Obviously at this point in the PhD I should be avoiding climate blogs, and mostly I'm managing. But I just fell off the wagon slightly, and had a gentle saunter around Watts Up With That. In the words of Father Dougal Mcguire, I'm now hugely confused.

So: the office of inspector general just completed Senator Inhofe's request to investigate CRU-related malfeasance. Here's the (nice and short) report. Predictably, both 'sides' interpret the outcome completely differently. But WUWT - following hot on the heels of Inhofe himself - gets in there with the headline:

Inspector General Finds NOAA Climategate Emails Warranted "Further Investigation"

Inhofe promises to follow up on this to 'ensure taxpayer dollars are being spent according to federal law'.

Perhaps you wouldn't know if you hadn't read the report's summary, or the report itself (it's not linked to in the WUWT story) - but those emails are investigated, in the report. That's one of the main things the report does. It was just saying, 'there were a lot of emails, we've picked out eight to concentrate on. We do that now.'

Look:

In our own review of all 1,073 CRU emails, we found eight emails which, in our judgment, warranted further examination to clarify any possible issues involving the scientific integrity of particular NOAA scientists or NOAA’s data. As a result, we conducted interviews with the relevant NOAA scientists regarding these eight emails, and have summarized their responses and explanations below:

Which they then do. Yet somehow, the implication becomes that potential malfeasance has been uncovered and more digging is required. That phrase, 'warranted further investigation', becomes the meme, despite the fact (am I repeating myself?) that it... happens in the next paragraph. I'm guessing the WUWT headline has done the rounds... uh huh, 254 hits for the phrase "Inspector General Finds NOAA Climategate Emails Warranted".

A commenter at WUWT went out on a limb and suggested Inhofe must be stupid or lying. That doesn't scan; there's something else at work. I don't believe Inhofe can think he's lying. He's just filtering. I don't suppose it matters: getting a little distance from this, the moral is the same. The point isn't the logical accuracy of what's being said, it's how it spreads, it's the feeling it gets into the public psyche. Climategate has done much to seed the idea of scientists as grubby rent-seekers twisting the facts (unlike those angelic chaps and chapesses in the private sector), and this is as good an example as you'd need to see how it works.