Inspector General: NOAA Clean on 'Climategate" e-mails

A special delivery letter to John. You've been proven wrong once again.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0211/50102.html


The Commerce Department's inspector general has found little wrong in the so-called "Climategate" e-mails written by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration employees.

To wit, the phrase “we found no evidence” appears at least six times in a new report from IG Todd Zinser, conducted at the request of climate skeptic Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.).

That includes "no evidence" that NOAA inappropriately manipulated data, "no evidence" to suggest that NOAA failed to adhere to its peer review procedures, and "no evidence" that NOAA violated the Information Quality Act.

NOAA chief Jane Lubchenco told the IG that she has personally read some of the NOAA-related e-mails and said she was "relieved because they were at odds with the way they were being publicly portrayed, and I thought that the ones I read [indicated] that NOAA scientists were exercising by and large good judgment and not doing things that were inappropriate" in their scientific work.

Out of the 1,073 e-mails from climate scientists around the world that were stolen from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in late 2009, the IG found 10 that warranted further examination.

The IG also zeroed in on a February 2007 e-mail of an "inappropriate" image mocking Inhofe and other climate skeptics floating in the ocean near a melting ice can. NOAA chief Jane Lubchenco acknowledged that "it was in bad taste" and the agency says the creators of the picture have been "counseled by their respective supervisors."

Zinser did criticize the handling of four Freedom of Information Act requests to Susan Solomon regarding review comments on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, saying NOAA needs to revisit the inadequate responses and perhaps revise its FOIA policy.

Solomon, who is named only by title in the report, is a long-time NOAA scientist and was the co-chair of the IPCC's 2007 report. The IG said he was unable to reconcile "divergent accounts" of what advice Solomon was given when from her supervisor and a NOAA attorney regarding IPCC-related documents.



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