Saudia Arabia’s announcement that the CRU email hack will have a "huge impact" on the Copenhagen summit is unsurprising. But it doesn't change the science.
Saudia Arabia’s announcement that the CRU email hack will have a “huge impact” on the Copenhagen summit is unsurprising but deeply unsavoury.
Al-Sabban, the Saudis’ lead spokesman on this, is now saying:
“It appears from the details of the scandal that there is no relationship whatsoever between human activity and climate change”.
But let’s remind ourselves of the long and deep history of Saudi Arabia’s support for the denial of man-made climate change; the concrete actions that they have taken to prevent timely action; and their pitiful failure to take any action themselves over the greatest of all threats to our species and our living world.
Climate-deniers don’t like to focus on the role of the likes of Saudi Arabia and Exxon in backing them up. They prefer to talk about things like the minutiae of the programmer’s code used in working on the CRU data. For example, on last night’s Newsnight (11’45”) in which the new ‘Harry’ programmer’s code controversy is presented.
As has been shown expertly here and here, there is no smoking gun at all; just a vague suggestion that the way that the CRU data has been worked with has not been as flawless as the way that NASA’s has been. For more, watch this video:
Does this cast any doubt at all on their fundamental findings, or suggest any kind of conspiracy? The answer is simple: No.
The bottom line is this: There are many people out there, some of them just wilful contrarians, some of them directly profiting from the continuation of the fossil-fuel-economy, who are desperate to do whatever they can to try to hold off the moment when they have to change. CRU is one of the messengers saying that change in the way we live is necessary, if manmade climate change is not to overwhelm us. At the end of the day, the mad furore around this hack is simply a new case of a very old phenomenon: shooting the messenger.
33 Responses to “Shooting CRU, the climate change messenger”
hono
i don’t even see the issue as being whether humans affect climate or not. they do – it’s simple physics. the question is ‘how much, a lot or a little’.
this is something the climate scientists don’t really know which is why they have large error bands on the predictions from their models.
simple physics says 0.6 C rise per 100 ppm CO2 increase. will it be less or more? the answer is as yet unknown. there are both +ve feedbacks and -ve feedbacks. the -ve ones are the least well known because the behaviour of clouds is too complex.
but it must be reminded that many years ago when there was 6000 ppm CO2 rather than the current paltry 380 ppm, life was very happily evolving thankyou.
if you want to know what the most extreme scenarios give us for a climate in 2100 or whenever (and these really are the most extreme), look up the Eemian period when it was much hotter than today, sea levels 6m higher, hippos living in the Thames and forests where there is now tundra. I’ll happily admit that that scenario is a domesday one but I will need to see some evidence first.
hono
in addition, polar bears survived the Eemian
Anon E Mouse
hono – I agree mankind alters the climate but I see it from the perspective of the poor peoples of the world who will have to pay for the 20,000 “delegates” in Copenhagen and the limos and the gross expenditure involved and the forthcoming taxes…
…because like it or not that’s what’s going to happen I guarantee it.