“One of the lessons of Climategate is that scientists are all too human…. The next few chapters … expose how some climate scientists bent the rules of scientific engagement in ways that blurred the distinction between doing good science and preserving their own reputations.” – Fred Pearce, The Climate Files, p. 79.
When reputable scientists have different views of the same subject–such as climate sensitivity to anthropogenic forcing–the players need to be assessed. Who is less emotional and less bombastic? What is the track record of the players? And in an unsettled, still young area such as climate science, who expresses humility in the face of unknowns.
This leads to the central character of the Climategate scandal, revisited at MasterResource last week, Michael Mann, who has remained as unapologetic and strident as ever in the last decade.…
Continue Reading“It is possible that some areas of climate science have become sclerotic … too partisan, too centralized. The tribalism that some of the leaked emails display is something more usually associated with … primitive cultures.”
– Mike Hulme, CRU climate scientist. Quoted in Fred Pearce, The Climate Files (below)
Fred Pearce’s The Climate Files: The Battle for the Truth About Global Warming (2010) remains the definitive account of one of the greatest scientific scandals of our time. The book’s self-described summary states:
… Continue ReadingOne of the world’s leading writers on climate change tells the inside story of the events leading up to the much-publicized theft of climate-change related emails. He explores the personalities involved, the feuds and disagreements at the heart of climate science, and the implications the scandal has for the future. In November 2009 it emerged that thousands of documents and emails had been stolen from one of the top climate science centers in the world.
[Editor Note: It was during the Thanksgiving weekend 11 years ago that the Climategate’s unsettling oeuvre was first being disseminated and analyzed. This post summarizes some remembrances from that period.]
“The conflict between the two ideas about how science should be conducted–a closed system dominated by gatekeepers, or a more chaotic but less hierarchical open system–is the dominant story of the [Climategate] emails over more than a decade.” – Fred Pearce, The Climate Files (2010), p. 13.
“There is no doubt that these emails are embarrassing and a public-relations disaster for science.” – Andrew Dessler, “Climate E-Mails Cloud the Debate,” December 10, 2009.
Climategate lives in infamy. Then, and now, it is a case study of agendas driving science rather than science driving agendas.
A decade ago, climate alarmists and friends (including Dessler above) went into damage control.…
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