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 Posted: Tue Nov 24, 2009 6:40 am |
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Key scientist says politics behind stolen e-mails
By P. SOLOMON BANDA (AP) – 11 hours ago
BOULDER, Colo. — A leading climate change scientist said hackers
breaking into a university's computer server and then posting
documents online show the nasty politics of global warming.
Kevin Trenberth, head of the climate analysis section of the U.S.
National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, 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," Trenberth said Monday in an interview with The
Associated Press.
The University of East Anglia, in eastern England, said hackers last
week stole about a decade's worth of data from a computer server at
the university's Climatic Research Unit, a leading global research
center on climate change.
About 1,000 e-mails and 3,000 documents have been posted on Web sites
and seized on by climate change skeptics, who claim correspondence
shows collusion between scientists to overstate the case for global
warming, and evidence that some have manipulated evidence.
"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," Trenberth said.
Trenberth said he's identified 102 e-mails stolen from a British
university's computer server. Hackers distributed only documents that
could help attempts by skeptics to undermine the scientific consensus
on man-made climate change.
Many of the exchanges were between him and Phil Jones, the British
research center'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 e-mails are exchanges among a whole bunch of
scientists on issues," 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."
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 by the hackers.
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.
Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. |
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