Artikkel av Fred Pearce

[ConTrari]

Fred Pearce, som neppe kan kalles skeptiker, har en interessant artikkel om Climategate, der han maner til mer åpenhet hos klimaforskerne. Han mener det er en skandale at CRU nekter å gi McIntyre tilgang til deres data:

"The fuss over climategate showed that the world is increasingly unwilling to accept the message that "we are scientists; trust us". Other people want to join the scientific conversation. Good scientists, interested in finding truth, should want to encourage them, not put up the shutters. The wider world instinctively knows to distrust those in all walks of life who reject openness. As McIntyre put it recently, "probably no single issue damages the reputation of the climate science community more than the refusal to show the data that supports their work". There should, for the good of science as well as public discourse, be a presumption in favour of open access."

"McIntyre, meanwhile, is still hunting. He believes CRU researchers using tree rings to unpick temperatures in past eras may have been cherry-picking their Siberian logs to help sustain the argument that recent decades are warmer than anything in the past 2,000 years. He cannot be sure, because they are still refusing to hand over their full data sets. CRU's justifications have a familiar ring. Disclosure could do "financial harm" to the university by reducing its "ability to attract research funding". Really?

If McIntyre eventually gets the data, could it undermine the case that man is warming the world? Certainly not; that is independent of past natural variability. Could it change our ideas about past natural climate change? Conceivably, yes. Is it a scandal that McIntyre cannot get to see the data to review CRU's work and do his own science? I believe it is."

http://www.indexoncensorship.org/2011/11/climate-change-secrecy-freedom-information/