Press Release
London, 25 January: The Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) remains deeply concerned about the failure by academic and parliamentary inquires to fully and independently investigate the ‘Climategate’ affair.
The latest follow-up report by the Science and Technology Committee on the disclosure of climate data from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia (UEA) confirms that the Climategate inquiries had serious flaws, lacked balance and transparency and failed to achieve their objective to restore trust and confidence in British climate science.
The report by the Science and Technology Committee shows that the inquiries into the conduct and integrity of scientists at the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia were deficient and biased.
In particular, the report finds that:
- UEA Vice-Chancellor Professor Acton misled the House of Commons Committee over the nature of the Science Appraisal Panel (paragraph 23).
- As Graham Stringer MP, a member of the Committee, has pointed out: “The Oxburgh panel did not do as our predecessor committee had been promised, investigate the science, but only looked at the integrity of the researchers… This leaves a question mark against whether CRU science is reliable.”
- Lord Oxburgh’s Science Appraisal Panel may have not been wholly independent (paragraph 32).
- The review by Lord Oxburgh lacked rigour and diligence (paragraphs 33; 61).
- The Inquiries failed to investigate the serious allegation relating to the deletion of e-mails in response to an FOI request (89).
- None of the inquiries have determined if CRU staff actually contacted the journals they discussed threatening. The alleged threatening of the highly respected journal Geophysical Research Letters, arguably the most important incident in this area, has yet to be examined at all. The committee’s finding in this area is shameful.
Andrew Montford, the author of the GWPF’s report into “The Climategate Inquires” said:
“The committee suggest that we should all just move on. That may be what suits most politicians, but the public deserve to know the truth. The committee have turned a blind eye to the abundant evidence of wrongdoing at UEA and in the Climategate inquiries.”
We share the view by Graham Stringer that the UEA failed to set up independent panels that would have ensured an independent and objective scrutiny of the Climategate affair.
Mr Stringer’s conclusion encapsulates the utter failure of the Climategate inquires:
“We are now left after three investigations without a clear understanding of whether or not the CRU science is compromised.”
— end
Contact details:
Dr Benny Peiser
Director, The Global Warming Policy Foundation
1 Carlton House Terrace, London SW1Y 5DB
tel: 020 7930 6856
mob: 07553 361717
Note for Editors:
The Global Warming Policy Foundation (www.thegwpf.org) is an all-party and non-party think tank and a registered educational charity.
Our 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.
Our main focus is to analyse global warming policies and its economic and other implications. Our aim is to provide the most robust and reliable economic analysis and advice.
We intend to develop alternative policy options and to foster a proper debate (which at present scarcely exists) on the likely cost and consequences of current policies.
We are funded entirely by voluntary donations from a number of private individuals and charitable trusts. In order to make clear its complete independence, it does not accept gifts from either energy companies or anyone with a significant interest in an energy company.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
There needs to be a judicial inquiry into the police handling of this matter. As I understand things they used an agency that only looked into the release of the files but not it’s contents.
Although withholding or destroying information is a criminal offence under the terms of the Act (FOI), apparently no prosecution could be brought against Phil Jones for offences committed more than six months prior to the investigation by the Information Commissioner’s office.
1212073451.txt
However:-
http://www.fact-uk.org.uk/site/criminal_justice/statact.htm
Dr A Burns says:
January 24, 2011 at 7:16 pm
‘An organisation calling itself “Global Warming Policy Foundation” has bias built into its name.’
I’m not clear what you mean by this. Are you aware that the GWPF is a sceptical organisation?
Caroline Lucas, our ONE Green Party MP, was given virtually free reign on BBC’s Breakast programme the other day – basically expounding the theory that we need to go back to wartime-type rationing, or else – not a peep from the news anchors.
Might have been nice to get one of our 649 OTHER MPs in to give their view on the matter…
Keep reducing CO2, and we WILL have to go back to food rationing, because crops yields will start to fall…!
Sir Brandon Gough, Chancellor of the University of East Anglia, is accused of being complicit in academic fraud and corrupt abuse of public funds in relation to Climategate. More here:
http://www.stopcp.com/cpclimategate.php
Have you seen this article on fox news?
skeptics are not insulted and treated in denial, it seems that the tide is turning …
Five Reasons the Planet May Not Be Its Hottest Ever
Le réchauffement climatique est en plein essor, disent les uns des climatologues du monde. Ou est-ce?
Le jeudi l’agence météorologique de l’ONU a annoncé que 2010 était une étape importante, l’année la plus chaude, Dans une triple égalité avec 2005 et 1998. “Les données de 2010 confirment significative de la Terre tendance au réchauffement à long terme”, a déclaré Michel Jarraud, haut responsable de l’Organisation météorologique mondiale. Il a ajouté que les dix années les plus chaudes après le début des relevés en 1854 ont toutes été depuis 1998.
Mais quelle est la fiabilité des données? Voici cinq bonnes raisons de certains scientifiques sont sceptiques quant à ces allégations.
