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IGNORE the unwarranted claims that hacked emails from the University of East Anglia (UEA) in the UK expose human-made climate change as a conspiracy. Away from those headlines, an equally intense battle is taking place over access to the data showing global warming is real.

It reached a peak earlier this year, when the UEA鈥檚 Climatic Research Unit (CRU) turned down freedom of information (FOI) requests for its temperature records. Last week, the UK鈥檚 Met Office attempted to quell the growing anger at its lack of openness by 鈥渞eleasing鈥� data from 1700 weather stations around the world. The move was a token gesture. The Met Office has admitted to 快猫短视频 that those figures were already publicly available through the World Meteorological Organization.

Much data remains under lock and key. It is tied up in confidentiality agreements with the governments that provided it. The Met Office and the UK government say they are now seeking permission to publish it. What they have not yet publicly revealed is that under a confidentiality agreement between the Met Office and the UK鈥檚 Natural Environment Research Council, a portion of the UK鈥檚 own temperature measurements is only made available to 鈥渂ona fide academic researchers working on agreed NERC-endorsed scientific programmes鈥�. Why? So that the data can be sold privately. 鈥淲e have to offset our costs for the benefit of the taxpayer, so we balance that against freedom of access,鈥� says David Britton, a spokesman for the Met Office.

Government agencies are not alone in seeking to defend their hard-earned data against prying eyes. The hacked CRU emails reveal years of correspondence between a handful of climate scientists on how to respond to a growing number of FOI requests (see 鈥淒eclare or defend?鈥�). Many came from Canadian mathematician Steve McIntyre.

In 2003, after a career trading shares in mining companies, McIntyre started taking an interest in climate change. He began by asking climate historian Michael Mann, now at Penn State University in University Park, for the 1000 years鈥� worth of data behind his famous 鈥渉ockey stick鈥� graph, which shows that the warming in the 20th century is unprecedented. After eventually obtaining most of Mann鈥檚 data 鈥� much of which originally came from Keith Briffa at the CRU 鈥� McIntyre turned his attention to other CRU data sets, notably an archive of global temperatures assembled from 150 years of thermometer records by CRU director, Phil Jones.

Through 2008, as the FOI data demands escalated, so did frustration among the climate scientists. In one email, Ben Santer, a CRU alumnus now at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, wrote: 鈥淚 believe that our community should no longer tolerate the behaviour of Mr McIntyre and his cronies.鈥� Others disagreed, including former CRU director Tom Wigley, who urged Santer to be open with his data. 鈥淭he benefits to the community would be truly immense,鈥� he wrote in December 2008. Jones, however, clearly felt under attack. When 快猫短视频 contacted him about the data wars in July this year, he said: 鈥淢cIntyre has no interest in deriving his own global temperature series. He just wants to pick holes in those that do. I鈥檓 getting pretty fed up with this. It is just time-wasting.鈥�

At stake here is the principle that scientific findings are only valid if they can be replicated 鈥� which in turn requires sharing data. And not just with friends. McIntyre told 快猫短视频: 鈥淭here is an unseemliness about scientists willingly providing data to their friends and resisting the provision of data to people who are perceived as critics.鈥�

Judith Curry, an atmospheric scientist at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, agrees that ignoring sceptics is inappropriate. 鈥淓instein didn鈥檛 start his career at Princeton, but at a post office,鈥� she says. 鈥溈烀ǘ淌悠祍 claim they would never get any research done if they had to continuously respond to sceptics. The counter to that argument is to make all of your data, meta-data and code, openly available. Doing this would keep molehills from growing into mountains.鈥�

鈥淢ake all of your data openly available, to keep molehills from growing into mountains鈥�

Mann seems to have taken this advice of late. 鈥淗e has made a concerted effort to place his materials online,鈥� says McIntyre. Like other recent battles over official databases 鈥� from paedophile registers to school league tables 鈥� it seems those demanding the freedom of information are winning the war over climate data.

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