This is an email I received after making a voluntary submission from the public(me).

“Sir/Madam
Many thanks for your email to the independent Climate Change Email Review. All emails will be read and eventually published by the Review.
If relevant to the Review remit, your email will be considered as a submission by the Review team.
Where possible we will try to respond to questions raised, though the volume of emails received means that this may take time.

With best wishes
The independent Climate Change Email Review team”

It was on reading this that it came to me that if they insist on keeping Boulton we should boycott the Muir Russell Inquiry. A number of those who would have submitted should make public statements that we are having nothing to do with it. They’ve had the emails since 3 Dec 09. They never bothered to contact Steve or Ross (or I assume anyone else who could have really shed light) before starting this farce, the day after the Commons Select Committee deadline ended. They have already hopelessly compromised themselves. We should make it clear that we’re not interested. Go back to the Phil Willis’ select committee on Science and Technology and argue the case from there. At least those guys were once elected.

Ross:

You already raised some of the issues so I will add on here…

I disagree somewhat as I believe that there is an excellent potential (not certainty) of a whitewash on the following basis.

My concern is that they are not examining critical documents — if indeed they exist — and they should exist in a research organization.

Recall that the researchers are being asked to justify their positions! Agreements can be a justification — real or otherwise.

First a quick list:
a) Employment agreements
b) Confidentiality and Non-disclosure / disclosure agreements with each researcher.
c) Data exchange/trade/use documents with all organizations with which they do business.
d) Applicable research sharing/joint venture documents.
e) Commercial agreements
f) Funding agreements

In case they need to be explained…

a) Their job description and responsibilities are relevant — they may have done (or not done) things which are required (or forbidden). They may have overstepped their responsibilities in their actions — or the opposite.

b) Confidentiality / NDA agreements from an important part of a researchers life in spelling out the obligations to keep confidential or share data. Usually these documents have a set of definitions — including private, secret, public domain etc, and how to handle information as it moves down the secrecy scale.

c) Data exchange/purchase/sale/trade agreements need to be revealed so that obligations are clear. If they don’t exist of course there is perceived to be no obligations and the data is “free” or unencumbered. If their are agreements they need to specify at what point data becomes “work product or results” — which can be distributed as the researcher sees fit. As a corollary to this point, they should be examining if agreements were created on the fly to forestall release of data because they did not wish to release data — this would be an abuse of position, and I think this came to light with the agreements from Spain — which is why I raise this issue.

d) Research and Joint/venture and data/results sharing should be examined as well. They may have clauses which require or prevent sharing of data and results. These agreements may or may not reflect policy and accepted practice. They could also be used as reasons or excuses for withholding of data which should be made public.

e) Commercial agreements — this speaks for itself. For example CRU has stated that they have funding from Oil Companies (BP, Shell? I believe were listed on their web site at one point). There could be obligations to provide first review and an obligation to withhold certain conclusions or data based on these agreements. The potential for private/commercial wealth or gain is enormous and must be considered.

f) Funding agreements should be examined to see if there are pre-suppositions in their terms of reference. For example if a funding agreement asks that research be done to determine how something affects climate change — then that is what you will get. They were not asked to examine “if”…

Examining the emails and the circumstances around them without looking at contractual obligations — employment, research and commercial will never reveal the whole story.

The above is not the whole story but expansion of a five minute “back of the napkin” summary after reading the PDF “Issues for Examination”. They are from the perspective of writing, researching enforcing and reviewing these types of documents for some years now. I know that other people who have run research programs may have very different views on what is appropriate — or not!

Hopefully this will give some a few thoughts to chew upon.

My conclusion. They created some good questions. Still lots of room for a whitewash though as per above comments.

Seeking advice from the Royal Society in this context is like asking Dracula about blood-bank security. Stand by for a whitewash, I think.

From Grypho’s post on Sean Hannity’s forum.

Quote ….Sir Muir Russell’s direct ties to, and vested interests in, “green energy” companies, can they be considered a conflict of interest of any kind? What about his allegiance to the RSE (Royal Society of Edinburgh), which not only completely endorses warmist claims, but is now launching a full scale “inquiry” (the exact word used) entitled “Facing Up To Climate Change”:

“The Royal Society of Edinburgh (RSE) has launched its next major inquiry, Facing up to Climate Change. A multi-disciplinary group of experts will look into the gap between the policies necessary to deal with climate change and what the public will currently accept.”

