I’ve not been kind to New Scientist in the past. Examples:
I am, however, largely in agreement with their recent editorial on the Climategate “investigations”:
Without candour, we can’t trust climate science
Some excerpts:
IS CLIMATEGATE finally over? It ought to be, with the publication of the third UK report into the emails leaked from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU). Incredibly, none looked at the quality of the science itself.
Oxburgh declared “the science was not the subject of our study“. Finally, last week came former civil servant Muir Russell’s 150-page report. Like the others, he lambasted the CRU for its secrecy but upheld its integrity – despite declaring his study “was not about… the content or quality of [CRU's] scientific work“
They have not studied hundreds of thousands more unpublished emails from the CRU. Surely openness would require their release.
All this, plus the failure to investigate whether emails were deleted to prevent their release under freedom of information laws, makes it harder to accept Russell’s conclusion that the “rigour and honesty” of the scientists concerned “are not in doubt”.
When panels such as these don’t even look at the real issues, such as whether emails were deleted, what else are we supposed to do but proclaim the proceedings a whitewash?
Phil Jones’ emails are very clear, and no other context is needed:
May 29, 2008
From: Phil Jones
To: “Michael E. Mann”
Subject: IPCC & FOI
Date: Thu May 29 11:04:11 2008
Mike,
Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4? Keith will do likewise. He’s not in at the moment – minor family crisis. Can you also email Gene and get him to do the same? I don’t have his new email address.
We will be getting Caspar to do likewise.
I see that CA claim they discovered the 1945 problem in the Nature paper!!
Cheers
Phil
December 4, 2008, in an email:
”About 2 months ago I deleted loads of emails, so have very little – if anything at all.”
November 24, 2009, in the Guardian UK:
“We’ve not deleted any emails or data here at CRU.”
Read the emails yourself and draw your own conclusions.
Update 7/23/2010: Steve McIntyre covers the entire “deleted” issue in much greater detail here.
