Climategate 2: More E-mails Leaked Ahead of UN Summit

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The newly leaked data shows supposed top experts using conspiratorial language to discuss devious ways to advance “the cause” — global-warming alarmism. The e-mails also reveal discussions on how to marginalize skeptics and even illegally destroy evidence and hide data.

A few scientists’ e-mails expressed skepticism and concern about the shadowy process, too. At least one expert complained that his protests were being ignored. Another said governments should be used to help drum up public fears. And one exchange shows scientists encouraging the use of the term “climate change” instead of “global warming” due to “public relations” problems.

According to analysts, the embarrassing new leaks will have widespread repercussions and could mark the end of climate alarmism altogether. Critics of man-made climate-change theories touted by the UN are already calling the emerging scandal “Climategate 2.”

The last trove of leaked Climategate e-mails from the University of East Anglia’s disgraced Climatic Research Unit (CRU) provoked a massive public outcry. Scientists were caught discussing, among other unscientific scheming, ways to “hide the decline” in global temperatures.

In the new cache of documents, one unsourced line mentions the scientists’ efforts to manipulate data to conceal cooling. "Today’s decisions should be based on all the information we can get, not on hiding the decline," the anonymous author of the document stated, pointing out that the trillions of dollars being wasted on “climate change” could save children’s lives instead.

The first Climategate scandal grew so large that many analysts credited it with stalling the creation of more global-warming treaties at the UN COP 15 climate conference, the 15th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, two years ago in Copenhagen, Denmark. And the new batch could have a similarly chilling effect on the upcoming COP 17 summit.

One e-mail from disgraced CRU boss Professor Phil Jones, for example, discusses an illegal conspiracy to violate the U.K. Freedom of Information Act. “One way to cover yourself,” he noted, “would be to delete all emails at the end of the process. Hard to do, as not everybody will remember to do it.”

Another e-mail from Jones talks about filling the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change with “people we know and trust.” A third discusses stuffing the IPCC with scientists “on the right side” of the debate.

Jones was also at the center of the first Climategate scandal and eventually became a laughingstock among climate experts who did not support his alarmist views. But in the newly leaked correspondence, it becomes clear that even supporters of “the cause” had reservations.

In one e-mail to Jones, U.K. Met Office climate scientist Peter Thorne blasts some of the methodology and presentations being used. “Observations do not show rising temperatures throughout the tropical troposphere unless you accept one single study and approach and discount a wealth of others,” he noted. “This is just downright dangerous. We need to communicate the uncertainty and be honest.”

A separate e-mail from Thorne to Jones complains that his concerns are not being taken seriously. “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,” Thorne explained, noting that if something did not change, he did not even want to be associated with a research paper.

One widely cited quote came from the correspondence of Professor Jonathan Overpeck, the director of the Institute for the Study of Planet Earth. “The trick may be to decide on the main message and use that to guid[e] what’s included and what is left out,” he noted in an e-mail discussing how to condense a body of material, suggesting the exclusion of "inconclusive information."

The University of East Anglia promptly released a statement saying the e-mails were apparently held back from the last leak “to cause maximum disruption to the imminent international climate talks” in Durban. "This appears to be a carefully-timed attempt to reignite controversy over the science behind climate change,” the statement read, claiming the “science” had already been “vindicated.”

Self-styled climate scientists whose e-mails were leaked immediately went on the offensive, too. Several told every newspaper that would listen that their correspondence was “taken out of context” and that there are no doubts about human-caused global-warming theories.

Disgraced chief of Penn State University’s Earth System Science Center and creator of the discredited “hockey stick” graph Michael Mann, for instance, told the U.K.'s Guardian that the latest leak was "truly pathetic." Ironically, those are the exact same words used by one of his fellow climate scientists in the leaked e-mails to describe his hallmark graph.

But his own words are damning, too, according to critics. In one e-mail he sent, which was released this week, Mann said, “The important thing is to make sure [skeptical scientists] are loosing [sic] the PR battle.” He also blasted other scientists for “not helping the cause.”

While Mann admitted the e-mails were his, he claimed — as usual — that they were taken out of context. "I hardly see anything that appears damning at all," he added in the interview with the Guardian, a publication that has become notorious for promoting unjustified climate hysteria.

The New American obtained the leaked documents from a Russian server where they were posted briefly before being taken down. A spokesman for the University of East Anglia said the institution had not been able to sift through all of the data but that it appeared genuine.

Establishment publications such as the Washington Post, however, were quick to defend the supposed scientists and their theories despite the new revelations. “Competent people can disagree about how big of a problem global warming is,” Jason Samenow claimed in a Post piece, suggesting that a discussion about whether global warming is a problem — let alone manmade or even real — is entirely off limits. “But the scientific community has largely moved beyond the scientific issues brought to light in the Climategate 1.0 emails and more emails on the same issues only serve as an unneeded distraction.”

But critics of the UN global-warming narrative did not see it that way at all. "It appears that Climategate 2.0 has arrived to drain what little life there was left in the man-made global warming movement,” noted Climate Depot publisher Marc Morano, a longtime critic of the global body’s theories. “The new emails further expose the upper echelon of the UN IPCC as being more interested in crafting a careful narrative than following the evidence. The release of thousands of more emails is quite simply another victory for science.”

Popular commentator James Delingpole with the Telegraph suggested that the climate-alarmism “game” might finally be over. “All your favorite Climategate characters are here, once again caught red-handed in a series of emails exaggerating the extent of Anthropogenic Global Warming, while privately admitting to one another that the evidence is nowhere near as a strong as they'd like it to be,” he noted. “In other words, what these emails confirm is that the great man-made global warming scare is not about science but about political activism.”

There are still more than 200,000 e-mails that have not been released by the individual or organization responsible for the first two leaks. Police are reportedly investigating. It remains unclear what may be contained in the unreleased e-mails or if they will eventually be leaked.

Clarification: This article has been revised to more accurately reflect the context of Professor Jonathan Overpeck's e-mail.

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