---
title: "Climatic Research Unit email controversy"
chunk: 3/12
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_email_controversy"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:22:41.916840+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

== Responses ==
In the United States, former Republican House Science Committee chairman Sherwood Boehlert called the attacks a "manufactured distraction", and Newsweek and The New York Times described the dispute as a "highly orchestrated" and manufactured controversy. Concerns about the media's role in promoting early allegations while also minimising later coverage exonerating the scientists were raised by journalists and policy experts. Historian Spencer R. Weart of the American Institute of Physics said the incident was unprecedented in the history of science, having "never before seen a set of people accuse an entire community of scientists of deliberate deception and other professional malfeasance". The United States National Academy of Sciences expressed concern and condemned what they called "political assaults on scientists and climate scientists in particular".
In the United Kingdom and United States, there were calls for official inquiries into issues raised by the documents. The British Conservative politician Nigel Lawson said: "The integrity of the scientific evidence ... has been called into question. And the reputation of British science has been seriously tarnished. A high-level independent inquiry must be set up without delay." Bob Ward of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics said that there had to be a rigorous investigation into the substance of the email messages, once appropriate action has been taken over the hacking, to clear the impression of impropriety given by the selective disclosure and dissemination of the messages. United States Senator Jim Inhofe, who had previously stated that global warming was "the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people", also planned to demand an inquiry. In a debate in the United States House of Representatives on 2 December 2009, Republicans read out extracts from eight of the emails, and Representative Jim Sensenbrenner said: "These e-mails show a pattern of suppression, manipulation and secrecy that was inspired by ideology, condescension and profit". In response,  the president's science adviser John Holdren said that the science was proper, and the emails only concerned a fraction of the research. Government scientist Jane Lubchenco said that the emails "do nothing to undermine the very strong scientific consensus" that the Earth is warming due to human actions.
Climate change sceptics gained wide publicity in blogs and news media, making allegations that the hacked emails showed evidence that climate scientists manipulated data. A few other commentators such as Roger A. Pielke said that the evidence supported claims that dissenting scientific papers had been suppressed. The Wall Street Journal reported that the emails revealed apparent efforts to ensure that the IPCC included their own views and excluded others, and that the scientists withheld scientific data.
An editorial in Nature stated that "A fair reading of the e-mails reveals nothing to support the denialists' conspiracy theories." It said that emails showed harassment of researchers, with multiple Freedom of Information requests to the Climatic Research Unit, but release of information had been hampered by national government restrictions on releasing the meteorological data researchers had been using. Nature considered that emails had not shown anything that undermined the scientific case on human-caused global warming or raised any substantive reasons for concern about the researchers' own papers. The Telegraph reported that academics and climate change researchers dismissed the allegations, saying that nothing in the emails proved wrongdoing. Independent reviews by FactCheck and the Associated Press said that the emails did not affect evidence that man-made global warming is a real threat, and said that emails were being misrepresented to support unfounded claims of scientific misconduct. The AP said that the "[e]-mails stolen from climate scientists show they stonewalled sceptics and discussed hiding data". In this context, John Tierney of The New York Times wrote: "these researchers, some of the most prominent climate experts in Britain and America, seem so focused on winning the public-relations war that they exaggerate their certitude – and ultimately undermine their own cause".
Climate scientists at the CRU and elsewhere received numerous threatening and abusive emails in the wake of the initial incidents. Norfolk Police interviewed Phil Jones about death threats made against him following the release of the emails; Jones later said that the police told him that these "didn't fulfil the criteria for death threats". Death threats against two scientists also are under investigation by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation. Climate scientists in Australia have reported receiving threatening emails including references to where they live and warnings to "be careful" about how some people might react to their scientific findings. In July 2012, Michael Mann said that the episode had caused him to "endure countless verbal attacks upon my professional reputation, my honesty, my integrity, even my life and liberty".