Some prominent climate scientists are calling for changes in the way research on global warming is conducted after a British university said thousands of private e-mail messages and documents had been stolen from its climate center.The scientists say that the e-mail messages, which have circulated on the Internet and which disclose the inner workings of a small network of climatologists who chart the planet's temperature, have damaged the public's trust in the evidence that humans are dangerously warming the planet, just as many countries are poised to start reining in greenhouse gas emissions. "This whole concept of, 'We're the experts, trust us,' has clearly gone by the wayside with these e-mails," said Judith Curry, a climate scientist at Georgia Institute of Technology.
"E pur si move," the man responded.
She and other scientists are seeking more transparency in the way climate data is handled and in the methods used to analyze it. And they argue that scientists should re-evaluate the selection procedures used by some scientific journals and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the panel that in 2007 concluded that humans were the dominant force driving warming and whose findings underpin international discussions over a new climate treaty.