From a University of East Anglia Press Release
Professor Phil Jones has today announced that he will stand aside as Director of the Climatic Research Unit until the completion of an independent Review resulting from allegations following the hacking and publication of emails from the Unit.
Professor Jones said: “What is most important is that CRU continues its world leading research with as little interruption and diversion as possible. After a good deal of consideration I have decided that the best way to achieve this is by stepping aside from the Director’s role during the course of the independent review and am grateful to the University for agreeing to this. The Review process will have my full support.”
Vice-Chancellor Professor Edward Acton said: “I have accepted Professor Jones’s offer to stand aside during this period. It is an important step to ensure that CRU can continue to operate normally and the independent review can conduct its work into the allegations.
“We will announce details of the Independent Review, including its terms of reference, timescale and the chair, within days. I am delighted that Professor Peter Liss, FRS, CBE, will become acting director.”
An AP story is here
h/t to Jeff Id of The Air Vent
OK mods, sorry, I realise that Michael was writing for effect. Even if I think it unwise. Please delete my pervious message if poss.
Apologies
Still no response from Gavin and RC about Phil stepping aside. Matter of fact RC is as quiet as when ClimateGate first broke. None of the threads has had an updates for at least 2 hours.
@stanislous
Can’t believe that you media hotshots have not found the BBC report of Phil Jones’ stepping aside! Just go to the BBC main web page; then look for the UK news, then find the ‘England’ section, then look at the drop down bar for the regional news, and scroll down until you find ‘Norfolk’.
Sorry for not giving you the full quote- ain’t always easy to do that on an iPhone.
Fantastic post mate – 5/5 before adjustments!
philincalifornia (15:46:43) :
Now this might explain it.
I hope that’s not the video they’ve been deluged with. (If so, it’s Monty Pithon’s “4 Yorkshiremen.”)
It certainly would explain why all that trouble is centered in Britain. Btw, how close to Yorkshire is Hadley, anyway? Isn’t there another center in Yorkshire? Better open that one to scrutiny, too, and ASAP.
I just posted this in the comments section of the Ravetz/Hulme article
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8388485.stm
——————————————————————
Hi Jerry,
I’ve got my extended facts and some very interesting leaked documents. Does that mean I get a legitimate place at the policy debating table?
Can I table the motion that there is no policy required, and the govt can stop wasting billions of pounds of taxpayers money on the antics of fraudulent tree ring ‘scientists’ now?
——————————————————————
Blunt enough for you Phil?
🙂
I’ll second that. Something to chuckle about while I cook dinner.
Somebody get the FOI request for the documents in the “independent investigation” ready.
What I *really* want is the “new guy” to make an unequivocal statement of a new and sincere committment to transparency and sharing data, both past and present.
There is a real scientific battle going on here, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Making one side fight with one arm tied behind its back is the travesty of science that’s been going on.
Monckton and Singer putting the pressure on CRU:
http://dailybayonet.com/?p=2194&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+typepad%2Fdailybayonet%2Fnewfeed+%28The+Daily+Bayonet%29
What about Mann’s investigation? Is he being investigated too?
“Penn State is conducting an inquiry into the controversy surrounding a Penn State professor whose illegally leaked e-mails have sparked an international debate over whether he and his colleagues distorted data on global warming.
The inquiry will determine if further investigation is warranted, a university spokeswoman said Sunday.”
http://www.collegian.psu.edu/archive/2009/11/30/psu_investigates_climategate.aspx
Fairfax Press in Australia reporting this new development:
http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-technology/uk-climate-scientist-to-temporarily-step-down-20091202-k451.html
The Age and the SMH have been very reticent to cover climategate (less coverage than the gov’s ABC) however this story does give the Australian audience a clear impression that Climategate (this word not yet used) is having an impact in USA and UK – and so perhaps it should be taken seriously. Let’s see if it makes make the print editions.
The AP link at the top of this post is broken – or non-existent.
They need some help. The global wire service Associated Press has their head in the sand. I have just written them a “press release” repeating the news of Dr. Phil Jones’ resignation.
info@ap.org
I think if we want to see this story in MSM they need to hear from us. Take five minutes and write the AP a press release about a Climategate issue. Somehow, with all their ears around the world – they missed this little story.
