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On the eve of the most important climate summit ever hacked emails from a research center in England are being promoted as a “game changer” by people who don’t want to see climate action. These people say that the emails prove that global warming is a hoax – a conspiracy that is either socialist or corporatist or, most terrifying of all, Al Gorist.

Why?

Out of the thousands of emails there is no evidence of a massive worldwide conspiracy of thousands of scientists to impose socialism or corporatism or Al Gorism.

Instead, there is evidence of scientists reacting badly to the enormous pressure they are under from a small, motivated and well funded group of people and institutions who have made it their mission to confuse the public about climate science, and have the backing of big dollars from big oil. This is the Manufactured Doubt Industry. It started decades ago to protect tobacco company profits by confusing the public about cancer research, it consists of a network of researchers with dubious credentials and right-wing think tanks designed to grab media attention, and its very happy with itself right now.

The scientists whose emails were hacked adopted a “bunker mentality” about their data because they are under constant attack from the Manufactured Doubt Industry who question their motives, their competence and will distort the scientists’ data and analysis to further an ideological agenda (government is bad!) and protect fossil fuel company profits (oil money is good).

Today’s leading climate scientists did not choose this fight. We have to remember that we’re talking about people who decided to spend decades in school researching something that can’t talk to them. Climate scientists are not people people, let alone the organizers of a global socialist or corporatist or Gorist conspiracy.

Let’s talk about the other side here. Last year Exxon Mobil made $45 billion dollars, the most profit of any corporation, ever. Exxon Mobil didn’t become the dominant player in an industry that features dictatorships by being a bunch of nice guys with your interests at heart. Exxon Mobil is the biggest backer of the Manufactured Doubt Industry because they know that doubt will work to protect their ability to keep us addicted to fossil fuels.

Remember: what do oil companies value the most? Their profits.

Now, what do scientists value the most? Their credibility.

Who has the motive to lie and confuse the public?

Nature, perhaps the most presitgious scientific journals in the world, wrote in an editorial:

“The e-mail archives stolen last month from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia (UEA), UK, have been greeted by the climate-change-denialist fringe as a propaganda windfall (see page 551). To these denialists, the scientists’ scathing remarks about certain controversial palaeoclimate reconstructions qualify as the proverbial ’smoking gun’: proof that mainstream climate researchers have systematically conspired to suppress evidence contradicting their doctrine that humans are warming the globe.

This paranoid interpretation would be laughable were it not for the fact that obstructionist politicians in the US Senate will probably use it next year as an excuse to stiffen their opposition to the country’s much needed climate bill. Nothing in the e-mails undermines the scientific case that global warming is real — or that human activities are almost certainly the cause. That case is supported by multiple, robust lines of evidence, including several that are completely independent of the climate reconstructions debated in the e-mails.”

The editorial, again written by perhaps the most prestigious scientific journal in the world, proceeds with a detailed rebuttal of the Manufactured Doubt Industry’s talking points.

I think it’s a good thing to send around – http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v462/n7273/full/462545a.html

So when it comes down to it the question is this: who do you trust more? Thousands of scientists and every presitigious scientific organization or the world’s biggest oil companies? I pick the scientists.

This is the central question for the UN Climate Summit in Copenhagen: will the world rise to the challenge of reducing global warming pollution as fast as the science tells us we must to prevent catastrophic climate change, or will we lower the bar to protect the profits of the most polluting companies on the planet no matter what the consequences for everyone else?

You can help answer that question by fighting back against the hacked email hachet job – and more importantly, by building the pressure on our goverment for real climate leadership.