Climate Science Wins a Round, But the Campaign Goes Poorly

In 2010 climate researchers struggled to move past the controversy that had rocked their community the year before. The accusation was incendiary: that scientists had grossly exaggerated the case for global warming by manipulating their data. The evidence was murky: more than 1,000 e-mails and documents exchanged by leading climate scientists, which had been hacked from their computers. But the verdict, as delivered by five separate investigations, was clear: The accused scientists were exonerated of any misconduct.

Three British investigations focused on the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, site of the stolen e-mails and a leading center for studying global warming. Meanwhile, two American panels examined the integrity of Michael Mann, a prominent climate researcher at Pennsylvania State University. All five groups concluded that none of the scientists had violated academic standards. “We find that their rigor and honesty as scientists are not in doubt,” declared a report headed by Sir Muir Russell, chair of one of the British investigations.

Lisa Graumlich, a University of Washington paleoecologist who served on another British group, led by Lord Ronald Oxburgh, looked into a broader charge: whether there was something “fundamentally broken” about the integrity of the Climate Research Unit. Such charges, she determined, were baseless. On the contrary, as the Ox­burgh panel’s final report (pdf) put it, the attacks leveled against the scientists “showed a rather selective and uncharitable approach to information made available by the CRU.” Michael Mann was more blunt. In an e-mail to me, he asserted that the people who attacked his work “don’t have the science on their side, and they surely know this. So smears and disinformation are all they have left.”