As Copenhagen summit nears, 'Climategate' dogs global warming debate

“The furor over these documents is not about tone, colloquialisms or whether climatologists are nice people,” writes the business-friendly Wall Street Journal. “The real issue is what the messages say about the way the much-ballyhooed scientific consensus on global warming was arrived at, and how a single view of warming and its causes is being enforced. The impression left … is that the climate-tracking game has been rigged from the start.

The chairman of the IPCC, Rajendra Pachauri, stood by his panel's 2007 findings last week. That study is the foundation for a global climate response, including carbon emission targets proposed this week by both the US and China.

So far, climate scientists say nothing in the leaked emails takes away from the fact that the climate change evidence is solid. In fact, a new study in the journal Science shows the polar ice cap melting is happening at a faster rate than predicted just a few years ago.

In a teleconference call with reporters this week, one of the scientists whose emails were leaked, Pennsylvania State University paleoclimatologist Michael Mann, said that “regardless of how cherry-picked" the emails are, there is "absolutely nothing in any of the emails that calls into the question the deep level of consensus of climate change."

Leaked e-mails part of a 'smear campaign'

This is a "smear campaign to distract the public," added Mann, a coauthor of the Copenhagen Diagnosis, the report on climate change released this week ahead of the Copenhagen. "Those opposed to climate action, simply don't have the science on their side," he added.

Professor Trevor Davies of the East Anglia CRU called the stolen data the latest example of a campaign intended "to distract from reasoned debate" about global climate change ahead of the Copenhagen summit.

But the problem for scientists and policy-makers isn’t as much as what the emails actually reveal -- though some of it is certainly vexing -- but how it will play in Peoria or Copenhagen.

Recent studies show that, while many Americans worry about global warming, their concerns are receding.

Researchers, including Mann, say the blame lies with skeptics trying to undermine hard science about the plight of the globe and mankind. They've turned "something innocent into something nefarious," Mann said last week.

But even some climate scientists at East Anglia, the CRU that got hacked, worry that tribal and political attitudes among scientists may undermine public support for climate change legislation. Citing momentum, however, UN chief Ban Ki-moon told a summit in Trinidad and Tobago Friday that “success in Copenhagen is in sight.”

The New York Times quoted East Anglia climate scientist Mike Hulme saying the leaks hint that “some areas of climate science has become sclerotic … too partisan, too centralized.”

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