Climate contrarians spinning hard with stolen email files

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Iโ€™ll admit, as someone who spends most days looking for leaked documents, the package of stolen emails and documents from the Climate Research Unit at East Anglia University is pretty juicy. Anything that provides insight into the inner-workings of your opponents is pretty much manna from heaven in this line ofย work.

I have been going through all the files today and I hate to disappoint but it just ainโ€™t the scandal climate conspiracy theorists want it toย be.

These emails are blissfully being spun by the climate contrarians as proof of some type of worldwide conspiracy by scientists to fake the climate change crisis. Michelle Malkin, who relishes Ann Coulter-esque statements, goes so far as to call it โ€œthe global warming scandal of theย century.โ€

Right.

As Brad Johnson writes, itโ€™s more likely proof that climate deniers are the crazed conspiracy theorists we always thought theyย were.

At the center of the conspiracy claim is a quote in a casual conversation between colleagues talking about Mikeโ€™s Natureย โ€œtrick.โ€

They are referring to the Michael Mann hockey stick study from ten years ago that has been the subject of attacks by climate skeptic bloggers for many years now. In fact, it got so bad that the US National Academy of Sciences was called in by the US Senate to look further into the validity of the Mannย study.

Unfortunately for skeptics the NAS exonerated the Mann study, findingย that:

โ€œThe basic conclusion of Mann et al. (1998, 1999) was that the late 20th century warmth in the Northern Hemisphere was unprecedented during at least the last 1,000 years. This conclusion has subsequently been supported by an array of evidence that includes both additional large-scale surface temperature reconstructions and pronounced changes in a variety of local proxy indicators, such as melting on ice caps and the retreat of glaciers around the world, which in many cases appear to be unprecedented during at least the last 2,000ย years.โ€

More importantly, and this is related directly to these leaked emails that are supposed proof of some massive conspiracy, the NAS concludedย that:

โ€œSurface temperature reconstructions for periods prior to the industrial era are only one of multiple lines of evidence supporting the conclusion that climatic warming is occurring in response to human activities, and they are not the primaryย evidence.โ€

In layman terms this means that the Mann hockey stick study is only one of many studies and many lines of evidence that shows that the climate is warming. Even further, they point out that the Mann Hockey Stick isnโ€™t even a primary evidenceย source.

As for the Mann โ€œtrick,โ€ I would be very impressesd that this โ€œtrickโ€ was never detected by the NAS report. As Mann himself explains today on Real Climate, the โ€œtrickโ€ being refered to is that, โ€œscientists often use the term โ€œtrickโ€ to refer to a โ€œa good way to deal with a problem,โ€ rather than something that is โ€œsecret,โ€ and so there is nothing problematic in this atย all.

What people like Malkin and others donโ€™t understand is that the evidence for climate change is based on decades of research that builds and builds into a solid foundation from which conclusions can beย drawn.

It is not the house of cards they want us to think it is. And while these emails donโ€™t look great, they are in no way โ€œproofโ€ that climate change is not happening. It just isnโ€™t the grand conspiracy they think itย is.

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Kevin is a contributor and strategic adviser to DeSmog. He runs the digital marketing agency Spake Media House. Named a โ€œGreen Heroโ€ by Rolling Stone Magazine and one of the โ€œTop 50 Tweetersโ€ on climate change and environment issues, Kevin has appeared in major news media outlets around the world for his work on digital campaigning. Kevin has been involved in the public policy arena in both the United States and Canada for more than a decade. For five years he was the managing editor of DeSmogBlog.com. In this role, Kevinโ€™s research into the โ€œclimate denial industryโ€ and the right-wing think tank networks was featured in news media articles around the world. He is most well known for his ground-breaking research into David and Charles Kochโ€™s massive financial investments in the Republican and tea partyย networks. Kevin is the first person to be designated a โ€œCertified Expertโ€ on theย political and community organizing platformย NationBuilder. Prior to DeSmog, Kevin worked in various political and government roles. He was Senior Advisor to the Minister of State for Multiculturalism and a Special Assistant to the Minister of State for Asia Pacific, Foreign Affairs for the Government of Canada. Kevin also worked in various roles in the British Columbia provincial government in the Office of the Premier and the Ministry of Health. In 2008 Kevin co-founded a groundbreaking new online election tool called Vote for Environment which was later nominated for a World Summit Award in recognition of the worldโ€™s best e-Content and innovative ICTย applications. Kevin moved to Washington, DC in 2010 where he worked for two years as the Director of Online Strategy for Greenpeace USA and has since returned to his hometown of Vancouver, Canada.

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