IF YOU HAVE NOTHING TO HIDE YOU HAVE NOTHING TO FEAR

This is the standard mantra used when we are told to give up all our privacy and data, and lately even our DNA!

Yet this is curiously not applicable to our governments, and now to climate scientists.

The Commons Science and Technology Committee has released its report on the Climategate story, and is actually quite damning and critical of the CRU, despite the spin given to the report by the mainstream media that Professor Jones has been exonerated.

HE HAS NOT!

He has been seriously criticised for withholding and possibly deleting data that should by law have been released due to FOIA requests.

It doesn't matter if the requests were from climate change sceptics; the requests were made and data should have been released.

The committee tries to sympathise with Jones in saying that witholding data is standard practice in climate science!!

And the committee also expresses its confidence in the 'independence' of the Oxburgh Inquiry into Climategate, even though Lord Oxburgh is chairman of the Carbon Capture and Storage Association and the wind energy company Falck Renewables which stand to make a fortune from the green economy that would arise if the green Nazi policies are implemented.

It's all such a farce!

I quote from the report executive summary.

The disclosure of climate data from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia (UEA) in November 2009 had the potential to damage the reputation of the climate science and the scientists involved.

We believe that the focus on CRU and Professor Phil Jones, Director of CRU, in particular, has largely been misplaced. Whilst we are concerned that the disclosed e-mails suggest a blunt refusal to share scientific data and methodologies with others, we can sympathise with Professor Jones, who must have found it frustrating to handle requests for data that he knew—or perceived—were motivated by a desire simply to undermine his work.

In the context of the sharing of data and methodologies, we consider that Professor Jones’s actions were in line with common practice in the climate science community. It is not standard practice in climate science to publish the raw data and the computer code in academic papers. However, climate science is a matter of great importance and the quality of the science should be irreproachable. We therefore consider that climate scientists should take steps to make available all the data that support their work (including raw data) and full methodological workings (including the computer codes). Had both been available, many of the problems at UEA could have been avoided.

We are content that the phrases such as “trick” or “hiding the decline” were colloquial terms used in private e-mails and the balance of evidence is that they were not part of a systematic attempt to mislead. Likewise the evidence that we have seen does not suggest that Professor Jones was trying to subvert the peer review process. Academics should not be criticised for making informal comments on academic papers. In the context of Freedom of Information (FOIA), much of the responsibility should lie with UEA. The disclosed e-mails appear to show a culture of non-disclosure at CRU and instances where information may have been deleted, to avoid disclosure. We found prima facie evidence to suggest that the UEA found ways to support the culture at CRU of resisting disclosure of information to climate change sceptics. The failure of UEA to grasp fully the potential damage to CRU and UEA by the non-disclosure of FOIA requests was regrettable. UEA needs to review its policy towards FOIA and re-assess how it can support academics whose expertise in this area is limited.

The Deputy Information Commissioner has given a clear indication that a breach of the
Freedom of Information Act 2000 may have occurred but that a prosecution was timebarred; however no investigation has been carried out. In our view it is unsatisfactory to leave the matter unresolved. We conclude that the matter needs to be resolved conclusively—either by the Independent Climate Change Email Review or by the Information Commissioner.

We accept the independence of the Climate Change E-mail Review and recommend that
the Review be open and transparent, taking oral evidence and conducting interviews in
public wherever possible.

On 22 March UEA announced the Scientific Appraisal Panel to be chaired by Lord
Oxburgh. This Panel should determine whether the work of CRU has been soundly built
and it would be premature for us to pre-judge its work.