This was a complete reversal of the scientific method-----announcing a conclusion before observational and experimental work had been carried out.! Nonetheless the AGW(antropogenic global warming) hypothesis was taken by the press and politicians to be a fact.
To achieve some semblance of plausibility, it became necessary to adjust what "evidence" there was to fit the conclusions. This was the purpose of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a non scientific but politically motivated body. And it was through the IPCC that scientists in the UK(at the climate research unit(CRU) at the University of East Anglia (UEA) and in the USA(GISS/NASA) colluded to generate this "evidence". The leaked e-mails make it clear that collusion is the correct word. To achieve an apparently "unprecedented" rise in temperature since 1975 a neat trick was used.
Global average temperature had been calculated using the raw data from several thousand weather stations round the world. In order to show an alarming "anomaly" (a nearly one degree rise) they cut the number of weather stations used for raw data by 70-80 percent. What they then refused to do was to make the details of this selection available to other scientists. Thus began a long campaign by "the team" (activist scientists from CRU and NASA-----part of the IPCC machine) to prevent this vital disclosure. Sceptical scientists (no professional scientist can be other than sceptical) were suspicious of the secrecy. They were reasonably certain that the modern warming was being exaggerated----but without access to the raw data sources they could not test this. Only after vigorous efforts using the Freedom of Information Act, which were resisted at every turn by "the team", using every excuse in the book from "losing the data" to "national security" to prevent disclosure, and by the leaking of e-mails, has the truth begun to emerge. It is a complicated tale of collusion, deliberate fraud and deceit, but the cull of the weather stations crystallizes most clearly how the"trick" was performed.
The sudden jump in average temperature (of nearly one degree celsius) around 1990 "coincided" with the dramatic cull in the number of weather stations-----because the ones removed were overwhelmingly the ones in the colder regions of the world and in the rural areas(generally cooler than urban areas). So should we still worry? Is the science still "robust" as politicians and activists continue to say? The answer is no and no. The "science" is bust not robust.
(Rev Philip Foster is an Anglican minister ministering in Cambridge. The above is taken from his book " While the earth endures" published by St Matthew Publishing Ltd www.stmatthewpublishing.co.uk.)
