Remember Climategate?

The theft of thousands of emails from the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia, UK, by unknown hackers was supposed to prove that global warming was all a hoax. Conservatives and “climate change skeptics” claimed that the emails proved the existence of a conspiracy among the world’s top climatologists to “hide” data” that didn’t agree with their preconceived conclusions, to change the results of studies and published papers to fit their theory of man made global warming, and to repress contrarian views by individuals who disagreed that global warming either (1) existed or (2) was caused by human activity from being published in respected scientific journals.

In short, the emails, excerpts of which were published by climate change skeptics within 24 hours after the hacking incident occurred allegedly proved that prominent climate scientists had lied and conspired to lie about the existence of anthropogenic generated climate change. Claims were made publicly that they had formed some sort of massive scientific cabal to force the world to forego the use of fossil fuels such as coal and oil in order to — what exactly? That part was never made too clear, but charges of financial interests, charges that they were socialists or that they wanted to destroy capitalism have all been bandied around without any justification or evidence. Nevertheless, these were serious charges to level at anyone.

Thus, Penn State began an official inquiry into one of the most renowned of the climate scientists whose work had convinced so many other scientists that global warming was real and that it was connected to human activity:

Michael E. Mann. Mann was the primary co-author of the seminal paper linking global warming to human activity, “Global-scale temperature patterns and climate forcing over the past six centuries”, Nature, 1998, a principle contributor to the reports issued by the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and one of the the founders of Real Climate the most prominent blog on the science of climate change, all while continuing to conduct research and publish papers while a member of the faculty at Penn State.

Mann has long been a lightning rod for criticism by global warming deniers because his 1998 paper and subsequent research provided such strong evidence linking humanity’s carbon emissions to the dramatic rise in global temperatures over the last 160 years. They have spilled thousands of gallons of ink, figuratively speaking, in an attempt to discredit his work, particularly his iconic graph which soon became known to both critics and defenders alike as the “hockey stick” graph:

So, despite the widespread acceptance of Mann’s work (and the work of thousands of other climate scientists) by the scientific community, by the US Military and the CIA, and by most world leaders, that climate change poses a real threat to mankind’s future, a small group of cyber-criminals, and those who took the stolen emails they had acquired and selectively quoted from them to generate a phony controversy, managed to distract the world from the reality of climate change, and call into question the integrity of the scientists involved in this crucial area of research.

Well, now Penn State has completed its inquiry into the stolen emails which related to Michael Mann and here is what they determined regarding the charges that Mann had falsified his data and research:

Under The Pennsylvania State University’s policy, Research Administration Policy No. 10, (hereafter referred to as RA-10), Research Misconduct is defined as:

(1) fabrication, falsification, plagiarism or other practices that seriously deviate from accepted practices within the academic community for proposing, conducting, or reporting research or other scholarly activities; […]

Finding 1. After careful consideration of all the evidence and relevant materials, the inquiry committee finding is that there exists no credible evidence that Dr. Mann had or has ever engaged in, or participated in, directly or indirectly, any actions with an intent to suppress or to falsify data. While a perception has been created in the weeks after the CRU emails were made public that Dr. Mann has engaged in the suppression or falsification of data, there is no credible evidence that he ever did so, and certainly not while at Penn State.

The Penn State panel also found that there was no credible evidence to suggest that Mann had deleted emails or data regarding his work and/or his correspondence with other climate scientists nor that he misused confidential and privileged information (both of which had also been alleged by those who published excerpts from the stolen CRU emails).

Of course, this isn’t the first time that Professor Mann has been accused of professional misconduct regarding his research. In 2006, the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) investigated Mann’s research prompted by a request from the then Republican controlled Congress. The report issued by the NAS in 2006 concluded that Mann “had not intentionally chosen data sets or methods to get a desired result.”

“I saw nothing that spoke to me of any manipulation,” said one member, Peter Bloomfield, a statistics professor at North Carolina State University. He added that his impression was the study was “an honest attempt to construct a data analysis procedure.”

What is more, the 2006 NAS report essentially confirmed that the research into anthropogenic climate change is accurate to a high degree of confidence:

In summary, large-scale surface temperature
reconstructions are proving to be important tools in our understanding of global climate change. They contribute evidence that allows us to say, with a high level of confidence, that global mean surface temperature was higher during the last few decades of the 20th century than during any comparable period
during the preceding four centuries.

In short, each time Michael Mann has been “investigated” on charges that he has “cooked the books” by selectively choosing which data to include in his models or otherwise lied or committed scientific fraud regarding his research, he has been cleared of any wrongdoing. I’m sure that his so-called critics find that fact extremely galling.

No doubt, however, that as long as certain parties (Big Oil for one) have a vested interest in muddying the waters regarding the results that climate change scientists are reporting as to the existence of climate change driven by human activity, Professor Mann and other scientists will be attacked and phony charges of fraud and deceit will be alleged against them regarding their research findings.

And, regrettably, millions of people will have heard only that climate scientists are liars, cheats and frauds who can’t be trusted, and not the result of the investigations which exonerated them.