Changing Climate

They tried to tell us the so-called "Climategate" emails were insignificant but now left-wing British paper The Guardian once the leading voice for climate change alarmism admits that the whole Climategate scandal has changed the practice of climatology, despite the whitewashing "investigations".

‘’The release of the emails was a turning point,’’ Mike Hulme, professor of climate change at the University of East Anglia, told The Guardian . ‘’...Already there is a new tone. Researchers are more upfront, open and explicit about their uncertainties.’’

Bob Ward, policy director of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change at the London School of Economics, said researchers had to accept that the affair would not only result in their own science being judged but also their motives, professionalism, integrity and ‘’all those other qualities that are considered important in public life’’.

The Climategate controversy erupted last November, weeks before the Copenhagen summit. It was sparked by the leaking of thousands of emails belonging to the University of East Anglia and their publication online.

The emails, mostly between Dr Phil Jones, director of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia and colleagues both in Britain and the US, appeared to reveal a systematic attempt to evade freedom of information requests as well as open discussion on ways to play down research findings that did not fit within the framework of steadily rising global temperatures.

The scientists also appeared to work actively to stop the publication of rivals’ work in peer-reviewed papers. Hans von Storch of the KGSS Research Centre in Geesthacht, Germany, told the newspaper that trust had been damaged by the affair:

‘’People now find it conceivable that scientists cheat and manipulate, and understand that scientists need societal supervision as any other societal institution,’’ he said…

Judith Curry, of the Georgia Institute of Technology, the scientist who has worked hard to try to reconcile warring factions, said the idea of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change scientists as ‘’self-appointed oracles, enhanced by the Nobel prize, is now in tatters’’…

The furore had laid bare ‘’the seamy side of peer review and consensus building in the IPCC assessment reports.’’

From Andrew Bolt's blog