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Emails going back to 1996 have been leaked or stolen from the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit (CRU) and have appeared on the web.

The ´óÏó´«Ã½ has already reported it , blogged about it and had a discussion about it on the Today programme this morning. Link scroll down to 7.35am. It's also been the lead story on .

Commentator Bryan posting as TrueToo asked for my opinion on all this. I'll try not to repeat what others have said and since this is a blog about science will focus on that.

First of all there is a lot of data here. What I've looked at certainly looks genuine but it is possible some parts may be faked. I should put on record I certainly haven't read it all but dipped in and out. I've also kept an eye on other parts of the blogosphere as they go through it.

So far I can't see any sign of a "smoking iceberg".

In those cases where people seem to think they have found evidence of problems I remain to be convinced. Often we just don't have enough context in these emails to understand what is being discussed. On other occasions CRU researchers are accused of using inappropriate language. Well let's be honest, who doesn't in emails we assume to be private?

It's also clear that these scientists are working on research in rather extreme circumstances. An enormous amount of interest across the world from people who are often unable to understand the data but demand it anyway. How far a scientist should engage with such outside interests is an interesting argument. But if they chose to do so then it will often add nothing to their actual work. And it will certainly distract them from it.

Conspiring to avoid public scrutiny, insulting dissenting scientists and manipulating evidence are nothing new to science. Indeed as this demonstrates all these accusations and more can be laid at the feet of Newton. And we're not going to repeal the laws of motion.

But from my limited troll through these emails this would appear to be a group of scientists doing world-class research and trying to politely deal with a wide variety of enquiries about their work.

In some cases I'm amazed their private emails about all this are as temperate as they are.

In the meantime the wisdom of the crowd will descend on all this data and if there is anything problematic in there I'm sure they will find it eventually.

In the meantime has perhaps the best summing up I've seen on the web so far.

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