UK Institute of Physics clarifies climate statement
DOI: 10.1063/PT.4.0950
The UK’s Institute of Physics (IOP) is facing a backlash to a 10 February statement submitted to the House of Commons Science and Technology committee on the recent climate research unit (CRU) emails that were released into the public domain after someone hacked their email servers .
The IOP statement says that the disclosed e-mails from the CRU threaten the “integrity of scientific research in this field.
The statement was seen by many inside and outside the physics community as being too harsh on Phil Jones , the head of the CRU and playing into the hand of skeptics reports the Guardian .
The IOP, although confirming that the statement was written and approved by their energy subcommittee of its science board , refuses to name the authors of the statement. The move has lead calls in the community for the institute itself to be more open. Some IOP members are asking why it was the energy and not the environmental physics group that worked on the statement.
Peter Gill, an energy industry consultant who had publicly argued in an IOP newsletter that the role carbon dioxide plays global warming should be downplayed is a member of the energy sub-committee and confirmed to the Guardian that some of his suggestions, but not all, were in the IOP statement.
Arnold Wolfendale, past president of the IOP (1994-1996) told Physics World‘s Michael Banks (which is owned by IOP) that the evidence is “not worthy” of IOP and that the submission “further muddies the waters regarding global warming”.
Climatologist and IOP member Andy Russell from the University of Manchester, says , “If the IOP continues to stand by this statement then I will have no other option but to reconsider my membership.” He says the allegation of data suppression is “incorrect and irresponsible”.
Shortly afterwards the IOP released a new statement
We regret that our submission has been seized upon by some individuals to imply that IOP does not support the scientific evidence that the rising concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is contributing to global warming.
IOP’s position on global warming is clear: the basic science is well established and there is no doubt that climate change is happening and that we should be taking action to address it now.
The evidence to the Committee was focused however on the need to maintain the integrity, openness and unbiased nature of the scientific process. The key points it makes are ones to which we are deeply committed - ie that science should be communicated openly and reviewed in an unbiased way. However much we sympathise with the way in which CRU researchers have been confronted with hostile requests for information, we believe the case for openness remains just as strong.
Only three members of IOP’s science board approved the initial statement. The Guardian contacted several members of the board, including its chairman, Denis Weaire, a physicist at Trinity College Dublin. All said that they had little direct role in the submission.
Eric Steig , an isotope geochemist at the University of Washington and a contributor to the realclimate.org blog wonders how much more open climate science could get . Said Steig, “I know of none that is more transparent than climate science.”
Paul Guinnessy
More about the authors
Paul Guinnessy, pguinnes@aip.org
