Commons Committee to investigate Climategate

Posted by TonyN on 22/01/2010 at 10:48 pm CRU Email Hack, The Climate 32 Responses »
Jan 222010

The House of Commons Science and Technology Committee are to investigate Climategate with terms of reference that should send a chill down a few spines at UEA:

THE DISCLOSURE OF CLIMATE DATA FROM THE CLIMATIC RESEARCH UNIT AT THE UNIVERSITY OF EAST ANGLIA

The Science and Technology Committee today announces an inquiry into the unauthorised publication of data, emails and documents relating to the work of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia (UEA). The Committee has agreed to examine and invite written submissions on three questions:

– What are the implications of the disclosures for the integrity of scientific research?

– Are the terms of reference and scope of the Independent Review announced on 3 December 2009 by UEA adequate (see below)?

– How independent are the other two international data sets?

The Committee intends to hold an oral evidence session in March 2010.

Background

On 1 December 2009 Phil Willis, Chairman of the Science and Technology Committee, wrote to Professor Edward Acton, Vice-Chancellor of UEA following the considerable press coverage of the data, emails and documents relating to the work of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU). The coverage alleged that data may have been manipulated or deleted in order to produce evidence on global warming. On 3 December the UEA announced an Independent Review into the allegations to be headed by Sir Muir Russell.

The Independent Review will:

1. Examine the hacked e-mail exchanges, other relevant e-mail exchanges and any other information held at CRU to determine whether there is any evidence of the manipulation or suppression of data which is at odds with acceptable scientific practice and may therefore call into question any of the research outcomes.

2. Review CRU’s policies and practices for acquiring, assembling, subjecting to peer review and disseminating data and research findings, and their compliance or otherwise with best scientific practice.

3. Review CRU’s compliance or otherwise with the University’s policies and practices regarding requests under the Freedom of Information Act (‘the FOIA’) and the Environmental Information Regulations (‘the EIR’) for the release of data.

4. Review and make recommendations as to the appropriate management, governance and security structures for CRU and the security, integrity and release of the data it holds .

Submissions

The Committee invites written submissions from interested parties on the three questions set out above by noon on Wednesday 10 February:

Each submission should:

a) be no more than 3,000 words in length
b)be in Word format (no later than 2003) with as little use of colour or logos as possible
c)have numbered paragraphs
d)include a declaration of interests.

A copy of the submission should be sent by e-mail to scitechcom@parliament.uk and marked “Climatic Research Unit“. An additional paper copy should be sent to:

The Clerk
Science and Technology Committee
House of Commons
7 Millbank
London SW1P 3JA

It would be helpful, for Data Protection purposes, if individuals submitting written evidence send their contact details separately in a covering letter. You should be aware that there may be circumstances in which the House of Commons will be required to communicate information to third parties on request, in order to comply with its obligations under the Freedom of Information Act 2000.

Please supply a postal address so a copy of the Committee’s report can be sent to you upon publication.

A guide for written submissions to Select Committees may be found on the parliamentary website at: www.parliament.uk/commons/selcom/witguide.htm

Please also note that:

-Material already published elsewhere should not form the basis of a submission, but may be referred to within a proposed memorandum, in which case a hard copy of the published work should be included.

-Memoranda submitted must be kept confidential until published by the Committee, unless publication by the person or organisation submitting it is specifically authorised.

-Once submitted, evidence is the property of the Committee. The Committee normally, though not always, chooses to make public the written evidence it receives, by publishing it on the internet (where it will be searchable), by printing it or by making it available through the Parliamentary Archives. If there is any information you believe to be sensitive you should highlight it and explain what harm you believe would result from its disclosure. The Committee will take this into account in deciding whether to publish or further disclose the evidence.

-Select Committees are unable to investigate individual cases.
http://www.parliament.uk/parliamentary_committees/science_technology/s_t_pn14_100122.cfm

Membership of the committee is here:

There are 14 in total: LAB 8, CON 3, LIBDEM 2, INDEPENDENT 1

Of course it is not unknown for Select Committees to come up with some very uncomfortable findings.

I think that the danger here is that the warmists are sufficiently well coordinated, and have the resources, to swamp the committee with very persuasive submissions, and we poor sceptics are not.

