Global warming e-mail whodunit heats up as new e-mails surface

It smells a lot like a certain quadrant of the denier community. They pretend to be concerned that we are impeding development in poor countries. Only certain think tanks think that way and play that way.
Greenpeace research director Kert Davies • Discussing who he thinks might be behind an infamous 2009 hack that led to the distribution of over 1,000 e-mails from the Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia, timed in such a way to undercut research being done on global warming. The story, on the backburner for nearly two years, is suddenly starting to simmer again as a result of further e-mail releases and word of an investigation in Britain. During the most recent leak of e-mails, the leaker offered up just enough details in cryptic messages to give investigators something to grasp onto. Many in the climate change community — skeptics, activists and so on — have different views on the motives of the person who released the e-mails, but it’s a whodunit which should keep things interesting in the coming weeks. source

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Reuters is also greatly underplaying the story at the very bottom of their front page. But at least they’re playing it, unlike Fox News, which spilled a lot of ink on it when it first broke. It’s only on their world page as a result of partner member The Wall Street Journal running a story about it (and them linking to it at the very bottom of the page). While not the biggest story on the digest, the initial controversy around Climategate – often a punching bag for skeptics of climate change – makes it a pretty important story to have something about. Other sites are covering it like so:

CNN: Lead storyIn a lot of ways, the controversy around climate change is stronger in the U.S. than elsewhere in the world, so big play here makes sense.
Guardian: Lead StoryNo individual source owned the Climategate story as much as The Guardian did, so it’s not surprising to see them giving it big play.

Google news: A lead itemWhile the Russian spy swap and the NBA’s free agency craziness are ahead of it, Google’s algorithms are giving it decent play.
BBC: Secondary storyDespite the fact that the controversy is based around a British university, the BBC chose to play up Nicolas Sarkozy instead.

New York Times: DownpageWhile given decent play, it’s not the site’s lead story this morning. They went with the Russian spy-trading story instead.
MSNBC: DownpageYou have to go nearly halfway down the page to see the site covering this at all, which is pretty strange if you ask us.

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We went through this very carefully and we concluded that these behaviors did not damage our judgment of the integrity, the honesty, the rigor with which they had operated as scientists.
“Climategate” investigator Muir Russell • Presenting his findings on scientists at the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit. While the 160-page report largely vindicates their research, it does reveal that they didn’t use “the proper degree of openness” with public information requests. Which one might say led to the whole “see! we knew they were lying to us!” mess you see today. source

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The UEA response has been frankly pathetic. It was informed by Real Climate of the hack on 17 November but only reacted two days later when journalists caught on to the story. It refused to confirm whether the emails were accurate or not and, for a long time, refused to comment at all.
Climate Outreach and Information Network founder George Marshall • Discussing the University of East Anglia’s weak response to the hacked e-mail controversy despite the fact that the e-mails don’t reveal any sort of conspiracy. He argues instead that it’s merely been integrated into longstanding skeptic opinions. “The speed with which the emails have been cut apart and fed into existing storylines is remarkable,” he notes. He also notes the timing is extremely suspect. source

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This is not a smoking gun; this is a mushroom cloud.
Climatologist Patrick J. Michaels • Describing his feelings on a bunch of private e-mails ganked from a British university’s computer server. The belief of skeptics? These e-mails prove that the scientific community is overstating the global warming threat for their own gain. The University of East Anglia confirms the hacking but says they can’t confirm the accuracy of the e-mails sent. Source

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02 Jan 2012 11:21