A top US delegate at Copenhagen summit denied the possibility that hacked e-mails had made the case for sceptics stronger and said the incident would not affect the fate of climate change bill in the American Senate.
US Deputy Special Envoy for Climate Change Jonathan Pershing criticised media for blowing the controversy out of proportion and maligning scientists involved in this episode.
“What I think is unfortunate and in fact shameful is the way in which some scientists who have devoted their lives our being pilloried by the press without due regard to the press,” Pershing said.
“My sense about the emails that have been stolen is that they have released a barrage of additional information, which makes clear the robustness of science, the enormous multitude of different strands of evidence that also support the urgency and severity of the problem,” he said yesterday.
With US Senate expected to debate an energy bill, early next year, there is concern that US anti-bill politicians and lobbyists will use the hacked reports to block its passage.
Hackers gained access to data of climate research centre of UK-based East Anglia University and leaked confidential information including thousands of e-mails and documents between British and US scientists over past ten years that have led to accusations that scientists amplified the nature and scope of the manmade climate crisis.
Sceptics of climate change have used these e-mails to back their case that dangers of climate change have been wildly exaggerated on several websites and blogs.
Saudi Arabia’s negotiator Mohammed al-Sabban said the climate science had been “shaken” by the leaked e-mails.
At his opening speech in the summit head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Rajendra Pachauri, defended the UN’s scientific body and its scientists some of whom have been named in the scandal.
“The internal consistency from multiple lines of evidence strongly supports the work of the scientific community including those individuals singled out in these email exchanges many of whom have dedicated their time and effort to develop these findings in teams of lead authors in the series of IPCC assessment reports during the past 21 years,” he said.
