The Climate Files

My interest in this book was heightened as I was presenting a Panorama episode on overlapping territory, but The Climate Files will engage anyone who cares for the future of science, the planet or just likes to see academics tear lumps out of each other.

Pearce’s source materials are the well-publicised emails poached from the University of East Anglia and the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which suggested that certain reports had been exaggerated. But he adds insight from his long experience as a science journalist. The opening ‘dramatis personae’ feels like it could have been ripped from his contacts book.
This matters as, although the leak was recent, the emails themselves stretch back over a decade with rows over tree rings, thermometer readings, satellite observation and access to information. Pearce combines the drama of having ‘been there’ with the wisdom of hindsight.

At one point he’s at the heart of the story: the false claim in the IPCC report of 2007 that Himalayan glaciers would go by 2035 came from Pearce’s report of an interview with an Indian glaciologist. When you stop and think about it, suggesting ice up to 500m thick would melt in 30 years defies common sense. But nobody involved, including Pearce initially, exercised sufficient scrutiny. Judgment on the perils of climate change was frequently afflicted by one-way gullibility: Pearce’s recent investigation of other dodgy claims by the IPCC reveals Glaciergate certainly wasn’t a one off.

His conclusion though is clear: “nothing uncovered in the emails destroys the argument that humans are warming the warming the planet.” But tough scrutiny from all quarters will make the science stronger.

Tom Heap presents Costing the Earth on BBC Radio 4

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