"Climategate" Leak Report Vindicates Scientists
Updated at 8:30 a.m. EDT.
An independent British report into the leak of hundreds of e-mails from one of the world's leading climate research centers has largely vindicated the scientists involved, a finding many in the field hope will calm the global uproar dubbed "Climategate."
The inquiry by former U.K. civil servant Muir Russell into the scandal at the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit found there was no evidence of dishonesty or corruption in the more than 1,000 e-mails stolen and posted to the Internet late last year. But he did chide the scientists involved for failing to share their data with critics.
"We find that their rigor and honesty as scientists are not in doubt," Russell said. "But we do find that there has been a consistent pattern of failing to display the proper degree of openness."
Russell's inquiry into the scandal is the third major investigation into the theft and dissemination of the e-mails, which caused a sensation when they were published online in November, right before the U.N. climate change conference at Copenhagen.
The messages captured researchers speaking in scathing terms about their critics, discussing ways to stonewall skeptics of man-made climate change, and talking about how to freeze opponents out of peer-reviewed journals.
The ensuing scandal energized skeptics and destabilized the Copenhagen talks. The research center's chief, Phil Jones, stepped down while Russell, a former vice-chancellor of the University of Glasgow in Scotland, investigated.
While Russell's report said there was no evidence to show Jones or any other scientist had subverted the peer-review process, it did revisit the now infamous e-mail exchange between Jones and a colleague in which the climatologist refers to a "trick" used to "hide the decline" in a variable used to track global temperatures.
Some skeptics took that as proof that scientists were faking global temperature trends. Russell's report rejected that conclusion, but did say the resulting graph was "misleading" - although not intentionally so.
Russell also criticized the university for being "unhelpful" in dealing with Freedom of Information requests - something Britain's data-protection watchdog has already scolded the university for.
University of East Anglia Vice-Chancellor Edward Acton said the report had "completely exonerated" Jones, who would now return to the Climatic Research Unit as director of research - a new position that Acton said would free him from administrative duties.
Acton also said the university has since overhauled the way it dealt with requests for data.
Russell's report follows a British parliamentary inquiry that largely backed the scientists involved and another independent investigation that gave a clean bill of health to the science itself. Yet both reports have been criticized by skeptics who alleged they were incomplete or biased.
On Tuesday, a leading Dutch environmental agency admitted to making miscalculations in the much maligned U.N. report on climate change. The University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit was one of the principal research units behind the report.
It has been difficult to gauge the impact of the scandal, which played widely in the British and U.S. media. In Britain, there is some evidence that public concern over global warming has been diluted, although not by much.
An Ipsos MORI poll published last month suggested that 78 percent of Britons believed that the world's climate was changing, compared with 91 percent five years earlier. Seventy-one percent of respondents expressed concern about global warming, versus 82 percent in 2005. The pollster surveyed 1,822 people aged 15 and over in interviews between January and March 2010.
Some scientists say the scandal has made it impossible for researchers to hide data from their critics and has pushed those who do believe in the dangers of man-made global warming to be more vocal about their doubts.
"The release of the e-mails was a turning point, a game-changer," Mike Hulme, a professor of climate change at the University of East Anglia, told The Guardian newspaper before the Russell report was released. "Already there is a new tone. Researchers are more upfront, open and explicit about their uncertainties, for instance."
Bob Ward, the policy director of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change at the London School of Economics, agreed that openness was the now order of the day.
"There is a need to re-establish trust," he said.
CBS/ AP An independent British report into the leak of hundreds of e-mails from one of the world's leading climate research centers has largely vindicated the scientists involved, a finding many in the field hope will calm the global uproar dubbed "Climategate."
The inquiry by former U.K. civil servant Muir Russell into the scandal at the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit found there was no evidence of dishonesty or corruption in the more than 1,000 e-mails stolen and posted to the Internet late last year. But he did chide the scientists involved for failing to share their data with critics.
"We find that their rigor and honesty as scientists are not in doubt," Russell said. "But we do find that there has been a consistent pattern of failing to display the proper degree of openness."
Russell's inquiry into the scandal is the third major investigation into the theft and dissemination of the e-mails, which caused a sensation when they were published online in November, right before the U.N. climate change conference at Copenhagen.
The messages captured researchers speaking in scathing terms about their critics, discussing ways to stonewall skeptics of man-made climate change, and talking about how to freeze opponents out of peer-reviewed journals.
The ensuing scandal energized skeptics and destabilized the Copenhagen talks. The research center's chief, Phil Jones, stepped down while Russell, a former vice-chancellor of the University of Glasgow in Scotland, investigated.
While Russell's report said there was no evidence to show Jones or any other scientist had subverted the peer-review process, it did revisit the now infamous e-mail exchange between Jones and a colleague in which the climatologist refers to a "trick" used to "hide the decline" in a variable used to track global temperatures.
