Climategate - loss of history?

If you haven't heard about "Climategate" you have either lived under a rock or work for the IPCC.

In a nutshell thousands of e-mails between scientists working for the Climatic Research Unity (based at the University of East Anglia) were leaked and distributed online, one month before the Climate Conference which took place in Copenhagen in December 2009. They showed the lengths at which scientists went in order to discredit and essentially silence climate change septics.

In one email, Benjamin Santer from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, Calif., wrote to the director of the climate-study center that he was "tempted to beat" up Mr. Michaels. Mr. Santer couldn't be reached for comment Sunday.

In another, Phil Jones, the director of the East Anglia climate center, suggested to climate scientist Michael Mann of Penn State University that skeptics' research was unwelcome: We "will keep them out somehow -- even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!" Neither man could be reached for comment Sunday.

Wall Street Journal, 23rd November 2009

An article in today's Guardian, How to avoid your own 'climategate' scandal, highlights the risks for academics working in the post Freedom of Information age. The Freedom of Information Act which is so beneficial in many ways inevitably has several unintended consequences, namely;

For sensitive information that you would not want in the public domain, rather than putting it in email or in a document, it may be better to discuss it face-to-face or on the phone.

Documents of historical value will nto exist as academics (but also policy makers etc.) will for fear of a climategate style scandal avoid using communication methods which could become public.

"Every email I write," says a lawyer colleague of mine, "I write as though next week I could be reading it in the newspaper."