Whatever the outcome, Climategate is assured of a place in the headlines for months to come.

  UPDATE 23/01/2010:

Alex  Cull has contributed this information abut the members of the committee. It makes fascinating reading:

Looking at the 14 MPs’ profiles on theyworkforyou, their voting records and also their own web sites and blogs (where available), some interesting patterns emerge. For instance, I looked at all of them with regard to the voting record (from PublicWhip) concerning laws to stop climate change, and here is a breakdown (any errors are probably mine, please feel free to correct me!)

Voted very strongly for laws to stop climate change: 2 (Tim Boswell: Con, Evan Harris: LibDem).
Voted strongly for laws to stop climate change: 3 (Nadine Dorries: Con, Bob Spink: Ind, Rob Wilson: Con).
Voted moderately for laws to stop climate change: 1 (Phil Willis: LibDem).
Voted a mixture of for and against laws to stop climate change: 1 (Brian Iddon: Lab).
Voted moderately against laws to stop climate change: 6 (Roberta Blackman-Woods: Lab, Ian Cawsey: Lab, Gordon Marsden: Lab, Doug Naysmith: Lab, Ian Stewart: Lab, Desmond Turner: Lab).
Voted strongly against laws to stop climate change: 1 (Graham Stringer: Lab).

So those who voted for laws to stop climate change turn out to be mostly Conservative, LibDem or Independent, and those who voted against, turn out to be Labour, very curious! It is interesting then to look at the laws that were voted on. Nine are listed, from 2007 to 2009 5 of these relating to the Climate Change Bill – including its second and third readings -and the others including an Energy Bill in 2008 and the campaign last year for the Government to sign up to 10:10. And here a pattern emerges of the Labour committee members voting for the Climate Change Bill but mostly against the other motions. Which is perhaps less controversial than it sounds, given for instance that the campaign to get the Government to commit to 10:10 was initiated by the LibDems, and in fact Government ministers such as Ed Miliband and Joan Ruddock were opposed to it. So maybe it’s possible to read too much into the voting record results.

Looking at the blogs and websites, and also skimming through transcripts of various debates, here are some impressions.

a) Some appear to be more on-message about AGW than others, and I’d say that Roberta Blackman-Woods, Tim Boswell, Evan Harris, Bob Spink, Desmond Turner and Rob Wilson are probably in this category. Dr Blackman-Woods supports the Climate Durham organisation in her constituency, Desmond Turner attended COP15 (”this Conference is a turning point for global efforts to reduce carbon emissions and tackle effectively the threat of catastrophic climate change. It is vital that real progress is made and binding targets are set”) and Rob Wilson supported the Climate Change Action Group and CAFOD as they took part in “The Wave” climate change march on 5th December last year (“It’s great to see so many local people getting involved and keeping the issue of climate change high on the political agenda.”)

b) Others appear not particularly interested in the climate question and chiefly get involved where projects such as wind farms could impact on their constituents (e.g. Ian Cawsey).

c) Some more than others come across as interested in science; in June last year, for instance, Graham Stringer debated with Joan Ruddock about the need to protect infrastructure against violent solar storms, e.g. Carrington Events. He’s also a supporter of the aviation industry and also appears not to be afraid to hold controversial views, e,g., about dyslexia. And Brian Iddon seems to have mixed views: “Whether one believes that emissions of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere produce climate change is a big argument, but does my right hon. Friend agree that there are two other important reasons why we should not be burning fossil fuels? First, we are acidifying the sea almost beyond the point of no return. Secondly – I speak passionately as a chemist – producing energy from carbon fuels is a very inefficient process, and we need those carbon fuels as larders of chemicals for the generations of the future, so it is a sin to burn them.”

I think it will be fascinating to see how they proceed with this.

Many thanks Alex!

