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Climategate 2? More UEA hacked emails

Hacked emails from the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit (CRU) were leaked online in 2009 before crunch UN climate talks in Copenhagen.

The so-called ‘climategate’ scandal prompted three separate enquiries in Britain alone. Although the scientists involved were cleared of any scientific wrongdoing the university was criticised for failing to be more open with information around climate change.

This time 5,000 emails were leaked days before the latest round of UN talks in Durban, South Africa, where it is hoped progress can be made towards a new deal on global warming.

Many of the emails are already circulating on various blogs as ‘evidence’ scientists involved in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the UN body in charge of advising governments, were not willing to share information.

One email allegedly from Professor Phil Jones, head of the CRU, reads: “One way to cover yourself ... would be to delete all emails at the end of the process. Hard to do, as not everybody will remember to do it.”

Phrases have been picked out that discuss not putting in too much “optimistic stuff”.

One email allegedly states: "I also think the science is being manipulated to put a political spin on it which for all our sakes might not be too clever in the long run."

Emails also appear to show the Government’s interest in a ‘strong story’ on climate change.

An email reads: “They want the story to be a very strong one and don’t want to be made to look foolish.”

Last night the University of East Anglia said the sheer volume of material makes it impossible to confirm at present that all the emails are genuine. The police have been informed.

A spokesman said many of the comments are taken out of context.

She added: “These emails have the appearance of having been held back after the theft of data and emails in 2009 to be released at a time designed to cause maximum disruption to the imminent international climate talks.

“This appears to be a carefully-timed attempt to reignite controversy over the science behind climate change when that science has been vindicated by three separate independent inquiries and number of studies.”

Professor Michael Mann of Penn State University in the US told a newspaper the emails appeared to be his but denied they were damning.

He said out of context snippets are being spread on the internet to make scientists look bad and confuse the public on climate change.

Bob Ward, policy and communications director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics, said the UEA should investigate the emails as a matter of urgency.

However on initial appearances, he said the emails do not seem to cast doubt on the science.

He said the issue of sharing information and being more open about the uncertainties within the science is already being dealt with by both the UEA and the IPCC following the criticisms prompted by the first cache of emails.

“The emails that have been highlighted by self-proclaimed climate change ‘sceptics’ do not raise any questions of substance that have not already been addressed by the independent inquiries into the original publication of hacked messages in November 2009. None of the inquiries found evidence of fraud or serious misconduct by climate researchers, but they did conclude that levels of transparency should be improved.”

Prof Andrew Watson FRS, Royal Society Research Professor at the University of East Anglia, said the 'selective' quotes simply show a diverse group of people having an argument and occasionally a bitch.

“Meantime, none of this, not one word that I can see, subtracts from the simple fact that the world has warmed significantly in the last 100 years and it's most likely caused by humans increasing the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere," he added.

Dr Simon Lewis, Royal Society research fellow at the University of Leeds, said it was all about politics.

“This latest email leak, again on the eve of important international climate talks, is about politics. Yet the shadowy, undemocratic group trying to influence these international talks will fail. I sat through two weeks of talks in Copenhagen after the first email release and heard them mentioned only once. This new leak will have a similarly limited impact. Governments know that climate science reports signed off by over 190 countries, each with their own scientists, cannot be unduly influenced by a single scientist or a small group. These emails are irrelevant."

By Louise Gray,

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