Climategate scientist breaks his silence

international | environment | other press

Thursday July 29, 2010 14:15

by Oswald Bastable

New Scient interviews Phil Jones, director of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, UK. Full text at url.

Do you feel that climate science and policy should be separate?

PJ I think there should be some separation. What we say about the science should be treated separately from what's happening with the policy. There should be an acceptance that the climate has warmed since measurements began. OK, there's then debate about what caused that warming. But I do find it difficult engaging with people who deny the evidence and say the world has not warmed.

Some of your critics say the emails revealed distortions of peer review. In one, for instance, you wrote about keeping papers out of the IPCC report "even if we have to redefine peer review literature".

PJ Muir Russell showed that to be wrong. He found there was no perversion of the peer-review process. The papers that we were referring to in that email were bad science. One was involved in a long saga in which half the editorial board of the journal that published it resigned. This relates to another issue I've always had difficulty with. I think there are too many journals - and more are coming in climate. So if our critics use the excuse that they can't get papers in scientific journals... well, there are enough journals around. Getting work published is not a problem.

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Comments (2 of 2)

Words ending in "...gate."

by Climatologist.

Sun Aug 01, 2010 16:35

The word "Climategate" is concocted.

Either we are changing the climate or we are not changinging the climate.

The evidence suggests that we are changing the climate.

No matter how many words ending in "..gate" you concoct.

Climategate data sets to be made public

Thu Jul 29, 2010 14:19

Plenty of information being released. More data and relevant links at url.

Climate-change sceptics who clamoured for raw data are to get all their Christmases at once.

The Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia (UEA) in the UK, recently at the centre of the hacked emails controversy, is launching a pilot study into how best to make public three major temperature data sets and detailed records of how they are processed. They will include data repeatedly requested by climate sceptics under freedom of information legislation.

It is not always obvious how complicated data sets – gathered from thousands of temperature monitoring stations around the world, for example – are turned into chronological descriptions of global warming, says Tim Osborn of UEA. The independent Muir Russell review, published this month, said the difficulties of integrating information from emails and on the servers of different institutions contributed to the accusations of malpractice at the centre of last November's climategate storm. The pilot is a response to these allegations.

It will not be as simple as putting the numbers online, as the data sets are frequently updated, and the steps leading to updates will also be made clear.

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Climategate scientist breaks his silence

Comments (2 of 2)