It created a media feeding frenzy and dragged climate scientists' reputations through the mud, but nobody will be prosecuted for the "climategate" email hack. Thousands of emails were stolen from the servers of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia in November 2009 and posted on a Russian email server. Climate sceptics seized on them to claim that scientists had conspired to withhold or alter data, unfairly manipulated the peer-review process and smeared their critics.