Look what just popped up, just days out from the UN climate talks in Durban, a fresh batch of leaked emails from the University of East Anglia, in what is being quickly dubbed by some as Climategate mark II.
But as with the first batch of emails, released in 2009, it pays to look past the headlines. Firstly, it seems this latest release has been held over from the original batch — and in the meantime, there’s a very important qualifier: three independent inquiries have since exonerated the climate scientists involved in any way manipulating or misleading on climate science.
Parliament’s Science and Technology Committee rejected the assessment that the leaked emails from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) showed researchers hid, exaggerated or fiddled the data to support the consensus view, but they sharply condemned the unit for withholding information requested by outsiders under Britain’s freedom of information laws.
However, “the scientific reputation of Professor Jones and CRU remains intact”, the report said. “We have found no reason in this unfortunate episode to challenge the scientific consensus.”
But that didn’t stop outlets like the UK’s The Daily Mail running headlines like this:
As Graham Readfern writes in Crikey today:
“The real test of this email release, could well rest on the ability of the journalists and commentators charged with reporting it. As popular climate blogger Joe Romm pointed out yesterday: ‘Climategate was a scandal of corrupt, deceitful, and shoddy reporting.'”
The professors from the University of East Anglia have been cleared of doctoring the science. Perhaps its time to look at the reporters who continue to doctor the facts.
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Peter Fray
Editor-in-chief of Crikey
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The investigations into the climategate emails were misleading at best.
One hesitates to call them corrupt but deceitful is closer to the mark
Science has been immeasurably hurt by these men who chose pal review rather than peer review to push a point of view. Science is not like that.
Good science welcomes all discussion and the data is always open for debate and analysis.
Science stands or falls on the results – spin & hype is like a falling star bright & startling momentarily but with an extremely short lifespan.
The investigation was into the original emails, so why the ‘Mark II’ ? So that it can be spun around as something new? As for the word Climategate, it sounds like a control system for ducted airconditioning. Fscking[1] lose it. And ‘culture of secrecy’ sounds bad too. Almost like ‘systemic failure’
[1] the VT, or something of fsck, an operation that is performed on unix disk systems. (ok, not really)
Oh my, did you guys actually look at the investigations that cleared the scientists in the first “climate gate”? It was hardly thorough. It was a bunch of pro warmest mates linked to Globe, the BBC and the UEA itself clearing their mates. To call it a whitewash would be unfair on whitewashing!! There should have been a commission with swearing in and legal consequences for false information. It should have been performed by independent judges, then you could say they were cleared!!
Very funny, lets not look at the contents of the emails cos their mates said they were out of context and the scientists are all honest.
The big Bobbie of Crikey “Come along then, Come along then, Nothing to see here now”