Climategate Scientists Cleared Of All Charges Of Dishonesty

In a blow to global warming deniers everywhere, an official review released today has cleared all the Climategate scientists from charges of dishonesty. Turns out what they were guilty of was not sharing enough.

You will recall that just ahead of last year’s big Copehenhagen Climate Conference, which was attended by many heads of state including President Obama, private emails were released to the public that together appeared to show some top scientists had fudged data to prove that global warming was taking place. Cue: Climategate. The timing of the release of the emails was considered suspicious at the time, though this did not stop a whole lot of climate change naysayers from jumping on the emails as proof that global warming was merely one big conspiracy. After today they may have to look elsewhere. From the Guardian:

The climate scientists at the centre of a media storm were today cleared of accusations that they fudged their results and silenced critics to bolster the case for man-made global warming.

Sir Muir Russell, the senior civil servant who led a six-month inquiry into the affair, said the “rigour and honesty” of the scientists at the world-leading Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia (UEA) are not in doubt. They did not subvert the peer review process to censor criticism as alleged, the panel found, while key data needed to reproduce their findings was freely available to any “competent” researcher.

So how did this whole debacle happen? Turns out the scientists were attempting to maintain a high level of secrecy in the new world of oversharing.

The panel did criticise the scientists for not being open enough about their work, and said they were “unhelpful and defensive” when responding to legitimate requests made under freedom of information laws…”We do find that there has been a consistent pattern of failing to display the proper degree of openness, both on the part of CRU scientists and on the part of the UEA,” the report, commissioned by UEA, said.

So that’s that. In other news, Central Park recorded its highest temperature ever yesterday, 103*, breaking the previous record set in August, 2001.