British politicians got their turn to ponder the climate-gate incident today, as the House of Commons science committee held its inquiry into the email theft furore.

Today’s meeting is only one of several inquiries into allegations stemming from the theft and publication of a huge number of emails from and to climate researchers at the University of East Anglia. These allegations range from the university not dealing properly with freedom of information requests to the suggestion that the emails show global warming is a huge conspiracy.

The star witness at the actually rather disappointing hearing was undoubtedly the scientist at the centre of the email web: Phil Jones, head of UEA’s Climatic Research Unit. However, people who have read any of the recent interviews with Jones (such as Nature’s) will probably not find any shocking revelations from today’s sparing.

The closest to that is probably the weak confession from Jones that, “I’ve obviously written some very awful emails”. At times he seemed slightly like a rabbit caught in the headlights as the science and technology committee produced their typically robust questioning, but most of the questions wheeled out here – about tree ring data, weather stations, access to data and the like – have been covered before.

In fact all those who appeared before the committee have clearly had a long time to perfect their answers to the questions they (and we) all knew were coming.

Before Jones took centre stage, Lord Lawson and Benny Peiser of the climate-skeptic Global Warming Policy Foundation, were also given a grilling by the committee members. Again, you are unlikely to have heard anything from them you haven’t heard before.

Former information commissioner Richard Thomas appeared to discuss the freedom of information aspects of the affair. “Some of the material that has surfaced … to any commissioner that is something that prima facie needs investigation,” he said. Again – this should surprise no one (see: Climate row university ‘broke law on information disclosures’).

Another issue is that, like many of the inquiries into the email leak, this hearing is explicitly “not an inquiry into global warming”. This insistence does begin to appear rather laughable given the number of submissions that make the denial or upholding of global warming a central point.

The claim by Godfrey Bloom, member of the European Parliament for Yorkshire and North Lincolnshire, that “the leaked CRU emails appear to show a deliberate and systematic attempt by leading climate scientists to falsify data, to ‘hide the decline’, and to exaggerate warming” is fairly typical of one side.

On the other side are submissions from the likes of the Met Office, insisting “there is strong evidence that the globe has warmed”.

Tune in soon for another sequel to Climate-gate – The Inquiry. Shocking revelations are likely to be in short supply though…

Image: the site of today’s hearing / photo by moppet65535 via Flickr under creative commons.