So, no conspiracy, no collusion, no manipulation of data, no corruption of the peer-review process, no scandal; just an understandable reluctance to hand over data to dishonest people with a history of misrepresenting it.
Squibs don’t get much damper than “Climategate”. The most worrying aspect of the drama was the way in which most of the media ditched any attempt at assessing the claims and became caught up in the frenzy, when a couple of hours spent reading the emails and talking to one of two of those involved would have made the conclusions of the House of Commons inquiry entirely predictable.
That’s CP’s favorite Australian ethicist Clive Hamilton in his ABC column, “Climategate: The lion that squeaked.” Note that a “damp squib” is an explosive dud, “a firework that fails to go off, due to wetting,” like say, the Segway, questions about Obama’s place of birth, or anything Geraldo Rivera reports on.
I don’t think “damp squib” will catch on, though, nor did “Swifthack,” so offer your own suggestions for renaming the non-gate. Gotta be catchier than TSFKAC to give the status quo media something to write about. They lavished coverage on TSFKAC, but it has mostly been crickets chirping on the exoneration of Phil Jones by the House of Commons. At the very least, CP needs something to call it.
Here’s Hamilton’s whole piece:
It was the “final nail in the coffin” of global warming science, declared James Delingpole of London’s Daily Telegraph, the moment you should start dumping shares in renewable energy companies.
Lord Monckton announced that it proved beyond doubt “the abject corruption of climate science”.
“The reputation of British science has been seriously tarnished”, thundered Lord Lawson and in the United States Senator James Inhofe went so far as to recommend that all those involved should be chased down for criminal prosecution.
Our own Lord of Blog Andrew Bolt declared it “a scandal that is one of the greatest in modern science”, an outrage in which leading scientists were guilty of “conspiracy, collusion in exaggerating warming data, possibly illegal destruction of embarrassing information, organised resistance to disclosure, manipulation of data, private admissions of flaws in their public claims and much more”.
Across the globe, denialists were cock-a-hoop. At last, the leaking of emails from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia had vindicated everything they believed, even the conspiracy theories about which they were a little embarrassed.
Except that the leaked emails that sent the denial industry into a heart-stopping frenzy have turned out to be the mouse that squeaked. That roar we heard was generated in the denialist echo chamber.
Today the Science and Technology Committee of the British House of Commons brought down its report into “Climategate”. What did it find?
1. There was nothing untoward behind the “trick” used to “hide the decline” in the temperature record. The phrases were colloquial terms without any sinister implications. The Committee found that the “evidence patently fails to support” the claim that these words reveal a conspiracy to hide evidence that does not fit with global warming, and that CRU Director Professor Phil Jones has “no case to answer”.
2. The results and conclusions of CRU research have been independent verified by other methodologies and other sources of data. The Unit’s analyses “have been repeated and the conclusions have been verified”.
3. There is no evidence to suggest that Professor Jones was trying to subvert the peer review process.
4. While 95 per cent of the CRU data have been publicly available for years and some of the remainder is subject to confidentiality agreements with overseas organisations, the report did find that CRU scientists had refused to hand over their data to climate “sceptics” and the University may have breached the Freedom of Information Act.
Despite this finding, the Committee wrote that it “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.”
The University of East Anglia had submitted that in “July 2009 UEA received an unprecedented, and frankly administratively overwhelming, deluge of FOIA requests related to CRU”, which helps to explain why the Committee noted a “culture at CRU of resisting disclosure of information to climate change sceptics”.
The Committee blamed the failure to release data on the relevant officers at the University who should have stepped in to over-rule the scientists. “We believe that the focus on CRU and Professor Phil Jones, Director of CRU, in particular, has largely been misplaced”, concluded the Committee, and recommended Jones be reinstated.
So, no conspiracy, no collusion, no manipulation of data, no corruption of the peer-review process, no scandal; just an understandable reluctance to hand over data to dishonest people with a history of misrepresenting it.
Squibs don’t get much damper than “Climategate”. The most worrying aspect of the drama was the way in which most of the media ditched any attempt at assessing the claims and became caught up in the frenzy, when a couple of hours spent reading the emails and talking to one of two of those involved would have made the conclusions of the House of Commons inquiry entirely predictable.
The winner of the contest to rename TSFKAC gets the contents of Al Capone’s vault.
Related Posts:
- The top 5 ways the ‘birthers’ are like the deniers
- Nature editorial: “Nothing in the e-mails undermines the scientific case that global warming is real — or that human activities are almost certainly the cause.”
- Debunking Misinformation About Stolen Climate Emails
- Here’s what we know so far: CRU’s emails were hacked, the 2000s will easily be the hottest decade on record, and the planet keeps warming thanks to us!
- Michael Mann updates the world on the latest climate science and responds to the illegally hacked emails
- Select Committee Staff Analysis debunks stolen climate email myths
