Fragilecologies

Tag: climategate

  • True Believers and Naysayers – Durban, S. Africa

    True Believers and Naysayers – Durban, S. Africa

    Views on climate change negotiations converge at COP17

    – Durban, South Africa

    The views of those setting up the COP 17 event in South Africa, many negotiators and skeptics’ seem to have converged. Generally speaking, no one believes that anything of value will take place at the conference as a step toward an agreement to restrict let along roll back carbon dioxide emissions in the near term. Their views converge for different reasons.

    Strange Bedfellows?
    The naysayers (a category that includes legitimate skeptics as well as deniers) revel in the release of the second set of emails by unknown hackers in advance of the COP 17 round of Kyoto Protocol-related negotiations. They lobby that unnamed evil forces have rigged climate change science in order to make money by shifting societal dependence on fossil fuels to renewable energy sources (they called the climate change issue a hoax).

    For their part negotiators have been disheartened ever since the crash of hopes and expectations in Copenhagen at COP 15 in December 2010. Since the summer of 2011 (maybe even earlier), following the COP 16 non-plus meeting in Cancun, Mexico, expectations were lowered to such a level that anything at all appearing as some sort of political consensus might be viewed as success of sorts. Those in charge of overseeing the negotiation process lowered expectations of success. In other words negotiators as well as onlookers were told to expect less from the COP process and, sadly, it is easier for governments to meet lowered expectations than to match elevated ones. So, yea-sayers and naysayers now agree that the UNFCCC Conference of Parties process is one of window-dressing with nothing of substance in the window. This gives proof to the saying, “nothing ventured, nothing gained.”

    Glantz modification of Davies J-curve <www.fragilecologies.com>

    Apparently this is the first of recent COPs in which no American congressperson has attended: too busy they say; too far says others; not a major conference says still others. The naysayers’ side point to the hacked emails of “climategate” (it should have been called ‘email-gate’) to claim victory. And the governments leading the push for control on greenhouse gas emissions now point to the financial crisis that plagues them: sorry, no funds can be spared now (to spare the Planet’s inhabitants of foreseeable dire global warming consequences).

    The truth of the matter is that the major polluting governments are really reluctant to deal with the heart of the matter, economies fueled by and dependent on fossil fuel availability and use. There was no will to attack climate change before the financial crisis when money was available and it is likely that after the financial crisis has been resolved some years down the road they will still find other reasons to continue “business as usual” with regard to fossil fuel consumption.

    Killing the hope for and the prospects of success at least in the near to mid term from the climate change negotiating process has been achieved. Governments are still not taking seriously the need to avert foreseeable adversities that are associated with global warming. While the current set of political leaders might not be alive to see the adversities, their younger yet-to-be-chosen successors will. By then we will likely be in a climate-related disaster bubble from which there would be little chance of escape.

  • “An IPCC dilemma: Who to trust talking to the media, its critics or its colleagues? ” Mickey Glantz (July 12, 2010)

    “An IPCC dilemma: Who to trust talking to the media, its critics or its colleagues? ” Mickey Glantz (July 12, 2010)

    The title of this editorial is a play on words with a bottom-line message: whom should you keep your eyes on — your enemies (critics) and or your colleagues, when it involves talking with the media about IPCC’s 5th Assessment findings.

    A colleague of mine, Ed Carr at the University of South Carolina, received a letter from the Head of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) cautioning those selected to prepare the next (5th) Climate Change Assessment Report not to talk to the media, leaving that task to the IPCC Secretariat.

    Ed Carr wrote (his blog in just below this one):

    So I [Carr] was dismayed this morning to receive a letter, quite formally titled “Letter No.7004-10/IPCC/AR5 from Dr Pachauri, Chaiman of the IPCC”, that might set such transparency back. While the majority of the letter is a very nice congratulations on being selected as part of the IPCC, the third paragraph is completely misguided:

    “I would also like to emphasize that enhanced media interest in the work of the IPCC would probably subject you to queries about your work and the IPCC. My sincere advice would be that you keep a distance from the media and should any questions be asked about the Working Group with which you are associated, please direct such media questions to the Co-chairs of your Working Group and for any questions regarding the IPCC to the secretariat of the IPCC.”

