The Cruel Hoax

clipped from justoneminute.typepad.com Is this a cruel hoax?  Back in the 80's, when electronic storage was not so cheap and ubiquitous, the major British center for climate research moved to a new building.  In a brilliant, forward-looking space saving move they discarded the raw weather data collected from stations all over the world, electing to preserve only the scientifically adjusted "value-added" data. Of course, now the whole topic is hopelessly politicized and we don't trust them, so what next?  From the UK Times On Line: 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 UEA’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) was forced to reveal the loss following requests for the data under Freedom of Information legislation.