Quick thoughts:

1. Where’s Lazar?

2. The last thing Russia wants is for Europe and the US to wean themselves from fossil fuels. They’ve done very well selling pollution allowances to the EU under Kyoto, but looking long-term, Russia (a) is probably better off internally if the world warms a few degrees, and (b) needs to keep the EU dependent on their petroleum and NG in order to pursue their security strategy of re-establishing a secure buffer zone around the Russian heartland. Maybe this was a Russian govt operation, or maybe just something they allowed to happen? Once it’s out they can be shocked, SHOCKED that there was gambling at Rick’s, shut down the server, and kill all the witnesses, but it’s already done.

3. Looking at a few of the hacked emails, it strikes me that these guys may have considerable legal risks. At least insofar as anyone in these emails, or their organizations, got grants from the United States government, check out 18 U.S.C. 1001:

http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/18/1001.html

Plus, actual fraud in the use and securing of money. I assume the UK has some similar protections for its funds and communications bewteen govt grant-makers and the recipients.

4. Will affect the true believers not a bit. Virtually the same people are already ignoring everything in Maj. Hasan’s background, this is a piece of cake compared to that. But if 10-20% are open-minded, it changes the political balance enough to change the political outcome.

The quote tanstaafl points to @ 120 shows the trope: “But the evidence pointing to a growing human contribution to global warming is so broad and deep that the hacked material is unlikely to erode the overall argument.”

Of course, all that “evidence” is not independently corroborated but just self-referential and the work of people whose integrity has just been impugned–yet, it is still used to justify its own “findings.”

Only a highly trained journalist or academic can be so stupid, or, rather, think everyone else is that stupid.