据此,欧洲日内瓦高能物理研究中心实验室CERN,于2000年正式提出一项实验建议,研究宇宙线和大气中凝聚水滴形成的关系,全名是“cosmic Leaing 0ut door Droplets”,简称“CLOUD)”的研究项目。2O06年,CL0UD实验被批准,已分别在2007年和2008年发布了工作进展报告。www.ddhw.com
Cold, hard facts, scientists say: An iceberg breaks off the Knox Coast in the Australian Antarctic. Melting polar ice is frequently cited as proof of climate change.
www.ddhw.com
EXPERT PERSPECTIVE
USA TODAY asked the University of Michigan's Nicholas Steneck, author of the federal Office of Research Integrity's "Introduction to the Responsible Conduct of Research" report, to comment on the climate researchers' emails stolen from the United Kingdom's University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit (CRU) this month:
"The faults, if there are any, are in my view much broader than CRU and its researchers. Scientists/researchers have not thought through and provided guidance on how they should act in situations such as this and how the behavior of scientists should be assessed when problems arise. This is why there is no agreement now even on who should look into the situation. www.ddhw.com
Society needs good, reliable scientific advice to make informed decisions about public policy. Scientist should not be put in a situation where they are too intimidated by anyone who disagrees to provide that advice. Scientific freedom must be protected. But scientists also need to be provided with appropriate guidance and training on public debate and advocacy. It would be a sad day for society if some ill-chosen words in private emails distracted the important discussions that need to take place about how best to control our insatiable need for energy and its impact on our environment."www.ddhw.com
var storyURL = "http://www.usatoday.com/weather/climate/globalwarming/2009-11-30-warming30_ST_N.htm"; var storyTitle = "Climate research e-mail controversy simmers";var articleSummary = "The scientific conduct of climate researchers has come under increasing heat in a sprawling online debate over leaked e-mails from climate researchers.";
The scientific conduct of climate researchers has come under increasing heat in a sprawling online debate over leaked e-mails that, critics say, raise questions about the arguments that global warming threatens the world.www.ddhw.com
The fight comes as leaders of 192 nations prepare to meet Dec. 7-18 in Copenhagen to craft an agreement to stem the heat-trapping "greenhouse" gases that feed temperature rise.www.ddhw.com
Unknown hackers this month stole thousands of e-mails and documents, dating from 1996 to 2009, from the United Kingdom's University of East Anglia. The university's Climate Research Center has played a key role in advancing the case that the planet is steadily getting warmer.www.ddhw.com
In the e-mails, researchers led by the climate center's Phil Jones discuss problems with data, models and outside critics of their research. The conclusion of some who have looked at the e-mails, including Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., is that the scientists are ignoring data that question whether global warming is real and that they have conspired to disparage those who question their work.
'E-mails do not read well' www.ddhw.com
The controversy gained new momentum last week as Inhofe and others called for investigations and the University of East Anglia announced an "independent review."www.ddhw.com
George Monbiot, a well-known environmentalist who writes for the United Kingdom's newspaper The Guardian, called for re-examination of all the data discussed in the stolen notes and said Jones "should now resign" because of a message saying he would keep climate skeptics' papers out of the benchmark 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report. Jones vows in the e-mail to "keep them out somehow – even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!"
Critics view the temperature record maintained at the East Anglia climate center as a backbone of warnings that surface temperatures are going up with statistical certainty worldwide as predicted by greenhouse gas measurements. Misconduct there exposes climate change as a lie, they say. Inhofe, for instance, says the e-mails show researchers "cooked the books" to make the case for global warming.www.ddhw.com
"My colleagues and I accept that some of the published e-mails do not read well," Jones said in a statement. "Some were clearly written in the heat of the moment; others use colloquialisms frequently used between close colleagues."
On Saturday, East Anglia official Trevor Davies said 95% of the worldwide weather station data backing the climate center's temperature record are publicly available. "The university will make all the data accessible as soon as they are released from a range of non-publication agreements," he said in a statement.www.ddhw.com
But Jones and others note that the center's surface temperature reconstructions also have been independently mirrored by the National Climatic Data Center of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, showing rising global temperatures from records dating back to 1880.
Scientists: Look at the facts
The case for global warming rests on "all kinds of evidence," says climate scientist Don Wuebbles of the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. "Look at what's happening to ice in the Arctic. Explain that as 'no global warming.' It doesn't take a genius to see, obviously, warming is happening, e-mails or not."www.ddhw.com
Further, notes IPCC chief Rajendra Pachauri, the evidence for warming in the 2007 IPCC report comes from multiple lines of evidence besides surface temperatures, such as ocean heat, atmospheric water vapor and sea ice. The 2007 report found man-made gases have raised average atmospheric temperatures about 1.3 degrees Fahrenheit since 1905 and probably will raise them 3 to 7 degrees by 2100, depending on future emission cuts.www.ddhw.com
"The East Anglia temperature records aren't the core problem," says climatologist Patrick Michaels of the Cato Institute in Washington, D.C., which advocates for limited regulation.www.ddhw.com
Michaels, a skeptic of the worst implications of a warming climate, comes under criticism in the e-mails for a 2007 Journal of Geophysical Research paper he co-wrote. The paper said that industry and urban heat explain half of the temperature rise seen over land. "Attempts to influence editors not to publish papers you don't like: That's the real issue," Michaels says.
"The problem seems to be the circling-of-the-wagons strategy developed by small groups of climate researchers in response to the politically motivated attacks against climate science," says climate researcher Judith Curry of Georgia Tech, writing on the ClimateAudit website.www.ddhw.com
But Pachauri says small groups of researchers "have no ability" to decide what gets in or out of the IPCC reports, given their four layers of independent review by hundreds of people. "The entire report-writing process of the IPCC is subjected to extensive and repeated review by experts as well as governments," he says.www.ddhw.com
Scientists have not had any guidance on how they should act in the midst of a scientific controversy like global warming, says science-misconduct expert Nicholas Steneck of the University of Michigan, by e-mail. "I believe what the CRU e-mails will show when carefully studied is a group of professionals struggling with the (climate) dilemma."www.ddhw.com
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