| December 17, 2009 |  |
Senator Inhofe Can't Even Get the Dates Right on Stolen Emails
Embarassing Gaffe in Copenhagen Speech Exposes Lack of Knoweldge About Climate Science, Stolen Emails
Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) made an embarrassing gaffe in a speech at the Copenhagen climate conference today that demonstrates his lack of understanding of climate science and the significance of emails stolen from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in England, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS). First, he erroneously claimed that one stolen email was written in response to another email that was written 10 years before. Second, he misrepresented the meaning of the contents of those emails to attack climate science.
According to the text of his speech, Sen. Inhofe said, "I could go on and on reading the emails, but it would take hours to finish. So here's one example: 'I've just completed Mike's Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (i.e. from 1980 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith's to hide the decline.' Of course [Phil Jones] means hide the decline in temperatures, which caused another scientist, Kevin Trenberth, to write: 'The fact is we can't account for the lack of warming, and it's a travesty that we can't.'"
Inhofe referenced two of the most misrepresented emails in this manufactured controversy and implied that Trenberth was writing in response to an email from Phil Jones, the director of the Climatic Research Unit. In fact, these emails were written 10 years apart. According to a searchable database of the stolen emails, Phil Jones sent the email Sen. Inhofe cited on November 16, 1999 while Kevin Trenberth's sent his on October 12, 2009.
For the record, "trick" and "hide the decline" refer to past temperatures information preserved in tree rings, not recent air temperature measurements, as Inhofe seems to imply. Both phrases represent valid scientific techniques for analyzing past temperature data. The "trick," as in "trick of the trade," was used in a paper published in 1998 in the science journal Nature. It refers to combining old data from tree rings, which form every year and can be a good substitute for temperature data, with newer thermometer data. "Hiding the decline" in this email referred to omitting tree ring data from some Siberian trees after 1960. This omission, and the scientific reasons why, were openly discussed in the peer-reviewed literature starting in 1997 and also were included in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) 2007 report. So none of this information was "hidden" at all.
In his email, Trenberth also wrote about using better monitoring equipment to determine the cause of short-term climate variations, not the long-term climate change that is readily apparent through existing monitoring systems, such as temperature stations and satellites.
UCS staff have assembled a comprehensive debunking of the worst claims about the stolen emails.
The bottom line is the content of the stolen e-mails has no impact on the solid scientific understanding, based on multiple independent lines of evidence, that human activity is driving dangerous levels of warming. As 18 leading U.S. scientific organizations stated it in a recent letter to Congress, "Contrary assertions are inconsistent with an objective assessment of the vast body of peer-reviewed science."
The Union of Concerned Scientists puts rigorous, independent science to work to solve our planet's most pressing problems. Joining with citizens across the country, we combine technical analysis and effective advocacy to create innovative, practical solutions for a healthy, safe, and sustainable future.
