Brian noted last week that a Penn State investigation had cleared Dr. Michael Mann of any wrongdoing in the “Climategate” noise-up, which involved as-yet-unidentified criminals stealing private property and attempting to turn it into evidence of a vast climate disruption conspiracy on the part of greedy liberal scientists.

Apparently the conspiracy runs deeper than anyone could have imagined. Dozens, if not hundreds of presumably reputable news agencies have now joined in the whitewash. For example, there’s:

• Business Week
• BBC
• Science Insider
• Time
• The New York Times
• The Guardian
• The Sydney Morning Herald
• CNN
• The Financial Times
• Sky News (which is owned by Rupert Murdoch, no less)

One hopes that our vigilant community of skeptics will devote some time to understanding how such a broad body of predominantly corporate interests could have been sucked into this conspiracy. George Soros may have a lot of money, but he doesn’t have that much…