Britain Launches Independent Climate Change Research Inquiry

Following on the heels of controversy surrounding the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the UK’s University of East Anglia announced today it will widen its inquity into the so-called ‘climategate’ scandal that preceded Copenhagen talks.

The UEA has invited outside assistance from the Royal Society, Britain’s national academy.

Sir Muir Russell, who recently retired as vice-chancellor of Glasgow University, will head the investigation into  the way the unit handled data, including allegations UEA scientists manipulated and suppressed evidence.

The other panel members are: Geoffrey Boulton and Peter Clarke of Edinburgh University; Phil Campbell, editor-in-chief of the journal Nature; David Eyton, head of research and technology at BP; and Jim Norton, an IT expert and external examiner for the Institute of Directors. A report of their findings is due by the end of May 2010.

Julian Morris, executive director of International Policy Network, a think-tank that is sceptical of human-caused climate change, said: “It is not clear to me that you can have an authoritative statement on climate change, as the science has not been settled. I don’t think this can be resolved by having the Royal Society [involved].”

At least one organization representing man-made climate change sceptics, and connected to the International Policy Network, is Civil Society Coalition on Climate Changes. The core substance of this debate isn’t whether or not climate change is occuring. The focus is on causation.

We do not follow arguments that there is no climate change occuring unless new discoveries of falsified information turns every bit of environmental science inside out.

The Financial Times (fee-based, depending on your number of visits) lists key questions that will be investigated:

1) Did scientists ignore potential problems with tree-ring data that might have undermined the validity of findings that indicated a sudden recent rise in global temperatures?

2) Did the climate research unit play down the significance of data that might appear to conflict with the hypothesis that human activity is responsible for the sudden rise in temperatures?

3) Were temperature deductions and instrumental temperature data improperly combined to conceal mismatches between the two?

4) Was there improper bias in selecting and adjusting data to favour a certain global warming hypothesis, and were details of weather station sites and data adjustments not made adequately available?

5) Were there improper attempts to influence the peer review system and Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change procedures in attempting to prevent the publication of opposing ideas?

6) Was there a failure to make important figures available or the procedures used to analyse them?

7) Were accurate records kept of data sets, algorithms and software used in the climate data analysis?

8) Did the research unit respond correctly to requests made under the UK’s Freedom of Information Act?

Anne of Carversville doesn’t even have a friend, who is a climate scientist. Nevertheless, we have inquiring minds and these are our questions about the research process:

9} Separate from suppressing contradictory climate change evidence — which is willful — to what degree is climate change based on linear thinking conclusions, rather than an interactive, holistic multi-dimensional global, interactive model?

10) Is there a super agency, not only responsible for processing new climate change research, but for adding it to a holistic model that says ‘woops, based on new researching finding E, A & D conclusions are now invalidated or suspect?

11) Is every possible contributor to a climate change problem investigated? To what extent is politics part of the decision?  The idea that scientists never investigated India’s carbon-particles contribution to glaciers melting in the Himalayas is a stunning ommission.

We will add our questions as a media request to the review process. Anne