Further indication that “climategate” data was leaked by an inside source

Steve Watson
Infowars.net
Tuesday, Nov 24, 2009

A BBC Weather presenter who was discussed by scientists in the “climategate” emails says he was forwarded the material more than five weeks before it was made public on the internet.

Paul Hudson, a weather presenter and climate correspondent for the BBC, notes on his blog “I was forwarded the chain of e-mails on the 12th October,”.

Hudson says he saw the exact emails that were either hacked or leaked from the Climate Research Unit at East Anglia University placed on the internet last week.

“The e-mails released on the internet as a result of CRU being hacked into are identical to the ones I was forwarded and read at the time and so, as far as l can see, they are authentic.” Hudson notes.

Following the publication of a 9th October article Hudson wrote for the BBC entitled “whatever happened to global warming?“, in which he questioned the science behind the theory of human induced warming, the BBC correspondent was discussed within emails to which several of the CRU climatologists were privy, including Kevin Trenberth, Michael Mann, Tom Wigley and Philip D. Jones.

Hudson’s article, which pointed out that there had been no increase in global temperatures since 1998, spurred Kevin Trenberth, one of the leading authors of the IPCC report on climate change to make the following comment within the private emails to his colleagues:

“The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a
travesty that we can’t.”

Climate scientist Michael Mann of Penn State University also commented on Hudson’s piece, writing:

“extremely disappointing to see something like this appear on BBC. its particularly odd, since climate is usually Richard Black’s beat at BBC (and he does a great job). from what I can tell, this guy was formerly a weather person at the Met Office.

We may do something about this on RealClimate, but meanwhile it might be appropriate for the Met Office to have a say about this, I might ask Richard Black what’s up here?”

As we reported yesterday, in addition to showing that the scientists manipulated data to “hide the decline” in global temperatures, the thousands of leaked emails have already revealed several references to efforts by the CRU scientists to exclude skeptical warming viewpoints and evidence from important scientific publications and the media at large.

If it is confirmed that the emails were forwarded to the BBC’s Paul Hudson on October 12th, it would provide a strong indication that the source of the leak is an insider at the CRU, rather than an external hacker.

Hudson says he is in the process of providing a more detailed write up on the matter.