Study: ClimateGate Emails “Don’t Support” Skeptics

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


Climate change skeptics can no longer complain that the mainstream media has glossed over ClimateGate. Yesterday the Associated Press published a virtual exegisis of the 1,073 emails stolen from climate researchers at East Anglia University. It was written by five AP reporters who reviewed more than 1 million words between them and then sent the juiciest passages to seven experts in research ethics, climate science, and science policy. The experts were underwhelmed, to say the least. “None of the e-mails flagged by the AP and sent to three climate scientists viewed as moderates in the field changed their view that global warming is man-made and a threat,” the AP reported. “Nor did it alter their support of the conclusions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which some of the scientists helped write.”

The AP examined an email that is cited more often than any other by global warming skeptics, a message in which climate scientist Phil Jones says: “I’ve just completed [climatologist] Mike’s [Mann] trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years [from 1981 onward] and from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline [in temperature readings].” Skeptics have cited the message as evidence that climatologists are cooking the books, but the AP saw it differently:

Jones was referring to tree ring data that indicated temperatures after the 1950s weren’t as warm as scientists had determined.

The “trick” that Jones said he was borrowing from Mann was to add the real temperatures, not what the tree rings showed. And the decline he talked of hiding was not in real temperatures, but in the tree ring data which was misleading, Mann explained.

Mark Frankel, director of scientific freedom, responsibility and law at the American Association for the Advancement of Science, saw “no evidence for the falsification or fabrication of data, although concerns could be raised about some instances of very ‘generous interpretations.'” Dan Sarewitz, a science policy advisor at Arizona State University, added: “This is normal science politics, but on the extreme end, though within bounds.” (And that’s coming from a guy who works at the same university where climate researchers have taken more than $1 million from oil, coal and utility interests).

Ultimately, the AP found no evidence that the emails revealed a “culture of corruption,” as some Republicans have claimed. The story makes clear that the climatologists were under siege from lawsuits and FOIA requests from skeptics eager to twist their raw data. Despite these pressures, the emails show that the scientists respected their critics so long as they were professionals who published through the peer-review process and not Internet cranks eager to feed a “den of disinformation.” 

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate