UPDATE: CEJ's Tom Yulsman has my favorite one-liner so far:
I'm not sure even Michael Crichton could have dreamed something like this up.
So this Hadley hacker affair will, as Keith Johnson at Environmental Scandal puts it, "spice things up" for a wee bit. It's too early to jump to any conclusions, so Roger Pielke Jr.'s headline question is apt: "Climate Conspiracy or Much Ado About Nothing?" For the moment, the histrionics will carry the day and maybe the weekend. One hardcore skeptic is already calling it
a scandal that is one of the greatest in modern science.
Meanwhile, an overwrought Michael Tobis offers this:
It's a travesty that the fate of the world is being reduced to word games.
Please. I thought Freeman Dyson already held that fate in his hands. Actually, Michael, you really ought to wait to see if the story has legs, as they say in the business. It's not often I find myself nodding in agreement with the folks at Planet Gore, but they are right about this:
If legit, this apparently devastating series of revelations will be very hard for the media to ignore.
Even doubly so if it's an inside job, as many are now speculating. And if it's not, then this commenter at RPJ's site is thinking what every reporter following this story is thinking:
Whoever hacked these files did it for what's now occuring. I doubt this is the work of a disinterested hacker. I think the hacker is an interested party who had some idea of what the emails contained.
So there's a whodunit aspect to this that whets the journalistic appetite. And if more documents and emails follow, in a slow-drip fashion, well, that's also great journalistic kindling. So all in all, I'd be shocked if the media didn't follow up on this and start poking around.
