Climategate has claimed its first casualty. The AP is reporting that Phil Jones, the head of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, is stepping down “pending an investigation into allegations that he overstated the case for man-made climate change.”
Meanwhile, Michael Mann, another major player, is under investigation at Pennsylvania State University.
The White House, however, is deep in nothing-has-changed mode. That perhaps is inevitable given that the president and 70 other heads of state and government will be arriving in Copenhagen next week to hold a conference on limiting greenhouse gases to stop global warming. But the whole idea of global warming is predicated entirely on the validity of the data that Climategate now brings into very serious question. I reiterate my suggestion that the 70 heads of state forget the conference and just enjoy Copenhagen.
The cap-and-trade bill that passed the House and is now stalled in the Senate is still on the president’s legislative agenda. But it’s hard to see why any senator would take a political risk voting for it now. It is politically a lot easier — not to mention a lot wiser — to insist on getting to the bottom of all this first. When wisdom and political expediency coincide, politicians can be counted on to be wise.
So the White House might want to consider shifting over to get-real mode. Why? Well, one reason is that “Climategate,” a word that did not even exist two weeks ago, now gets 1,270,000 hits on Google.