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The Tip of the Climategate Iceberg
...Often, when independents obtain raw temperature data or computer codes, they do uncover flaws, thus advancing climate science—the "sunlight" now shining on CRU's data and codes is doing just that. That's what motivated Competitive Enterprise Institute scholar Christopher Horner to request a slew of information from NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, which has already corrected its temperature records thanks to Mr. McIntyre's probing. Mr. Horner told us he wants "an entire accounting of rolling, relevant data, adjustments, codes, annotations and of course internal discussion about the frequent revisions."

Two years later, the requests are unmet. A NASA spokesman said "We're clearly late, but we are working on it." Probably wise, considering Mr. Horner is set to sue, and two U.S. senators have asked NASA's Inspector General to investigate.

When it comes to questionable accounting, independent researchers cite the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and its National Climate Data Center (NCDC) as the most egregious offenders. The NCDC is the world's largest repository of weather data, responsible for maintaining global historical climate information. But researchers, led by meteorology expert Anthony Watts, grew so frustrated with what they describe as the organization's failure to quality-control the data, that they created Surfacestations.org to provide an up-to-date, standardized database for the continental U.S. ...