I’ve been blogging about the climate change issue for some time now. Here’s the latest, which responds to the exposure of private e-mails in which a climatologist is accused of acknowledging deliberately tweaking the data in order to make a stronger environmental case.
[N]ot only did British investigators clear the
East Anglia scientist at the center of it all, Phil Jones, of
scientific impropriety and dishonesty in April, an investigation at Penn
State cleared PSU
climatologist Michael Mann of
“falsifying or suppressing data, intending to delete or conceal e-mails
and information, and misusing privileged or confidential information”
in February. In perhaps the biggest backpedaling, The Sunday Times
of London, which led the media pack in charging that IPCC reports were
full of egregious (and probably intentional) errors, retracted its
central claim–namely, that the IPCC statement that up to 40 percent of
the Amazonian rainforest could be vulnerable to climate change was
“unsubstantiated.” The Times also admitted that it had totally
twisted the remarks of one forest expert to make it sound as if he
agreed that the IPCC had screwed up, when he said no such thing. –Newsweek
I warn my freshman writing students that activist groups (no matter how well-meaning and noble their goals) tend to post on their websites only those studies that offer the best claims in favor of their position. Science often leads to conclusions that are far too complex and nuanced to fit into a bumper sticker (or the thesis statement for a 3-page freshman research paper), and sloppy science reporting does not help the situation.
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