This is the final report, which has been embargoed until 5:01 PM PDT / 00:01 GMT March 31st.
Below is the emailed notice to MP’s sent with the PDF of the report.
Date: 30 March 2010 10:30
Subject: EMBARGOED REPORT: CLIMATE SCIENCE MUST BECOME MORE TRANSPARENT SAY MPs
To: [undisclosed recipients]
Phil Willis MP, Committee Chair, is available for embargoed interviews today. Please let me know if you wish to bid (I will be at the embargoed briefing until approx 1pm but will respond once I return).
Embargoed press briefing for science, environment and news corrs at Science Media Centre (21 Albemarle Street London, W1S 4BS), 11.30 am today.
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY COMMITTEE
Select Committee Announcement
[X]
31 March 2010
***EMBARGOED UNTIL 00.01 WEDNESDAY 31 MARCH 2010***
CLIMATE SCIENCE MUST BECOME MORE TRANSPARENT, SAY MPs
The Science and Technology Committee today publishes its report on the disclosure of climate data from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia. The Committee calls for the climate science
community to become more transparent by publishing raw data and detailed methodologies.
Phil Willis MP, Committee Chair, said:
“Climate science is a matter of global importance. On the basis of the science, governments across the world will be spending trillions of pounds on climate change mitigation. The quality of the science therefore has to be irreproachable. What this inquiry revealed was that climate scientists need to take steps to make available all the data that support their work and full methodological workings, including their computer codes. Had both been available, many of the problems at CRU could have been avoided.”
The focus on Professor Jones and CRU has been largely misplaced. On the accusations relating to Professor Jones’s refusal to share raw data and computer codes, the Committee considers that his actions were in line with common practice in the climate science community but that those practices need to change.
On the much cited phrases in the leaked e-mails-“trick” and “hiding the decline”-the Committee considers that they were colloquial terms used in private e-mails and the balance of evidence is that they were not part of a
systematic attempt to mislead.
Insofar as the Committee was able to consider accusations of dishonesty against CRU, the Committee considers that there is no case to answer.
The Committee found no reason in this inquiry to challenge the scientific consensus as expressed by Professor Beddington, the Government Chief Scientific Adviser, that “global warming is happening [and] that it is induced by human activity”. But this was not an inquiry into the science produced by CRU and it will be for the Scientific Appraisal Panel, announced by the University on 22 March, to determine whether the work of CRU has been soundly built.
On the mishandling of Freedom of Information (FoI) requests, the Committee considers that much of the responsibility should lie with the University, not CRU. The leaked e-mails appear to show a culture of non-disclosure at CRU and instances where information may have been deleted to avoid disclosure, particularly to climate change sceptics. The failure of the University to grasp fully the potential damage this could do and did was regrettable. The University needs to re-assess how it can
support academics whose expertise in FoI requests is limited.
Ends.
NOTES TO EDITORS:
Further details about this inquiry can be found at:
http://www.parliament.uk/parliamentary_committees/science_technology/s_t_cru_inquiry.cfm
Media Enquiries: Becky Jones: 020 7219 5693 Committee Website:
http://www.parliament.uk/science Publications / Reports / Reference
Material: Copies of all select committee reports are available from the
Parliamentary Bookshop (12 Bridge St, Westminster, 020 7219 3890) or the
Stationery Office (0845 7023474). Committee reports, press releases,
evidence transcripts, Bills; research papers, a directory of MPs, plus
Hansard (from 8am daily) and much more, can be found on
www.parliament.uk<http://www.parliament.uk/>.
Rebecca Jones
House of Commons Select Committee Media Officer Children, Schools &
Families; Health; Science & Technology; Northern Ireland; Scotland; Wales
===================================================
UPDATE:
Steve McIntyre has a few points to make, which I encourage reading here at Climate Audit
“Most recently, the sceptics have been particularly intrigued by the background of the man chosen by the university to chair an assessment of the CRU’s scientific record. Lord Oxburgh declared on his appointment that he is linked to major wind-farm and renewable-energy companies. He admitted that he advises Climate Change Capital, which manages funds worth $1.5 billion, hoping to cash in on the “opportunities created by the transition to a low-carbon economy”, in a world market potentially worth – its website boasts – $45 trilllion.” Christopher Booker, UK Telegraph
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/7530961/Can-we-trust-the-Climategate-inquiry.html
The following comment by the Chairman of the enquiry was reported in the Daily Telegraph on 23 January, before the enquiry started:
“There are a significant number of climate deniers, who are basically using the UEA emails to support the case this is poor science. We do not believe this is healthy and therefore we want to call in the UEA so that the public can see what they are saying.”
No surprise, then.
This is totally unsurprising to me, as a non-UK citizen. The great majority of politicians in the UK have no idea about ethical behaviour in politics, let alone science. Tiliting at the establishment in the UK is, sadly, a Quixotic enterprise at best as it is now very clear that the UK has the best politicians money can buy. A few who can think for themselves and have a handle on ethics, such as Mr Stringer are, sadly, wildly outnumbered by greedy troughists.
