UK Climate Expert Steps Aside After Hacked E-Mails
Date: 04-Dec-09
Country: UK
Author: Reuters
UK Climate Expert Steps Aside After Hacked E-Mails Photo:
Peter Andrews/Files
Smoke bellow from the chimneys of Belchatow Power Station, Europe's
largest biggest coal-fired power plant, in this May 7, 2009 file photo.
Photo: Peter Andrews/Files
LONDON - The head of a British climate research institute has stepped
aside after hacked e-mails were seized upon by skeptics as evidence that
the case for global warming has been exaggerated.
Phil Jones, head of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University
of East Anglia, will step aside "until the completion of an independent
review," the university said in a statement.
"It is an important step to ensure that CRU can continue to operate
normally," University Vice-Chancellor Professor Edward Acton said after
accepting Jones' offer to stand aside.
Dubbing the affair "Climategate," some climate change skeptics have
seized upon the e-mails, some of them written 13 years ago, and accused
scientists at CRU of colluding to suppress data which might have
undermined their arguments.
Skeptics have pointed to phrases in the e-mails in which climate
scientists talk of using a "trick" to "hide the decline" in temperatures
as evidence that they adjusted data to fit their theories. CRU denies
any manipulation.
Delegates meet in Copenhagen for a December 7-18 talks to try to work
out a new U.N. pact to address global warming.
The head of the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate (IPCC) Change,
Rajendra Pachauri, told Reuters last week that the leaks do not affect
findings in 2007 that it was more than 90 percent certain that human
activities were causing climate change.
"This private communication in no way damages the credibility of the ...
findings," he said, saying that all conclusions were subjected to
rigorous review.
Some CRU researchers contribute to the IPCC's reports which pull
together data from scientists around the world in an attempt to give a
consensus view on climate change. "Opposition groups are taking passages
out of context to try to undermine public confidence in climate
science," the Union of Concerned Scientists said in a statement on
Wednesday.
"Even without data from CRU, there is still an overwhelming body of
evidence that human activity (is) triggering dangerous levels of global
warming," it said.
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