Fallout From Hacked Climate Change Emails Intensifies

Scientists worry backstabbing could derail emissions agreement
By Rob Quinn,  Newser Staff
Posted Nov 24, 2009 9:22 AM CST
Fallout From Hacked Climate Change Emails Intensifies
Aviation Maintenance Tech 2 John Ferrari looks out of the back of a Coast Guard C-130 as he surveys the ice off of the coast of Barrow, Alaska, during a surveillance flight to the Arctic.   (AP Photo/Al Grillo)

The planet-sized rift between climate scientists skeptical about man-made global warming and the rest of the field has been getting even wider this week as the fallout from last week's hacked emails continues. Some experts fear that the emails—in which climate scientists insult skeptics and discuss ways to block dissenting points of view—could hurt the chances of an agreement on cutting emissions, the Wall Street Journal reports.

Evidence of efforts to silence opposition is "what everyone feared," one scientist discussed negatively in the emails says. Other scientists say that while the emails will embarrass the scientists involved, they're not a game-changer in the climate debate. "It shows that the process of science is not always pristine," the director of the Yale Project on Climate Change tells Reuters. "But there's no smoking gun in the emails from what I've seen." (More climate change stories.)

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