The British Government's Science and Technology Committee (click title to entry - thank you) have today released their report into the disclosure of climate data from the University of East Anglia, largely exonerating Professor Phil Jones and the rest of the university's Climatic Research Unit (CRU). Professor Jones (pictured above), the director of the CRU, became the centre of a global media whirlwind late last year after the university's servers were hacked and several years worth of his team's personal email correspondence were released onto the internet. Climate sceptics used phrases from these emails to attack the CRU and Climate Science as a whole; however the committee today concluded that there is no evidence to challenge the "scientific consensus" that global warming is induced by human activities.
Much of the furore focused on two particular phrases in the emails - "trick" and "hiding the decline." However, today's report accepted that they were colloquial terms used in private e-mails and the "balance of evidence is that they were not part of a systematic attempt to mislead." The report also noted that Phil Jones and his workmates were scapegoats on whom the focus had been "largely misplaced." It went on to blame the university itself for its poor handling of freedom of information requests and a culture of non-disclosure....
