Top scientist blames 'nasty politics' for stolen emails

A leading climate change scientist said today that hackers breaking into a university’s computer server and then posting documents online showed the "nasty politics of global warming".

Dr Kevin Trenberth, head of the climate analysis section of the US National Centre for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, said the hackers’ intentions may have been to influence discussions in an upcoming global climate change summit in Denmark.

“It comes down to politics at sort of all levels, and some of it’s nasty and some of it is trying to destroy the message or even kill the messenger so to speak,” Dr Trenberth said.

The University of East Anglia said hackers stole about a decade’s worth of data last week from a computer server at its Climatic Research Unit, a leading global research centre on climate change.

About 1,000 emails and 3,000 documents have been posted on websites and seized on by climate change sceptics who claim correspondence shows collusion between scientists to overstate the case for global warming, and of evidence tampering.

“The messengers in this case are the scientists who are putting forward a basis for this, the basis for the climate change based on, and founded upon the facts, the measurements and the observations and our best interpretation of those,” Mr Trenberth said.

Dr Trenberth said he had identified 102 emails stolen from a British university’s computer server.

Hackers distributed only documents that could help attempts by sceptics to undermine the scientific consensus on man-made climate change.

Many of the exchanges were between him and Phil Jones, the British research centre’s director.

The two men worked on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessments, which articulated the scientific community’s consensus on global warming in 2001 and 2007.

“What you see in those emails are exchanges among a whole bunch of scientists on issues,” Dr Trenberth said.

“What you will find is that there is a tremendous amount of integrity, vigorous discussion about issues and exactly how to handle issues... So it’s far from a whole bunch of scientists agreeing and colluding to do things. They’re actually arguing, vigorously, about the science.”

Dr Trenberth, a well-respected atmospheric scientist, said it did not appear that all the documents stolen from the university had been distributed on the internet.

At least 65 world leaders will attend the Copenhagen climate summit in December as representatives of 191 nations seek agreement on a new global treaty on limiting emissions of greenhouse gases.