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Climate Audit is a blog which was founded on 31 January 2005 by Steve Mcintyre. The New York Times has called it "a popular skeptics’ blog".

The website has won the 2007 Best Science Blog award and was a runner up in the same category in 2008.

Donald Rapp in his book Assessing climate change: temperatures, solar radiation, and heat balance has written that Climate Audit was technically competent and "anti establishment".

Founding

McIntyre started Climate Audit in January 2005. One reason McIntyre gave for starting the site was to provide a forum for discussions on his "audits" of climate science research. Another reason for starting the blog was for McIntyre to respond to what Fred Pearce described as attacks on his work by the blog RealClimate. RealClimate was a blog started two months earlier by Michael E. Mann, Gavin Schmidt, Stefan Rahmstorf, and other climate scientists.

Dr Judith Curry of the Georgia Institute of Technology has said "McIntyre started the blog climateaudit.org so that he could defend himself against claims being made at the blog Realclimate with regards to his critique of the “hockey stick” since he was unable to post his comments there". She has also referred to this site as one of several "Climate Auditor" websites.

Climatic Research Unit email controversy

The site was one of the first to receive word of the e-mails which had been leaked from the University of East Anglia with Jonathan Leake of The Times writing, "The storm began with just four cryptic words. “A miracle has happened,” announced a contributor to Climate Audit, a website devoted to criticising the science of climate change." Louise Gray wrote in The Daily Telegraph, "Climate Audit was one of the first to post up the stolen emails from the University of East Anglia that led to the 'climategate' scandal". Bloomberg said of the controversy, "Web sites and blogs including the Climate Audit Mirror Site have carried copies of e-mails, correspondence between climatologists and commentary. In one e-mail cited widely on blogs including Climate Audit, Phil Jones writes about completing “Mike’s nature trick of adding in the real temps” in order to hide the decline." According to Science Magazine, Jones wrote e-mails stating that he convinced Freedom of Information Act officers to not release data to climate skeptics because Jones believed that they planned to harm the UAE or setback climate science. "Think I've managed to persuade UEA to ignore all further FOIA requests if the people have anything to do with Climate Audit," Jones wrote. The House of Commons' Science and Technology Committee largely vindicated the scientists involved in the scandal, but left consideration of the quality of the science and the conduct of the research to committees chaired by Lord Oxburgh and Sir Muir Russell. McIntyre, who also worked at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and submitted notes to the committee for its investigation, wrote a lengthy rebuttal of the decision to vindicate the scientists on the blog. "Contrary to the University of East Anglia's claims, there is no valid statistical procedure supporting the substitution of tree ring proxy," said McIntyre, calling the panel's conclusions "absurd."

Reception

Patrick J. Michaels, a former contributor to the IPCC, named Climate Audit as part of "a new “parallel universe” of emerging online publications, manned by serious scientists critical of world governments approach to climate change. “A parallel universe is assembling itself parallel to the IPCC. This universe has become very technical -- very proficient at taking apart the U.N.’s findings."

Peter McGahan writing for The Economic Voice has said "Whether or not you believe in global warming or climate change is a separate argument, one which you might find very interesting, but this article will not cover that. However, a trip to iceagenow or climateaudit, and a few hours reading, coupled with the fact that no real improvements or investments by global governments in the essential infrastructure have taken place in the last six years, despite the need, will leave you much more balanced than you may currently be thinking."

The blog has been described by Ed Barnes as "one of the most vocal critics" of the IPCC.

Olive Heffernan wrote in Nature it is "a blog that investigates the statistical methods used in climate science".

