How Scientists Cope as Climate Debate Gets Personal

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http://www.livescience.com/17257-scientists-cope-personal-climate-debate.html

How Scientists Cope as Climate Debate Gets Personal

Stephanie Pappas, LiveScience Senior Writer
Date: 01 December 2011 Time: 11:50 AM ET

In the days before Thanksgiving, climate researchers got an unpleasant holiday surprise: A new release of emails between climate scientists hacked from a University of East Anglia (UEA) server in 2009.

The release, quickly dubbed "Climategate 2.0" after the initial 2009 "Climategate" hacking, drew http://www.livescience.com/17151-climategate-emails-michael-mann.html">strong condemnation from scientists involved in the emails, as well as a certain sense of wearied exasperation.

"Just another shameless effort to manufacture a false controversy, once again," Pennsylvania State University climate scientist Michael Mann wrote in an email to LiveScience.

In 2009, an unknown hacker stole thousands of documents, including emails between climate researchers, from a UEA server and released a portion of them publicly. Climate-change skeptics pounced on the emails as evidence that the researchers were fudging data and suppressing debate in the climate field; however, multiple investigations, including by the researchers' universities, independent panels, and the U.K. House of Commons, found no evidence of scientific misconduct in the documents. The new document dump reportedly includes documents taken in 2009, but not released earlier.

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