Govt-Funded Research Unit Destroyed Original Climate Data

By Thomas Lifson

America is being asked to spend trillions on a theory, some of whose foundational data has been destroyed, allegedly for a lack of storage space. If the data cannot be reviewed, it cannot be trusted, scientifically. Via Christine Hall and the Competitive Enterprise Institute:

In the wake of a revelation by a key research institution that it destroyed its original climate data, the Competitive Enterprise Institute petitioned EPA to reopen a major global warming proceeding.

In mid-August the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit (CRU) disclosed that it had destroyed the raw data for its global surface temperature data set because of an alleged lack of storage space. The CRU data have been the basis for several of the major international studies that claim we face a global warming crisis. CRU's destruction of data, however, severely undercuts the credibility of those studies.

In a declaration filed with CEI's petition, Cato Institute scholar and climate scientist Patrick Michaels calls CRU's revelation "a totally new element" that "violates basic scientific principles, and "throws even more doubt" on the claims of global warming alarmists.

This data destruction has the odor of fraud about it.