In a staggering blow to the credibility of the CRU at the University of East Anglia, the UK’s Met Office will re-examine 160 years worth of climate data in light of the scandal there.  You can read about the Met Office here. They have been a very important and influential part of the man-made climate change cabal and are a government agency.  They along with the Royal Society and the Natural Environmental Research Council issued a statement as recently as November 24th saying AGW was real and the scientific evidence for that hypothesis has actually “strengthened significantly”.

Now, apparently, it is concerned enough by what has been revealed through the released emails from the CRU to decide to review the entire 160 years of data upon which the hypothesis rests.  The Times tells us:

The Met Office plans to re-examine 160 years of temperature data after admitting that public confidence in the science on man-made global warming has been shattered by leaked e-mails.

The new analysis of the data will take three years, meaning that the Met Office will not be able to state with absolute confidence the extent of the warming trend until the end of 2012.

[...]

The Met Office’s published data showing a warming trend draws heavily on CRU analysis. CRU supplied all the land temperature data to the Met Office, which added this to its own analysis of sea temperature data.

Why is this important?

The Met Office database is one of three main sources of temperature data analysis on which the UN’s main climate change science body relies for its assessment that global warming is a serious danger to the world. This assessment is the basis for next week’s climate change talks in Copenhagen aimed at cutting CO2 emissions.

Said another way, those in Copenhagen next week, will be making policy based on an assessment in which one of the providers of the data has no confidence.

Make sense?

And you’ll love this:

The Government is attempting to stop the Met Office from carrying out the re-examination, arguing that it would be seized upon by climate change sceptics.

Facts? We don’t need no stinkin’ facts – our minds are made up.  It’s much more important that we don’t give the skeptics ammo than actually settle the science. Talk about vested interests.

And, of course, there’s a bit of whistling past the graveyard:

The Met Office is confident that its analysis will eventually be shown to be correct. However, it says it wants to create a new and fully open method of analysing temperature data.

Couldn’t agree more on the “open method of analysing temperature data” – long, long overdue. And NASA needs to release their data as well and the sooner the better.

Meanwhile, even the IPCC has had to finally admit somethings actually going on which may have an effect on their findings:

The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change admitted yesterday that it needed to consider the full implications of the e-mails and whether they cast doubt on any of the evidence for man-made global warming.

Here’s an idea – cancel Copenhagen until there’s some level of confidence that the “science” that undergirds the hypothesis claiming human activity is a main source for ongoing climate change is actually based in real, factual data before rushing into economy killing emissions controls.

Fat chance, I know – we’ll soon learn what the term “bureaucratic impetus” means, I’m afraid.

~McQ