The case for man-made global warming took a major hit last week when 62 megabytes of data, including e-mail messages and model codes (searchable here), were stolen from the UK’s University of East Anglia and then made public. The new information tells us much that we already suspected – warming scaremongers are cooking the books and suppressing dissent in order to push their agenda.

These aren’t just any scientists, either. They have been influential in driving the hype, including with the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which issued a report in 2007 declaring that the end is near if massive shackles aren’t put on the economies of nations such as the U.S. Phil Jones, director of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit, Keith Briffa also of CRU and Michael Mann of Penn State University – the creator of the debunked “hockey stick” graph – are some of the key players.

One of the most enlightening e-mails discusses whether the work of academic skeptics should be included in that IPCC report (which won the Committee and Al Gore a Nobel Peace Prize, by the way). Jones wrote to Mann, “I can’t see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin [Trenberth] and I will keep them out somehow – even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!” Trenberth is head of the Climate Analysis Section at the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research.

The pair also discussed how they could pressure scientific journals to maintain the party line. Mann suggested that, for one, the journal “Climate Research” should be targeted. “Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal.” (Sounds a bit like White House adviser David Axelrod’s assessment of Fox News: “[Fox is] really not news – it’s pushing a point of view. And the bigger thing is that other news organizations … ought not to treat them that way, and we’re not going to treat them that way.”)

Of course, the definition of science is challenging hypotheses, not stifling dissent; following the evidence, not contriving it to fit.

But stifling and contriving are exactly what warmists are doing. In another e-mail, Jones wrote, “I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd [sic] from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.” So the goal is to “hide the decline”?

Scientist Mick Kelly wrote to Jones about manipulating data to hide the fact that the planet is actually cooling: “I’ll maybe cut the last few points off the filtered curve before I give the talk again, as that’s trending down as a result of the end effects and the recent coldish years.”

Kevin Trenberth of the National Center for Atmospheric Research wrote to Mann complaining of cold weather and admitting, “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.”

Perhaps they can’t account for cooling because their code for creating the models is geared toward making the earth appear warmer. In fact, the code may be more damning than the e-mails. One line of code features, for example, a variable called “fudge factor,” which allows these scientists to put in whatever they want to create the desired outcome in the computer models.

Australian geologist Ian Plimer, a global warming skeptic, summed it up: The e-mails “show that data was massaged, numbers were fudged, diagrams were biased, there was destruction of data after freedom of information requests, and there was refusal to submit taxpayer-funded data for independent examination.” Other than that, the science was accurate!

Considering that everything from the Kyoto Protocol to Waxman-Markey and Kerry-Boxer in Congress, to EPA regulations to the Copenhagen conference are based on this faulty, fudged and fictitious data, policy makers should, at minimum, re-evaluate their plans. Certainly, the world’s economy should not take a hit for nothing but lies.

UPDATE: The Washington Post, no doubt in an effort to be “fair and balanced,” published three letters to the editor in response to an editorial about this climate scandal. Two of the letters were in opposition to the Post’s defense of the warmists. Trouble is, the second letter was from none other than Michael Mann, and he linked to RealClimate.org so readers could be bombarded with more warming propaganda. The Post didn’t bother to note that Mann is being investigated for his role in the scandal.

UPDATE 2 (Tuesday afternoon): The Associated Press reports, “Britain’s University of East Anglia says [Phil Jones] the director of its prestigious Climatic Research Unit is stepping down pending an investigation into allegations that he overstated the case for man-made climate change.”