Kiwiblog

The Herald reports:

Scientists involved in last year’s “climategate” leaked emails controversy, which added to scepticism about the science of global warming, were not open enough with their data and unhelpful with requests for information, an independent review of the affair found yesterday.

They and their institution, the University of East Anglia, did not embrace the “spirit of openness” enshrined in the Freedom of Information Act, according to a long-awaited report.

However, the review found that the researchers concerned, led by the director of UEA’s Climatic Research Unit Professor Phil Jones, could not be faulted for their “rigour and honesty as scientists”, and there was no evidence that they had behaved in a way that might undermine the conclusions of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

The review effectively clears those involved of dishonesty and corruption; it absolves them of the allegation made by climate sceptics that they had manipulated both climate data and the scientific peer-review process to serve their predetermined views that climate change is man-made.

This is largely what I expected.

Nevertheless, the review’s condemnation of the lack of openness at UEA amounted to “significant criticisms”, and its practices needed to change. …

* Dr Benny Peiser, director of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, a sceptical think-tank, said the Russell report was a “damning indictment of the university’s handling of freedom of information requests”. “I don’t think the university can just claim this is a vindication.”

* Andrew Montford, a climate sceptic who is conducting a review of how the three Climategate inquiries were set up and carried out, said the Russell review “has picked up some of our concerns on freedom of information” but had “brushed other issues under the carpet”. He said: “Not to ask Professor Jones if he had deliberately deleted emails so they could not be requested is a pretty extraordinary omission.”

* David Holland, a retired engineer and sceptic, one of the principal seekers of information from the CRU, said: “When it was set up 20 years ago the IPCC rules required climate science to be assessed on ‘a comprehensive, open and transparent basis’. Sir Muir Russell’s inquiry has rightly reported that UEA has not lived up to this.”

More transparency is needed. Even basic stuff such as a schedule of adjustments to recorded temperatures which details when an adjustment was made, and why, is not available from most agencies (including NIWA).

Now this does not mean that there is some global conspiracy to convince the world that temperatures have been increasing, when they have not been. Such a conspiracy would require 1000s of scientists to be colluding over the last 100 years.

I am sure adjustments to recorded temperatures series have been done in good faith, for reasons such as the moving of a recording station. However when decisions that may economies billions of dollars are dependent on the integrity of the data, it it reasonable to insist on total transparency.

A refrain we often hear is that we should listen to the scientists, when it comes to issues like climate change. And I agree.

Now the Climategate e-mails have been debated at some length. Poneke did an extensive blog post where he advocated that there was real cause for concern about what they unveiled. Some attacked him for this and said it was no big thing.

The UK Parliament is holding hearings on the e-mails, and one notable submission is from the Institute of Physics, representing 36,000 scientists.

Some quotes from their submission:

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.

That was the opening, and then:

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 whole peer review process for climate science needs reviewing they say.

Fundamentally, we consider it should be inappropriate for the verification of the integrity of the scientific process to depend on appeals to Freedom of Information legislation. Nevertheless, the right to such appeals has been shown to be necessary. The e-mails illustrate the possibility of networks of like-minded researchers effectively excluding newcomers. Requiring data to be electronically accessible to all, at the time of publication, would remove this possibility.

The law sets out the minimum necessary disclosure, but ethical scientists should be disclosing far more than the minimum.

Now the practises disclosed by Climategate do not mean that there is not a link between greenhouse gas emissions and increasing temperatures. Few people argue that.

But what it does mean is that you can’t expect the nations of the world to commit hundreds of billions of dollars on mitigation efforts, when the key scientists involved in climate research have failed to follow good scientific practice with their data, and make it open.

The climate science “industry” needs to not ignore Climategate but adopt a universal policy of full and open access to all data, and to not treat those with different scientific theories as enemies.

Populus polled the UK on climate change in early November 2009, before Climategate, and again in early February 2010.

