Leaked E-mails Raise Questions About Climate Change Science

November 22, 2009 10:44 a.m. EST

Washington, DC (AHN) - Hundreds of emails between leading climate scientists were hacked and leaked online, and are likely to add to the debate over the theory that man is responsible for climate change.

Many of the e-mails, hacked from the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit, suggest that some data used to support the theory of climate change was manipulated, and skeptical scientists were deliberately kept out of the debate.

Climate change doubters are using the e-mails as a "smoking gun" that scientists colluded over the years to support their theory that climate change is real and caused by man.

More than 169 megabytes of e-mails and files were released. They contain exchanges going back to 1996.

News of the e-mails has caused a stir on the Internet and the story has been picked up by major newspapers like the New York Times and the Washington Post.

One exchange between the CRU's director Phil Jones and Pennsylvania State University's Michael E. Mann, states that scientists questioning climate change should not be included in the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's report on the subject. Jones also said the the e-mail that the report's editor should be fired for allowing dissenting views to make publication.

"I can't see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report," Jones wrote Mann. "Kevin and I will keep them out somehow -- even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!"

Jones also wrote, "I will be emailing the journal to tell them I'm having nothing to do with them until they rid themselves of this troublesome editor."

The e-mails are likely to be used as ammunition by opponents of climate change legislation pending in the Senate, that has already passed the House.