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Mark Landsbaum – Orange County Register – July 23, 2010

Five allegedly independent investigations claim to have cleared U.S. and British climate scientists of chicanery in their global warming research. It's more likely the investigations will be among the final nails in the coffin for the global warming alarmist movement. That's a position shared not only among respected skeptics in the scientific community, but increasingly in the mainstream press and even by some global warming believers.

Sure, government funding for climate change research probably will continue for a while. And propagandists will continue to crank out new studies claiming we're cooking the planet to death. They will hold more international confabs and issue more dire proclamations, but to less and less avail.

Most likely, this was the tipping point. Global warming zealots have lost. It's only a matter of time until they realize it and move on to a new contrived catastrophe, where doubtless they'll be warmly received by a compliant press and amply rewarded with more tax-subsidized grants. It seems there are insatiable appetites and never-ending tax dollars for the proper causes.

The Climategate scandal erupted last fall when thousands of e-mails were leaked suggesting scientists manipulated data, conspired to silence critics and schemed to deny access to their research by those who challenged their findings. It was a body blow to the assertion that the earth is dangerously overheating, people are to blame and governments must act drastically to fix it. Investigations launched at Pennsylvania State University and at the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit now have concluded there was no serious scientific malpractice.

The problem is, these investigations appear to have been about as independent and thorough as a congressional investigation into legislative pork.

People recognize self-interested exoneration. Despite proclamations of innocence, the verdicts didn't accomplish what the climate catastrophe community most desired – a welcoming of the prodigals back into society's good graces.

In part, this is because the relationship of investigators to those they investigated was eyebrow raising, casting doubt on their conclusions. From the beginning, neither global warming skeptics nor true believers expected investigators to find anything amiss. As many have noted, the institutions paid for and/or commissioned the investigations of themselves by cadres of friendly faces. A pervasive sense of glossing over also exists because many of the most obvious questions weren't even asked, or asked of the right people.

And there's the justifiable lingering perception that even if the books weren't cooked, climate scientists behaved as if they were above scrutiny.

Newsweek reported that even though the probe "cleared the researchers of most allegations, the lingering controversy could further undermine the IPCC longstanding push for massive CO2 reduction targets as the only viable option to deal with global warming." Environmental columnist Damian Carrington, at the British Guardian.co.uk pronounced, "the public's trust in that science has been scorched," despite his personal belief in dangerous global warming. A technology columnist at the Montreal Gazette opined, "The bigger conclusion, for scientists and bureaucrats, is that secrecy can be wrong - and dreadfully damaging."

When even global warming believers scoff at the findings, it's obviously a whitewash. Clive Crook, who believes global warming threatens the planet and advocates a carbon tax to mitigate its effects, wrote in the Atlantic that the Penn State investigation was so hard to swallow, it "would be difficult to parody." Three of four allegations were dismissed out of hand, and not even investigated, Crook wrote.

MIT's Richard Lindzen found that fact "thoroughly amazing." He was about the only global warming skeptic interviewed in all the inquiries. "I mean these issues are explicitly stated in the e-mails. I'm wondering what's going on?"

Although an investigative panel had been directly tasked to examine the hacked e-mail exchanges for evidence of manipulation or suppression of data, investigators didn't review the vast majority of the emails.

Professor Michael Mann, the target of the investigation at Penn State, was applauded by investigators for having won awards, which in their circular reasoning led them to conclude therefore, "his research could not have been outside of respected practices..." In short, he's accomplished, so he can't have done anything wrong.

University of East Anglia's investigators didn't bother to ask the Climate Research Unit's Director Phil Jones whether he actually deleted any e-mails to avoid Freedom of Information requests, as he said he had in one of the leaked messages. Is it unreasonable to expect an investigator to ask questions such as, "Did you do it?"

In fact, one of the East Anglia investigations apparently permitted Jones to choose which of his papers they could review as a "fair sample" of his work. "Is it any wonder the verdicts keep coming up 'not guilty'?" asked Anthony Watts, a climate skeptic who's also skeptical of the investigations' integrity.

A Wall Street Journal editorial called the written summary of the East Anglia investigation, "a 160-page evasion of the real issues." FormerUniversity of Virginia professor of environmental studies Patrick J. Michaels of the CATO Institute wryly noted, "It's impossible to find anything wrong if you really aren't looking."

In the popular international science magazine New Scientist, commentators predicted an increasing loss of faith in global warming science. New Scientist accused the final East Anglia probe of failing to answer basic questions: "How can we know whether CRU researchers were properly exercising their judgment?" That failure makes "it harder to accept (the investigation's) conclusion that the 'rigour and honesty' of the scientists concerned 'are not in doubt'."

The Great Britain-based science publication editorialized: "[W]hat happened to intellectual candour – especially in conceding the shortcomings of these inquiries and discussing the way that science is done? Without candour, public trust in climate science cannot be restored, nor should it be."

If providing professional cover for the global warming researchers was the goal, the probes may have succeeded. If reestablishing public faith in global warming theory was the goal, they probably didn't. The carefully guided inquiries did, however, cumulatively affect the climate-change crowd's credibility among people who saw conspiracies in last fall's Climategate disclosures.

As University of Southern California professor of media and politics Tom Hallihan told the San Francisco Chronicle, "The more you refute them, the more evidence those people see that the conspiracy is very pervasive."

The global warming movement seems oblivious to the lesson. The International Panel for Climate Change, the U.N.'s global warming advocacy arm, has sent out a letter advising climate researchers to "keep a distance from the media." That was just two days before the final kid-gloves East Anglia investigation at least conceded that it found "a consistent pattern of failing to display the proper degree of openness."

Another consistent pattern at Penn State and in the U.K. was to limit the inquiries by excluding almost all critical or skeptical sources.

"The committee again excluded from consideration any document or point of view that might incriminate Mann's conduct," observed Steve Milloy of JunkScience.com.

Similarly, at East Anglia, "the committee relied almost entirely on the testimony of those implicated in the scandal or those who have a vested interest in defending the establishment view of global warming," commented Myron Ebell, Competitive Enterprise Institute's director of energy and global warming policy.

A March Gallup poll showed 48 percent of Americans believe the seriousness of climate change is usually exaggerated, an increase from 41 percent in 2009. Public support of global warming zealotry clearly is waning. It can be expected to lose more ground in the aftermath of these whitewashed findings.

There's still another shoe to drop. Virginia authorities are investigating whether Mann of Penn State used fraudulently manipulated data to win government funding. Investigators won't set out to protect reputations or to justify funding. It's a criminal probe.

Claims of academic freedom won't stop the cop at the door. All that will matter is whether books were cooked to line pockets with taxpayer money.