UK parliament confirms climate science, deplores secrecy

The UK House of Commons Science and Technology Committee has released its report on the University of East Anglia’s (UEA) climate research unit (CRU), which was triggered by one of the university’s email servers being hacked .

The MP’s criticized UEA for not tackling a “culture of withholding information” among CRU staff but also said Phil Jones, the head of CRU, should have been provided better support from the university in dealing with the numerous freedom of information requests from climate skeptics and deniers. In that regard they cleared Jones and CRU of any wrong doing and said the scientific research produced by CRU was “untarnished.”

The committee expressed displeasure over the “standard practice” among the climate science community of not routinely releasing all its raw data and computer codes, partly confirming controversial evidence provided to the committee by the UK Institute of Physics .

“Climate science is a matter of global importance,” said committee chair Phil Willis. “On the basis of the science, governments across the world will be spending trillions of pounds on climate change mitigation. The quality of the science therefore has to be irreproachable.”

“What this inquiry revealed was that climate scientists need to take steps to make available all the data that support their work and full methodological workings, including their computer codes,” Willis added. “Had both been available, many of the problems at CRU could have been avoided.”

Paul Guinnessy

Related link The disclosure of climate data from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia