Memorandum submitted by Stuart Huggett
(CRU 03)
1. THE CRU—BACKGROUND
1.1 Underlying the problems at the CRU at
UEA is the question of their role in science. To quote from the
official CRU website:
1.2 The aim of the Climatic Research
Unit is to improve scientific understanding in three areas:
— past climate history and its impact on
humanity;
— the course and causes of climate change
during the present century; and
— prospects for the future
1.3 This implies an impartial and objective
scientific approach to understanding the problems
of climate.
2. IMPLICATIONS
OF THE
DISCLOSURES FOR
THE INTEGRITY
OF SCIENTIFIC
RESEARCH
2.1 The most worrying aspect of the leaked
emails and documents is the way in which debate, peer review and
FOI requests were stifled and perverted in an institution which
exists to improve scientific understanding of the matter.
2.2 If this were an obscure and abstract
branch of scientific enquiry then the consequences would be insignificant
and objective enquiry would gradually supplant bias on the part
of the researchers. In this institution, however the results of
its research have very far reaching consequences indeed with enormous
sums of money involved and major shifts in political and social
opinion on a global scale.
2.3 The manipulation of research in these
circumstances appears to be serious fraud—not only on the
part of the researchers involved but also on the part of those
involved, without due diligence, in directing the course of research
at the CRU and those various bodies, institutions and corporations
funding, participating in and using the results of that research.
2.4 Other aspects of the researchers' methodologies
revealed in the documents—data manipulation, irregular statistical
practices, loss of raw data sets, etc., etc. would appear to be
a consequence of their need to bias their research and serves
to add substance to the fraud mentioned in 2.03 above.
2.5 The leaked documents from the CRU energised
the global warming debate to the point where politicians and the
media started to question the precepts of what has come to be
known as 'Climate Change'. As a result further evidence of questionable
scientific practices came to light in the IPCC (Himalayan glacier
melting, GISS & NOAA temperature manipulation, etc., etc.)
and the idea of a 'settled science' or 'consensus' is losing credibility.
2.6 The beginning of a new and more objective
approach to the questions posed for the human race by climate
change can now be discerned which will hopefully result in a more
rational approach to our stewardship of our planet. For this we
have to thank the person or persons, at present unknown, who leaked
the CRU documents.
3. TERMS OF
REFERENCE AND
SCOPE OF
THE INDEPENDENT
REVIEW BY
UEA
3.1 The Terms of Reference and Scope of
the Independent Review are not adequate in that the review is
not asked to examine any possible global financial consequences
of the methodologies revealed by the leakage.
January 2010
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