Remember our friend “Dr.” Tom Karl, the first appointee to head the nation’s new Climate Service? He was “Dr. Karl” — thanks to a 1970s PhD, or so he had written — until, well, he wasn’t?

Today, plowing through 1,500 pages of e-mails just dumped on me by NASA — to, I get the feeling, forestall the inevitable litigation they knew became ripe this week – I see the following e-mail from the good doctor to James Hansen. The footer jumped out at me. [See the PDF here.]

Now, imagine the moment when Mr. Karl proudly calls down to IT to announce that he wants the tag “Dr.” now placed before his name on the footer. Possibly right after he hung on the wall his new Doctorate. Erm, Honorary Doctorate. Ah, of, er, Humane Letters. In 2002.

How so very sad it would have been to observe that moment. Almost as bad, I guess, as when he erroneously put down the “Ph.D.” on that CV I found previously. Something to do with a federal grant (uh oh). Yet it really does capture the “climate science” field as it has boomed from a sleepy backwater of geology to the capo di tutti capi of taxpayer-funded boondoggles, on similar pretense.

And equally fitting that Dr. Karl be the first head of this new ClimateCorps (no, sadly, that’s not pronounced “corpse“). This reminds me of several more gems I have stumbled across in today’s review — please be patient — all telling me how we should look forward to years more of the sort of accuracy and integrity we have come to expect from our climate comrades.