Climategate was misinformation
Would we be further along in tackling climate change if the Climategate scandal hadn’t unfolded a decade ago? Climategate involved a hacker stealing more than 1000 emails from the University of East Anglia, sent between the unit’s director, Professor Phil Jones, and climate scientists all over the world, including New Zealand.
The emails were leaked in November 2009. Most of the emails were innocuous, but a single phrase in one was seized upon by climate sceptics. In an email sent in 1999, Jones had written to colleagues about using a technique to ‘‘hide the decline’’.
This was quoted out of context by sceptics, who said it proved that man-made climate change was a hoax. At least three independent investigations found the scientists had done nothing wrong.
Jones’ email referred to the removal of recent tree ring density data from a graph because it was at odds with more reliable thermometer readings. It was a legitimate thing to do.
But Churchill’s adage – ‘‘a lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on’’ – couldn’t have been truer.
Michael Mann, the American climate scientist who featured prominently in the emails, says they were ‘‘complacent’’ about the opposition from climate sceptics and apologists for the fossil fuel industry.
‘‘There were signs well in advance that there was this coming rear-guard assault on climate science,’’ he says in the new BBC documentary, Climategate: Science of a Scandal.
Climategate was part of a misinformation campaign that coincided with the COP15 climate summit in Copenhagen in December 2009. That summit failed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
It probably would have failed anyway, as the world had crashed into recession. But Climategate meant scientists had to spend years regaining the public’s trust.
At COP25 in Madrid last week, 16-year-old Greta Thunberg chastised political leaders for their ‘‘clever accounting and creative PR’’. Time
magazine named her 2019 person of the year.
Much has changed for the better in a decade. But Climategate reminds us that as long as we are reliant on fossil fuels, vested interests will try to subvert and deny the truth.
Climategate meant scientists had to spend years regaining the public’s trust.