How can the President of the United States go to Copenhagen this week to address a theory (man-made global warming, or AGW) with the very basis of that theory under investigation by his own administration? Here is ground shattering news from a reader at WUWT:

“December 14, 2009

DOE Litigation Hold Notice

DOE-SR [Savannah River] has received a “Litigation Hold Notice” from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) General Council and the DOE Office of Inspector General regarding the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in England. Accordingly, they are requesting that SRNS, SRR and other Site contractors locate and preserve all documents, records, data, correspondence, notes, and other materials, whether official or unofficial, original or duplicative, drafts or final versions, partial or complete that may relate to the global warming, including, but not limited to, the contract files, any related correspondence files, and any records, including emails or other correspondence, notes, documents, or other material related to this contract, regardless of its location or medium on which it is stored. In other words, please preserve any and all documents relevant to “global warming, the Climate Research Unit at he University of East Anglia In England, and/or climate change science.”

Your wondering what does DoE have to do with the Climate Research Unit? Federal tax dollars. It seems DoE has a few contracts with CRU, especially one Phil Jones. For example, there is this Antarctic Temperature & Pressure database contract: But I think the kicker was this mention of DoE in an article found in a CRU email:

Steel yourself for the new reality, because the data needed to verify the gloom-and-doom warming forecasts have disappeared.

Or so it seems. Apparently, they were either lost or purged from some discarded computer. Only a very few people know what really happened, and they aren’t talking much. And what little they are saying makes no sense. In the early 1980s, with funding from the U.S. Department of Energy, scientists at the United Kingdom’s University of East Anglia established the Climate Research Unit (CRU) to produce the world’s first comprehensive history of surface temperature. It’s known in the trade as the “Jones and Wigley” record for its authors, Phil Jones and Tom Wigley, and it served as the primary reference standard for the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) until 2007.

Anyone think Jones or CRU is going to be talking about deleting data now? And what is President Obama going to say if some bothersome reporter asks him about the US investigation into CRU? I also wonder when the NASA or NOAA notices will be going out. These agencies have no choice  since DoE stepped in – they can’t be looking like they are not doing their jobs!

Tags: Climategate, Department of Energy, Investigation