University of Arizona climate scientist William Sprigg, who led the technical review of the first global warming report issued by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 1990, dissected Climategate in a presentation he delivered at this week’s Energy and Environment Conference in Phoenix. My Heartland Institute colleagues James Taylor and Jim Lakely caught Sprigg’s remarks:

Sprigg called for a new climate research agency supported not entirely by the government, but in conjunction with the private sector.

“We need to stick to our scientific principles,” Sprigg said, referring at least in part to the critical importance of sharing data with other scientists so that hypotheses and methodologies can be checked and double-checked. “We need to improve our peer preview process, and expand the stakeholders’ role to keep us all honest.”

Taylor and Lakely put together a video report based on Sprigg’s presentation, emphasizing some of his key points about the need for transparency in scientific research. By the way, Sprigg is no global warming skeptic.