There is little doubt that the University of East Anglia’s e-mails provide fodder for those who oppose or even question the legitimacy of climate change. The apparent machinations brought to light by these justifiably scandalous e-mails do indeed cast doubt on the objective sincerity of some scientists. And they may very well draw into question these experts’ contributions to the objective debate surrounding global climate issues and of humanity’s contributing role.

Nonetheless, the fact remains that the issue of climate change is a top priority for the Obama administration and for Congress. For most observers, the overwhelming body of scientific evidence seems to have put the matter to rest, certainly in the eyes of many of those heading to Copenhagen. Only this week the Environmental Protection Agency officially declared greenhouse gas emissions a threat to human health.

What really matters right now is taking action to frame this wide-ranging debate in a way that provides both meaningful structure to address the world’s environmental challenges and allows for reasonable input from industries likely to be affected by any resulting regulation. Regardless of any action as a result of the Copenhagen negotiations, it should be noted that America’s natural gas utilities already have a wealth of experience and knowledge when it comes to being environmental stewards.

Terms like conservation and energy efficiency are not new to our industry; rather, they are our hallmarks. In fact, residential customers who use natural gas for heating have a carbon footprint today that is essentially the same as it was in 1970, even though the number of households using natural gas has grown from 38 million in 1970 to 65 million in 2009.

AGA will, therefore, continue to pursue the course we are already on – to encourage the use of clean, abundant, domestic natural gas in direct-use applications, as part of a low-carbon portfolio for energy generation and in innovative, effective ways such as the new generation of natural gas vehicles.

We’ve seen five key stories in the news this week:

• The EPA moves closer to regulating carbon pollution, calling global warming an urgent threat to public heath
• Negotiations that will ultimately produce a global climate treaty begin in Copenhagen
• The AP reports the 2000s will be the hottest decade on record
• Key senators say a tri-partisan clean energy & climate deal may be at hand
• The same old group of polluter-funded global warming deniers keeps pushing a month-old story about illegally hacked emails

Which story has the media spent the majority of its time on? The Swifthack stolen emails, of course – because it’s most easily crammed into the liberals vs. conservatives frame that media wizards have decided is the best way to drive up ratings & hit counts.

But protecting our children & grandchildren from the worst effects of global warming isn't question of left or right -- it's a matter of right & wrong. Dr. Amanda Staudt, an NWF climate scientist, said in response to the stolen emails, “The latest attack on climate science is simply another attempt to distract from the reality that the world is warming more than ever and the buildup of heat-trapping pollution in our atmosphere is higher than it’s been in 15 million years.”

Our leaders need to focus not on polluter-pushed "scandals" but on solutions. We’re seeing the leadership we need in the Senate from Senators Kerry, Graham & Lieberman, and President Obama will get a chance to show the same courage later this month in Copenhagen. I look forward to witnessing his call to action firsthand.

World leaders have neither the luxury nor any cause to hesitate in their efforts to reach agreement to mitigate and adapt to climate change. Regardless of whether the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) emails contain evidence of scientific misconduct, which is not yet clear, the data sets in dispute are simply too limited to undermine the broad scientific consensus, as articulated by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, and virtually every relevant scientific organization in America and Europe. Our understanding of climate change developed from many lines of independent evidence compiled and interpreted by thousands of scientists from hundreds of institutions in dozens of countries over several decades. Indeed, the evidence that our greenhouse gas emissions are the dominant cause of recent warming is as strong as ever: the upper atmosphere is cooling while the lower atmosphere is warming—only greenhouse gases can cause that pattern. Climate models, which do a good job of simulating the observed climate, can only reproduce the warming of the past few decades when they account for manmade greenhouse gases; none of the natural climate drivers (e.g., solar activity, volcanoes, internal cycles, etc.) can explain it.

Meanwhile, changes in the climate are already affecting the world and are proceeding faster than scientists believed possible a few years ago. Snow and ice cover is decreasing worldwide, ice loss from Greenland and Antarctica is accelerating, sea level rise continues, and the World Meteorological Organization announced this week that 2009 will be one of the ten warmest years and 2000-2009 the warmest decade on record. None of this evidence depends on the data sets discussed in the CRU emails.

