WASHINGTON (November 22, 2011) – Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) today called on the United States intelligence community to join the British and others in rooting out the hackers who have stolen emails from climate scientists and released them in advance of two major climate negotiations, including the upcoming talks in Durban, South Africa.
With the release of emails in 2009 in advance of the Copenhagen climate talks, and now a similarly-timed event before the South African session, a clear pattern has emerged that could negatively affect the interests of the United States as it tries to partner with other nations to reduce global warming emissions. In both cases, the hacked emails reportedly first surfaced on servers in Russia and posted to blogs associated with global warming skeptics, and in both cases the original source of the disclosure was unknown. Nine independent investigations have validated the climate science and climate scientists on the hacked University of East Anglia emails.
“This is clearly an attempt to sabotage the international climate talks for a second time, and there has not been enough attention paid to who is responsible for these illegal acts,” said Rep. Markey, who is the top Democrat on the Natural Resources Committee and is the co-author of the only climate bill to pass a chamber of Congress. “If this happened surrounding nuclear arms talks, we would have the full force of the Western world's intelligence community pursuing the perpetrators. And yet, with the stability of our climate hanging in the balance with these international climate treaty negotiations, these hackers and their supporters are still on the loose. It is time to bring them to justice.”
Last week, Reps. Markey and Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.) held a Congressional briefing “End of Climate Change Skepticism” with several prominent scientists, including Dr. Richard Muller, a scientist who was previously skeptical about many aspects of climate science, but the two-year study he led at the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project has validated the fact that the world is warming.
###
