Note the careful language. The “no professional contact” suggests there is some non-professional contact that he has maintained with is colleges of 18 years.

Such contact could be as much or more of a conflict of interest.

I can’t think of a single person of my scientific acquaintance of whom the corresponding statement would be true.

Maybe some journalist at New Scientist got the 2050 (or 2035) date badly wrong, but you’d think a professional glaciologist of 40 years standing would have spotted the mistake. Or does Boulton think it wasn’t a mistake?

Were skeptics mocking Pachauri missing the real target, which would be real glaciologists? Or were skeptics wrong this time?

I understand that climate scientists think that leaving out adverse information is a “good way to deal with a problem”, but people who aren’t climate scientists think that it’s a trick.

Exactly. Increasing numbers of neutral observers in the UK – soon to be voters in a general election – have every reason to demand something scrupulously honest and scrupulously fair. That the Muir Russell inquiry clearly isn’t, at least not yet.

Funny, that. In order to keep my optimism I must defend Boulton: meh, at least he’s a Scot.

Prof Boulton said he had been open about having worked at the School of Environmental Sciences at UEA between 1968 and 1986. “Since then, I have had no professional contact with the University of East Anglia or the Climatic Research Unit,” he said.

Careful parsing is in order. “no professional contact” does not exclude all contact, including personal friendships. It’s the cozy relationships that are more troublesome. Professional relationships have paper trails and clear indications of quid pro quo.