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
John McManus says:
July 18, 2010 at 4:10 pm
Latitude:
All deniers hate math. That’s why they are so bad at it.
ref: MacIntyre
McKittrick
Goddard
==========================================================
John, thanks for acting exactly like what you are……..
Looks like the CRU is going to need a bigger shredder.
Anyone know whether using free email services, such as gmail, which Doug Keenan said that British researchers were now doing to avoid FOI requests, is legal in the US? (Or the UK for that matter).
Why in the heck is the American government giving money to a foreign government’s research institution to begin with? Are the Brits broke? Oh, wait… never mind.
There’s are two current threads devoted to this topic:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/07/17/noaas-jan-jun-2010-warmest-ever-missing-data-false-impressions/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/07/16/a-spot-check-on-noaas-hottest-so-far-presser/
John McManus says:
July 18, 2010 at 4:10 pm
Latitude:
All deniers hate math. That’s why they are so bad at it.
ref: MacIntyre
McKittrick
Goddard
——-
REPLY:
John, thank you for your comment. As long as I’ve read and contributed to WUWT, I’ve rarely seen posting by out & out “deniers” (which is a derogatory and defaming label).
Nearly all of us are proud skeptics with varying levels of math and science training. I have an extensive background in statistics and find MacIntyre’s many analyses to be compelling in the extreme.
The Hockey Team, meanwhile, goes “uhhh, hmmmm, STATISTICS??”
Please call us skeptics, we wear the label with pride.
Michael says: July 18, 2010 at 11:33 am
It’s about time. The complete and total economic collapse of the US will take care of the rest of the scam artists.—–Wasn’t it those guys who were shredding data?
Michael. Well, I think you got it in one – except you can add the UK and Europe’s economic collapse to it as well – BTW – like your video clip on the shredding. Thems are the babies wot are doin’ us – big time.
Doug
Public policy, scientism and positivism is embodied in AGW. As per Martin Ryder
University of Colorado at Denver this makes for a nasty brew.
http://carbon.cudenver.edu/~mryder/scientism_este.html
Michael says: July 18, 2010 at 11:33 am
It’s about time. The complete and total economic collapse of the US will take care of the rest of the scam artists.—–Wasn’t it those guys who were shredding data?
Michael. Well, I think you got it in one – except you can add the UK and Europe’s economic collapse to it as well – BTW like your video clip on the shredding. Thems are the babies wot are doin’ us – big time.
Doug
Jon Rom says:
July 18, 2010 at 1:56 pm
State of the Climate
Keeping in mind that this is contiguous US temperature data, do you see any inconsistencies with your post and this:
http://lwf.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/get-file.php?report=national&image=timeseries02&byear=2010&bmonth=01&year=2010&month=01&ext=gif&id=110-00
gmail is google mail. Go to google and look at the top of the screen.
Andrew30 says:
July 18, 2010 at 4:44 pm
Using a water centric scale for a platentary body temperature is oh so human.
—
Since weather and climate are very dependent on water, it actually does make since.
I thought the World Meterological Association was redoing the temperature record — though they were careful to say, on the basis of zero evidence no less, that they expected it would come out the same as before.
Should someone therefore write to the DEA and point this out and suggest that the funding should be redirected there — since the basic task has also been redirected there.
Climate scientists are even worse than used car salesman.
At least you know before hand when a Used Car salesman opens his mouth he is lying, and that he has wound the odometer back…but we had to work it out that the so called scientists had wound the thermometers up.
But who would have thought that the climate scientists were so incompetent at maintaining the temp recording stations that they bolt them to buildings…and to make matters worse were corrupting the peer review process
Not that it matters in the case of the Peer Review …only the truly dopey would still use a system invented in the 18th century, and try and defend it as being still valid today. Is there anything these dopes haven’t stuffed up and misused.
I reckon Used Car salesman have a higher standards than these [snip].
John McManus says:
July 18, 2010 at 1:14 pm
No. $200,00 is not $4m. Even a rolling 3 year $200,000 is not $4m.
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.
The key phrase in that sentence, assuming the information is accurate, is ‘a year.’ The way it is written it sounds that while contract is renewed every three years, the payment is made yearly.
American Thinker uses this WUWT source.
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2010/07/doe_suspends_funds_to_cru_crew.html
I was disappointed that there has been no mention of the “Harry_read_me.txt” file that was released with the e-mails.
I still wonder about a “very artificial correction” in some of the programs and what the original data, if it had not been lost, would have looked like when gone through the CRU programs.
In another climate news story last week, The New York Times environmental journalist Andrew Revkin was interviewed about climategate – and the alleged lack thereof – on the American National Public Radio by their science correspondent Ira Flato, in “Climate Scientists Move Forward After Scandal-Revkin.”
The screeching need to minimize damage from the scandal as per the British Enquiries would not be brooked! AGW critics and skeptics are the equivalent of Young Earthers who cannot be moved to Believe in evolution by any mountain of evidence; the rest are conspiracy mongers.
