Stolen e-mails spark climate change firestorm

BOULDER - Global warming skeptics claim the e-mails make up a smoking gun. Climate change proponents say there is nothing nefarious about them.

A recent controversy has arisen out of hundreds of private e-mails hacked from a British university.

The e-mails are being attributed to American and British scientists studying climate change.

Some of the e-mails appear to show discussions about how to combat skeptics and whether to release certain information.

Skeptics say the e-mails show how many of those researching climate change have manipulated data to their favor, while the scientists behind the e-mails say there has been no collusion.

Kevin Trenberth's name is among the many in this trove of e-mails. He is a researcher at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder. He calls the current cries of conspiracy far-fetched.

"There's a few little places where you can pick on individual comments and take them out of context and they've been blown up and used by what I would call the climate change deniers and they may have innocent explanations," he said. "I don't know of anything that undermines the science that's out there."

Trenberth co-authored a significant section of the climate change analysis released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2007.

"Politics - and some of these politics can be quite nasty - is very much involved here," he said.

Bill Gray, a climatologist at Colorado State University, has a different take on the e-mails.

"There's a lot of chicanery involved with pushing this global warming business," he said.

Gray, who has gained fame through his hurricane forecasts, says he has been a skeptic of global warming for two decades.

"We're persona non grata in a lot of circles," he said. "I've been told I'm no longer a credible scientist and I've lost grants ... I've had trouble getting papers published."

Sen. James Inhofe (R-Oklahoma) - a long-time global warming skeptic - has asked for an investigation into the matter. He's also told scientists involved to preserve their e-mail correspondence.

As this dustup hit the news, President Barack Obama announced his intentions to outline his plans to cut greenhouse gas emission in the United States.

He said he'll unveil the plan at a global climate change summit in Copenhagen next month.