Hacked e-mails fuel controversy over global warming

By Amanda Phipps

A series of personal emails between scientists were hacked, revealing information that can change how people view global warming.

The private email messages were sent between American and British climate researchers and contained information about global warming evidence, according to a New York Times article.

The emails were hacked from a server at the University of East Anglia in Britain. The emails referred to ideas such as “using a statistical ‘trick’ in a chart illustrating a recent sharp warming trend,” according to the article. Another email referenced climate skeptics as ‘idiots.’

Climatologist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research Kevin Trenberth is quoted as saying in an email message, “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,” according to the NY Times article.

Even though the emails suggest that global warming evidence is exaggerated, this does not necessarily mean it isn’t true, one professor says.

“The people who don’t want to make global warming adjustments pounced on this as evidence that global warming is false or less (extreme) than previously thought,” political science professor Christopher Van Aller said.

Van Aller said he thinks that people looked at the emails and took the information out of context. He said he thinks global warming is a fact and, if anything, worse that what people think.

“A vast amount of scientists believe (global warming) is true,” Aller said. “It is human induced and not a natural occurrence.”

Van Aller also said that global warming is a long-term, complicated problem that is hard for the U.S. democracy to handle. He said people have trouble believing it is real.

“Many Americans mistrust education,” he said. “They tend to believe in smart people that confirm their previous prejudices.”

Another problem with global warming is that people want more from science, Van Aller said.

“Scientists prove what isn’t true,” he said. “People want a certainty that science cannot absolutely guarantee.”

Aller also mentioned that for people to accept global warming they would have to change.

“People do not want to give up their carbon-based lifestyle,” he said.

These factors led Van Aller to believe that people take the emails out of context and they do not prove global warming is false.

Rumors from the anti-global warming side overwhelm scientists, which is another problem with people believing in global warming, Van Aller said.

“(After a while), people start to believe the rumors”, he said. “Global warming is a problem.”

Though the emails may have been read into as something else as Van Aller mentioned, one professor thinks they have some significance to the understanding of how global warming evidence is handled. 

“There are a lot of responsible people who think the email traffic suggests that a manipulation of global warming data exists,” Biology Professor Peter Cumbie said, “to avoid reporting data that did not fit with previous predictions.”

Cumbie said he thinks the email messages are at least suggestive of some selective reporting of data. This, Cumbie mentioned, is to avoid providing any substance to beliefs of the skeptics of global warming.

Some scientists think carbon dioxide is the major contributor to global warming, but skeptics say there is no proof that this is the major contributing factor to the warming, Cumbie said. Skeptics do not deny that carbon dioxide is a factor, but that there are other sources that can contribute to a warming that aren’t taken into consideration.

“I don’t think global warming has not occurred,” he said. “(But) the emails have some significance to them.”