There has been quite an assault on the climate science in the past few weeks. Far more so than ever before, which is saying something given the Climate Cover-Up that’s gone on for so long. First, e-mails were hacked from a British university, showing some cherry-picked conversations between climate scientists, which global warming deniers have stretched and chalked up to data misrepresentation, and a massive global scientific conspiracy to trick people into reducing greenhouse gas emissions. For more background information on the entire issue, check out EnviroKnow. As I said before in my defense of science

“A few e-mails of out thousands sent by a few scientists out of thousands taken out of context by global warming deniers does not come within a light year of collapsing all of the scientific research, data, and current events that point to a warming planet caused by greenhouse gas emissions. It’s why record highs of outnumbered record lows by an ever increasing ratio, which reached 2:1 in the last decade. It’s why NASA recently reported the hottest June to October on record. It’s why every each decade is considerably hotter than the last, and why ocean surface temperatures are the warmest on record. It’s why declassified US spy satellites show the impact of warming on our ice caps, and East Antarctica is losing ice mass. Increased wildfires and pine bark beetles moving North. Australia being pushed to the breaking point by drought. That’s all happening now.”

Wonk Room has a great timeline which I’ve posted towards the bottom that shows all the steps taken by the climate denial machine to distort these e-mails and sabotage the climate “debate”, topped off by a Sarah Palin Op-Ed suggesting Obama should boycott Copenhagen because of the hacked e-mails.

Richard Graves has a great post about the real scandal, and I think he’s right on, given the fact that there was another attempt last week to hack a Canadian Government Centre’s e-mails

“The real scandal is not the email archive, or even how it was acquired, sorted, and uploaded to a Russian server, but rather the emerging evidence of a coordinated international campaign to target and harass climate scientists, break and enter into government climate labs, and misrepresent climate science through a sophisticated media infrastructure on the eve of the international climate talks.”

Now, it appears the climate scientists are finally fighting back, but an even louder voice is needed. There’s an Op-Ed today in the Washington Post by Alan Leshner, the chief executive officer of the American Association for the Advancement of Science hitting back against Sarah Palin and other deniers

“Doubters insist that the earth is not warming. This is in stark contrast to the consensus of 18 of the world’s most respected scientific organizations, who strongly stated in an Oct. 21 letter to the U.S. Senate that human-induced climate change is real. Still, the doubters try to leverage any remaining points of scientific uncertainty about the details of warming trends to cast doubt on the overall conclusions shared by traditionally cautious, decidedly non-radical science organizations such as the National Academy of Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, which represents an estimated 10 million individual scientists through 262 affiliated societies. Doubters also make selective use of the evidence, noting that the warming of the late 1990s did not persist from 2001 to 2008, while ignoring the fact that the first decade of the 21st century looks like it will be the warmest decade on record.

None of these tactics changes the clear consensus of a vast majority of scientists, who agree that the Earth is warming as greenhouse gas levels rise. The public and policymakers should not be confused by a few private e-mails that are being selectively publicized and, in any case, remain irrelevant to the broad body of diverse evidence on climate change. Selected language in the messages has been interpreted by some to suggest unethical actions such as data manipulation or suppression. To be sure, investigations are appropriate whenever questions are raised regarding the transparency and rigor of the scientific process or the integrity of individual scientists. We applaud that the responsible authorities are conducting those investigations. But it is wrong to suggest that apparently stolen emails, deployed on the eve of the Copenhagen climate summit, somehow refute a century of evidence based on thousands of studies.”

On top of this, the AP recently reported that 1,700 UK scientists have signed a statement defending the evidence for man-made climate change.

With the stakes so high right now in Copenhagen, you can believe that the fossil-fuel funded deniers and delayers will continue to push the envelope on the tactics used to confuse the public and deny the science. We need more scientists and scientific organizations to recognize the importance of this moment, and take back the debate. This is certainly a good start.

This is cross-posted from: The Dernogalizer

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From Wonk Room

Nov. 17: