Prominent climate skeptic defends Phil Jones

Roy Spencer, darling of the climate skeptic community, says he is not very organized, as Phil Jones said of himself, and that

"if you asked me to find original data from 20 years ago I'd have great difficulty too. We just didn't realise in those days how important and controversial this would all become - now it would just all be stored on computer."

This is quoted in a BBC article on the recent Heartland climate conference in New York.

Spencer goes on to say:

"Phil Jones has been looking at climate records for a very long time. Frankly our data set agrees with his, so unless we are all making the same mistake we're not likely to find out anything new from the data anyway."

Nods are given to other speakers at the conference, such as Steve McIntyre, Richard Lindzen and the grand finale Christopher Monkton:

In a bravura performance he had the audience roaring at his mocking impersonation of "railway engineer Rajendra Pachauri - the Casey Jones of climate change"; hissing with pantomime fury at the "scandal" of Climategate, then emotionally applauding the American troops who have given their lives for the freedom that their political masters are surrendering to the global socialist tyranny of global warming.

And kudos to Roger Harrabin for the less-is-more understatement of the closing paragraph:

As the ecstatic crowd filtered out I pointed one delegate to a copy of the Wall Street Journal on the table. A front page paragraph noted that April had been the warmest on record.

"So what?" he shrugged. "So what?"

Worth the read: