Climate scientists are endangering their profession -- and the planet

The hockey-stick saga is an example of why advocacy and hubris may have been the wrong reaction to the assault of McIntyre & Co. The original idea—conceived by Penn State’s Mann while still a postdoctoral researcher—was to surmise temperatures, going back 1,000 years, from such data as the thickness of the rings of bristlecone pine trees, which grow faster in warm summers than in cool ones. The method, for technical reasons, didn’t work for the last two decades of the 20th century. It also required some massaging of the data. This is not to say Mann was conspiring to deceive; the National Academy of Sciences gave this work a thumbs-up in a 2006 review. The troubles started after the results were published, when McIntyre began asking Mann for his data. McIntyre says Mann gave him raw data, but not the meta-data needed to make sense of them. Mann insists that he handed over all the data it was in his power to divulge. Some of the most damning passages in the climate­gate ­e-mails, however, involve some of the scientists discussing ways of fending off requests from McIntyre and other bloggers. Penn State recently cleared Mann of wrongdoing.

Rather than shun the amateurs, climate scientists might find that giving them access to their data goes a long way to building trust. It might even lead to better science. New Zealand computer programmer John Graham-Cumming found errors in temperature data of the U.K.’s Met Hadley research center that an official acknowledged early this month. “I’m not a climate skeptic,” Graham-Cumming told The Times of London. “I think it’s pretty sure that the world is warming up, but this does show why the raw data, and not just the results, should be available.” That also jibes with Curry’s personal experience. As coauthor of a 2005 paper arguing that the frequency of severe hurricanes has doubled in the past 30 years due to a warming climate, she felt the sting of criticism from bloggers who questioned her science and demanded to see her data. “I know what it’s like to be attacked, and it isn’t pleasant,” she says. Unlike Jones and the other climategate scientists, however, Curry obliged her critics. She emerged from the experience chastened (they found mistakes), but also convinced that her fellow climate scientists are doing themselves and the public a disservice by ignoring bloggers and skeptics.