The Hockey Stick Illusion by Andrew Montford

Posted by TonyN on 16/01/2010 at 12:54 pm CRU Email Hack, The Climate 29 Responses »
Jan 162010

Yesterday morning I was delighted to see that Andrew’s Montfod’s book will be published on Monday. For those of us who have read his Bishop Hill blog over the last few years there should be a treat in store, and one that could not come at a better time.

hockeystickjacket3.png

A book length treatment of the Hockey Stick controversy is long overdue. Although David Holland’s  2007 paper on the subject for Energy and Environment did an excellent job of putting this strange tale in context for non-specialists, and Marcel Croc’s lengthy article in Natuurwetenschap & Techniek had provided much fascinating background prior to that, the only comprehensive source of information on this subject is the extensive posts  by Steve McIntyre at climateaudit.org, and these are definitely not for the faint hearted. In any case, both the Holland and Croc contributions have been overtaken by events as much has happened since their publication.

Michael Mann’s Hockey Stick graph has often been described as the icon of the global warming movement, and with good reason. Even more potent than dodgy representations of polar bears seemingly marooned on icebergs, this graph is an image that compellingly conjures up concerns about human influence on the climate that have come to dominate political, economic and social agendas worldwide during the last decade. It appears to give absolute scientific authority to all we have been told about a planet imperilled by human profligacy. Its message has been immensely persuasive, and in some respects this has been devastating.

At least since the 18th century, when the owners of grand country houses began to surround themselves with extensive parks, we have had a respect for the aesthetic and spiritual value of beautiful countryside. During the 20th century protection of this aspect of our heritage was incorporated into legislation. The green belts that surround many of our cities, the creation of National Parks and Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty are examples of this. The planning laws in general have attempted to prevent the incursion of development in rural areas.

Back in 2004, I began work on a book about changing attitudes to the British landscape. I was puzzled and concerned that, soon after the start of the new millennium, a willingness to sacrifice a vital part of our cultural heritage by building wind farms had become acceptable. Just the kind of places which, only a decade or so previously, we would have struggled to preserve, were now being industrialised with no sign of widespread public outrage. My initial assumption was that an industrialised population had become detached from the natural world and was now indifferent to what was happening.

At that time media coverage of climate change amounted to little more than an occasional scare story about glaciers retreating or the latest prediction from a computer model; the usual outpourings of woe from the environmental movement. There seemed little reason to suppose that this amounted to more than just another fashionable scare story that would eventually run its course and fizzle out. I had already encountered a few: Continue reading »

Hush, Hush! The Advertising Standards Authority is Investigating

Posted by TonyN on 11/01/2010 at 7:12 pm TV Adverts 11 Responses »
Jan 112010

An ‘Investigations Executive’ at the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) wrote to me the day before the Climategate scandal broke.  Although the content of her letter was surprising, to put it mildly, subsequent events rather overshadowed it. Publication of the Climatic Research Unit’s emails, the collapse of the Copenhagen climate summit, and the lethargy of the Christmas holidays have postponed responding to the ASA’s letter.

Before I go any further, it is worth pointing out that the ASA is not a statutory body; it is not even an ‘authority’ in any accepted meaning of the term. It has no legal powers and nor is it charged by government with the duty of enforcing legislation. Quite why the word ‘Authority’ appears in its title is a mystery. Its remit extends no further than the advertising industry of which it is a part.

The ASA was founded in 1961 by the advertising industry as a means of self-regulating and of avoiding government regulation.  Funding is provided by a levy on advertisers. There are some interesting notes on the ASA’s history here. These mentions that, quite properly, the ASA operates under a chairman who has no connection with the advertising industry. I’ll come back to this in a moment.

So what did the ASA have to say in their letter? Well telling you is a bit of a problem because it’s all a terribly big secret. In fact, come to think of it, even telling you that I have received a letter from them would seem to be a terribly big secret, in their eyes at least. Just mentioning that there has been a letter I mean.  Perhaps I should really be pretending that none of this has ever happened.

Contributors to Harmless Sky who made complaints to the ASA may remember that we all received an acknowledgement from them which ended, ‘Please treat all correspondence as confidential until such time as a decision is published on our website’. This seemed a bit silly to me.

So far as I remember there were over 800 complaints to the ASA about the government adverts. Presumably each and every one of the complainants got the same letter, and this included the request for ‘confidentiality’. I’ve always believed that the only kind of secret that stays that way is one that you don’t share with anyone.

But of course such a request for confidentiality does beg a very obvious question; why is it being made?

