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Here is an article from the Wall Street Journal reporting on the
hacking of the emails of some prominent climate scientists and the
political shenanigans that have gone on. As soon as this whole mess
became political, this was bound to happen. Note that this doesn't
mean they are wrong about global climate change, but it does bring into
question some of their most dire claims and their claims of "unity"
among scientists.<br>
<br>
<h1>Hacked Emails Show Climate Science Ridden with Rancor
</h1>
KEITH JOHNSON<br>
<p>The
picture that emerges of prominent climate-change scientists from the
more than 3,000 documents and emails accessed by hackers and put on the
Internet this week is one of professional backbiting and questionable
scientific practices. It could undermine the idea that the science of
man-made global warming is entirely settled just weeks before a crucial
climate-change summit.</p>
<p>Researchers at the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East
Anglia, England, were victims of a cyberattack by hackers sometime
Thursday. A collection of emails dating back to the mid-1990s as well
as scientific documents were splashed across the Internet. University
officials confirmed the hacker attack, but couldn't immediately confirm
the authenticity of all the documents posted on the Internet.</p>
<p>The publicly posted material includes years of correspondence among
leading climate researchers, most of whom participate in the
preparation of climate-change reports for the Intergovernmental Panel
on Climate Change, the authoritative summaries of global climate
science that influence policy makers around the world.</p>
<p>The release of the documents comes just weeks before a big
climate-change summit in Copenhagen, Denmark, meant to lay the
groundwork for a new global treaty to curb greenhouse-gas emissions and
fight climate change. Momentum for an agreement has been undermined by
the economic slump, which has put environmental issues on the back
burner in most countries, and by a 10-year cooling trend in global
temperatures that runs contrary to many of the dire predictions in
climate models such as the IPCC's.</p>
<p>A partial review of the emails shows that in many cases, climate
scientists revealed that their own research wasn't always conclusive.
In others, they discussed ways to paper over differences among
themselves in order to present a "unified" view on climate change. On
at least one occasion, climate scientists were asked to "beef up"
conclusions about climate change and extreme weather events because
environmental officials in one country were planning a "big public
splash."</p>
<p>The release of the documents has given ammunition to many skeptics
of man-made global warming, who for years have argued that the
scientific "consensus" was less robust than the official IPCC summaries
indicated and that climate researchers systematically ostracized other
scientists who presented findings that differed from orthodox views.</p>
<p>Since the hacking, many Web sites catering to climate skeptics have
pored over the material and concluded that it shows a concerted effort
to distort climate science. Other Web sites catering to climate
scientists have dismissed those claims.</p>
<p>The tension between those two camps is apparent in the emails. More
recent messages showed climate scientists were increasingly concerned
about blog postings and articles on leading skeptical Web sites. Much
of the internal discussion over scientific papers centered on how to
pre-empt attacks from prominent skeptics, for example.</p>
<p>Fellow scientists who disagreed with orthodox views on climate
change were variously referred to as "prats" and "utter prats." In
other exchanges, one climate researcher said he was "very tempted" to
"beat the crap out of" a prominent, skeptical U.S. climate scientist.</p>
<p>In several of the emails, climate researchers discussed how to
arrange for favorable reviewers for papers they planned to publish in
scientific journals. At the same time, climate researchers at times
appeared to pressure scientific journals not to publish research by
other scientists whose findings they disagreed with.</p>
<p>One email from 1999, titled "CENSORED!!!!!" showed one U.S.-based
scientist uncomfortable with such tactics. "As for thinking that it is
'Better that nothing appear, than something unacceptable to us' … as
though we are the gatekeepers of all that is acceptable in the world of
paleoclimatology seems amazingly arrogant. Science moves forward
whether we agree with individual articles or not," the email said.</p>
<p>More recent exchanges centered on requests by independent climate
researchers for access to data used by British scientists for some of
their papers. The hacked folder is labeled "FOIA," a reference to the
Freedom of Information Act requests made by other scientists for access
to raw data used to reach conclusions about global temperatures.</p>
<p>Many of the email exchanges discussed ways to decline such requests
for information, on the grounds that the data was confidential or was
intellectual property. In other email exchanges related to the FOIA
requests, some U.K. researchers asked foreign scientists to delete all
emails related to their work for the upcoming IPCC summary. In others,
they discussed boycotting scientific journals that require them to make
their data public.</p>
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