"The Dog Ate My Tree Rings"

Steyn:

The most obvious thing that strikes anyone wading through the CRU documents is how easy it was for a small number of "experts" to propel their data-raped conclusions first into a "peer-reviewed" "consensus" and then up through western governments into the international fait accomplis of Kyoto, the IPCC and now Copenhagen. I initially assumed stuff like this was just a bit of naked obstructionism toward a few troublemakers:

I find it hard to believe that the British Antarctic Survey would permit the deletion of relevant files for two recent publications or that there aren't any backups for the deleted data on institutional servers.

But no, it was systemic. Hysterical queens like Gordon Brown are demanding we introduce global taxation, micro-regulation of every aspect of your life, massive multi-trillion dollar transfers from the productive sector to eco-rackets and transnational bureaucracies, bovine flatulence levies and extraterrestrial surveillance of once sovereign states on the basis of fevered speculations for which there is no raw data:

SCIENTISTS at the University of East Anglia (UEA) have admitted throwing away much of the raw temperature data on which their predictions of global warming are based.

It means that other academics are not able to check basic calculations said to show a long-term rise in temperature over the past 150 years...

The data were gathered from weather stations around the world and then adjusted to take account of variables in the way they were collected. The revised figures were kept, but the originals — stored on paper and magnetic tape — were dumped to save space when the CRU moved to a new building...

In a statement on its website, the CRU said: “We do not hold the original raw data but only the value-added (quality controlled and homogenised) data.”

The CRU is the world’s leading centre for reconstructing past climate and temperatures. Climate change sceptics have long been keen to examine exactly how its data were compiled. That is now impossible.

No raw data, huh? But why let that stand in your way?

Only Monday, a British parliamentary committee proposed that every citizen be required to carry a carbon card that must be presented, under penalty of law, when buying gasoline, taking an airplane or using electricity. The card contains your yearly carbon ration to be drawn down with every purchase, every trip, every swipe.

But don't worry. It'll all be very scientific. Your carbon allowance numbers will be kept in a big database. Maybe in East Anglia?