ACADEMICS at a British climate research institute at the centre of a controversy about the science of global warming defended their work during cross-examination at parliament on March 1, rejecting allegations that they manipulated climate data. But a former researcher at the University of East Anglia’s prestigious Climatic Research Unit admitted he had withheld some scientific data about global temperatures collected from around the world and written some “awful” emails to critics who asked to see his data.

 

The academics were questioned by lawmakers because a cache of emails stolen from the research centre and leaked online last year appeared to show that scientists stonewalled climate sceptics, tried to pervert the scientific peer review process and discussed ways to dodge Freedom of Information requests.

 

Their disclosure energised sceptics of manmade global warming, who seized on the emails as proof that scientists were conspiring to overstate the extent to which the earth was warming or making up the phenomenon entirely.

 

Questioned  by parliament’s science committee on why the centre did not make its raw climate data and methodology public, former UEA climate researcher Phil Jones said the data was withheld because it wasn’t “standard practice” to release it. He also said a small number of countries which supplied the information had refused to let his centre publish it. But he insisted that similar data are publicly available from other sources, such as Nasa.