The Climatic Research Unit (CRU) email
controversy (also known as "Climategate") began in November 2009 with
the hacking of a server at the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University
of East Anglia (UEA). On 20 November, two weeks before the Copenhagen Summit on
climate change, an unknown individual or group breached CRU's server and copied
thousands of emails and computer files to various locations on the Internet.
The story first broke in the climate skeptic
blogosphere, with my pal James Delingpole of the UK Telegraph popularizing the
term "Climategate" to
describe the controversy. The emails revealed scientists manipulated climate
data, suppressed their critics and evidence that global warming was a
scientific conspiracy. Once the credibility of climate data was suspect in
public perception, the steam went out of the global warming movement.
The Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST)
project was an effort to resolve criticism of the current records of the
Earth's surface temperatures by preparing an open database and analysis of
these temperatures and temperature trends, to be available online, with all
calculations, methods and results also to be freely available online.
The BEST project is funded by unrestricted
educational grants totaling (as of March 2011) about $635,000. Large donors
include Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the Charles G. Koch Foundation,
and the Fund for Innovative Climate and Energy Research (FICER), and the
William K. Bowes, Jr. Foundation. The donors supposedly have no control over
how BEST conducts the research or what they publish. Now the Charles G. Koch
Foundation was the charity of the Koch Brothers who global warmists loved to
hate for funding climate sceptical research.
Professor Richard Muller, a physicist, and
his team at Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST) promised to “resolve
current criticism of the former temperature analyses, and to prepare an open
record that will allow rapid response to further criticism or suggestions”.
Because the BEST team constituted of some sceptics as well, even many sceptics
looked favourable at this attempt.
“We know that the rise in temperatures over the past five decades is
abrupt and very large. We know it is consistent with models developed by other
climate researchers that posit greenhouse gas emissions — the burning of fossil
fuels by humans — as the cause. And now we know, thanks to Muller, that those
other scientists have been both careful and honorable in their work.
Nobody’s fudging the numbers. Nobody’s manipulating data to win
research grants, as Perry claims, or making an undue fuss over a “naturally
occurring” warm-up, as Bachmann alleges. Contrary to what Cain says, the
science is real.”
But the joy of climate alarmists proved short
lived and their smug was wiped out from their faces very fast. A report
published by the Global Warming Policy Foundation includes a graph of
world average temperatures over the past ten years, drawn from the BEST
project’s own data published in its website.
Notice the BEST graph is until only 2000 when
we are in 2011 to demonstrate a warming world. Even sceptics do not challenge
this claim but only differ in attributing this phenomenon to natural cycles.
But GWPF’s graph 2000-2010 establish that according to BEST’s own data, there
had been no accelerated warming trend. This graph shows that the trend of the
last decade is absolutely flat, with no increase at all – though the levels of
carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have carried on rising relentlessly,
demolishing Muller’s claim to the contrary.
But the humiliation of Muller as a cheat did
not stop there. A leading member of Prof Muller’s team has accused him
of trying to mislead the public by hiding the fact that BEST’s research
shows global warming has stopped. Prof Judith Curry, who chairs the Department
of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at America’s prestigious Georgia Institute of
Technology, said that Prof Muller’s claim that he has proven global warming
sceptics wrong was also a ‘huge
mistake’, with no scientific basis. Prof Curry is a distinguished
climate researcher with more than 30 years experience and the second named
co-author of the BEST project’s four research papers. Her comments, in an
exclusive interview with The Mail on Sunday,
seem certain to ignite a furious academic row. She said this affair had to be
compared to the notorious ‘Climategate’
scandal two years ago.
Like the scientists exposed then by leaked
emails from East Anglia University’s CRU, her colleagues from the BEST
project seem to be trying to ‘hide the
decline’ in rates of global warming. In fact, Prof Curry said, the
project’s research data show there has been no increase in world temperatures
since the end of the Nineties – a fact confirmed by a new analysis that The
Mail on Sunday has obtained. ‘There is no scientific basis for saying that
warming hasn’t stopped,’ she said. ‘To say that there is detracts from the
credibility of the data, which is very unfortunate.’
When BEST was formed, its Richard A. Muller told
The Guardian:
"...we are bringing
the spirit of science back to a subject that has become too argumentative and
too contentious. ...we are an independent, non-political, non-partisan group.
We will gather the data, do the analysis, present the results and make all of
it available. There will be no spin, whatever we find. We are doing this
because it is the most important project in the world today. Nothing else comes
close."
BEST proved it was an anti-thesis to its
overt objectives.
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