Doug Keenan has an excellent post at WUWT about his experiences trying to persuade Queens University Belfast to release some tree-ring data using the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Not least of his problems has been the very strange conduct of the Information Commissioner’s Office, which is supposed to be the watchdog that enforces the legislation and ensures that recalcitrant public agencies, such as universities, abide by the law.
What follows is another example of how this eminently sensible piece of legislation actually works in practice, or in this case, seems not to work at all.
In July 2007 I made an application to the BBC under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and the Environmental Information Regulations (EIR) for information about a seminar on climate change that was mentioned in the BBC Trust’s blockbuster report on impartiality published in June 2006. This is what it said in the section on climate change:
The BBC has held a high-level seminar with some of the best scientific experts, and has come to the view that the weight of evidence no longer justifies equal space being given to the opponents of the consensus.
This decision was one that would inevitably have far reaching effects on public opinion. Continue reading »
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