The Guardian hounds CRU with new reports

A series of events appears to be unfolding in the UK that provide for a serial story. As they say in the news biz “it has legs”.

Two more stories have emerged from the Guardian by Fred Pearce. They read like Climate Audit narratives rather than Guardian stories we’ve come to know in the past. In fact, Climate Audit is heavily cited, a first that I can recall.

Here are the two headlines:

and this one….

The Guardian is keeping up the pressure on UEA/CRU and Dr. Jones. It’s almost like a “death spiral” to borrow a phrase from Dr. Mark Serreze of NSIDC.

I would not be surprised if resignations are being considered.

h/t to Dr. Richard North of the EU Referendum for links

UPDATE: It appears that the Guardian reporter has tipped his hand. WUWT commenter “dodgy geezer” writes:

…note this comment from the Guardian, explaining why they seem to be addressing the skeptical line for the first time. It seems they are building the story into a big ‘disproof’ of the skeptical position. Find it at:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/03/yamal-data-climate-change-hacked-email?showallcomments=true#end-of-comments

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Question – What is the purpose for publishing all these articles by Fred Pearce?

Many thanks for your comments and questions. The fall-out from the hacked UEA emails is the hottest story in climate science at the moment and a lot of claims about what they tell us have been flying around since they were made public in November.

The Guardian’s editorial line is that global warming is happening and caused by human actions, but that does not mean we are blind to contradictory evidence. It would be remiss of us journalistically to ignore a story like this where the actions of leading scientists are being seriously called into question.

We asked Fred to do a thorough investigation into some of the unanswered questions.

Is there evidence in the emails of data manipulation? Is there evidence of abuse of peer review and FOI? Is there evidence of “hiding” temperature declines? Is there evidence of fraud and conspiracy? etc etc

The answer to most of these questions turned out to be no. But it would be wrong of us not to have asked them. The aim of this investigation (which continues tomorrow) was to produce a more nuanced account of what went on behind the scenes of climate science than has appeared elsewhere. Some of it is not pretty, but significantly, the science of global warming has not been seriously challenged.

J Randerson

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It may be that Jones will be made the sacrifice for the FoI transgressions, so that they can get the bus back on the road.