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5/2/2010 Guardian   “None of the 1,073 emails upsets the 200-year-old science behind the greenhouse effect” The emails stolen from the University of East Anglia in November have cast an   uncomfortable light on the behind-thescenes actions of some of the world’s most senior   and respected climate scientists. The affair raises serious questions about access to data   and the way scientific peer review can be used to stifle dissent.
  But is climate change science fundamentally flawed by the “climategate” revelations?   Absolutely not. Nothing uncovered in the emails destroys the argument that humans are   warming the planet. None of the 1,073 emails plus 3,587 files containing documents, raw   data and computer code upsets the 200-year-old science behind the “greenhouse effect” of   gases such as carbon dioxide, which traps solar heat and warms the atmospheres
  Nothing changes the fact that carbon dioxide is accumulating in the atmosphere thanks to   human emissions from burning carbon-based fuels such as coal and oil. Nor the   calculations by physicists that for every square metre of the Earth’s surface, 1.6 watts   more energy enters the atmosphere than leaves it.
  And we know the world is warming as a result. Thousands of thermometers in areas   remote from any conceivable local urban influences tell us that. The oceans are warming   too. The great majority of
  the world’s glaciers are retreating, Arctic sea ice is disappearing, sea levels are rising ever   faster, trees are climbing up hillsides and permafrost is melting.
  These are not statistical artefacts or the result of scientists cherry-picking data. Equally,   many of the most widely publicised claims from sceptics about the emails are   demonstrably unfounded. There is no conspiracy to “hide the decline” in temperatures.   Nor that a lack of warming in the data is a “travesty” – still less of attempts to fix the data.
  But, within the narrower confines of assembling a reliable history of global temperature,   the emails have done significant damage to the credibility of scientists, They show that in   their desire to give the world a clear message that humans are heating the planet, a group   of scientists cut corners and played down uncertainties in their calculations.
  Their opponents charge that they then covered their tracks by being secretive with data   and suppressing dissent.
  Taken with the recent revelations about shortcomings in reports of the Intergovernmental   Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), this suggests a wider problem of scientific sloppiness,   but not of outright fraud. Many scientists believe their community has to own up to that,   and put its house in order.
  Part of the problem is secrecy in has been trying to make peace between her colleagues   and the sceptics, says the various data sets connected to the famous “hockey stick”   temperature graph and Phil Jones’s thermometer data sets “stand out as lacking   transparency”
  Science is too much of a closed shop, she says, Outsiders need to be let into the ivory   towers for the good of science itself. “Einstein didn’t start his career at Princeton, but   rather at a post office.” Bring on the bloggers. Maybe there’s an Einstein among them.
  The doors of labs are being opened whether scientists like it or not. The Information   Commissioner’s office last week released a statement saying that the University of East   Anglia had “not dealt with [Fol requests] as they should have been under the legislation”.
  There is evidence in the emails that some at the Climatic Research Unit wanted to delete   files rather than hand them over – though it is not clear if there were any deliberate   deletions.
  Probably no one anticipated that a law intended to unwrap state secrets might end up   freeing data from scientists’ computers. But the science community now urgently needs to   figure out how to respond to this altered landscape.
  The need to open up science is made all the greater by the question raised in the emails   about the “gold standard”, the peer review system. In many fields of research, peer review   creates serious conflicts of interest in which, as the emails have revealed, senior research-   ers can act in a way that could have the effect of blackballing the research papers of their   critics. The dangers are all the greater when, again as the emails show, the conventions of   anonymity in peer review are not rigorously upheld.
  Finally, “climategate” raises questions about the IPCC report-writing process, in which   many of the emailers have been involved. Governments set up the IPCC 20 years ago to   get scientists to speak with one voice on climate change, But often there is no Blear   consensus. Scientists are trained to disagree. The tensions created by the pressure to agree   are clear in dozens of the emails,
  One of Jones’s UEA colleagues, the climatologist Mike Hulme, says: “Climate scientists   will have to work harder to earn the warranted trust of the public – and maybe that is no   bad thing.”
  While science gets its house in order, we need some perspective. In the midst of a cold   winter it may be hard to convince ourselves, but the world is still warming.  Humanity is   still to blame.  And we still, urgently, need to do something about it.
   Go to: http://guardian.newspaperdirect.com/epaper/viewer.aspx