Inquiry clears climate scientists in email row

Climategate inquiry findings confirm no scientific malpractice at UEA CRU, after leaked emails before Copenhagen talks; panel urges stronger statistics, transparency, and engagement amid climate change debate on CO2 emissions and skeptics' claims.

An inquiry cleared British climate researchers of wrongdoing after their emails were hacked, leaked and held up by skeptics as evidence they had exaggerated the case for manmade global warming.

Former government adviser Ronald Oxburgh, who chaired the panel, said he had found no evidence of scientific malpractice or attempts to distort the facts to support the mainstream view that manmade CO2 emissions contribute to rising temperatures.

The affair stoked the global debate on climate change and put pressure on scientists and politicians to defend the case for spending trillions of dollars to cut emissions, amid a UK coal station court verdict that underscored policy tensions, and help cope with rising temperatures.

Thousands of emails sent between scientists were published on the internet just before the United Nations Copenhagen climate talks last December.

Campaigners who doubt the scientific basis for saying global warming is manmade said the leaked messages showed that the research unit at East Anglia University had taken part in a conspiracy to distort or exaggerate the evidence, citing Canada's UN climate inventory controversies as parallels in the wider debate.

The university, in eastern England, appointed Oxburgh to investigate the Climatic Research Units methods.

We saw no evidence of any deliberate scientific malpractice, Oxburghs inquiry concluded. Rather, we found a small group of dedicated, if slightly disorganized, researchers.

We found them to be objective and dispassionate and there was no hint of tailoring results to a particular agenda.

Its strongest criticism was aimed at the units handling of statistics. It recommended that the researchers work more closely with professional statisticians in future.

Oxburghs was the second of three inquiries into the episode to report its findings. Police are also investigating the leak.

Last month, a British parliamentary committee cleared the unit of manipulating the evidence, but criticized its handling of requests for information made by outsiders under freedom of information laws.

The third and most comprehensive inquiry, led by former civil servant Muir Russell, is due to end in May, as scientists pressed world leaders to cut emissions at the time.

Dr Benny Peiser, director of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, a climate change skeptics thinktank, noting that coal tops oilsands in greenhouse gases in some scientific assessments, said the inquiry was rushed and superficial.

They want to restore the trust of the public and the credibility of the researchers and that is an honorable thing to do, he said. But they should have done a proper job.

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