Climate Audit

Last updated
Climate Audit
Type of site
 Blog
Available inEnglish
Owner Steve McIntyre
Created by Steve McIntyre
Revenue Donations
URL ClimateAudit.org
Launched31 January 2005
Current statusLive

Climate Audit is a blog founded in 2005 [1] [2] by Steve McIntyre.

Contents

In November 2009 journalist Andrew Revkin described it in The New York Times as "a popular skeptics’ blog" run by McIntyre, a retired Canadian mining consultant. [3] In 2010, a Nature article described the site as part of the "climate change skeptic community" alongside the Air Vent and Black¬board. [4]

Founding

In 2004 Stephen McIntyre blogged on his website climate2003.com about his efforts with Ross McKitrick to get an extended analysis of the hockey stick graph into the journal Nature . [5] [6]

On 25 October 2004 McIntyre posted comments on climate2003.com about a piece by William Connolley circulated on various blogs, and on 26 October wrote, "Maybe I’ll start blogging some odds and ends that I’m working on. I’m going to post up some more observations on some of the blog criticisms." [7] On 1 December Michael E. Mann and nine other scientists launched the RealClimate website as "a resource where the public can go to see what actual scientists working in the field have to say about the latest issues." [8] On climate2003.com McIntyre noted this development in a blog post on 10 December, where he wrote "Mann and some of his colleagues have set up a blog at the above address. A couple of Mann's first postings have been arguments against our papers. I'll post up a two quick comments below." [7] On 2 February 2005 McIntyre set up his Climate Audit blog, having found difficulties with posting comments on the climate2003.com layout. [9]

Judith Curry of the Georgia Institute of Technology has said "McIntyre started the blog climateaudit.org so that he could defend himself against claims being made at the blog Realclimate with regards to his critique of the “hockey stick” since he was unable to post his comments there". She has also referred to this site as one of several "Climate Auditor" websites. [10]

Climatic Research Unit information requests and email controversy

After the UK Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) came into effect in 2005, Climate Audit readers were asked to make FOI requests to the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia (UEA) for the raw data from weather stations used in developing instrumental temperature record datasets, for copies of agreements under which the raw data was obtained from meteorology institutions, and also for email correspondence relating to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fourth Assessment Report. [11] On 12 August 2009, Olive Heffernan wrote in naturenews that "Since 2002, Steve McIntyre, the editor of Climate Audit, a blog that investigates the statistical methods used in climate science, has repeatedly asked Phil Jones, director of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia, UK, for access to monthly global surface temperature data held by the institute. But in recent weeks, Jones has been swamped by a sudden surge in demands for data". She described how CRU had received 58 FOIA requests between 24 and 29 July 2009 from McIntyre or others associated with the blog. The raw data was restricted to academics, and the unit's director Phil Jones said that the data was subject to confidentiality agreements with various governments, but he was seeking agreement to get the raw data available online. He said that “Data release needs to be done in a systematic way.” [12]

The site was one of the first to receive word of the e-mails which had been leaked [13] [14] [15] from the University of East Anglia with Jonathan Leake of The Times writing, "The storm began with just four cryptic words. 'A miracle has happened,' announced a contributor to Climate Audit, a website devoted to criticising the science of climate change." [16] Louise Gray wrote in The Daily Telegraph, "Climate Audit was one of the first to post up the stolen emails from the University of East Anglia that led to the 'climategate' scandal". [17]

Bloomberg said of the controversy, "Web sites and blogs including the Climate Audit Mirror Site have carried copies of e-mails, correspondence between climatologists and commentary. In one e-mail cited widely on blogs including Climate Audit, Phil Jones writes about completing “Mike’s nature trick of adding in the real temps” in order to hide the decline." [18] According to Antonio Regalado writing in Science Insider, Jones wrote e-mails stating that he convinced the university's FOI managers to not release data to "greenhouse skeptics" because Jones believed that they planned to harm the UEA or setback climate science by drawing scientists into disputes, wasting research time. [19] "Think I've managed to persuade UEA to ignore all further FOIA requests if the people have anything to do with Climate Audit," Jones wrote in 2007. [19] The House of Commons' Science and Technology Committee largely vindicated the scientists involved in the scandal, but left consideration of the quality of the science and the conduct of the research to committees chaired by Lord Oxburgh and Sir Muir Russell. Fox News said that McIntyre "who also worked at the IPCC and submitted notes to the Science and Technology Committee for its investigation, wrote a lengthy rebuttal of the decision on his blog", and disputed the committee's conclusion that the word trick "appears to be a colloquialism for a 'neat' method of handling data". [20] Further investigations by the United States Environmental Protection Agency, the Inspector General of the United States Department of Commerce and the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) of the National Science Foundation reaffirmed that the accusations against the scientists were unfounded.

