Jonathan Leake, The Sunday Times
The American government has suspended its funding of the University of East Anglia’s climate research unit (CRU), citing the scientific doubts raised by last November’s leak of hundreds of stolen emails.
The US Department of Energy (DoE) was one of the unit’s main sources of funding for its work assembling a database of global temperatures.
It has supported the CRU financially since 1990 and gives the unit about £131,000 ($200,000 USD) a year on a rolling three-year contract.
This should have been renewed automatically in April, but the department has suspended all payments since May pending a scientific peer review of the unit’s work.
The leaked emails caused a global furore. They appeared to suggest that CRU scientists were using “tricks” to strengthen the case for man-made climate change and suppressing dissent.
A spokesman for the DoE said: “The renewal application was placed on hold pending the conclusion of the inquiry into scientific misconduct by Sir Alastair Muir Russell.”
Muir Russell published his report earlier this month. It said that the rigour and honesty of the CRU scientists were not in doubt but criticised them for “a consistent pattern of failing to display the proper degree of openness”.
The DoE peer review panel will now sift through the report and decide if American taxpayers should continue to fund the unit.
A spokesman for the university said: “We are still waiting to hear if the latest bid for funding to the US Department of Energy has been successful and would not comment or speculate in the meantime.”
The Sunday Times, 18 July 2010
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No evidence of peer review surpressing ‘sceptical’, post ‘climategate’ it still ‘seems’ to be happening…
Perhaps someone should tell the scientific journals…
I read this WSJ article, and missed something, that The Air Vent picked up on…
Pat Michaels:
“Climate Research and several other journals have stopped accepting anything that substantially challenges the received wisdom on global warming perpetuated by the CRU. I have had four perfectly good manuscripts rejected out of hand since the CRU shenanigans, and I’m hardly the only one. Roy Spencer of the University of Alabama, Huntsville, has noted that it’s becoming nearly impossible to publish anything on global warming that’s nonalarmist in peer-reviewed journals.”
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704075604575356611173414140.html
The Air Vent’s thoughts:
“Blocking of papers that came to different conclusions from climate journals was one of the central issues of climategate. The conspiracy to block certain views was openly discussed in the emails, of course the ‘review’ panels couldn’t seem to read them, but whatever.”
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2010/07/18/i-hope-not/
It has supported the CRU financially since 1990 and gives the unit about £131,000 ($200,000 USD) a year on a rolling three-year contract.
Nice, I’ve helped pay $4,000,000(U.S.) for that tripe. Of course, the way we throw(print) money around here, that’s hardly a drop in the bucket, seeing we use terms such as $trillion with such frequency here, I was beginning to wonder if we knew there were amounts less than 1,000,000,000. (Please, no one tell the current administration what comes after a trillion.) But now here and a phone conversation I had with a former congressional representative(he was engaged in taking public funds and directly inputting them into private companies for rural high-speed internet through the RUS and NRTC) confirms they still remember there are amounts less than a billion.
So, CRU received money from the DOE on a rolling grant basis to the tune of half-a-million tri-annually.
Perhaps our esteamed host can state here how much he got from the DOE for his research critical of the CRU and fellow AGWers? I guess, but it’s only a guess, that it
is nill, zilch, nothing, nada.
Who again was in the pockets of the big money?
Antarctic sea ice anamoly way UP!
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.recent.antarctic.png
Whitewash didn’t help?
My guess is the interview with Phil Jones was fatal.
James Sexton says:
July 18, 2010 at 8:39 am
Does is strike anyone else as odd that the U.S. DOE is partially funding the CRU? I guess I’m glad to hear the U.S. and G.B. are “cooperating”, but can’t the Brits pay for their own propaganda? Or are they helping our own propaganda machine the GISS?
=======================================
Exactly! Also…I would trust CRU data over GISS data any ole’ day.
That’s not saying very much, though…
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
I cannot believe that a government that has Lisa Jackson saying, “greenhouse gases are pollution,” Steven Chu wanting houses and roads painted white to cool the earth, and Barak Obama wanting people’s energy bills to “necessarily skyrocket” is doing this. Something is up, this is window dressing, and in the end it will only lead to a dramatic increase of funding to CRU.
Is DOE funding Intelliweather too? Once again the color-coded map shows Toronto cool at 77 but Atlanta and New Orleans hot at the same temperatures:
http://www.intelliweather.net/imagery/intelliweather/tempcity_nat_640x480.jpg
We seem to accept very sloppy work by the climate industry.
Robinson says:
July 18, 2010 at 8:08 am
I rather hope the British government will do the same.
Don’t be daft – our government – like most governments these days – will do everything it can to maintain the status quo and keep the green train rolling.
Gary D, was on the right track. Anthony you should apply to become the impartial repository for all RAW climate data, above reproach, trickery, manipulation or losing it when it is convenient to do so.
Wow
New Scientist on Muir Russell and other inquiries.
Referring to the three UK reports, it says this:
“none looked at the quality of the science itself”;
and this:
“Data manipulation is the stuff of science, but that manipulation has to be as open and transparent as the data itself”,
and this:
“… the failure to investigate whether emails were deleted to prevent their release under freedom of information laws, makes it harder to accept Russell’s conclusion that the “rigour and honesty” of the scientists concerned are not in doubt” …
and more – especially this:
“But what happened to intellectual candour – especially in conceding the shortcomings of these inquiries and discussing the way that science is done. Without candour, public trust in climate science cannot be restored, nor should it be.”
