The echoes of 鈥渃limategate鈥� rumble on with the publication of a in which some of the researchers involved take issue with a suggestion that greenhouse gases are not primarily responsible for global warming.
A paper claims two-thirds of global warming in the past 30 years was caused by the growing influence of the warm phase of the El Ni帽o climate cycle in the Pacific Ocean 鈥� and, by inference, not by greenhouse gases. The analysis was conducted by John McLean of Applied Science Consultants in Croydon, Victoria, Australia.
The journal has now published a riposte from researchers whose emails were stolen from the University of East Anglia last November. They include Grant Foster of Tempo Analytics in Westbrook, Maine, UEA鈥檚 and of Pennsylvania State University. Among the objects of their ire was McLean鈥檚 co-author, geographer of the University of Auckland, New Zealand.
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Foster鈥檚 team concludes that McLean鈥檚 analysis maximises the apparent influence of the four-year El Ni帽o cycle by filtering out temperature variability on timescales greater than six years. They say El Ni帽o only explains 15 to 30 per cent of recent warming.
鈥淔oster uncovered a fatal flaw in the analysis of McLean and de Freitas,鈥� says Judith Curry of the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta. But de Freitas says there are 鈥淐limategate-style shenanigans鈥� going on, and that Foster鈥檚 paper is an 鈥渁ttempt to discredit work that challenges alarmism鈥�.
In March, when early drafts of the Foster paper were circulating, de Freitas and McLean wrote of their paper. The vitriol continues.
