Not only were the "Let's screw with the evidence" files real, Updated

you can download them.

Apparently the 'true believer' sites are bitching about the hacking and saying absolutely nothing about the content; big surprise, huh?

Update: remember Mann and the 'hockey stick' graph that turned out to be bull? He's involved:
Dr. Mann was implicated in the global warming email conspiracy. It was reported on several websites today that classified emails and files prove that the junk scientists behind the global warming movement knowingly perpetrated a fraud on the global community. Mann’s name came up in several of the emails. The posted material, which includes e-mails allegedly sent by the CRU’s director Phil Jones to fellow climate researchers, including Michael Mann at Pennsylvania State University in University Park.


Update 2: the more people go through these files, the worse it gets:
Jones, head of the CRU unit whose emails were leaked, has been under most fire so far over one email in particular in which he boasted of using a ‘“trick" to “hide the decline” that would have otherwise spoiled his graph showing temperatures soaring ever-upward.

But far more serious - at least in a legal sense - may be his apparent boasting of destroying data to stop sceptics from checking this alarmist work. If, as some emails suggest, he destroyed it to thwart FOI requests from Professor Ross McKitrick and Steve McIntyre, who’d already exposed as fake the Michael Mann “hockey stick”, Jones, one of the most active of the IPCC lead authors, could even face criminal charges.

(Note: in saying that, I should add that these emails may simply be poorly worded, out of context or even altered by the whistleblower who leaked them. Jones may also not knowingly have done anything wrong, and there is no proof that he did anything against the law.)
He may not have known he was quite possibly breaking law, but he damn well knew he was violating the most basic rules of the scientific method, and for that alone he deserves to have his ass handed to him.

That last, in some ways, is the worst of all about this. In a comment on an earlier post Wolfwalker said, in part, This story hurts. I don't want to believe it. But so far it doesn't look good at all. And if it's true, if they've really been fudging and falsifying data, and intentionally censoring the scientific press, then heads should roll in large quantities.

We must be able to trust our scientists and engineers.
And it's exactly that trust that these people have been taking advantage of, and destroying. The damage won't just stop here, either, it's going to cause problems for a whole lot of people. "Look at all the lies these people pushed; why the hell should we trust them on ANYTHING!?" will be the attitude of many, and it- unfortunately- is a damned good question.

Forget everything else: one of the basic rules of the scientific method is the information has to be studied by others, tested and tried by others for errors or missed data or misinterpretation; and these people deliberately hid information, refused to allow others to review their data and even hid or destroyed information to keep others from reviewing it. The violation of basic ethics is disgusting.