Computer hackers have broken into a server at a well-respected climate change research center in Britain and posted hundreds of private e-mails and documents online — stoking debate by whether some scientists have overstated the case for man-made climate change.

The University of East Anglia, in eastern England, said in a statement Saturday that the hackers had entered the server and stolen notes at its Climatic Research Unit, a leading global research center on climate change. The university said police are investigating the theft of the data, but could not confirm whether all the materials posted online are genuine.

More than a decade of correspondence amoung leading British and U.S. scientists is included in about 1,000 e-mails and 3,000 documents posted on Web sites following the safety measure breach last week.

Some climate change skeptics and bloggers claim the knowledge shows scientists have overstated the case for global warming, and allege the documents contain proof that some

researchers have attempted to manipulate input.

The furor by the leaked documents comes weeks before the U.N. climate conference in Copenhagen, when 192 nations will seek to reach a binding treaty to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping greenhouse gases worldwide. Many officials — including U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon — regard the prospects of a pact being sealed at the meeting as bleak.

In one leaked e-mail, the research center’s director, Phil Jones, writes to colleagues about graphs showing climate statistics by the last millennium. He alludes to a technique used by a fellow scientist to “hide the decline” in recent global temperatures. Some evidence appears to show a halt in a rise of global temperatures from about 1960, but is contradicted by other evidence which appears to show a rise in temperatures is continuing.

Jones wrote that, in compiling new documents, he had “just completed Mike’s Nature…

Original post by dhiram