See also

• Global warming controversy
• Hockey stick controversy
• The Hockey Stick Illusion

References

1. .net, Whois (31-Jan-2005). "Whois". Whois. Retrieved 4 May 2010. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
2. "Alexa Ranking". Amazon. p. 1. Retrieved 26 August 2010.
3. Revkin, Andrew C. (11,27,2009). "Hacked E-Mail Data Prompts Calls for Changes in Climate Research". New York Times. New York Times. p. 1. Retrieved 27 May 2010. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
4. Aylward, Kevin (November 1, 2007). "Best Science Blog". Web Blog Awards. Retrieved 4 May 2010.
5. Aylward, Kevin (December 31, 2008). "Best Science Blog". Web Blog Awards. Retrieved 4 May 2010.
6. Rapp, Donald (8 January 2008). "2". Assessing climate change: temperatures, solar radiation, and heat balance (1st ed.). Springer. p. 90. ISBN 978-3540765868.
7. Pearce, Fred, The Climate Files: The Battle for the Truth about Global Warming, (2010) Guardian Books, ISBN: 978-0-85265-229-9, p. XVIII.
8. Curry, Judith (February 24, 2010). "Can scientists rebuild the public trust in climate science?". Physics Today. Retrieved 4 May 2010.
9. "UN climate panel ordered to make fundamental reforms". AFP. Google News. 2010-08-30. Archived from the original on 2010-08-31. Retrieved 2010-08-31. the IPCC was rocked by a scandal involving leaked emails which critics say showed that they skewed data.
10. Spotts, Pete (2010-08-30). "IPCC climate change panel needs transparency, review panel finds". csmonitor.com. The Christian Science Monitor. Archived from the original on 2010-08-31. Retrieved 2010-08-31. Many of these controversies came to light within the past 10 months. Emails leaked from the University of East Anglia revealed a handful of influential climate scientists displaying a circle-the-wagons mentality as some analysts tried to gain access to their data and analysis methods. Critics alleged that the emails also held evidence of fudged results.
11. Helderman, Rosalind S. (2010-08-31). "Judge rejects Ken Cuccinelli's probe of U-Va. global warming records". washingtonpost.com. The Washington Post. Archived from the original on 2010-08-31. Retrieved 2010-08-31. has long been under attack by those who doubt global warming, particularly after his work was referenced in a series of leaked e-mails from the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit.
12. Leake, Jonathan (November 29, 2009). "The great climate change science scandal". The Sunday Times. Retrieved 4 May 2010. IT was against this background that the emails were leaked last week
13. Gray, Louise (09 Apr 2010). "Climate change: Key influencers in the debate". The Telegraph. Retrieved 4 May 2010. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
14. Efstathiou Jr, Jim (12/02 /2009). "U.K. Climate Scientist Steps Down After E-Mail Flap (Update4". Bloomberg. p. 1. Retrieved 27 May 2010. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help); Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
15. ^ Antonio Regalado (2009-11-23). "In Climate Hack Story, Could Talk of Cover-Up Be as Serious as Crime?". Retrieved 2010-09-08.
16. ^ "Scientists Cleared -- After One-Day Probe". Fox News. 2010-03-31. Retrieved 2010-09-08.
17. Koprowski, Gene J (April 28, 2010). "EXCLUSIVE: Citizen's Group Plans Extensive Audit of U.N. Climate Report". Fox News. Retrieved 3 May 2010.
18. McGahan, Peter (April 19, 2010). "Ethical, green or not, how do you choose?". The Economic Voice. Retrieved 4 May 2010.
19. Barnes, Ed (February 23, 2010). "EXCLUSIVE: U.N. Climate Panel to Announce Significant Changes". Fox. Fox News. p. 1. Retrieved 26 August 2010.
20. Heffernan, Olive (2009-08-12). "Climate data spat intensifies Growing demands for access to information swamp scientist". Nature. Archived from the original on 2010-08-31. Retrieved 2010-05-04. Since 2002, Steve McIntyre, the editor of Climate Audit, a blog that investigates the statistical methods used in climate science, has repeatedly asked Phil Jones, director of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia, UK, for access to monthly global surface temperature data held by the institute.

External links

• ClimateAudit

• Science blogs