from the BBC
Sir Muir, a former civil servant, will look into allegations that have arisen from the security breach.
[As a measure of how out of touch UEA is, they apparently have little idea that the title “former civil servant” does not inspire much confidence from skeptics, since it has been “civil servants” who have been blocking access to the data and procedures all along. Here is Sir Muir’s Wikipedia page and his biography page on the University of Glasgow web site – Anthony]
The review will examine whether there is evidence of manipulation or suppression of data “at odds with acceptable scientific practice”.
The CRU is based at the University of East Anglia (UEA).
The e-mails issue arose two weeks ago when hundreds of messages between scientists at the CRU and their peers around the world were posted on the world wide web, along with other documents.
It appears that the material was hacked or leaked; a police investigation has yet to reveal which.
CRU maintains one of the world’s most important datasets on how global temperatures have changed.
Professor Phil Jones, director of the unit, has stepped down pending the review, and has said he stands by his data.
At the time that the theft of the data was revealed, some climate sceptic websites picked up on the word “trick” in one e-mail from 1999 and talk of “hiding the decline”.
Professor Jones said the e-mail was genuine but taken “completely out of context”.
He added: “The first thing to point out is that this refers to one diagram – not a scientific paper.
“The word ‘trick’ was used here colloquially as in a clever thing to do. It is ludicrous to suggest that it refers to anything untoward.”
UEA has said the review will:
- Examine e-mail exchanges to determine whether there is evidence of suppression or manipulation of data at odds with acceptable scientific practice which “may therefore call into question any of the research outcomes”.
- Review CRU’s policies and practices for acquiring, assembling, subjecting to peer review and disseminating data and research findings, and “their compliance or otherwise with best scientific practice”.
- Review CRU’s compliance or otherwise with the UEA’s policies and practices regarding requests under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and the Environmental Information Regulations (EIR) for the release of data.
- Review and make recommendations about the management, governance and security structures for CRU and the security, integrity and release of the data it holds.
Sir Muir commented: “Given the nature of the allegations it is right that someone who has no links to either the university or the climate science community looks at the evidence and makes recommendations based on what they find.
Read the complet article here
h/t to Leif Svalgaard
…”former civil servant” does not inspire much confidence from skeptics…
Pardon me, but here in the UK “former civil servant” does not inspire much confidence from anyone! If you really want an independent enquiry, you get a High Court judge; “former civil servants” are what Whitehall use for whitewashes.
You missed out Bob Ward’s comments from the article.
He his poking his head out of the trench quite a bit these days and was very quick to point out a mistake on Lord Lawson’s website.
IMHO he hasn’t time for these shenanigans he still has a PhD to write up!
naturally sceptic (14:00:53) :
I think it should be more than one “trust-looking” guy, perhaps two committees, so that a competing analysis can be put forward. That is the whole point. If the competing analysis is transparent, it may have a chance to gain the trust. What is at stake here is the credibility. It is more than one guy. One from the Royal Society does not seem to fit the bill.
We should remember that it was the Royal Society which forced Briffa to publish his tree ring data.
PaulinManchester (09:38:41) :
Re: Joseph
I read the ‘greenjobs’ news item to say that he sits on the Advisory Board for Scottish Power – I wouldn’t on that basis rush to conclude that he is biased.
No? From the greenjobs mission statement:
“Man’s impact on the planet is no longer in question. There is now no “reasonable doubt” that our carbon-emissions have altered climate in a way that demands an immediate change in behavior: we have all noticed the breakdown in seasonal patterns, and the general increase in temperatures – these belie a chain-reaction that is altering the near-future of life on Earth before our very eyes, and one which we, over just the last century, have caused.”
http://www.greenjobs.com/Public/Info/mission.htm
It is self-explanatory.
UEA is going to white-wash this just sure as heck. They investigating the actions of themselves is just like “The Team” “peer-reviewing” each others papers with a rubber stamp of approval. I have an image in my mind of a failed tap-dancer who cannot stop tap-dancing because he doesn’t know what else to do. Sad and comical at the same time.
Re: Joseph (16:35:15)
Please note that what is quoted about Sir Russell on the greenjobs web site is actually a news release from Scottish Power, original ref:
http://www.scottishpower.com/PressReleases_1612.htm .
It is not clear to me how quoting the greenjobs mission statement is relevant? A link between Sir Russell and greenjobs is not apparent.
@ur momisugly GEO
Yes, I too am waiting for the rest of the purloined data to be released.
