Global warming? Not in the last fifteen years. The concession of this fact by one of the leading advocates of the theory of manmade climate change is the latest development in the rocky post-Climategate world.
Prof. Phil Jones, the former director of the Climate Research Unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia, was among the scientists who was embarrassed by the Climategate revelations.
In the aftermath of Climategate, Jones stood as one of the individuals at the very nexus of the scandal.
As scientists and independent journalists began to demand the data to verify claims of anthropogenic global warming, Jones and the CRU found themselves at the center of undesired attention as it became clear that a release of all the original data would not be forthcoming.
Actually, it turned out that the CRU destroyed much of the original data. As the Times of London reported,
The data were gathered from weather stations around the world and then adjusted to take account of variables in the way they were collected. The revised figures were kept, but the originals — stored on paper and magnetic tape — were dumped to save space when the CRU moved to a new building.
The admission follows the leaking of a thousand private emails sent and received by Professor Phil Jones, the CRU’s director. In them he discusses thwarting climate sceptics seeking access to such data.
In a statement on its website, the CRU said: “We do not hold the original raw data but only the value-added (quality controlled and homogenised) data.”
At one point, Jones claimed that some climate data could not be released for independent scientific verification because of “confidentiality agreements”—meanwhile claiming that he could not remember with which governments such agreements had been made.
Now, Prof. Jones is blaming his poor record keeping for the troubles, and is conceding that the past fifteen years have shown no sign of climate change. According to a Daily Mail report:
The academic at the centre of the ‘Climategate’ affair, whose raw data is crucial to the theory of climate change, has admitted that he has trouble ‘keeping track’ of the information.
Colleagues say that the reason Professor Phil Jones has refused Freedom of Information requests is that he may have actually lost the relevant papers.
Professor Jones told the BBC yesterday there was truth in the observations of colleagues that he lacked organisational skills, that his office was swamped with piles of paper and that his record keeping is ‘not as good as it should be’.
The data is crucial to the famous ‘hockey stick graph’ used by climate change advocates to support the theory.
Professor Jones also conceded the possibility that the world was warmer in medieval times than now – suggesting global warming may not be a man-made phenomenon.
And he said that for the past 15 years there has been no ‘statistically significant’ warming.
The notion that the nations of the world gathered in Copenhagen in December of last year to consider treaties which would have fundamentally altered the global economy, and could have ended national sovereignty in any meaningful sense of the term, on account of the contended theory of manmade global warming is unbelievable enough. To now learn that such inexcusable sloppiness regarding the handling of the alleged data which is being invoked to support such actions strains credulity.
The fiasco known at the "climate change theory" ought to call into question the presumptions of elements of the scientific community which have become accustomed to delivering pronouncements from on high. Credentials are no substitute for science, and the assertion of a theory does not establish that theory as fact.
Photo of UN’s climate chief Yvo de Boer: AP Images
