Source:  Forbes

When a woman consistently messes up her relationships, her therapist doesn’t just tell her to wear a new dress and change her lipstick before her next date; s/he asks her to do some real soul searching. But a new dress-and-lipstick combo is pretty much what an agency charged with reviewing the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Control’s procedures in the wake of the GlacierGate mess recommended last week.

Both the detractors and supporters of the IPCC – the U.N. body that serves as the Vatican of climate change – are billing the

Image by AFP/Getty Images via @daylife

Inter Academy Council’s recommendations as “fundamental” change. And some of its recommendations might indeed make a difference if the IPCC ever implements them — a big “if.” But fundamental change would require creating incentives for the IPCC to question its own conclusions – do constant soul searching, as it were — something that other scientific disciplines do as a matter of course. Nothing in the review’s recommendations does that. (more…)

Source:  Townhall

by Paul Driessen

Pennsylvania State University recently released a report summarizing its final “investigation” into whether one of its employees had committed scientific misconduct. The report exonerated Dr. Michael Mann of all charges, although he did receive a tap on the wrist – for sharing unpublished manuscripts with third parties without first getting the authors’ permission!

The result was hardly unexpected. Most experts who question climate disaster claims had assumed Penn State would produce a whitewash. PSU stood to lose significantly in reputation and dollars if it found that Dr. Mann had cheated on research and engaged in other conduct unbecoming of a university professor. What was surprising is the reason it gave for its “not guilty” finding.

Dr. Mann could not possibly be guilty, the report averred, because his “level of success in proposing research and obtaining funding” was possible only because he had “met or exceeded the highest standards of his profession.” Indeed, his research was consistently “judged to be outstanding by his peers.” (more…)

Source:  Climate Audit

The Muir Russell panel blatantly misrepresented the facts surrounding Jones’ notorious request to “delete all emails”, a misrepresentation that, in my opinion, was done, at a minimum, either recklessly or out of gross negligence.

The Muir Russell Report
Muir Russell’s findings on the “delete any emails” incident are contained in chapter 10 paragraph 28. Obviously the issuing of an FOI request affects the right of Jones or anyone else to delete documents. Muir Russell purported to exonerate CRU on this count on the empirical basis that the “delete any emails” request had not occurred in the context of a prior FOI request – a claim that is totally untrue. (more…)

Clive Crook may be a warmist, but is honest enough to describe whitewash when he sees it:

I am for a carbon tax. I also believe that the Climategate emails revealed, to an extent that surprised even me (and I am difficult to surprise), an ethos of suffocating groupthink and intellectual corruption…

I had hoped, not very confidently, that the various Climategate inquiries would be severe. This would have been a first step towards restoring confidence in the scientific consensus. But no, the reports make things worse. At best they are mealy-mouthed apologies; at worst they are patently incompetent and even wilfully wrong. The climate-science establishment, of which these inquiries have chosen to make themselves a part, seems entirely incapable of understanding, let alone repairing, the harm it has done to its own cause.

The Penn State inquiry exonerating Michael Mann—the paleoclimatologist who came up with “the hockey stick”—would be difficult to parody. Three of four allegations are dismissed out of hand at the outset: the inquiry announces that, for “lack of credible evidence”, it will not even investigate them…. Moving on, the report then says, in effect, that Mann is a distinguished scholar, a successful raiser of research funding, a man admired by his peers—so any allegation of academic impropriety must be false… (more…)

Source:  WUWT

Previously I have said this about the lack of integrity regarding the recent Climategate investigations:

The investigations thus far are much like having a trial with judge, jury, reporters, spectators, and defendant, but no plaintiff. The plaintiff is locked outside the courtroom sitting in the hall hollering and hoping the jury hears some of what he has to say. Is it any wonder the verdicts keep coming up “not guilty”? (more…)

Source:  Wall St. Journal

By PATRICK J. MICHAELS

Global warming alarmists claim vindication after last year’s data manipulation scandal. Don’t believe the ‘independent’ reviews.

Last November there was a world-wide outcry when a trove of emails were released suggesting some of the world’s leading climate scientists engaged in professional misconduct, data manipulation and jiggering of both the scientific literature and climatic data to paint what scientist Keith Briffa called “a nice, tidy story” of climate history. The scandal became known as Climategate.

Now a supposedly independent review of the evidence says, in effect, “nothing to see here.” Last week “The Independent Climate Change E-mails Review,” commissioned and paid for by the University of East Anglia, exonerated the University of East Anglia. The review committee was chaired by Sir Muir Russell, former vice chancellor at the University of Glasgow.

Mr. Russell took pains to present his committee, which consisted of four other academics, as independent. He told the Times of London that “Given the nature of the allegations it is right that someone who has no links to either the university or the climate science community looks at the evidence and makes recommendations based on what they find.”

No links? One of the panel’s four members, Prof. Geoffrey Boulton, was on the faculty of East Anglia’s School of Environmental Sciences for 18 years. At the beginning of his tenure, the Climatic Research Unit (CRU)—the source of the Climategate emails—was established in Mr. Boulton’s school at East Anglia. Last December, Mr. Boulton signed a petition declaring that the scientists who established the global climate records at East Anglia “adhere to the highest levels of professional integrity.” (more…)