The discussion on climate change is getting hotter. Image courtesy of NASA.
Joel Kontinen
The discussion on climate change is getting hotter and hotter after either a hacker or a disgruntled worker released a thousand e-mails that Professor Phil Jones, director of the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia, GB, and co-workers either sent or received.
For the most part, science publications have been reticent about the incident and its consequences but it seems that the temperature and in some cases also the blood pressure of participants on Internet forums has risen.
It is even possible that historians will remember the word ”climategate”.
The published e-mails suggest that CRU scientists have prevented dissidents from publishing their views in climate journals.
CRU scientists have admitted that in the 1980s they threw away raw climate data. Scientists who take a skeptical approach to man-made climate change cannot check whether the figures CRU has given are reliable.
In a separate incident, climate researchers in New Zealand have doctored climate data in order to get a warming trend.
Scientists and other activists who have raised alarms on the dangers of carbon dioxide have not always sounded very credible. For instance, Al Gore and some climate advocates have had a habit of flying from one climate conference to another in their private jets, spewing tons on carbon dioxide into the air.
This might say something about the credibility of the branch.
We might find it more difficult to believe that science should have to do with a quest of knowledge.
Sources:
Leake, Jonathan. 2009. Climate change data dumped. Timesonline (29 November) http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6936328.ece
Watt. Anthony. 2009. Uh, oh – raw data in New Zealand tells a different story than the official one. Whats Up With That. (25 November.) http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/25/uh-oh-raw-data-in-new-zealand-tells-a-different-story-than-the-official-one/#more-13215
Posts
