A few days ago more than 60 megabytes worth of e-mails and other documents hacked from a computer server at the University of East Anglia in Great Britain were posted on a Russian server. The University of East Anglia is one of the top “global warming” research universities and the e-mails – which appear to be genuine – are a treasure trove for climate change skeptics.

The e-mail messages, attributed to prominent American and British climate researchers, include discussions of scientific data and whether it should be released, exchanges about how best to combat the arguments of skeptics, and casual comments — in some cases derisive — about specific people known for their skeptical views. Drafts of scientific papers and a photo collage that portrays climate skeptics on an ice floe were also among the hacked data, some of which dates back 13 years.

In one e-mail exchange, a scientist writes of using a statistical “trick” in a chart illustrating a recent sharp warming trend. In another, a scientist refers to climate skeptics as “idiots.”

Some skeptics asserted Friday that the correspondence revealed an effort to withhold scientific information. “This is not a smoking gun; this is a mushroom cloud,” said Patrick J. Michaels, a climatologist who has long faulted evidence pointing to human-driven warming and is criticized in the documents.

I’m not sure yet if the documents are really a “mushroom cloud,” but without a doubt the pro-anthropogenic-global-warming researchers don’t come off as the noble, dispassionate, only interested in the truth scientist-types that are usually portrayed in textbooks.

I encourage you to check out the sites of Anthony Watts and Steve McIntyre – the latter who looms large in some of the e-mails – for analysis of the e-mails, such as this disturbing wording:

In a 1999 e-mail exchange about charts showing climate patterns over the last two millenniums, Phil Jones, a longtime climate researcher at the East Anglia Climate Research Unit, said he had used a “trick” employed by another scientist, Michael Mann, to “hide the decline” in temperatures.

Dr. Mann, a professor at Pennsylvania State University, confirmed in an interview that the e-mail message was real. He said the choice of words by his colleague was poor but noted that scientists often used the word “trick” to refer to a good way to solve a problem, “and not something secret.”

So “trick” = “method.” In the future, I would suggest that they use the latter term.

Finally, I want to make a brief note about what “unbiased” journalism looks like at The New York Times.

The evidence pointing to a growing human contribution to global warming is so widely accepted that the hacked material is unlikely to erode the overall argument.

This statement is the reporter’s. It’s an opinion, masquerading as uncontested fact. The sad thing is that the reporter, Andrew Revkin, is one of the more fair and balanced reporters covering “global warming” in the mainstream media.

Media. Wound. Self-inflicted.