Hackers expose climate brawl

The emails -- more than 2000 of them, plus 3000 documents -- began appearing online late on Friday, and are widely available.

Some are malicious -- in one, the head of Britain's Climatic Research Unit, Phil Jones, says he is "cheered" by news of the sudden death of a prominent Australian climate sceptic, John L. Daly, who died of a heart attack at his Launceston home in 2004.

Others show scientists referring to sceptical colleagues as "prats", "charlatans" and "idiots".

The emails also acknowledge the frustration of trying to find evidence to "prove" man-made climate change.

In one email, Kevin Trenberth, a climatologist at the US Centre for Atmospheric Research, who supports the theory of man-made climate change, says: "The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment, and it is a travesty that we can't."

Dr Trenberth says data published last August "shows there should be even more warming . . . the data are surely wrong."

Sceptics say the emails are evidence of a conspiracy by climate scientists to bully into submission colleagues who challenge the theory of man-made climate change.

The authors of the emails, including many who contribute to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports, say their words have been taken out of context.

The emails first appeared on an anonymous Russian server, after hackers apparently broke into the Climatic Research Unit's server at the University of East Anglia last Thursday.

They came with a note from the hacker, saying: "We feel that climate science is, in the current situation, too important to be kept under wraps. We hereby release a random selection of correspondence."

In a statement, the university acknowledged the security breach, saying hackers had stolen its data "to undermine the strong consensus that human activity is affecting the world's climate in ways that are potentially dangerous".

The emails were leaked just weeks before the Copenhagen climate talks and just days before federal parliament considers an emissions trading scheme for Australia.

Some of the emails directly refer to the debate in Australia. In 2003, for example, Professor Jones says: "It's nice to know that our friends down under are doing their best to fight the misinformation. Is it true that the sceptics twist the truth clockwise rather than counterclockwise in the southern hemisphere?"

Another, dated July 1999, says the World Wildlife Federation Australia wants a particular section of a report on climate change "beefed up" because it is worried that section looks "conservative" when compared with the CSIRO's data.

Scientist Ben Santer is quoted as saying he would like to "talk to a few of these (sceptics) in a dark alley".

One email from Professor Jones to Michael E. Mann, director of the Earth System Science Centre at Pennsylvania State University, has as the subject line: "John L. Daly dead".

It is dated just hours after Daly collapsed from a heart attack in his home in Launceston, on January 29, 2004, shortly after doing an interview with the BBC.

The email says: "Mike, in an odd way, this is cheering news!" and it attaches the death notice placed by Daly's family. The family yesterday said they had no comment.