1. D’où vient l’proviennent les données? Les températures moyennes au niveau mondial l’année dernière de 0,95 degrés Fahrenheit (0,53 Celsius) plus élevé que la moyenne 1961-1990 qui est utilisé à des fins de comparaison, selon l’OMM – une déclaration fondée sur trois ensembles de données climatiques du Royaume-Uni et les organismes météorologiques des États-Unis. Ils rassemblent des lectures de stations météorologiques terrestres et le climat, les navires et les bouées et des satellites – et ils sont venus en vertu de contrôle dramatique ces dernières années.
Les données sur les terres est largement contestée par Anthony Watt sur son SurfaceStations.org site web. Watts, récemment classée 61% des stations utilisées pour mesurer la température avec un D – d’être situé à moins de 10 mètres d’une source de chauffage artificiel. Beaucoup de sceptiques du climat aussi au sujet de la NASA et la NOAA, les organismes américains qui recueillent des données climatiques des États-Unis, mais aussi de manipuler et de «normaliser» il.
Satellite data is arguably the most accurate way to measure temperature. Roy Spencer, a climatologist and former NASA scientist, takes issue with the way that data is normalized and adjusted, instead presenting raw, unadjusted data on his website. The WMO does not use this data.
Watts pointed FoxNews.com to a new, peer-reviewed paper that looks at the reliability of the land-based sensor network, concluding that “it is presently impossible to quantify the warming trend in global climate.”
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/01/24/planet-hottest-ever-global-warming/#ixzz1C2uZrQ00
I was alerted to the Horizon programme (part way through) by a phone call , and was shouting at the the TV within seconds. What absolutely disgusting propaganda! I found Paul Nurse to be rather smug, and as we’ve come to expect from the Biased Broadcasting Corporation it was carefully edited to present only one side as being the truth.
The only hope is that being on BBC2 it won’t have been seen by as many people as it would on BBC1…
Dave Ward and Ralph et al: yes the Horizon programme was outright propaganda. If they had wanted to illustrate the publics’ increasing skeptism of Science, they could have picked on say Dark Matter and Dark Energy. But no, it was all about Climate Change as per usual.
I was also agast at the head of the Royal Society with his insistance on consensus science. It is not the scientific process that I recognise I can tell you that. It may be that you have heaps of evidence in support of a hypothesis, but if just ONE little experiment falsifies it, that’s it, end of hypothesis. THAT is science !
dave ward says: “I was alerted to the Horizon programme (part way through) by a phone call , and was shouting at the the TV within seconds.”
When was that? I missed it, … but there was this real funny comedy program where some misfit goon (why do people always stereotype scientists) tried to tell the world that they should believe what scientists say … whilst constantly referring to the motto of this fictitious scientific institute whose motto was “don’t trust anyone’s word”.
I was in stitches, it was too funny for words, the comedian managed to spend the entire program saying how important it was to provide evidence … whilst not providing one bit themselves.
Who was it? I seem to remember them from Monty Python?
I have to second (third?) the comments from Ralph and TFN Johnson above about last night’s ‘Horizon’ on BBC TV. It was a transparent piece of propaganda, in which the strongest claim seemed to be that ‘the enquiries found them not guilty, so that’s all right, folks, you can go back to believing AGW’. As TFN noted, this programme used to be the BBC’s flagship science program; these days it is one sorry piece of polemic after another, the actual science content being generally minimal.
If anyone in the States or elsewhere wants an hour’s pretty vile viewing, the episode title to look for is ‘Science Under Attack’. It’ll confirm all our unfavourable comments.
I just love it; they left in Stringer’s report. Heh, they probably thought it meant nothing since they’d voted it down.
Madness, I say, madness.
=============
Michael says –
“Are you serious? What a surprise an organisation set up by skeptics, housed in a Materials and Mining institute is critical of several enquiries clearing the CRU. I would have never guessed, hardly an independent organisation. Hardly newsworthy, nothing would ever be enough, totally manufactured newsflash.
But typically you guys eat it up.”
They are simply reporting what the MP’s said.
Just been reading the climategate inquiry (http://thegwpf.org/images/stories/gwpf-reports/Climategate-Inquiries.pdf) and quite literally my mouth dropped when I read this text revealed by an FOI:-
“Ron [Oxburgh] is keen that we can say that [the list] was constructed in consultation with the Royal Society. [The papers] represent the core body of CRU work around which most of the assertions have been flying. They are also the publications which featured heavily in our submission to the Parliamentary Inquiry, and in our answers to the Muir Russell Review’s questions. I would be very grateful if you would be prepared to allow us to use a form of words along the lines: ‘the publications were chosen in consultation with The Royal Society’.”
Up to that point Oxburgh’s inquiry could have been portrayed as an honest, but misguided attempt to quickly and slapdash-edly examine the “science”.
