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Is Climate Gate "Greatest Scandal in Modern Science?"

By Brien McElhatten
June 18, 2010 Updated Dec 7, 2009 at 11:06 PM EST FORT WAYNE, Ind. (Indiana's NewsCenter) - It's been dubbed "Climate Gate" and if true, it threatens to turn climate change theory upside down. In November, a person claiming to be a hacker, accessed a computer system at the University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit in the UK. Emails and other documents allegedly from leading climate scientists seemingly show a coordinated effort by those scientists to hide data that goes against their theories. Some of those theories, have led to new environmental legislation around the world, including the current cap and trade bill under debate in Washington. This story has been largely ignored by the mainstream media. While The New York Times and other publications have written on the topic, the major television networks relegated the story to their websites, if they covered it at all, leaving bloggers to carry the story to the masses. One blogger highlights of the documents online, including discussions about "destroying a journal that has published skeptic papers" and "how data is truncated to stop an apparent cooling trend showing up in the results." That "cooling trend" would conflict with the warming trend climate change scientists are pushing. While Indiana's NewsCenter cannot independently confirm that the documents are in fact authentic communications between the scientists, some of those researchers have stepped down over the incident, including the director of the Climate Research Unit Phil Jones and a climate researcher at Penn State University, Michael Mann. Both are under investigation by their respective insitutions for their alleged roles in the controversy. Frank Paladino, a distinguished professor of Biology at IPFW says that climate change is a very real threat. "Despite the fact that there has been recent questions brought into the research that has been used to demonstrate [climate change] the man-made impact over the last 100 years is very obvious. The evidence is undisputable," explains Paladino. In fact, evidence by many is quite convincing. Data, some of which has been brought into question with "Climate-Gate," suggests that high levels of greenhouse gasses, mainly carbon dioxide from industrial sources, is responsible for trapping heat and warming Earth's temperature. The result, they argue, is melting polar ice, rising sea levels and increasingly dangrous weather patterns. Stay tuned to Indiana's NewsCenter as we investigate the Climate Gate Scandal further.
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