    It is clear that the IPCC still has a problem. It claims the problem is with the media, or at the very least it strongly hint at that. However, in this day and age, if one type of news medium does not catch IPCC scientists off guard another type will. That is what the media is paid to do. I would argue that secrets are hard to keep from the media and are hard to be kept by the media.

    A political ‘rule of thumb’ is that ships of state (eg, governments) tend  by metaphor to leak from the top; that is, leak confidential information to reporters either to reinforce a political position or to undermine it. I would argue that the same rule applies to the IPCC as a scientific climate-change- related ship of state. Leaks about scientific deliberations came from within the IPCC science community. Partly it is due to the persistence of reporters and science writers and partly it is because of the egos of some scientists who thrive on media attention. [NB: climategate was the result of hacked emails and NOT the result of loose lips (off-hand comments) by IPCC scientists (as far as we know).]

    So, it seems that the email directive and the defense of issuing it by the Head of the IPCC makes little sense. instead of embracing openness with the general public, the IPCC leadership has chosen to cast another shadow about the objectivity of the forthcoming 5th scientific climate change assessment. Is there something to hide? I don’t think so. Will the public be led to believe that there is something to hide? I think so.

    Instead of emerging from the climategate situation feeling exonerated and with heads held high, the IPCC leaders seem to haves come out of it paranoid and less secure about how its work presented by the media to the public.


    Transparency is the best cure for the IPCC’s image. Even with critics at the door and media as well, the best strategy to pursue is to pursue openness. Good objective science will win out. Policing the comments of your colleagues (eg, friends) will likely generate frustration and resentment thereby converting friends into “frenemies” (friendly enemies who support IPCC science but not the IPCC process).

  • GUEST Editorial by Edward Carr. July 9, 2010. “Apparently, we have learned nothing . . .”

    GUEST Editorial by Edward Carr (University of South Carolina) July 9, 2010

    “Apparently, we have learned nothing . . .”

    www.edwardrcarr.com/opentheechochamber/

    I am part of Working Group II of the 5th Assessment Report (AR5) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). As some of you might know, Working Group II of the previous Assessment Report (AR4) was the one that caught a lot of flak for problematic conclusions and references regarding Himalayan Glacier melt and whatnot. On one hand, these were stupid errors that should have been corrected in the review process (which will be part of my job in AR5).  On the other, they really did not affect the overall conclusions or quality of the report – they just gave those who continue to have an issue with the idea of climate change an opening to attack the report.

    Part of the problem for the IPCC is a perceived lack of openness – that something is going on behind closed doors that cannot be trusted.  This, in the end, was at the heart of the “climategate” circus – a recent report has exonerated all of the scientists implicated, but some people still believe that there is something sinister going on.

    There is an easy solution to this – complete openness.  I’ve worked on global assessments before, and the science is sound.  I’ve been quite critical of the way in which one of the reports was framed (download “Applying DPSIR to Sustainable Development” here), but the science is solid and the conclusions are more refined than ever.  Showing people how this process works, and what we do exactly, would go a long way toward getting everyone on the same page with regard to global environmental change, and how we might best address it.

    So I was dismayed this morning to receive a letter, quite formally titled “Letter No.7004-10/IPCC/AR5 from Dr Pachauri, Chaiman of the IPCC”, that might set such transparency back.  While the majority of the letter is a very nice congratulations on being selected as part of the IPCC, the third paragraph is completely misguided:

    “I would also like to emphasize that enhanced media interest in the work of the IPCC would probably subject you to queries about your work and the IPCC. My sincere advice would be that you keep a distance from the media and should any questions be asked about the Working Group with which you are associated, please direct such media questions to the Co-chairs of your Working Group and for any questions regarding the IPCC to the secretariat of the IPCC.”

    This “bunker mentality” will do nothing for the public image of the IPCC.  The members of my working group are among the finest minds in the world.  We are capable of speaking to the press about what we do without the help of minders or gatekeepers. I hope my colleagues feel the same way, and the IPCC sees the light . . .

  • “SKEPTICS, SHOW US YOUR EMAILS: ‘turn-about’ is fair play.” Mickey Glantz, DAY 4 at COP 15

    Let’s be honest. We have all said things on email ranging fro m serious to silly to stupid. We have all sent curt responses based on the fact that those receiving it understand the context of the abbreviated message. I am not condoning or excusing the sometimes dumb, sometimes uncaring and sometimes deceptive comments that have appeared in the so called “climategate” so called “scandal”. That situation will be sorted out by others, invesitgative committees most likely. Yes, the emails were illegally hacked. Nevertheless, they are now public. So, the public will read them and they have through the media. E-mailing has its consequences.

