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2) Missing Data
On 22 March 2010 the university announced the composition of an independent Science Assessment Panel to reassess key CRU papers which have already been peer reviewed and published in journals. The panel did not seek to evaluate the science itself, but rather whether "the conclusions [reached by the CRU] represented an honest and scientifically justified interpretation of the data." The university consulted with the Royal Society in establishing the panel. It was chaired by Lord Oxburgh and its membership consisted of Professor Huw Davies of ETH Zurich, Professor Kerry Emanual at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Professor Lisa Graumlich of the University of Arizona, Professor David Hand of Imperial College London, and Professors Herbert Huppert and Michael Kelly of the University of Cambridge. It started its work in March 2010 and released its report on 14 April 2010. During its inquiry, the panel examined eleven representative CRU publications selected by the Royal Society that spanned a period of over 20 years, as well as other CRU research materials. It also spent fifteen person days at the UEA carrying out interviews with scientists.[13]
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The report of the independent Science Assessment Panel was published on 14 April 2010 and concluded that the panel had seen "no evidence of any deliberate scientific malpractice in any of the work of the Climatic Research Unit." It found that the CRU's work had been "carried out with integrity" and had used "fair and satisfactory" methods. The CRU was found to be "objective and dispassionate in their view of the data and their results, and there was no hint of tailoring results to a particular agenda." Instead, "their sole aim was to establish as robust a record of temperatures in recent centuries as possible."[13]
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Speaking at a press conference to announce the report, the panel's chair, Lord Oxburgh, stated that his team had found "absolutely no evidence of any impropriety whatsoever" and that "whatever was said in the emails, the basic science seems to have been done fairly and properly." He said that many of the criticisms and allegations of scientific misconduct had been made by people "who do not like the implications of some of the conclusions" reached by the CRU's scientists. The repeated FOI requests made by climate change sceptic Steve McIntyre and others "could have amounted to a campaign of harassment" and the issue of how FOI laws should be applied in an academic context remained unresolved.[104] Another panel member, Professor David Hand, commended the CRU for being explicit about the inherent uncertainties in its research data, commenting that "there is no evidence of anything underhand – the opposite, if anything, they have brought out into the open the uncertainties with what they are dealing with."[105]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_email_controversy
3) Invented Data - Please supply information
4) Fraudulent Data - Tree rings
At the request of the U.S. Congress, a special "Committee on Surface Temperature Reconstructions for the Past 2,000 Years" was assembled by the National Research Council's Board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate. The Committee consisted of 12 scientists, chaired by Gerald North, from different disciplines and was tasked with explaining the current scientific information on the temperature record for the past two millennia, and identifying the main areas of uncertainty, the principal methodologies used, any problems with these approaches, and how central the debate is to the state of scientific knowledge on global climate change.
The panel published its report in 2006.[7] The report agreed that there were statistical shortcomings in the MBH analysis, but concluded that they were small in effect. The report summarizes its main findings as follows:[38]
* The instrumentally measured warming of about 0.6 °C (1.1 °F) during the 20th century is also reflected in borehole temperature measurements, the retreat of glaciers, and other observational evidence, and can be simulated with climate models.
* Large-scale surface temperature reconstructions yield a generally consistent picture of temperature trends during the preceding millennium, including relatively warm conditions centered around 1000 (identified by some as the “Medieval Warm Period”) and a relatively cold period (or “Little Ice Age”) centered around 1700. The existence and extent of a Little Ice Age from roughly 1500 to 1850 is supported by a wide variety of evidence including ice cores, tree rings, borehole temperatures, glacier length records, and historical documents. Evidence for regional warmth during medieval times can be found in a diverse but more limited set of records including ice cores, tree rings, marine sediments, and historical sources from Europe and Asia, but the exact timing and duration of warm periods may have varied from region to region, and the magnitude and geographic extent of the warmth are uncertain.
* It can be said with a high level of confidence that global mean surface temperature was higher during the last few decades of the 20th century than during any comparable period during the preceding four centuries. This statement is justified by the consistency of the evidence from a wide variety of geographically diverse proxies.
* Less confidence can be placed in large-scale surface temperature reconstructions for the period from 900 to 1600. Presently available proxy evidence indicates that temperatures at many, but not all, individual locations were higher during the past 25 years than during any period of comparable length since 900. The uncertainties associated with reconstructing hemispheric mean or global mean temperatures from these data increase substantially backward in time through this period and are not yet fully quantified.
* Very little confidence can be assigned to statements concerning the hemispheric mean or global mean surface temperature before about 900 because of sparse data coverage and because the uncertainties associated with proxy data and the methods used to analyze and combine them are larger than during more recent time periods.
In response, a group-authored post on RealClimate, of which Mann is one of the contributors, stated, "the panel has found reason to support the key mainstream findings of past research, including points that we have highlighted previously."[39] Similarly, according to Roger A. Pielke, Jr., the National Research Council publication constituted a "near-complete vindication for the work of Mann et al.";[40] Nature reported it as "Academy affirms hockey-stick graph. But it criticizes the way the controversial climate result was used."[3
ibid
Comrade Stalin