Things keep going from bad to worse for the AGW (Anthropogenic Global Warming) enthusiasts. Now it turns out that the former head of the Climate Research Unit at East Anglia in England, Dr. Phil Jones, not only can't produce the data that led so many scientists to conclude that we are presently in the midst of a sharp uptick in global temperatures, but the man himself says that there's no conclusive reason to believe that global temperatures have risen since the mid 90s:
Professor Jones told the BBC yesterday there was truth in the observations of colleagues that he lacked organisational skills, that his office was swamped with piles of paper and that his record keeping is 'not as good as it should be'.
The data is crucial to the famous 'hockey stick graph' used by climate change advocates to support the theory.
Moreover, Dr. Jones is now conceding that global temperatures may well have been elevated at several periods in the past. If that's so, claims that the current alleged "warming" must be due to human activity seem to be unwarranted.
Here's the relevant excerpt from an article in the Daily Mail Online:
Even more strikingly, [Dr. Jones] also sounds much less ebullient about the basic theory, admitting that there is little difference between global warming rates in the Nineties and in two previous periods since 1860 and accepting that from 1995 to now there has been no statistically significant warming.
He also leaves open the possibility, long resisted by climate change activists, that the 'Medieval Warm Period' from 800 to 1300 AD, and thought by many experts to be warmer than the present period, could have encompassed the entire globe.
This is an amazing retreat, since if it was both global and warmer, the green movement's argument that our current position is 'unprecedented' would collapse.
Moreover, British researchers have now come to the conclusion that the data that was relied upon to show that global temperatures were trending upward was tainted by local alterations in the microclimate surrounding the measuring devices.
After almost every country in the world has spent millions of dollars to ameliorate carbon emissions, after near panic has gripped many of the governments in the West over the impending doom of climate catastrophe, it turns out that it was all based on dubious data. Now the whole AGW project seems to be coming undone. Maybe it's just time to take a deep breath and start over with a whole new team of scientists, and perhaps Al Gore should just make himself scarce for the next decade or so.
RLC