Thursday, December 10, 2009

Professional integrity?

The Met Office has embarked on an urgent exercise to bolster the reputation of climate-change science after the furore over stolen e-mails, reports The Times.

More than 1,700 scientists have agreed to sign a statement defending the "professional integrity" of global warming research. They were responding to a round-robin request from the Met Office, which has spent four days collecting signatures. The initiative is a sign of how worried it is that e-mails stolen from the University of East Anglia are fuelling scepticism about man-made global warming at a critical moment in talks on carbon emissions, says the paper.

One scientist said that he felt under pressure to sign the circular or risk losing work. The Met Office admitted that many of the signatories did not work on climate change.

Thus, in concocting this faux testimonial, the Met Office is demonstrating with absolute clarity precisely the point it is seeking to rebut – that "global warming research" entirely lacks "professional integrity".

And who, incidentally, paid for this little exercise in deception?

CLIMATEGATE THREAD