Oh, this is just too delicious not to put up here (via Mike Eades’ Twitter feed).

Climate sceptics claim leaked emails are evidence of collusion among scientists – Hundreds of emails and documents exchanged between world’s leading climate scientists stolen by hackers and leaked online.

Yes, I’ve always been a "global warming denier," at least in the sense of it being anthropogenic (man made). I’ve always thought it the height of being Fooled by Randomness.

…That, and now, good evidence that grant whores and other self-serving lying criminal deadbeats willing to sacrifice their fellow man for their personal advancement really do exist.

A couple of choice quotes.

In one email, dated November 1999, one scientist wrote: "I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature [the science journal] trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie, from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline."

Of course, everyone "declines to comment." Well, Michael "Hockey Stick" Mann does, and he’s really concerned about the truth.

Professor Michael Mann, director of Pennsylvania State University’s Earth System Science Centre and a regular contributor to the popular climate science blog Real Climate, features in many of the email exchanges. He said: "I’m not going to comment on the content of illegally obtained emails. However, I will say this: both their theft and, I believe, any reproduction of the emails that were obtained on public websites, etc, constitutes serious criminal activity. I’m hoping the perpetrators and their facilitators will be tracked down and prosecuted to the fullest extent the law allows."

What this demonstrates, to me, is not wide conspiracy but a reflection of what happens when whole livelihoods are staked on a particular hypothesis being correct, something we see all the time in the Cholesterol Con.

I’m closing comments on this one. It’s an aside and the last thing we need is a huge comment thread arguing AGW. I’m well aware that many in the paleo and evfit community clearly see what’s driving bad dietary advice but seemingly don’t see the same principles and dynamics at work elsewhere in the various "disasters" and "epidemics" engineered to scare the crap out of the general populace.