Thanks to Simon at Australian Climate Madness (ACM) the video of yesterday’s testimony by Dr. Phil Jones of UEA/CRU is now online via YouTube, making it viewable by millions worldwide. There are five parts, each of about 9 or 10 minutes. Jones is accompanied by the Vice Chancellor of the University of East Anglia, Prof. Edward Acton. Symon sums up the questioning: “They don’t exactly give PJ a tough ride, do they? To quote the former UK Labour Chancellor Denis Healey, it was like being savaged by a dead sheep…”. Fred Pearce of the Guardian commented that: “…the Commons committee tiptoed round embattled scientist and sidestepped crucial questions”.

Here’s a sampling of what British press has to say. Thanks to Dr. Benny Peiser and his CCNet Newsletter for the roundup.

MPs have quizzed the scientist at the centre of the “climategate” scandal, the first time he has been questioned in public since the row erupted. Professor Phil Jones used his appearance before the science committee to say that he had done nothing wrong. Earlier, critics told the MPs that the stolen e-mails, which appeared on the internet in November, raised questions about the integrity of climate science.

–BBC News, 1 March 2010

Prof Phil Jones, head of the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit, is accused of withholding raw data behind his research on global warming. In emails stolen from the university he asks one climate change sceptic: “Why should I give information to you when all you want to do is find something wrong with it?” In a grilling by MPs, Prof Jones admitted he had withheld data and sent some “pretty awful” emails. But he insisted it was “standard practice” to refuse certain information to other scientists.

–Louise Gray, The Daily Telegraph, 2 March 2010

Lord Lawson called for scientists to be more open about their methodologies. “The Freedom of Information Act should not have been brought into this,” former Chancellor Lord Lawson of Blaby, a longstanding critic of climate policy, told MPs. “Scientists of integrity reveal… all of their data and all their methods. They don’t need Freedom of Information Act requests to get this out of them.”

–BBC News, 1 March 2010

Also giving evidence alongside Lord Lawson was Dr Benny Peiser, director of the Global Warming Policy Foundation. He said that sound science was based on “testability, replication, and verification”. Dr Peiser told the committee: “Of course, if you do not have the data sets or methods then you have to trust the word of a scientist. “You cannot even see if he has done these calculations directly on the basis of solid data, and this is the core of this problem – it is not about the overall science, it is about the process.”

–BBC News, 1 March 2010

The integrity of climate change research is in doubt after the disclosure of e-mails that attempt to suppress data, a leading scientific institute has said. The Institute of Physics said that e-mails sent by Professor Phil Jones, head of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, had broken “honourable scientific traditions” about disclosing raw data and methods and allowing them to be checked by critics.

–Ben Webster, The Times, 1 March 2010

The body representing 36,000 UK physicists has called for a wider enquiry into the Climategate affair, saying it raises issues of scientific corruption. The Institute of Physics doesn’t pull any punches in the submission, one of around 50 presented to the Commons Select Committee enquiry into the Climategate archive. The IOP says the enquiry should be broadened to examine possible “departure from objective scientific practice, for example, manipulation of the publication and peer review system or allowing pre-formed conclusions to override scientific objectivity.”

–Andrew Orlowski, The Register, 1 March 2010

The entire 3 hours is available here via Windows Media Player:

http://www.parliamentlive.tv/Main/Player.aspx?meetingId=5979&player=windowsmedia

Sorry, the MP’s don’t seem to have a Mac/Quicktime link.

Select segments about 9-10 minutes each are available below.

Part1

Part2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

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