The science is telling us that we have already delayed action for too long. Further delay will only make the impacts of climate change more severe and the costs of mitigating further change and adapting to additional unavoidable impacts more expensive and more painful. Attempts to manufacture new excuses not to act are to be expected, but world leaders should not be fooled. They must push forward, assured that their actions are fully justified by the science and critical to our children’s and grandchildren’s well-being.

Attempts to twist the meaning behind a batch of stolen e-mails represents the continuation of a smear campaign being run by lobbyists and skeptic groups funded by Big Oil and other special interests in order to block energy reform and protect their profits.

The President’s Science Advisor, Dr. John Holdren, and leading U.S. scientists have pointed to the fact that none of this private email chatter changes the scientific consensus that the world is warming and that impacts will be catastrophic, as stated by the IPCC report as well as multiple scientific bodies. The fact is that the scientific evidence behind global warming is unequivocal and it shows that much of the observed increase in global temperatures since the mid-20th century is due to carbon pollution caused by human activities. One criminal stunt does nothing to change the evidence that surrounds us: this has been the hottest decade on record, sea levels are rising and glaciers are melting.

More importantly, though, is that the solutions to curbing global warming are the same solutions that will help turnaround the economy and make America more energy independent. By investing in clean American power and cutting carbon pollution, we can create millions of new clean energy jobs, reduce our dangerous dependence on foreign oil and protect the planet for future generations. These are the opportunities at hand if we act now, there is no reason to wait. Especially not over personal emails that don’t change consensus understanding of climate science or the millions of Americans who want more jobs, less pollution and greater security.

EPA’s Endangerment Finding was a foregone conclusion, not the result of a diligent review of the science and global sources of emissions. Whether it will withstand judicial review, only time will tell? If it does, it will be a monument to the Law of Unintended consequences.

Once EPA starts down the road of regulating greenhouse gas emissions, there will be no logical stopping point and the economic consequences would be enormous. Since CO2 emissions are mainly from fossil fuel combustion and fossil energy contributes directly to economic growth, EPA would hold all the levers for controlling the economy. This is a role that goes far beyond its mission and competence.

Congress should have a strong incentive to take legislative action limiting EPA’s use of the Clean Air Act to the regulation of the conventional pollutants for which it was developed. Whether that is part of climate legislation or through some other mechanism is less important than making a correction of legislative intent is essential.

The heads of state of over 100 nations would not be converging on Copenhagen unless some major agreement was virtually a done deal. Based on the history of COPs, there will be a great deal of wrangling and uncertainty until these world leaders jet in and save the day at the 11^th hour. As happened in Kyoto, however, nations can agree to anything no matter how impractical but the Senate still has to muster 66 votes to approve any treaty. The type of reductions being tossed around by the EU, some senators, and the President virtually guarantees that if there is a treaty it will be dead on arrival. What is needed is an agreement which reflects energy, economic, technological realities and the national circumstances of each nation.

Today’s announcement from the Environmental Protection Agency demonstrates the power of the Clean Air Act to curb global warming. We applaud the EPA for moving forward to implement one of our nation’s most successful environmental laws to avert catastrophic runaway global warming.

Now the Clean Air Act must be put to full use to address the crisis of climate change. As President Obama heads to Copenhagen, his hands are not tied by the tragically weak cap-and-trade bills being debated in Congress. President Obama needs to lead, not follow. Today’s decision clearly shows that his administration already has the legal tools to achieve deep and rapid greenhouse emissions reductions from major polluters, consistent with what science demands, through the Clean Air Act. The next step is for EPA to issue pollution-reduction rules for vehicles, smokestacks, and other polluters, and to set a science-based national pollution cap for greenhouse gases.

