The University of East Anglia (UEA) is to launch a review into the theft and online publication of hundreds of emails sent by scientists in its climate research unit.
Selected and unverified extracts from the emails have been used by climate change deniers to claim that the scientists colluded to manipulate climate data, causing a storm on deniers’ blogs.
The charge is rejected as ‘despicable” by those involved and as groundless by leading scientific bodies.
With less than two weeks before the crucial United Nations climate change summit in Copenhagen, climate scientists and campaigners are assessing the damage the incident has caused to the public understanding of global warming. Opinion was split earlier this week over how to deal with the fallout.
Bob Ward, director of policy and communications at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change at the London School of Economics, called for an investigation.
‘Once appropriate action has been taken over the hacking, there has to be some process to assess the substance of the email messages as well,” he said.
‘The selective disclosure and dissemination of the messages has created the impression of impropriety, and the only way of clearing the air now would be through a rigorous investigation.”
But others said an investigation would be a mistake, particularly as some climate sceptics were also calling for one.
Andy Atkins, Friends of the Earth’s executive director, said: ‘Calls for an inquiry look suspiciously like an attempt to cast doubt on the science of climate change ahead of crucial UN negotiations.
‘The overwhelming majority of climate scientists believe that climate change is happening, that it is man-made, and that it poses a major threat to people across the planet. We can’t afford to be distracted from the need for urgent action.”
George Marshall, founder of the Climate Outreach and Information Network, said: ‘The UEA response has been frankly pathetic. One can only imagine that the UEA’s communications team is totally out of its depth. A less charitable conclusion is that they are defending the interests of UEA and are not concerned about — or have not understood — the damage to climate science.”
The United Kingdom’s Met Office, which jointly produces global temperature data with the climate research unit, said there was no need for an inquiry.
‘If you look at the emails, there isn’t any evidence that the data was falsified and there’s no evidence that climate change is a hoax,” a spokesperson said.
‘It’s a shame that some of the sceptics have had to take this rather shallow attempt to discredit robust science undertaken by some of the world’s most respected scientists. It’s no surprise, with the Copenhagen talks just days away, that this has happened now.”
Michael Mann, director of the earth system science centre at the University of Pennsylvania, and a long-term target of sceptics, agreed the timing was suspicious.
‘What appears to have happened is that going into this monumental climate summit in a couple of weeks the other side, which does not favour taking action to combat climate change, resorted to an illegal smear campaign,” he said.
‘They are going through them and cherry-picking them for any word they can find that is cited out of context and can appear incriminating. I think it’s despicable.” He said the emails did not undermine the body of science.
‘This doesn’t make any difference at all in the degree of consensus on climate change,” Mann said. ‘I hope it boomerangs back on the criminals.” —