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Comments on the Climategate 2.0 Emails Comments on the Climategate 2.0 Emails On February 11, 2010, Peabody Energy Corporation (“Peabody”) filed an extensive Petition for Reconsideration of U.S. EPA’s final action entitled, “Endangerment and Cause or Contribute Findings for Greenhouse Gases under Section 202(a) of the Clean Air Act,” 74 Fed. Reg. 66496 (Dec. 15, 2009) (the “Endangerment Finding”). Peabody’s reconsideration petition (“Petition”) was largely based on information and materials that became available as a result of Climategate—the release on the Internet of a trove of email communications and documents from the University of East Anglia’s (“UEA”) Climatic Research Unit (“CRU”) in early November of 2009.1 The CRU emails garnered significant attention among the media, the blogosphere, professional and lay scientists, and government agencies because they revealed, for the first time, disturbing and highly questionable practices and actions by leading climate scientists and researchers employed at UEA-CRU and their colleagues at other leading academic facilities.2 Indeed, certain government agencies held hearings on, or conducted inquiries into the circumstances of the release. In its reconsideration petition, Peabody brought these questionable practices and activities to the attention of EPA. Peabody argued that the CRU material significantly weakened EPA’s reliance on the work of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (“IPCC”) as support for EPA’s Endangerment Finding. The very scientists implicated in the Climategate scandal were heavily involved in all stages of the production of the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report (“AR4”) and otherwise highly influential in the workings of the IPCC and 1 See “Scientist steps down during e-mail probe; Hacked messages about global warming caused controversy,” Washington Post (Dec. 4, 2009). 2 See “Investigator Assigned To Review Climate Research” New York Times (Dec. 4, 2009). 1162295v1 climate science. The analyses, conclusions, and recommendations contained in AR4 concerning purported greenhouse gas emissions, climate change, and related effects of global warming served as the cornerstone for EPA’s Endangerment Finding. Citing numerous CRU emails as first-hand evidence, Peabody showed that leading CRU researchers and their colleagues engaged in dubious academic and professional behavior, including: (1) stonewalling requests for data and information under freedom of information laws and advocating the destruction of information; (2) presenting scientific conclusions in order to advance specific objectives, namely demonstration of a late 20th Century warming trend— despite evidence to the contrary; (3) stifling legitimate debate about scientific conclusions and blackballing scientists who did not fully subscribe to the purported “consensus” view of recent climate change; (4) manipulating the peer-review process of academic publishing to ensure preferable treatment of favored colleagues and/or favored papers; and, (5) manipulating the IPCC process during the preparation of AR4 to incorporate academic papers that supported pre- conceived conclusions about climate change. Peabody urged EPA to reconsider the Endangerment Finding in light of the CRU revelations because the revelations seriously undermined the credibility of leading climate scientists and the IPCC, thereby casting substantial doubt on the validity of the Endangerment Finding. On July 29, 2010, EPA denied Peabody’s petition.3 Approximately two years after the original Climategate emails appeared on the Internet, a second, even larger release of material from CRU became available online in late October 2011.4 3 See EPA’s Denial of the Petitions To Reconsider the Endangerment and Cause or Contribute Findings for Greenhouse Gases Under Section 202(a) of the Clean Air Act, 75 Fed. Reg. 49556 (Aug. 13, 2010). 1162295v1 - 2 - Although this installment contained nearly five times the number of emails – approximately 5,000 in total5 – the release generated less coverage in the mainstream media. Peabody has reviewed the contents of Climategate 2.0 and the emails are every bit as damaging to the credibility of leading climate scientists, if not more so. In these comments, Peabody focuses on discussing five themes that are readily apparent in the Climategate 2.0 emails: (1) the Divergence Problem; (2) evasion of freedom of information act requests and possible destruction of responsive material; (3) internal expressions of doubt among the leading climate scientists as to the validity and accuracy of their work (which are not shared with the public); (4) a concerted effort to marginalize and discount the Medieval Warm Period; and, (5) disdain and contempt for lesser-known scientists and their work, especially work that reached different conclusions about purported recent climate change. In short, the second installment of Climategate emails provides a strong basis for renewed scrutiny of the Endangerment Finding.6 1. The Divergence Problem. In emails going back to the late 1990s, leading climate scientists raise and discuss the “divergence problem” in paleo-climatology. The divergence problem refers to historical temperature reconstructions based on tree ring analysis that fail to correspond to instrument- 4 See “Hacker releases new batch of climate scientists' e-mails,” Washington Post (Nov. 23, 2011); “New Trove of Stolen E-Mails From Climate Scientists,” New York Times (Nov. 23, 2011). 