Reception

James Hansen, the former director of NASA's Goddard Institute, has dismissed McIntyre as a "court jester". [21]

"If a single person can be credited with setting the stage for Climategate, it's Stephen McIntyre, the retired mining consultant behind the popular skeptic blog Climate Audit," wrote Kate Sheppard at Mother Jones in 2011. [22] "Emails from this period show the scientists lashing out against McIntyre. He is referred to as a "bozo" and "a playground bully." McIntyre clearly gets a rise out of irking scientists, whom he frequently refers to as 'the Team'—another play on the hockey-stick metaphor. He likes to 'tease these guys and kind of make fun of them,' he says, and their evident aggravation at his inquiries only egged him on. 'I think it was a mistake for them to in effect adopt a fatwa against Climate Audit,' says McIntyre." [22]

Patrick J. Michaels, a former contributor to the IPCC and a former fellow at the denialist Cato Institute, named Climate Audit as part of 'a new “parallel universe” of emerging online publications, manned by serious scientists critical of world governments approach to climate change'. “A parallel universe is assembling itself parallel to the IPCC. This universe has become very technical -- very proficient at taking apart the U.N.’s findings." [23]

Internet voting by the public organized by the Weblog Awards, a right-wing blog sponsored by conservative media group Wizbang LLC, won the website the 2007 Weblog "Best Science Blog" award [24] and it was a runner up in the same category in 2008. [25]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Temperature record of the last 2,000 years</span> Temperature trends in the Common Era

The temperature record of the last 2,000 years is reconstructed using data from climate proxy records in conjunction with the modern instrumental temperature record which only covers the last 170 years at a global scale. Large-scale reconstructions covering part or all of the 1st millennium and 2nd millennium have shown that recent temperatures are exceptional: the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fourth Assessment Report of 2007 concluded that "Average Northern Hemisphere temperatures during the second half of the 20th century were very likely higher than during any other 50-year period in the last 500 years and likely the highest in at least the past 1,300 years." The curve shown in graphs of these reconstructions is widely known as the hockey stick graph because of the sharp increase in temperatures during the last century. As of 2010 this broad pattern was supported by more than two dozen reconstructions, using various statistical methods and combinations of proxy records, with variations in how flat the pre-20th-century "shaft" appears. Sparseness of proxy records results in considerable uncertainty for earlier periods.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Michael E. Mann</span> American physicist and climatologist

Michael Evan Mann is an American climatologist and geophysicist. He is the director of the Center for Science, Sustainability & the Media at the University of Pennsylvania. Mann has contributed to the scientific understanding of historic climate change based on the temperature record of the past thousand years. He has pioneered techniques to find patterns in past climate change and to isolate climate signals from noisy data.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Climatic Research Unit</span> UK Climate Change research body

The Climatic Research Unit (CRU) is a component of the University of East Anglia and is one of the leading institutions concerned with the study of natural and anthropogenic climate change.

Stephen McIntyre is a Canadian mining exploration company director, a former minerals prospector and semi-retired mining consultant whose work has included statistical analysis. He is the founder and editor of Climate Audit, a blog which analyses and discusses climate data. He is a critic of the temperature record of the past 1000 years and the data quality of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies. He has made statistical critiques, with economist Ross McKitrick, of the hockey stick graph which shows that the increase in late 20th century global temperatures is unprecedented in the past 1,000 years.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Phil Jones (climatologist)</span> Climatologist

Philip Douglas Jones is a former director of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) and a professor in the School of Environmental Sciences at the University of East Anglia (UEA) from 1998, having begun his career at the unit in 1976. He retired from these positions at the end of 2016, and was replaced as CRU director by Tim Osborn. Jones then took up a position as a Professorial Fellow at the UEA from January 2017.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hockey stick graph (global temperature)</span> Graph in climate science

Hockey stick graphs present the global or hemispherical mean temperature record of the past 500 to 2000 years as shown by quantitative climate reconstructions based on climate proxy records. These reconstructions have consistently shown a slow long term cooling trend changing into relatively rapid warming in the 20th century, with the instrumental temperature record by 2000 exceeding earlier temperatures.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">James Delingpole</span> English writer (born 1965)

James Mark Court Delingpole is an English writer, journalist, and columnist who has written for a number of publications, including the Daily Mail, the Daily Express, The Times, The Daily Telegraph, and The Spectator. He is a former executive editor for Breitbart London, and has published several novels and four political books. He describes himself as a libertarian conservative. He has frequently published articles promoting climate change denial and expressing opposition to wind power.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anthony Watts (blogger)</span> American blogger (born 1958)

Willard Anthony Watts is an American blogger who runs Watts Up With That?, a climate change denial blog that opposes the scientific consensus on climate change. A former television meteorologist and current radio meteorologist, he is also founder of the Surface Stations project, a volunteer initiative to document the condition of U.S. weather stations. The Heartland Institute helped fund some of Watts' projects, including publishing a report on the Surface Stations project, and invited him to be a paid speaker at its International Conference on Climate Change from 2008 to 2014.

