You wouldn't read about it: climate
scientists right
SMH by Rodney Tiffen, July 26, 2010
Chances are, you have not heard much about Climategate
lately, but last November it dominated the media. Three weeks before the
Copenhagen summit, thousands of emails from the Climate Research Unit at the
University of East Anglia were published on a Russian website.
The research institute was a leading contributor
to the fourth Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, and some of the
leaked emails showed the scientists in a poor light.
The scandal was one of the pivotal moments in
changing the politics of climate change. What seemed close to a bipartisan
agreement on an environmental trading scheme collapsed with Tony Abbott's
defeat of Malcolm Turnbull. Within months the Rudd government lost its nerve on
what the former prime minister called ''the greatest moral and economic
challenge of our time''.
By casting doubt on the integrity of the
scientists, Climategate helped puncture public faith in the science, and
probably contributed to Labor's political panic. The echo chamber of columnists
reverberated with angry and accusatory claims. In Australia, Piers Akerman
said: ''The tsunami of leaked emails . . . reveal a culture of fraud,
manipulation, deceit and personal vindictiveness to rival anything in a John le
Carre or John Grisham thriller.'' Later he wrote: ''The crowd that gathered in
Copenhagen were there pushing a fraud.''
Andrew Bolt thought that ''what they reveal is
perhaps the greatest scientific scandal'' of our time. ''Emails leaked on the
weekend show there is indeed a conspiracy to deceive the world - and Mr Rudd
has fallen for it.''
Miranda Devine wrote: ''We see clearly the
rotten heart of the propaganda machine that has driven the world to the brink
of insanity.''
The ramifications of Climategate were immediate.
The climate unit's head, Professor Phil Jones, was forced to stand down. Three
inquiries were set up to examine the scientists' conduct.
The first, a British House of Commons select
committee, reported in March that the scientific reputation of Professor Jones
and the CRU remained intact. The second, a science assessment panel, set up
with the Royal Society and consisting of eminent British researchers, reported
in April.
Its chairman, Lord Oxburgh, said his team found
''absolutely no evidence of any impropriety whatsoever'' and that ''whatever
was said in the emails, the basic science seems to have been done fairly and
properly''.
The third, set up by the university itself,
published its 160-page report two weeks ago. On the specific allegations made
against the behaviour of the CRU scientists, ''we find that the rigour and
honesty [of the scientists] as scientists are not in doubt''. Importantly, it
concluded: ''We did not find any evidence of behaviour that might undermine the
conclusions of the IPCC assessments.''
In other words, nothing in the emails undermined
the research of the climate scientists. Like the other two, the inquiry found
aspects of the scientists' behaviour that fell short of professional standards
- ''failing to display the proper degree of openness''.
What might seem the most damning was the way
Jones dealt with freedom of information requests, but context makes his
behaviour more understandable. In July last year alone, the CRU received 60 FoI
requests. Answering them would have been too much for even all the unit's staff
time. In a matter of days, it received 40 similar FoI requests, each wanting
data from five different countries - 200 requests in all. Jones concluded the
unit was subject to a vexatious campaign.
While not fully excusing their behaviour, one
has to appreciate the embattled position of scientists who received a steady
stream of obscene and abusive emails and constant public attacks on their
integrity.
After the leaks, Jones, now reinstated, received
death threats and said he had contemplated suicide.
You might imagine the media would be keen to
report on authoritative conclusions about allegations it had found so
newsworthy in December. But coverage of each of the reports has been
non-existent in many news organisations and in others brief or without
prominence.
At best, the coverage of the inquiries'
conclusions added up to a 20th of the coverage the original allegations
received, which leaves us to ponder the curiosities of a news media that gets
so over-excited by dramatic allegations and then remains so incurably
uninterested in their resolution.
The newspapers that gave greatest play to the
allegations tended to give less attention to the findings. The columnists who
gave greatest vent to their indignation have not made any revisions or
corrections, let alone apologised to the scientists whose integrity they so
sweepingly impugned.
Even at the time, it was clear much of the
coverage was more attuned to maximising sensation rather than to reporting with
precision. The sheer number of leaked emails, for instance, was sometimes taken
as proof of the scale of the scandal, as if they were all disreputable.
In fact, only from a handful could anything
sinister be conjured.
It is a common criticism of the media that it
prominently publishes allegations, but gives less coverage to the prosaic facts
that later refute them. But rarely is the disproportion so stark. Rarely has
such an edifice of sweeping accusation and extravagant invective been
constructed on such a slender factual basis.
Rarely does it do such damage.
Rodney Tiffen is emeritus professor of government
and international relations at the University of Sydney.