By now it’s clear that the media, the public, and right wing politicians were taken in, punk’d if you will, by the thoroughly dishonest hoax known as “Climategate.” Today another investigation by a British panel cleared the climate scientists of the CRU.

“On the specific allegations made against the behavior of C.R.U. scientists, we find that their rigor and honesty as scientists are not in doubt,” said the new review, led by Muir Russell, a leading British civil servant and educator.

The Russell panel also found little reason to question the advice the scientists had given to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the United Nations body that produces a major review of the science of global warming every few years. The new report said that “we did not find any evidence of behavior that might undermine the conclusions of the I.P.C.C. assessments.”

This is the fifth investigation, and all five have completely exonerated the climatologists of any scientific wrongdoing. Yet we see no acknowledgment of this exoneration at the many right wing and climate change denial websites that so enthusiastically pimped this phony scandal; in fact, we see exactly the opposite. It’s now an article of faith among this crowd that “Climategate” was the final proof that super-evil scientific Illuminati are conspiring to take away their SUVs.

One day, the investigation into the hacking of the CRU’s servers may reveal who stole and cherry-picked their emails and program code, and that should be very interesting.