Words of the day, the year, the decade?

The Word of the Day at Spotlight Online today is "diversify", and the example sentence is: "To deal with climate change, we need to diversify our ways of generating energy." For many, "climate change" is the expression that describes this decade and may define this century. According to scientists such as NASA's James Hansen, time is running out to save the planet.

But move over, "climate change"! Here comes "Climategate". You can read all about it at Th!nk About It, a blogging project run by the European Journalism Centre in Maastricht that I'm involved in.

BACKGROUND: "Climategate" began at the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia in England. The CRU is a major source of data on global temperatures. It's relied on by the very influential Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Last week, 61 megabytes of CRU e-mails were made public by a hacker. They suggest that CRU scientists have been misstating data and working to prevent the publication of opposing views. Three typical e-mails:

"The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty we can't."

"Can you delete any e-mails you may have had with Keith re AR4?"

"I've just completed Mike's Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (i.e. from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith's to hide the decline."

After reading the e-mails, Megan McArdle, who blogs for The Atlantic magazine, wrote, "The CRU's main computer model may be, to put it bluntly, complete rubbish." George Monbiot of The Guardian read the e-mails, too, and said: "I'm dismayed and deeply shaken by them."

Because the "climate change" consensus is based in large part on CRU data that may be "complete rubbish" and, possibly, the result of fraud, "Climategate" might turn out to be the word of the year — even of the decade. Or can you suggest better candidates for the title?