ClimateGate Overshadows Climate Change At Copenhagen

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


The past decade has been the warmest on record, according to a new report from the World Meteorological Organization. But in the early days of the Copenhagen summit, climate change is in danger of being overshadowed by the so-called ClimateGate affair.

Climate skeptics and dirty energy front groups falsely claim that a decade’s worth of emails stolen from the a climate research unit at the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom are a smoking gun proving that scientists have colluded to make the case for global warming appear stronger than it really is. In fact, nothing in the messages challenges the finding by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)—the premier body of climate scientists organized by the United Nations—that the evidence of climate change is “unequivocal.” Yet ClimateGate seems to be the main topic of interest for many of the 5,000 journalists here. I’ve been quizzed about it on several television programs, and yesterday I spotted British climate change denier Lord Christopher Monckton dishing on the affair to a gaggle of avid journalists. Scientists and leaders at the summit are being bombarded with questions about the “controversy.” 

The new data from the World Meteorological Organization suggests that the decade of 2000 to 2009 “is very likely to be the warmest on record, warmer than the 1990s, than the 1980s and so on,” according to Michel Jarraud, the agency’s secretary-general. This year is expected to be the fifth-warmest year on record. However, the IPCC cautions that studies of temperature increases over short periods should not on their own be taken as definiteive proof of climate change, because there is so much climate variability within the course of a decade. What’s most important is the body of evidence of a long-term, incremental warming trend, Thomas F. Stocker, co-chair of the IPCC working group that studies the science of climate change, told Mother Jones on Tuesday. 

IPCC chief Rajendra Pachauri directly addressed the ClimateGate issue in his opening address. The case for climate change is “based on measurements made by many independent institutions worldwide that demonstrate significant changes on land, in the atmosphere, the oceans and in the ice- covered areas of the earth,” he said. This research has been subject to “extensive and repeated review by experts as well as governments.” He concluded: “The internal consistency from the multiple lines of evidence strongly supports the work of the scientific community, including those individuals singled out in these e-mail exchanges.”

Bottom line: The planet is getting hot, fast, and world leaders need to do something about it. The ClimateGate flap could prove a dangerous distraction from that task.

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate