Saturday, December 05, 2009

Three years to wait?

The Met Office, we are told, plans to re-examine 160 years of temperature data "after admitting that public confidence in the science on man-made global warming has been shattered by leaked e-mails."

The new analysis of the data will take three years, meaning that the Met Office will not be able to state with absolute confidence the extent of the warming trend until the end of 2012 ... by which time, we will be very firmly and obviously in the grip of the cooling cycle which has already started. So, are they going to delay the Copenhagen slugfest until the results are in? And what happened to "the science is settled"? Come to think of it, why are they checking at all when the science is robust?

The government, incidentally, is attempting to stop the Met Office from carrying out the re-examination, arguing that it would be seized upon by climate change sceptics. It is a bit late for that - the genie is already out of the bottle.

CLIMATEGATE THREAD