I'm pleased to report that people with more knowledge than I have in the post below strongly refuted the nonsense that was posted in this forum by a small number of sadly misguided people.  

Guy's you really need to think about what your purpose is.  If your purpose is to mislead yourself and your friends into the wilderness, to destroy the future prospects of your own family and friends, you are doing a great job.

I know that's exactly NOT, what you want to achieve.  However unpleasant the news might be, understanding the bad news and dealing with it, is the secret of success in this world.  Political truth, standing together on the basis of a lie, come what may, causes you to make fundamental errors of judgment, and leads to decisions one later regrets.  Religious truth, is no better, if it's not based on reality.  The words from religious texts, were originally written to explain some situation; and that explanation has proven useful, and that text has been retained, perhaps even glorified.  But if the text is misused to stop you and your's from understanding the world and adapting successfully to the world, it's no longer serving the intended purpose.  

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From Climate Progress Blog

House of Commons exonerates Phil Jones

Based on their inquiry and evidence, "the scientific reputation of Professor Jones and CRU remains intact. We have found no reason ... to challenge the scientific consensus ... that 'global warming is happening [and] that it is induced by human activity'."

We believe that the focus on CRU and Professor Phil Jones, Director of CRU, in particular, has largely been misplaced ....

In the context of the sharing of data and methodologies, we consider that Professor Jones’s actions were in line with common practice in the climate science community ....

Likewise the evidence that we have seen does not suggest that Professor Jones was trying to subvert the peer review process. Academics should not be criticised for making informal comments on academic papers.

These are quotes from the British House of Commons Science and Technology Committee must-read report on Phil Jones and "the disclosure of climate data from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia."

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Climatologist Michael Mann called the report an "exoneration" of Jones and said:

Those of us who know Phil personally never had any doubt about this. I'm very pleased to hear that this distinguished panel saw through the dishonest attacks against Phil Jones, and made the correct determination.

The committee's chair, Phil Willis, Member of Parliament (MP), said in a press conference:

We do believe that Prof Jones has in many ways been scapegoated as a result of what really was a frustration on his part that people were asking for information purely to undermine his research.

Here are the central findings of the report, The disclosure of climate data from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia:

Conclusion 1: The focus on Professor Jones and CRU has been largely misplaced. On the accusations relating to Professor Jones’s refusal to share raw data and computer codes, we consider that his actions were in line with common practice in the climate science community. We have suggested that the community consider becoming more transparent by publishing raw data and detailed methodologies. On accusations relating to Freedom of Information, we consider that much of the responsibility should lie with UEA, not CRU.

Conclusion 2: In addition, insofar as we have been able to consider accusations of dishonesty—for example, Professor Jones’s alleged attempt to “hide the decline”—we consider that there is no case to answer. Within our limited inquiry and the evidence we took, the scientific reputation of Professor Jones and CRU remains intact. We have found no reason in this unfortunate episode to challenge the scientific consensus as expressed by Professor Beddington, that “global warming is happening [and] that it is induced by human activity” It was not our purpose to examine, nor did we seek evidence on, the science produced by CRU. It will be for the Scientific Appraisal Panel to look in detail into all the evidence to determine whether or not the consensus view remains valid.

Conclusion 3: A great responsibility rests on the shoulders of climate science: to provide the planet’s decision makers with the knowledge they need to secure our future. The challenge that this poses is extensive and some of these decisions risk our standard of living. When the prices to pay are so large, the knowledge on which these kinds of decisions are taken had better be right. The science must be irreproachable.

Many other important findings are highlighted throughout the report.

The report expressed concern about how CRU dealt with the Freedom of Information requests and urged more openness and a change in scientific practice:

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The report was quite tough on the culture that had begun to pervade CRU:

However, a culture of withholding information—from those perceived by CRU to be hostile to global warming—appears to have pervaded CRU’s approach to FOIA requests from the outset. We consider this to be unacceptable.

On the matter of the "repeatability and verification" of CRU's temperature work, the Committee found:

We therefore conclude that there is independent verification, through the use of other methodologies and other sources of data, of the results and conclusions of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia.

The fact that all the datasets show broadly the same sort of course of instrumental temperature change since the nineteenth century compared to today was why Professor John Beddington, the Government Chief Scientific Adviser, had the confidence to say that human-induced global warming was, in terms of the evidence to support that hypothesis, “unchallengeable”:

"I think in terms of datasets, of the way in which data is analysed, there will always be some degree of uncertainty but when you get a series of fundamentally different analyses on the basic data and they come up with similar conclusions, you get a [...] great deal of certainty coming out of it."

Even if the data that CRU used were not publicly available—which they mostly are—or the methods not published—which they have been—its published results would still be credible: the results from CRU agree with those drawn from other international data sets; in other words, the analyses have been repeated and the conclusions have been verified.

On Jones’ use of the word “trick” in an email about Mann’s Hockey Stick, the Committee found:

"Critics of CRU have suggested that Professor Jones’s use of the word “trick” is evidence that he was part of a conspiracy to hide evidence that did not fit his view that recent global warming is predominately caused by human activity. The balance of evidence patently fails to support this view. It appears to be a colloquialism for a “neat” method of handling data."

On Jones’ use of the phrase “hide the decline”, the Committee found:

"Critics of CRU have suggested that Professor Jones’s use of the words “hide the decline” is evidence that he was part of a conspiracy to hide evidence that did not fit his view that recent global warming is predominantly caused by human activity. That he has published papers—including a paper in Nature—dealing with this aspect of the science clearly refutes this allegation. In our view, it was shorthand for the practice of discarding data known to be erroneous."

Kudos to the MPs for their solid report.

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Private Reply to John Stephen Veitch (new win)