Stolen Climate Change Emails To Be Investigated
The University of East Anglia announced Thursday it is formally investigating whether scientists at its prestigious Climatic Research Unit falsified data on global warming studies, The Associated Press reported.
In late November, emails between some of the world’s leading climate scientists were stolen from the university and leaked to the Internet.
As a result, skeptics of man-made global warming say the emails are proof that scientists have been conspiring to hide evidence showing that global warming was not as devastating as scientists said.
The director of the unit, Phil Jones, stepped down Tuesday pending the result of the investigation. Thursday’s announcement was the first acknowledgment that the research itself would be under scrutiny.
East Anglia said in a statement that its review would examine the emails and other information “to determine whether there is any evidence of the manipulation or suppression of data which is at odds with acceptable scientific practice.”
The email theft and their resulting publication online sparked a political uproar over the controversy surrounding man-made climate change.
However, researchers say their content has no bearing on the principles of climate change itself, yet the controversy appeared only weeks before the U.N. summit on global warming.
Meanwhile, the revelation that the university had thrown out much of the raw temperature data on which some of its global warming research was based sparked even more criticism.
The data, stored on paper and magnetic tape, was dumped in the 1980s to save space when the unit moved to a new location, according to a statement from the university, issued last week.
Some lawmakers in Britain argue that the release of the data shows that critics of climate change want to wreck any global agreement on reducing greenhouse gas emissions that could be achieved at the U.N. climate change summit in Copenhagen on Dec. 7-18.
“Those challenging the mainstream scientific view on climate change are irresponsible and dangerous,” said Ed Miliband, Britain’s climate change secretary.
Miliband told reporters they had to beware of the climate saboteurs and those who want to cast aspersions on the whole process.
Now, House Republicans and U.S. lawmaker James Sensenbrenner say that the emails show the world needs to re-examine experts’ claims that the science on warming is settled.
Sensenbrenner read out loud some of Jones’ email messages at a hearing Wednesday in Washington, including one in which Jones wrote about a “trick of adding in the real temps” in an exchange about long-term climate trends.
“I would like to see the climate change happen so the science could be proved right,” read another of Jones’ emails.
But the emails don’t change the fact that the earth is warming, scientists say.
Jane Lubchenco, the head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said the emails do nothing to undermine the very strong scientific consensus that tells us the earth is warming, that warming is largely a result of human activity.
Lubchenco argued that the emails don’t negate or even deal with data from her agency or the U.S. space agency NASA, which keep independent climate records that show dramatic global warming effects on the Earth.
Miliband said sections of the East Anglia emails that appear to show that scientists had manipulated data, or attempted to suppress contradictory evidence, had been largely taken out of context.
He maintained that one chain of emails does not undo scientific consensus that is broadly based and relatively universal.
Penn State University is also examining e-mails by its own researcher, Michael Mann.
“We need maximum transparency including about all the data but it’s also very, very important to say one chain of emails, potentially misrepresented, does not undo the global science,” Miliband said.
“I think we want to send a very clear message to people about that.”
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