Scientists Out in Cold

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THE Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia in Britain compiles data on the global temperature record and then distributes this information worldwide – including to the Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) and the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). 

About three weeks ago, email correspondence between the Director of CRU, Phil Jones, and some of the world’s leading climate scientists was leaked.  

Professor Jones never denied that the more than 1,000 emails, some dating back over a decade, were real or that their public release had the potential to be very damaging for climate science – particularly the case for man-made global warming.

Then last week – on the same day the Liberal Party elected widely acknowledged ‘climate sceptic’, Tony Abbott, as its new leader – Professor Jones stepped aside, pending the outcome of an inquiry into allegations of fraud within the CRU. 

In one email, which was dated May 29, 2008, Dr Jones directs his colleagues to destroy email correspondence subject to a Freedom of Information (FOI) request. 

In another email it is suggested that climate scientists boycott a technical journal because it will publish the work of sceptics.    

Professor Jones and other IPCC scientists have publically dismiss the lack of global warming since 1998 as just a blip in an otherwise warming trend – but it is interesting that the group are not as confident in their private emails.  For example, on October 14, 2009, Kevin Trenberth head of the Climate Analysis Section at the National Centre for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, and a leader author of the last IPCC report, wrote: “We can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't.” 

Scanning through the leaked emails it is apparent that many scientists who advise the IPCC are more concerned with politics and reputation than science. 

And it appears the intrigue extends to Australia. 

In one email, a request is made by Adam Markham, then International Climate Campaign Director at the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), to Mike Hulme at the CRU, that he “beef-up” a section of a report on drought and extreme weather to provide ammunition to Australian scientists at the CSIRO in support of a planned “big public splash” on the issue by WWF-Australia.   

Of course the conduct of a group of climate scientists, however wrong and offensive, does not necessarily prove or disprove global warming. 

But it does reflect on the quality of the science and the data being used to justify new legislation and regulation including the Carbon Pollution Reduction Bill here in Australia.

New Liberal leader, Mr Abbott, is on the public record saying he accepts climate conditions may change, but he is unconvinced by the science of man-made global warming and he has even called it “crap”. The leaked emails suggest Mr Abbott might be right.  

Published in The Land

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