The headline of Climate Progress’s report tells it all: “House of Commons exonerates Phil Jones.” Climate Progress, a project of the Left-wing Center for American Progress, quickly offers a few quotes from the Committee’s report that clinch everything:

. . . the scientific reputation of Professor [Phil] Jones and [Climatic Research Unit] remains intact. We have found no reason . . . to challenge the scientific consensus . . . that “global warming is happening [and] that it is induced by human activity.”

We believe that the focus on CRU and Professor Phil Jones, Director of CRU, in particular, has largely been misplaced . . . .

In the context of the sharing of data and methodologies, we consider that Professor Jones’s actions were in line with common practice in the climate science community . . . .

Likewise the evidence that we have seen does not suggest that Professor Jones was trying to subvert the peer review process. Academics should not be criticised for making informal comments on academic papers.

And Climate Progress goes on to quote Michael Mann, of hockey stick fame: “I’m very pleased to hear that this distinguished panel saw through the dishonest attacks against Phil Jones, and made the correct determination.”

Perhaps Climate Progress learned its tactics from the global warming alarmists: carefully cherrypick your data and you can get whatever results you want. A thorough reading of the Committee’s report gives a very different picture.

Take just one of the excerpts Climate Progress uses above: “that Professor Jones’s actions were in line with common practice in the climate science community . . . .” Sounds like exoneration for Jones—until you see what the Committee said, in boldface, about “common practice in the climate science community”:

It is not standard practice in climate science and many other fields to publish the raw data and the computer code in academic papers. We think that this is problematic because climate science is a matter of global importance and of public interest, and therefore the quality and transparency of the science should be irreproachable. We therefore consider that climate scientists should take steps to make available all the data used to generate their published work, including raw data; and it should also be made clear and referenced where data has been used but, because of commercial or national security reasons is not available. Scientists are also, under Freedom of Information laws and under the rules of normal scientific conduct, entitled to withhold data which is due to be published under the peer-review process. In addition, scientists should take steps to make available in full their methodological workings, including the computer codes. Data and methodological workings should be provided via the internet. There should be enough information published to allow verification.

The Committee also drew attention to a “culture of non-disclosure,” adding, “a culture of withholding information—from those perceived by CRU to be hostile to global warming—appears to have pervaded CRU’s approach to FOIA requests from the outset. We consider this to be unacceptable” (boldface original).

The unavoidable conclusion on any thorough reading of the report—which the Committee rushed to present before the close of the session of Parliament—is that the Committee went to great pains to refrain from blatantly charging Jones, the CRU, and their close associates with serious offenses while simultaneously noting time and again that the whole standard operating procedure of the climate-change science community was the opposite of the transparency, accountability, and replicability that are the sine qua non of credible science.

In fairly short order the report came under close scrutiny that pointed out serious flaws in it—by “Bishop Hill,” (the blog name of A. W. Montford, author of The Hockey Stick Illusion: Climategate and the Corruption of Science) once and in a follow-up, and by Frank Furedi, Richard Courtney, and, most recently, Lawrence Solomon and Iain Murray.

When one considers the makeup of the Committee (all members of the House of Commons), one wonders about its own credibility to judge in such matters. Its chairman is a music graduate and former teacher, and the remaining members were a social-science Ph.D.; the president of a foundation specializing in agricultural research and education; a computer programmer; a nurse; a medical practitioner; a Ph.D. in organic chemistry; a historian; a Ph.D. in immunology; an M.S. in industrial engineering with Ph.D. in economics; a chemical plant operator; an analytical chemist; a Ph.D. in chemical research; and a businessman with experience in health and telecommunications sectors.

But close examination of the report suggests a little problem. As Richard Courtney points out, “The entire Committee agreed the report, but only five of the Committee’s members seem to have had much involvement in the work to produce the report. These were” chairman Phil Willis (the musician), Tim Boswell (the charitable foundation president), Ian Stewart (the chemical plant operator), Dr Evan Harris (the medical practitioner), Graham Stringer (the analytical chemist), and Dr Doug Naysmith (the immunologist). “These were the only members who attended the oral investigation held on 1 March 2010,” Courtney notes.

