Well...the truth is out. Hackers on the Side of Righteousness exposed the malfeasance and double-dealing of so-called climate change scientists. They were faking the data all along!

Er...no.

But that is how some are framing it. Many people with genuine skepticism on the reality of anthropogenic global warming...or ANY warming AT ALL...have seized on the exposed e-mails associated with a few scientists working at the world-renowned University of East Anglia, and spun the scientists' snide remarks and off-the-record-on-the-record comments as "proof" that the ice core data, the carbon dioxide data...all of it...were exaggerated, if not downright fabricated.

As Professor Andrew Watson has been reported as saying, ‘The climate sceptics would have us believe the e-mails invalidate the ... data ..., but they don't. They would have us believe that the warming that has occurred during the 20th Century is a construct entirely in the minds of a few climate scientists. But this point of view surely has some difficulty in explaining why Arctic sea ice is declining so rapidly, mountain glaciers around the world are retreating so rapidly, and Spring is coming much earlier now than it did 50 years ago.'

So the effect is real. Heck, do people really think that this scientific agreement is mass hysteria?

Unfortunately, the e-mails show the scientists concerned as curmudgeons - and that is putting it mildly.

Well, as a biochemist, I have been exposed to the truth that even scientists are human. They have jealousies, rivalries, likes and dislikes. So the fact that in a few e-mails, they make disparaging remarks about those who don't see eye-to-eye with them...not a surprise.

But the timing is spectacularly awful. This gives a huge pile of ammunition to anti-environmentalists and to those who were looking for anything to throw at the global consensus. Some of it was spawned from fear for their jobs, if they work in an industry that produces a lot of carbon dioxide. Some of it was ideological - they couldn't believe that our economy cannot just grow, grow, grow without a problem. Some of it was a partisan divide.

So, the conspiracy? Well, someone hacked into the university's computers, knowing what they were looking for. The timing is exquisite. This is not random. I am afraid that from a Creation Care perspective, I must call it an attack from the forces of darkness.