Press release
London, 14 September – The Global Warming Policy Foundation today publishes a detailed assessment of the Climategate inquiries set up by the University of East Anglia and others which finds that they avoided key questions and failed to probe some of the most serious allegations.
The report The Climategate Inquiries, written by Andrew Montford and with a foreword by Lord (Andrew) Turnbull, finds that the inquiries into the conduct and integrity of scientists at the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia were rushed and seriously inadequate.
In particular, the report finds that:
- none of the Climategate panels mounted an inquiry that was comprehensive within their area of remit
- insufficient consideration in the choice of panel members led to a failure to ensure balance and independence
- none managed to be objective and comprehensive
- none made any serious attempt to consider the views and submissions of well-informed critics
- terms of reference were either vague or non-existent
- none of them performed their work in a way that is likely to restore confidence in the work of CRU.
Andrew Montford, the author of the GWPF report, said:
“The lack of impartiality manifested itself in the different ways the panels treated CRU scientists and their critics. While CRU justifications and explanations were willingly accepted without any serious probing, critics were denied adequate opportunity to respond and to counter demonstrably inaccurate claims.”
“All in all, the evidence of the failings of the three UK inquiries is overwhelming. Public confidence in the reliability of climate science will not be restored until a thorough, independent and impartial investigation takes place,” Andrew Montford warned.
Lord Turnbull, who wrote the foreword to the GWPF report, said:
“The report by Andrew Montford clearly demonstrates that all three inquiries have serious flaws. The result has been that the three investigations have failed to achieve their objective, ie early and conclusive closure and restoration of confidence.”
“The new House of Commons Select Committee on Science and Technology, which has rightly reopened the issue, would do well to study Andrew Montford’s report and take evidence from him. It needs to satisfy itself as to whether the criticisms made are valid and whether the exoneration claimed is justified.”
“Only if the integrity of the science is re-established and the strengths and weaknesses of the main propositions are acknowledged will there be the basis of trust with the public which policymakers need,” Lord Turnbull said.
Lord Turnbull also called on the Government to look at the serious criticisms of the IPCC made in the recent InterAcademy Council Report. He said: “The Government should demand that the fundamental reforms recommended by the IAC in the practice, governance and leadership of the IPCC are implemented immediately for its Fifth Assessment.”
Notes to editors:
A full copy of the report (The Climategate Inquiries) can be downloaded from 11am here:
About the author
Andrew Montford is the author of The Hockey Stick Illusion: Climategate and the Corruption of Science (2008), a history of some of the events leading up to the release of emails and data from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia. He writes a blog specialising in climate change issues at http://www.bishop-hill.net and has made many media appearances discussing global warming from a sceptic perspective.
Lord Turnbull
Andrew Turnbull was Permanent Secretary, Environment Department,1994-98; Permanent Secretary to the Treasury 1998-2002, Cabinet Secretary and Head of the Home Civil Service 2002-05. He is now a Crossbench member of the House of Lords and a trustee of the Global Warming Policy Foundation.
GWPF Reports
Views expressed in the publications of the Global Warming Policy Foundation are those of the authors, not those of the GWPF, its Trustees, its Academic Advisory Council members or its Directors.
The GWPF
The Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) is an all-party and non-party think tank and a registered educational charity. Its main purpose is to bring reason, integrity and balance to a debate that has become seriously unbalanced, irrationally alarmist, and all too often depressingly intolerant.
The GWPF’s primary purpose is to help restore balance and trust in the climate debate that is frequently distorted by prejudice and exaggeration.
We are funded entirely by voluntary donations from a number of private individuals and charitable trusts. In order to make clear its complete independence, we do not accept gifts from either energy companies or anyone with a significant interest in an energy company.
For further information and interview requests, contact:
Dr Benny Peiser – The Global Warming Policy Foundation – 1 Carlton House Terrace, London SW1Y 5DB – tel: 020 7930 6856 – mob: 07553 361717 – info@thegwpf.org
It may all be for naught:
http://www.newsweek.com/2010/09/12/george-will-earth-doesn-t-care-what-is-done-to-it.html?from=rss
We’re just not that big of a factor, folks.
Woo hooo!
One thing. I don’t think you can just quickly cut and paste in entirity somebody else’s article without giving some sort of credit
It is this one, isn’t it? http://thegwpf.org/climategate/1532-damning-new-investigation-into-climategate-inquiries.html
Somebody got on the case just a bit too quickly after we complained meaning there was never any prior intention of using it.
Thanks though. Great post.
