by Lord Oxburgh and Sir Muir Russell. Fox News said that McIntyre "who also worked at the IPCC and submitted notes to the Science and Technology Committee for its investigation, wrote a lengthy rebuttal of the decision on his blog", and disputed the committee's conclusion that the word trick "appears to be a colloquialism for a 'neat' method of handling data". Further investigations by the United States Environmental Protection Agency, the Inspector General of the United States Department of Commerce and the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) of the National Science Foundation reaffirmed that the accusations against the scientists were unfounded. Reception James Hansen, the former director of NASA's Goddard Institute, has dismissed McIntyre as a "court jester". "If a single person can be credited with setting the stage for Climategate, it's Stephen McIntyre, the retired mining consultant behind the popular skeptic blog Climate Audit," wrote Kate Sheppard at Mother Jones in 2011. "Emails from this period show the scientists lashing out against McIntyre. He is referred to as a "bozo" and "a playground bully." McIntyre clearly gets a rise out of irking scientists, whom he frequently refers to as 'the Team'—another play on the hockey-stick metaphor. He likes to 'tease these guys and kind of make fun of them,' he says, and their evident aggravation at his inquiries only egged him on. 'I think it was a mistake for them to in effect adopt a fatwa against Climate Audit,' says McIntyre." Patrick J. Michaels, a former contributor to the IPCC and a former fellow at the denialist Cato Institute, named Climate Audit as part of 'a new “parallel universe” of emerging online publications, manned by serious scientists critical of world governments approach to climate change'. “A parallel universe is assembling itself parallel to the IPCC. This universe has become very technical -- very proficient at taking apart the U.N.’s findings." Internet voting by the public organized by the Weblog Awards, a right-wing blog sponsored by conservative media group Wizbang LLC, won the website the 2007 Weblog "Best Science Blog" award and it was a runner up in the same category in 2008. See also Global warming controversy The Hockey Stick Illusion Tree ring References External links ClimateAudit Science blogs Climate change denial