House of Commons Clears Jones of "Climategate" Charges
UK 'Climategate' inquiry largely
clears scientists
The Associated
Press, March 31, 2010
LONDON -- The
first of several British investigations into the e-mails leaked from one
of the world's leading climate research centers has largely vindicated
the scientists involved.
The House of
Commons' Science and Technology Committee said Wednesday that they'd
seen no evidence to support charges that the University of East Anglia's
Climatic Research Unit or its director, Phil Jones, had tampered with
data or perverted the peer review process to exaggerate the threat of
global warming - two of the most serious criticisms levied against the
climatologist and his colleagues.
In their report,
the committee said that, as far as it was able to ascertain, "the
scientific reputation of Professor Jones and CRU remains intact," adding
that nothing in the more than 1,000 stolen e-mails, or the controversy
kicked up by their publication, challenged scientific consensus that
"global warming is happening and that it is induced by human activity."
The 14-member
committee's investigation is one of three launched after the
dissemination, in November, of e-mails and data stolen from the research
unit. The e-mails appeared to show scientists berating skeptics in
sometimes intensely personal attacks, discussing ways to shield their
data from public records laws, and discussing ways to keep skeptics'
research out of peer-reviewed journals. One that attracted particular
media attention was Jones' reference to a "trick" that could be used to
"hide the decline" of temperatures.
The e-mails'
publication ahead of the Copenhagen climate change summit sparked an
online furor, with skeptics of man-made climate change calling the
e-mails' publication "Climategate" and claiming them as proof that the
science behind global warming had been exaggerated - or even made up
altogether.
The lawmakers
said they decided to investigate due to "the serious implications for
U.K. science."
Phil Willis, the
committee's chairman, said of the e-mails that "there's no denying that
some of them were pretty appalling." But the committee found no evidence
of anything beyond "a blunt refusal to share data," adding that the
idea that Jones was part of a conspiracy to hide evidence that weakened
the case for global warming was clearly wrong.
In a briefing to
journalists ahead of the report's release, Willis said the controversy
would ultimately help buttress the case for global warming by forcing
the University of East Anglia - and other research institutions - to
stop hoarding their data.
"The winner in
the end will be climate science itself," he said.
The winner on
Wednesday was Jones, who stepped down temporarily as chief of the
climate research unit about a week after the e-mail scandal broke. The
committee expressed sympathy with Jones, whom Willis said had been made a
scapegoat for larger problems within the climate science community.
"The focus on
Professor Jones and the CRU has been largely misplaced," the report
said.
But the lawmakers
did criticize the way Jones and his colleagues handled freedom of
information requests, saying scientists could have saved themselves a
lot of trouble by aggressively publishing all their data instead of
worrying about how to stonewall their critics.
Lawmakers
stressed that their report - which was written after only a single day
of oral testimony - did not cover all the issues and would not be as
in-depth as the two other inquiries into the e-mail scandal that are
still pending.
Willis said the
lawmakers had been in a rush to publish something before Britain's next
national election, which is widely expected in just over a month's time.
"Clearly we would
have liked to spend more time of this," he said, before adding
jokingly: "We had to get something out before we were sent packing."
One of the two
pending inquiries is being headed by former civil servant Muir Russell,
who is looking into whether scientists, including Jones, fudged data or
manipulated the peer review process. It also is examining the extent to
which university followed applicable freedom of information laws. That
report is due to report sometime this spring.
Geologist Ernest
Oxburgh is leading a parallel investigation into the integrity of the
science itself, one staffed by academics including Kerry Emanuel, a
professor of meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
and Huw Davies, a former president of the International Association of
Meteorology & Atmospheric Science.
The committee
said that climate scientists had to be much more open in future - for
example by publishing all their data, including raw data and the
software programs used to interpret them, to the Internet. Willis said
there was far too much money at stake not to be completely transparent.
"Governments
across the world are spending trillions of pounds, or trillions of
dollars, on mitigating climate change. The science has got to be
irreproachable," he said.
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