Ö÷²¥´óÐã

It's beginning to look like a pattern.

An apparent scandal is unveiled that threatens to rock climate science to its very core, a scandal that usually ends in the suffix "-gate".

, Amazon, and Climate itself are just three of the stems that have borne the suffix in recent months.

Sections of the blogosphere then erupt with claims of deception, malpractice, political machinations and even fraud.

Later, a more sober analysis by some body of learned men and women tends to turn that view on its head, concluding - in summary - that while there may be lessons to be learned, the science of human-induced climate change is not rotten at its core - in fact, it is in pretty good health.

The latest in this series of sober analyses is , the findings of which were released on Monday.

The investigation was commissioned by the Netherlands parliament, elements of which were incensed earlier in the year to discover that according to the IPCC, more than half (55%) of their country was at risk of flooding from rising sea levels.

As a pioneering developer of sea defences, this was apparently an issue that stirred Dutch hearts.

In conjunction with the approach of an election in which pro-business and pro-coal agendas through advancement of the Freedom Party and Liberal Party, this produced a potent demand for an inquiry.

Now it's here. And on the issue that perhaps ought have been - but was not, as far as I know - dubbed "Sluicegate", PBL has put the blame firmly on... itself.

The 55% flood risk figure stemmed from a PBL report that had been taken into the IPCC process by a PBL researcher. In fact, 55% is the total figure at risk of flooding; but less than half of this comes from sea level rise, the remainder being due to river overflows. The inquiry concludes:

"We acknowledge that this error was not the fault of the IPCC... the error was made by a contributing author from the PBL, and the (co-ordinating) lead authors (of AR4 chapters) are not to blame for relying on Dutch information provided by a Dutch agency,"

Altogether, PBL flagged up 35 instances in the IPCC's report that it thought merited comment - some it labelled errors.

Some have been accepted, and errata logged on the IPCC website. Others are not accepted by a group of researchers who played leading roles in the organisation's 2007 assessment.

At the microscopic level, .

But in any analysis, it's the macroscopic level that perhaps matters most.

In essence: are the projections of how climate change will progress, and the projections of where and when effects will be felt, changed by all of these gates?

Thus far, comes the answer: not a jot.

The of issues arising from emails hacked from the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit (CRU) said:

"We have found no reason in this unfortunate episode to challenge the scientific consensus as expressed by Professor (John) Beddington, that 'global warming is happening [and] that it is induced by human activity'."

The into the same issue said:

"We saw no evidence of any deliberate scientific malpractice in any of the work of the Climatic Research Unit and had it been there we believe that it is likely that we would have detected it."

And now, from PBL:

"Our findings do not contradict the main conclusions of the IPCC on impacts, adaptation and vulnerability related to climate change... The negative impacts under unmitigated climate change in the future pose substantial risks to most parts of the world, with risks increasing at higher global average temperatures."

All three reviews have flagged up issues, to be sure: lack of openness, a certain disorganisation in the research community, the need for additional quality control in IPCC processes, unjustifiable resistance to freedom-of-information laws, and several more.

Some of these issues have also been raised within into the IPCC - the review commissioned by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon earlier this year.

But none is judged in these reviews to undermine the central tenets of man-made climate change.

Meanwhile, some of the IPCC's harshest critics within mainstream journalism are having to retrench on some of their most contentious claims.

The Sunday Times recently had to publish an apology for opening "Amazongate" - a claim that IPCC projections on die-back of the Amazon rainforest were unsubstantiated. You may not be able to access the apology on their website as it's now behind a paywall - but you will .

The Telegraph for alleging that Indian corporation Tata "had used the carbon trading scheme to transfer steel production from Redcar to India, pocketing £1.2 billion in carbon credits at the cost of 1700 jobs".

The Canadian National Post and Financial Post newspaper group by Canadian scientist Andrew Weaver - a particularly interesting action, in that it seeks to make the paper liable for readers' comments appended to articles as well as for the articles themselves.

There's a chance, I gather, that even more explosive libel suits may follow.

Meanwhile, we await the outcomes of the outstanding review into the CRU affair (the Muir Russell review, due for release this week) and the IAC process itself, the most important of the lot.

There's no doubt that the "establishment" was ill-prepared for the various gates that opened onto its workings just before and after the Copenhagen summit.

Without their openings, it's entirely possible there would have been no IAC review and no inquiries, and history may judge the gates to have been positive in the sense that they brought much greater openness and transparency into science overall, never mind just climate science.

But here's something less positive. As this series of reviews unwinds, we see a landscape in which the central claims of mainstream climate science is judged to be untouched: a landscape in which man-made climate change is very likely happening, and its effects are projected to be significant in many regions of the world, particularly in regions populated by the poor.

• Bookmark with:
• |
• |
• |
• |
• - What's this?