British officials and lawmakers carried out the first hearing against climate scientist Phil Jones yesterday over uncertainties in his research results made public by leaked emails now known as "Climategate." Simon Hoggart of The Guardian described Jones as "taut, nervous, often miserable. Often his hands shook." Investigators say they avoided some of the most piercing, some say most critical, questions intentionally due to Jones' frail mental state. Since the scandal erupted last November, Jones has become the subject of scrutiny, scorn, and death threats. He admitted that he had contemplated suicide and is currently relying on prescription anti-depressants to maintain social functionality.
Investigators did not ask him to explain emails where he detailed how he used a "trick" to "hide the decline," nor did they ask him to account for emails where he and others discussed how to coerce editors of scientific journals to reject work from scientists that are skeptical of his global warming research. Jones was also not asked to account for the deletion data that might be damaging to his research conclusions and alleged tampering of field data across multiple interdependent studies that was alluded to by some emails.
Despite the points intentionally not covered by the British inquiry, Jones was still grilled with a solvo of difficult questions; some of Jones answers to these questions served to incriminate him further. In one such question, Jones is asked why he worked so hard to circumvent freedom of information requests, Jones replied that it was because the scientists asking to look at his work only wanted to find flaws in it — a principle facet of the scientific process.
An account from Simon Hoggart:
"I have obviously written some very awful emails," Jones replied glumly.
"But you wouldn't let him have the data," said MP Graham Stringer.
"We had a lot of work and resources tied up in it," said Jones, digging himself in a little deeper.
Jones conceded that some positions he held publicly, such as the denial of a warming pattern worse than the one occurring now once took place about a thousand years ago, have been revised. Lord Lawson, a well-known climate skeptic, criticized Jones at the hearing, saying that "proper scientists... wish to reveal their data and all their methods. They do not require freedom of information requests."
The British trial on climate science, perhaps more accurately climate scientists, has a mirror image in the United States. Senator James Inhofe released a statement exposing the legal grounds for filing criminal charges against 17 scientists involved in Climategate and climate research at large. According to the document, the named scientists have sufficient evidence against them to be tried for the violation of three laws and four government regulations.
The climate scientists named on the document relate it to "drag net McCarthyism" and have called Inhofe's actions a "witch hunt." Some of the climate scientists, like Raymond Bradley from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, say that Inhofe is "using the power of his office to intimidate people and to harass people. You wonder whether you should have legal counsel."
A spokesman from Inhofe's office said that "we are not saying that there are [only] 17 scientists we should be calling criminals — I'm not putting a number on 17." Inhofe's office went on to say that while these 17 scientists have the clearest evidence against them of criminal wrongdoing, they are just the key players in a much wider problem.
Earlier this month, similar evidence was used by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and various State Governments, including Virginia and Texas, to legally challenge the EPA's right to regulate greenhouse gasses. The EPA has since retreated from its position, though this may have more to do with President Obama reaching out to Republican interests than a concession to the myriad lawsuits.
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