- So after Steve's "True Believer" type behaviour I went to check some stuff - Life is too short to do a full check of the 3 reports...
What did you really expect ? Was anybody expecting that investigations commissioned by the CRU organisations themselves would be very damming against the CRU ?
... one clear point if the Penn State or CRU investigations had cast doubt on their own working practices then future funding would be likely to be severely cut. With the investigators own salaries dependent on this funding and fact they sit in the canteen with the accused researchers it's not such a surprise the investigation was not condemning.
Now The UK government investigation is independent of these organizations, but it's conclusions may well have politically affected. Politicians wouldn't be happy if it weakened the foundations of environmental and energy campaigns that they are locked into. - Sidestepping says guilty, otherwise they would have dealt with the issues headon.
- So far it seems that rather than refute the key accusations the 3 reports sidestepped investigating them. The fact that the reports didn't prove the accusations to be false doesn't prove that the accusations are true, but it does add a lot of weight to the argument that CRU often behaved improperly. - The easiest place to get the story is to listen to the Guardian debate....a lot more helpful than Steve Novella's "believers" style mention in the SGU live TAM8 podcast ,
but note a couple of important edits : that Steve McIntyre's excellent speech is apparently edited out of the video (it's in the audio) and Douglas J. Keenan opening remarks were also edited out of both audio and video since he made direct accusation of fraud against Phil Jones (keeping one of Keenan's reports out of a peer reviewed journal was mentioned in an email by Jones). So he posted the opening remarks here
- The overloaded with FOI requests red herring - Steve Mcintyre explains
1. There were 60
2. Some were duplicates, cos earlier requests were ignored he got his mates to request the same thing to show that the info was generally wanted and he was no lone crank.
3. Doesn't it take a lot of time to deal with these FOIRs ? No Phil Jones suggested loads of the requests would be satisfied if he put up 1 webpage.
4. Since the scientists work for the UK taxpayer then it's part of their job to comply. This guy wrote an aricle last year saying the skeptic movement is being "true believers" - Rod Lidell : said "A powerful editorial in New Scientist about Muir Russell's report into those emails leaked from East Anglia's Climate Research Unit. It does not quite call Russell's publication a whitewash, but comes fairly close."
Also .. An article by Fred Pearce (The skeptic enviromental writer)
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