TAKE THIS, BIN LADEN – AT 6:17 P.M. ET:  Just as Osama bin Laden joins the global-warming movement – see our 9:11 a.m. post today – The Times of London comes out with another devastating article on the collapsing science that presumably underlies it.  The Times has become the international leader in exposing "global warming":

The university at the centre of the climate change row over stolen e-mails broke the law by refusing to hand over its raw data for public scrutiny.

The University of East Anglia breached the Freedom of Information Act by refusing to comply with requests for data concerning claims by its scientists that man-made emissions were causing global warming.

When scientists refuse to release their underlying data, there is a very large problem.

The stolen e-mails , revealed on the eve of the Copenhagen summit, showed how the university’s Climatic Research Unit attempted to thwart requests for scientific data and other information, and suggest that senior figures at the university were involved in decisions to refuse the requests. It is not known who stole the e-mails...

...Details of the breach emerged the day after John Beddington, the Chief Scientific Adviser, warned that there was an urgent need for more honesty about the uncertainty of some predictions. His intervention followed admissions from scientists that the rate of glacial melt in the Himalayas had been grossly exaggerated.

COMMENT:  President Obama has taken the trendy and politically correct view that global warming is settled science, despite increasing evidence that it's anything but settled.  (In fact, science is never settled.) 

The president could learn from the defeat he's now taking on holding terror trials in New York and try to get ahead of the story by appointing an impeccable commission, like the panel that investigated the 1986 Challenger disaster, to examine the claims and counterclaims on global warming. 

Every poll shows that Americans, those ordinary, unlettered people out there, are becoming increasingly dubious about warming.  The nation is entitled to a blue-ribbon inquiry, fully transparent, and open to TV coverage.  What do you think are the chances?

January 29, 2010