The parliamentary expenses scandal and the revelations that serving MPs who are former Cabinet Ministers have not only prostituted themselves by acting as insider-lobbyists, but boasted about it demonstrates the malaise that infects Westminster.
“..this was not an inquiry into the science produced by CRU and it will be for the Scientific Appraisal Panel, announced by the University on 22 March, to determine whether the work of CRU has been soundly built.”
Their job was about the stonewalling not about the science.
Who’s in the Scientific Appraisal Panel ?
Is there one skeptic on that panel?
Hey Guys what did you expect!. Only 4 MPs voted against the climate change bill and it was hardly debated. What do you expect of a loaded committee: they were hardly likely to come to any other verdict because they would have to admit that they might be wrong about climate change and embarrassed about the climate change act.
I think most of us will be relieved at the vote of confidence in the honesty of Phil Jones and his team at CRU.
While evidence of dishonesty would not necessarily have affected the conclusions of climate science as a whole, it would certainly have cast a shadow over the reputation of climate science, and perhaps by association, all science.
Now Jones will be able to return to his lab with head held high and a renewed determination to make this world safe for his grandchildren.
The inquiry results have angered the weather gods: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/topics/weather/7540107/Motorists-rescued-from-snow-as-winter-storms-batter-Britain.html
The report will certainly disappoint folk who think MPs are independent honourable men.
This has long ceased to be the case.
The MPs have an election coming up within months and certainly do not want to rock any boats.
The MPs have recently been involved in widespread expenses scandals where criminal proceedings are pending.
A particularly notorious example is Stephen Byers MP who sets a new low standard by which most bent politicians would seem like Saints.
He headed the department which on hearing of the 9/11 massacre issued an e-mail saying “that now was a good time to bury bad news” that is if the department had to publish something that would put it in a bad light, issue it now and nobody will notice, because of the worlds preoccupation with the tragic events.
He is known in the UK as a serial liar but unfortunately for him he is not very clever and most times gets caught.
One of his side jobs is President of Globe International an alarmist platform with Al Gore a previous past president.
Of course there are a few honourable men/women in Parliament one such is Frank Field MP
We are content that the phrases such as “trick” or “hiding the decline” were colloquial terms used in private e-mails and the balance of evidence is that they were not part of a systematic attempt to mislead.
So either trees are not good thermometers or thermometers are not good thermometers and covering up this “minor issue” is just business as usual so far as the committee is concerned.
It appears to be a colloquialism for a “neat” method of handling data. That is certainly one way of looking at it. That reconstructions are wrong or current instrumental “products” are wrong and Jones [et al] hid this from public and peers is another.
Not sure what they have concluded regarding FOI other than “leave it for somebody else to sort out”. I would have liked a clarification, before the cameras, of at least …
“All our FOI officers have been in discussions and are now using the same exceptions not to respond – advice they got from the Information Commissioner.” Which seems to include just about everybody in the FOI chain.
Ian (17:45:08) :
The most important thing to come from this , is that once and for all, climate science will now be under scrutiny by all of us. No more hiding under the cover of ignorance.
Not quite sure what you believe has changed. Apart from a slight wobble everything is now back on track, exactly where it was last November. Jones gets his office back on Monday and everyone maintains their share in The Great Carbon Swindle.
How many of the original FOI requests have been satisfied ? In what way are the CRU more open and transparent? Business as usual as far as I can see. Decline hidden, sceptics sidetracked, time purchased, heist on track.
“The Committee found no reason in this inquiry to challenge the scientific consensus as expressed by Professor Beddington, the Government Chief Scientific Adviser, that “global warming is happening [and] that it is induced by human activity”. But this was not an inquiry into the science produced by CRU and it will be for the Scientific Appraisal Panel, announced by the University on 22 March, to determine whether the work of CRU has been soundly built.”
So why mention it then???
It’s perhaps helpful to recall that Richard North (of EUReferendum.blogspot.com) commented some while ago that only those who had never seen a UK Parliamentary Select Committee in action were inpressed with those institutions.
CRU set up and funded by Government to find evidence to support CAGW.
CRU find (concoct?) evidence the Government needs.
Government Inquiry gives CRU a pat on the back and blames UEA.
Government will fall as the whole CAGW house of cards crashes!
Politicians are stupid.
Is it really a surprise that a bunch of crooks found another bunch of crooks not guilty.
If you are unlucky enough to live in the UK under this government then these enquiries, and their results are a joke , what a scandalous waste of money!
Banana Republic of Couldbegreat Britain
Note the difference in how the thrust of coverage changes from
the BBC report:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8595483.stm
to what the Associated Press is feeding to American readers:
http://apnews.excite.com/article/20100331/D9EPF5K00.html
We don’t need no stinking investigations in the U.S.
Again, nothing to see. Please move along.
I think I’ll take up weather & climate change prediction as I got that result 100% right!
barry: “I tend to go along with the consensus view of climate change (which makes me a ‘warmist’, I guess) and I rather hope that data and code are all made open”.
Parodoxically, before climategate I really wanted to know what was happening to the world climate, because irrespective of the many lies in this area it seemed to matter, now however, I don’t think I care at all, because even the politicians seem to care so little that they are perfectly happy to have the whole credibility of climate data resting on the most discredited people with a known propensity to upjust the data.
