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
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JimB (12:45:38) : I can forgive mistakes, generally, unless someone was hurt… What they’ve done for the past 10yrs is not a “mistake”…
Sure – many mistakes. What annoys me the most is that they took full control of the peer review process; this is nasty, see excellent comment #14 below from a nuclear engineer. Still, it is always a danger that our “group think” here at WUWT becomes somewhat nasty too; although WUWT is certainly the most civilised climate blog!
“ClimateGate exposed the cabal of 20 – 30 scientists (not just at CRU) that peer reviewed each others papers, strong-armed scientific journals to only print their views, and then sat on the IPCC panels as authors judging which published studies go into the IPCC final reports. This is why they always keep shouting “peer reviewed studies, peer reviewed studies, peer reviewed studies”. They owned the peer review process.”
http://pajamasmedia.com/rogerlsimon/2009/11/28/climategate-time-to-postpone-copenhagen/
muse is popular with my son & his friends….this video really gives me hope!
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xaj387_muse-uprising-clip_music
Perhaps another scientific “trick”?
Looks like criminal charges are being laid – all climate scientists, politicians, & Al Gore should pay close attention:
http://pathstoknowledge.wordpress.com/2009/12/01/too-late-for-resignations-in-climategate-as-requests-for-charages-are-being-filed/
Let’s guess the spin:
“It doesn’t matter…”
Wigley, Mann, Jones, Overpeck etc… should be thrown out of their respective research centers. The IPCC should be disbanded.
Basically Monbiot told them how to handle it, Jones agreed to and he’ll be back, white as a dove.
UEA is doing the CYA dance! But after this white wash is over Phil Jones will be reinstated with not even a slap on the wrist.
Good piece from Derek Lowe:
http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2009/12/01/climategate_and_scientific_conduct.php
Jim Watson (12:00:38) :
Jim, I feel no glee. I’m sorry that so many people of good will have been so misled and mistreated. I’m sorry that so much money and time was wasted and that so much science has been tainted. I mourn the careers.
The silver lining is that I and millions like me have become much more intrested and engaged by science. Sure, skeptically, but what’s wrong with that?
And many, many folks now know that they need to keep an eye on the ivory tower. Learn about what they’re doing. Make sure they’re on the up and up.
And, lets not forget, many of us are a LOT more educated than we once were thanks to this fiasco. I’m glad for the knowledge.
M
I’d be very surprised if Jones makes a come back. Letting people ‘stand-aside’ to save face/lawsuits is common over here.
In a weird way, I feel some pity for Jones et al. Being eaten alive by 13m Google hits would scare the carp out of anyone.
They brought it on themselves of course, and hoovered up millions in research cash, so perhaps I’m just a softie ; )
Ocean biochemistry has been completely left out of climate models until this summer.
It’s the new hot thing.
So Liss might be a good choice since he’s an organic chemist with an oceanography background.
This could take proving them wrong to a whole new level.
Not just statistics any more.
Now if someone would just tell them that they need to add phosphorus with the iron to make it work.
The secret lives of Climate Researchers…
http://iowahawk.typepad.com/iowahawk/2009/11/iowahawk-geographic-the-secret-life-of-climate-researchers.html
One of the lessons from Sun Tsu, the downfall of the arrogant is always their arrogance. And running around yelling we are all going to melt at the top of their lungs is the height of arrogance.
So what will Obama do at Hopenhagen?
It needs a good massage first and besides, you don’t want people like Steve McIntyre to get his hands on it with too much time to spare before Fraudenhagen, do you?
I believe a website with a clear comma fault IN THE HEADER. Yeah, I do.
ice9
As wide spread as this fraud is, and with trillions of dollars to be made … I simply have no faith in this investigation.
Too many powerful people are involved in this. The results of the investigation will no doubt chastise these “scientists” for their methods, but will also affirm AGW is real and must continue to be investigated.
This isn’t over. Expect the unexpected.
I just read on Media Matters how they are claiming that nothing was destroyed, but yet it all looks like lying double talk. MM links to the NY Times, so I’m showing what CRU had said to the NY Times:
“When you’re looking at climate data, you don’t want stations that are showing urban warming trends,” Jones said, “so we’ve taken them out.” Most of the stations for which data was removed are located in areas where there were already dense monitoring networks, he added. “We rarely removed a station in a data-sparse region of the world.”
Refuting CEI’s claims of data-destruction, Jones said, “We haven’t destroyed anything. The data is still there — you can still get these stations from the [NOAA] National Climatic Data Center.”
Tom Karl, director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C., noted that the conclusions of the IPCC reports are based on several data sets in addition to the CRU, including data from NOAA, NASA and the United Kingdom Met Office. Each of those data sets basically show identical multi-decadal trends, Karl said.
………………………………………………
It sounds like they are saying they didn’t delete anything because they got it all from the NOAA, while at the same time saying that they are different data sets that don’t precisely line up. This was said before Climategate hit the fan, but is now being repeated. I think there should be a clarification that CRU is not NOAA so CRU is lying and “basically” doesn’t count.
Richard deSousa (13:18:26) :
UEA is doing the CYA dance! But after this white wash is over Phil Jones will be reinstated with not even a slap on the wrist.
I’m not so sure. The UK public are quite unforgiving when it comes to intellectual dishonesty and enethical behaviour. As the deeds become more widely known, the rumble will rise to an uproar.
Jean (13:01:09) :
Who is Harry, of Harry-Read-Me fame?
Some say Ian Harris.
I’m not sure if this deserves its own thread
Mick Hulme, along with Jerome Ravetz have decided to redefine what science is at the BBC website.
One of his gems:
“The classic virtues of scientific objectivity, universality and disinterestedness can no longer be claimed to be automatically effective as the essential properties of scientific knowledge.
Instead, warranted knowledge – knowledge that is authoritative, reliable and guaranteed on the basis of how it has been acquired – has become more sought after than the ideal of some ultimately true and objective knowledge.”
On this basis…
What’s hot:
– knowledge must emerge from a respectful process in which science’s own internal social norms and practices are adhered to
– knowledge must also be subject to the scrutiny of an extended community of citizens who have legitimate stakes in the significance of what is being claimed
– knowledge must be fully exposed to the proliferating new communication media by which such extended peer scrutiny takes place
– citizen’s panels
What’s not:
– falsifiability
– replication of results
– Karl Popper (screw you Karl!)
The link is at the Beeb
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8388485.stm
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.
I do not think that Dr. Jones will be back as Director (tho will in all likliehood continue as a researcher/professor). The review will exonerate him on the science, and find some fault of leadership. . . whereupon Jones will seize upon the first and step aside permenantly as Director to “concentrate on his research” re the second.
The data release is part of the coverup. It is not the raw data that matters, it is which data points were selected, how they were selected, and then how they were normalized and adjusted. The public may not see beyond the raw data dump. They even joked about doing it in the emails.
Excellent, this is a watershed for the Climategate expose of bad climate science. Now it’s obvious that the ‘let’s ignore it and it will go away’ strategy isn’t doing the trick, they need a scapegoat to put the blame on.
There will be so much public scrutiny of this Independent CRU-Review that they cannot risk fudging the result or even more damage will be done to the already smeared UEA.
The next stage for UEA will be to sever all links with the CRU, as there is enough prima facie evidence in the Climategate files that many other CRU scientists where complicit in these sorry events.
Stand back everyone, the excrement is really going to hit the fan.
maybe we should make that ‘Hopenchangin’
Maybe this is one of his “tricks”. Clever thing to do of course.
Sorry couldn’t help myself.