Only five—Willis (musician), Boswell (foundation president), Harris (medical practitioner), Dr. Brian Iddon (organic chemist), and Stringer (analytical chemist)—attended the March 24 meeting that assessed the evidence and prepared the report. The minutes of that meeting are revealing. On eight points the committee divided. Every time, the division was the same: Stringer versus Boswell, Harris, and Iddon (chairman Willis not voting): the analytical chemist versus the charitable foundation president, the medical practitioner, and the organic chemist. Arguably, only Stringer and Iddon had relevant scientific expertise, so in that respect the vote was 50/50.

What were those points?

1. Whether to include paragraph 47, which implied that because other datasets reached conclusions similar to CRU’s, its credibility was not undermined by the Climategate revelations. Stringer opposed.
2. Whether to include paragraph 51, which in the report is boldfaced: “Even if the data that CRU used were not publicly available—which they mostly are—or the methods not published—which they have been—its published results would still be credible: the results from CRU agree with those drawn from other international data sets; in other words, the analyses have been repeated and the conclusions have been verified.” Stringer opposed.
3. 3.    Whether to amend the crucial paragraph 66 (boldfaced in the report) from “Critics of CRU have suggested that Professor Jones’s use of the words ‘hide the decline’ is evidence that he was part of a conspiracy to hide evidence that did not fit his view that recent global warming is predominantly caused by human activity. That he has published papers—including a paper in Nature—dealing with this aspect of the science clearly refutes this allegation. In our view, it was shorthand for the practice of discarding data known to be erroneous. We expect that this is a matter the Scientific Appraisal Panel will address” to “We have not taken enough evidence on this matter to come to a conclusion.” Stringer supported.
4. Whether to amend paragraph 132 (boldfaced in the report) from “Reputation does not, however, rest solely on the quality of work as it should. It also depends on perception. It is self-evident that the disclosure of CRU e-mails has damaged the reputation of UK climate science and, as views on global warming have become polarised, any deviation from the highest scientific standards will be pounced on. As we explained in chapter 2, the practices and methods of climate science are a key issue. If the practices of CRU are found to be in line with the rest of climate science, the question would arise whether climate science methods of operation need to change. In this event we would recommend that the scientific community should consider changing those practices to ensure greater transparency” by replacing the underlined words with “it would be necessary for the whole of climate science to increase its transparency and improve its scientific methodology.” Stringer supported. Since elsewhere the report made it clear that CRU’s practices did not differ significantly from those of the rest of the climate science community, and it also made it clear that CRU had resisted transparency and the sharing of data, the report is in this regard not so much an exoneration of Jones and the CRU as an indictment of the whole climate science community—exactly what skeptics have claimed is the significance of Climategate.
5. Whether to add “Given the increasingly hostile attitudes of both sides on this issue, it is vital that [two other inquiries into Climategate] have at least one member each who is a reputable scientist, and is sceptical of anthropogenic climate change” to paragraph 134, which called for coordination between two other investigations. Stringer supported.
6. Whether to add “Within our limited inquiry and the evidence we took, the scientific reputation of Professor Jones and CRU remains intact” to paragraph 137. Stringer opposed.
7. Whether to add a summary (pp. 3-4) to the report. Stringer opposed. The summary almost entirely omits the many criticisms of Jones and the CRU that do appear in the rest of the report.
8. Whether to make the resulting complete document the committee’s final report to the House of Commons. Stringer opposed.

In short, one of the two actual scientific experts among the handful of committee members who actually produced the report sought seven amendments that would have made the report much more critical of Jones, the CRU, and the climate science community generally. He was outvoted each time—by one scientist and two non-scientists.

As University of Guelph environmental economist and UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change expert reviewer Ross McKitrick put it in personal communication to me, “To the extent the committee actually looked at the evidence they were critical of the CRU. To the extent they were supportive of the CRU, they were ignoring the evidence, and by their own admission they simply punt a lot of the tough questions over to the Muir Russell inquiry.”

What, then, are we to make of the Commons Committee’s report? Certainly not a blanket exoneration of Jones, the CRU, and the climate science community. A great deal of it amounts to damning with faint praise—and a fair amount to outright damning.

The report is by no means the last word in the controversy. Rather, its tepid acquittal of the Climategate principals will fade into oblivion as other, more qualified examiners make much better informed judgments.