Philip Jones steps down as head of Climatic Research Unit

And the story is reported in the New York Times, no less, with the paper of record coming right out and declaring in the third paragraph that the leaked e-mail exchanges at the CRU “appear to reveal efforts to keep the work of skeptical scientists out of major journals and the possible hoarding and manipulation of data to overstate the case for human-caused climate change.”

I’m stunned that the Times admits so much, so plainly. Anyone wanting to defend the warmists could have continued arguing that the meaning of the fragmented e-mail exchanges is ambiguous and uncertain. Even more than Jones’s stepping aside, the Times’ concession of apparent CRU wrongdoing represents a surrender by the anthropogenic global warming proponents. It’s the AGW equivalent of the head of the Communist Party USA admitting that Solzhenitsyn was apparently right about the Soviet Union.

[Note: the analogy is not quite right; see correction below.]

December 2, 2009
Climatologist Leaves Post in Inquiry Over E-Mail Leaks
By JOHN M. BRODER

The head of the British research unit at the center of a controversy over the disclosure of thousands of e-mail messages among climate-change scientists has stepped down pending the outcome of an investigation.

Phil Jones, the director of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in England, said that he would leave his post while the university conducted a review of the release of the e-mail messages. The university has called the release and publication of the messages a “criminal breach” of the school’s computer systems.

The e-mail exchanges among several prominent American and British climate-change scientists appear to reveal efforts to keep the work of skeptical scientists out of major journals and the possible hoarding and manipulation of data to overstate the case for human-caused climate change.

In a related announcement, Pennsylvania State University said it would review the work of a faculty member who is cited prominently in the e-mail messages, Michael Mann, to assure that it meets proper academic standards.

Skeptics have seized upon the disclosures to call into question years of efforts to document changes to the climate and its causes. Republicans in Congress have begun an investigation into the work of the scientists who sent the messages—many of whom have conducted much of their research with money from the federal government—and the scientific and policy decisions that may have flowed from them.

The British university has contended that the messages were illegally obtained by a hacker, who posted them on Web sites of groups critical of the current scientific consensus that human activity has caused dangerous changes to the global climate.

Professor Jones, in a statement issued by the climate research unit, said, “What is most important is that C.R.U. continues its world-leading research with as little interruption and diversion as possible.” He added that “the best way to achieve this is by stepping aside from the director’s role during the course of the independent review.”

For more than a week, the episode has fueled a fierce debate on the blogosphere and in newspaper opinion columns and once again placed global warming science under intense scrutiny.

Senator James M. Inhofe, a Republican of Oklahoma who is the most outspoken climate-change skeptic in Congress, renewed his call for an investigation on Tuesday.

“The e-mails reveal possible deceitful manipulation of important data and research,” Mr. Inhofe wrote.

[end of Times article]

- end of initial entry -

A reader writes from England:

You wrote:

“It’s the AGW equivalent of the head of the Communist Party USA admitting that Solzhenitsyn was apparently right about the Soviet Union”

I think this is more like Kruschev denouncing Stalin once he was safely dead. Jones is going under the bus to save Anthropogenic Climate Change, not to bury it. This way they can present it as a story of individual wrongdoing, not the revelation that the whole Global Warming case is based on a tissue of lies.

LA replies:

I thank the reader for this. As I was writing it, I felt that my analogy wasn’t quite right, went a tad too far, but I couldn’t put my finger on what was wrong or how to fix it.

Tim W. writes:

Now that the Times has hinted that the “scientific consensus” on global warming has been manufactured, they should send some of their reporters to investigate Al Gore. Just how much money did this charlatan make over the past few years promoting a lie? Give Gore credit for one thing: He’s adept at making money no matter which way the winds blow. His first fortune came from tobacco and oil. When those industries became toxic for politicians, he crusaded against them and earned an even bigger fortune blaming oil for heating up the planet. Of course, he kept his prior fortune even as he was making a new one. He also won a Nobel prize, an Oscar, a Grammy, and tears galore at the Democratic Convention for his tirades against the sources of his wealth. Maybe the adroit Gore can accumulate a third fortune selling heating oil during the upcoming Great Cooling.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at December 02, 2009 09:27 AM | Send