The findings, and the changes from November to February are:

• 75% (-8%) agree global warming is happening
• 34% (-16%) of that 75% agree it is an established scientific fact that climate change is largely man-made
• 50% (+11%) say man-made global warming is a widespread theory but has not been conclusively proved
• 14% (+5%) say man-made climate change is environmentalist propaganda with little or no evidence

Now to look at these numbers as shares of the total population, they are:

1. 25% (+8%) say there is no global warming
2. 11% (+4%) say there is global warming but it is natural
3. 38% (+6%) say there is global warming but it has not been conclusively proven it is man-made, however that is the widespread theory
4. 26% (-16%) say that there is global warming and it is an established scientific fact it is largely man-made

So this shows the magnitude of the changes. Those who say it is a fact we have man-made global warming has dropped from 42% to 26%. That is a relative decline of almost 40%, so one in three people who believed global warming is definitely man-made have changed their minds.

UPDATE: This Blunt cartoon seems topical

Poneke has done something very few people have done. He has read every single of the 1,000+ Climategate e-mails. He has a lengthy 4,500 word blog post on his findings. Poneke introduces it by saying:

This is the longest and most important article I’ve yet written for this blog and I make no apology for its 4600 words — more also than in any newspaper article. As a journalist, I believe the Climategate emails have exposed one of the most significant news stories of the decade. As the mainstream news media has so far barely gone beyond giving those who wrote them and their supporters time and space to deny their undeniable contents, I present here an extensive journalistic account of what they actually say in the context of the dates and events in which they were written, with full links to all the emails.

Now, for those who don’t know who Poneke is, or his background – he is not just a “blogger”. He has spent at least a couple of decades in journalism, and I think it is fair to say that he was regarded by many as one of the finest investigative journalists we have had. His work on the Peter Ellis case especially was peerless.

Poneke’s conclusions:

Having now read all the Climategate emails, I can conclusively say they demonstrate a level of scientific chicanery of the most appalling kind that deserves the widest possible public exposure.

The emails reveal that the entire global warming debate and the IPCC process is controlled by a small cabal of climate specialists in England and North America. This cabal, who call themselves “the Team,” bully and smear any critics. They control the “peer review” process for research in the field and use their power to prevent contrary research being published.

The Team’s members are the heart of the IPCC process, many of them the lead authors of its reports.

They falsely claim there is a scientific “consensus” that the “science is settled,” by getting lists of scientists to sign petitions claiming there is such a consensus. They have fought for years to conceal the actual shonky data they have used to wrongly claim there has been unprecedented global warming this past 50 years. Their emailed discussions among each other show they have concocted their data by matching analyses of tree rings from around 1000 AD to 1960, then actual temperatures from 1960 to make it look temperatures have shot up alarmingly since then, after the tree rings from 1960 on inconveniently failed to match observed temperatures.

The emails show that some of them at least concede in private that the world was warmer 1000 years ago (in the Medieval Warm Period) than it is today, but the emails also show they had to get rid of the MWP from the records to claim today’s temperatures are unprecedented.

They show Team members becoming alarmed and despondent at global temperatures peaking in 1998, then slowly falling to the present, while publicly trying to hide the fact that there was a peak and now a decline.

Revealingly, they show them even smugly nominating each other for prestigious awards, using factually wrong details in the information sent in nominating letters in support of the awards.

He looks at the peer review process:

AGWarmers parrot the mantra that their view is supported by learned articles in peer-reviewed scientific journals and that peer-reviewed contrary views cannot be found. The Climategate emails conclusively show that the Team control the peer-reviewed literature, to the extent they “peer review” each other’s reports, and veto publication of research they do not support, bullying the editors and owners of scientific journals.

Worse, though, is the emails’ revelation that even material they put into the hallowed reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was not peer reviewed, and knowingly shabby.

And the “hide the decline” trick:

What this is saying – and no amount of obfuscation can alter the fact – is that a 1000-year “global temperature” chart was created – fabricated – by using tree-ring proxy data from 1000 to 1960, then using actual temperatures from 1961 on, to “hide” the fact that the tree ring proxies showed a “decline” from 1960 onwards. There can not be a more blatant example of using apples and oranges to “prove” a point than this, and they would have got away with it if not for the Climategate whistleblower.

Poneke’s full post is a must read.  It is also the sort of journalism that should be in the mainstream media. Has any daily newspaper assigned a reporter to read all 1,000 e-mails?