"Climategate" a farce of global proportions

Emails were stolen from the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia (UEA) last November. While thousands of emails were taken, only a handful provided fodder for those who reject the science underpinning climate change and muddied the waters for those who don't follow the issue closely. While this controversy stoked a lot of emotion, and high profile skeptics began ringing the death knell for climate change and clean energy policy, we are shown once again that "Climategate" and all its accompanying furor was in fact built on a house of cards.

I highly recommend this article from the Ecocentric blog hosted by Time. It provides some critical background and sets the record straight. Now let's move on and address the problem instead of pretending there isn't one.

Fact or Fiction Tuesday!

Folks, I know you've missed me. Especially Steve. Apologies for the big gap between this and my last post. Last week was brutal and this week I'm on vacation, but feeling the insatiable desire to blog out like it's 1999.

Let's get back in the swing of things with a Fact or Fiction Friday, even though it's Tuesday. Are you ready? Take a deep breath and read this important disclaimer before you enter the abyss.

Fact or fiction: climate models are unreliable. Shall we rock out to the Jeopardy theme song while you're pondering this one? Wow, my kingdom for a synthesizer.

But I digress. The answer is . . . FICTION! "While there are uncertainties with climate models, they successfully reproduce the past and have made predictions that have been subsequently confirmed by observations."

There are really three critical issues highlighted in SkepticalScience on this point. The first is fairly straightforward and that is, no one has created a model that can explain climate's behavior over the past century without factoring in CO2 warming. The second is the distinction between weather and climate. I'll let SkepticalScience do all the talking on this one.

A common argument heard is "scientists can't even predict the weather next week - how can they predict the climate years from now". This betrays a misunderstanding of the difference between weather, which is chaotic and unpredictable, and climate which is weather averaged out over time. While you can't predict with certainty whether a coin will land heads or tails, you can predict the statistical results of a large number of coin tosses. In weather terms, you can't predict the exact route a storm will take but the average temperature and precipitation will result the same for the region over a period of time.

The last point is one I hope will stick with you if nothing else does. It deals with uncertainty. Do we know enough to act? Yes, we do. We will never have 100% certainty but no one in their right mind waits to act until they do. Many of the impacts highlighted in the 2007 report conducted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have a 95% chance of happening. Do we really need 96%, 99%, or 100% to take action? If 95 doctors said you were sick, would you believe the 5 who said you weren't?

As always, please check out SkepticalScience to learn more about this and other arguments regularly touted by those who reject the science of climate change.

Why the Science Matters

There's been an enormous amount of chatter recently about climate change science. It started last year when computer hackers stole thousands of emails from the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia (UEA) and has continued in light of recent revelations that a small number of projections in the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) were inaccurate or not properly peer reviewed.

But neither event should take away from the fact that, despite all of the media coverage, and all of the sceptical arguments used in the aftermath of the UEA and IPCC developments, the overwhelming fundamentals have not changed - that climate change is happening and “man-made greenhouse gas emissions are very likely to be the cause”.

We are changing the level of CO2 in the atmosphere at an unprecedented rate. This significant shift is leading to changes taking place right now (e.g., Arctic sea ice melt, Greenland glacial melt, and increased ocean acidity). These are not potential impacts 20, 50, or 100 years from now, but changes happening in real time.

The latest review published by the Met Office Hadley Centre and other UK and international climate experts lends further support to these assertions. It shows the evidence for man-made climate change is even stronger now than when the IPCC carried out its last assessment in 2007.

So, do we just stand idly by and wait to see what happens? Or do we take concrete, pragmatic steps to fix the problem? If you haven't guessed by now, I say we choose the latter. Over the next few weeks, GreenMachine2050 will focus on what specific steps can be taken to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs), improve energy security, and create new low carbon economic future.

I know. It's going to be awesome. So stay tuned.