MORE CLIMATEGATE? - AT 2:41 P.M. ET:  Charges are flying in Britain that add to the atmosphere of Climategate.  From London's Daily Express:

THE Meteorological Office was last night facing accusations it cherry-picked climate change figures in a bid to increase evidence of global warming.

UK climatologists “probably tampered with Russian-climate data” to produce a report submitted to world leaders at this week’s Copenhagen summit, it is claimed.

The Met Office’s study, which says the first decade of this century has been the warmest on record for 160 years, is being used to trumpet claims that man is causing global warming.

But experts at the Moscow-based Institute of Economic Analysis say the British dossier used statistics from weather stations that fit its theory of global warming, while ignoring those that do not.

They accuse the Met Office’s Hadley Centre of relying on just 25 per cent of Russia’s weather stations and over-estimating warming in the country by more than half a degree Celsius.

Last night, leading global warming sceptic Dr Fred Singer, of the Science and Environmental Policy Project, said: “I have long suspected that this selective fiddle took place but have not assembled all the evidence.

COMMENT:  What strikes me about so many of the charges made against the "global warming consensus" is how serious they are, and the fact that they come from serious people.  The standard charge made by the professional warmers is that dissenters all work for oil companies.  Of course, that's been shown to be nonsense.  Many of the dissenters are first-class scientists with outstanding reputations.

I don't know how much longer we'll have to put up with all the posturing before there are calls for major investigatons, and a full, neutral review of the data by scientists of high standing.  Of course, if Republicans take control of either house of Congress next year, they can start their own investigation.  They'd then probably be called McCarthyites.

December 17, 2009