[HOZ]

A nice article in the Ecologist

Beyond climategate: can we keep the politics and science of climate forecasting separate?

In November 2009, emails were leaked from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia that led to its being accused of manipulating data. While nothing in the emails cast doubt on the fact of manmade climate change, the researchers involved were perceived to have been secretive about the information they had gathered, and thus to have something to hide.

Last year the IPCC was forced to admit that a 2007 claim that Himalayan glaciers could melt away by 2035 was sourced not from peer-reviewed scientific literature but a 1999 media interview with a scientist.

Mistakes, cover-ups and inaccuracies have served to undermine many people’s faith in climate science at a time when its work is more important than ever.

A step in this direction was made In July this year. After a two-year battle following ‘Climategate’, an Oxford academic won the right to get access to the UEA data, including 160 years’ worth of thermometer readings from 4,000 weather stations. As a result of the ruling, climate researchers from now on will be required to make their research publicly available.