Climate Wars: Who stole the emails?

No doubt you've heard by now that somebody hacked computers and stole thousands of emails at the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit (CRU) last week. The British institution is a major center for climate research.

In looking at the published comments from the thousands of stolen emails, it appears there is nothing nefarious that screams "climate conspiracy" in the documents that have been illegally obtained and made public. The few items regarding climate discussions that have been cited by climate change skeptics seem to have already been easily explained as part of normal healthy debate and discussion among scientists.

The bigger questions I have not seen asked yet may be; Who would hack into these computers and commit cyber theft, and why would they do it? Is this an orchestrated smear campaign against reputable climate scientists? Is the timing of this, just weeks before a major international climate policy meeting in Copenhagen, a coincidence?

I do not personally know the answers to these questions, but the investigation into the stolen emails may shed some interesting light in the coming weeks.

In the mean time, buckle up.

What do you think?

PH