Climategate

The Climatic Research Unit email controversy began in November 2009 with the hacking of a server at the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia by an external attacker, copying thousands of emails and computer files to various internet locations several weeks before the Copenhagen Summit on climate change. The story was first broken by climate change denialists, with columnist James Delingpole popularising the term "Climategate" to describe the controversy. They argued that the emails showed that global warming was a scientific conspiracy and that scientists manipulated climate data and attempted to suppress critics. The CRU rejected this, saying that the emails had been taken out of context and merely reflected an honest exchange of ideas. The mainstream media picked up the story, as negotiations over climate change mitigation began in Copenhagen on 7 December 2009.

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