http://www.laconiadailysun.com/opinion/letters/86940-james-veverka-6-12-990
To the Editor,
Did Don Ewing say Climategate? Another fake scandal of course. Right wingers hacked 1079 of Michael Mann's emails and created a huge lie that would appeal to deniers and their industrialist pals. They claimed conspiracy, exaggeration, collusion, resistance to disclosure, manipulation of data, private admissions of flaws in their public claims and much more. Its a lie. A number of independent investigations from different countries, universities and government bodies have investigated the stolen emails and found no evidence of wrong doing. Some of the investigators were Pennsylvania State University, the UK government's House of Commons Science and Technology Committee, an international Scientific Assessment Panel, in consultation with the Royal Society, the US Environmental Protection Agency and others. [1]
Statements from these investigations included, "there is no substance to the allegation against Dr. Michael E. Mann", "we find that their rigour and honesty as scientists are not in doubt", "Professor Jones’s actions were in line with common practice in the climate science community", "no evidence of any deliberate scientific malpractice in any of the work of the Climatic Research Unit", "found this was simply a candid discussion of scientists working through issues that arise in compiling and presenting large complex data sets".
On the alleged "trick", a report stated, "there exists no credible evidence that Dr. Mann had or has ever engaged in, or participated in, directly or indirectly, any actions with an intent to suppress or to falsify data. The so-called “trick” was nothing more than a statistical method used to bring two or more different kinds of data sets together in a legitimate fashion by a technique that has been reviewed by a broad array of peers in the field."
In February 2011, the Department of Commerce Inspector General conducted an independent review of the emails and found "no evidence in the CRU emails that NOAA inappropriately manipulated data". In August 2011, the National Science Foundation concluded "Finding no research misconduct or other matter raised by the various regulations and laws discussed above, this case is closed."[2]
The American Meteorologist Society (AMS) study that Mr Ewing referenced does not say what he says it says. The survey was designed to test the Doran and Zimmerman study. It verified it. Here is what the study actually said. "Climate science experts who publish mostly on climate change and climate scientists who publish mostly on other topics were the two groups most likely to be convinced that humans have contributed to global warming, with 93% of each group indicating their concurrence."[3] The AMS released this policy statement in 2012. "It is clear from extensive scientific evidence that the dominant cause of the rapid change in climate of the past half century is human-induced increases in the amount of atmospheric greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide (CO2), chlorofluorocarbons, methane, and nitrous oxide."[4]. Oops.
Mr Ewing doesnt like the President's position on Climate Change. In 2014 The Department of Defense released its Climate Change Adaptation Roadmap (CCAR), which states: “Climate change will affect the DoD’s ability to defend the nation and poses immediate risks to U.S. national security.” Must be a hoax! [5]
In 2011, among the American Geophysical Union, Farnsworth and Lichter found that 84% believed humans had a significant impact on climate while 5% said little or none. In 2010 The Anderegg study "used an extensive dataset of 1,372 climate researchers and their publication and citation data to show, not only that 97–98% of the climate researchers most actively publishing in the field support the tenets of anthropogenic climate change, but also that the relative climate expertise and scientific prominence of the researchers unconvinced of ACC are substantially below that of the convinced researchers." [6]
In 2009, Doran and Zimmerman found that 98% of the most widely published Climatologists believed humans had a significant impact on climate. They also found that 90% of scientists publishing on the subject of climate change agreed. 88% of climatologists regardless of publishing agreed and 82% of Earth Science faculty and researchers agreed. Ewing misrepresented the Doran study by saying there were only 77 people. The team sent out 10,000 survey letters to the American Geological Institute’s directory of geoscience. They received 3146 responses and then publicized the results from two questions: (1) Have mean global temperatures risen compared to pre-1800s levels? (2) Has human activity been a significant factor in changing mean global temperatures? About 90% of the scientists agreed with the first question and 82% percent with the second. The 97% was the count among the 79 widely publishing Climatologists.
The Cook study looked at 11,944 abstracts of papers on the topics 'global climate change' or 'global warming' written over a 20 year period ending in 2011. Two-thirds expressed no position on Anthropomorphic Global Warming (AGW). Of the rest, 97.1% or 3822 papers endorsed the consensus position that humans are causing global warming while 82 rejected it.[7]
I addressed the myth of global cooling alarmism in my last letter. Now Russ Wiles is jumping in and Don has for the third time mentioned it. Its a bogus mainstream media story. A NASA projection had said if we quadrupled our Sulfate aerosols we could trigger rapid cooling. While a few papers were published about cooling, the vast majority of climate scientists were still predicting warming.[8] Warming is what research pointed to. A law was passed which required scrubbers on smokestacks. The cost of not fixing the aerosol particulates problem would be far more expensive than the cost of the scrubbers. Fred Singer lost again. Scrubbers put the brakes on a lot of smog, acid rain and many serious health risks.
Don says that science shouldn't be so political. I suggest he read Merchants of Doubt by science historian Naomi Orestes. Its about how a handful of cold war scientists with ties to big industry and phony cover groups obscured the dangers of cigarettes, acid rain, the Ozone hole, Pesticides, secondhand smoke and global climate change. These men tried to downplay the harm just as they are doing now. They actually lied about cigarettes and cancer for 50 years.
[1]http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/solutions/fight-misinformation/debunking-misinformation-stolen-emails-climategate.html
[2]http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2011/08/22/300821/nsf-inspector-general-investigation-michael-mann/
[orestes]http://www.sciencemag.org/content/306/5702/1686.full
[3]http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/BAMS-D-13-00091.1
[4]http://www.ametsoc.org/policy/2012climatechange.pdf
[5]http://climateandsecurity.org/2014/10/13/military-leaders-agree-with-pentagon-climate-change-an-immediate-risk-to-national-security/
[6]http://www.climatesciencewatch.org/2013/05/12/4-pinocchios-for-rep-chris-stewart/
[7]http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/8/2/024024/article
[8]http://www.skepticalscience.com/ice-age-predictions-in-1970s-intermediate.htm
