I no longer think anything in climate science is very likely to be accidental. Too many of the these potential accidents fall the wrong side of a line.

Only Norton replied, and as I think I suggested, I really do not know who, other than Briffa, Osborn, Jones and Davies (UEA Pro Chancellor) may have seen the mangled version of my submission. In fact I can not even be sure if Briffa saw it – why would he need Osborn’s help to reply to it? Osborn’s name appears only once in a reference in Boulton’s mangled version of my submission and no allegation against Osborn was included in it.

Because this all makes little sense I submitted a FoIA request (and a DPA) to the University of Edinburgh. Peter Clarke is an an employee of the University and was formally contracted by the University to Sir Muir Russell. Boulton is listed as a Senior Honorary Professorial Fellow. This seems to mean he can come and go as he pleases and the University claim any of his emails are not technically held by them. In the case of Clarke’s the University claim he deleted all his emails on the Russell Review soon after its report was published and the Review “consolidated” its documents at an undisclosed location – possibly outside the reach of the FoIA. Deleting all correspondence on a commercial contract days after it is completed does strike me as a bit unusual, but as Steve says “this is climate science”.

I have now noted elsewhere that the email (and perhaps all other) correspondence by the panel was deleted just after their report was published.

A recent legal comment, I think on this thread above, suggests that Judges would take a very dim view of that, unless it was provably accidental. They could, being men born to suspicion, harbour a notion that deletion would amount to pre-emptive FOIrequest avoidance.

Sadly it betrays perhaps (unless we are looking at a most tragic accident) the type of thinking that these men can exhibit and their fears of revealing real opinions and facts. Certainly it makes a nonsense of the transparency promises so trumpeted at the very beginning of the panel pronouncements and formation of the membership!

David Holland,
1]You mentioned two correspondents. Did anyone other than Norton reply?

2]Did Norton see your submission, or the Boulton mangloid?

Is that ascertainable by any means?