Third inquiry into 'Climategate' clears scientists of dishonesty

international | environment | other press Thursday July 08, 2010 16:02 by Monty Burns

Yet another report has cleared scientists at the University of East Anglia’s (UEA) Climatic Research Unit (CRU) of dishonesty in the presentation of data on global warming. However it has stated that: “We do find that there has been a consistent pattern of failing to display the proper degree of openness, both on the part of CRU scientists and on the part of the UEA.”

But the inquiry found that the scientists “honesty and rigour” were “not in doubt” and there was “no evidence” of behaviour that would undermine assessments by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The Climategate controversy erupted last November after still unknown hackers broke into the CRU’s computer database and retrieved numerous e-mails between the unit’s director, Dr Phil Jones, his colleagues and others in the wider scientific community.

Circulated like a virus on the internet by climate change sceptics and deniers, the most infamous of these e-mails referred to Dr Jones using a “trick” to “hide the decline” in the rate of global warming; this, more than anything else, undermined the CRU’s scientific credibility.

The Russell report rejected that conclusion, but said the CRU graph – which appeared on the front cover of the World Meteorological Organisation’s 1999 report on climate change – was “misleading” because it didn’t explain how the underlying data had been derived.

Full story here: