Even though it’s a new year – and a new decade –, the scandal over the leaked emails from the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East has not gone away. In an opinion in The Australian, Prof. Garth Paltridge says, “It seems that a religious belief in disastrous climate change has destroyed their common sense….” and that the scandal may demonstrate that the idea of a scientific consensus on global warming is likely nonsense. He also suggests that actions by the scientists involved may have been illegal.
In any event, the CRU information is covered by environmental information regulations that specifically require public bodies in Britain to make their data progressively available to the public by electronic means that are easily accessible.
So the ducking and weaving in the face of reasonable requests for CRU data by outside scientists and indeed in the face of Freedom of Information requests by those same outside scientists may not be just bad scientific form. It may be illegal. Which makes the lukewarm reaction to Climategate by the great and powerful of the scientific establishment even more difficult to swallow.
Read the full article: Boffins may be illegal
Emeritus Professor Garth Paltridge is an atmospheric physicist and was a Chief Research Scientist with the CSIRO Division of Atmospheric Research before taking up positions in Tasmania as Director of the Institute of Antarctic and Southern Ocean Studies and CEO of the Antarctic Cooperative Research Centre. He retired in 2002 and continues to live in Hobart. He is an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Tasmania and a Visiting Fellow at the Australian National University. He is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science and author of The Climate Caper