Whilst this is no victory for the sceptics, for the climate forecasters it is a complete disaster! It hasn’t given them the kick up the backside they needed to mend their ways and stop treating the subject in such a partisan way that the public will not believe them.
You’ve got to be cruel to be kind and this is the equivalent of taking the bottle of vodka away from the alcoholic with a small slap on the wrists, and then leaving them unsupervised in a brewery, where no one is going to notice “just one little drink”.
By treating this whole thing as being entirely insignificant, the message they are sending out is not that the climategate forecasters have been vindicated, but that climate forecasting is such an unimportant subject that it really doesn’t ,matter whether those involved can be trusted!
In the first item of its “Conclusions and Recommendations”, the Report says: “Professor Jones told us that the published e-mails represented only “one tenth of 1%” of his output, which amounts to one million e-mails”.
Let’s be very optimistic, and say 3 mins per email, and an eight-hour day, with say 240 work-days in the year. So:
0.05 hours per email –> 20 emails/hour
x 8 hours per day –> 160 per day
x 240 days/year –> 38,400 per year
So, time to 1 million –> 1,000,000/38,400 –> 26 years.
When did he ever have time for any real work, or even for answering others’ emails? Or is this another example of being economic with the actualité?
And did no-one on the Committee have sufficient knowledge of simple arithmetic to check this claim? If not, then what does this say about their capability for assessing slightly more complex matters?
Why wasn`t “Harry” part of this enquiry?
barry: “…What funding source for climate science would skeptics consider reasonable? Answer – none. Any source would be grist in the skeptical mill.”
Barry, this is not about climate “science”, it is about climate forecasting. The two are very different, as different as nuclear physics and nuclear weapons.
It is entirely reasonable that climate forecasting should be government funded, because long-term weather/climate forecasts are essential information for the long-term policy of a government.
It is also entirely reasonable to pay for good quality research to improve the quality of climate forecasters.
What I object to is (using the analogy), “nuclear scientists” who take it into their head that as nuclear scientist they are the people who should not only fly the nuclear armoured bombers, but decide who to bomb!
Climate scientists should stick to scientifically investigating the climate using a variety of techniques, these various strands should then be brought together by climate forecasters to make forecasts based on all the science and not just some special interest group and then policy makers should analyse the implications of apolitical climate forecasts to work out political action.
We need clear demarcation, and the lack of this clear demarcation is the rotten core to this whole rotten corrupt business!
AND IT HAS JUST STARTED SNOWING AGAIN!
“The Committee found no reason in this inquiry to challenge the scientific consensus as expressed by Professor Beddington, the Government Chief Scientific Adviser, that “global warming is happening [and] that it is induced by human activity”. ”
Well, I never would have guessed at that outcome.
Summary para 2 “We believe that the focus on CRU and Professor Phil Jones, Director of CRU, in particular, has largely been misplaced. Whilst we are concerned that the disclosed e-mails suggest a blunt refusal to share scientific data and methodologies with others, we can sympathise with Professor Jones, who must have found it frustrating to handle requests for data that he knew—or perceived—were motivated by a desire simply to undermine his work.”
What has “sympathise” to do with this affair? Would a judge “sympathise” with a burglar because he was “frustrated” that he couldn’t afford a plasma TV and was only behaving like other burglars?
Para 4 “We are content that the phrases such as “trick” or “hiding the decline” were colloquial terms used in private e-mails and the balance of evidence is that they were not part of a systematic attempt to mislead. Likewise the evidence that we have seen does not suggest that Professor Jones was trying to subvert the peer review process. Academics should not be criticised for making informal comments on academic papers.”
Tree ring data didn’t match the temperature record from 1960 so the tree ring data from then was replaced by the temperature record. That was misleading with a clear result that the divergence problem was covered up and so the presentation supported the AGW theory.
The use of the words balance and systematic are weasal words (spin) to divert the reader from the truth that the “trick” was deliberately misleading.
The mere existence of the the “trick” e-mail is indicative of something systematic ie it is a process and it has a purpose.
Of couse some may say it’s unfair to compare with burglary and I would agree in the sense that the law against burglary does not expire after 6 months of the offence unlike with Freedom of Information Law which is there to prevent the public being deprived of data and knowledge instead of plasma TVs.
Two things came up when somebody from the committee was interviewed on radio 4 was that:
a) CRU has only 3 members of staff
b) Russia and Japanese data confirmed CRU’s findings
Any comments?
R.S.Brown (03:15:35) :
Note the difference in how the thrust of coverage changes from
the BBC report:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8595483.stm
to what the Associated Press is feeding to American readers:
http://apnews.excite.com/article/20100331/D9EPF5K00.html
We don’t need no stinking investigations in the U.S.
Again, nothing to see. Please move along.
——————————————————-
R.S. Brown, politicians will only agree that AGW was a scam, when polar bears are roaming through the ice-covered streets of London and come to bite their sorry asses.
Hmmm, let’s see. Government enquiry finds government funded scientists are good.