With an Alabama connection.

The furor is now a full-blown media event dubbed Climategate, and very near its center are Christy, Alabama's state climatologist, a handful of other researchers and, to a lesser extent, Christy's fellow researcher at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, Dr. Roy Spencer, also known as "the official climatologist of the Rush Limbaugh Show."

Christy was named in 51 of about 1,000 e-mails either hacked or leaked late last month from the University of East Anglia in eastern England. Spencer was named in 15.

The British university's Hadley Climatic Research Unit (CRU) is one of the world's leading centers for climate study. On its staff are prominent advocates of the theory that people are causing global warming by releasing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere from auto exhausts and power plants.

The e-mails were between CRU scientists and other climate researchers at such top laboratories as California's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. They concerned how to minimize skeptics such as Christy, and how to adjust data that don't seem to support their view.

One of the advocates and e-mailers, CRU Director Phil Jones, stepped down last week pending an investigation.

The 51 references made Christy second only to Canadian global-warming skeptic Stephen McIntyre as a subject of discussion.

Since the e-mails first appeared Nov. 19, Christy has been quoted by news organizations around the world including, in America, CBS News, the Wall Street Journal, National Public Radio and the New York Times.

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