Defenders of the scientists involved in Climategate often say the same thing: “the emails don’t prove anything…Climategate is just a diversion…” and, my personal favorite from The Economist (and winner for understatement of the year), “the leaked e-mails do not show climate scientists at their best.” Ya think?
The defenders have also made the point that climate science goes way beyond the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia (the center of the email scandal). They insist that climate science and research occurs at other institutions and therefore the agreed- upon theory of man-caused global warming still holds true.
Fine, I’ll give them that. They’re right. Climate research does occur in other places. So, let’s take a look at the behavior at some of those other places:
David Harsanyi writes about his experience with climate scientists yesterday over at RealClearPolitics. He explains that he, giving the scientists the benefit of the doubt, tried to obtain raw data from Kevin Trenberth, head of the Climate Analysis Section at The National Center for Atmospheric Research (a American research facility that received 95 percent of its funding from the federal government). Shortly after sending his request, Harsanyi “was informed by NCAR’s counsel that the organization is, in fact, not a federal agency — because its budget is laundered through the National Science Foundation — and thus is under no obligation to provide information to the public.” So much for transparency.
Harsanyi also cites the case of Competitive Enterprise Institute Fellow Chris Horner who is now having to pursue a lawsuit in order to get NASA ‘s Goddard Institute for Space Studies to release some of its raw data on climate change.
Also yesterday, the latest bombshell, reported by James Delingpole at the Telegraph, that the Russians have now confirmed that that British climate scientists manipulated data to exaggerate global warming.
On Tuesday, the Moscow-based Institute of Economic Analysis (IEA) issued a report claiming that the Hadley Center for Climate Change based at the headquarters of the British Meteorological Office in Exeter (Devon, England) had probably tampered with Russian-climate data.
The IEA believes that Russian meteorological-station data did not substantiate the anthropogenic global-warming theory. Analysts say Russian meteorological stations cover most of the country’s territory, and that the Hadley Center had used data submitted by only 25% of such stations in its reports. Over 40% of Russian territory was not included in global-temperature calculations for some other reasons, rather than the lack of meteorological stations and observations.
Read Delingpole’s entire fascinating article here.
The bottom line, the defenders are right…it isn’t just East Anglia…the corruption of climate science is everywhere.