At a critical time, the uproar over stolen emails suggesting scientists suppressed contrary views about climate change has emboldened sceptics - including US congressional Republicans looking to scuttle President Barack Obama's push for mandatory reductions in greenhouse gases.
The e-mail brouhaha dubbed "Climategate" by doubters comes as US delegates to the international climate conference in Copenhagen are trying to convince the world the United States is determined to move aggressively to rein in heat-trapping pollution.
To counter the delegates, a group of Republican lawmakers is going to Copenhagen to argue against mandatory greenhouse gas reductions. The climate sceptics gained political momentum when former Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin said Obama should boycott the negotiations in Denmark and "not be a party to fraudulent scientific practices" - a clear reference to the purloined emails from computers belonging to scientists at a British climate research centre.
Obama is going anyway.
Former Vice President Al Gore, the most recognised US voice on climate change, quickly rebutted Palin and accused the climate deniers in an interview with CNN television of "taking things out of context and misrepresenting" what the emails actually said.
On Thursday, more than 1700 British scientists released a statement saying they continue to have "the utmost confidence in the observational evidence for global warming and the scientific basis for concluding that it is due primarily to human activities."
That has not stopped Republican members of Congress, two dozen of whom are writing a letter to United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon demanding that he investigate the e-mails. Republican lawmakers say they will loudly and often raise questions about what they consider a corruption of climate science at the Denmark conference, where delegates from 192 nations are trying to forge a climate agreement.
It all began when hackers broke into a computer system belonging to a highly respected climate research center at Britain's University of East Anglia, stole several thousand emails spanning a decade between some of the worlds leading climate scientists, and three weeks ago put some of the spiciest ones on the Internet.
One referred to using a "trick" that could be used to "hide the decline" of temperatures. Another disparaged the skeptics, and a scientist said "the last thing I need is news articles claiming to question temperature increases." Yet another complained about "getting hassled by a couple of people" to release temperature data that suggests uncertainties about climate change.
"Don't any of you three tell anybody that the UK has a Freedom of Information Act," Phil Jones, the director of climate research unit, wrote in one e-mail. Jones, who temporarily stepped aside as unit director as an investigation into the matter proceeds, has said the comments have been taken out of context and there never was an intent to manipulate data.
Opponents of legislation before Congress to cap heat-trapping emissions and cut them as much as 17% by 2020 have seized on the e-mail disclosures and are likely to use them not only at the Copenhagen talks, but also in the Senate debate of climate change early next year.
"These emails show a pattern of suppression, manipulation and secrecy," insisted Rep. James Sensenbrenner, a Republican and longtime climate skeptic who is among a group of party lawmakers heading for Copenhagen.
"We now have thousands of emails showing several of the UN's top scientists apparently evading laws requiring transparency, defaming scientists with opposing viewpoints, and manipulating data to fit preconceived opinions," declared Sen. James Inhofe, a Republican and another leading climate skeptic in Congress, also going to Copenhagen.
Eileen Claussen, president of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, said she is not surprised by the recent e-mail uproar.
"The closer you get to actually doing something about this problem the more shrill and the more dogmatic the skeptics become because they are trying their hardest to stand in front of a train essentially," said Claussen.
Earlier this week, Envirormental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson announced that the agency had concluded, based on science, that greenhouse gases are public health threat and should be regulated.
"The vast body of evidence not only remains unassailable, it has grown even stronger," she said. Rep. Ed Markey, a Democrat and the co-author of the House-passed climate legislation, said the hacked emails scandal was being perpetuated by a "paid-for" coalition of deniers who are using it to distract from the action the US and world should be taking.
"These small number of deniers are out there still trying to derail something the rest of the world sees as an imperative for action," Markey said.
Friday, 11 December 2009
