23 September 2010

Job Security for Partisan Climate Bloggers

E&E Daily reports that Representative Darrell Issa (R-CA) has said that should the Republicans take over the House, they will open up investigations into the release of the East Anglia emails:
The House's top Republican watchdog is planning to launch an investigation into international climate data if he takes the helm of the chamber's oversight panel next year.

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), the ranking member of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said a probe of the "Climategate" scandal will top his environmental agenda if the Republicans take over the House next year and he gets the chairmanship.

"I do have a backburner investigation that I'm going to want to have completed, and that is, we paid a lot of money to have international evaluation, most of it done in Britain, that turns out to have been less than truthful in some of the figures," he said. "We're going to want to not investigate to get our money back, but we're going to want to have a do-over of good numbers so that everyone can have confidence."
If one wanted to improve the quality of numbers, then doing so via a highly partisan congressional investigation is probably not the best way to go about it.  On the flip side, the most partisan climate bloggers will have plenty of exciting new material to fight with each other about. (H/T: DS)