Scientists were reminded yet again Friday that private email discussions are subject to prying eyes when an informal climate discussion on a National Academy of Sciences list-serve appeared in conservative media outlets.

The email discussion, which took place on an list-serve normally devoted to benign NAS business affairs, focused on how to respond to global warming sceptics. Many participants were calling for a more pro-active stance after Senator James Inhofe, a Republican from Oklahoma, accused at least 17 climate scientists of potentially criminal behaviour in a 23 February report regarding the leaked climate emails from the University of East Anglia. Some had even gone so far as to suggest taking out advertisements perhaps through a new non-profit organization.

The emails were obtained by the Washington Times, a right-leaning newspaper that framed the discussion in somewhat conspiratorial terms. “Undaunted by a rash of scandals over the science underpinning climate change,” the Times reported, “top climate researchers are plotting to respond with what one scientist involved said needs to be ‘an outlandishly aggressively partisan approach’ to gut the credibility of sceptics.”

“Some closet sympathizer certainly violated the internal NAS rules and forwarded a private conversation to – no surprise – a right-wing news paper, which actually didn’t do a bad job,” says Stephen Schneider, a climatologist at Stanford University who was on Inhofe’s list and took part in the discussion on the NAS list-serve.

The NAS list-serve is now inactive, but discussions no doubt continue as to how scientists should deal with the recent resurgence in skepticism about global warming. For his part, Schneider is arguing that scientists need to calm down and reestablish a sincere dialogue with policymakers. And he hopes that the the Inhofe report, by labelling climate scientists as potential criminals without a shred of evidence, might help accomplish that aim by sparking a backlash against such tactics.