Last week, the Center for Biological Diversity and 350.org petitioned the EPA to set national limits for carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas pollution under the Clean Air Act. The petition seeks to enforce a central provision of the Act that requires EPA to designate “criteria” air pollutants, set national pollution limits for these pollutants to protect the public health and welfare, and assist the states in carrying out plans to reduce emissions from major pollution sources to attain or maintain the national standards.

The petition seeks to have seven greenhouse gases designated as “criteria” air pollutants and atmospheric CO2 capped at 350 parts per million (ppm), the level leading scientists say is necessary to avoid the worst impacts of global warming.

Emissions-reduction targets announced by Obama in the lead-up to Copenhagen, which mirror the targets in the climate bill passed by the House of Representatives earlier this year, have virtually no chance of avoiding dangerous climate change. Combined with other countries’ proposals on the table in Copenhagen, CO2 concentrations would increase to more than 650 parts per million. In contrast, the Clean Air Act, fully implemented, could put us on track to reducing CO2 to below 350 ppm.

EPA today issued its formal finding that greenhouse pollutants like carbon dioxide are a threat to the public health and welfare. In doing so the Agency followed basic atmospheric science -- that excessive concentrations of greenhouse pollutants in the atmosphere will disrupt the climate -- and observed the bright line language of the Clean Air Act -- that any pollutant whose emissions " may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public helath or welfare" is subject to regulation under the Act.

In doing so the Obama Administration did what the Supreme Court ordered more than two years ago -- an order the Bush Administration flagrantly and illegally violated by the amazing expedient of refusing to click the "open" button on the email which would have triggered the obligation to act.

But however plain vanilla the science and law might be, it wasn't enough for the usual suspects. In response the Competitive Enterprise Institute announced that it would sue, and Congressman Joe Barton chimed in to complain that the leaked East Anglia emails showed that EPA had no basis for its finding.

CEI and Barton are pretending that the Clean Air Act requires action only if we can cross every t and dot every i in defining at exactly what level of greenhouse pollution climate is disrupted in what specific ways. We don't yet know this, and reasonable scientists do disagree on how close the climate models come to precise reality.

Just look at the language of the Clean Air Act. A pollutant must be regulated if it "may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public helath or welfare." When it comes to setting specific emission limits for the pollutant, the Agency must meet different tests -- is it proposing the use of "best" but "available" control technology for example? But the first step -- deciding that a pollutant should be regulated -- doesn't require precise models -- it only requires evidence of harm -- and the acidification of the oceans alone meets that threshhold, even if you don't believe in global warming itself.

It's sad that special interests and ideologues like Barton and CEI are willing to do anything to remain in denial of what is clearly the scientific consensus and clearly the law of the land.

But how refreshing to have an EPA Administrator who finds this just as simple as, in fact, it is.

I believe the leaked emails raise legitimate concerns about the scientific process and possibly the underlying science itself. First, it is important to remember that these same models and the data produced by them were relied upon by scientists all over the world for the basis of their own research. What we can tell so far is: 1) The Scientists openly discussed the manipulation of data; 2) They actively blocked Freedom of Information requests to share their data with other researchers; 3) They worked to exclude scientists with whom they disagreed from the IPCC process; 4) They pressured scientific journals regarding the publication of research; 5) They destroyed historical temperature data and email evidence; and perhaps the most important 6) The Center's computer programmer, after three years of massaging the data, couldn’t replicate their own results. The problem is we may never know to what extent their manipulations directed other scientists down the research path that they engineered. The data involved is the backbone of the IPCC modeling research, as the CRU is in charge of one of the key data sets used by the IPCC as the basis of their reports. This data was also relied upon by the US EPA for the underlying research to support the EPA's endangerment finding. Last week in a hearing EPA Administrator Jackson stated that they relied upon this data for the endangerment finding. At the very least this is added to the list of issues which will be played out in the courts over the finding. The issue of blocking access to the climate data goes beyond the CRU to the IPCC and the other climate centers. NASA has been stonewalling a FOIA request here in the US for over two years to release their data and it is telling that one of the emails from Dr. Jones at CRU which discussed avoiding FOIA was sent to Gavin Schmidt at NASA. When groups of scientists at different institutions discuss how to avoid releasing data to the public, then one must ask why.

