AFTER ERRORS, GLOBAL WARMING GETS A COLD SHOULDER

Mar 8, 2010 — The Boston Globe

By Beth Daley

Mar. 8, 2010 (The Boston Globe delivered by Newstex) --

A series of highly publicized errors in a landmark report about manmade global warming - and lingering controversy over hacked e-mails between climate scientists - is eroding public confidence in the research and could further stall efforts in Congress to pass climate legislation.

The errors - involving projections, citations of source materials, and geography - have been seized on by skeptics of the scientific consensus that the burning of fossil fuels is almost certainly the most significant cause of earth's rising temperature. Now, there are signs the critics are succeeding at raising doubts.

In recent weeks, Texas, Virginia, and Alabama officials filed challenges to the Environmental Protection Agency's finding that manmade greenhouse gases threaten public health, and Senator Jay Rockefeller, a Democrat from the coal state of West Virginia, introduced a bill to postpone for two years EPA rules stemming from that determination.

Republican senators have pointed to the errors as another reason to oppose a climate bill, spearheaded by Senator John F. Kerry, that would limit carbon dioxide emissions.

Even in Massachusetts, where environmentalism has long been good politics, GOP gubernatorial candidate Charlie Baker said recently when asked whether global warming was manmade: ``I absolutely am not smart enough to believe I know the answer.''

In 2007, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations scientific body considered the leading authority on global warming, concluded the widespread warming of the atmosphere and oceans and the melting of sea ice and glaciers could not be explained without taking into account manmade emissions of heat-trapping gases. The group said it was 90 percent certain that humans are the main reason for the world's temperature rise in the past 50 years.

Governmental scientific bodies around the world, including in the United States, have supported that conclusion, which was based on a review of decades of research by international scientists.

Authors of the report stand by its central findings, although some scientists involved with the UN panel say the errors have damaged the body's reputation. Late last month, the United Nations environmental program announced that a group of scientists will independently review the 2007 report.

The errors largely center on the projected impact of climate change - predictions based on computer models that have a broad range of uncertainty.

``This issue is so politically sensitive, scientists need to be careful they [focus] on the science and not advocacy. . . . The science is robust and can speak for itself,'' said Adil Najam, a lead author of two Intergovernmental Panel assessments and director of Boston University's Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future. He said the recent errors do not undermine the fact that man is significantly contributing to global warming, ``but the review process needs to be strengthened'' for future reports.

Recent polls by the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies and George Mason University show a decline in public concern about global warming, with 50 percent of respondents saying they are ``somewhat'' or ``very worried'' about global warming, a 13-point decrease from the fall of 2008. Sixteen percent are considered ``dismissive'' - believing that global warming isn't happening and is probably a hoax - up from 7 percent in 2008.

Meanwhile, a December ABC/Washington Post poll found 56 percent of those surveyed don't trust the things scientists say about the environment - up from 49 percent a year and a half earlier. However, it is unclear how much these shifts are related to ``climategate,'' the controversy surrounding stolen e-mails from climate scientists, which skeptics publicized late last year as evidence that global warming data are not credible. Climate scientists involved in the controversy say the e-mails were misinterpreted.

Just as that issue was subsiding, ``glaciergate'' emerged.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's report said Himalayan glaciers could disappear by 2035. The report attributed this conclusion to an advocacy group, and the group, it turns out, had picked this information up from a news story - hardly rigorous scientific methodology.

The date was also apparently copied incorrectly from another source and should have read 2350. The errors went beyond sloppiness and were troubling to scientists because advocacy group reports, no matter how robust, can give the perception of bias and are often not peer-reviewed - meaning they have not been vetted by independent scientists, as are studies published in scientific journals.

Next came ``Amazongate.''

Citing a World Wildlife Fund report, the Intergovernmental Panel said ``up to 40 percent of the Amazonian forests could react drastically to even a slight reduction in precipitation'' from global warming. The figure was correct, but it came from peer-reviewed work by a Woods Hole Research Center senior scientist, Daniel Nepstad. ``There was a little sloppiness in the citation,'' he said.

Then it was revealed that the panel had wrongly said that more than half of the Netherlands is below sea level. It is actually about 26 percent.

A former chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel, Robert Watson, recently told The Times in Britain that if the mistakes in the report were due merely to chance, he would expect the errors to both over- and underestimate the impact of climate change. Yet the errors he has seen, he told the newspaper, overstated the problem, making him worry there is a bias toward warming among scientists.

``There is a general bias toward the proposition that there is a problem. Without the problem, almost all the funding would disappear,'' Richard Lindzen of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a prominent skeptic of the projected impact of manmade global warming, said in an e-mail.

Climate policy observers say there are probably errors in the report that underestimate the problem, but they say skeptics hunt to uncover overstated issues. The few errors, they say, are outweighed by a stack of scientific studies that show the world's climate is changing and that people are almost certainly playing a significant role.

``There are no fatal flaws, but from a public credibility standpoint they are very damaging,'' said Pat Parenteau, a professor at Vermont Law School.

Scientists say that climategate exposed a vitriolic divide between skeptics and climate scientists, and both sides need to be more respectful and hear each other out. Also, the fact-checking and review of future reports needs to be more thorough. While it is considered an honor to be asked to be part of an Intergovernmental Panel report, it is a job - like most scientific reviewing of papers - that does not pay.

The political fallout may be even more telling.

Environmental policy specialists say the controversies, along with the struggling economy, could hurt Kerry's effort to pass climate legislation.

Kerry said recently that he is closing in on a bipartisan bill. He vowed to push forward, noting the issue is as much about jobs and national security as about the environment.

``What we have to do is go on the offensive,'' Kerry said. The science ``has been maligned and misinterpreted, and we need to fight back . . . people [need to] stop being moved by these talk show [hosts] and start looking for the facts'' themselves.

Beth Daley can be reached at bdaley@globe.com.

Newstex ID: BGL-1035-42660454