Hacked global warming e-mails – what's new?

When the news broke that "more than 169 megabytes worth of global-warming emails and related files were either hacked and/or leaked from computers at the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Center in Britain and released to the world via the Internet," as the Monitor's Pete Spotts wrote, some reactions were to be expected: Skeptics of global warming were jubilant because they say the e-mails prove that human-caused global warming is false, a fraud perpetrated by scientists.

Supporters countered that statements from the e-mails were taken out of context.

The Los Angeles Times predicts that after healthcare, Afghanistan, and financial regulatory reform, global warming will be the next partisan divide in the US. Anyone who tries to read some of the thousands of impassioned blog posts on this topic would say that it has already happened.

The New York Times zeroes in on the arrogance shown in the scientists' e-mails.

And in Britain, the Telegraph points out that "Climate change sceptics have been forced to change their own graph showing a decrease in global temperatures after admitting that they got it wrong."

Also in the news about climate change as well as concerned with the e-mails:

-- A trio of climate scientists calls the furor over the hacked e-mails "a smear campaign":

"We're facing an effort by special interests who are trying to confuse the public," said Richard Somerville, Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Scripps Institution of Oceanography and a lead author of the UN IPCC Fourth Assessment Report, reports SolveClimate, vai Reuters.

--  Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., had earlier announced an investigation into the e-mails. (See below.) Now, "The U.S. Senate's leading global warming skeptic has sent letters to several climate change scientists and to the inspectors general of various federal agencies notifying them to retain breached documents and e-mails that he says prove researchers are manipulating data to make the case for global warming," says FOX News.

– The president will attend the UN climate change conference in Copenhagen after all.

– Obama to Offer Firm Pledge on Emissions Cuts in Copenhagen, reports The New York Times:

Carol Browner, the president’s senior adviser for energy and climate change, said the president hoped that the announcement of the American target would spur other countries to show their cards.

“Obviously we hope other major economies will put forth ambitious action plans of their own,” she said at a White House briefing Wednesday morning

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