Hey, Al Gore --- Incoming!

From wattsupwiththat.com we learn that the US Department of Energy has issued a "litigation hold notice" to 8,000 DOE employees targeting any contact with the Climate Research Unit at ClimateGate ground zero - the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia:

DOE Litigation Hold Notice
DOE-SR has received a “Litigation Hold Notice” from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) General Council and the DOE Office of Inspector General regarding the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in England. Accordingly, they are requesting that SRNS, SRR and other Site contractors locate and preserve all documents, records, data, correspondence, notes, and other materials, whether official or unofficial, original or duplicative, drafts or final versions, partial or complete that may relate to the global warming, including, but not limited to, the contract files, any related correspondence files, and any records, including emails or other correspondence, notes, documents, or other material related to this contract, regardless of its location or medium on which it is stored. In other words,
please preserve any and all documents relevant to “global warming, the Climate Research Unit at he University of East Anglia In England, and/or climate change science.”

DOE-SR is the Department of Energy facility at Savannah River. Apparently the DOE has an enormous number of grants with various research organizations and the intergovernmental CYA is beginning. I am not sure if this notice means that it's the beginning of the end for Al Gore and his Global Ponzi Scheme but it sure sounds like good news. In any event, the comment section of the post has this following entry:

Jochen Vederer (22:03:54) :

As an attorney who deals with electronic data cases on a regular basis, I have a few thoughts on this letter.

This letter does not necessarily mean that litigation has commenced. As an attorney, I send “preservation letters” all the time before litigation. Essentially, a preservation letter states that the recipient must retain and preserve the specified evidence, i.e., they cannot delete or otherwise destroy such evidence. After sending a preservation letter, we often use computer forensic experts to create back-up images of all drives and media that may contain electronic data relevant to the matter at hand. Likewise, after a client receives such a letter I recommend that they make their own backups.

[...]Regarding the preservation letter mentioned above, I have two thoughts as to its purpose. First, an interested party may have sent a preservation letter to the DOE. Second, the DOE has most certainly reviewed the CRU matter and may know even more about it than is in the public domain. Thus—realizing that the climate-change game may be up soon—the DOE may be taking proactive steps to salvage its reputation when the house of cards comes down. Perhaps the DOE realizes that it may at some point be shown to be complicit in the biggest scandal in modern times. In such a case, the DOE can then say: “Hey look, we were duped too, and as soon as we realized it we began a campaign to ferret out all the miscreants involved.” In any event, this letter is actually more interesting if no preservation letter has been received by the DOE as this would suggest that it may intend to go after grant recipients who were cooking the books! This situation, of course, will probably only come about once the mainstream media picks up the story and scientists and research centers/universities (grant recipients) are shown to have falsified and/or improperly manipulated data, etc. If they did it in concert with others, there may even be conspiracy and racketeering charges.

Finally, the DOE may just be doing this as a defensive tactic so that climate skeptics cannot later state that evidence was destroyed, i.e., there would be a presumption that global warming is bunk science because of the spoliation of evidence.

Interesting observation, no? And this is a fascinating email available at JunkScience . This site maintains that the emails and other data weren't hacked from the CRU server. Instead, it

• is a file assembled by CRU staff in preparation for complying with a freedom of information request. Whether it was carelessly left in a publicly accessible portion of the CRU computer system or was "leaked" by staff believing the FOIA request was improperly rejected may never be known but is not really that important. What is important is that:
• There was no "security breach" at CRU that "stole" these files
• The files appear genuine and to have been prepared by CRU staff, not edited by malicious hackers
• The information was accidentally or deliberately released by CRU staff
• Selection criteria appears to be compliance with an or several FOIA request(s)

Curiouser and curiouser...