climate scientists’ e-mail exchange leaked – climate change sceptics have new impetus

A large number of private e-mails by leading climate scientists became public after the e-mail server of East Anglia University was hacked. They are particularly interesting because some of their content is used by climate sceptics to denounce the scientists, their methods, and findings. The university responded by making all the e-mails – spanning the years 1996 to 2009 – public.

http://www.eastangliaemails.com/index.php These e-mails are extremely interesting and offer an insight into how climate scientists work and how much uncertainty and statistical difficulties and decisions they face.

Here is just one excerpt from Oct. 14 2009: “The Figure you sent is very deceptive. As an example, historical runs with PCM look as though they match observations -- but the match is a fluke. PCM has no indirect aerosol forcing and a low climate sensitivity -- compensating errors. In my (perhaps too harsh) view, there have been a number of dishonest presentations of model results by individual authors and by IPCC. This is why I still use results from MAGICC to compare with observed temperatures. At least here I can assess how sensitive matches are to sensitivity and forcing assumptions/uncertainties.”