THE HEAT IS ON THE WARMERS – AT 7:16 P.M. ET:  In what could be a devastating blow to the global-warming establishment, a prestigious British society speaks out. 

The Institute of Physics, which represents 36,000 physicists across Britain and the world, has told a Commons inquiry into Climategate that the controversial emails at the centre of the storm represent "prima facie evidence of determined and co-ordinated refusals to comply with honourable scientific traditions".

In short, the IoP has called into question the integrity of the entire field of climate change.

The Commons science and technology committee is interviewing key climate scientists and global warming sceptics. The standard of the interrogation on the first day was tame and the protagonists merely restated their arguments.

The star witness, Professor Phil Jones - the CRU's head and the sender of most of the hacked emails - was let off particularly lightly, his most damning admission probably being: "I have obviously written some really awful emails."

Far more interesting are the written submissions to the inquiry, including that from the Institute of Physics.

Although it has been made abundantly clear that the inquiry is not about whether global warming is actually happening, the IoP criticises one of the fundamental slices of evidence behind the assertion that we are currently experiencing a period of unprecedented global warming.

COMMENT:  I'm sure the global warmers will charge that all 36,000 members of the Institute of Physics work for oil companies.  That's been the standard line.

We need more scientific bodies like the Institute to speak out and demand a full inquiry, by unimpeachable investigators, into the "science" of global warming.

March 2, 2010