The e-mails at the heart of the so-called Climategate scandal show that climate scientists are guilty of anger toward global warming skeptics, but they do not support claims that climate change is a vast conspiracy, according to the Associated Press, which reviewed the 1,073 messages in question.
The AP on Saturday published the findings of its lengthy review, carried out by five reporters. It found that climate scientists repeatedly discussed withholding data from skeptics--though its unclear how often it may have happened. Such actions would undermine the premise of open, government-funded research. The e-mails show that some of the researchers believed their work would be misconstrued by skeptics and that numerous Freedom of Information (FOI) requests were wasting government time and money.
The e-mail that has gained the most notoriety, concerning a "trick" of changing temperature data, is explained in the AP report. Phil Jones, chief of climate change research at the University of East Anglia, reportedly was referring to swapping out temperature estimates based on tree-ring observations for the years after 1950 with the actual measured temperatures on record.
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