"Q: Should leaders of the world halt efforts to control greenhouse gases until they've investigated recent charges that some scientific studies linking human activity to climate change may have been overstated?"

The obvious answer is no. I have been involved in the study of climate change issues since 1986. Before I worked on that project I was doubtful of the entire idea, but also hardly knew what is was all about. This project was a real eye-opener. Off and on over the years I kept coming back to the global climate change issues even though they were hardly popular in the early days. I have taught about the subject for many years and have read reports from both the pro and con sides, and even from the "I am really confused" sides. In my classes I put readings from both proponents and opponents of the idea that climate change is manmade. I want my students to see all sides of the issues. It makes no sense to impose ideas via reading lists as many professors might do. Open discussion is important for such complex ideas and problems.

Should all efforts to control greenhouse gases be stopped until we look into some emails hacked? Well, should all efforts be stopped at trying to help the economy get out of a recession by financial regulation changes and fiscal policy because some people are writing about the recessions being spawned from oil price hikes even though the preponderance of evidence shows that it is from financial irresponsibility and the lack of proper regulatory and supervision environments? These issues are far too big to be stopped in their tracks because of some hacked emails or because someone is writing something counter to the norm, as is the case with the recession. It would neither be logical nor responsible to stop a project and the development of proper policies because of some interestingly timed email revelations like these. Indeed, the timing is very interesting.

However, what they reveal may also be interesting. The science and policies of global climate change have lots of continua and lots of uncertainties. This is far from a black and white issue as some people like to present it. If there are any data out there that either strengthen or weaken a case from either side they should be looked at, but looked at with the skeptical and thoughtful scientific eye. Policies should be allowed to be flexible contingent on the circumstances on the ground, or in this case in the atmosphere.

I worry that the policy developers on global climate change issue are becoming overly ambitious. There seems to be a false presumption here that doom is right around the corner and for that reason all contrary discussion should be shut down. Important data should not be shut off from any direction if they come from reliable, tested and honest sources. I know from my research over decades that there is a connection and at first I doubted it. I am a born skeptic. However, over the years even this graying skeptic learned to be more flexible in my understanding of the issues and options surrounding global climate change.

I do not like how some climate change "religious acolytes" are trying to force the rest of the world to follow their leads. This is another kind of fundamentalism. I abhor the intellectual vacuum and intellectual walls produced by fundamentalisms of all varieties. Climate change is too complex. It requires nuanced and subtle thinking to make any proper policies work in such complex environments. It also requires that the people, industries, governments and others are on board within a reasonable fact-based and science-based negotiated set of treaties and laws. Nothing good will be done from impositions from "above".

The scientific studies on global climate change should not stop with passages and signings of treaties or laws. Too much is at stake. Type I and Type II errors here could be measured in percentages of world GDP and in millions of jobs lost -- or in destruction of cities, industries, human health, water systems and more.

If anything doubt should breed more thinking and research, not less. All responsible, tested, and reasonable sides need to be listened to. This is not the time to shut down the thinking because of a few emails. This is also not the time to try to shut down the thinking on the other side. They have some challenging things to say and they may add into the final product that is needed in order to make proper decisions. I know that is somewhat déclassé amongst the chattering classes. So be it.

I remember the group-think that lead a country down the path of war when the data did not support it. I remember someone saying that a 1% chance was enough to make a decision stick. Huge mistakes were made.

If data and science support an argument, that is if the intelligence is good, then the grand global struggle to mitigate climate change needs all of the help it needs. The situation in the future will be fluid and complex. Group-think does not help in proper decision making. The fashion police of "scientific thinking" do not really help us decide what is best to do -- even though I am sure they think they do.

Do I believe that global climate change is man made? Yes, but the manmade change also is running along side climate cycles that have been around for at least 800,000 years. Do we have global climate change problems ahead caused mostly by our use of energy? I agree. Should we change the way we use energy systems and the way we use our land, seas, and other natural resources to make the world economy more sustainable? Yes. Should we shut down the debate? No. If anything the debate should get more widespread and more intense. The gauntlets of intellectual challenges should come from and be accepted from many directions and many parties.

