Fallout From Hacked Climate Change Emails Intensifies

The planet-sized rift between climate scientists skeptical about man-made global warming and the rest of the field has been getting even wider this week as the fallout from last week's hacked emails continues. Some experts fear that the emails—in which climate scientists insult skeptics and discuss ways to block dissenting points of view—could hurt the chances of an agreement on cutting emissions, the Wall Street Journal reports.

Evidence of efforts to silence opposition is "what everyone feared," one scientist discussed negatively in the emails says. Other scientists say that while the emails will embarrass the scientists involved, they're not a game-changer in the climate debate. "It shows that the process of science is not always pristine," the director of the Yale Project on Climate Change tells Reuters. "But there's no smoking gun in the emails from what I've seen." (More climate change stories.)