Adele Ferguson - A way to go to convince UN on global warming

REMEMBER the big flap last November when unknown hackers illegally broke into a server at a British climate institute and stole and published on the Internet thousands of emails and documents in which global warming scientists privately discussed how to silence anyone who disagreed with their view that mankind is the cause?

All hell broke loose in the scientific community, considering the climate institute at the University of East Anglia is the main source of information and advice on climate change for the United Nations.

Further, an international conference on the subject of climate change was coming up in December in Copenhagen, at which the world’s leaders were expected to agree on a plan to curb greenhouse emissions.

The conference was thrown into a tizzy and deteriorated into a series of closed door meetings, including one called by China, hosting Brazil, India and South Africa. President Obama was not invited but found out about it and crashed it anyway.

THE FIVE NATIONS came up with a pact Obama took credit for brokering, but it was denounced by poor countries because it was non binding and set no overall target for achievement.

Also, three separate reviews into the matter of the stolen e-mails were called for to determine the correctness of scientific conduct and make any needed recommendations, the third and final of which made its report early in July.

The third, like the first two, found no evil in what the e-mailing scientists did.

All three, according to news stories, mostly cleared the scientists of misconduct and called on them to be more open with their data.

I didn’t expect that from the Wall Street Journal, which headlined its story, “Report Backs Climate Data, Scolds Scientists.”

I had forgotten for the moment that the WSJ is the most liberal newspaper in the country except for its editorial pages, but its editorial folk didn’t forget. My Journal sported another view of the review and the way it was being interpreted. “The Climategate Whitewash Continues,” was the headline over environmental sciences professor Patrick J. Michaels’ blistering of the supposedly independent review of the evidence which said, in effect, there was nothing there. Review Chair Muir Russell of Glasgow claimed no one with any links to the university or the climate science community was involved in making recommendations based on what they found.

NO LINKS? One of the panel’s four members was on the faculty of East Anglia’s School of Environmental Sciences for 18 years, said Michaels.

The Russell report also dismissed an allegation the Research Unit had withheld temperature data from skeptics. Really? says Michaels. Its director wrote an e-mail that told an Australian scientist “why should I make the data available to you when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?”

There also was no evidence, said Russell, to substantiate an allegation there was subversion of the peer review or editorial process.” Michacls detailed the fact several scientific journals had stopped accepting anything that substantially challenges the perceived wisdom by the Research Unit blaming global warming on mankind. The reason the Russell panel members didn’t find anyone to blame in the Climategate emails, said Michaels, “is because they only interviewed their own people (who wrote the e-mails) and not the people whom they trashed.”

I guess we’re a long way yet from convincing the UN’s climate experts that global warming has been occurring naturally for millions of years and will continue to do so.

(Adele Ferguson can be reached at P.O. Box 69, Hansville, Wa., 98340.)