In a symposium Friday at the annual meeting of the American Association
for the Advancement Science, AAAS, the scientific leaders acknowledged
errors in a 2007 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change and possibly impolitic email exchanges by East Anglian
University climate researchers.
But they expressed shock at the
political effects of the disclosures and said the impact was far out of
proportion to the overwhelming evidence that human activity is changing
the Earth's climate.
"There
has been no change in the scientific community, no change whatsoever,"
in the consensus that global average temperatures have been steadily
climbing since the mid-20th century," said Jerry North, a professor of
atmospheric sciences at Texas A&M University.
The panel also
included: Ralph Cicerone, president of the National Academies of
Science and chair of the National Research Council; Lord Martin Rees,
president of the Royal Society in the U.K.; James J. McCarthy, chairman
of the AAAS Board; Alexander Agassiz, professor of Biological
Oceanography at Harvard University; and Philip Sharp; a Nobel laureate
and professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Some
climate science critics and media reports have suggested that the
e-mails, stolen from an East Anglican University server and released
last November, show evidence of tinkering with climate change data. But
many scientists say comments from the emails were taken out of context
and used in misleading ways.
An independent investigation is
ongoing. The Royal Society will provide advice to the University of
East Anglia in identifying assessors to conduct an independent external
reappraisal of the Climatic Research Unit's key publications.
Rees
said on February 12, "It is important that people have the utmost
confidence in the science of climate change. Where legitimate doubts
are raised about any piece of science they must be fully investigated -
that is how science works. The names being put forward by the society
will be acting as individuals, not representatives of the Society and
the Society will have no oversight of this independent review."
In
January, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United
Nations organization that has involved thousands of scientists from
around the world in producing four major reports since the 1990s,
acknowledged that it had included unsubstantiated data on Himalayan
glacier melting in a 2007 report.
Cicerone said "the appearance,
if not the reality," of a rift within the research community has
"corroded" the climate debate in a way that "may spread over to other
kinds of science."
Scientists need to
redouble their efforts to share the implications of climate change with
the public, he said, by breaking down the numbers and showing how the
often-cited global average temperature rise of three degrees Centigrade
could actually send temperatures over the land soaring nearly to nearly
nine degrees in the next few decades.
"A lot of what we need to do," said Cicerone, "is translate basic information into terms the public can understand.
Several
of the scientists acknowledged that some of the details of climate
change remain uncertain. But "we think despite all the uncertainties
... action is justified and indeed imperative" to avoid the worst
effects of climate change, said Rees.
The IPCC conclusions are
subject to rigorous peer review. Indeed, said Rees, some IPCC
researchers did catch the erroneous statement that accelerated melting
could lead to the disappearance of Himalayan glaciers by 2035. Still,
the error slipped through.
McCarthy, who formerly served as
co-chair of an IPCC working group, predicted that the organization
would certainly redouble its efforts to catch mistakes in the future.
He
said the IPCC's prestigious reputation as a Nobel Peace Prize winning
organization was a factor in many news reports. "The greater the
stature of the institution," he said, "the harder the fall."
Some
scientists were also not prepared to discuss the data in ways that were
useful to the press and public, said North. While the diversity of data
- from pollen samples to satellite data to computer modeling - is a key
strength of climate change conclusions, the "culture" of each
discipline is equally varied, he said.
"Some of these [groups] are not really well organized to handle relations with the press," North said.
Climate
change is "diffuse and international and remote in time," two special
hurdles that make it "very hard to get the public exercised on the
matter," said Rees.
Wider access and transparency for research
data is a step toward better communication, Cicerone said. The National
Academies released a report last year on building specific standards
for sharing research more broadly with scientific colleagues and the
public.
The controversy will probably play only a small role
whether the U.S. Congress will pass a climate change law this year,
said McCarthy and Cicerone, who said Americans remain more concerned
about a sluggish economy than about climate change.
So far,
McCarthy said, scientists have not done "a sufficiently good job" of
persuading the American people and their congressional representatives
of the potential economic and health benefits of a comprehensive
climate change law.
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