The Uni of East Anglia has confirmed that it is their emails being
circulated on the internet.
That they have been leaked is obviously illegal, but it is like
someone leaked info on the holocaust.
Is the illegality important.

There does seem to be a prima fascia case to be answered.
The legislation about to go through Parliament must be suspended and
realistically the Copenhagen conference should be postponed.
They were not going to get an agreement there anyway .
It won't happen of course, but it will give them something to talk
about and who would get in the way of a politician or public servant
and such a junket ?

BTW, did you hear about the IPCC & Finnish scientists that did tests
on a lake bed. The data showed a falling temperature ?
The IPCC published the graph upside down !
You couldn't make it up !

Like the abortion debate, the debate over climate change has become totally poisoned, divided into two armed camps hurling insults and accusations at one another, and unfortunately the loudest-mouthed extremists on each side are increasingly the only voices heard. Positions have been firmly entrenched and no-one seems to want to be seen as giving succour to the enemy.

The stridently pro-AGW side seems unable to deal in anything less than the sort of apocalyptic scenarios that would make even Roland Emmerich blush, while the rabid anti-AGW'ers seem unable to accept that their enemies might be even just a little bit right.

And heaven help those who dare so much as set a toe in No-Man's-Land. "It’s not hard to get labelled a climate change 'denier'. You don’t even have to deny that climate change is real, man-made and a problem," lamented Stuart Blackman recently. "If you stray from agreeing with the political prescription, you're an immoral person."

The unfortunate result of such partisanship is that every scrap of evidence ends up being examined only in the light of proving your case - whichever particular way you lean.

With regard to the Hadley leak, the pro-AGWers are determinedly pooh-poohing the whole thing and self-righteously deploring the "illegal" actions of the unknown whistleblower, whilst the anti-AGWers are just as determined that it will finally be proof of their nuttier conspiracy theories.

My two cent's worth? The Hadley leak doesn't blow open any "conspiracy", but it does highlight some extremely questionable practices, especially the absolute determination to own the debate and to avoid public scrutiny, and what appears to be some tendentious research.

Oh, and Bazz, a slight correction: the IPCC did not publish the Tiljander graph upside down; what Michael Mann did do, while technically correct, still couldn't be described as anything less than incredibly dodgy: the axes of the graph were inverted, so that while the data was still the same, to a less-than scrupulous eye the picture appeared to be telling a completely opposite story.

Let me repeat my original post.
In the 60's a woman started an organization to clothe animals. Her reason was that you could see their "private parts" & as "Private parts" were obscene they should be covered, even on animals. She traveled around America for a year & started many groups who held demonstrations & even a march on Washington. 10 of thousands attended. One Zoo even went so far as to comply & dressed their animals. Clothing companies got into the act & made & sold clothes for peoples dog & cats. It turns out that the woman was doing her Majors in Psychology on Brainwashing the Masses. I remember the article in the paper & on the News. & so it goes on.

Global Warming is a bigger scam than the Nigerian scam. It's all a World wide Governments revenue raising scheme.

To add some.

I was sitting in a doctors office the other day & I picked up an old Readers Digest "Scientific Facts" Circa 1974. In that there was a large chapter written by a number of eminent scientists of the day, They claimed that the world, by the year 2000, would be experiencing a Nuclear Winter because of all the pollution in the atmosphere. I guess that didn't happen so, Oh well, it must be the other way. We'll try that. I even remember an extended Documentary about Nuclear Winter that went to air about 1976 & a Mini Series on another channel about the same subject.

The whole thing is a bit dicy for my liking. I do agree though that the world need to find & use all methods of alternate energy. Even if it's just to wrest control of the Worlds energy away from the Oil & Coal Barons.

In light of the recent CRU email releases, I believe we should at least postpone our government's pellmell race to an ETS.

Clearly there have been some dodgy practices in obtaining the position of "consensus" and the IPCC data is now suspect and tainted.

If it's all well and good, then we'll have lost very little time anyway, since Australia is on its own going down this particular rabbit hole. The rest of the world will meet again every year now the UN says, till they get the $ they want, or the whole thing goes away.

The rest of the world is not going the Aussie way and it seems clear from PM Rudd's outburst that personal pride is his driver, after all he has been awarded the position of prefect, sorry, special friend of the chair.

Both sides of the debate are winding up pressure and as Clownfish says, can be hysterical.

Some thing really doesn't smell right here. You do remember that one of own most revered scientists, Dr William McBride, who discovered Thalidomide caused birth defects, was later caught out falsifying research data for his own ends, positional power and grants - if it can happen to him, it could happen to any, or many.

I was at a meeting recently and mentioned that I had my doubts about AGW,
and that I thought they were worrying about the wrong problem.
The IPCC computer models it is said assume the historic growth in
fossil fuel use will continue.
This is not true. Oil use has already declining and by 2050 will be
very much lower than at present.

When I explained this I was accused of being a peak oil nut and didn't
know what I was talking about.
Now that may be true, but I didn't call them AGW nuts that expected
the earth to burst into flame at any moment.
I was quite surprised at their attitude to me which changed dramatically.

It is said never to talk about politics or religion a dinner parties.

Since both subjects draw strong emotional beliefs and you will never convince either party of anything, nor will they convince you.

We need to either admit the AGW belief is a religion, or add to the first sentence, or AGW.

To E.Sykes, I would offer in jest "wow..we just gathered enough evidence to say conclusively" And after a bit of tweaking and shutting down of any opposition and hiding our flimsy evidence from any kind of objective review - CRU. So all the wonderful bulletproof data may be dressed up statistics, like Mann's upside down clever visual, not wrong mind you, but tricky imagery.

I do believe the world is warming and has been since the last ice age, also that the ice caps may melt. That activity is well understood by the scientific community and with a little tweaking of the facts for the layman, it has become a gravy train.

The climate changes, yes it does, and will our government's action actually do anything to slow it down stop or reverse it? Not a chance, that money is going towards the next election of the ALP and the PM's election to the UN, see if I'm wrong.