THE CRU WASN'T ALWAYS CO2PHOBIC

EXCERPT:

The secretive approach of CRU director Jones and his colleagues, particularly in the paleoclimatology field, is not a secret.

Distinguished scientists have testified to this throughout from the early 1990s onwards. A report specifically commissioned four years ago by Congress, the Wegman Report, identified many of the failings discussed in the past week. Failings are understandable, climatology is in its infancy, and the man-made greenhouse gas theory is a recent development. However no action was taken.

A little like Goldman Sachs, the group that includes the CRU Crew was deemed to be too important to fail - or even have the semblance of fallibility. A lightning recap of what CRU is, and what role it plays, helps bring the puzzle out of the shadows. CRU was founded in 1972 by the 'Father of Climatology', former Met Office meteorologist Hubert Lamb.

Until around 1980, solar modulation was believed to be the driving factor in climatic variation. A not unreasonable idea, you might think, since our energy (unless you live by a volcano vent) is derived from the sun. Without a better understanding of the sun, climatology may be reasonably be called "speculative meteorology".

But CRU's increasing influence, according to its own history, stemmed from politicians taking an interest. "The UK Government became a strong supporter of climate research in the mid-1980s, following a meeting between Prime Minister Mrs Thatcher and a small number of climate researchers, which included Tom Wigley, the CRU director at the time.

This and other meetings eventually led to the setting up of the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research, within the Met Office," the CRU notes. Lamb (who died in 1997), however remained sceptical of the greenhouse gas hypothesis to the end.

In addition to inheriting all the problems of climatology, the greenhouse gas hypothesis has several unique issues of its own, and addressing them is a challenge for the most scrupulous researcher. How CRU addressed them was to define climatology for two decades - and ultimately defined the public debate and policy, too.

The gas theory is based on an elegant 'energy budget' model, but it leans heavily on positive feedbacks resulting from greenhouse gases such as CO2 in order to produce the warming CO2 cannot do by itself.

Yet no simple empirical laboratory tests are of use here. Nor is there a ‘fingerprint’ or tell-tale signal that anthropogenically produced gases are the primary forcing factor.

Hence climatology's increasing reliance, since 1980, on a range of anecdotal evidence and computer modelling.

RTWT.

THE CRU UNDER JONES WAS A DISINFORMATION UNIT.

• AGW = BS.
• CO2 IS HARMLESS.
• CARBON SCHEMES = STEALTH SOCIALISM.