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The head of the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit, Professor Phil Jones, has stepped aside from his directorship for a temporary period to enable a faster and more comprehensive investigation of the Center’s electronic security and of how he (and others) managed the CRU (and their email correspondence) in the face of determined climate change denier assaults on their integrity, their work processes, and otherwise.  On top of the often distorted rendering and discussion of specific emails, often taken significantly out of context, this temporary stepping aside is being greeted with glee from the denialosphere (and its Congressional allies, such as James Inhofe).  And, across the web, those seeking to reinforce our polluting energy habits and infect greater numbers with anti-science syndrome  are out in force using these events to try to shout down science discussion and brow-beat people, especially journalists, into adopting their language when it comes to “ClimateGate” (SwiftHack.).

John Broder, of the New York Times, seems to provide a textbook example of success in this vein. In reporting on Jones’ temporary stepping aside, Broder wrote

The e-mail exchanges among several prominent American and British climate-change scientists appear to reveal efforts to keep the work of skeptical scientists out of major journals and the possible hoarding and manipulation of data to overstate the case for human-caused climate change.

Yes, they “appear to overstate” if one takes the denialosphere at their face in terms of discussion of the stolen emails.

However, more direct looks at each email in question, placing the material into context (defining terms) and otherwise suggests otherwise. Media Matters did just such a look with “Climategate” exposed which opens:

Since the reported theft of emails from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia, conservative media figures have aggressively claimed that those emails undermine the overwhelming scientific consensus that human activities are causing climate change, dubbing the supposed scandal “Climategate.” But these critics have largely rested their claims on outlandish distortions and misrepresentations of the contents of the stolen emails, greatly undermining their dubious smears.

Here is one of the items from that examination:

CLAIM: Trenberth’s “travesty” email exposes private doubts about whether global warming is occurring

• BECK: But first, let’s start with the science that has been so settled for all these years. What are these guys saying behind closed doors about their so-called bullet-proof consensus? Well, Kevin Trenberth, he’s a climatologist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. He wrote, quote: “The fact is, we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it’s a travesty that we can’t.” Incorrect data? Inadequate systems? Yeah. Travesty, pretty good word for it. [Glenn Beck, 11/23/09]

• In a November 24 Human Events post, James Delingpole asserted that the Trenberth email reveals a scientist “[c]oncealing private doubts about whether the world is really heating up.”

• Citing the Trenberth email, Robert Tracinski wrote in a November 24 commentary at RealClearPolitics.com that “[t]hese e-mails show, among many other things, private admissions of doubt or scientific weakness in the global warming theory. In acknowledging that global temperatures have actually declined for the past decade, one scientist asks, ‘where the heck is global warming?… The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t.'”

REALITY: Trenberth’s email referred to “inadequate” system of observing short-term variability, not long-term trend. In the October 12 email, Trenberth cited “my own article on where the heck is global warming” and wrote: “The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t. The CERES data published in the August BAMS 09 supplement on 2008 shows there should be even more warming: but the data are surely wrong. Our observing system is inadequate” [emphasis added].

Trenberth published similar comments in the journal article he cited. Wired’s Threat Level blog reported that Trenberth “says bloggers are missing the point he’s making in the e-mail by not reading the article cited in it. That article — An Imperative for Climate Change Planning (.pdf) — actually says that global warming is continuing, despite random temperature variations that would seem to suggest otherwise.” RealClimate.org similarly stated in a November 23 post that “[y]ou need to read his recent paper on quantifying the current changes in the Earth’s energy budget to realise why he is concerned about our inability currently to track small year-to-year variations in the radiative fluxes.” Indeed, the Trenberth article referred to what he called an “incomplete explanation” of short-term climate variations, and maintained that “global warming is unequivocally happening.”

Okay, in the email, Trenberth cites an article as a reference to the point that he makes in the email.  Let’s talk about that email, however, without considering the referenced discussion — which in in the public record (and available on the web).

Back to Broder … When reading Broder’s article, which notably quotes serial reality denier James Inhofe and no other American government officials (Congressional or Administration, perhaps discussing ClimateGate with Jim Hansen), it seems clear that he did not put the email context under the sort of scrutiny that occurred from Media Matters.  Sadly, however, Media Matters is several mouse clicks away from Broder’s screen — perhaps too long a journey for a busy and tired journalist.  Thus, rather than putting Jones’ resignation into some form of appropriate context, Broder’s article implicitly reinforces deceptive framing and discussion being aggressively pushed by deniers and self-proclaimed skeptics anxious to have others become similarly afflicated with anti-science syndrome.

PS: For a shorter, interactive and more graphical look than the Media Matters’ piece, see Katherine Goldstein’s ClimateGate: The 7 Biggest Lies About The Supposed “Global Warming Hoax”.

A moment about policing emails …

Now, are there potentially improprieties among scientists?  Yes. Is it possible, after a full investigation, that the University will determine that the emails show improprieties in CRU operations?  Yes.  Does, at the end of the day, any of these possible improprieties suddenly make the Arctic Ice extent and mass increase above 30 year trend levels, turn around the global pattern of glacial ice melt, reverse the speeding Greenland and Antarctic ice melting, get birds to stop moving their habitats toward the poles, stop acidification of the oceans, etc …?  Sadly, no.

NOTE:  Some are uncomfortable with “ClimateGate” as a term of reference for this situation. Let us take a moment for historical reference. When it comes to Watergate, the fault lay not with the hotel or with the Democratic Party (the McGovern campaign), but with those conducting illegal electronic surveillance.

And, for a discussion which places this into context, see Chris Mooney’s Déjà vu All Over Again:

This is how it begins: Proponents of a fringe or non-mainstream scientific viewpoint seek added credibility. They’re sick of being taunted for having few (if any) peer reviewed publications in their favor. Fed up, they decide to do something about it.

These “skeptics” find what they consider to be a weak point in the mainstream theory and critique it. Not by conducting original research; they simply review previous work. Then they find a little-known, not particularly influential journal where an editor sympathetic to their viewpoint hangs his hat.

They get their paper through the peer review process and into print. They publicize the hell out of it. Activists get excited by the study, which has considerable political implications.

Before long, mainstream scientists catch on to what’s happening. They shake their heads. Some slam the article and the journal that published it, questioning the review process and the editor’s ideological leanings. In published critiques, they tear the paper to scientific shreds.

Embarrassed, the journal’s publisher backs away from the work. But it’s too late for that. The press has gotten involved, and though the work in question has been discredited in the world of science, partisans who favor its conclusions for ideological reasons will champion it for years to come.

The scientific waters are muddied. The damage is done.