The Climatic Research Unit email controversy began in November 2009 with the hacking of a server at the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia (UEA) by an external attacker, copying thousands of emails and computer files to various internet locations several weeks before the Copenhagen Summit on climate change.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">The Global Warming Policy Foundation</span> Climate change denial lobby group in the United Kingdom

The Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) is a charitable organisation in the United Kingdom whose aims are to challenge what it calls "extremely damaging and harmful policies" envisaged by governments to mitigate anthropogenic global warming. The GWPF, and some of its prominent members individually, have been characterised as practising and promoting climate change denial.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Climatic Research Unit documents</span>

Climatic Research Unit documents including thousands of e-mails and other computer files were stolen from a server at the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia in a hacking incident in November 2009. The documents were redistributed first through several blogs of global warming deniers, who alleged that the documents indicated misconduct by leading climate scientists. A series of investigations rejected these allegations, while concluding that CRU scientists should have been more open with distributing data and methods on request. Precisely six committees investigated the allegations and published reports, finding no evidence of fraud or scientific misconduct. The scientific consensus that global warming is occurring as a result of human activity remained unchanged by the end of the investigations.

Watts Up With That? (WUWT) is a blog promoting climate change denial that was created by Anthony Watts in 2006.

Andrew William Montford is a British writer and editor who is the owner of the Bishop Hill blog. He is the author of The Hockey Stick Illusion (2010).

<i>The Hockey Stick Illusion</i> 2010 book by Andrew Montford

The Hockey Stick Illusion: Climategate and the Corruption of Science is a book written by Andrew Montford and published by Stacey International in 2010, which promotes climate change denial.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Eduardo Zorita</span> Spanish paleoclimatologist

Eduardo Zorita is a Spanish paleoclimatologist. As of 2010, he is a Senior Scientist at the Institute for Coastal Research, GKSS Research Centre in Geesthacht, Germany, where he has worked since 1996. Zorita is review editor of the journal Climate Research.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Berkeley Earth</span> Climatological research institute

Berkeley Earth is a Berkeley, California-based independent 501(c)(3) non-profit focused on land temperature data analysis for climate science. Berkeley Earth was founded in early 2010 to address the major concerns from outside the scientific community regarding global warming and the instrumental temperature record. The project's stated aim was a "transparent approach, based on data analysis." In February 2013, Berkeley Earth became an independent non-profit. In August 2013, Berkeley Earth was granted 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status by the US government. The primary product is air temperatures over land, but they also produce a global dataset resulting from a merge of their land data with HadSST.

Freedom of Information requests to the Climatic Research Unit featured in press discussions of disputes over access to data from instrumental temperature records, particularly during the Climatic Research Unit email controversy which began in November 2009.

The Wegman Report was prepared in 2006 by three statisticians led by Edward Wegman at the request of Rep. Joe Barton of the United States House Committee on Energy and Commerce to validate criticisms made by Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick of reconstructions of the temperature record of the past 1000 years, in particular the reconstructions by Mann, Bradley and Hughes of what had been dubbed the hockey stick graph.

The North Report was a 2006 report evaluating reconstructions of the temperature record of the past two millennia, providing an overview of the state of the science and the implications for understanding of global warming. It was produced by a National Research Council committee, chaired by Gerald North, at the request of Representative Sherwood Boehlert as chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Science.

The history of climate change policy and politics refers to the continuing history of political actions, policies, trends, controversies and activist efforts as they pertain to the issue of climate change. Climate change emerged as a political issue in the 1970s, when activist and formal efforts sought to address environmental crises on a global scale. International policy regarding climate change has focused on cooperation and the establishment of international guidelines to address global warming. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is a largely accepted international agreement that has continuously developed to meet new challenges. Domestic policy on climate change has focused on both establishing internal measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and incorporating international guidelines into domestic law.