This is a global issue. The debate should be global. It should also be responsible. It should be flexible in its response to new data and new ideas. Too much is at stake. The egos of the scientists and the politicians should stand down to the needs of the people. Intellectual arrogance has led us to folly before. Let's try to not have this happen again.

The tempest over the hacked emails of several climate scientists at East Anglia University tells us a great deal about the ethics of some researchers, but it doesn’t change the science. We know now that two of those researchers tried to corrupt the peer-review process at two reputable journals, in an effort to block publications by two climate-change skeptics. These researchers should be censured severely – but there’s no evidence that they succeeded, and the articles they wanted to block raised no new questions for the broad scientific consensus that global warming is occurring. The more serious issue concerns the way the East Anglia scientists measure CO2 levels, specifically about the discontinuity found between the levels inferred from proxy measures used to estimate CO2 concentrations in the 19^th and early 20^th centuries and the levels reported in more recent years using direct measurement techniques. The emails discuss a number of “tricks” – the critics may not know that “trick” is a colloquial term scientists use to describe something they consider particularly clever – employed to reconcile the two data series. It’s true that the two series don’t tell the same story. But it’s the more recent, objective measures that show greenhouse gas levels in recent decades reaching their highest levels in thousands of centuries.

The demand that we suspend our efforts to control greenhouse gases, until these critics are satisfied that the data have not been manipulated, amounts to a craven politics of intimidation. First, many of these critics have been insensitive to scientific argument, and they’re not likely to change. And they will always be able to note that there is much we cannot really know about climate change, including the precise rate at which it is raising global temperatures and the precise ways in which those higher temperatures affect the climate and its ecosystems. But nothing in the emails or the arguments offered by these critics has confounded the basic science and the broad, worldwide scientific consensus about the following propositions: 1) Burning fossil fuels releases greenhouse gases (GHG) which accumulate in our atmosphere; 2) as these GHG concentrations increase, they absorb and reflect back to earth more infrared sunlight; 3) this process raises the temperature of the land and water which reabsorb the additional sunlight; and 4) raising worldwide temperatures by two or more degrees centigrade can significantly change weather and climate patterns. The undisputed East Anglia data show that we already are very close to the GHG atmospheric concentrations that will increase temperatures by the critical amount. Now is the time not to slow our efforts to stop global warming, but to accelerate them.

For it is important that awake people be awake,
or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;
the signals we give - yes or no, or maybe -
should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.

From "The Darkness Around Us Is Deep" by William Stafford

Science is signaling clearly (to those awake to probability distributions) the fat-tailed risk of severe climate damages - and the urgency of "tail-skimming to avert catastrophe" that climate policy represents. Meinshausen’s graph is far more awakening than the hacked emails.

(http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v458/n7242/fig_tab/nature08017_F1.html)

The scientific evidence that climate change is a massive threat to our health, living standards, and national security is overwhelming. Americans have acknowledged this since midway through the Reagan Administration. The time to act is now.

The term 'skeptic' is inaccurate in its application to most people who oppose action to reduce global carbon emissions. Despite the lack credible peer reviewed scientific studies to the contrary, so-called 'skeptics' continue to use the tobacco industry's old playbook. Just as tobacco companies spent millions of dollars over several decades attempting to protect their business model by planting half-truths, misrepresenting data and studies, and denying the problem, fossil fuel producers and Chamber of Commerce-types are working overtime to sow distrust and doubt in the public mind. Illegally obtained emails are part and parcel of their methods.

Reagan's actions on ozone depletion should be the model for conservatives today. At first, President Reagan was skeptical of man's impact on the earth's protective ozone layer. He studied the science, understood the problem, then charted a path to a global solution. His Administration developed cap and trade as the most market friendly approach to contain emitted pollutants. His successor, George H. W. Bush implemented cap and trade to combat acid rain, and it worked marvelously.

