Just when I thought the CRU folks might actually stuff the genie back in the bottle, we get this spectacularly stupid claim:

Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, the vice-chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), said he believed the theft of the emails was not the work of amateur climate sceptics.

“It’s very common for hackers in Russia to be paid for their services,” he told The Times.

“If you look at that mass of emails a lot of work was done, not only to download the data but it’s a carefully made selection of emails and documents that’s not random at all.

“This is 13 years of data and it’s not a job of amateurs.”

No--it wasn't the job of amateurs. There's every reason to believe the files and emails were assembled by trained professionals--on staff at the CRU, in response to a legitimate freedom of information act request.

The STUPID part of this claim is that it's so sensational that everybody who has been trying to ignore it now has to find a whole new reason to stifle the story. We're down to two irresistable memes--it's either "Deep Throat" or "Boris and Natasha." And when you make rash accusations about nuclear-armed oil-producing states who have a serious dog in the Copenhagen fight, you're making a serious PR error.