The worldwide scientific community is aghast over thousands of emails and documents posted on the Internet after being leaked from the Climate Research Unit (CRU) in the United Kingdom, a prominent global warming research center leading the claim that human-caused global warming is destroying the world.

The secret emails were published only a few weeks before the opening of the major climate-change summit in Copenhagen where President Barack Obama is said to be ready to sign an emissions control accord despite the Senate’s refusal to pass his so-called Cap and Trade bill.

The secret emails show that CRU scientists have faked data, hidden inconvenient facts, and muscled opponents out of meetings and publications, so that CRU’s data on global climate will convince a gullible public to take political action that elevates scientists into de facto rulers of most of the world’s economies alongside elected officials.

Leaked emails even plot ways to keep opposing scientific papers from being published, and one suggests physically beating a scientific opponent. In one email, Benjamin Santer from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, California, wrote to the director of the CRU that he was "tempted to beat" up Patrick Michaels, a climate scientist at the Cato Institute in Washington

Michaels told the New York Times, “The one about 'let's punch Pat Michaels' -- that's really no big deal. Much more important are the e-mails showing attempts to intimidate the editors of journals and the refereed scientific literature."

Michaels told the Wall Street Journal, "This is what everyone feared. Over the years, it has become increasingly difficult for anyone who does not view global warming as an end-of-the-world issue to publish papers. This isn't questionable practice, this is unethical."

The secret correspondence between dozens of climate-change researchers, including many in the U.S., illustrates seething hate and unethical censorship by those who believe human activities cause global warming against rivals who argue that the link between humans and climate change remains uncertain.

One of the most appalling documents in the mess is a brainwashing manual called “The Rules of the Game,” partly paid for with British government money (do they have a Ministry of Propaganda now?) and used by climate scientists to manipulate public opinion and gain support for political action. Click here to examine the 5-page document (PDF document).

The Climate Research Unit, located at East Anglia University in England, has claimed their computers were hacked by an outside attacker in Russia, but the evidence points to a CRU inside whistleblower: the files are all contained in a master folder named FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) that holds only items that have been legally requested but that CRU has refused to release.

In addition, the FOIA folder contains two neatly separated sub-folders, one for emails, the other for documents. Only an insider who knew exactly what to look for would have been able to release only the items that had been legally requested through FOIA but kept secret by the CRU – and to do it without scrambling legally requested data with other information.

In all, more than 1,000 emails and more than 2,000 other documents were copied from the Climate Research Unit, but left intact on CRU’s computers and not removed or harmed. The tidy package of information was transmitted by the whistleblower to an anonymous file transfer center in Russia to hide the identity of the whistleblower, who would undoubtedly be punished rather than given a hero’s award for releasing the truth.

The whistleblower’s revelations show that the Climate Research Unit, an important center of global climate research, acted viciously to shut out dissenters and their points of view.

Emails dating from 1996 to the present show U.S. and U.K. researchers repeatedly insulting, disparaging and attacking climate research that disagreed with their own findings. CRU scientists discussed ways to crush what they call "disinformation" by flooding scientific journals and popular Web sites with their views and even calling dissenters “criminals.”

The emails include CRU scientists making deals with friends on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations group that monitors climate science, to include only their own views and exclude others.

Phil Jones, the director of the East Anglia climate center, suggested to climate scientist Michael Mann of Penn State University that skeptics' research was unwelcome: We "will keep them out somehow -- even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!"

John Christy, a scientist at the University of Alabama at Huntsville attacked in the emails for asking that an IPCC report include dissenting viewpoints, said, "It's disconcerting to realize that legislative actions this nation is preparing to take, and which will cost trillions of dollars, are based upon a view of climate that has not been completely scientifically tested."

The emails show positively that CRU’s climate scientists repeatedly refused to make their data available to scientists whose views they disagreed with, to prevent any critique.

 
East Anglia University officials confirmed that their computer had been “attacked” and said the documents appeared to be genuine.

The University said, "The selective publication of some stolen emails and other papers taken out of context is mischievous and cannot be considered a genuine attempt to engage with this issue in a responsible way."

The University appears to be trying to hide its own corruption, since the “selective publication” they refer to was only of items that had been legally requested through FOIA and were perfectly in context: they were strictly items that the University had refused to release after being legally asked to provide the information.

The mischief looks like it’s being done by the University and that the CRU is the one not attempting to engage this issue in a responsible way – why would scientists, of all people, hide facts and try to prevent others’ facts from being published?

Guilt is the only reason I can see. It looks to me like the CRU is lying, cheating and acting like thugs.

The Wall Street Journal remarked, “Most climate scientists today argue that the earth's temperature is rising, and nearly all of those agree that human activity is likely to be a prime or at least significant cause. But a vocal minority dispute one or both of those views.”

Representatives of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a clubby old-line grant-seekers’ group, expressed concern that the exposed emails would weaken global resolve to curb greenhouse-gas emissions. Their own political power is clearly what these “scientists” really care about.

Ginger Pinholster, an AAAS  spokesperson, said her outfit believes "that climate change is real, it is related to human activities, and the need to counteract its impacts is now urgent."

She added that the association's journal, Science, evaluates papers solely on scientific merit.

Why don’t we believe in peer review anymore? The peer review process has been irreparably corrupted by ideological scientists who will even resort to “redefining what the peer-review literature is!"

The “scientist” who said that is less like the defiant dissident Galileo than he is like Torquemada, the Spanish Inquisition’s “hammer of heretics.”

The Wall Street Journal quoted Mojib Latif, a climate researcher at Germany's Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences, who said he found it hard to believe that climate scientists were trying to squelch dissent. Mr. Latif, who believes in man-made global warming but who has co-authored a paper ascribing current cooling to temporary natural trends, said, "I simply can't believe that there is a kind of mafia that is trying to inhibit critical papers from being published."

Well, Herr Doktor Latif, how come we don’t see them? Hmm?

And what’s “belief” got to do with science anyway?

On second thought, maybe he’s right.

Perhaps climate science has grown so supernatural and so political, that’s what it takes.