US may probe leaked global warming emails

A few days after leaked email messages appeared on the internet, the US Congress may probe whether prominent scientists who are advocates of global warming theories misrepresented the truth about climate change.

Senator James Inhofe, an Oklahoma Republican, said on Monday the leaked correspondence suggested researchers "cooked the science to make this thing look as if the science was settled, when all the time of course we knew it was not", according to a transcript of a radio interview posted on his website. Aides for Representative Darrell Issa, a California Republican, are also looking into the disclosure.

The leaked documents come from the Climatic Research Unit of the UK's University of East Anglia. In global-warming circles, the CRU wields considerable influence: it claims the world's largest temperature data set, and its work and mathematical models were incorporated into the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's 2007 report. That report, in turn, is what the Environmental Protection Agency acknowledged it "relies on most heavily" when concluding that carbon dioxide emissions endanger public health and should be regulated.

For more on this story, see Congress May Probe Leaked Global Warming E-Mails on CBS News.