Did Russian spies engineer Climategate?

As the Copenhagen summit kicks off today in Denmark, speculation swirls over who's responsible for leaking the hacked 'Climategate' emails from the University of East Anglia. A new report by the Daily Mail reveals that the emails were originally released from a server in Siberia. The British press, in particular, has jumped on the story, with many asking: Did Russia's secret service, the FSB, engineer Climategate to derail Copenhagen? (Watch a report about speculation that Climategate scientists fudged numbers)

A Russian-engineered climate scandal makes sense: With "much of Russia's vast oil and gas reserves" rendered nearly inaccessible during the winter months, says Shaun Walker in The Independent, Russia has good reason to wish for a warmer Earth. Add to that the "vast sums of money" required for Russia to modernize its "aging factories," and it's easy to see why the FSB might be tasked with finding a way to make Copenhagen fail.

"Was Russian secret service behind leak of climate-change emails?"

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Russian or not, the hackers were professionals: "I don't know if Russia was responsible," says Charles Johnson at Little Green Footballs, "but this has never looked like a simple case of computerized vandalism." Whoever carried out this "sophisticated operation" was obviously careful to release "the most incriminating" information, "specifically to sabotage the Copenhagen summit" — solid evidence that the break-in was the work of professionals.

"Was Russia behind the stolen CRU emails?"

This is just a distraction from the real scandal: "Of course the leak of the files was timed to derail Copenhagen," says James Dellingpole at The Telegraph. But this story is "utter bilge." Blaming the Russians for the leaks is merely a distraction aimed to keep us from focusing on what really matters: "$45 trillion worth of economy-destroying taxes and regulations imposed on us by big government in the name of a problem that quite likely doesn’t exist."

"Climategate: the Russian distraction"

Regardless of who's responsible, attempts to debunk global warming are not new: The only distraction here is the supposed Climategate scandal itself, says Brad Johnson at Think Progress. "For 30 years, defenders of a pollution-based economy have intimidated, smeared, and suppressed climate science." And now that the U.S. "finally appears ready to join the world in the fight against global warming," opponents are simply "resorting to criminal desperation" with the hopes of derailing any possible progress.

"Watergate redux: break-ins reported at another top climate research center"