Quote:
Originally Posted by SecretMaster
Except they didn't. Every "denier" went into a tizzy with the climate-gate scandal over nothing. If you take anything without it's full context it can be dangerously misconstrued. The only problem with the CRU was it's poor handling of data sharing. I think there were three or four separate investigations that found the CRU had no wrong-doing.
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I think it was slightly more than nothing and it wasn't just the deniers as you put it.
Referring to requests for climate data from critics, CRU Director Phil Jones wrote in 2005 that “I think I’ll delete the file rather than send to anyone.”
Labour MP Graham Stringer asked Jones why he refused to comply with requests to share data to which Jones answered:
“Because all he [a skeptic] wants to do is find something wrong with it.”
Well that's certainly an acceptable reason to not share data. NOT. That's the whole point of peer review - to make your data available to others for systematic scrutiny.
Even the House of Commons in their summary agreed with that:
'However, a culture of withholding information””from those perceived by CRU to be hostile to global warming””appears to have pervaded CRU’s approach to FOIA requests from the outset. We consider this to be unacceptable.'
Almost 80,000 scientists from the Royal Insitute of Chemistry and the Institute of Physics who submitted their own reports to Parliament in which they raised serious concerns over Jones’s and the CRU's conduct. Here is the report from the Institute of Physics of February 2010
http://www.publications.parliament.u...ata/uc3902.htm
In particular, note these sections:
"The CRU e-mails as published on the internet provide prima facie evidence of determined and co-ordinated refusals to comply with honourable scientific traditions and freedom of information law. The principle that scientists should be willing to expose their ideas and results to independent testing and replication by others, which requires the open exchange of data, procedures and materials, is vital. The lack of compliance has been confirmed by the findings of the Information Commissioner. This extends well beyond the CRU itself - most of the e-mails were exchanged with researchers in a number of other international institutions who are also involved in the formulation of the IPCC's conclusions on climate change. "
and later:
"There is also reason for concern at the intolerance to challenge displayed in the e-mails. This impedes the process of scientific 'self correction', which is vital to the integrity of the scientific process as a whole, and not just to the research itself. In that context, those CRU e-mails relating to the peer-review process suggest a need for a review of its adequacy and objectivity as practised in this field and its potential vulnerability to bias or manipulation."
The Royal Society of Chemistry's report is here:
http://www.publications.parliament.u...ata/uc4202.htm
So while the House of Commons might have given him a "get out of jail" free card, the greater scientific community didn't.