CBS News

The first of several British investigations into the e-mails leaked from one of the world’s leading climate research centers has largely vindicated the scientists involved. The House of Commons’ Science and Technology Committee said Wednesday that they’d seen no evidence to support charges that the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit or its director, Phil Jones, had tampered with data or perverted the peer review process to exaggerate the threat of global warming two of the most serious criticisms levied against the climatologist and his colleagues.

In their report, the committee said that, as far as it was able to ascertain, “the scientific reputation of Professor Jones and CRU remains intact,” adding that nothing in the more than 1,000 stolen e-mails, or the controversy kicked up by their publication, challenged scientific consensus that “global warming is happening and that it is induced by human activity.”

The 14-member committee’s investigation is one of three launched after the dissemination, in November, of e-mails and data stolen from the research unit. The e-mails appeared to show scientists berating skeptics in sometimes intensely personal attacks, discussing ways to shield their data from public records laws, and discussing ways to keep skeptics’ research out of peer-reviewed journals. One that attracted particular media attention was Jones’ reference to a “trick” that could be used to “hide the decline” of temperatures.

The e-mails’ publication ahead of the Copenhagen climate change summit sparked an online furor, with skeptics of man-made climate change calling the e-mails’ publication “Climategate” and claiming them as proof that the science behind global warming had been exaggerated or even made up altogether. The lawmakers said they decided to investigate due to “the serious implications for U.K. science.”

Phil Willis, the committee’s chairman, said of the e-mails that “there’s no denying that some of them were pretty appalling.” But the committee found no evidence of anything beyond “a blunt refusal to share data,” adding that the idea that Jones was part of a conspiracy to hide evidence that weakened the case for global warming was clearly wrong. In a briefing to journalists ahead of the report’s release, Willis said the controversy would ultimately help buttress the case for global warming by forcing the University East Anglia and other research institutions to stop hoarding their data. “The winner in the end will be climate science itself,” he said.

The winner on Wednesday was Jones, who stepped down temporarily as chief of the climate research unit about week after the e-mail scandal broke. The committee expressed sympathy with Jones, whom Willis said had been made a scapegoat for larger problems within the climate science community. “The focus on Professor Jones and the CRU has been largely misplaced,” the report said. But the lawmakers did criticize the way Jones and his colleagues handled freedom of information requests, saying scientists could have saved themselves a lot of trouble by aggressively publishing all their data instead of worrying about how to stonewall their critics.

Lawmakers stressed that their report which was written after only a single day of oral testimony did not cover all the issues and would not be as in-depth as the two other inquiries into the e-mail scandal that are still spending. Willis said the lawmakers had been in a rush to publish something before Britain’s next national election, which is widely expected in just over a month’s time. “Clearly we would have liked to spend more time of this,” he said, before adding jokingly: “We had to get something out before we were sent packing.”

One of the two pending inquiries is being headed by former civil servant Muir Russell, who is looking into whether scientists, including Jones, fudged data or manipulated the peer review process. It also is examining the extent to which university followed applicable freedom of information laws. See story here.

By Dr. Walter Starck

And now we have Reefgate

For the past half century the Great Barrier Reef has sustained a Queensland industry predicated on “saving” the reef from a never ending succession of purported “threats”.  All have been declared as dire and of course, they require urgent funding. None have ever become manifest in any serious manner and the hundreds of millions of dollars spent in research has never resulted in a solution for any these non-problems.

The reef today remains a vast area of pristine nature with the majority of its over 2500 individually named reefs are seldom fished or even visited by anyone. The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority headquartered in Townsville has grown into a 45 million dollar a year bureaucracy charged with “managing” the reef. This it does by remote control from air conditioned offices where it overseas the application of hypothetical solutions to imaginary problems and administers a morass of regulations which have effectively strangled most healthy productive activity on the reef.  Starting with no problems and only their own assessment of results, they have declared great success. This has been proclaimed widely through their extensive “educational” activity which serves to promote the Authority and create a high public profile for it.

In 2004 they stumbled badly with a large expansion of no fishing areas (a.k.a. green zones) on the reef. This resulted in a devastating impact on the small but important commercial fishing industry in the region as well as over 300 mandatory criminal convictions for otherwise law abiding recreational fishermen almost all of whom were arrested for inadvertently crossing one of the complex maze of unmarked boundaries. The upshot has been a massive compensation payout for the commercial fishermen, considerable public resentment and replacement of the GBRMPA chairperson.

