A climate change debate (mid November) had many apparently trolling the climate blogosphere to get the latest information on the thousands of emails of climate catastrophists released on the Internet (some 168MB of information).

The emails came from a database at the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit (CRU), which collaborates with the UK Hadley Centre. The CRU controls, and has effectively hidden, a large amount of data related to global climate.

The emails (already available online in word-searchable format)  start in 1996 and continue to the present. They include detailed conversations with some  key players on the alarmist side of the debate: Phil Jones, Michael “Hockey Stick” Mann, Keith Briffa, Kevin Trenberth, Tom Wigley, and others. The leak of these files is being dubbed Climategate.

The authors complain that the emails are being taken out of context, except that in most cases, the context is obvious and damning. No open-minded person who takes the time to read these will fail to see a pattern that for many climate alarmists, ideology and politics have trumped good science.

Several troubling themes have emerged so far (h/t to “Jeff C” in comments)

1. Data manipulation: Several times the scientists discuss ways to massage and cherry-pick data and spin presentations to give the strongest impression of warming, and to downplay contrary evidence—just as they have been suspected of doing.

2. Evading Freedom of Information inquiries: In many emails the scientists are clearly colluding to avoid releasing correspondence and data that they are legally obligated to release. They discuss deleting emails after being directed by officials not to do so.

3. Manipulating peer review: They discuss how to blackball scientists who don’t tow the orthodox line, get journal editors fired who allow “skeptical” papers to be published, how to destroy the reputation of journals that allow such papers to be published, and how to prevent “contrarian” research from being included in UN reports. Since the catastrophist crowd speaks so loudly and insistently about “peer-reviewed” research, it’s stunning to find out what this really means in the scandal of contemporary climate research.

Some have complained of the illegality of hacking into a server and releasing private emails. But the leak looks like the work of a scrupulous whistleblower on the inside, who would be legally protected in the UK.