LONDON – The director of a research unit at the centre of a row over stolen e-mails which sceptics claim show climate change data was being manipulated, said yesterday he “absolutely” stood by the science his centre had produced.
Prof Phil Jones, director of the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU), said the suggestion there was a conspiracy to alter evidence to support a theory of human-related climate change was “complete rubbish”. He also insisted the research unit had not manipulated or deleted data or e-mails to support the evidence of global warming it was producing.
The material was taken from servers at the world-renowned research centre and published on websites run by climate change sceptics, possibly in a bid to undermine next month’s global climate summit in Denmark.
Prof Jones, who since the e-mails were leaked has received personal threats which have been passed on to Norfolk police, said it had been “the worst few days of my professional life”.
While he said he had no intention of resigning, he did express regret at sending some of the e-mails, with “poorly chosen words in the heat of the moment, when I was frustrated”.
He said all the e-mails that had been selected for discussion since the story broke, which include ones describing a “trick” to simplify a graph, appeared to be genuine.
In response to demands, including a number of freedom of information requests this year, to publish confidential raw data on land temperatures, Prof Jones said the information was drawn from organisations all around the world and CRU had signed agreements with them not to release it.
But he said the unit was in the process of contacting the other organisations to ask whether they could release the data. Similar independent data sets from the US had the raw data published online, he added.
“We absolutely stand by the science we produce here at the University of East Anglia, and it has been peer-reviewed and published,” he said.
Prof Jones said data including temperature records, ice cores and tree ring samples from various international studies showed that the last 50 years of the 20th century were likely to have been the warmest in the past 1,300 years.
The concept of man-made climate change was also supported by much indirect evidence, including retreating glaciers, reduction in the extent of sea ice in the Arctic, and global rises in sea levels.
Meanwhile, Australia’s government gained bipartisan backing yesterday for its revised carbon-trade plan.
Opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull said conservative senators would back the scheme in a parliamentary vote later this week, ending a deadlock that threatened the carbon-trade plan – a central part of the government’s efforts to fight climate change.
However, some members are threatening to vote against the scheme. – (PA, Reuters)