The first British investigation into the supposed “climategate” emails has largely vindicated the scientists involved, including Phil Jones – head scientist of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia. This further proves, as I’ve said all along, that this “Climategate” is just more inane propaganda being forced down the throats of a bewildered and misinformed public. I don’t as much blame the individuals who go on these denier rants as I do the supposed “news” outlets and politicians that encourage and foster such behavior, reaction and mentality.
Anthropogenic Global Warming is real and happening right now. It is likely the largest crisis and challenge our civilization has ever faced. We need to get serious about solving this problem and we need to have started thirty years ago. But I’m sure all this will accomplish is a flurry of propaganda from Fox News, etc. about how the House of Commons is really the mastermind behind some great globe-wide conspiracy to dupe everyone into believing global warming… yadda, yadda, yadda.
Check out the AP article on CBS for more information. Here are some of the the “conclusions and recommendations” from the House of Commons report:
We therefore conclude that there is independent verification, through the use of other methodologies and other sources of data, of the results and conclusions of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia.
Even if the data that CRU used were not publicly available—which they mostly are—or the methods not published—which they have been—its published results would still be credible: the results from CRU agree with those drawn from other international data sets; in other words, the analyses have been repeated and the conclusions have been verified.
Critics of CRU have suggested that Professor Jones’s use of the word “trick” is evidence that he was part of a conspiracy to hide evidence that did not fit his view that recent global warming is predominately caused by human activity. The balance of evidence patently fails to support this view. It appears to be a colloquialism for a “neat” method of handling data.
Critics of CRU have suggested that Professor Jones’s use of the words “hide the decline” is evidence that he was part of a conspiracy to hide evidence that did not fit his view that recent global warming is predominantly caused by human activity. That he has published papers—including a paper in Nature—dealing with this aspect of the science clearly refutes this allegation. In our view, it was shorthand for the practice of discarding data known to be erroneous. We expect that this is a matter the Scientific Appraisal Panel will address.
The evidence that we have seen does not suggest that Professor Jones was trying to subvert the peer review process. Academics should not be criticised for making informal comments on academic papers. The Independent Climate Change Email Review should look in detail at all of these claims.
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