreeing at times about details and engaging in 'robust' discussions; Scientists expressing frustration at the misrepresentation of their work in politicized arenas and complaining when media reports get it wrong; Scientists resenting the time they have to take out of their research to deal with over-hyped nonsense. None of this should be shocking.

Out-of-context cherry-picking is the furthest thing from science.

But, then, so is global warming denialism, and so is the right's manufactured "climategate" scandal. In the real world, where science trumps propaganda, or at least where science reveals the truth and propaganda seeks to obscure it with lies, the struggle to address the most pressing crisis of our time, a crisis that could very well lead to massive global destabilization and genocide, continues. And it is the scientific community, occasional unseemliness and all, that leads the way.