THE DAILY COLLEGIAN
British police are investigating the theft of hundreds of private e-mails -- some from a Penn State professor -- that were leaked last week by hackers, causing a commotion over whether scientists have exaggerated the effects of man-made climate change. But the professor in question, Penn State meteorology professor Michael Mann, said Friday the e-mails have been taken out of context.
Hackers accessed the e-mails two weeks ago from a server at the University of East Anglia in eastern England, a climate change research center.
The Associated Press reported that some "climate change skeptics" say the leaked documents suggest scientists exaggerated information and manipulated data regarding global warming. But Mann said he and his colleagues used a lot of "understood" language in their e-mail conversations that might not translate to outside readers.
Mann said many of the e-mails that were released were ones he received, not ones that he sent. One of the e-mails from a colleague references a paper Mann wrote that discusses two separate data sets spanning two separate periods of time. Combined, these data display long-term climate changes.
The Associated Press reported that the center's director, Phil Jones, e-mailed his colleagues to say he had "just completed Mike's Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (i.e., from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith's to hide the decline." Jones confirmed this was accurate, the Associated Press reports, but the "Keith" in reference could not be identified.
The data is clearly labeled and nothing is hidden, Mann said. But he said the word "trick" -- which, to the scientists, meant "a clever device" to understand the data -- has been distorted by some people in an attempt to allege climate change researchers were manipulating the data. The words have been taken out of context, Mann said.
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This article makes me grin. The last thing we need in time like this is a fraud of this kind of epic proportion to distract from what's really going on. Yes, the sun's temperature did increase, and yes, it is now decreasing. It's been like this for years! It's just solar cycles. Now, if we can just get our good buddy Gore to finally admit that this whole "global warming" thing is all just a scam, we might be able to save some money for a change. Global warming never was an issue, and anyone who says otherwise has probably already spent too much money trying to fix a problem that isn't even there.
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ReplyDelete-Zane Huseth
ReplyDeleteDavid, I'm sorry, but you shouldn't believe everything your dad says to you. Solar flares are not the cause for this, human activity is. If you actually listen to what the scientists themselves had to say themselves, then you would realize that this entire thing was blown way out of proportion. Those who think this is fake have no proof of that; instead, they automaticly make assumptions that contradict common sense. If the world is cooling again, then why was November so warm?
i think that zane has some interesting facts but why do we need to worry about solar flares?? what i think is that everybody in america is worried that the world is going to end in 2012,but i strongly disagree with that. i also think that this whole little "epidemic" about hacked emails is dumb because a very smart person could have hacked into the system and wrote all this nonsense about global warming just to scare america. now if the scientists or government could give us all proof about this, than mabey america would actually listen and start to be more aware. but untill then i think america be worried less than what they are.
ReplyDelete-johnathan bue
Nick C7
ReplyDeleteI think that global warming is a big joke. I think that it is just a cycle of nature the climate changes. When we drill wells we sometimes run into trees that are a hundred feet below the surface so that tells you that before the glaciers there were trees growing. The glaciers just covered them up and it is all part of a cycle. In Greenland they found trees underneath the glaciers so that tells you that the glaciers werent always there and froze over the trees. So I think that global warming is just part of a cycle and is no big deal and that it has been blown way out of proportion.
Darn, Zane, you got us. You're right. David and I could care less about the facts and only listen to what our parents think. We let them tell us what to believe in. Obviously, this is sarcasm. In fact, we believe in the things we do because the statistics support it. The science that you spoke of (although I failed to see any of this "science" in your argument) is still up for debate between scientists. Since you like facts, I suppose I could give you some. Over the past 120 years, some graphs have stated that the rising global temperatures are based on the solar activity of the sun, not the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Not only that, but in one point in these graphs, the temperature of earth in around 1938 indicates the level of carbon dioxide was much lower than the temperatures of the Arctic sections of the world. When comparing this to the ratio of CO2 to Arctic termperatures today, it is obvious that these two do not correspond with each other. This data was gathered by the UK Meteorological Office's Hadley Center for Climate Studies.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/05/02/a_tale_of_two_thermometers/
According to other pesky facts, the average global temperature has been fluctuating thousands of years ago, just as much as it is today. This is odd, because thousands of years ago the people did not have access to technology that would cause the emittance of carbon dioxide. Actually, to me, this isn't odd. This is how global warming has been since the beginning of time.
http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/ice_ages.html
I have to agree with Nick Justin and David. this whole global waming thing is a joke. Even if it was really going on we really cant do much to stop it. Yea we can get more fuel efficent cars, better electrsity methods, and more biofuels; but the earths population is still growing so there is still a demand for more goods. The more people there are the more we need to survive. So we will still end up using more things that produce carbon dioxide and greenhouse gasses. So really even if global warming is happening we cant do much to stop it, maybe slow it down, but it will still happen eventualy. Like Justin said the earths temperature has been changing for thousands of years so why do we blame it on global warming now; instead of what was changing the earths temperature thousands of years ago?
ReplyDeleteBrady Fahlstom