Some skeptics took that as proof that scientists were faking global temperature trends. Russell's report rejected that conclusion, but did say the resulting graph was "misleading" - although not intentionally so.
Russell also criticized the university for being "unhelpful" in dealing with Freedom of Information requests - something Britain's data-protection watchdog has already scolded the university for.
University of East Anglia Vice-Chancellor Edward Acton said the report had "completely exonerated" Jones, who would now return to the Climatic Research Unit as director of research - a new position that Acton said would free him from administrative duties.
Acton also said the university has since overhauled the way it dealt with requests for data.
Russell's report follows a British parliamentary inquiry that largely backed the scientists involved and another independent investigation that gave a clean bill of health to the science itself. Yet both reports have been criticized by skeptics who alleged they were incomplete or biased.
On Tuesday, a leading Dutch environmental agency admitted to making miscalculations in the much maligned U.N. report on climate change. The University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit was one of the principal research units behind the report.
It has been difficult to gauge the impact of the scandal, which played widely in the British and U.S. media. In Britain, there is some evidence that public concern over global warming has been diluted, although not by much.
An Ipsos MORI poll published last month suggested that 78 percent of Britons believed that the world's climate was changing, compared with 91 percent five years earlier. Seventy-one percent of respondents expressed concern about global warming, versus 82 percent in 2005. The pollster surveyed 1,822 people aged 15 and over in interviews between January and March 2010.
Some scientists say the scandal has made it impossible for researchers to hide data from their critics and has pushed those who do believe in the dangers of man-made global warming to be more vocal about their doubts.
"The release of the e-mails was a turning point, a game-changer," Mike Hulme, a professor of climate change at the University of East Anglia, told The Guardian newspaper before the Russell report was released. "Already there is a new tone. Researchers are more upfront, open and explicit about their uncertainties, for instance."
Bob Ward, the policy director of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change at the London School of Economics, agreed that openness was the now order of the day.
"There is a need to re-establish trust," he said.
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Answer: Infinitesimal
The IPCC now agrees. See the IPCC Technical Report section entitled Global Warming Potential (GWP). And the GWP for CO2? Just 1, (one), unity, the lowest of all green house gases (GHG). What?s more, trace gases which include GHG constitute less than 1% of the atmosphere. Of that 1%, water vapor, the most powerful GHG, makes ups 40% of the total. Carbon dioxide is 1/10th of that amount, an insignificant .04%. If carbon dioxide levels were cut in half to 200PPM, all plant growth would stop according to agricultural scientists. It's no accident that commercial green house owner/operators invest heavily in CO2 generators to increase production, revenues and profits. Prof. Michael Mann's Bristle cone tree proxy data (Hockey stick) proves nothing has done more to GREEN (verb) the planet over the past few decades than moderate sun-driven warming (see solar inertial motion) together with elevated levels of CO2, regardless of the source. None of these facts have been reported in the national media. Why?
The right is all about the accumulation of power and wealth; there is little evidence to suggest that they permit anything to interfere with their drive to satiate those lusts.
Given that humans tend to project their own motives and morality upon others, it is not surprising that the right would leap to paint the people of science with their own colors.
This report is nothing more than damage control. There is real science behind climate variations and it has very little to do with what has been going on since our favorite lecher, Al Gore .......
===============================================================
Stupid people (like YOU) do little research beyond watching FAUX
NOISE and listening to Rush LimpBalls. Why don't you meander
over to a website owned by this little oil company named EXXON MOBIL.
SEE WHAT -THEY- HAVE TO SAY ABOUT "GLOBAL WARMING".
This report is nothing more than damage control.
=====================================================
Nobody talks about Global Ignorance ... but it is time
to start. You and your brethren are ignorant ... and
ignorance is NOT free. Let me guess ... as far as school
went ... you skipped Chemistry and took Art instead ?
This has to do with scientific rigor, not you injecting your pseudo-scientific opinion.
A good book on the topic is Fitzhugh and Ward's Vikings: the North Atlantic Saga. Washington: Smithsonian in Assoc. with the National Museum of Natural History, c2000.
In any case, the climate of Greenland in the Middle Ages has nothing to do with the climate of the entire world in 2010.
We need citizens who can make decisions about technical issues that have a huge impact on their lives. We have people who argue about whether or not climate change is a hoax today like they argued about whether or not smoking causes lung cancer in 1975. They make decisions based solely on political positions
Yikes!!!!
Religious leaders have only been able to hold them at bay since the inception of organized culture and society, but they are quickly seizing the day with well thought out "cover ups" and perfectly timed media blitz' coinciding with "coincidental" disasters around the globe.
Hang on a second while I adjust my tinfoil hat.