, who had been responsible for synthesising text in the IPCC’s second assessment report. He was accused of having “tampered with” wording and somehow “twisting” the intent of IPCC authors by Fred Seitz of the Global Climate Coalition., whose famous “hockey stick” diagram of global temperatures was a key part of the third assessment report, came under fire from right-wing think-tanks and even the attorney general of Virginia.
He wrote: “By singling out a sole scientist, it is possible for the forces of ‘anti-science’ to bring many more resources to bear on one individual, exerting enormous pressure from multiple directions at once, making defence difficult. It is similar to what happens when a group of lions on the Serengeti seek out a vulnerable individual zebra at the edge of a herd.”In late 2009, just before the Copenhagen climate summit, emails among climate scientists were hacked and released.
Some scientists, including Columbia University professor James Hansen, argue that the agonising efforts of scientists to avoid provoking accusations of alarmism have led to an innate optimism bias. The official science reported by the IPCC may in some cases be a cautious underestimate. It’s probably worse — much worse — than we think.
There are no shortcuts to the technological, economic, political and cultural changes needed to tackle climate change.