Needless to say, no evidence was offered; nor were any climategate emails quoted or discussed in a program purportedly about them.
Perhaps the most anoying comment from Revkin was an ‘ends justifies the means’ explanation for the revelations of misbehavior and scientists turned political advocates.
“Mr. REVKIN: Yeah. I mean, to me, one of the real problems that really has emerged, you know, in covering this so long – I mean, you and I both, we -getting to be graybeards in this realm – that I think that many scientists have gotten very frustrated with the lack of traction for the – they see this body of information building and the public isn’t moving and policymakers, or the treaty makers, are just sort of sitting on their hands. And there’s this growing sense of frustration. So that has led, for sure, sometimes, to oversimplification. And to scientists, also, increasingly getting into the advocacy realm, you know, not just telling what is, but telling us what we should do.”
Does he really mean science fudging, hiding data, and group-think dogmas are OK if the cause is ‘Right’?
Audio and transcript here http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128568245
Ethelred:
It looks like you were ready.
Bet if we raised the voting age to 55 and put term limits in the Constitution we wouldn’t see any more of this waste in department spending bills.
Has anyone else noticed? Uncle Sam seems to have the same big-spending and no-saving habits as todays kids (the 15-30 something mob). Wonder what came first, the chicken or the egg? Bet it was Sam.
PS: Have to admit, the kids didn’t have all the advantages we had. What with newspapers going belly up, and adults delivering them with their cars, there haven’t been as many paper routes as there used to be. And I don’t think they let kids work in drug stores anymore delivering prescriptions and stocking shelves.
“Environment quangos to be cut, says Caroline Spelman”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-10676997
Defra – department for environment, food and rural affairs
“Ms Spelman told Sky News that Defra had 87 quangos, with some set up decades ago to protect the environment or rural communities” I believe the CRU could be described as a Quango.
@James Baldwin Sexton
“BTW, you should peruse this site and familiarize yourself with the temp gathering techniques employed by NOAA, and then also familiarize yourself with the data manipulation NOAA and other climate tracking bodies engage in. Their credibility is stretched beyond its limits.”
Yes, James, I HAVE looked at it, for a long time (and my IQ is 146 so I actually understand some of it) and, you know what? You guys are a lot better than me at doing climate science. I feel I would need an advanced degree to really contribute anything, or to arrive at an independent judgment.
But at the same time, the scientists who are convinced of AGW are also a lot better at climate science than me. And when something like 97% (I know, I know…) of climate scientists support the AGW interpretation, what gives?
Now I completely understand the argument that the ~97% are biased because of certain rewards that may come with that position, but there are also rewards (although different) associated with being a skeptic. So if you want to throw out the ~97 AGW scientists, you damn well better throw out the ~3 skeptics too, right? Babies with the warm bathwater, so to speak.
As I said, I am not a scientist but I have been working directly with scientist for over 30 years (I design research labs). I think they are almost all really smart and usually dedicated and mostly devoted (in an almost religious way) to documented evidence and the truth, as revealed by the scientific method. No other client type so repeatedly asks me for “proof” of the benefits of a proposed design. It is a PITA frankly. But it certainly has convinced me that scientists don’t take a position, or arrive at a belief, lightly.
My problem is that, from my experience, I can’t discount all of them. There are a whole bunch of really smart and extremely dedicated and truly knowledgeable people who find on the side of AGW. Even if we throw out a huge and unlikely ~50% of them, it is still >10:1 for AGW.
Convince me otherwise, please. I am not a closed-minded person.
James Sexton says:
July 18, 2010 at 8:59 am
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 is only part of the story James. Your DoE certainly funded Jones et al / CRU in the 1980’s – see the 1986 doc below – for the Southern Hemisphere TR027 DoE report the contract was No. DE-AC02-79EV10098.
See my articles below – I have never been able to discover the annual $ amounts pre-1995. Looking at published papers and allowing time for pre-pub research – IMHO DoE funding of Jones et al / CRU could have commenced as early as 1979. So you are looking at a DoE in the Carter era – does anybody have any ideas who in the DoE over 30 years ago now – was instrumental in awarding these contracts to Jones et al / CRU ?
Is the US Dept of Energy still funding Professor Phil Jones ?
February 2nd, 2010
http://www.warwickhughes.com/blog/?p=479
Needless to say – your DoE does not reply to my faxed questions this year.
USA Dept of Energy Jones et al 1986 350 pages station documentation now online in pdf February 20th, 2010
http://www.warwickhughes.com/blog/?p=510
I agree with those who say the DoE will resume funding after a while.
@ur momisugly john Rom
Please cite your source that “something like 97% (I know, I know…) of climate scientists support the AGW interpretation”
@ur momisuglyLarry Cullen G says:
“@ur momisugly john Rom
Please cite your source that “something like 97% (I know, I know…) of climate scientists support the AGW interpretation”
”
It ain’t perfect but pretty good at 97% is good enough…
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2010/06/04/1003187107.abstract