It can be found here:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20727692.900-without-candour-we-cant-trust-climate-science.html
New Scientist have been a big advocate of CAGW, AGW or agw, whatever it should be called.. New Scientist, infamously, had an Age of Denial issue a couple of months ago – including Climate Change (presumably man made?) Denial
The DOE is headed by a full on nut case. This will be reversed.
Is Chu twisting Jackson slowly, slowly in the wind or are the inmates in charge of the asylum? Choose both, my friend.
===================
“The renewal application was placed on hold pending the conclusion of the inquiry into scientific misconduct by Sir Alastair Muir Russell.”
“The DoE peer review panel will now sift through the report and decide if American taxpayers should continue to fund the unit.”
The peer review channel will not peer review any alleged scientific misconduct. Oy will peer review the conclusions of the Alastair Muir Russell enquiry.
The Alastair Muir Russell Enquiry – “the rigour and honesty of the CRU scientists are not in doubt ” – Now what could this possibly mean? We will soon know from the DOE enquiry.
THIS may be the real reason for the FIOA secrecy. They are getting 200 grand for a couple of days work and did not want anyone to see how piffling the job was.
In fact seeing the huge figures on some of the tenders what were exposed in the emails, there is a huge financial pressure for the university to appoint some sympathetic, ex-college researcher to do the “independent” inquiry and to carefully step around any issues they may be contentious.
Just to make sure he was “independent” they gave him a list of the papers they wanted him to look at (an hence implicitly those to avoid).
Did American taxpayers even know they were funding the CRU?
A spokesman for the DoE said: “The renewal application was placed on hold pending the conclusion of the inquiry into scientific misconduct by Sir Alastair Muir Russell.”
Well, the Muir Russell repport is in. It exonerated the scientists of any serious wrong doing… does anyone really expect to see DoE challenge the conclusion? Even though it was the Oxburgh report that was supposed to examine the science and Russell was to examine the conduct and integrity…. given that CRU has received unprecedented scrutiny and emerged nearly beatified, I’d suggest that a doubling or tripling of CRU’s grants is not out of the question. This organization is a world treasure addressing the most important issue of our time and needs our whole-hearted support and should be exploited to the utmost.
Anyone feeling a little nauseous yet?
There is still hope. The DoE might publish their reasoning on the matter. That gives critics something to work with. Also, because the opinion comes from DoE, that gives Senator Inhofe a starting point. Maybe the once-MSM will conver the matter. Finally, there is the possibility that maybe, just maybe, Obama is looking for an excuse not to push Cap’n Trade.
Chu an honest scientist?… wow.
As for the DOE witholding funding, I wouldn’t be chilling the sparkly just yet. They have to somewhat maintain the appearance of scrutiny, but let’s not forget what they chose to scrutinize. A report that basically said “Hey…these are good chaps, just not quite as open as we’d’ve liked!”
Nothing to see here, move along, move along…
JimB
OT.
Anyone know what to make of this rather large area of VERY cold water that just appeared in the Atlantic? I don’t recall seeing that before. It wasn’t there in the gif fro the 11th
http://www.osdpd.noaa.gov/data/sst/anomaly/2010/anomnight.7.15.2010.gif
This is the FIRST time I’ve heard of the U. S. taxpayer funding the CRU! After all the coverage of this scandal and no one has done any parody or sarcasm or videos about that ripoff yet. Wow!
And now we $ee why the whitewash pails came out of the utility closets so quickly!
In tune with the theme above…
Mere days after stepping into office, Mr. Chu, oops, Dr. Chu renounced decades (and tens of $billions) of scientific study on the appropriate location for permanent nuclear waste disposal facility in Yucca Mountain in Nevada, home State of the ‘necessary’ Harry Ried, citing lack of scientific basis for the site selection.
I suspect James Hanson will redeem himself, and NASA’a hand in ‘Climategate’ by introduction of ‘Shariah Mathmatics’ into the AGW climate modelling protocol.
Michael Mann, of course, will head the ‘Blue Ribbon Panel’ tasked with ‘peer review’ of CRU ‘tricks’.
Interesting – there’s no mention of this in the online versions of the 2 local papers in Norwich, I bet there won’t be anything in the print editions next week, either.
But if you only read them, you would know very little about the “leak” in any case….
One wonders if all these whitewashes are connected to a fear by the establishment of being sued for misrepresentation of the causes of global climate variation. The politicians and universtity administrators are asking for another bucket of whitewash to cover their backs so that if (when) all the “science” falls apart they can point to the advice they received that the money was going into an institution that had been approved by the scientific community.
The fall guys will be the scientists. not the politicians and not the universities. For this reason scientists should not be silent, they should be standing up and saying “no, these methods do not reach standards that are acceptable to us as scientists”. Those scientists who approve CRU will be using their status as scientists to protect the grants of CRU and at the same time dragging your profession into disrepute. The longterm outcome will be very bad for the reputation of science and afterwards you will find all grants for scientific research will become harder to get because it will be associated in teh publics mind with memories of corruption in your midst that was systematically hidden by the scientific community.