Renewable energy executive: Nothing to see in ClimateGate, move along

Some paid hack from some companies looking to make a killing in alternative energy has just issued a report clearing the ClimateGate scientists of wrongdoing:

[Lord] Oxburgh has paid directorships of two renewable energy companies, and is a paid advisor to Climate Change Capital, the Low Carbon Initiative, Evo-Electric, Fujitsu, and an environmental advisor to Deutsche Bank. Last month we revealed that Oxburgh had failed to declare his directorship of GLOBE, an international network of legislators with ties to the Club of Rome.

Of course, the good Lord was appointed to head up the official investigation into the whole ClimateGate brouhaha. It seems his commission was so short of time that they couldn't invite a single skeptic to testify. Skeptic-in-Chief Steve McIntyre says the whole thing is pathetic:

They did not interview me (nor, to my knowledge, any other CRU critics or targets). The committee was announced on March 22 and their “report” is dated April 12 – three weeks end to end – less time than even the Parliamentary Committee. They took no evidence. Their list of references is 11 CRU papers, five on tree rings, six on CRUTEM. Notably missing from the “sample” are their 1000-year reconstructions: Jones et al 1998, Mann and Jones 2003, Jones and Mann 2004, etc.)

They did not discuss specifically discuss or report on any of the incidents of arbitrary adjustment (“bodging”), cherry picking and deletion of adverse data, mentioned in my submissions to the Science and Technology Committee and the Muir Russell Committee.

A cynic would say that the report is cut from the same cloth as peer-reviewed climate science: opposing views are censored, to keep the comfy government grant gravy train rolling.

One objection that could be raised to this post is that I'm being intentionally inflammatory ("Renewable energy executive", "gravy train", "paid hack"). Guilty as charged. It is offered as a mirror to the "you're a paid energy company hack" charge that we skeptics encounter all the time. Unlike that charge, mine has the advantage of being true. Lord Oxburgh is a paid director of multiple companies which stand to make considerable money off of a shift from fossil fuels to alternate sources. Lord Oxburgh is a member, or has ties to a notorious environmental lobby. Lord Oxburgh did not interview witnesses for the prosecution, so to speak. Government is interested in climate research that supports large scale government intervention in the economy. Government does fund this, to the tune of a hundred billion dollars or so.

And Lord Oxburgh isn't the first mainstream climate big shot who's making money off the crisis.

Just like the ClimateGate emails showed how the peer-review process was suborned, this "investigation" (intentional use of scare quotes) follows the only-listed-to-friendly-views so sadly prevalent in climate science today. It's a cryin' shame, really.

So lefties, if you want to be taken seriously, you really need to do a better job policing your own side. Go ahead - dazzle me.