‘Climategate’ scientist considered suicide following e-mail row

LONDON - The scientist at the centre of the “climategate” e-mail scandal that surfaced two months ago, has revealed that he was so traumatised by the worldwide uproar that he considered committing suicide. rofessor Phil Jones said he thought about killing himself “several times”, but pulled through with the support of his family and the love of his five-year-old granddaughter.

He said he was so shocked by the scale of the reaction,and now regrets the way he handled Freedom of Information requests for data on climatic research.

The professor had called on colleagues to destroy scientific data. He is still receiving death threats from around the world more than two months after the scandal first unfolded.

“I regret that I did not deal with them in the right way,” he said in an interview with The Sunday Times.

He stood down as director of the climatic research unit at the University of East Anglia, which has been accused of suppressing data after its e-mails were hacked and posted online by climate-change sceptics. (ANI)