Graph Showing Recent Temperature Increases Called “Exaggerated”

A second investigation into leaked University of East Anglia “Climategate” emails resulted in criticism of a graph purporting to represent recent global temperature increases as “exaggerated.”

Professor David Hand, president of the Royal Statistical Society and a member of an investigatory panel chaired by scientist and former Shell Chairman Lord Oxburgh, said the so-called “hockey stick” graph was based on a statistical technique that exaggerated recent warming.

The panel’s report, however, concluded that the scientists implicated in the email scandal had behaved “honestly and fairly” and not demonstrated “any deliberate scientific malpractice.”

While the report called it “surprising” that the statistical side of climate change research had not been conducted in closer collaboration with professional statisticians, Hand said the erroneous graph and other errors “[don’t] detract from the vast bulk of the science.” Hand told the Financial Times that some skeptics were distorting the overall picture by selecting a handful of specific issues and “blowing them up.”

The report was commissioned by the University, with advice from the Royal Society, the U.K. national science academy.

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