Why "Climategate" doesn't matter

Despite the recent brouhaha over emails from the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit (CRU) that put Al Gore and his team of Nobelers into hot water, "nothing in the stolen material undermines the scientific consensus that climate change is happening and that humans are to blame," according to an article in the February 2010 issue of Scientific American.

In other words, claims that client science is far from settled, that "tricks" (more on that below) were used and that researchers hid data that didn't support their argument are all bogus - bugbears created by denialists to ignore the obvious.

Here's why (all quotes from the SciAm article and are in green):

1). "Heat-trapping effects can be verified by any undergraduate in any lab," notes climate scientist Katherine Hayhoe of of Texas Tech University. "The detection of climate change, and its attribution to human causes, rests on numerous lines of evidence." [These] include melting ice sheets, rising sea levels and earlier onset of spring, not to mention higher average global temperatures.

2). Some of the kerfluffle rests on a mis-reading of the emails wording. For example, "trick" in one message actually describes a decision to use observed temperatures rather than stand-in data inferred from tree rings. Instead of implying deception, the word itself in science often refers to a strategy to solve a problem. (This is the part that the Limbaugh cronies jumped on - "They're trying to trick us!" Only problem is, they didn't understand what the word meant in scientific jargon and used this ignorance to fuel what turned out to be a misinformed, imaginary fire. Sur-prise, sur-prise, sur-prise.)

3). "Even if the CRU data "were dismissed as tainted, it would not matter," argues IPPC (UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) contributor Gary Yohe of Weslayan University. "CRU is but one source of analysis whose conclusions have been validated by other researchers around the world." Other sources include NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Climate Data Center, and even the IPCC, all of which provide access to raw data. In other words, twisting one set of findings that don't even say what some claim they do does not invalidate the findings of other, highly trustworthy sources. (Not trustworthy, you say? How many lies, distortions and half-truths do Limbaugh, Beck and their ilk pass off as "facts" in a given week? If you trust any of those people, you probably can't count that high.)

The one thing the whole debacle (perhaps too strong of a word - let's stick with kerfluffle, it's cuter and not as ominous) has shown is the sociological and political sides of science.

"This is a record of how science is actually done," notes Goddard's Gavin A. Schmidt. Historians will see "that scientists are human and how science progresses despite human failings. They'll see why science as an enterprise works despite the fact that scientists aren't perfect."

"Science has already played its role" in the climate debate, explains Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the IPCC. After all, IPCC authors had to achieve consensus with more than 190 countries as well as publicly respond to each comment on the draft documents. "Unfortunately, the [climate] negotiations are becoming solely political," Pachauri laments.

So once again, it's down to politics and blatant ignorance in the face of facts vs. politics and science. I'll take science for the win and that's my final answer.