References

  1. ↑ .net, Whois (31 Jan 2005). "Whois". Whois. Retrieved 4 May 2010.
  2. ↑ "Alexa Ranking". Amazon. p. 1. Archived from the original on May 11, 2023. Retrieved 26 August 2010.
  3. ↑ Revkin, Andrew C. (Nov 27, 2009). "Hacked E-Mail Data Prompts Calls for Changes in Climate Research". The New York Times. p. 1. Retrieved 27 May 2010.
  4. ↑ Lemonick, Michael D. (1 November 2010). "Climate heretic: Judith Curry turns on her colleagues". Nature. Retrieved 9 April 2020.
  5. ↑ Pearce, Fred, The Climate Files: The Battle for the Truth about Global Warming, (2010) Guardian Books, ISBN   978-0-85265-229-9, pp. 93–96.
  6. ↑ McIntyre, Stephen (2004), Welcome to Climate2003, archived from the original on 2 September 2004, retrieved 10 September 2012, McIntyre, Stephen; McKitrick, Ross (1 July 2004), M&M03 Page, archived from the original on 12 September 2004, retrieved 10 September 2012
  7. 1 2 McIntyre, Stephen (5 January 2005), Welcome to Climate2003, archived from the original on 24 January 2005, retrieved 10 September 2012
  8. ↑ David Appell (February 21, 2005). "Behind the Hockey Stick". Scientific American. Retrieved 2011-03-07.
  9. ↑ McIntyre, Stephen (2 February 2005), Climate Audit, archived from the original on 4 February 2005, retrieved 10 September 2012
  10. ↑ Curry, Judith (February 24, 2010). "Can scientists rebuild the public trust in climate science?". Physics Today. Archived from the original on 19 July 2011. Retrieved 4 May 2010.
  11. ↑ Pearce, Fred (2010), The Climate Files: The Battle for the Truth About Global Warming, Random House UK, pp. 143–156, ISBN   978-0-85265-229-9
  12. ↑ Heffernan, Olive (2009-08-12). "Climate data spat intensifies Growing demands for access to information swamp scientist". Nature. Archived from the original on 2012-09-08. Retrieved 2010-05-04. Since 2002, Steve McIntyre, the editor of Climate Audit, a blog that investigates the statistical methods used in climate science, has repeatedly asked Phil Jones, director of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia, UK, for access to monthly global surface temperature data held by the institute.
  13. ↑ "UN climate panel ordered to make fundamental reforms". AFP . 2010-08-30. Archived from the original on 2010-09-02. Retrieved 2010-08-31. the IPCC was rocked by a scandal involving leaked emails which critics say showed that they skewed data.
  14. ↑ Spotts, Pete (2010-08-30). "IPCC climate change panel needs transparency, review panel finds". The Christian Science Monitor . Archived from the original on 2010-09-01. Retrieved 2010-08-31– via csmonitor.com. Many of these controversies came to light within the past 10 months. Emails leaked from the University of East Anglia revealed a handful of influential climate scientists displaying a circle-the-wagons mentality as some analysts tried to gain access to their data and analysis methods. Critics alleged that the emails also held evidence of fudged results.
  15. ↑ Helderman, Rosalind S. (2010-08-31). "Judge rejects Ken Cuccinelli's probe of U-Va. global warming records". The Washington Post . Archived from the original on 2010-10-23. Retrieved 2010-08-31– via washingtonpost.com. has long been under attack by those who doubt global warming, particularly after his work was referenced in a series of leaked e-mails from the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit.
  16. ↑ Leake, Jonathan (November 29, 2009). "The great climate change science scandal". The Sunday Times. Archived from the original on January 7, 2010. Retrieved 4 May 2010. IT was against this background that the emails were leaked last week
  17. ↑ Gray, Louise (9 Apr 2010). "Climate change: Key influencers in the debate". The Telegraph. Archived from the original on 12 April 2010. Retrieved 4 May 2010.
  18. ↑ Efstathiou Jr, Jim; Alex Morales (Dec 2, 2009). "U.K. Climate Scientist Steps Down After E-Mail Flap (Update4". Bloomberg.com. p. 1. Retrieved 27 May 2010.
  19. 1 2 Antonio Regalado (2009-11-23). "In Climate Hack Story, Could Talk of Cover-Up Be as Serious as Crime?". Archived from the original on 2010-03-10. Retrieved 2010-09-08.
  20. ↑ "Scientists Cleared -- After One-Day Probe". Fox News. 2010-03-31. Archived from the original on April 2, 2010. Retrieved 2010-09-08.
  21. ↑ Global warming's most dangerous apostate speaks out about the state of climate change science. by Anne Jolis, The Wall Street Journal , Nov. 18, 2009
  22. 1 2 Climategate: What Really Happened?, Mother Jones, Apr. 21, 2011
  23. ↑ Koprowski, Gene J (April 28, 2010). "EXCLUSIVE: Citizen's Group Plans Extensive Audit of U.N. Climate Report". Fox News. Retrieved 3 May 2010.
  24. ↑ Aylward, Kevin (November 1, 2007). "Best Science Blog". Web Blog Awards. Archived from the original on 6 December 2013. Retrieved 4 May 2010.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link)
  25. ↑ Aylward, Kevin (December 31, 2008). "Best Science Blog". Web Blog Awards. Archived from the original on 28 May 2010. Retrieved 4 May 2010.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link)
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