The e-mail, which includes Jones' correspondence with other researchers and journalists, can be searched

The RealClimate Web site, a forum for climate change scientists, disputed skeptics' claims that the e-mails showed any attempt to manipulate results. "More interesting is what is not contained in the emails," "There is no evidence of any worldwide conspiracy, no mention of George Soros nefariously funding climate research, no grand plan to ‘get rid of the MWP’ [Medieval Warm Period], no admission that global warming is a hoax, no evidence of the falsifying of data, and no ‘marching orders’ from our socialist/communist/vegetarian overlords."

Judging from the data posted, the hack was done either by an insider or by someone inside the climate community who was familiar with the debate, said Robert Graham, CEO with the consultancy Errata Security. Whenever this type of incident occurs, "80 percent of the time it's an insider," he said.

E-mail data dumps are a familiar way of settling grudges in the hacker community, but they happen in the political world too. Last year, former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin's Yahoo Mail correspondence was published after a hacker managed to reset her account password.