“The science that indicates that climate change is resulting from greenhouse gas emissions is well established, with the only real uncertainty being the scale of the future changes. Even if an ambitious international settlement can be achieved at the Copenhagen Climate Change Summit, Scotland will need to adapt to the climate change that is already inevitable.”

Whatever the case, I’m sure Sir Muir will be particularly well positioned and suited to employ some kind of trick to help the CRU hide the decline in public trust. (and of course, by trick I only mean “a good way to solve a problem” – and by decline I only mean the extreme “divergence problem” of public opinion and trust)
snip

The one question I did not see was something along the lines of: “Why did you ask colleagues to delete any correspondence pertaining to AR4?” (and appropriate follow-up questions). But I digress …

From their FAQ:

The Review’s job is to determine if there is evidence of poor scientific practice which could call their research into question; whether they followed University and statutory FOI procedures properly; and whether they should have better procedures for managing their research and keeping their data safe.

[...]

Why have you only given people two and a half weeks to make submissions to the Review?

Everyone likely to make a submission to the Review already has a view on the issues within its remit, and the hacked emails are in the public domain. The Review team is also keen to ensure that preliminary conclusions are presented to UEA in the Spring, as has been requested.

Has the Review team actually read all of the hacked emails yet? Will you have access to the whole CRU email record?

We have read a substantial number of the hacked emails, but not yet all. If the submissions received point to reasonable wider concerns, we will follow the trail where it leads.

[...]

Does the Review have a Freedom of Information policy? Will evidence submitted to the Review be made public? Will the Review’s minutes and correspondence be published?

The Team will operate as openly and transparently as possible. It is establishing a website which will eventually display all of the evidence received, correspondence, considerations, analyses and conclusions. The aim will be to publish all material quickly. We will follow the principles of FOI. Our scheme is that all submissions relevant to our remit will be published as soon as practicable on the Website.[...] [emphasis added hro]

Who can submit evidence to the Review and how?[...]

Anyone is welcome to make a relevant submission to the Review, but we expect they are most likely to be made by people or organisations with scientific or professional expertise. We will not accept a submission which is not relevant to our remit.

We will publish all relevant submissions with the name of the author(s). We will adhere to the conditions of the Data Protection Act in holding back personal details.

We will not accept anonymous submissions or submissions which come with a condition of anonymity.

I didn’t see any fine-print (or ambiguous statements) which would preclude any submission from being published elsewhere. So it would appear that their intent really is to be transparent – and open. They would look very silly not publishing (or ignoring) any relevant submissions, don’t you think?

There was one somewhat curious paragaph:

What fees are you paying to the Review team?

The University of East Anglia is being paid for by the University of East Anglia. They have offered to pay the normal daily rates for academics of this standing

The bad news: (Other than the dearth of informative links, as Lucy noted above) Media enquiries are directed to a person at Luther Pendragon, a company that does “Media Relations, Public Affairs, Issues & Crisis, Stakeholder & Community Engagement [...]” Excerpts from the last of these:

Luther Pendragon has a wide range of experience of stakeholder and community engagement. The team has developed and implemented inspiring high profile public social marketing campaigns, [...]

[...]

Luther also offers an expert understanding and practical knowledge of corporate responsibility communications. In practice that means we develop and advise on communication strategies and campaigns on environmental, social and ethical issues from climate change to human rights.

Their “Luther Brussels” pages do not give me a lot of comfort.

Let’s hope that the MSM will be more diligent in their reporting than they have been in the past.

If they do stick to the Team terminology, it will create a divide between the skeptics, the AGWers and the lay community at large who understand very clearly who is being referred to, by “the team”, and the authors of the report. You’ll then have two sets of people who refer to completely different things using the same term.

How can anyone discuss the Muir-Wood investigation after that? Secondly, if the investigators call themselves the team, what term would they use for “the” team?

I do not believe for one moment, that this is not deliberate.

Tokyo Nambu: Yet to see a more spectacularly laconic underestimation of Climategate.

“it’s a bunch of academics from upmarket older provincial universities (Edinburgh, UCL) investigating a bunch of academics from a distinctly less upmarket, distinctly less old university that hasn’t even got a physics department”