American business stands to gain the most from an international agreement to cap carbon emissions. Developing new methods to reduce their own emissions will enable companies to profit, quickly. Developing new technology will create new jobs and new wealth. We can't afford to defer these opportunities to other nations.

My fellow Republicans and conservatives need to get with the program, and start looking forward to what is in the best interest of future generations of Americans.

The basis of Administration and Congressional proposals for cap and trade and a global agreement to deeply cut emissions over the next several decades is the conclusion of the IPCC that human activities are mainly responsible for warming that has occurred over the past century. That conclusion rests on two main assumptions:

1. There is a positive correlation -- implying causality -- between an increase in CO2 emissions and a rise in temperature increases; and

2. Scientists and policymakers understand natural variability and climate sensitivity well enough to make long term climate predictions using computer models.

The recently exposed emails from the Climate Research Unit (CLU) at East Anglia reinforce long expressed doubts about these assumptions that have been raised by people and organizations like the George C. Marshall Institute. Those who have expressed doubts have been dismissed as skeptics and deniers. Yet, these emails verify many of their concerns; they provide what appears to be damning evidence that data were manipulated to support a preconceived conclusion. Like-minded scientists showed all of the signs of Group Think in trying to suppress dissent and promote their orthodoxy. Clearly, this was not consistent with the environment necessary to promote understanding and increase knowledge about the climate system.

Now the high priests of climate change admit that they can't explain the lack of warming this decade, they're admitting that they do not fully understand natural variability. And this undermines their assertion that human activity is mainly responsible for warming. By deliberately manipulating historical temperature data -- which is already known to be of poor quality -- to produce the "Hockey Stick" effect, they demonstrate there is a weak scientific foundation for the conclusion that they are promoting.

Climatologist and global warming skeptic Roy Spencer recently observed that "year after year, the evidence keeps mounting that most climate research now being funded is for the purpose of supporting IPCC politics, not to find out how nature works. The 'data spin' is increasingly difficult to ignore or to explain away as just sloppy science."

The release of these emails and the promised release of additional documents pertaining to activities by the CLU provide a critical opportunity for reassessment of both the research involved and the conditions that produced global warming Group Think. Taking time for a careful, thorough, and transparent reassessment will could help avoid actions likely to cause serious harm to America's economy.

There are many actions that government can take to stimulate new investments in low carbon energy systems, technology, and energy efficiency -- all of which will produce further reductions in carbon intensity and progress in addressing the climate change risk.

No one doubts that human activity affects Earth's climate system. But, if that influence has been exaggerated -- as many believe it has -- this government and others would be irresponsible to proceed with policies that mandate constraints on energy use and that cause serious economic disruptions.

The Copenhagen conference on global action to curb greenhouse gas emissions, where a hundred heads of state are due to show up, is being upstaged by a series of purloined emails of climate scientists from East Anglia University. The controversy has focused on a few of the thousand or so emails that stretch from March 1996 to November 12, 2009.

A random sampling of the emails indicates that they are mainly mundane exchanges between scientists engaged in reasonable discussions about a complex scientific enterprise with important policy implications. Some are indeed offensive, including one that suggested that the editor of Geophysical Research Letters, a reputed scientific journal, be ousted. There seems to have been a fear that the editorial policy of the journal had come to support climate contrarians, given publication of their papers. Another email sought (unsuccessfully) to keep two papers from being published (in a different venue).

Those who want to forestall serious action to reduce CO2 emissions have seized upon a few emails as if they were a “smoking gun” that shows a broad bias among scientists who have concluded that human activities, notably the burning of fossil fuels, are changing climate in ways that could cause severe damage to ecosystems, human society, and the global economy. Implicit, in this argument is that the climate “skeptics” must therefore be right.

This line of argument is an even worse politicization of climate science than that contained in the few offensive emails. This is a time to focus on the science and how we should make decisions, given that there are uncertainties in some of the underlying science.

