Climate Change head stood down

The Herald reports:

The chief of a British research centre caught in a storm of controversy over claims that he and others suppressed data about climate change has stepped down pending an investigation, the University of East Anglia said.

The university said that Phil Jones, whose emails were among the thousands of pieces of correspondence leaked to the internet late last month, would relinquish his position as director of the Climatic Research Unit until the completion of an independent review.

The stolen e-mails do not prove a global conspiracy to fake data, but they do show that several leading climate change scientists have developed a siege mentality, where they see all criticism as invalid, and will go out of their way to denigrate and obfuscate those they disagree with.

Andrew Bolt quotes Lord Monckton’s take on the e-mails.

Some blogs have run a story that local NIWA data has been altered from the public data, but this has been easily explained by NIWA that what happened is their monitoring station moved from Wellington Airport to Kelburn, so the back series of data was adjusted to take account of the average difference between the two sites.

What NIWA did was absolutely correct in my opinion, and I have no issues with their professionalism. However the problem is that some of their peers overseas have had e-mails about changing data to make the case that temperatures are rising, and this rightly makes those sceptical even more sceptical. Trying to pretend the stolen e-mails are of no consequence is not going to work.

While some of the e-mails are benign, very dated, or out of context – there are some that quite appalling – especially references to keeping non supporting research out of the IPCC. It is hard to see how the author of that e-mail can remain involved with IPCC work in future.

UPDATE: Heh love this cartoon from Clint Heine: