One Year Later, the Science of Climate Change Remains Overwhelming

Posted on November 18, 2010

By Kay Bechtold, New Media Intern

A year ago this week, over 1,000 private emails between climate scientists were stolen from the University of East Anglia’s (UEA) Climatic Research Unit and published online. Climate science deniers latched on to this incident, claiming the documents contained a “smoking gun” that cast doubt on the reality of climate change.
But no such smoking gun existed. There is overwhelming scientific evidence that our climate is changing due to human activities, and nothing was found in the stolen documents to contradict this evidence.
Since November 2009, five separate investigations have debunked the misinformation spread by climate deniers and cleared the involved scientists of wrongdoing:
1. The House of Commons Science and Technology Committee performed an inquiry which “found no reason in this unfortunate episode to challenge the scientific consensus” and stated that “the scientific reputation of Professor Jones and CRU remains intact.”
2. An independent inquiry by the Lord Oxburgh Scientific Assessment Panel found “absolutely no evidence of any impropriety whatsoever” and found “no evidence of any deliberate scientific malpractice in any of the work of the Climatic Research Unit.”
3. Another review commissioned by UEA, an inquiry by the Independent Climate Change Email Review Panel, also concluded that the “rigour and honesty [of the CRU scientists] are not in doubt.”
4. There were two panels that investigated Michael Mann, a climatologist and professor at Penn State University. The first panel, made up of Penn State faculty, found no evidence that he had suppressed or falsified data, concealed or destroyed information, or misused confidential information.
5. The second panel, a follow-up by faculty scientists at Penn State, found “no substance” to allegations that Mann seriously deviated from accepted scientific practices.
Climate change deniers successfully proved one thing with this debacle: They’re capable of fabricating a scandal that has no factual basis. But they can’t change reality. Climate change is happening, and we need clean energy solutions to help solve it. All of the hacked emails and false accusations in the world can’t change that fact.