Some things are quite certain. Without natural greenhouse gases the average temperature of the Earth’s surface would be bone-chilling cold instead of nearly 60 F. Carbon dioxide is one such gas, next in importance to water vapor, which is the most important natural greenhouse gas. There is essentially no doubt about the “greenhouse” property of gases at issue (there are a few others, like methane).

It is also a fact that human beings have extracted large amounts of fossil fuels and burned them emitting CO2 in the atmosphere. Similarly, forest burning and other agriculture-related activities have also increased CO2 (and methane) emissions. While there is a modest amount of uncertainty about how the fraction of the anthropogenic emissions of CO2 that remains in the atmosphere, knowledge of the approximate total emissions as well as the changing ratios of carbon-13 to carbon-12 gives us pretty definite proof that the increases in atmospheric CO2 in the past two hundred years are primarily anthropogenic.

Put these two conclusions, based on careful measurements, together and the inference that the added CO2 is trapping added infrared radiation, is inescapable. The energy circulating in the troposphere, the oceans and the land has increased as a result. This energy is called radiative forcing. It drives meteorological patterns, which we call climate. The increased radiative forcing is disrupting natural patterns.

While this much is reasonably certain, there are some uncertainties regarding the effect of increased greenhouse gases on temperature and precipitation and the specific changes in climate that would be produced by anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. Modeling the effects and the various feedback loops created by the increased radiative forcing is difficult and complex. A part of the reason is that natural changes in climate also occur.

Actually, those who say the models are not accurate are quite right. However, many signs, such as more rapid melting of the Arctic than estimated by climate models, rapid melting of glaciers, acidification of the oceans, and thawing of increasing amounts of Siberian permafrost, point in the direction that models are underestimating the severity of the change. Indeed, some of the problem positive feedbacks that could cause even more severe climate disruption, such as methane emissions from rapid permafrost melting, are not yet in the standard climate models.

Is there a potential that the estimated severity of climate change could be smaller that currently estimated? Could mitigating factors emerge? Indeed, they might. But most scientists engaged in the research do not call for action because they are certain of every estimate they make. Rather, action is warranted because there is a significant chance that failure to reduce emissions could result in catastrophe.

Would it be tolerable if hospital authorities told a patient that he or she was about to get blood that was not screened for HIV because the chances of the blood being infected were low? Or that the expense of screening was driving up health care costs? The suggestion would be considered absurd, callous, or worse. Yet, a much higher probability of severe damage to global society and ecosystems has become an object of intense controversy and even fear, when it should rationally be treated as an occasion to purchase a sensible insurance policy in the form of greatly reduced emissions.

What is even more tragic about these diversions is that the net overall costs of action to phase out fossil fuels would be small to nil, at least in the United States,* where the opportunities for improving efficiency are vast and renewable energy is much more plentiful than oil in all the OPEC countries put together. By my calculation, expenditures on the services that energy provides would remain at typical historical levels (about eight percent of GDP) with a sound energy policy that emphasized on both efficiency and renewable energy sources. The intemperate emails should be, and are being, investigated; the occasion might even be usefully used to debate and perhaps reform the peer-review process. But it would be dreadful were they to be successfully used as a device to derail action on energy and climate.

* See my book, Carbon-Free and Nuclear-Free: A Roadmap to U.S. Energy Policy, available for free downloading here.

The recent emails from the Climate Research Unit that were obtained by hackers and posted on line are a teapot tempest carefully orchestrated by climate skeptics to derail an important international opportunity to reduce rates of human-induced climate change. Out of several thousand emails, a few were carefully selected and presented out of context in a way that makes it impossible to assess the broader issues addressed by those involved. Email exchanges regarding any position on any important issue (e.g., health care, agricultural policy, national security) could have been similarly cherry picked to misrepresent the activities and intent of those involved.

