The chief of a prestigious British research center caught in a storm of controversy over claims that he and others suppressed data about climate change has stepped down pending an investigation, the University of East Anglia has announced.
The university said in a statement on Tuesday that Phil Jones, whose e-mails were among the thousands of pieces of correspondence leaked to the Internet late last month, would relinquish his position as director of the Climatic Research Unit until the completion of an independent review.
Trevor Davies, the university’s pro-vice-chancellor for research, said the investigation would cover data security, whether the university responded properly to Freedom of Information requests, “and any other relevant issues.” The statement said the specific terms of the review would be announced later in the week.
Jones has been accused by skeptics of man-made climate change of manipulating data to support his research. In particular, many have pointed to a leaked e-mail in which Jones writes that he had used a “trick” to “hide the decline” in a chart detailing recent global temperatures. Jones has denied manipulating evidence and insisted his comment had been misunderstood, explaining that he’d used the word trick “as in a clever thing to do.”
Davies said there was nothing in the stolen material to suggest the peer-reviewed publications by the unit “are not of the highest-quality of scientific investigation and interpretation.”
But the correspondence from Jones and others have been seized upon by those who are fighting efforts to impose caps on emissions of carbon dioxide as evidence of a scientific conspiracy.
Republican Senator James Inhofe, a vocal skeptic of global warming, called on Tuesday for Senate hearings on the e-mails.
Davies defended Jones and his colleagues, saying the publication of their e-mails “is the latest example of a sustained and, in some instances, a vexatious campaign” to undermine climate science. The sentiment was echoed by Nicholas Stern, a leading climate change economist, who said the person or people who posted the leaked e-mails had muddled the debate at a critical moment.
“It has created confusion and confusion never helps scientific discussions,” Stern told reporters in London on Tuesday. “The degree of skepticsm among real scientists is very small.”
Governments are in the final days of preparations for the Copenhagen conference on climate change. Stern said the stakes were very high, explaining that if countries did not manage to reach agreement, world temperatures could rise by 5˚C by the end of the century, making much of the world uninhabitable.
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