Businesses 'erode climate findings'

Businesses which could be damaged by climate change have had a significant influence in undermining public confidence in the science of global warming, an expert has suggested.

But Lord Oxburgh, who led a review into the "climategate" row over emails hacked from a leading research centre, said the scientific community had been "unduly patronising and arrogant" in presenting its conclusions to the public.

The University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit (CRU) has been under attack since hacked emails were leaked online last year, which sceptics claimed showed scientists were manipulating data to support a theory of man-made global warming.

Lord Oxburgh, who conducted one of three inquiries into the affair, told MPs he had found no evidence of deliberate manipulation of data to back up a predetermined agenda, as sceptics had alleged.

He defended his inquiry against claims by sceptics that all those on the panel conducting it already accepted climate change science, telling the Science and Technology Committee that at least one member of the team was "very doubtful" about global warming.

Quizzed on the email seized on by sceptics, which describes a "trick" to "hide the decline" seen in temperatures estimated from tree rings, Lord Oxburgh - whose inquiry did not examine the emails - said he had looked up "trick" in the Oxford English Dictionary.

He had found nine meanings for the word, he said, including one which described it as a specialised technique or way of doing something.

"I think anyone in the field reading that with an open mind would take that meaning of the word trick," he said.

He said that when it came to presenting complicated information for the public there were difficult decisions about "honesty" and how to simplify data to get a general idea across.

But he said scientists had not helped their cause, when using data in publications for public consumption, by limiting the "very wide" uncertainties associated with the information.