The central issue is that the evidence for causes of climate change has been intensively assessed for 20 years, and the evidence is increasingly clear that climate change is real, it is accelerating, and human activities account for the largest portion of recent changes. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which has assessed these changes most thoroughly, includes thousands of scientists with a wide range of perspectives on the science of climate change. The assessments are rigorously developed, vigorously debated, then reviewed by a broad spectrum of the scientific community. Climate skeptics have every opportunity to enter into this review process, and, if their perspective has not emerged in the final reviews, it is because their arguments were not scientifically sound. Every review comment is carefully assessed, and the text of the reports is modified to represent the best scientific consensus of the true state of knowledge about climate change. The IPCC is NOT the opinion of a few insider scientists; it is the scientific community’s best understanding of all the issues involved. Finally, scientists appointed by every government involved in IPCC must sign off on the final document. As a result, the IPCC process is very conservative in its conclusions. Since the IPCC assessments began in 1980, climate change has been occurring at the upper limit of the range of estimates provided by IPCC. Given the clear message by IPCC that human activities (especially the emission of carbon dioxide from the combustion of fossil fuels) are very likely the primary cause of recent climate warming, policy makers should take climate change very seriously and make their best efforts to reduce human impacts on the climate system. The scientific justification for reducing carbon emissions is very clear. The major question is whether society has the political will to reduce the rate of climate change.

You’ve got to give the Far Right angry people credit: they are as relentless as they are wrong, and they shape the public debate far more than is acknowledged. There has been mainstream scientific consensus for over a decade that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse pollutants are warming the planet. All that is debated is the pace and severity of the warming. So in the face of relentless attacks by the very fossil fuel industry that has a vested interest in business as usual, the scientific community attempted to communicate global warming science in a more understandable way. That is ultimately what this e-mail “scandal” is about (a scandal it must be noted has been advanced and perpetuated by, SURPRISE, the Far Right). But it’s far more than e-mails that are at stake. The fact that we have actually “debated” e-mails for the past few weeks has only taken attention away from what actually needs to be done to stop or stem global warming. In my twenty years of environmental law work, I have never seen such an aversion to applying the best available science to public policy as now exists with climate change policy. Sure, there are always going to be political deals. Yet why are intelligent entities such as the Obama White House, Senator John Kerry and NRDC/Sierra Club failing to talk about the scientific standard of 350 parts per million, the acknowledged best available scientific standard? Why is EPA not aggressively and immediately implementing the existing Clean Air Act to achieve global pollutant reductions? Why is the body politic so scared to talk about a science-based national global warming pollution cap under the Clean Air Act’s National Ambient Air Quality Standard (NAAQS) provision? I posit the answer is the Far Right fueled by the oil, gas and coal industries. Too many run with their tails between their legs. All we need now is a good passport controversy regarding renowned NASA scientist James Hansen. That would be fun. Not.

Global warming is here, it’s increasingly dangerous, the burning of fossil fuels is the primary driver, and we have a narrow window to limit the damage by reducing heat-trapping emissions. The stolen e-mails have no bearing on this set of facts, despite the insistence to the contrary by some individuals.

While it’s not clear whether any wrongdoing has actually taken place – and the universities involved have appropriately launched investigations to determine what occurred – scientists always can do more to address concerns about openness. Science flourishes in an atmosphere of transparency and free and open dialogue. Science works because exchanging ideas and criticism helps researchers refine their ideas and better understand the world.

Unfortunately, some in Congress are using these e-mails to attack climate scientists and all climate science. But that betrays a lack of understanding about the extensive body of climate science and how it was compiled. The overwhelming scientific consensus on climate change is built on evidence gathered and analyzed over time by thousands of scientists at hundreds of research institutions worldwide, and subjected to the rigors of peer review and transparency at every step of the way.

We’ve seen these attacks before when the science was solid and compelling. For decades, the tobacco industry engaged in disinformation campaigns designed to cast doubt on studies demonstrating the link between smoking and lung cancer. Opponents of action on climate change should fairly debate the merits of the proposed policies on the table rather than attacking scientists and spreading conspiracy theories about climate science.

The real story, which continues to develop, is that the latest scientific data indicate that climate change is occurring more rapidly than scientists previously projected. The need to reduce emissions is more urgent than ever.