An unknown person leaked more than a decade of e-mail messages and some data belonging to a noted climatologist last week, adding fuel to the heated debate over climate change.
On Monday, the University of East Anglia in Norwich, U.K., acknowledged that one of its e-mail servers had been hacked and a large amount of e-mail messages belonging to at least one member of its Climate Research Unit taken by the intruder. The breach likely occurred sometime between Nov. 12, the date of the most recent e-mail messages, and Nov. 17, when the intruders attempted to send the files to a blog that reported on the breach.
"Data, including personal information about individuals, appears to have been illegally taken from the university and elements published selectively on a number of websites," the university said in a statement. "The volume of material published and its piecemeal nature makes it impossible to confirm what proportion is genuine. We took immediate action to remove the server in question from operation and have involved the police in what we consider to be a criminal investigation."
Climate skeptics posted a number of alleged snippets of the e-mail messages, including some that shed an unflattering light on the scientists' methods of presenting data. In one snippet, the scientists discussed a "trick" of pasting recent temperature measurements onto estimated historical data. Posting to the RealClimate blog, which supports the prevailing view of human-caused global warming, an unidentified poster noted that a "trick" is often used to refer to a neat way of doing things.
While climate skeptics argue for non-secretive peer review, the result of the e-mail server intrusion may be the opposite.
"Clearly no-one would have gone to this trouble if the academic object of study was the mating habits of European butterflies -- that community’s internal discussions are probably safe from the public eye," the post to the RealClimate blog stated. "But it is important to remember that emails do seem to exist forever, and that there is always a chance that they will be inadvertently released. Most people do not act as if this is true, but they probably should."
The University of East Anglia has notified the FBI and defended the research group's reputation.
"CRU's published research is, and has always been, fully peer-reviewed by the relevant journals, and is one strand of research underpinning the strong consensus that human activity is affecting the world's climate in ways that are potentially dangerous," the University of East Anglia said in a statement.
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