With a sore need to remove the smudges from their workbook after the green zones debacle plus a juicy prospect for substantial expansion through management of a vast new Marine Protected Area in the Coral Sea, GBRMPA recently produced a glowing report of “extraordinary” benefits from the expanded green zones. To underscore the credibility and importance of their claims the report was published in one of the world’s most prestigious scientific journals rather than as just another of their own numerous publications. However, in doing this they badly overreached. 

The report appeared in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in the U.S. This journal has strict requirements for authors. These include:

* A requirement that authors declare no conflict of interest; yet, all 21 of them are employed by or are recipients of generous funding from GBRMPA and they are reviewing outcomes of their own findings and recommendations.
* A requirement that authors must declare sources of funding; yet, this cannot be found in the report.
* A requirement that all data and materials be made available for independent examination; yet, the supplementary information posted on the PNAS website fails to provide this.
* A requirement that authors acknowledge and address any conflicting evidence. Not only was this not done in regard to a number of key claims, the conflicting evidence is clear, convincing and, most extraordinary of all, authored by some of the same researchers as those in the report.

This situation has been brought to the attention of PNAS and they have promptly responded that they are looking into it. The appearance of repeated serious breeches of scientific ethics as well as explicit requirements of the journal is incontrovertible. It is difficult to imagine any credible explanation which might indicate otherwise. This is a very big deal and a full explanation by GBRMPA is demanded.  Any attempt to pretend otherwise will only compound the seriousness of this matter. See summary here. See PNAS letter here. See detailed analyasis here.

By Kevin Sieff in Washington, Financial Times

Three senior US lawmakers are piecing together a sweeping bipartisan energy and climate bill, which looks set to include sweeteners to galvanise support among Republicans and industry groups.

The proposed legislation, encouraged by President Barack Obama, dilutes a climate bill that stalled last year in the Senate. The senators have hosted meetings with industry groups over the past two weeks, revealing details about their plan that would cap carbon emissions while expanding offshore oil drilling and nuclear power generation.

Nearly six months have passed since the Senate’s most recent climate bill failed to win over conservatives and moderates, a political stalemate that cast a shadow on America’s presence at the Copenhagen climate summit. But some Democrats say the passage of healthcare reform has opened the door for climate change legislation, while acknowledging trade-offs will be needed to secure 60 Senate votes. “They know that to pass a comprehensive bill they will have to ease concerns of some special interests and mid-western senators whose states have manufacturing-oriented economies,” said Daniel J. Weiss, senior fellow at the Center for American Progress Action Fund, a liberal think-tank.

Environmental groups are divided over the bill, with some decrying the push to pre-empt existing state and federal greenhouse gas regulations. But many moderate groups are withholding judgment until the bill is introduced, saying concessions to industry bodies will be necessary. According to people briefed by the senators, the bill aims to cut carbon emissions from 2005 levels by 17 per cent by 2020 and 80 per cent by 2050, largely by implementing separate caps on utilities and manufacturers. The federal government would sell separate pollution permits to each sector, using a “hard price collar” to limit greenhouse gas allowances to between $10 and $30 per ton, and committing to flood the market with credits if the price ceiling is exceeded.

The bill’s sponsors - John Kerry, the Massachusetts Democrat, Joseph Lieberman, the independent from Connecticut, and Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina Republican - said the new sectoral approach would begin imposing carbon caps on utilities in 2012 and manufacturers in 2016.

The bill includes a new petrol tax, which would be passed on to consumers, though this could be vulnerable in the efforts to reach a compromise. By mentioning investment in conventional energy, the senators have elicited favourable responses from industry leaders, including BP executives and lobbyists from the US Chamber of Commerce, who opposed the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill passed by the House of Representatives last spring. After meeting the senators, Bruce Josten, the chamber’s top lobbyist, said their efforts were “largely in sync” with industry targets.

Mr Graham, distinguishing his legislation from last year’s bill, told reporters this month “the cap-and-trade bills in the House and Senate are dead” and would be replaced. He hopes his sector-by-sector approach to regulation,
unlike Waxman-Markey’s economy-wide cap, will help him save face among conservatives. His role in the bill’s formulation was itself in doubt after he said the Democrats’ handling of healthcare reform “poisoned the well” for bipartisan co-operation.

The senators hope to send details of the bill to the Environmental Protection Agency this week. The bill is likely to be introduced by late April. Despite bipartisan sponsors, its passage is not guaranteed. Last week, 10 Democratic senators said they would not support unlimited offshore oil exploration. Meanwhile, some environmentalists said the bill would curb the EPA’s authority to regulate greenhouse gases.

Read story here.