Brick by brick, they tore down the wall.
Mods,
The fact you just bare faced copied it off another site without reference means that perhaps there are new moderators? Just getting used to the job?
Reply: With a couple of exceptions, moderators do not put up posts. ~ ctm
The good Bishop nailed it once again. His observations on the failings of the various Climategate panels are all accurate as well as pointed. Sadly, I don’ t think they will have much effect.
As I’ve noted before, the UK likes to do their whitewashes in just this style. Convene several inquiries that each look at peripheral points and collectively let the main subject fall through the cracks.
But at the very least Andrew Montford has memorialized their failings.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Warming_Policy_Foundation
“The Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) is a registered, educational charity and think tank in the United Kingdom, whose stated aims are to challenge “extremely damaging and harmful policies” envisaged by governments to mitigate anthropogenic global warming.”
“Established in November 2009, and chaired by former Chancellor of the Exchequer Nigel Lawson, GWPF states that it is “deeply concerned about the costs and other implications of many of the policies currently being advocated” to address climate change and that it aims to “bring reason, integrity and balance to a debate that has become seriously unbalanced, irrationally alarmist, and all too often depressingly intolerant”.”
“David Aaronovitch noted the GWPF’s launch in The Times, writing “Lord Lawson’s acceptance of the science turns out, on close scrutiny, to be considerably less than half-hearted. Thus he speaks of ‘the (present) majority scientific view’, hinting rather slyly at the near possibility of a future, entirely different scientific view. (…) ‘Sceptic’ (…) is simply a misnomer. People such as Lord Lawson are not sceptical, for if one major peer-reviewed piece of scientific research were ever to be published casting doubt on climate change theory, you just know they’d have it up in neon at Piccadilly Circus. They are only sceptical about what they don’t want to be true.”[16]
The Daily Mail stated that “(Lord Lawson) said the integrity of the evidence on which ‘far-reaching and hugely expensive policy decisions’ are based has been called into question and the reputation of British science was ‘seriously tarnished’. (He) was launching The Global Warming Policy Foundation, a think tank devoted to challenging conventional wisdom about climate change.”[17]
The Guardian quoted Bob Ward of the LSE as saying “some of those names are straight from the Who’s Who of current climate change sceptics…It’s just going to be a way of pumping material into the debate that hasn’t been through scrutiny”. The article cast doubt on the idea that an upsurge in scepticism was underway, noting that “in (the US) Congress, even the most determined opponents of climate change legislation now frame their arguments in economic terms rather than on the science”[18]”
At least now we know who the thieves were of those stolen CRU emails, the GWPF!
RockyRoad says:
September 14, 2010 at 9:28 am
It may all be for naught:
http://www.newsweek.com/2010/09/12/george-will-earth-doesn-t-care-what-is-done-to-it.html?from=rss
We’re just not that big of a factor, folks.
_____________________________________________________________
George Will is a NOOB of the first order.
We are funded entirely by voluntary donations from a number of private individuals and charitable trusts.
Poor lads, need some charity from Big Oil!
The WUWT posting did open with acknowledgment of the source. Read the first sentence again.
At last, some light breaks through the haze. Can not those with eyes see?
We will see what the MSM makes of this in the UK. The key thing is whether Roger Harrabin at the BBC will mention it. I wonder if he was in the HoL for the release of the report.
Philip Thomas is entirely correct. It is bad form to copy an entire article without attribution. If you have permission to do so, you aught to show that in your article, Anthony.
As for the article itself, it is not news to regular WUWT visitors. As many have posted, the various “whitewashes” were the moral equivalent of a court trying a serious fraud case, and banning the prosecution from court and then only asking the defence team to conduct the prosecution case in front of a hand-picked jury of the accused’s best friends.
It made whitewashes look honest and above board.
REPLY: The article was sent in it’s entirety to me via private email to my personal account, with the heading of PRESS RELEASE.
Note it says “PRESS RELEASE” in the article I’ve posted.
I need permission to repost press releases sent to me personally? You both need to get a life. – Anthony
Yes!!! Investigate the investigation(s), and then, investigate those. No stopping until heads are rolling. The witch hunt continues! And the best part is the obvious non-bias of a person like Andrew Montford.
Give me a break…
Be attentive guys, we are living in historical times which we could tell our grandchildren: The End of Anglia, becoming greener and greener.
