Third inquiry into 'Climategate' clears scientists of dishonesty

THE THIRD inquiry into 'Climategate' has again cleared scientistsat the University of East Anglia's (UEA) Climatic Research Unit(CRU) of dishonesty in the presentation of data on global warming,but called on them to be more open with the public.

Conducted by Sir Muir Russell, a retired British civil servant,the inquiry found that their "honesty and rigour" were "not indoubt" and there was "no evidence" of behaviour that would undermineassessments by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change(IPCC).

But the Russell report, commissioned by the UEA and publishedyesterday, said: "We do find that there has been a consistentpattern of failing to display the proper degree of openness, both onthe part of CRU scientists and on the part of the UEA."

The Climategate controversy erupted last November after stillunknown hackers broke into the CRU's computer database and retrievednumerous e-mails between the unit's director, Dr Phil Jones, hiscolleagues and others in the wider scientific community.

Circulated like a virus on the internet by climate changesceptics and deniers, the most infamous of these e-mails referred toDr Jones using a "trick" to "hide the decline" in the rate of globalwarming; this, more than anything else, undermined the CRU'sscientific credibility.

The Russell report rejected that conclusion, but said the CRUgraph - which appeared on the front cover of the WorldMeteorological Organisation's 1999 report on climate change - was"misleading" because it didn't explain how the underlying data hadbeen derived.

In the run-up to last December's Copenhagen climate summit, itprovided very welcome and seemingly damning material for sceptics toargue their case that there was no real basis for the "theory" ofman-made climate change, due mainly to the burning of fossil fuels.

Announcing his findings, Sir Muir said: "Ultimately this has tobe about what they did, not what they said". And he made it clearthat "we have not found any evidence of behaviour that mightundermine the conclusions of the IPCC assessments" of a warmingclimate.

His report criticised the CRU scientists for being "defensive"and the UEA for being "unhelpful" in responding to requests underBritain's Freedom of Information Act.

The fact that many of these requests were being made by scepticslooking for ammunition probably accounted for their reticence aboutreleasing it.

However, the scientists were cleared of accusations that they hadsubverted peer review processes and censored the findings of rivalsby keeping them out of scientific journals, as most of the data atthe heart of the controversy was available to any "competent"researcher, the inquiry found.

The report said there was also a need "for alternative viewpointsto be recognised in policy presentations, with a robust assessmentof their validity, and for the challenges to be rooted in sciencerather than rhetoric".