On this day in 2010, Professor Phil Jones of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, gave testimony to a parliamentary committee (the Science and Technology Select Committee since you ask) on the subject of the so-called Climategate hack (or the “Climatic Research Unit email controversy”).
In late 2009, in the run up to Copenhagen, the servers of the University of East Anglia had been infiltrated, a vast archive of emails downloaded, and then selected releases to make it look as if climate scientists were colluding to keep critics out of peer review. And this was designed to make the negotiations at Copenhagen COP more problematic. Whether it mattered or not is impossible, perhaps to say, but no single bullet ever wins a war…
The broader context is that climate scientists had been coming under fierce public attack since at least 1989. (Never mind James Hansen’s funding being pulled in 1981 because of a New York Times front page article displeasing the Republican Administration).
But the kind of personal, bitter ad hominem attacks really took off 1995-96 around the second IPCC assessment report. Michael Mann, who became the subject of attacks himself, calls this the Serengeti Strategy.
Why this matters.
The narrative of “there is doubt about how severe climate change will be/the climate scientists may be – if not lying – exaggerating” is an immensely powerful narrative. Because it allows middle class professional people to continue not to pay attention to the issue. And that’s why the predatory delayers have played the card for so long.
What happened next?
The “climategate” emails were found, after multiple investigations, to be – in the words of the right wingers – a “nothing burger.” Jones continued his career, having admitted that he had contemplated suicide at the time. Meanwhile, the atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide have continued to climb
Atmospheric C02 concentration at that time: 390.1ppm
Atmospheric C02 concentration at time of publication: 416.71ppm