Simon de Montfort to peer-review Climate science

Readers of the New York Times do not know that the UK Parliament has just concluded a grilling of the University of East Anglia's Prof. Phil Jones, the head of the Climate Research Unit and the man at ground zero of ClimateGate. While the Times does pick up on the amazing soul searching that's going on in the scientific community, their "reporting" of the MP's questioning is a puff piece:

“I have obviously written some very awful e-mails,” Phil Jones, the British climate scientist at the center of the controversy, confessed to a special committee of Parliament on Monday. But he sharply disputed charges that he had hidden data or faked results.

Once again, the UK press is all over the story. As a service to any Times readers who actually want "All the news", let me give you a few highlights:

The Telegraph (moderately conservative by US standards):

According to Lord Lawson, “proper scientists, scientists of integrity” are delighted to reveal all their data, so that other scientists can check their work, but the UEA scientists have refused to do this.

One hammer blow followed another, culminating in the crushing accusation from Lord Lawson that for the period before 1421 the scientists “relied on one single pine tree” to establish how hot the world was, “which was more than it [the tree] could bear”.

The Independent (middle of the road-ish by UK standards, which makes them somewhat to the left of Stalin to us Colonials):

Yes, by the sound of it there was considerable data smoothing and oiling and homogenising and substituting and standardising... I don't know much about statistics but I know what I like. And when a scientist says: "We couldn't keep the original data, only the added-value data," all sorts of sirens and alarms go off.

The Guardian (to the left of Stalin by UK standards):

[UEA Vice Chancellor Edward] Acton conceded that not everything pointed in the same direction. It's acknowledged that several hundred years ago Earth became much warmer. If we knew why, we could explain a lot. "The early medieval period is something we should spend more time researching," he mused. This was probably the first time anyone had said that to a parliamentary committee since Simon de Montfort ran the place.

Heh.

The tabloids were also out in force. The Daily Mail took its typical man-in-the-street view of things:

For years this scientist from the University of East Anglia has been feted. He has become used to ministers and regents hanging on his words.

Now that he was being quizzed by some vaguely inquisitive parliamentarians, he responded with an unfortunate high-handedness. Twitchy gesticulations. A dry-toned voice which came across as both hesitant and bolshy.

The Register is, as you'd expect, all over this story like stink on a dog. They have a very in-depth story from Andrew Orlowski that the NYT could have published, but didn't:

MPs who began by roasting sceptics in a bath of warm sarcasm for half an hour were, a mere two hours later, asking why the University of East Anglia’s enquiry into the climate scandal wasn’t broader, and wasn’t questioning “the science” of climate change. That’s further than any sceptic witness had gone.

In between, they’d wrought an admission from CRU director Phil Jones that he’d written some awful emails, and that during peer review nobody had ever asked to see his raw data or methods.

Perhaps the Honourable Members had noticed an incongruity. The Vice Chancellor of East Anglia, with Jones seated next to him, had said CRU had made a significant contribution to the human scientific understanding of climate change. Yet the practices of CRU looked more tatty and indefensible as the hearing went on. How could CRU be crucial to the science, but the science could not be discussed? Something was not quite right.

All the news that's fit to print. File that next to sic transit gloria mundi. Instead of this hard hitting and informative journalism from across the spectrum of the UK press, the NYT serves up watery gruel indeed:

“There have always been people accusing us of being fraudulent criminals, of the I.P.C.C. being corrupt,” [NASA's] Dr. Schmidt said. “What is new is this paranoia combined with a spell of cold weather in the United States and the ‘climategate’ release. It’s a perfect storm that has allowed the nutters to control the agenda.”

Not much news there, but thanks for toeing the ideological line there. Remember the two main Soviet newspapers, Pravda ("truth") and Izvestia ("news")? Remember the old joke that there's no news in Pravda and no truth in Izvestia? In Soviet Russia, story prints you ...

I know, I know - dog bites man. I mean, who'd image that the Times would skip over all the juicy bits in defense of environmentalist doctrine? I'm shocked, shocked!