Another fake controversy debunked

Remember the e-mails that proved climate scientists exaggerated the threat of global warming for ... uh, in order to ... I have no idea why?

Well...

The controversy known as "climategate" erupted in November 2009 with the publication of more than 1,000 e-mails to and from scientists at the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia in eastern England.

The e-mails, dating back to 1996, were published on Web sites run by climate change skeptics who claim efforts had been made to manipulate data to exaggerate the threat of global warming.

The head of the CRU, Professor Phil Jones, stepped down from his post while reviews were conducted. It was announced Wednesday that Jones would return to the role of Director of Research at the university after an independent review cleared the CRU of manipulating or falsifying data.

"We concluded that these behaviors did not damage our judgment of the integrity, the honesty, the rigor with which they had operated as scientists," said the review's chairman Muir Russell.

In early July, an investigation by Penn State University into one of the authors of the e-mails, Professor Michael Mann, found that he had not strayed from accepted practices for "proposing, reporting or conducting research."

I hope this is the last we hear of a group of people with a political and/or financial agenda falsifying facts to exaggerate a controversy.