“One thing. I don’t think you can just quickly cut and paste in entirity somebody else’s article without giving some sort of credit”
Huh? I expect that is why it was described as a “Press Release”
You would be surprised what you can do with the facts and convincing lay people of what is happening. They may not be scientists, but once told what is going on the can figure it out … Be your own activist. Polar bears are particular easy targets, people have no idea where they came from, nor how long they have been around, not how far they can swim.
The end of the last ice age and sea rise is also a lucrative point to make.
I end my pitches with giving out the WUWT website ^_^
EFS_Junior, can you present a single piece of evidence to support your ridiculous allegation?
A) The emails and related data were located (apparently) on open public servers, therefore the charge of theft does not stand. No more than a charge of theft against you for downloading the images and text of this HTML document you are reading.
B) Where is there any evidence, let alone proof, that the GWPF were the people who first accessed this data and spread it worldwide? The BBC had access to this data long before the GWPF was even established.
As I understand it, the GWPF was created in response to the outcry caused by the discovery of seriously “dodgy” and wholly UNscientific practices as exposed by the CRU email and data LEAK.
Apparently, CRU doesn’t hold public trust or confidence in very high regard.
What ever are they thinking?
That was just the GWPFs introduction to its own release. All other versions of this release have the original source link but WUWT just packaged it as if it was their own. ClimateRealists gave source http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=6291&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ClimaterealistsNewsBlog+%28ClimateRealists+News+Blog%29
But then I’m so pleased it was posted that I’m willing to overlook this quibble.
REPLY: You really need to review my inline comment upstream. You’re way off base here. – Anthony
Oh, and by the way EFS, using wikipedia as a source for anything, is not a sensible start to an argument.
Big Government finances, promotes, sponsors at taxpayers’ expense every possible corrupt and malfeasant agenda that enhances its parasitic apparat’s hegemony over private citizens’ autonomy on every level. To the extent this peculating mandarinate preempts initiative, innovation, productive risk-takers’ rewards, just so will civil polities subside to socialized cesspools guaranteed to represent the worst-case of all scenarios.
Now on the threshold of a looming 70-year Maunder Minimum, if not an overdue end to our 12,250-year Holocene Interglacial Epoch itself, Thanatists who “love death more than life” (as jihadi Muslim terrorists are wont to say) are eager to reduce Gaia’s human population by 85% (not including themselves) by hardship and starvation to below a billion souls.
Anyone thinking this is an exaggeration had best re-read Paul Ehrlich, John Holdren, Peter Singer, James Hansen, Keith Farnish and others of their ilk from 1968. Wherever their thoroughly vicious mentality originates, these Luddite sociopaths pursue a homicidal agenda that prefers you dead.
The Guardian:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/sep/14/climategate-inquiries-lawson-report#start-of-comments
Monbiot’s minions in there early in the comments – predictably doing everything to avoid engaging with the substance, which they almost certainly haven’t read.
This article (apologies Anthony, it is properly attributed at the start, I missed that) only reinforces what regulars at WUWT already know. that these multiple whitewashes were the moral equivalent of a criminal court case trying a case of fraud, where the prosecution was excluded from the court and the defense were invited to invent and present the prosecution case in front of a jury of the accused’s friends and closest colleagues.
They made whitewashes look honest and above board
Mod – Please delete earlier comment.
Actually, I found Ross McKitrick’s analysis easier to read.
http://rossmckitrick.weebly.com/uploads/4/8/0/8/4808045/rmck_climategate.pdf
There’s ‘establishment’ – and then there’s real establishment in Great Britain.
Just check the credentials of Lord Turnbull, from the top of this post:
‘Andrew Turnbull was Permanent Secretary, Environment Department,1994-98; Permanent Secretary to the Treasury 1998-2002, Cabinet Secretary and Head of the Home Civil Service 2002-05. He is now a Crossbench member of the House of Lords …’
He is what is commonly understood as a ‘Mandarin’. What he says has more weight in government circles than what the ‘establishment’ figures such as Lords Oxbourgh and Muir have put their names to in their whitewash attempts.
This report is not another example of brave flag-waving by some sceptics, it is more like a lit fuse, burning its way slowly but surely towards the coming explosion.
Bishop Hill has this very interesting remark on his blog:
“The moment of excitement was at the end, where Graham Stringer piped up from the back of the room. I hadn’t noticed he was there before then, but his comments did bring a certain focus to events. >SNIP>
… hearing from a member of the Science and Technology Committee that what was going on at CRU was literature and not science made the question of how much I was paid for the report seem somehow deeply irrelevant.”
(My emphasis)
One thing is for sure – this is not going to go away any time soon!