And Now...UK Gov speaks on ClimateGate!
Well,
We certainly have a tradition of the USA and UK being very close. Close allies in war and trade. Close in the values we share. Even fairly close in our forms of government. But who knew JUST how close our governments were! Because now it is clear the UK government is JUST AS COMPLETELY BROKEN AND CORRUPT AS OURS!
Here is a link to the
UK Parliamentary Inquiry into Climategate.
Here are a couple of the most choice quotes from the esteemed MPs who participated in this whitewash:
<font color="red"> "The focus on Professor Jones and CRU has been largely misplaced. " [/COLOR]
Even though investigators have said he willfully violated UK FOIA laws, but because the law was written with a 6 month statute of limitations for prosecution, they could not legally prosecute him. I see. He actually broke the law, but the law lets him skate, and so then the focus is misplaced. Interesting, that. But here is the best:
<font color="red"> "On the accusations relating to Professor Jones’s refusal to share raw data and computer codes, the Committee considers that his actions were in line with common practice in the climate science community but that those practices need to change." [/COLOR]
So let me see if I get this opinion correct:
1) For at least two centuries (I am being conservative), the Scientific Method has clearly stated that you openly share your data and methods, not only to allow people to catch errors, but to show you are not fudging anything.
2) Even though the entire rest of the world's scientific community has known about these standards, and more or less obeyed them, it was fine and dandy for a specialized segment of science (which did not exist more than 4 decades ago) to violate that rules because they had their own "common practice."
3) We are admitting that those practices need to change (but not saying they were wrong at the time?), and we don't really much care about the reason why Jones was being so secretive with the data (not to mention outright lying).
Amazing. But still there is more that is hard to reconcile with how I thought science was supposed to be practiced:
<font color="red"> "On the mishandling of Freedom of Information (FoI) requests, the Committee considers that much of the responsibility should lie with the University, not CRU. The leaked e-mails appear to show a culture of non-disclosure at CRU and instances where information may have been deleted to avoid disclosure, particularly to climate change sceptics. The failure of the University to grasp fully the potential damage this could do and did was regrettable. " [/COLOR]
Howzat???? So it was the failure of the Uni to "grasp fully" that their CRU employees were acting unethically... THAT is the big problem? Not the fact that the CRU people were actually acting unethically? So CRU gets a pass because their "parents" did not catch them pulling the cat's tail? WOW.
Un-frickin-believable. Democracy is dead, folks. Once the government refuses to admit errors in how their self-funded science is being done, then things will only become more totalitarian from here on out.
RMT