I have suggested previously that if this was an inside job, and that seems t be the view, and that the “Hacker” had plenty of time to select his material, which, based on the lack of extraneous material seems probable, then it also seems probable to me that what has been released so far was carefully selected and therefore not a representative portion of a homogeneous whole but merely an attention getter.
I suspect (hope) there is at least one more tranche of material to be released and I would guess that it may be a bit more explosive.
This close to Copenhagen (and with the warmist PR campaign in full swing but now seeming somewhat of a fantasy) f we are going to get anything, we’ll get it soon.
From his photo – he looks very much like a ‘yes’ man to me.
Dave B (11:11:15) : Thank you for your contribution(s). I have read them with interest.
Along with many that have commented above, I doubt that this independent review will allow much sunlight to fall upon CRU’s hallowed science.
But it might be worth remembering that the Titanic did not sink all at once. At first, all that was felt by most was a gentle shudder that persisted momentarily. Of course, we all now know that the Great Ship was doomed – but at the time, none of the passengers knew that at first – and nor, indeed, did the crew.
This review is akin to the Captain sending a junior engineer down into the bowls of the ship to assess the extent of the damage and to report back on options for repair. Nothing more. It is not the sinking itself.
The drama of Climategate will take many months for events to fully unfold and for political elites to register the true significance of the damage.
“As a measure of how out of touch UEA is, they apparently have little idea that the title “former civil servant” does not inspire much confidence from skeptics, since it has been “civil servants” who have been blocking access to the data and procedures all along.”
Anthony, when I read “former civil servant” in the opening parapraphs your post is exactly what I thought myself. And knowing a top “civil servant” in New Zealand who, jokingly states “I don’t have to be civil nor do serve anyone.”, sums them all up IMO.
I got a laugh out of this: “CRU maintains one of the world’s most important datasets on how global temperatures have changed.”
Sure, they maintain the dataset if you call corrupting, hiding and destroying “maintaining”.
Given the seriousness of the allegations in some instances, I’m not sure what any external review that does not have supoena power and the ability to compel testimony under oath (and potential penalty of perjury) can accomplish.
Why are we talking about a special inquiry by the University of East Anglia? They’ve already blown it. This is a cover up, trying to pre-empt an investigation by Parliament or Her Majesty’s Government. The investigation properly belongs in the public sphere with maximum transparency. If the Windsors can not grasp the idea that they have put their prestige behind a con job, they deserve what is about to happen. HRH Wales needs to take the lead on this.
With GE divesting NBC (it’s “green” drum) and Gore not going to an event he has waited a decade to crash, I have a gut feel there are some other shoes in the process of dropping…
What could those be ?
Is there a NASA download out there ??
Maybe a IPCC disc ???
F@ur momisugly*! this bullsh!$. [snip] I’m telling you, we will all lose are freedom and rights if we allow these spooks to tax us to no end with bullsh!# carbon cap and trade. This civil servant was cherry picked, and are we going to let a biased investigation take place? We must not. There has to be a true revolution. If this climategate comes to pass as just another simple “misunderstanding” and AGW still holds its ground, then anything goes. We might all as well just stick pineapples up our @ur momisugly$$es and sing “God bless America”.
Here is a link to an interesting article on iceagenow:
http://www.iceagenow.com/Climate_Change_Fraud.htm
Maybe one day, we shall live in a world where preying on less educated people and their naivete will be outlawed. Finally we might stop having our brains pumped with infomercials, marketing schemes, and we shall break free from the swindling practices of the intellectual elite.
One day, the word “fraud” might even disappear from the human language! I see two possibilities for this: One: we would live in an utopian world where fraud really no longer exists, or Two: Fraud would be so widespread that the word would basically become an onomatopoeia.
Pete M., you give the 7th inning stretch a whole new meaning. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjrcEKq6Xnw
So long as there are blogs such as WUWT, the monkey shines should be revealed in all their glory. A whitewash just won’t do.
Keith G (18:24:46) :
“It might be worth remembering that the Titanic did not sink all at once. At first, all that was felt by most was a gentle shudder that persisted momentarily. Of course, we all now know that the Great Ship was doomed – but at the time, none of the passengers knew that at first – and nor, indeed, did the crew.
This review is akin to the Captain sending a junior engineer down into the bowels of the ship to assess the extent of the damage and to report back on options for repair. Nothing more. It is not the sinking itself.
The drama of Climategate will take many months for events to fully unfold and for political elites to register the true significance of the damage.”
There’s an interesting additional parallel. According to a recent book, The Last Log of the Titanic, the ship could have stayed afloat at least until the next day, giving time enough to rescue those aboard by other ships, if it had just stayed put. Staying put is what was recommended practice after suffering the sort of damage the Titanic had.
Instead, the head of White Star, Ismay, who was aboard, decided that, since the pumps were keeping ahead of the inflow, and since it would look bad if people had to abandon his unsinkable ship, it would be better to get under way for Halifax. This loosened the damaged plates on the bottom of the ship and scooped in lots more water, causing the ship to go down in short order.
What really doomed the ship was the decision to Move On.
[just too off topic ~ ctm]
Sir Russell Muir is the perfect man to conduct a whitewash.
1. He will steer his panel well away from the truth.
2. He will skirt around the issues.
3. He will find nothing wrong.
4. He will exonerate everyone involved.
5. He will be made a Lord of the realm.
Looks like tasking a left-wing intellectual from 30ties to find out truth about Stalin´s gulags.
Tallbloke,
I wish I could be as convinced as you but there is a worry.
Scotland, facing a future without North Sea Oil is pinning its hopes on being the next jolly green giant in the field of green technology.
I hadn’t realised quite how serious this was till I attended a Sustainable Scotland Conference in Edinburgh.
I was surprised at the presumption that Scotland would/could be the worlds leading technology innovator in green energy since that would mean overtaking Holland at wind farms and Norway on Hydro, but they believe they can take the technical skills they have developed on North Sea Oil and morph them into green energy skills. It is a nice idea and sensible if they want to retain leading edge skills in Scotland.
Scotland has an abundance of wind, and lots of coast line for hydro but not too much else (whatever happened to Silicon Glen? Scotland recognises it needs something…. but in the Climate Change world, it has something of its self that it can exploit, its natural resources. With computer technology it is not fundamentally different to anywhere else.)
But it means that there is a degree to which Scotland relies on green energy skills and which they in turn depend on global warming alarmism.
If this doesn’t all happen, what does Scotland do when North Sea Oil runs out and the oil industry packs up shop and moves those skills to deep water field locations or shale oil territory?
What if no one wants all those green technologies quite so ardently as with AGW?
What does it do instead?
Hence, to what extent is this choice an attempt at suggesting impartiality and to what extent do they hope that there is, underlying that, an even keener self-interest to be tapped into?
http://www.publicserviceevents.co.uk/main/overview.asp?ID=97
http://www.sustainable-scotland.net/
http://www.sustainablescotland.com/
By the way, the description in wiki on Muir Russel:
“In Dec 2009 he was tapped to head an independent investigation into allegations that the causes of climate change were exaggerated by The Climatic Research Unit (CRU) based out of the University of East Anglia (UEA).”
Has now been changed to:
“In Dec 2009 he was appointed to head an independent investigation into allegations regarding research by the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) based at the University of East Anglia (UEA). The allegations surfaced after a security breach made public hundred of emails between the CRU’s head Professor Phil Jones and other climate researchers.”
I guess we now need to question the word “independent” – just who is conducting the investigation? Any government body? The police for conspiracy to destroy documents under an FOIA? or the university for “exaggeration”? Maybe wiki was right the first time?
As a Scot myself I am concerned about the appointment of a Scottish Academic in a management role in a University. His institution will be benefiting from numerous research grants which specifically mention Global warming in their “case for support” if not their title.
Scotland is trying to position itself at the forefront of renewable energy research which I applaud given the enormous renewable energy resources that the Altantic coastline and oceanic climate provide. However the politicians are not capable of disassociating the real need for alternative energy from the imaginary need to reduce carbon emissions. If they stop believing in “Thermageddon” they may stop investing in renewable energy research. That would be a tragedy as we desperately need a coherent energy strategy that makes optimum use of renewables.
Sir Muir Russell; is part of the green energy industry in Scotland.
See http://www.greenjobs.com/Public/newsitems/news00685.htm
Not very indepenent!
The whitewash begins and they aren’t even being subtle about it.
http://www.prisonplanet.com/climategate-investigator-is-member-of-vehemently-pro-man-made-global-warming-organization.html
Just as Nicholas Stern in the UK and Ross Garnaut in Australia were carefully chosen to perform an “objective” review of the science so does this guy seems to be carefully chosen. The others have done what their masterd bid and received their 30 pieces of silver. No doubt Sir Muir Russel also will.