Bishop Hill House to investigate Climategate?
Dec 9, 2010 Climate: CRU Climate: Parliament The new chairman of the House of Representatives' SciTech Committee has now been appointed. Ralph Hall (R-CA) is the man in the hotseat, and is interviewed at Politico.com, much of the discussion relating to Climategate:
Hall told POLITICO in a recent interview he’s not a climate skeptic. “If they quote me correctly, I've never said it's outrageous to even think about global warming. I want some proof,” he said. “If I get the chair and have the gavel, I'm going to subpoena people from both sides and try to put them under oath and try to find out what the real facts are.”
But he said he does want to question all sides of the issue, including the scientists at the center of the so-called “Climategate” controversy surrounding e-mails stolen from climate researchers last year in England. He said at a hearing last month that the documents exposed a “dishonest undercurrent” within the scientific community. Investigators in the United States and Britain have cleared the scientists of any wrongdoing.
Hat tip - Benny Peiser.
Reader Comments (13)
Given the previous article....oh dear...oh deary.... deary me..'.the scientists have been cleared'....someone please send this guy the letter by Doug Keanan...
"Investigators..." - peculiar use of the word...perhaps in a 'Clouseau' sort of way...
Having read the following letter in the DT today, the sooner we get somebody under oath the better. The vested interests have free reign to make their case. They talk we pay.
"Cancun carbon cuts"
"SIR – We welcome the Committee on Climate Change’s analysis on how to meet the 2050 emissions target as quickly and cost-effectively as possible (report, December 7), and its argument that Britain should not allow slow progress toward an international framework on climate change to restrict government action to reduce emissions.
As members of the Prince of Wales’s Corporate Leaders Group on Climate Change, we have long argued that action on climate change is both imperative for preventing dangerous impacts and an opportunity to expand our economy and develop leadership in new, low-carbon industries.
The case for bold action is stronger than ever. We hope that talks in Cancun do make significant progress towards an effective international agreement on climate change. In the meantime, Britain should show leadership and demonstrate that a low-carbon future is not only possible, but beneficial."
Bill Hanway
Executive Director of Operations, Aecom
Joan MacNaughton
Senior Vice President, Alstom Power
Jeremy Darroch
Chief Executive, British Sky Broadcasting
Vincent de Rivaz
Chief Executive Officer, EDF Energy
Charlie Mayfield
Chairman, John Lewis Partnership
Neil Carson
Chief Executive Officer, Johnson Matthey
Ian Cheshire
Group Chief Executive, Kingfisher
Truett Tate
Director, Lloyds Banking Group
Lucy Neville-Rolfe
Director, Tesco
James Smith
Chairman, Shell UK
Gavin Neath
Senior Vice President, Unilever
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/letters/8189774/MPs-should-vote-against-raising-university-tuition-fees-in-the-interests-of-Britains-creative-industries.html
As I do not believe for one minute that any of the above will make any change whatsoever to their lifestyle the letter will certainly change my purchasing habits, whilst I recognise it will not make one iota of difference, at least I will still have my principles.
This is not about CO2 it is about money and control.
There was a disturbing few lines in the Times yesterday tucked away about Cancun. Apparently our wonderful government have agreed that the UK plus other countries will push on and legislate on the issues of climate change on the "assurances" that other countries such as China, USA etc will do some at some unspecified point in the future !!!
Is it only me that thinks we are governed by completely niaive f**kwits ?
Is it only me that thinks we are governed..
Mac, certainly not, they are without doubt "crackers"
"Under the UK's Pyrotechnic Articles (safety) Regulations of August 2010, Christmas crackers have been specifically named as a category 1 firework, which means they have an age restriction of 16 and cashiers are required to check the age of people buying them."
HEALTH AND SAFETY “GONE CRACKERS”, RETAILERS WARN
http://www.brc.org.uk/details04.asp?id=1851
Nothing better to do!
Mac: Certainly not just you. But I'm not sure about "niaive"!
He doesn't exactly sound like the sort of Rottweiler the GOP were promising us ...
Pointman.
I wonder if the specter of a real investigation conducted by the US House Sci Tech Committee might not cause the Select Committee of the UK House of Commons to look a bit more closely at the facts (something that have been assiduously avoiding to this point). It would be quite embarrassing for the MPs involved if the US House investigation uncovered serious problems that should have been apparent to Oxburgh and Russell.
I hope that the House is still p***ed that nobody would go over when summoned over the Gulf incident. It will mean that plea's of leniency from this side of the pond should fall on deaf ears.
Lets release Julian Assange and seal the fate of an environmentalist government.
Call it whitewashing the dirty laundry and making it clean.
Once the House gets done with it, they'll have vindicated the fraud and turned it back into legitimacy with the wave of their magic wand.
In the good ol' days, the difference between telling the truth and telling a lie was simple. Now we recognize a whole suite of behaviours that are neither one nor the other. We have "disinformation", "misinformation", we have people who "misspoke" and we have statements taken out of context.
The Mann/Jones "trick" of joining two types of data to portray a story they believe to be true falls somewhere in this moral bog, but where? A lie must have intent to deceive, to represent something the teller knows to be untrue. An unfairly put together graph is not a lie if what it pretends to portray is actually happening, though it deserves a scolding and some time in the bad boy corner. And who can say what intent was there so long ago?
Testimony under oath is useful for what people believe today. Under oath the uncertainties will come out, as they do in the witness box. Equivocation is in the witness' self-interest. What will count is the amount of technical knowledge of those in the investigating committee. They will have to be able to intelligently cross-examine. It could well be a doomed, wasteful effort based on the historical record of incisive, logical reasoning by politicians.desirous of having an escape route in case one is called for later.
Be very interested to see if the denizens of UEA accept subpoena and front up. Maybe they will just ask for political asylum from the UK Government. Either way CRU's US derived funding is about to disappear like snow in Cancun.
Ben Santers comment
“If individuals were incautious enough to try and engage in attempts to demonize the science and the scientists, I think that the scientific community would not sit by idly and watch it happen,”
Are we back to the "I'll be tempted to beat the crap out of him. Very tempted" type of science agin?