Climategate: 10 Years On

About the Series

On 19 November 2009, an unknown hacker published a cache of emails from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit. Multiple enquiries would clear the scientists of any wrongdoing. But with their emails taken out of context and posted on climate science denial blogs, the scientists suddenly found themselves under vicious attack.

10 years on, this DeSmog special series looks back at the key players that manufactured the scandal that came to be known as ‘Climategate’. We find out how it felt to be a climate scientist at the time, look at how the science has moved beyond the myths sparked by cherry-picked quotes, and reveal where those responsible for creating the smog clouding the climate debate are now.

It was meant to be the hack that brought down climate science. But it made the research stronger than ever.

Edited by Mat Hope and Ashley Braun. Artwork by Jill Russo.

In This Series

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On November 19, 2009, an unknown hacker published a cache of emails from the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit. It was meant to be the hack that brought down climate science. But i...
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DeSmog was launched in January 2006 to call out the public relations industry for working with fossil fuel industry clients to sow doubt and seed misinformation about climate science. In those earl...
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Ten years ago, leading climate scientists at the University of East Anglia had a mass of email correspondence stolen from their computers and broadcast around the world, in what became known as ‘Cl...
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Excessive media coverage of an email hacking tilted the outcome of a critically important event against the victims of the crime. Sound familiar? In 2016, it happened to the Hillary Clinton presid...
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“There was this incredible hullabaloo,” says Robert Brulle, recalling the moment that the Climategate scandal broke, 10 years ago today. He remembers thinking that it was all much ado about nothing...
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DeSmog UK’s first editor, Brendan Montague, shares his personal experience of investigating climate science deniers at the time of Climategate. Lord Lawson stepped to the curb hailing a taxi. We h...