It's kind of amusing to see these guys froth at the mouth at the prospect of scouring through millions of lines of text to find a couple of scientists with less than absolutely pure motivations and research methods. When the witch-hunt succeeds, it of course invalidates everything we leftist propagandists try to convince the people that we know!!<p>It's exactly parallel to creationists taking some instance of one scientist mistaking some fossil early in the century and milking that for decades to disprove evolution.
Speaking of skepticism...<p>Skeptics Handbook
<a href="http://joannenova.com.au/global-warming" rel="nofollow">http://joannenova.com.au/global-warming</a><p>Skeptics Handbook II
<a href="http://joannenova.com.au/2009/11/skeptics-handbook-ii-global-bullies-want-your-money/" rel="nofollow">http://joannenova.com.au/2009/11/skeptics-handbook-ii-global...</a><p>It's always been about the science.
Here's the question that interests me: how much is this information worth, and to whom? Who stole and published this information, and why?<p>Given the amount of money in play here, the value of this release to certain parties is enormous. What would a multinational oil company be willing to pay to derail Copenhagen? What would the Chinese government pay to avoid being subject to global CO2 emissions rules down the road?<p>While this is probably an inside job by a disgruntled IT worker, if this was a paid job the value delivered is truly enormous: definitely hundreds of millions of dollars, and conceivably <i>much</i> more.<p>Is there any level of data security that can protect against such a large incentive?
Perhaps a better link here:<p><a href="http://www.sophos.com/blogs/gc/g/2009/11/20/hackers-steal-information-climate-research-unit/" rel="nofollow">http://www.sophos.com/blogs/gc/g/2009/11/20/hackers-steal-in...</a>
<i>These people have acquired millions if not billions of taxpayers' money</i><p>Millions I can imagine. That's several peoples salaries over several years. But billions? Surely he shouldn't be making such an extreme claim without detailing how he thinks that value is broken down. It seems obviously nonsense just by rough order of magnitude estimates.