Investors charged with managing risk mustn't confuse ideology with science
As our planet's climate has continued to change, those who aren't convinced by the scientific evidence have increasingly turned to attacking climate scientists.
When scientists happen to discover a problem that might require government intervention — from lead in water, to acid rain, to aerosols eating away at the ozone layer — industry groups and the politicians they influence have aligned to attack the scientists instead of honestly debating policy.
Ken Cuccinelli, the attorney general of Virginia, is one such politician. But he's gone a step further than most, abusing his power to demand e-mails and research documents from the University of Virginia related to Dr. Michael Mann, who worked there for several years.
Investor's Business Daily recently defended his actions.
While it's understandable for people to question the evidence for human-induced climate change, we should do so soberly and without bias toward the scientists working on the issue.
Take for instance, the so-called "hockey stick" research that Mann and two of his colleagues published in the late 1990s. The research, which investigates global average temperatures over the last millennium, is often called the "hockey stick" because of the sharp upward bend in the temperature trend starting in the 20th century.
When Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, attacked the hockey stick in 2005, he sent a letter to Mann and his colleagues demanding a range of information from them. The American Association for the Advancement of Science wrote to Barton, saying his letter gives "the impression of a search for some basis on which to discredit these particular scientists and findings, rather than a search for understanding."
The association's instincts were right. Barton subsequently commissioned a report from a George Mason University statistician that was filled with misinformation about Mann et al.'s research.
Meanwhile, Rep. Sherwood Boehlert, R-N.Y., asked the National Research Council (NRC), an arm of the National Academy of Sciences, to do a truly science-based examination of the hockey stick.
Their conclusion?
Mann and his colleagues had broken some new ground in climate research and did so using statistical techniques that were perfectly valid, but hadn't been used in climate research before. Most importantly, their methodology and their conclusions were sound.
Since then, the hockey stick-shape temperature plot that shows today's climate considerably warmer than past climate has been verified by many scientists using different methodologies and different types of data.
Debates over individual pieces of climate research like the hockey stick obscure the larger picture. In 2010, the NRC stated that global warming is occurring, caused largely by human activities, and poses significant risks for a broad range of human and natural systems.
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