UN panel promises to investigate leaked ‘climategate’ e-mails

UN panel promises to investigate leaked ‘climategate’ e-mails

Times Online, December 4, 2009

The United Nations panel on climate change has promised to investigate claims that scientists at a British university deliberately manipulated data to support a theory of man-made global warming.

The controversy – dubbed “climategate” or “warmergate” – was sparked by the publication two weeks ago of hundreds of hacked e-mails to and from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU).

Climate change sceptics took the e-mails as proof of a conspiracy to skew the science of global warming. Green campaigners say that the row was contrived to undermine global negotiations on carbon emissions due to start in Copenhagen next week.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the UN body responsible for reaching a scientific consensus on the science of warming, initially defended its procedures in the face of the leaked e-mails.

But now its head, Dr Rajendra Pachauri, has admitted that the claims were serious and warranted proper investigation.

“We will certainly go into the whole lot and then we will take a position on it,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. “We certainly don’t want to brush anything under the carpet. This is a serious issue and we will look into it in detail.”

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