The Climategate emails

Description

The Climategate emails expose to our view a world that was previously hidden fromvirtually everyone.This formerly hidden world was made up of a very few players. But they controlledthose critical Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) processes involving the temperature records from the past, and the official interpretation of current temperature data. They exerted previously unrecognized influence on the “peerreview” process for papers seeking publication in the officially recognised climatescience literature from which the IPCC was supposed to rely exclusively in order todraw its conclusions.The Climategate emails demonstrate that these people had no regard for the traditions and assumptions which had developed over centuries and which provided thefoundations of Western science. At the very core of this tradition is respect for truthand honesty in reporting data and results; and a recognition that all the data, and allthe steps required to reach a result, had to be available to the scientific world at large.There are two issues which now have to be addressed. The first is the damage whichhas been done to the standing of science as an intellectual discipline on which ourcivilisation depends. The second is the status of the IPCC, since that institution isthe source of scientific authority on which prime ministers and other political leaders rely to legitimise their statements about global warming.