Disclosure: I once worked for this outfit. I still love em.
andersm (12:22:49) :
“No one should expect that an internal review will find wrongdoing in their own institution. The investigation is only an exercise in optics to shut down the criticism. It will be a travesty and will disgust a lot of people but Jones and the rest of the fibbers and fabricators will be exonerated.”
Don’t be too sure. EAU will be in much worse hot water if it lets Jones off the hook on such a major public scandal. They’re smart enough to recognize this. I agree with the post below:
Tim S. (12:17:38) :
“… the CRU e-mails are damning. Jones et al. have conspired to suppress and delete information that was subject to freedom of information requests. They have sought to fix data around a predetermined policy of pro-global warming activism. And they have sought to suppress dissenting scientific opinion. I don’t see how Jones can come back again.”
The Review process will have my full support
Yeah, I bet it will Phil. Just like the Peer Review process had your full support.
Say, is there a University of West Anglia? (Does Anglia need two of them–or four, if there are U’s for the north and south as well?) What are they up to? How do they view this affair? (Maybe they’re no longer envious of their yoke-mate’s world-famous grant-getting CRUdeptartment.)
As Stephen Fry might say: “Normal for Norfolk”.
It certainly would explain why all that trouble is centered in Britain. Btw, how close to Yorkshire is Hadley, anyway? Isn’t there another center in Yorkshire? Better open that one to scrutiny, too, and ASAP.
The Hadley Centre is based within the UK Meterological Office, which is now in Exeter, Devon. It used to be in Bracknell, Berkshire, but relocated some years ago.
Neither location is especially near Yorkshire!
@Onion (13:33:55) :
“Can we really describe any of this as science? At best, it seems like social studies. They really shouldn’t be describing themselves as scientists at UEA.”
You are right. Real scientists try to falsify their hypotheses. The psuedoscientists at UEA instead use arguments from ignorance and hope most people wont notice.
An argument from ignorance is when you say ” I do not know how it can be caused by this, therefore it must be caused by that.”
In global warming terms, this is ” I do not know how the recent warming could be caused by nature, therefore it must be caused by man.”
It is not valid to use a lack of knowledge as an explanation. There are necessarily an infinite number of possible explanations. It is not logical to conclude that because you have eliminated one natural explanation, that the anthropogenic explanation must be correct.
The next scalp has to be Mann. What are the Americans doing about him?
yonason (16:25:22) :
philincalifornia (15:46:43) :
Isn’t there another center in Yorkshire? Better open that one to scrutiny, too, and ASAP.
——————–
Not sure about that, as I’ve lived in the US for 30 years. East Anglia and Exeter are many miles away. Ravetz did most of his work while at the University of Leeds though.
Adapting the four Yorkshiremen to AGW in about 20 years will be most amusing though:
“Polar bears, bloody polar bears, I remember when ……” and so on and so forth.
Tallbloke, yes very blunt indeed. I wonder if Jones and his friends knew they were willingly participating in Post-Normal science, or were they effectively as misled and misguided as the Catlin Crew ??
Jones will go. He’s become a big liability to warmism; influential warmists must by now have seen the unavoidable logic of Monbiot’s columns. His allies won’t harpoon their cause to save his skin. Perhaps Jones will resign with a “far far better thing that I have done” statement. That is, saying he’s resigning for the sake of the cause, because staying on would be politically damaging, not that he’s done anything wrong.
Incidentally, his resignation gives the MSM “news peg” on which to hang Climategate, so we should be seeing more coverage of it soon.
The University of East Anglia is now in a difficult position: the most damaging revelation in the Climategate letters is the possible criminality of destroying records pertinent to a legitimate FOI request. If the UEA investigates Jones and exonerates him, and a later criminal investigation establishes guilt, the University administrators would expose themselves to the most severe criticism.
This matter of failing to comply with an FOI request should be investigated by the police and, if necessary, charges laid and the matter brought before the Courts.
philincalifornia (17:38:03) :
“Polar bears, bloody polar bears, I remember when ……” and so on and so forth.
LOL
P.S. I’m originally from Leeds, myself. Leeds, Massachusetts, that is. And we had a Hadley, and a Northampton, etc., but not an acre of Yorkshire. We couldn’t afford one, what with the rationing and all…
Mann is not as pure as driven snow. The manufacturer of the hockey-stick – whats happening about him?
Or Gavin Schmidt for that matter