Caught red-handed in a monumental fraud, disgraced Climategate scientists settle on a ludicrous defense

Another e-mail from Jones dated last year with the subject line “IPCC and FOI” is a request to Michael Mann, asking him to delete certain e-mails. Bloggers allege that Jones was trying to destroy data that had been requested under the Freedom of Information Act.

Jones wasn’t available for comment. Mann told Threat Level that he never deleted any e-mails and doesn’t know the context under which Jones made the request. ... [Gavin Schmidt]: “It’s just scientists talking about science, and they’re talking relatively openly as people in private e-mails generally are freer with their thoughts than they would be in a public forum. The few quotes that are being pulled out [are out] of context. People are using language used in science and interpreting it in a completely different way.”

Trenberth agrees.

“If you read all of these e-mails, you will be surprised at the integrity of these scientists,” he says. “The unfortunate thing about this is that people can cherry pick and take things out of context.”

Michael E. Mann, who directs the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University, said in a telephone interview from Paris that skeptics “are taking these words totally out of context to make something trivial appear nefarious.”

[Phil] Jones denied manipulating evidence and insisted his comment had been taken out of context. ... "The selective publication of some stolen e-mails and other papers taken out of context is mischievous and cannot be considered a genuine attempt to engage with this issue in a responsible way," [the University of East Anglica] said in a statement.

[Phil Jones] told the magazine that there was no intention to mislead, but he had "no idea" what he meant by those words.

"That was an e-mail from ten years ago. Can you remember the exact context of what you wrote ten years ago?" he said.