The U.S. Senate's leading global warming skeptic has sent letters to several climate change scientists and to the inspectors general of various federal agencies notifying them to retain breached documents and e-mails that he says prove researchers are manipulating data to make the case for global warming.

The move by Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe, the top Republican on the Environment and Public Works Committee, is part of his push for an investigation into whether the U.N's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has fudged the science on global warming.

The controversy began a week before President Obama announced his decision to go to Copenhagen next month to outline the U.S. goals for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

It also underscores the difficulty the U.S. faces in achieving a global treaty on emissions reduction at the conference -- one that would replace the Kyoto Protocol from 1997 that the U.S. never ratified.

Inhofe said the manipulation of climate change data has been going on for a long time, but the disclosure of the breached e-mails could bury the climate change legislation that narrowly passed in the House but is stuck in the Senate.

"Now that this has come out and if you go back and look at the speech I made on the Senate floor four years ago, this really just documents what I suspected at the time," Inhofe told Fox News on Tuesday.

Last week, hackers reportedly broke into the electronic files of the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia in Great Britain, and posted e-mails in which scientists dismissed climate change skeptics, expressed concern about the lack of evidence to prove the threat of global warming, and discussed ways to manipulate the data.

In one e-mail, published in The Washington Post, a scientist wrote, "We can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't."

In another e-mail, published in the Wall Street Journal, a scientist wrote, "I'm really sorry that you have to go through all this stuff, Phil. Next time I see Pat Michaels at a scientific meeting, I'll be tempted to beat the crap out of him. Very tempted."

Michaels, a senior fellow in environmental studies at the libertarian Cato Institute, has written a number of books forcefully challenging the science of global warming.

In another e-mail, published in the Guardian, a British newspaper, a scientist wrote, "I've just completed Mike's nature (the Science Journal) trick of adding in the real temps to face each series for the last 20 years (from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith's to hide the decline."

Kevin Trenberth, one of the scientists whose e-mails were hacked, called the breach an "illegal act" and said the e-mails don't undermine the data proving the threat of global warming.

"There's certainly disputes among scientists and how to deal with the skeptics and so on, but not about the science itself," he told Fox News. "And it's not dependent upon a few individuals. There are hundreds of scientists involved around the world that are doing climate change science."

But Myron Ebell of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, said there is no evidence that the e-mails were hacked, and they could have been released by a whistleblower. He also said while Trenberth is not one of the "main gang leaders," he is part of a "gang" that is cooking that data on global warming.

"They've been doing this for years and it's clear by looking at the data files that they have been doing that," he told Fox News. "I'm sorry but these people have already been revealed as not having any honor. Now they're being revealed as not having any sense of shame. They're just trying to brazen it out."

I wasn't aware that only one agency in the world had all the data on global warming that was being presented to the general public and that it wasn't non replicable data available to any scientist who decided to pursue similar tests.

exactly- you weren't supposed to be aware, they've done a fine job of blacklisting the competition.

Originally posted by:JFick

exactly- you weren't supposed to be aware, they've done a fine job of blacklisting the competition.

you're fucking stupid.

Originally posted by:yantastic

Originally posted by:JFick

exactly- you weren't supposed to be aware, they've done a fine job of blacklisting the competition.

you're fucking stupid.

elaborate please, I don't take name-calling seriously.

My first post was sarcasm to highlight that the anyone can test this out themselves--therefore it's not as if any agency per se could hide it from the public. Using this logic you could then verify that global warming as a crisis is occurring (as opposed to cyclical global warming which you are trying to make an incorrect analogy to)

Originally posted by:yantastic

My first post was sarcasm to highlight that the anyone can test this out themselves--therefore it's not as if any agency per se could hide it from the public. Using this logic you could then verify that global warming as a crisis is occurring (as opposed to cyclical global warming which you are trying to make an incorrect analogy to)

It's not that it was hidden, it's that false information was presented in the spotlight and declared as truth.
The media rode on these scientists' statements to instigate a state of fear among the populace and governments have used it to justify sweeping legislation which netted them billions of dollars.
It was a heist.
And where is this crisis you're referring to?

Ask new Orleans

Who are these billionaire scientists who capitalized on this? How did try get money? How does legislation earn them money?

Originally posted by:yantastic

Ask new Orleans

The New Orleans area had been hit by a massive hurricane a century before Katrina. It's human stupidity that made us build a city there. Ask New Orleans why they built a city in a hole, that's a better question.

Try to figure out how hurricanes and global warming tie together. It makes for interesting reading.

Originally posted by:yantastic

Who are these billionaire scientists who capitalized on this? How did try get money? How does legislation earn them money?

Al Gore, most notably, has made a fortune via fundraisers and, of course, a Nobel Prize.
Virtually all research on 'man-made climate change' is funded by federal government. Via legislation such as cap-and-trade and the Kyoto treaty, watchdog agencies are formed. These agencies create almost impossible guidelines so they can fine the private sector for 'violations'. These fines are paid to the agency and ultimately funneled back to the politician in charge of the agency.

U.S. Doesn't abide by Kyoto treaty-don't see how you're referencing that.

Originally posted by:JFick

Originally posted by:yantastic

Ask new Orleans

The New Orleans area had been hit by a massive hurricane a century before Katrina. It's human stupidity that made us build a city there. Ask New Orleans why they built a city in a hole, that's a better question.

Actually, dumbass... they built a city on high ground 20 miles inland. What we see today is the result of human intervention that has eroded much of that land away.

Originally posted by:yantastic

Originally posted by:JFick

exactly- you weren't supposed to be aware, they've done a fine job of blacklisting the competition.

you're fucking stupid.

Not name calling... a statement of fact.

Originally posted by:yantastic

U.S. Doesn't abide by Kyoto treaty-don't see how you're referencing that.

I don't see where I limited this discussion to just the U.S.