Resident Scholar Kenneth P. Green

The recently released documents from the CRU may not mark a sea change in the debate over anthropogenic climate change, but they will certainly increase the public's skepticism. They will also stiffen the spines of those who have long doubted climate science but have found it expedient to accede to the science and simply argue about policy.

The purloined letters show a climate-science community in full tribal mode, conspiring to suppress contrary findings in the peer-reviewed literature; excluding contrary peer-reviewed publications from IPCC reports; concealing the shoddy nature of climate data; colluding to hide data and destroy correspondence; and using mathematical tricks to produce ever more alarming-looking charts.

While much of the CRU material is banal, some of it clearly suggests intentional subversion of the scientific process by an incestuous group of scientists from major climate-research centers in the U.S. and U.K. Now, more than ever, we must demand transparency from the climate-science community, whose research is being used to justify Al Gore's "wrenching transformation" of our technological civilization.

Kenneth P. Green is a resident scholar at AEI.