Sunday, February 14, 2010

Phil Jones: The climate change debate is not over.

Phil Jones, the director of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia (UEA), which has been at the center of the Climategate scandal was recently interviewed for the BBC by BBC's environment analyst Roger Harrabin. Jones is one of the world's leading climate change scientist. He says the science is not settled. That is quite different than what we hear from most advocates of climate change theory who routinely declare that the science is settled and the debate is over. He does assert however that he is "100% confident that the climate has warmed" and that "there's evidence that most of the warming since the 1950s is due to human activity."

Here are highlights of the interview.

  • Jones says the rates of global warming from 1860-1880, 1910-1940 and 1975-1998 “are similar and not statistically significantly different from each other.” This is significant because the three periods of warming since the end of the Little Ice Age were very similar yet only the last warming period from 1975-1998 is attributed to man-made causes.

  • Jones says that from 1995 to the present there has been no statistically-significant global warming

  • When asked if the debate about climate change is over, he replied: “I don't believe the vast majority of climate scientists think this. This is not my view. There is still much that needs to be undertaken to reduce uncertainties.”

My believe in global warming theory just fell two more points. I am almost ready to call myself a skeptic.

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