CBS reports on Climategate

It reports that the head of the CRU at the University Of East Anglia is to temporarily step down from his position.

Phil Jones, the head of the Climactic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, said on Tuesday that he will relinquish his post while the U.K. school conducts an investigation into allegations of scientific and professional misconduct.

Notice he is only temorarily standing down. I suspect there will be some sort of whitewash and everything will return to normal. Now if that had been me, and I'd done nothing wrong, they'd have to drag me kicking and screaming from the building.

The reverberations have extended beyond the campus of the University of East Anglia and the CRU. E-mail messages from Michael Mann, a professor in the meteorology department at Penn State University who has argued that mankind is threatening "entire ecosystems with extinction in the decades ahead if we continue to burn fossil fuels at current rates," appeared in the leaked files. Now Penn State has opened an investigation into Mann's work, and the U.K.'s weather agency has been forced on the defensive as well.

I'm sure they all think that it will just melt away.

Hans von Storch, director of the Director of Institute for Coastal Research who was assailed by Mann in one e-mail message, calls the CRU axis a "cartel" and suggests that Jones and others avoid reviewing papers. A colleague, Eduardo Zorita, went further and said Mann and his allies "should be barred" from future United Nations proceedings and warned that "the scientific debate has been in many instances hijacked to advance other agendas."

Yes it's not really about climate change at all. It's all about Power, Control, and Oodles of money.



And to finish, scientists and politicians endorsing dramatic limits on economic growth to limit carbon dioxide have been reminded where the burden of proof properly lies.

Note: Just in case there are any warmists here. That is water vapour emanating from the cooling towers in the top picture, not smoke.