The Rt Hon Lord Lawson of Blaby,
Chairman
Memorandum submitted by The Global Warming Policy
Foundation (CRU 27)
INQUIRY INTO THE DISCLOSURE OF CLIMATE DATA FROM
THE CLIMATIC RESEARCH UNIT AT THE UNIVERSITY OF EAST ANGLIA
1. The Global Warming Policy Foundation
is a registered charity (no 1131448) of an educational nature.
Further details may be obtained from our website, www.thegwpf.org.
The Foundation's Chairman, the Rt Hon Lord Lawson of Blaby, and
its Director, Dr Benny Peiser, will be happy to give oral evidence
at the Committee's projected March evidence session in elaboration
of this brief written submission. If invited, we may wish to be
accompanied, if the Committee agrees, by an expert in one of the
matters at issue. We have no declarable interests.
2. On the first of your three questions, we believe
there are four distinct issues:
(i) Have the CRU scientists been manipulating
the raw surface temperature data in a way that is less than wholly
objective and dispassionate?
(ii) Have they refused dissenting scientists
and/or other outsiders with a bona fide interest in global warming
access to the raw data, contrary to the proper canons of scientific
research and to the demands of scientific integrity?
(iii) Have they been improperly seeking to avoid
answering Freedom of Information Act requests?
(iv) Have they actively sought to prevent papers
by dissenting scientists, statisticians, or other informed commentators
from being peer-reviewed and/or published, again contrary to the
proper canons of scientific research and to the demands of scientific
integrity?
3. We believe that there is compelling evidence
both independent of the leaked email exchanges and arising from
those emails to suggest that the answers to (ii), (iii) and (iv)
above are clearly "yes". As to (i) above, we believe
that the jury is still out, although the motive for the improper
behaviour involved in (ii), (iii) and (iv) above needs to be investigated,
as it may well have a bearing on the answer to this. Moreover,
we are disturbed by the CRU scientists' treatment of the so-called
divergence problem. That is the fact that, for that period of
time where both a proxy global temperature series and a recorded
global temperature series are available, the two series markedly
diverge. This clearly suggests either that the proxy series is
unreliable or that the recorded series is unreliable (or possibly
both: the point is that they cannot both be true). The CRU scientists'
attempt to hide the problem by concealing the divergence demonstrates,
we believe, a lack of integrity.
4. On the second of your three questions,
we believe that the terms of reference of the Muir Russell inquiry
are almost, but not entirely, adequate. Lord Lawson has written
to Sir Muir Russell, on behalf of the GWPF, setting out how we
believe the terms of reference (and the modus operandi of the
inquiry) should be strengthened. Lord Lawson's letter, and Sir
Muir Russell's reply, are appended as an annexe to this submission.[1]
5. Lastly, on the third of your three questions,
there are, in fact, four (not two) other international data sets,
all based in the United States. Two of them—NASA and NOAA—are
neither wholly independent of each other (unsurprisingly, since
they are both US Government agencies) nor wholly independent of
the CRU set, as indeed some of the leaked email traffic indicates.
The third, and fourth, which—unlike CRU, NASA and NOAA—use
not surface weather stations but satellite observations, are compiled
by the University of Alabama at Hunstville (UAH) and Remote Sensing
Systems (RSS). They are entirely independent of the CRU. They
use the same satellite data as each other but different methodology
and produce similar results to each other, which differ from those
of the CRU.
The Global Warming Policy Foundation
February 2010
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