On "Climategate": Those Stolen E. Anglia E-Mails

Apparently a lot of noise is being made about those stolen e-mails that seem to cast doubt on the honesty of leading climate researchers. In as few words as possible, I explain what the e-mails really said. I'll leave it up to you to put this all in context, or to remember these quotes the next time they pop up in discussion.

Quote 1:

The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't. The CERES data published in the August BAMS 09 supplement on 2008 shows there should be even more warming: but the data are surely wrong. Our observing system is inadequate.

What was being said here was, "We forecasted that 2008 would be the hottest year ever, and it was... but it wasn't as hot as our models predicted. This was because of A, B, and C. Now, even though A, B, and C wasn't a surprise and was perfectly obvious, our models have no way of calculating it. That's wrong."

Next one:

I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.

Climate researchers use tree rings to figure out hot and cold years hundreds of years ago. Unfortunately, for reasons nobody knows, tree ring reliability goes crazy after 1960. Trees worldwide started growing slower, making it seem like global temperatures "declined." So, instead of using tree ring data after 1960 in temperature charts based on tree rings, Mike (whoever he is) just started using actual temperatures. That's the trick.

There. That's the summary of this video below... but feel free to watch it anyway.

The simple fact is, as always: If you want to debate something, by all means... bring the facts and the data and compare and contrast. Everybody comes out smarter that way. However, when the arguments consist of cherry picking statements and misrepresenting their meaning in hopes of winning an argument merely by destroying the opponent's credibility, nobody comes out smarter, and nobody's argument is benefited in the end.