Another round of leaked e-mails from the University of East Anglia’s (UEA) Climatic Research Unit have surfaced, once again illustrating why governments should not be making serious policy decisions based on mainstream climate science.
Several of the following excerpts not only call into question conventional “climate change” wisdom but also suggest the selective use of information with an agenda in mind:
Observations do not show rising temperatures throughout the tropical troposphere unless you accept one single study and approach and discount a wealth of others. This is just downright dangerous. We need to communicate the uncertainty and be honest.
So climate change is not certain, and there is evidence to the contrary.
He’s skeptical that the warming is as great as we show in East Antarctica—he thinks the “right” answer is more like our detrended results in the supplementary text. I cannot argue he is wrong.
Possibly exaggerated predictions? No surprise there.
I too don’t see why the schemes should be symmetrical. The temperature ones certainly will not as we’re choosing the periods to show warming.
Choosing data to get a desired result is generally not considered good scientific practice.
Any work we have done in the past is done on the back of the research grants we get—and has to be well hidden. I’ve discussed this with the main funder (US Dept of Energy) in the past and they are happy about not releasing the original station data.
Why does the original data need to be hidden? Why is the U.S. Department of Energy happy about it?
The trick may be to decide on the main message and use that to guid[e] what’s included and what is left out.
Publishing information based on whether it supports a preconceived objective is not an impartial scientific exercise.
There shouldn’t be someone else at UEA with different views [from “recent extreme weather is due to global warming”]—at least not a climatologist.
Are dissenting opinions are not welcome within climatology?
I also think the science is being manipulated to put a political spin on it which for all our sakes might not be too clever in the long run.
Considering what some of his colleagues have said, he may be right.
Around the world, governments are making decisions based on climate science—decisions that affect the market, taxpayers, and consumers. Because of this, honest information regarding the risks, costs, and options must be provided to both officials and the public. Instead, the correspondence indicates that a political agenda is influencing the climate science community.
Government decisions should not be based on selective and biased science. Energy-use mandates and carbon restrictions disrupt the market and have substantial costs, and they are predicated on the assumption that such measures would prevent a global catastrophe. If the underlying support for these measures is proven to be unfounded, it will become apparent that lawmakers have squandered taxpayer dollars to the benefit of special interests without general public benefit.
These e-mails are damaging because they erode the credibility of anthropogenic climate change proponents. Policies based on climate change are economically damaging, so fear must be the primary motivation behind emissions control. But without objective scientific support, fear becomes an ineffective tactic.
William Schrider is a member of the Young Leaders Program at The Heritage Foundation. Click here for more information on interning at Heritage.