Hackers have broken into a server of the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit and posted private emails and documents on the Internet in hopes of showing that scientists have exaggerated global warming concerns.
The Climatic Research Unit, a leader in global climate change research, said that about 1,000 emails and 3,000 documents were posted on web sites after the hackers broke in and stole the information. It is not known as to whether all the emails and documents are authentic.
As with most issues, there is a debate over whether global warming is really occurring due to man-made problems or not. Skeptics and bloggers are saying that the recent information is proof that scientists are manipulating data to prove their point.
One email about global warming cited Phil Jones, the director of the research center, talking about the climate statistics of the last millennium and mentioned a technique used by scientists called “hide the decline.” Apparently, there is evidence that shows a halt in the rise of the temperatures while other evidence shows the temperatures continue to rise. The email said Jones had “just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (i.e., from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.” Skeptics picked up on the words “trick” and “hide the decline” as proof of a conspiracy. Jones says that his words were taken out of context and there is no “trick.”
Scientists named in the emails – including U.S’s Gavin Schmidt of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Kevin Trenberth of the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research – have yet to make a comment on the leaks.
The University of East Anglia issued a statement, which read in part that the leaks were trying to undermine “the strong consensus that human activity is affecting the world’s climate in ways that are potentially dangerous.” It went on to read “The selective publication of some stolen e-mails and other papers taken out of context is mischievous and cannot be considered a genuine attempt to engage with this issue in a responsible way.”
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