This story is exploding all over the skeptical blogs. The data dump also includes data files and code. The real treasure trove will be in looking at this data and code, which Phil Jones and others have kept secret from potential skeptics. Most skeptics will not be surprised by the email content, though it is always good to have your paranoia legitimated.
Phil Jones -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phil_Jones_%28climatologist%29
Philip D. Jones (born 1952) is a climatologist at the University of East Anglia, notable for maintaining of the time series of the instrumental temperature record [1]; this work figured prominently in the IPCC TAR SPM [2]. He is director of the Climatic Research Unit and a Professor in the School of Environmental Sciences at the University of East Anglia in Norwich. He holds a BA in Environmental Sciences from the University of Lancaster, and an MSc and PhD from the University of Newcastle upon Tyne. His PhD was titled “A spatially distributed catchment model for flood forecasting and river regulation with particular reference to the River Tyne”. His research interests are instrumental climate change, palaeoclimatology, detection of climate change and the extension of riverflow records in the UK. He was a contributing author to the IPCC TAR chapter 12 Detection of Climate Change and Attribution of Causes. Together with Michael E. Mann he has published on the temperature record of the past 1000 years.
More on Phil...
(snip) The warning, from Professor Phil Jones, director of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, was one of four sobering predictions from senior scientists and forecasters that 2007 will be a crucial year for determining the response to global warming and its effect on humanity.
Professor Jones said the long-term trend of global warming - already blamed for bringing drought to the Horn of Africa and melting the Arctic ice shelf - is set to be exacerbated by the arrival of El Niño, the phenomenon caused by above-average sea temperatures in the Pacific.
Combined, they are set to bring extreme conditions across the globe and make 2007 warmer than 1998, the hottest year on record. It is likely temperatures will also exceed 2006, which was declared in December the hottest in Britain since 1659 and the sixth warmest in global records.
Professor Jones said: “El Niño makes the world warmer and we already have a warming trend that is increasing global temperatures by one to two tenths of a degrees celsius per decade. Together, they should make 2007 warmer than last year and it may even make the next 12 months the warmest year on record.”(end snip)
Vigilance..not paranoia...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_S._Bradley
He was also an IPCC contributer and worked with Mann and Hughes.
Raymond S. "Ray" Bradley is a climatologist and University Distinguished Professor in the Department of Geosciences at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where he is also research director of the Climate System Research Center. Bradley's work indicates that the warming of Earth's climate system in the twentieth century is inexplicable via natural mechanisms.
Bradley was a contributing author to the IPCC TAR. Bradley worked on reconstructing the temperature record of the past 1000 years with MICHAEL E MANN AND MALCOLM K. HUGHS, an eminent dendrologist. This work (for which is he is publicly best known, although scientifically his contributions to assembling surface temperature records are only rivaled by Phil Jones) figured prominently in the IPCC TAR SPM.[1] In 2005, the Chair of the US House of Representatives Committee on Energy and Commerce, Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas) demanded that Bradley provide a detailed accounting of the data and funding of his research on climate change.[2] Barton specifically asked for responses to various allegations made by Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick about the Mann, Bradley and Hughes papers.[3] In Bradley's response, he finds the assertions of McIntyre and McKitrick to be without worth,[4] and recommends a commentary by Gavin Schmidt on the RealClimate website as providing a very good guide to the issues.[5]