The times are changing in the wake of Climategate. And more is to come as the polluted science embedded in the email exchanges gets reviewed by talented amateurs and pros alike on the blogosphere (see Climate Audit, Roger Pielke Jr., and WattsUpWithThat, in particular).

Given time, the rethink will go mainstream. Scientists are truth seekers at heart, but an entrenched mainstream of climate scientists–so many of them friends and political allies–will need to be nudged out of their denialism.

Old voices are challenging their ‘mainstream’ colleagues, and new voices are coming forth. I have seen this clearly here in Houston (examples below), and I expect it is happening elsewhere.

Consider what Andy Revkin, the recently retired climate-change science writer at the New York Times, told the public editor at the Times regarding Climategate: “Our coverage, looked at in toto, has never bought the catastrophe conclusion and always aimed to examine the potential for both overstatement and understatement.”

Sounds like the Times will report both sides of the issue now, rather than just trumpet alarmism as it was prone to do in the past (remember William K. Stevens?). Joe Romm at Climate Progress (Center for American Progress) is furious at this development, but just maybe over-the-top Joe has himself to blame for getting Revkin and the like to want to report on both sides more than ever before. And Romm himself is now considered damaged goods by the Left, thanks to the four-part expose by the Breakthrough Institute.

Climategate, in short, is making quite a difference. But much more courage is needed.

Dr. Michelle Foss (University of Texas at Austin)

Consider Michelle Michot Foss, an internationally respected energy economist with the University of Texas at Austin who is past president of both the U.S. Association for Energy Economics (2001) and the International Association for Energy Economics (2003). Her December 8th letter to the New York Times read:

To the Editor: Your editorial concludes, “It is also important not to let one set of purloined e-mail messages undermine the science and the clear case for action, in Washington and in Copenhagen.” Hold on a minute. It was precisely because “one set” of opinions has been driving climate politics that the whistleblowers, not hackers, published the evidence. And it is precisely because of the type of coverage that The New York Times and other mainstream news organizations are giving the whistleblowing incident that the integrity of both the scientific and journalistic communities is being threatened. Honest questions have been raised and honest attempts have been made to shed light on questionable claims about climate science for decades. We need to push for greater disclosure, more scrutiny, better research and a halt in the action before we jump into policy and regulatory schemes that we will deeply regret.

Dr. Foss has kept her views somewhat under wraps given her university position, but Climategate was enough for her to go public in the above very public way. And she has received a number of emails of support–and some emails by her alarmist friends to the effect: ‘gosh Michelle, I agree with you on Climategate, but I thought you were one of us….’

To such critics, her answer can be: Climategate proves that alarmism is exaggerated, and most modest warming scenarios win the debate for adaptation over mitigation. Robert Murphy has made this point in a post very widely read among economists and entitled “Apologist Responses to Climategate Misconstrue Real Issues.”

I think that if some on the UT-Austin faculty were to try to silence her powerful voice, they would have a (climate) McCarthyism issue on their hands post Climategate. What a difference compared to several months ago!

Dr. Neil Frank

Also consider the case of Dr. Neil Frank, a former director of the National Hurricane Center in Miami and a weather forecaster at KHOU-Channel 11 in Houston. He previously did not want to enter the climate fray for fear of being marginalized by the mainstream–including the hometown Houston Chronicle, whose editorial board is a bastion of alarmism, except for their science writer Eric Berger (skeptical of Gore-type alarmism) and business columnist Loren Steffy (anti cap-and-trade).

Dr. Frank just published an op-ed in the Houston Chronicle, Climategate: You Should be Steamed, where he explains why the silent majority in his profession have been mistreated by the academic mainstream/IPCC crowd. (His op-ed is reprinted as an appendix below.)

Dr. Peter Hartley (Rice University): Courage Following Berger’s Courage

It is a sad state of affairs–a Climategate-like situation–when a tenured, chair professor has to sneak his skeptical views about climate alarmism into the public debate. But this is the situation for Peter Hartley at Rice University, and specifically at the James A. Baker Institute where Dr. Neal Lane, a former Clinton Administration official and confidant of Obama science advisor John Holdren (who has been featured at climate events at Baker without balance on the other side) has shut down debate on the physical science of climate change.

Dr. Hartley has been beaten down at Baker for years, and he is full of stories about how other Rice University professors have concerns about climate models (and the “hockey stick” work of Climategater Michael Mann) but have stayed quiet because so much government funding is at stake. I have been present at a meeting of the Houston Chronicle editorial board where Dr. Hartley lamented the situation at the Baker Institute on climate-change science. The editors may not have taken note, but Chronicle science writer Eric Berger did. And it was Berger who mustered up a bit of courage to write a telling blog on feeling duped by Al Gore and climate alarmism. And as a comment on Berger’s blog, Hartley came out of the closet to note:

Eric, First, thank you for maintaining an open mind on this subject. It is unfortunate one has to say that, but certain groups have worked to make it very hard to do so, or at least to admit to it in public. Second, as a science writer for a major newspaper I think you should ponder the policy implications if natural climate change is more significant than was thought and can dominate the effects of CO2. It ought to make adaptation strategies more attractive since they can protect against climate shocks whatever the source while limiting the build-up of CO2 world-wide (assuming it can be done any time soon) can at best protect against just one source of climate change. This case is further strengthened [if], as is almost surely the case, additional CO2 in the atmosphere has direct benefits for plants and thus for agriculture, ecosystem productivity, greening of the deserts and much else besides. Good adaptation strategies would allow those benefits to be retained while controlling the costs of climate effects.

Fortunately, a thaw is in the air, as a climate discussion/debate has been planned for the evening of Wednesday January 27th at Rice University (but not at the Baker Institute!) between skeptic Richard Lindzen of MIT and Jerry North of Texas A&M. Stay tuned.

Mini-Climategates?

The emergence of new voices is an important development brought on by Climategate. But other voices are still intimidated into silence. There have been mini-climategates at a lot of places, including top universities (email releases anyone?).

It is time for science and ideology to come clean in what could and should be a new era of transparency for physical science and associated public policy. Climate alarmism and the whole neo-Malthusian worldview toward population, resources, etc. needs a full pro/con hearing.

May the best science and public policy win!

APPENDIX: DR. NEIL FRANK ON CLIMATEGATE

Climategate: You should be steamed By NEIL FRANK

HOUSTON CHRONICLE Jan. 2, 2010, 4:28PM