Posted 13th April 2010
The House of Commons Science and Technology Committee published its report into “The disclosure of climate data from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia” on 31st March 2010.
It is difficult to reconcile the conclusions of the Inquiry with the evidence presented to it. Clearly the Inquiry was conducted with undue haste in order to publish its findings before the election was announced and parliament suspended. It could be further argued that contentious findings would have had the potential to disrupt the election.
The oral sessions were woefully inadequate and failed to probe witnesses on the substance of the written submissions. The balance of the oral sessions was heavily weighted in favour of the man-made global warming lobby and had no representation from those who’ve studied the science of climate change in depth across the many scientific disciplines, such as Peter Taylor who made a comprehensive written submission.
Climate change science has played a major role in formulating public policy with many ramifications: economic, social and political. The Inquiry, as constituted, could never have hoped to achieve what is required, a full independent assessment, of the current state of climate science, independent of the IPCC. The scope of the Inquiry was drawn sufficiently narrowly so as to avoid many important issues and the Committee seemed to accept the notion that the “science is settled” without probing inconsistencies and contradictions in the evidence.