Climate scientist cleared of allegations of climate-change misconduct

On August 23, 2011, UPI.com released an article about the exoneration of climate scientist and researcher Dr. Michael C. Mann, who was one of several scientists charged with allegations of research misconduct at Penn State.

As the director of Penn State’s Earth System Science Center and professor of meteorology, Dr. Mann has become the target of many climate change skeptics who have accused him of manipulating climate data. However, according to the National Science Foundation report, “No direct evidence has been presented that indicates Dr. Mann fabricated the raw data he used for his research or falsified his results.”

Earlier in 2006, the National Research Council had supported Dr. Mann’s conclusions that climate warming in the Northern Hemisphere in the late 1900s was unprecedented during the last 1,000 years.

Dr. Mann was one of a specific group of scientists whose emails had been hacked from the University of East Anglia in the U.K., with thousands of them made public in 2009 as suspected evidence of manipulated data. This was the beginning of Climategate or the Climate Research Unit email controversy.

According to the Miami Herald, climate change skeptics used the stolen emails as evidence that Dr. Mann and other climate scientists “had hidden and manipulated data to bolster the argument for global warming.”

Penn University had formed a panel of five faculty members to investigate, concluding that even though they found no evidence of research misconduct….further investigation was needed. However, the National Science Foundation office of the inspector general confirmed that the smear tactics manufactured by climate change deniers had no basis in reality.

One of the several founding members of the RealClimate blog, Dr. Mann launched the blog in December 2004—providing a site for commentaries by working climate scientists, journalists and the general public.