LONDON
Computer hackers have broken into a server at a well-respected climate-change research center in Britain and posted hundreds of private e-mails and documents online -- stoking debate over whether some scientists have overstated the case for man-made climate change.
The University of East Anglia, in eastern England, said in a statement yesterday that the hackers had entered the server and stolen data at its Climatic Research Unit, a leading global research center on climate change. The university said police are investigating the theft of the information, but could not confirm if all the materials posted online are genuine.
More than 10 years of correspondence between leading British and U.S. scientists is included in about 1,000 e-mails and 3,000 documents posted on Web sites after the security breach last week.
Some climate-change skeptics and bloggers claim that the information shows scientists have overstated the case for global warming, and allege the documents contain proof that some researchers have tried to manipulate data.
In one leaked e-mail, the research center's director, Phil Jones, writes to colleagues about graphs showing climate statistics over the last millennium. He alludes to a technique used by a fellow scientist to "hide the decline" in recent global temperatures. Some evidence appears to show a halt in a rise of global temperatures from about 1960, but is contradicted by other evidence which appears to show a rise in temperatures is continuing.
Jones wrote that, in compiling new data, he had "just completed Mike's Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (i.e., from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith's to hide the decline," according to a leaked e-mail, which the author confirmed was genuine.
The scientist's use of the word "trick" has been seized on by skeptics -- who say his e-mail offers proof of collusion between scientists to distort evidence to support their assertion that human activity is influencing climate change.
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