ClimateGate Scientist Phil Jones to Step Down During Investigation

This just in from Newbusters…

The British scientist in the middle of the growing ClimateGate scandal is temporarily stepping down from his position as head of the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit pending an investigation.

The Associated Press reported moments ago (h/t Marc Morano):

Britain’s University of East Anglia says the director of its prestigious Climatic Research Unit is stepping down pending an investigation into allegations that he overstated the case for man-made climate change.

The university says Phil Jones will relinquish his position until the completion of an independent review into allegations that he worked to alter the way in which global temperature data was presented.

As NewsBusters has been reporting since this story first broke, most global warming-obsessed media have either ignored this scandal or downplayed its significance.

With the man in the middle of the controversy now stepping down from his position, will America’s press pay more attention to this matter?

OK, this seems like a win, but is it really?  Who will be doing the investigating here?  My fear is that this will be a rubber stamped by like-minded people.  You can bet that there will be no dissenting scientists doing the investigation.  This may be the alarmist’s means of doing damage control.  They investigate this with people who agree with AGW, say everything is all well and good, state that the emails are being read out of context, and that AGW is happening.  The media will then give it tons of coverage, just in time for either Copenhagen, or the legislative debates that will follow in most of the major industrial countries.

Why might I say this?  Well take a look at this from the WSJ.

But the deeper question is why the scientists behaved this way to begin with, especially since the science behind man-made global warming is said to be firmly settled. To answer the question, it helps to turn the alarmists’ follow-the-money methods right back at them.

Consider the case of Phil Jones, the director of the CRU and the man at the heart of climategate. According to one of the documents hacked from his center, between 2000 and 2006 Mr. Jones was the recipient (or co-recipient) of some $19 million worth of research grants, a sixfold increase over what he’d been awarded in the 1990s.

Thus, the European Commission’s most recent appropriation for climate research comes to nearly $3 billion, and that’s not counting funds from the EU’s member governments. In the U.S., the House intends to spend $1.3 billion on NASA’s climate efforts, $400 million on NOAA’s, and another $300 million for the National Science Foundation. The states also have a piece of the action, with California—apparently not feeling bankrupt enough—devoting $600 million to their own climate initiative. In Australia, alarmists have their own Department of Climate Change at their funding disposal.

And all this is only a fraction of the $94 billion that HSBC Bank estimates has been spent globally this year on what it calls “green stimulus”—largely ethanol and other alternative energy schemes—of the kind from which Al Gore and his partners at Kleiner Perkins hope to profit handsomely.

Add all of this up, and it easily dwarfs the profits made by Exxon Mobile!  I guess that responds to the statement of “show me the money!

Related Links: Hot Air