A very incestuous group that doesn't properly peer-review papers

that support the 'consensus' being pushed; you could call this 'The hidden rape of the scientific method'.
A scientific scandal is casting a shadow over a number of recent peer-reviewed climate papers.

At least eight papers purporting to reconstruct the historical temperature record times may need to be revisited, with significant implications for contemporary climate studies, the basis of the IPCC's assessments. A number of these involve senior climatologists at the British climate research centre CRU at the University East Anglia. In every case, peer review failed to pick up the errors.

They're specifically referring to tree-ring research that was conducted. And, it seems, cherry-picked. With a very damn long pole.
In particular, since 2000, a large number of peer-reviewed climate papers have incorporated data from trees at the Yamal Peninsula in Siberia. This dataset gained favour, curiously superseding a newer and larger data set from nearby. The older Yamal trees indicated pronounced and dramatic uptick in temperatures.

How could this be? Scientists have ensured much of the measurement data used in the reconstructions remains a secret - failing to fulfill procedures to archive the raw data. Without the raw data, other scientists could not reproduce the results. The most prestigious peer reviewed journals, including Nature and Science, were reluctant to demand the data from contributors. Until now, that is.
Take careful note of that: they refused the basic rule of releasing data so it could be cross-checked by others. AND two of the 'most prestigious' journals didn't push for it; gee, I wonder why?
At the insistence of editors of the Royal Society's Philosophical Transactions B the data has leaked into the open - and Yamal's mystery is no more.

From this we know that the Yamal data set uses just 12 trees from a larger set to produce its dramatic recent trend. Yet many more were cored, and a larger data set (of 34) from the vicinity shows no dramatic recent warming, and warmer temperatures in the middle ages.
Remember some of the stuff in the e-mails about getting rid of the Medieval Warm Period?
In all there are 252 cores in the CRU Yamal data set, of which ten were alive 1990. All 12 cores selected show strong growth since the mid-19th century. The implication is clear: the dozen were cherry-picked.

(This oversimplifies the story somewhat: for more detail, read this fascinating narrative by blogger BishopHill here (http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2009/9/29/the-yamal-implosion.html).)

Further along,
Controversy has been raging since 1995, when an explosive paper by Keith Briffa (http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/people/briffa/) at the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia asserted that that the medieval warm period was actually really cold, and recent warming is unusually warm. Both archaeology and the historical accounts, Briffa was declaring, were bunk. Briffa relied on just three cores from Siberia to demonstrate this.
This isn't just cherry-picking, they genetically engineered the damn things to get the result they wanted, so as to try to hide and deny the facts.

Found at Q&O