I could think of no answer to that, so I thought little more about the matter. Normally, if someone wants to impart information on condition that it is confidential they seek your agreement first. Telling you something,and then saying that, by the way, ‘this is confidential’, is rather pointless, more particularly so when you are telling several hundred other people the same thing. And anyway, what possible justification could there be for trying to keep the very mundane information from the ASA that has appeared on this blog secret?

From a purely practical point of view, I could think of no sensible reason to make the request in the first place, or at least no reason that would reflect well on the ASA. Since I have been running this blog I have had dealings with a couple of proper regulators – Ofcom and The Information Commissioner who do have statutory powers – and neither of them have made such a request. Why should the ASA  do so?

The first requirement of a regulator is that the processes they employ in reaching decisions should be absolutely transparent, otherwise how does the public know that they are competent, impartial, and that they have applied the correct procedures and criteria in order to reach a equitable decision?  A secretive regulator is hardly likely to be a credible regulator.

In the end I decided that the ASA were probably just a bit self-important and unprofessional, and adjusted my expectations of what all those 800 complaints might achieve accordingly. That was until I received the letter that I mentioned at the beginning of this post: Continue reading »

Goodbye to 2009

Posted by TonyN on 31/12/2009 at 9:04 pm The Climate 25 Responses »
Dec 312009

A year ago I signed off my 2008 New Year post with the words:

Much has changed during the last year, and I have no intention of joining the current fashion for prediction by trying to anticipate what will happen next, other than to suggest that next year will probably yield surprises, in the same way that last year did.

Goodbye to 2008

Overall, I suppose I was right about there being surprises in store – it was a pretty safe bet – but there is no similarity between the occurrences of the last couple of months of 2009 and anything that has preceded them in the course of the climate debate.

Most of what I wrote on that occasion had to do with the controversy about a decade long standstill, or even decline, in global temperatures. During the last twelve months, that has ceased to be controversial except for a few diehards who resolutely try to keep the myth of a steadily warming planet alive.

Any admission that global warming has stopped – whether temporarily or permanently, no one knows – was of course unthinkable in the run-up to the Copenhagen conference. In the aftermath of its failure anything would seem to be possible. Already there are voices suggesting that the IPCC has run its course and that responsibility for coordinating international policy on climate change should be taken away from the UN.

The extent to which Climategate played a part in the Copenhagen debacle is still not clear. There were certainly many commentators and politicians who were eager to downplay any influence that it may have had, but the term ‘Climategate’ is now firmly embedded in the language, and it is now a routine consideration into any general discussion of climate change.

But the initial shock waves caused by the revelations in the CRU emails are likely to be no more than a prelude. Climategate in November was soon eclipsed by the initial hype, and eventual disaster, of Copenhagen in December. Both were overtaken by the Christmas and New Year holidays before their full impact could really be accessed. As we move forward into 2010 there is much unfinished business in the pipeline.

Politicians and the media alike must realise by now that the public are pretty sick of climate change, and that another hard winter in the UK and across much of North America is unlikely to help with the task of getting scare stories across. Continue reading »

After Copenhagen: what comes next?

Posted by TonyN on 21/12/2009 at 1:09 am Copenhagen, The Climate 21 Responses »
Dec 212009

And so another chapter in the strange, fantastic history of global warming has come to an end. As over a hundred heads of state return home from a freezing Copenhagen, the process of trying to work out exactly what, if anything, has been agreed begins. But spokesmen from the UN, the EU, the UK and the US are already busy trying to salvage something – anything – from the wreckage. They must try to encourage the belief that a document called the Copenhagen Accord was a creditable outcome. There seems little chance that domestic audiences will buy into this myth.

Over 130 of the participating nations were only prepared to ‘note’ the existence of such a piece of paper. Even the vast army of environmental ‘observers’ who were present at the conference are not pretending that there are any words other than ‘disaster’ and ‘failure’ that accurately sum up what has happened. So far as I am aware, there is a vast difference in diplomatic terms between ‘noting’ an accord and signing up to one.

