Opinion: Snippets of stolen e-mails cannot make the Earth flat

Nov. 23, 2011

Out-of-context snippets from stolen e-mails can change neither the well-understood science nor the extreme weather we are all witnessing.

See also: We are smarter this time, 

by John Abraham

By Scott Mandia

for the Daily Climate

A file containing more than 5,000 e-mails from climate scientists was posted online in an apparent attempt to undermine public confidence in well-established science. This came days before the United Nations climate change conference in Durban, South Africa, where international leaders will gather again try to hammer out treaties to get the world off its high-carbon-emission path and to save humanity from the suffering that human-caused climate change brings with it. 

Here is what we know: The Earth is round, smoking is linked to lung cancer, and humans are changing the climate by emitting massive amounts of heat-trapping carbon dioxide and other gases. Like extra blankets at night, those emissions are warming the planet.  The physics of greenhouse gases has been understood for more than 100 years.  It is not new science.

During the height of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill last year, about 5,000 metric tons of oil spilled into the water a day.  At the same time, human activities were pumping 82 million metric tons of carbon dioxide daily into the atmosphere, a record.  For perspective, our emissions from fossil fuels are equivalent to 15,000 Gulf oil spills every single day.

'Settled fact'

The pattern of observed warming is precisely what the physics tells us we should see if heat is being trapped by greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide.  Nights are warming faster than days, winters are warming faster than summers, the oceans are gaining heat, and the lower atmosphere is warming while the upper atmosphere is cooling. There are no known natural mechanisms that can cause this observed warming pattern.  To state otherwise is to suggest that although we see human fingerprints all over the murder weapon, the killer must a ghost.  Because of the mountain of evidence, the National Research Council, an arm of the United States National Academy of Sciences, stated in 2010 that human-caused climate change is “settled fact.”

Historical evidence, well-understood physics, and sophisticated climate models all point to a dangerously warm climate if emissions are not dramatically reduced. In fact, the International Energy Agency reports that humanity has about five years to rapidly move away from a fossil fuel-based economy before catastrophic climate change may be locked in.  Killer heat waves, devastating droughts and wildfires, and unprecedented floods are expected in our warmer world and we are witnessing these events now. Climate is the canvas and weather is what is painted on that canvas. Change the canvas and all weather is affected. The extra heat and moisture that human-caused warming is adding to the climate is like injecting steroids into our weather.

Nothing new

Out-of-context snippets from stolen e-mails cannot change the well-understood science nor can they change the extreme weather we are all witnessing.  These “new” e-mails are actually from the same set of two-year-old e-mails stolen from the Climate Research Unit at East Anglia University in Britain in November 2009. The original release of these hacked e-mails was a hoax, a manufactured scandal designed to smear climate scientists. Of course, climate scientists were vindicated in multiple investigations.  There is nothing new here.  The Earth is still round.

Scott Mandia is Professor of Physical Science at Suffolk County Community College, Long Island, New York.  He has been teaching weather and climate courses for more than 20 years.