The UK Information Commissioner’s Office handed down a landmark ruling this week, requiring that the Queen’s University Belfast must make public the data from 40 years of research on Irish tree rings dating back 7,000 years. Doug Keenan, a City banker and avid anti-climate change analyst, will be the recipient of the documents.
Keenan has become well-known in the academic community for his pursuits of climate data from British academics. Just two years ago, Keenan accused Phil Jones from the Climatic Research Unit of fraud based on his analysis of weather stations in China.
Keenan had requested the information from Queen’s University back in 2007, but was denied by the university under various exemptions to the Freedom of Information Act. For the last three years, Keenan has campaigned to have the data handed over, culminating in the Comissioner’s Office handing down their ruling this week.
According to Professor Mike Baillie, the Belfast ecologist who has collected the majority of the requested data, the ruling is an injustice. He added that researchers at the university collected that data themselves and should have the right to copyright it.
On Monday, however, Keenan revealed he will pursue the case even further, requesting data from emails that could prove the university has spent three years trying to block his data requests. Keenan believes that the Irish tree rings could provide evidence for a medieval warm period that happened on Earth almost a 1,000 years ago. The suggestion has met with controversary as it would bring doubt to the notion that global warming is new to the 20th century.
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