For the weary politicians and their teams of negotiators and advisers, the next task will be to try and explain this fiasco to their own people. In the past, and particularly after the Bali conference two years ago, a vague and inconclusive agreement has been a great advantage in this process. Such a document is a blank canvas on which spin-doctors can exercise their creative skills. This time things are different, and the shortcomings are clear for all to see.

After two weeks of negotiations between over 190 countries it is difficult to detect any real progress towards a low carbon world.  There is no more than a vague aspiration to try to  limit global warming to 2oC. No medium or long-term emissions targets have been set. The all-important question of how the war on global warming will be financed has yet to be   answered or even seriously addressed.

The ‘road map’ hammered out at Bali has lead only into a cul-de-sac. Worse, that fudged agreement, forged to the accompaniment of hysterical sobs from the UN’s Yvo  de Boer, has been revealed for the fudge that it was; a diplomatic assemblage  built on foundations so shaky that now the whole edifice has collapsed. The idea that in the course of the coming year Humpty Dumpty can be put together again and a legally binding global treaty brought into being is fanciful.

This piffling accord, signed by only a handful of countries and scorned with derision by the rest, lays bare the extent of the fiasco for all to see.

Heads of state and climate change ministers will now have to try and justify the doom-laden rhetoric that most of them have pitilessly inflicted on their fellow countrymen during the run-up to the summit. If the diet of climate porn, apocalyptic claims, and outright propaganda promoting the IPCC’s dogmatic prognostications that we have suffered in the UK is anything to go by then this is likely to be an all but impossible task. Only a few weeks ago our prime minister was warning that Copenhagen was the last chance to save the planet and that if it did not succeed then disaster would surely follow, and very soon. As a general election approaches, how will he explain that measures to prevent global catastrophe that were desperately urgent just a month ago can now wait for another year or two? Continue reading »

Copenhagen: The cost of spreading the word

Posted by TonyN on 19/12/2009 at 1:03 am The Climate 15 Responses »
Dec 192009


As I write this, the word is beginning to seep through from Copenhagen that  a political agreement of some kind has been signed that doesn’t look as though it is worth the paper its written on. It will probably be days before we know what all the  spin really adds up to, but the expressions on the faces of politicians and reporters alike would seem to tell a tale of woe.

In the meantime there is one aspect of what has happened over the last two weeks that is worth bearing in mind, and it should be deeply worrying for sceptics and warmists alike. A brief excursion back into history is useful to put this into perspective.

During the 19th Century, some of what are now called the developed countries exported more than just cheap manufactured goods to what have come to be  known as the developing countries. Tens of thousands of missionaries left our shores and took the Bible to distant lands. In return for faith in the one true God they offered everlasting life, basic schooling, medical care and cast off western clothes. This was enough to persuade the recipients that it was worth giving up their old beliefs and customs, often with disastrous consequences.

Now, at the beginning of the 21st century, a new breed of evangelists has gone forth to the developing nations carrying – not the Good Book – but the reports of the IPCC.

For the indigenous populations of the countries they visit, espousing this novel faith has similar advantages to espousing the old one. Redemption is offered in return for believing in a new credo, or at least pretending to do so, and with this comes a promise of great bounty. Admittedly the sins that are to be redeemed are not those of the new converts who, in the eyes of the evangelists, are innocent victims of others profligacy. The blame for climate change is laid firmly at the door of the developed countries, who have spewed Co2 into the atmosphere as their economies have grown.  The victims have been too poor, for too long, to take a share in the blame. Furthermore, the faithful now have reason to blame almost any natural disaster that afflicts them on anthropogenic global warming. Continue reading »

CRU Email Hack: Don't panic! Pachauri of the IPCC is on the case

Posted by TonyN on 04/12/2009 at 5:06 pm CRU Email Hack, The Climate 63 Responses »
Dec 042009

 

On the Radio4 Today programme this morning, Simon Cox reported that Dr Rajendra Pachauri, Chairman of the IPCC, says that they will be investigating the CRU emails . See first item at 07:09, here:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_8394000/8394501.stm

The BBC website carries the same story but with a rather different slant here:

“We will certainly go into the whole lot and then we will take a position on it,” he said.

“We certainly don’t want to brush anything under the carpet. This is a serious issue and we will look into it in detail.”

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8394483.stm

For the first time, Climategate made the  headlines on the BBC’s morning news coverage. Their flagship Today programme, the one that politicians and policy makers can’t afford to miss, ran no less than three items on the story.

In a post here, I suggested that Climategate, like Watergate, is a story that will grow and grow. With the involvement of the IPCC  this seems bound to happen.

Up until now, the action and news coverage has centred on the University of East Anglia’s campus. After all it was Phil Jones’s mailbox at CRU that got raided. But from the very beginning it was clear that the scandal had international dimensions. As I have said before, the address headers on those emails reads like a list of the great and the good in climate research from around the world, and that means that they are the movers and shakers of the  IPCC process too.

In particular Michael Mann, Keith Briffa, and Kevin Trenberth – to say nothing of Phil Jones himself – have played a major role in the last two IPCC Assessment Reports. All have said apparently compromising things in the leaked correspondence.

  • There is little doubt now that confidence in Mann’s hockey stick, the iconic graph that Sir John Houghton used so successful as a brand image for the IPPC in its Third Assessment Report, was only maintained by collusion with colleagues to suppress criticism.
  • Briffa admits, referring to his IPCC duties, that the needs of the IPCC and science are not always the same.
  • Trenberth questions scientific understanding of the radiation budget, perhaps the most fundamental aspect of the greenhouse hypothesis, and admits that the present cooling cannot be explained. Yet he is a factotum of the organisation that has done more than any other to implant the idea in the minds of politicians, policy makers that the general public that the science is settled and a consensus exists.
  • Jones talks openly of keeping inconvenient scientific research out of the Fourth Assessment Report.

The intervention of the IPCC chairman is a turning point in the development of the CRU affair for two reasons. If the IPCC need to investigate, then it is no longer possible for anyone to pretend that the problem only concerns a few people and a limited amount of research at CRU. Climategate will have gone global. Secondly, any intimation that the IPCC are going to investigate is likely to bring forth a chorus of demands that it is not the place of the IPCC to investigate this matter, but it is the IPCC that should be investigated.

As I have said before, the people whose behaviour has been brought to light by this scandal are not bit players in the world of climate science; they are senior functionaries at the heart of  the IPCC process.

In a report on this morning’s Today programme (here at 08:56), Roger Harrabin had this to say:

Climate change has become the sort of great organising theme, a great grand narrative of our age. And what you’re seeing in Copenhagen now is the sort of businesses who previously rejected ideas that we had to cut emissions now buying into climate change science, and from that position making policies of their own for a transformational economy; a low carbon economy. So you had for instance five hundred businesses last night at Downing Street presenting a petition to Gordon Brown saying give us a strong deal. And I saw Richard Lambert there, Director Genera of the CBI, and said look! what about these stolen emails? Does this put you off?  And this is what he said;

Business people aren’t scientists and they’re not climatologists, but they are paid to understand risk. And they see a risk in climate change and they also see an opportunity. The question is, is it going to be an orderly transition to a low carbon economy or a disorderly transition.  And are investment plans going to be [served ?] by the way that [transition] creates business opportunities in the future. That’s is why business has an real interest, in a successful outcome to the Copenhagen discussions.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_8394000/8394501.stm

Why Harrabin should choose to interpret this very cautious response to a question about Climategate  as a refutation of the impact of the CRU debacle is not a subject for this post, but the real burden of what Lambert said certainly is.

Industry has billions invested in what they have been told are the new opportunities that the perceived risk of AGW are supposed to create. Businessmen are, as Lambert rightly says, paid to understand risk. But they are also paid to assess the information on which decisions on risk are based. In the case of global warming the main purveyor of this information is the IPCC, aided and abetted by government and the  quangos it has created.

Businessmen, or the best of them at least, are also paid to know when the information they are relying on can no longer be trusted. In the case of the IPCC, trust is a very important word. As Lambert makes clear, businessmen are not climate scientists and the number of people who can make a critical appraisal of what the IPCC has been telling us are relatively few. The decisions on risk are based almost entirely on what the IPCC has been telling us all for the last decade.

If the new markets that the businessmen are relying on to help ride out the recession begin to collapse because the IPCC process is flawed, then the IPCC can expect no mercy form the business leaders who have become its cheerleaders.

