Global Warming E-mails Rock Scientific Community

Campaign to Suppress Dissent in Climate Change Issue Revealed

Mark Whittington
Controversy is swirling about the infamous global warming emails that were hacked from the computer at major global-warming advocacy center in the UK and then distributed on the Internet. Accusations of fraud have ensued.

The emails and other documents, which were hacked from the Climate Research Unit at East Anglia University in the U.K., suggests that there is a systematic campaign ongoing to exclude from scientific journals opinions that maintain that human caused global warming does not exist.

"In the emails, which date to 1996, researchers in the U.S. and the U.K. repeatedly take issue with climate research at odds with their own findings. In some cases, they discuss ways to rebut what they call "disinformation" using new articles in scientific journals or popular Web sites.

"The emails include discussions of apparent efforts to make sure that reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations group that monitors climate science, include their own views and exclude others. In addition, emails show that climate scientists declined to make their data available to scientists whose views they disagreed with."

There are also references to attempts to delete data that does not support human caused global warming.

This is not, needless to say, the behavior of scientists who are interested in free, unfettered inquiry and the pursuit of scientific truth no matter where it leads. This is more like the behavior of issue advocates, advancing one point of view and attacking opposing points of view, regardless of the facts.

The publication of the hacked emails has caused a scandal in the scientific community. The revelation of what amounts to scientific fraud has occurred against a backdrop of rising skepticism about human caused global warming, not only among scientists and policy makers, but among the public at large. The climate change conference in Copenhagen has all but collapsed due to concerns by some countries of the draconian costs of dealing with a climate change crisis that may or may not actually exist.

Attempts to pass cap and trade legislation in the United States seem to have stalled, thanks in part of rising skepticism about human caused global warming and concerns about the cost of combating it.

Certainly the revelation of a campaign to squelch dissent on the climate change issue will not help the cause of those who want to impose draconian environmental regulations. The revelation of the global warming emails might, though, open up the climate change issue to more honest and open debate. It certainly suggests that, contrary to Al Gore, the science is not settled.

Source: Climate Emails Stoke Debate, Keith Johnson, Wall Street Journal, November 23rd, 2009

Published by Mark Whittington

Mark R. Whittington is a writer residing in Houston, Texas. He is the author of The Last Moonwalker, Children of Apollo, Dark Sanction, and Nocturne. He has written numerous articles, some for the Washington...   View profile

5 Comments

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  • Dave( Guest) 12/9/2009

    Scientists are the bane of civilisation(Humanity).What do they actually do??.They pull and tear apart the fabric of what is,then piece it back together to form some disjointed mosaic and then presume to tell us they hold the secrets of humanity, and the Universe in the palm of their hand.DO THEY HAVE NO UNDERSTANDING OF GOD AND HIS CREATION

  • dona 11/28/2009

    God Bless you Mr. HACKER, WHERE EVER YOU ARE.

  • mkurbo 11/23/2009

    To Mr. Connolley (of WikiPedia Global Warming Bias fame) because Wiki won't allow any posting of real info on the AGW site.

    For years Mr. William M. Connolley (talk) and group of biased editors have cried for peer reviewed papers from skeptics to support claims that Global Warming is nothing more than a hoax. It is clear now after the CRU info has been released that the peer reviewed process was controlled as a self perpetuating barrier to such truth being revealed in skeptical papers.

    Mr. Connolley, you will stand trial now for fraud and criminal negligence in maintaining such disinformation for manipulation of billions of dollars worldwide.

    For every innocent child who has viewed your information on Wiki (which was manipulated on purpose for expressed intent) you should be sentenced to one (1) year in prison. It will be hard to serve out millions of years for those crimes...

  • Pat 11/23/2009

    Oh these e-mails show much more than "a campaign to supress dissent" lol.

    We need to bring all these global warming fear mongers to justice!

  • David44 11/23/2009

    Thanks, good straight forward reporting. Unsurprisingly, most major media are parroting the spin put out by this coterie of dishonest climate scientists. One of the most important concerns brought out by this incident is how these guys have controlled the peer review process for both climate science and the IPCC reports. They demand that skeptical scientists publish in the peer-reviewed literature, yet they go to great lengths to prevent such publication by intimidating journal editors and ensuring (negative) peer review by their own inner circle. Imagine a non-tenured academic or graduate student clearing that barrier even if unwise enough to attempt to publish contrary data. How many promising careers have these guys ended or damaged? The overall damage to science and the public perception of scientists is incalculable.

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