Watergate Redux: Break-ins Reported at Another Top Climate Research Center

by Joseph Romm, Climate Progress, December 5, 2009

Hmm.  Maybe the “gate” part of the ClimateGate moniker is more apt than we thought, as guest blogger Brad Johnson reports in this WR repost.
Two weeks ago, thousands of illegally hacked emails from a British climate research center were dumped on a Russian webserver, timed to influence the politics of of the international climate negotiations commencing next week in Copenhagen, Denmark. Beginning Thanksgiving week, conservative media and Republican politicians have compared the climate scientists whose private emails were hacked to Hitler, Stalin, and eugenicists, saying they are involved in a global conspiracy to defraud and possibly take over the world. The Climategate “scandal” — a swiftboating intimidation and smear campaign against science — is the right-wing rage from Stephen Dubner to Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck to Lou Dobbs. Like the original Watergate scandal involving right-wing operatives who burglarized the offices of their political opponents, the real crime is the original break-in.

It has now been reported that the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Center is not the only victim of such a criminal invasion: burglars and hackers have also attacked the Canadian Centre for Climate Modelling and Analysis at the University of Victoria in British Columbia:

Andrew Weaver, a University of Victoria scientist and key contributor to the Nobel prize-winning work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, says there have been a number of attempted breaches in recent months, including two successful break-ins at his campus office in which a dead computer was stolen and papers were rummaged through.

These attacks go beyond simple burglary. University of Victoria spokeswoman Patty Pitts told the National Post “there have also been attempts to hack into climate scientists’ computers, as well as incidents in which people impersonated network technicians to try to gain access to campus offices and data.”

For thirty years, defenders of a pollution-based economy have intimidated, smeared, and suppressed climate science, using a playbook perfected by the tobacco industry and Karl Rove. Now — as the United States, led by President Barack Obama, finally appears ready to join the world in the fight against global warming — the opponents of reform are resorting to criminal desperation, harking back to the paranoia-fueled extremes of Richard Nixon.

Related posts:

• Science historian Weart: “We’ve never before seen a set of people accuse an entire community of scientists of deliberate deception and other professional malfeasance. Even the tobacco companies never tried to slander legitimate cancer researchers.”
• Reuters: “ANALYSIS-Hacked climate e-mails awkward, not game changer”
• The newspaper that publishes George Will (and Sarah Palin) editorializes: “Many — including us — find global warming deniers’ claims irresponsible.”
• Think Again: A Climate of Conspiracy