Concerted effort to silence dissenters revealed in Climategate messages
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November 24, 1:28 PMClimate Change Examiner
Tony Hake
Swimming against the tide is never an easy task. Scientists that disagreed
with the manmade climate change theory have learned that if you're swimming
against the 'consensus' of global warming, it can not only be hard, it can
be a nasty business.
For years those who believe other factors beyond man drive the planet's
climate have said they were blocked from publication and been the target of
a concerted effort to silence them. Their complaints were largely ignored
but with the release of the Climategate documents and emails, the proof
shows their claims were not unfounded.
An analysis of the emails from a veritable who's who in climate science show
that some of the world's top scientists worked directly against dissenting
scientists. The scientists worked to discredit other's work, oust them from
professional organizations, exerted pressure on scientific publications and
went so far as to consider pushing an educational institution to review the
doctorate of a scientist. The moves appear to go far beyond a scientific
debate and read more like a vendetta against dissenting opinions.
In January 2005, the scientists were greatly concerned with the work of
Stephen McIntyre, the editor of Climate Audit and the man responsible for
discrediting the infamous "Hockey Stick" graph. McIntyre had a manuscript
published in Geophysical Research Letters (GRL) that was edited by Professor
James Saiers and reviewed by three scientists. This did not sit well with
the alarmists and Tom Wigley of NCAR wrote to Michal Mann, author of the
"Hockey Stick" saying, "If you think that Saiers is in the greenhouse
skeptics camp, then, if we can find documentary evidence of this, we could
go through official AGU channels to get him ousted."
Before that, Mann was concerned about the publication "Climate Research." He
wrote to Phil Jones saying "the peer-review process at Climate Research has
been hijacked by a few skeptics on the editorial board" and that the
skeptics had staged a coup. The solution as Mann saw it was to begin a
concerted effort to discourage scientists to submit to their work to the
publication. "I think we have to stop considering "Climate Research" as a
legitimate peer-reviewed journal. Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues
in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in,
this journal," Mann said.
The next month, Tom Wigley was also concerned about "Climate Research" and
felt ousting the publication's editor-in-chief, Hans von Storch, was the way
to go. Wigley wrote to Tim Carter, Mike Hulme and Phil Jones saying, "Mike's
idea to get editorial board members to resign will probably not work -- must
get rid of von Storch too, otherwise holes will eventually fill up with
people like Legates, Balling, Lindzen, Michaels, Singer, etc."
"Weather", the monthly magazine of the Royal Meteorological Society was
targeted just this year by the scientists. Phil Jones was not getting along
with the editor of the publication and was prepared to go over his head. He
told Ben Santer of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, "I'm having a
dispute with the new editor of Weather. I've complained about him to the RMS
Chief Exec. If I don't get him to back down, I won't be sending any more
papers to any RMS journals and I'll be resigning from the RMS."
Santer agreed with Jones and was upset that the RMS dared to make the
scientists provide data to back up their research. He wrote back, "If the
RMS is going to require authors to make ALL data available - raw data PLUS
results from all intermediate calculations - I will not submit any further
papers to RMS journals."
Some scientists that participated in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change's (IPCC) work have said the work was too political and those who
disagreed were silenced. Emails from Phil Jones indicate that he and other
scientists worked hard to ensure dissenters' voices were not heard in the
IPCC's work. He wrote in an email to Mann, "I can't see either of these
papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep them out
somehow - even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!"
Dr. Patrick Michaels, a professor with the University of Virginia and the
state of Virginia's state climatologist was targeted for his contrary
opinion on anthropogenic climate change and his leading the charge against
CRU for its destruction of raw climate data. In just this past October, Tom
Wigley felt that going back to the educational institution that gave
Michaels his doctorate might be useful. Rather than refuting Michaels'
opinions, Wigley wrote, "Perhaps the University of Wisconsin ought to open
up a public comment period to decide whether Pat Michaels, PhD needs
re-assessing?"
The content of the messages would seem to be clear - dissenting opinions
were not welcome. Rather than refute with science, many of those who wrote
in the CRU emails chose to resort to other tactics. For them, it was never
about honest and open scientific debate. It was about silencing and crushing
critics and nothing less would suffice.