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I have spent the last week reading far more emails belonging to other people than I ever would have liked. While a number of the emails have been flogged around the blogosphere and captured much of the attention, I found that a lot of emails worth seeing have gotten no attention at all. Including some that show that the denialista’s claims of a grand conspiracy is more of a grand hallucination. Because the stolen emails contain plenty of discussions that reveal just how hard the scientists work to make sure they are getting the information right.

That’s Pete Altman, NRDC’s Climate Campaign Director, writing last week on the Switchboard blog on the stolen emails you haven’t heard about.

For debunking of misrepresentations of the emails you have read about, you can go to Fight Clean Energy Smears, Union of Concerned Scientists, Pew Climate Center, RealClimate.org, SkepticalScience or links below.  But Altman focuses on the “ones that haven’t caught much attention. Any attention, for that matter. Possibly because these emails show that the denialistas claim of a grand conspiracy to exaggerate global warming is in reality a grand hallucination.”

He offers this “sample” of the myriad “discussions that reveal just how hard the scientists work to make sure they are getting the information right”:

Michael Mann to Ed Cook re long-term temperature trends and how to resolve differences in research findings. “There are some substantial scientific differences here, lets let them play out the way they are supposed to, objectively, and in the peer reviewed literature.” April 12, 2002.

Eric Steig explaining the goal for new paper to examine more closely the bearing that a particular line of evidence (icehole bores) has on the temperature record since the last ice age. “An example might be that the “thermal maximum” was actually warmer than present – a major issue of contention in the popular literature – and was more-or-less simultaneous in both polar regions. If this is correct, it will be a useful service to the paleoclimate community to demonstrate it. Alternatively, we may find after carefully looking at the data that we CANNOT reach such a conclusion. This would be an equally important result.” (emphasis added.) December 12, 2000.

Michael Mann to Ed Cook in an exchange about the possibility of Cook’s research being used to attack Mann’s findings: “Lets figure this all out based on good, careful work and see what the data has to say in the end. We’re working towards this ourselves, using revised methods and including borehole data, etc. and will keep everyone posted on this.” May 2, 2001.

Jonathan Overpeck to a team of scientists he coordinating to write a section of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report Summary for Policymakers, the goal of which is to make clear the most certain aspects of the science that policymakers need to understand in order to make policy decisions. “We have to make sure we stick to only the best science.” July 14, 2005.

Keith Briffa and Tim Osborn to Tom Crowley, discussing how to best represent what’s known about the “Medeival Warming Period” for the upcoming 4th Assessment Report. “I **absolutely** agree that we must avoid any bias or perception of bias. My comment on “nailing” was made to mean that uninformed people keeping coming back to the mwp, and describing it for what I believe it wasn’t. Our job is to make it clear what it was within the limits of the data. If the data are not clear, then we have to be not clear.” July 20, 2005.

The purloined emails remain, as many in the media elsewhere have explained, much ado about not bloody much:

• Nature editorial: “Nothing in the e-mails undermines the scientific case that global warming is real — or that human activities are almost certainly the cause.”
• Let’s look at one of the illegally hacked emails in more detail — the one by NCAR’s Kevin Trenberth on “where the heck is global warming?”
• Exclusive audio of press call today with Michael Mann, Gavin Schmidt, and Michael Oppenheimer on “Climate Science: Setting the Record Straight”
• Michael Mann updates the world on the latest climate science and responds to the illegally hacked emails

• Must read AP analysis of stolen emails: An “exhaustive review” shows “the exchanges don’t undercut the vast body of evidence showing the world is warming because of man-made greenhouse gas emissions.”

• 1700 UK scientists come forward to reaffirm climate science
• The American Association for the Advancement of Science reaffirms “The scientific evidence is clear: global climate change caused by human activities is occurring now, and it is a growing threat to society.”
• American Meteorological Society reaffirms “that the atmosphere, ocean, and land surface are warming; that humans have significantly contributed to this change; and that further climate change will continue to have important impacts on human societies….”
• Statement on stolen emails by IPCC Working Group I on basic climate science

The top image is from The Purloined Letter blog, which, like the scientific community, “hides” all of its thoughts (and data) in plain sight (see “Where is all the damn climate data?)”

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This entry was posted by Joe on Sunday, December 20th, 2009 at 9:49 am and is filed under SwiftHack. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.