5 The Climategate 2.0 emails are available at the following Internet addresses: http://climategate2011.blogspot.com/ and http://foia2011.org/index.php?id=4 (last accessed June 20, 2012). 6 Peabody provides two appendices with this report that organize and further summarize the Climategate 2.0 emails. Appendix A consists of two parts, which cover, respectively, emails preceding the IPCC’s Third Assessment Report (“TAR”) and Fourth Assessment Report (“AR4”). Appendix B covers emails from 2008 and 2009. 1162295v1 - 3 - based temperature records of warming in recent decades. The tree ring records diverge in this respect from temperature measurements, and generally show a marked cooling trend after 1950 that is contrary to instrument-based observations. This phenomenon presents a significant problem for the reliability of tree ring reconstructions because it means that similar behavior may have existed in the past, such that tree ring reconstructions may understate temperature increases in the pre-instrumental time period. See Petition at IV.C.2. This problem was glossed over in AR4, which concluded that it was “likely” that temperatures during the last 50 years of the 20th century in the Northern Hemisphere were the highest during the last 1,300 years. The Climategate 2.0 emails undermine the “consensus” view and show that leading climate scientists were aware of the divergence problem prior to, and during the preparation of AR4. Indeed, divergence created significant controversy and doubt among the leading scientists, and eventually led Keith Briffa, a leading expert on tree ring-based paleo-climatology to propose, nearly ten years after the fact, a special initiative with the United Kingdom’s National Environmental Research Council (“NERC”) to study the problem. What is most disturbing, however, is that gate-keepers of the “consensus” view allowed the divergence problem to fester for more than ten years, finally owning up to the fact that in 2009, they still had no convincing explanation. The initial email discussed below, and the final emails are compelling “bookends” for this disturbing chapter of climate science. An early email sets the stage for the controversy that would eventually erupt from the divergence problem. In this note from Sept. 1999 (no. 3357), Tim Osborn responded to an email from Julie Jones, at the time a CRU colleague, about tree ring data that he, Phil Jones and Keith Briffa were working with. Osborn was apparently optimistic about the data, but then disclosed that the divergence problem required a fundamental leap of faith: 1162295v1 - 4 - *** I should tell you that there is a fairly strong temperature signal in the tree-ring density series, but that a non-temperature trend is also apparent post-1950 that gets bigger and deteriorates the temperature relationship. This makes calibration somewhat harder (hence I’ve been working on them for 2 years...!), but you also have to make the assumption that this non-temperature signal is something g anthropogenic and didn’t occur in the past. Osborn’s leap of faith, of course, proved to be a giant one, which was marginalized and ignored for considerable time. Another early email from the Climategate 2.0 database suggests awareness and concern about tree ring proxies. Yet, these concerns were never fully explored before tree ring proxies were offered as conclusive evidence of a decidedly cooler past climate. In this email, Fritz Schweingruber wrote to Keith Briffa on October 5, 1999 (no. 4453): It was a good idea to sensilibise some Americans for boreal dendroclimatic studies. I think that also the densitometric labs from Marseill (Tessier) and Quebec (Payette) should be included. It is a fascinating idea to bring all dendroclimatologists und on umbrella with two topics: − what about the last 40 years? − millenial growth/climate fluctuations One problem is still not solved or even not discussed. The European foresters clearly say that forests are growing more and more − no downward trend since 1960. We should bring this problem on the table. Recently several foresters at the WSL addressed the proplem.
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