This all reminds me a bit of 1996, shortly after the release of the IPCC Second Assessment Report. At that time, the Science and Environmental Policy Project, the Global Climate Coalition, and Fred Seitz (abetted by the Wall Street Journal) mounted a smear campaign against Ben Santer claiming he had inappropriately altered Chapter 8 of the IPCC report. They managed to spin this out for quite a while, and use the false controversy to manufacture doubt about the conclusions of Chapter 8 -- that the balance of evidence shows a human impact on warming.
Yet, in the end, there was nothing to it. Ben Santer was completely exonerated, though he was put through hell along the way. In 1998 he was awarded a MacArthur Genius grant in recognition of the quality of his work on the climate record.
I cannot comment on the issues raised by Phil's request that people delete certain email, since I do not have the necessary legal background to do so and do not have access to the full record regarding the FOIA requests. However, anybody who has the least familiarity with the work itsellf or the published record can see that all the accusations of "fraud" or fudged data are completely bogus. As far as that goes, this is just a witch hunt.
I don't know if people understand the nature of work in historical climatology. It is very exacting tedius and unglamorous work, involving sifting through ships' logs, thinking about bait tank thermometers, diving into icy lakes after tree trunks, sorting out a hundred factors that do or don't make trees respond to temperature. It's a thankless task, and while I can't defend some of Phil's graceless choice of words in what he thought were private emails, the work itself has been a very important contribution to the subject. If the reward is just to attract the level of harassment these cyber-thugs have directed at Phil, then it is only going to drive competent people out of that subject. I hope somebody will be brave enough to step in and fill the gap, but I fear it will not happen.
The whole field of historical climatology will be impoverished for this. And meanwhile, one of the few agencies working on the temperature record has been at least partly taken out of action. I suppose the manufactured doubt industry is not going to rest until we have lost all ability to analyze what the climate has really been doing in the past. Congratulations on your progress toward that goal.
Yet, in the end, there was nothing to it. Ben Santer was completely exonerated, though he was put through hell along the way. In 1998 he was awarded a MacArthur Genius grant in recognition of the quality of his work on the climate record.
I cannot comment on the issues raised by Phil's request that people delete certain email, since I do not have the necessary legal background to do so and do not have access to the full record regarding the FOIA requests. However, anybody who has the least familiarity with the work itsellf or the published record can see that all the accusations of "fraud" or fudged data are completely bogus. As far as that goes, this is just a witch hunt.
I don't know if people understand the nature of work in historical climatology. It is very exacting tedius and unglamorous work, involving sifting through ships' logs, thinking about bait tank thermometers, diving into icy lakes after tree trunks, sorting out a hundred factors that do or don't make trees respond to temperature. It's a thankless task, and while I can't defend some of Phil's graceless choice of words in what he thought were private emails, the work itself has been a very important contribution to the subject. If the reward is just to attract the level of harassment these cyber-thugs have directed at Phil, then it is only going to drive competent people out of that subject. I hope somebody will be brave enough to step in and fill the gap, but I fear it will not happen.
The whole field of historical climatology will be impoverished for this. And meanwhile, one of the few agencies working on the temperature record has been at least partly taken out of action. I suppose the manufactured doubt industry is not going to rest until we have lost all ability to analyze what the climate has really been doing in the past. Congratulations on your progress toward that goal.
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