CRU Email Hacks: Is there going to be a whitewash?

Posted by TonyN on 04/12/2009 at 1:08 am CRU Email Hack, The Climate 16 Responses »
Dec 042009

 

Sir Muir Russell chairman of the the UEA review, centre

 

It has just been announced that Sir Muir Russell will chair the UEA’s  much trailed ‘independent inquiry’ into the CRU scandal, except that the word inquiry is not being used any more. Apparently we are to have an ‘independent review’ instead.

This is surprising because as recently as last night, Professor Acton who is the Vice-Chancellor of the university was indeed talking about an inquiry. Is the change of name because ‘inquiry’ is a rather emotive term suggesting wrongdoing while ‘review’ implies that there is nothing much to worry about? If the latter is the case then the outlook for climate science in general and CRU in particular is very bleak indeed.

Here is the beginning of the press release:

Sir Muir Russell to head the Independent Review into the allegations against the Climatic Research Unit (CRU)

Today the University of East Anglia (UEA) announced that Sir Muir Russell KCB FRSE will head the Independent Review into allegations made against the Climatic Research Unit (CRU).

The Independent Review will investigate the key allegations that arose from a series of hacked e-mails from CRU.

http://www.uea.ac.uk/mac/comm/media/press/2009/dec/homepagenews/CRUreview

It would seem that someone is rather preoccupied with ‘allegations’.

Surely an inquiry review should not be primarily concerned with allegations, but with what has actually happened at CRU. The allegations are only a symptom.

This wording suggests that someone thinks that, if there had been no allegations, then there would be no problems. Given the content of the emails, wouldn’t you expect UEA to recognise that they must find out just what has been going on at the CRU over the last decade?  This possibly Freudian slip would seem to indicate a mind-set at UEA that has yet to appreciate the full implications of this scandal. Continue reading »

Tory Environmentalism - is everybody listening?

Posted by TonyN on 02/12/2009 at 2:01 am The Climate 43 Responses »
Dec 022009

This is the first paragraph of a message from David Cameron posted on the Conservative Party website. Apparently it was also emailed to members:

In nine days time, representatives from 192 countries will meet in Copenhagen for the UN Conference on climate change. This summit is of historic importance. It is an opportunity for the world to take bold action to deal with the real danger of climate change.

http://blog.conservatives.com/index.php/2009/11/27/the-copenhagen-summit-is-of-historic-importance/

The rest is fairly predictable, but it is worth reading in full.

When I first looked at this page on Sunday evening there were just over two hundred comments, most presumably from the Conservative faithful – otherwise known as their core vote. As I ran my eye over them, I searched in vain for any that might support the leaders take on climate change. I did eventually find a few. Continue reading »

CRU Email Hack - will Climategate be the new Watergate?

Posted by TonyN on 28/11/2009 at 1:36 pm CRU Email Hack, The Climate 100 Responses »
Nov 282009

I suppose that it is inevitable that the sensational revelations in the hacked CRU emails have  been labelled Climategate, but is it reasonable to compare what is happening now with the Watergate scandal of nearly forty years ago?

Pat Michaels, climatologist and long-time global warming sceptic, certainly thinks so. When he was interviewed on Fox News by Stuart Varney he suggested:

The other side’s going to say that this story will go away. No! It’s not. There is so much in here its like Watergate. Things are going to come up, and up , and up, and up for the next year.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHATItyOsdY&feature=related

He may well be right that there are many more revelations to come from the CRU computer files that are now in the public domain. As I pointed out in a previous post, the amount of data is vast and assessing it will be a complex task. Although initial frenzied searches by sceptics have yielded many quotations that apparently reveal sensational wrongdoing, this is just the first stage. In the coming months far more detailed analysis will take place so that the complex relationship between various strands of the email exchanges and the extensive data files can be untangled. This process will takes time, scientific expertise, and a very great deal of patience. Such research is likely – at the very least – to prompt more questions about just what has been going on at  one of the world’s leading climate change labs.

So is this process likely to be analogous with the dogged investigation carried out by Washington Post reporters Woodward and Burnstein, which revealed the cover-up that was the most devastating aspect of Watergate scandal? Continue reading »

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