Is the world in danger of a heat collapse or just an eco-dictatorship? In the world of climate research the hostility between warning scientists and sceptics has become reinforced. Recently, a reconciliation conference took place in Lisbon - but there seems to be no particular interest in peace.

The problems start with naming your opponents correctly. Are sceptics battling against alarmists? Deniers against catastrophists? Or realists against warmists? The conflict is between established climate researchers, who warn of the consequences of man-made global warming, and that colorful camp of scientists and non-scientists, who distrust the computer models of their opponents, who think all the talk of climate change is a big mistake or even a conspiracy by radical ecologists.

The battlefield of this war, which is fought with graphs, charts and verbal attacks, is usually the digital jungle of the internet. Therefore, it was a little sensation that parts of the warring factions were actually physically meeting in Lisbon last week - and this under the headline "reconciliation in the climate debate." Equally remarkable was the fact that the workshop with about 30 participants was organised by the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission. After all, the EU has an official goal of limiting global warming to two degrees above pre-industrial levels - and this limit is one of the favorite targets of the sceptics.

Initiator of the meeting was Jerome Ravetz, a science philosopher from the University of Oxford. "The frontlines in the war about climate research have hardened completely", was Ravetz 'diagnosis. "The result is a huge credibility problem."

For quotes like these, Ravetz got a dressing down from the climate scientific establishment. So it is little wonder that its most important representatives were absent from the meeting. Gavin Schmidt, a U.S. climatologist and the mastermind of the climate alarmist blog "Realclimate.org”, was absent. He was invited and turned down, a decision possibly linked to the fact that Steve McIntyre had confirmed his attendance.

McIntyre calls for sanctions against scientists

The retired mining analyst has become the intimate enemy of a number of climate scientists. About seven years ago, he began to examine diligently the so-called Hockey Stick. The graph is an icon of climate research. It is a reconstruction of global temperatures of the last thousand years and is supposed to prove that it has never been as warm as today during this period.

“Climate scientists must be required to publish information that is contrary to their predictions just as investment bankers are", said McIntyre in Lisbon. Otherwise, he demanded, they should face sanctions. "The managers of Enron did not go to jail for losing billions, but because they misled investors by withholding information." With statements such as these, he provoked his opponents at least as effectively as with his numerous requests for the release of the raw data on which their graphs are based.

McIntyre was denigrated by climate scientists on their blogs, which prompted him to set up his own internet forum called www.Climateaudit.org. The Canadian was not to be taken in and did indeed find methodological inconsistencies in the calculations that went into generating the hockey stick graph.

Since then some researchers have called the man from Toronto "idiot", "madman" or "playground bully" – for example in the e-mails which were stolen from a server of the University of East Anglia at the end of 2009 and subsequently posted on the Internet. The guild of climatologists called this a criminal act, the sceptics dubbed the affair "Climategate". It was - in addition to the concession by the IPCC to have committed errors in the forecasts for the melting of the Himalayan glaciers - the climax, so far, in the conflict over climate research.

Knowledge is growing – Public Support is shrinking

While some want to save the world of a heat shock, others claim they want to protect mankind from an eco-dictatorship. Mainstream climatologists, however, do not participate in a battle for the truth, because the latter is clearly on their side. They consider all reservations about their own claims to be pure nonsense and reply that the scientific debate was settled long ago.

"This is a mistake," says Judith Curry in Lisbon. The geophysicist from the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta was one of the first who got involved in discussions with the sceptics. Since then, she has become a pariah – and battles on her blog against her opponents. "The uncertainties in climate models are researched completely inadequately. The science establishment attempts to conceal this fact from the public," said Curry.

Academics and muddled troublemakers: Why there was no agreement at the meeting

Hans von Storch, director of the Institute for Coastal Research at the Helmholtz Centre in Geesthacht, is cautious when it comes to the reliability of climate models. He firmly believes – just as Curry - in the existence of human-induced climate change. He worries, however, whether citizens still agree with the experts on this. "While we are increasing our knowledge about the climate system, the percentage of people who think that climate change is dangerous and are willing to take counter-measures is diminishing," Storch complains in Lisbon and provides survey results from previous years.

Storch is accepted by the spokesmen of the alarmists because he has written standard works. "We cannot simply ignore the sceptics and think that they will disappear eventually ", says Storch. The opposite is the case, and not even the growing number of indicators for climate change could stop this trend. "We have to discuss with them."

The spectrum in the camp of skeptics ranges from "the academics to the confused troublemakers," says Storch, a statement which led to resentment among the participants at the Lisbon meeting. They feel largely excluded from the circles of the climatologists. "We have no chance to publish in their journals," complains Steven Mosher, a blogger and author of a critical book on climate research, who is a professional investment adviser in San Francisco.

In response, the participants discussed whether journal reviewers could not be required to publish conflicts of interest. Mosher also demanded from the mainstream science to make all underlying raw data of papers publically available automatically. The sceptics agreed to renew the scientific debate about the hockey stick. "What we need is more data about the climate of the last millennium, be they derived from corals, from tree rings or from stalagmites", said Peter Webster, a climatologist from Australia, and a colleague of Judith Curry.

However, can the dispute about the key messages of climate research be resolved by means of ever more and better data? Several participants of the reconciliation meeting questioned whether this would be the case. "Even as our knowledge about the climate system increases, uncertainties keep growing," said the scientific philosopher Ravetz.

No agreement on final declaration

There was some perplexity on the third and final day of the conference. Ravetz had wished to formulate a final statement: "Climate science would benefit if it adopted procedures for the collection of new records that are validated according to agreed standards."

But in the end the plenum could not agree on this which was partly due to substantial differences between the positions even among the sceptics camp. There was also resistance from moderate researchers who did not want to see their names listed under a joint statement that would worsen their position in disputes with colleagues.

The warmists will take the lack of consensus certainly with satisfaction. The status quo, with both parties remaining in their trenches, might be in the interest of both sides. The sceptics can continue comfortably in their online forums to talk about their conspiracy theories. And the alarmists? As one participant put it: "They can continue to blackmail the politicians by saying: 'If you do not follow us, then the sceptics will take over the field'."

Geophysicist Curry left a sarcastic comment on her blog after the session. According to Wikipedia reconciliation is a "resumption of normal relations between warring parties". "But it is not clear," says Curry, "whether there ever have been normal relations between mainstream scientists and the critical climate blogosphere."

Spiegel Online, 31 January 2011

Translation Phillip Mueller