UK inquiry clears climate scientists in email row

Peter Griffiths, Reuters 14 Apr 10;

LONDON (Reuters) - An inquiry cleared British climate researchers of wrongdoing on Wednesday after their emails were hacked, leaked and held up by skeptics as evidence they had exaggerated the case for man-made global warming.

Former government adviser Ronald Oxburgh, who chaired the panel, said he had found no evidence of scientific malpractice or attempts to distort the facts to support the mainstream view that manmade CO2 emissions contribute to rising temperatures.

The affair stoked the global debate on climate change and put pressure on scientists and politicians to defend the case for spending trillions of dollars to cut emissions and help cope with rising temperatures.

Thousands of emails sent between scientists were published on the internet just before the United Nations climate talks in Copenhagen last December.

Campaigners who doubt the scientific basis for saying global warming is manmade said the leaked messages showed that the research unit at East Anglia University had taken part in a conspiracy to distort or exaggerate the evidence.

The university, in eastern England, appointed Oxburgh to investigate the Climatic Research Unit's methods.

"We saw no evidence of any deliberate scientific malpractice," Oxburgh's inquiry concluded. "Rather, we found a small group of dedicated, if slightly disorganized, researchers.

"We found them to be objective and dispassionate and there was no hint of tailoring results to a particular agenda."

Its strongest criticism was aimed at the unit's handling of statistics. It recommended that the researchers work more closely with professional statisticians in future.

Oxburgh's was the second of three inquiries into the episode to report its findings. Police are also investigating the leak.

Last month, a British parliamentary committee cleared the unit of manipulating the evidence, but criticized its handling of requests for information made by outsiders under freedom of information laws.

The third and most comprehensive inquiry, led by former civil servant Muir Russell, is due to end in May.

Dr Benny Peiser, director of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, a climate change skeptics' thinktank, said the inquiry was "rushed and superficial."

"They want to restore the trust of the public and the credibility of the researchers and that is an honorable thing to do," he said. "But they should have done a proper job."

(Editing by Tim Pearce)

'No deliberate malpractice' in British climate row
Yahoo News 14 Apr 10;

LONDON (AFP) – A review of the work of one of the world's leading climate research centres, launched after a major scandal last year, concluded Wednesday there had been no deliberate scientific malpractice.

The University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit (CRU) became embroiled in a worldwide row after more than 1,000 emails were hacked from the university's server and posted online.

Sceptics claimed the messages showed evidence scientists were trying to exaggerate the case for global warming in the run-up to December's UN climate talks aimed at striking a new accord to tackle climate change.

An independent panel, led by Lord Ron Oxburgh, was asked by the university last month to look into claims that the CRU's data had been dishonestly selected or manipulated, and concluded Wednesday it had not.

"We saw no evidence of any deliberate scientific malpractice in any of the work of the Climatic Research Unit, and had it been there we believe that it is likely that we would have detected it," the panel said.

However, it added: "It is very surprising that research in an area that depends so heavily on statistical methods has not been carried out in close collaboration with professional statisticians."

A parliamentary inquiry last month cleared the CRU scientists of wrongdoing, while a third investigation launched in December has yet to report back.