Did Edward Wegman's team commit plagiarism in preparing its 2006 Congressional report on the so-called MBH Hockey Stick? Objectively, yes.

Is there a conspiracy to confuse and distort climate science? Absolutely. If you doubt it, read the John Mashey paper attached (or our book, Climate Cover-up).

Have any crimes been committed? That'll be for a judge to decide. But given that misleading Congress is a felony offense, there might be some justifable nervousness among the people who coached Wegman through his attack on the scientistists behind the Hockey Stick.

The inspiration for these questions, and some fodder for the answers, is presented in painstaking and well-documented detail in the attached paper (see new version 1.0.1, updated Feb 11, 2010). Prepared by the computer scientist and entrepreneur John Mashey, it is a roadmap, a reference source and a timeline for the campaign of deceit that began in the 1990s and has come to something of a crescendo with the recent thefts of the East Anglia emails.

Mashey begins with a context-heavy review of the excellent research by the blogger Deep Climate, whose most recent revelations are described in greater detail here.

But Mashey doesn't stop there. He burrows back into the campaign of climate change denial, naming names and describing tactics. He is unfailingly cautious in making accusations, but the weight of his documentation is devastating for scientific sellouts like Dr. S. Fred Singer and for organizations like the Cato Institute and the Competitive Enterprise Institute, which have chosen to insert themselves in the the political process and in the public conversation - in a way that is, often, anything but forthright.

This document should be required reading for Congressional investigators and for any reporter who wants to cover this issue credibly.

We have been  told repeatedly, of late, that science has become politicized and that a cabal of conspirators are trying to make us believe something for which they have no evidence. That's absolutely true, but not in the way the Wall Street Journal or Canada's National Post would have you think.

As Mashey documents here, so well, this whole party has been a set-up, with scientists on one side, bound by the rules of evidence and by their own integrity, and think tanks, PR counsellors and their aides and allies on the other side, using any technique aailable  (including, apparently, obtaining, using and disseminating stolen emails), to defend the right of fossil fuel companies to continue, unrestrained, in the sale and distribution of a substance that is threatening the human habitability of planet earth.

We know that the scientists have been telling the truth - a couple of trivial exceptions help prove that rule. Mashey shows that the track record on the other side is considerably more checkered.