Oxburgh’s inquiry had a clear remit to advise parliament on the science. it was not that it happened to be looking at the same subject … it was set up in order to provide parliament the information. This FOI clearly shows a conspiracy by those involved to deceive parliament regarding the credibility of key information of that inquiry. I would be surprised if this is not a criminal offence
The Daily Mail are today running a poll as to whether people consider that the BBC is biased in its reporting of climate change. Presently as I type, 85% of respondents have answered Yes and only 15% have answered No. There is therefore a widespread view (at least amongst Daily Mail readers which readers are probably better informed than most since the Daily Mail is one of the more balanced/sceptical papers) that the BBC is biased in its reporting of this matter.
The political class would be well advised to take note of this perception. The BBC managers should definitely take note of this since it undermines their position and credability as a noteworthy media organisation.
You’ve got to hand it to us Brits. When it comes to whitewash, the ‘great and good’ of our establishment have elevated the process to nothing short of an art form (or so they seem to think)!!
It is a criminal offence to ‘mislead Parliament’ in the UK – sitting just below ‘Treason.’ I wonder if the UEA Chancellor can expect to ‘have his collar felt’ by an arresting Constable in the near future following this revelation? I do hope so, it may send a message to this shower at last…
Finished reading the climategate inquiry (http://thegwpf.org/images/stories/gwpf-reports/Climategate-Inquiries.pdf) and what a fantastic job all those involved have done. The professionalism of the report puts the other inquiries to shame!
Whatever the politicians & “scientists” try to do, however they try to rewrite the story, the facts are now so clearly laid out for future generations, that the history of the climategate inquiries has already been written.
Unless the climate suddenly diminishes in all importance, the only remaining chapter for history to write is which politicians and scientists stood out against the conspiracy and which got tarred with the brush.
TWO inquiries into claims that scientists manipulated data about global warming were yesterday condemned by MPs as ineffective and too secretive.
Read more: http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/225108/MPs-slam-secretive-Climategate-probesMPs-slam-secretive-Climategate-probes#ixzz1C3qtLIVM
Steve C says January 25, 2011 at 4:32 am
Just found these on YouTube. Seems to be complete:
BBC Horizon – Science under Attack
Part 1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2wMGU8-2bE
Part 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FklwzRihv6Y
Part 3 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHr36wELGrY
Part 4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Orlqa039jlQ
Part 5 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvZS2USXPms
Part 6 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehlZNEv3mec
Well spotted Richard Verney at 5.15pm on the 24th! And well done Peter Sissons in blowing the gaffe on the BBC in such spectacular style.
People will know that I have commented many times in these pages on how unbearably embarrassing it must be these days for anyone to admit to being a BBC journalist. And the complaints from UK TV licence payers about the lack of balance, journalistic enquiry and integrity in the BBC’s news and current affairs output has become a national uproar.
Now, all our indignation, suspicions and dismay about the plummeting standards of BBC journalism have been confirmed by Peter Sissons’ revelations. This is a dagger-to-the-heart of BBC journalism. Already privately discredited by former journalists, like myself, who have seen this sickness developing over the last few years, BBC journalism is now dying publicly, a once proud tradition of a great British institution, rolling squealing and degraded on the floor while it licks the shoes of the Establishment that it so obviously serves.
Dear God, that it should come to this…
John V. Wright says January 25, 2011 at 7:58 am
Link
Please remember that the US EPA relies on these whitewashes to vaildate the basic science of AGW, and these whitewashes rely on the EPA to do the same.
AGW remains unvalidated
Roger R
Interesting as the science regarding the government climate policy is, and thanks very largely to Anthony for this; the general public will only demand action if they know how much it is costing them. When fuel petrol/diesel costs rise voices are very quickly raised because everyone knows how much it is costing them. This is not so with the cost of electricity where the cost of subsidies to support the construction of wind turbines and the installation of solar panels and the feed in tariff that benefits the provider is kept hidden.
The Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) is an AGW skeptic organization. They paid Montford 3000Lb to write his report. It is nonsense to pretend that this is some kind of impartial report on the UK Govt. investigation of “Climategate”.
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Global_Warming_Policy_Foundation
On the other hand, the UK government commission that investigated the allegations did include at least one skeptic, Graham Stringer, on the panel.
REPLY: Mr. Adler. Please. So your view is that all skeptics should put up all their time and work for free, or is it that we should donate that “big oil” check that we all supposedly get? Critics of skeptics really should make up their minds about the skeptic “funding issues”, which are mostly non-existent.
You really should have a look at the funding of places like DeSmog Blog and the Center for American Progress (Climate Progress parent NGO), which gets over 30 million dollars a year according to IRS filings.
In the meantime may I suggest you insert your viewpoint on this topic into the nearest trash orifice where it belongs? Thanks for your consideration. – Anthony
E.M.Smith:
BTW, per internet censorship:
They can try, and they will fail. Too many ways to route information around the roadblocks.
I’m reminded of a late-80’s TV show, “Max Headroom”.
Thanks Anthony for bringing attention to Andrew Montford’s GWPF report on the Climategate inquiries. This document stands on its own; thoroughly documented, and painstakingly accurate. A.W. Montford is the author of “The Hockey Stick Illusion”; same high quality reporting!