Just as the movement to change our actions to combat global warming has really caught on, a sensational story of falsified data breaks. According to reports, climate research scientists at a leading research unit in England exchanged hundreds of emails involving the falsifying of data in order to provide strong evidence for global warming.
This is a heavy blow to those that support the cause, as skeptics are using these emails as evidence that global warming doesn’t exist. Obviously, these emails do not disprove global climate change, but the scary part is what the average citizen is going to think about the whole thing. Without knowing the whole story, the one might be disinclined to go that extra step to change their actions.
So here it is, to the best of my ability, the facts behind the scandal.
Fact #1: We often forget that a lot of scientific research is funded with government fellowships and research grants. Because of this, scientific research is very closely tied up with politics. This is the reason we see conflicting evidence on a topic from opposing political sides. The scientists whose research is funded by one side is going to focus on data that supports that side’s position, while the other research team is going to be doing the same. It even happens at a smaller scale, which is why "research" funded by a certain corporation is often biased, and third-party research is sometimes the only way we can trust "scientific evidence."
Yes, this may seem to be an ugly, dirty way to use science to support a certain claim, but it doesn’t mean we can’t trust any scientific research.
Fact #2: The emails found by the hacker do not show that the scientists were making up data. What it really shows is that they were manipulating data to overstate the case for climate change. Yes, this is completely wrong, but it doesn’t automatically discount the existing overwhelming evidence for global warming. The scientists also withheld making some information public that disproved some of their data.
Even Fox News concedes that “the science behind global warming may be exaggerated,” but no one is saying global warming doesn’t exist.
Why would they do this? Perhaps they were concerned if they didn’t come up with strong enough evidence, they might lose their funding. Hundreds of billions of dollars are on the line here and that proved to be a powerful enough motivator for scientists to change their data.
Fact #3: The emails show that climate research scientists raised temperatures .15 of a degree in order to cover up a "blip" in their data records that show cooling temperatures. The emails also show that the scientists were trying to control what information was made public and what data was published. This is wrong because rather than releasing all the evidence and letting others determine the true story, they wanted to manipulate what was put into data records.
On the other hand, the emails span over a decade and much is taken out of context. The truth of the matter is that the scientists were not completely honest, but this doesn’t disprove global warming. The issue at stake here is the degree to which human activities contribute to global warming and the degree to which global warming is happening.
Fact #4: The research scientists involved continue to believe that "global warming is unequivocally happening," and they were interested in releasing data that supported that position in order to ensure continued action on both a national and global level to fight the effects of global warming.
Fact #5: It is sad that we cannot trust those in place to find out the truth of what is going on in our world. However, the fact remains that these scientists are not the only few studying climate change. There are still hundreds of thousands of other scientists that have found and published evidence that points clearly to global warming trends and human contribution to those trends.
According to the Real Climate blog; "More interesting is what is not contained in the emails. There is no evidence of any worldwide conspiracy, no mention of George Soros nefariously funding climate research, no grand plan to ‘get rid of the MWP,’ no admission that global warming is a hoax, no evidence of the falsifying of data, and no ‘marching orders’ from our socialist/community/vegetarian overlords.”
To sum it up, despite the scandalous nature of the emails, global warming undoubtedly exists.