    Thank you Bizarro. All scientists, global warming hawks and deniers should have paid attention to your message
    Thank you Bizarro. All scientists, global warming hawks and deniers should have paid attention to your message

     

    There is no question in my mind that the integrity of both the scientists and of email security has been damaged. Others will assess that level of impact. But here i want to call for a level playing field. It’s a good faith challenge to the climate skeptics who are using climategate to discredit the science of climate change, though they cannot discredit impacts of a changing climate on people today and in the future.

    I call upon the climate change skeptics, political, scientific and media to share with the world a block of their unbroken years-long chain of emails about climate change . I am asking them to do this on a voluntary basis in order to show us that they are super human and do not share the  human frailty of ‘loose lips’ that the rest of humankind is subect to.

    Doing so would provide outsiders an even broader context in which we can evaluate the content of the emails that had been hacked and released from the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at University of East Anglia [and also at Penn State]. Let society be the judge about the words and motives of all involved in the climate change issue at the political, scientific and media levels, and let society be the judge on the merits of the finding and interpretation of the science of climate change.

    After all, isn’t turn about fair play? or what is good for the goose should be good for the gander as well, no?

  • A message to climate scientists: Emails are from Mars. Letters are from Venus

    The following excerpt is from an editorial I wrote in 2002 called “E-mails are from Mars. Letters are from Venus.” I believe it is relevant to the controversy swirling around the hacked files (emails and documents) of the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit. Those emails expose a side of science that does not receive much attention, except from an occasional writer whose manuscript might have been rejected for publication. Perhaps some of those disappointed writers, rejected research manuscripts in hand, were right to complain. Their voice collectively is now being heard around the world.

    E-mails are from Mars. Letters are from Venus
    Mickey Glantz

    Emails are impersonal. No matter how hard one tries, transmitting warm and emotional thoughts by way of email is a difficult task. The pressure of time, the need to spell check, the pressure to type in a correct representation of one’s thoughts, the pressure to answer other emails, typing with two or three fingers in front of a 15- or 17-inch monitor – all these factors lead to an impersonal communication. An email also lacks a personal signature.

    emails and Mars
    emails and Mars

    Letters, on the other hand, convey a much higher level of sincerity. There is little room for correction, unless a draft is first written and then a clean copy is made. People writing letters on paper must think through what they want to say, thought by thought, sentence by sentence, before it is written down. The letter-writer must go to the trouble of putting the letter in the mail. For centuries, writing on papyrus, animal skins, or parchment has been the preferred way to communicate. By analogy, writing on stone or clay tablets is, to me, more like writing down one’s thoughts in email.

    letters are from venus
    letters are from venus

    With written letters, there is a tendency to rethink what has been said and therefore there is a delay in sending them – a safety period, so to speak. With emails, the tendency is to fire them off, once they have been written. One may not actually want to take the time to modify (or mitigate) his or her first thoughts. And it is so easy to hit the “send” button. Not only that, but the sender does not have to wait several days before the recipient receive the message, and wait several more days for a reply. With emails, sending and receiving messages can take place in real time, and then often do. What was not clear in the first message can perhaps be cleared up on a second or third email.

    The writer of an email is also stripped of the trouble that the letter-writer must go through in order to mail a letter: address an envelope, find a stamp (remembering which is the latest stamp with the correct price on it – I don’t know what they currently cost), and then remember to get the letter into a mailbox.

    It is important to be aware of the differences between emails and hard-copy letters. They are not the same. While they do convey information from one person to another, they can be very different in the depth of thought that goes into them. The level of sensitivity varies, with email tending to be less sensitive, often incomplete thoughts that can mislead or provoke the recipient. I have actually witnessed a situation in which email correspondence between people in the same office went on a downward spiral, as one misleading statement led to an equally insensitive response, and so forth, until both parties ended up completely estranged, with no further communication possible between them.

    I suggest that, when writing an email, we take the time to go back and read it through and think about its content, and more importantly, its tone before sending. Try to put ourselves in the place of the recipient. This would lend a little “Venus” to our emails and mitigate their “Mars” aspect.