Look who's doing this ClimateGate inquiry: On Emmanuel and Oxburgh

Climate Feedback: Another day, another ‘climate-gate’ inquiry

In a statement circulated by the Science Media Centre, Bob Ward, of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, says, “We will now see predictable attempts by so-called ‘sceptics’ to discredit the panel before it has even started work so that its findings can be conveniently dismissed unless it hands a propaganda goal to those who promote denial and complacency about the causes and consequences of climate change. But nobody should be in doubt that this is a high-quality panel of individuals who have demonstrated both their authority and integrity.”

- Bishop Hill blog - Emmanuel on the Climategate emails

Reader Mac notes Kerry Emmanuel's comments on the Climategate emails, delivered at an MIT debate on the subject:

"What we have here," says Kerry Emanuel, are "thousands of emails collectively showing scientists hard at work, trying to figure out the meaning of evidence that confronts them. Among a few messages, there are a few lines showing the human failings of a few scientists…" Emanuel believes that "scientifically, it means nothing," because the controversy doesn't challenge the overwhelming evidence supporting anthropogenic warming. He is far more concerned with the well-funded "public relations campaign" to drown out or distort the message of climate science, which he links to "interests where billions, even trillions are at stake..." This "machine … has been highly successful in branding climate scientists as a bunch of sandal-wearing, fruit-juice drinking leftist radicals engaged in a massive conspiracy to return us to agrarian society…"

- Bishop Hill blog - Oxburgh's conflict of interest

Commenters are also noting the background of Ron Oxburgh, the chairman of the RS panel. Lord Oxburgh is:

* President of the Carbon Capture and Storage Association
* Chairman of wind energy firm Falck Renewables
* A member of the Green Fiscal Commission