Why is ClimateGate Important?

Primarily because the people involved make up the core of the scientific thrust behind the political movement to reduce carbon dioxide. If that core is compromised, the entire scientific foundation for the climate change (nee "global warming") movement collapses.

From the UK Telegraph: Climate change: this is the worst scientific scandal of our generation

The senders and recipients of the leaked CRU emails constitute a cast list of the IPCC's scientific elite, including not just the "Hockey Team", such as Dr Mann himself, Dr Jones and his CRU colleague Keith Briffa, but Ben Santer, responsible for a highly controversial rewriting of key passages in the IPCC's 1995 report; Kevin Trenberth, who similarly controversially pushed the IPCC into scaremongering over hurricane activity; and Gavin Schmidt, right-hand man to Al Gore's ally Dr James Hansen, whose own GISS record of surface temperature data is second in importance only to that of the CRU itself.

What are they accused of doing?

There are three threads in particular in the leaked documents which have sent a shock wave through informed observers across the world. Perhaps the most obvious, as lucidly put together by Willis Eschenbach (see McIntyre's blog Climate Audit and Anthony Watt's blog Watts Up With That ), is the highly disturbing series of emails which show how Dr Jones and his colleagues have for years been discussing the devious tactics whereby they could avoid releasing their data to outsiders under freedom of information laws.

They have come up with every possible excuse for concealing the background data on which their findings and temperature records were based.

This in itself has become a major scandal, not least Dr Jones's refusal to release the basic data from which the CRU derives its hugely influential temperature record, which culminated last summer in his startling claim that much of the data from all over the world had simply got "lost". Most incriminating of all are the emails in which scientists are advised to delete large chunks of data, which, when this is done after receipt of a freedom of information request, is a criminal offence.

Why is this a problem?

But the question which inevitably arises from this systematic refusal to release their data is – what is it that these scientists seem so anxious to hide? The second and most shocking revelation of the leaked documents is how they show the scientists trying to manipulate data through their tortuous computer programmes, always to point in only the one desired direction – to lower past temperatures and to "adjust" recent temperatures upwards, in order to convey the impression of an accelerated warming. This comes up so often (not least in the documents relating to computer data in the Harry Read Me file) that it becomes the most disturbing single element of the entire story. This is what Mr McIntyre caught Dr Hansen doing with his GISS temperature record last year (after which Hansen was forced to revise his record), and two further shocking examples have now come to light from Australia and New Zealand.

In each of these countries it has been possible for local scientists to compare the official temperature record with the original data on which it was supposedly based. In each case it is clear that the same trick has been played – to turn an essentially flat temperature chart into a graph which shows temperatures steadily rising. And in each case this manipulation was carried out under the influence of the CRU.

In other words, they "adjusted" the data until if gave them the result they wanted. and then they sold it to the UN who wanted to tax developed countries for the benefit of the kleptocracies that make up the majority of its membership. and it gave the socialists in the developed world an excuse to gain more control of their country's economies.

From the American MSM? With the exception of FOX, the key players are defending the status quo. The NY Times lead reporter on climate change, Andrew Revkin (mentioned in the leaked e-mails) concludes his defense of the climate change hoaxers this way:

Dr. Curry and others said that if nothing else, the e-mail correspondence suggested that climate scientists needed to show more temperance in dealing with their critics.

“We won the war — the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize, and climate and energy legislation is near the top of the U.S. agenda,” Dr. Curry said. “Why keep fighting all these silly battles and putting ourselves in this position?"

For Revkin and the global warming alarmists, the battle is over, they have won and now it's just a matter of sweeping up and putting the "deniers" in their place.