Hackers leak e-mails, stoke climate debate
November 21, 2009 By DAVID STRINGER , Associated Press Writer(AP) -- Computer hackers have broken into a server at a well-respected climate change research center in Britain and posted hundreds of private e-mails and documents online - stoking debate over whether some scientists have overstated the case for man-made climate change.
The University of East Anglia, in eastern England, said in a statement Saturday that the hackers had entered the server and stolen data at its Climatic Research Unit, a leading global research center on climate change. The university said police are investigating the theft of the information, but could not confirm if all the materials posted online are genuine.
More than a decade of correspondence between leading British and U.S. scientists is included in about 1,000 e-mails and 3,000 documents posted on Web sites following the security breach last week.
Some climate change skeptics and bloggers claim the information shows scientists have overstated the case for global warming, and allege the documents contain proof that some researchers have attempted to manipulate data.
The furor over the leaked data comes weeks before the U.N. climate conference in Copenhagen, when 192 nations will seek to reach a binding treaty to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping greenhouse gases worldwide. Many officials - including U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon - regard the prospects of a pact being sealed at the meeting as bleak.
In one leaked e-mail, the research center's director, Phil Jones, writes to colleagues about graphs showing climate statistics over the last millennium. He alludes to a technique used by a fellow scientist to "hide the decline" in recent global temperatures. Some evidence appears to show a halt in a rise of global temperatures from about 1960, but is contradicted by other evidence which appears to show a rise in temperatures is continuing.
Jones wrote that, in compiling new data, he had "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," according to a leaked e-mail, which the author confirmed was genuine.
One of the colleague referred to by Jones - Michael Mann, a professor of meteorology at Pennsylvania State University - did not immediately respond to requests for comment via telephone and e-mail.
The use of the word "trick" by Jones has been seized on by skeptics - who say his e-mail offers proof of collusion between scientists to distort evidence to support their assertion that human activity is influencing climate change.
"Words fail me," Stephen McIntyre - a blogger whose climateaudit.org Web site challenges popular thinking on climate change - wrote on the site following the leak of the messages.
However, Jones denied manipulating evidence and insisted his comment had been taken out of context. "The word 'trick' was used here colloquially, as in a clever thing to do. It is ludicrous to suggest that it refers to anything untoward," he said in a statement Saturday.
Jones did not indicate who "Keith" was in his e-mail.
Two other American scientists named in leaked e-mails - Gavin Schmidt of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, and Kevin Trenberth, of the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research, in Colorado - did not immediately return requests for comment.
The University of East Anglica said that information published on the Internet had been selected deliberately to undermine "the strong consensus that human activity is affecting the world's climate in ways that are potentially dangerous."
"The selective publication of some stolen e-mails and other papers taken out of context is mischievous and cannot be considered a genuine attempt to engage with this issue in a responsible way," the university said in a statement.
©2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
2 hours ago
So you are claiming that scientists are deliberately going down a dead end research path in order to garner research grants.
Isn't that rather stupid?
Why would a research scientist do that?
Research money provides no personal benefits.
Therefore it makes sense to apply for grants to work on projects.
Your comments strike me as those of a conspiracy theorist.
I would love to have their salary, i even would not mind to make up stories for it.
No thats not true, i'm to honest for that.
You have no idea what most scientific researcher's salaries are, nor how much peer-reviewed work they have to do to become the top-paid researchers in their field. The majority make less than $100k a year, and it's virtually unheard of to break through $250k.
But no, it's the multi-million dollar Oil and Automobile CEOs who are virtuous here. Those wo blatantly pay to have "research" performed that calls into question AGW, which would otherwise justify tighter regulations and a rearrangement of subsidies and taxes that would hurt their industries that is. All those dirty, poorly paid scientists are the one's who can't be trusted. It's not like they've devoted their lives to some noble cause, like finding the Truth or anything. They're clearly just trying to take the poor rich CEO's money that he worked so hard for.
The unit should come clean and release all the data and emails excepting private personnel matters as a step in restoring some modicum of confidence. Hopefully law enforcement will be looking into potential charges for conspiracy to commit fraud using public funding. Let's get to the bottom of the whole tawdry mess; what people are paid is irrelevent if they are corrupt.
Let me send you some applications to install :)
Certain corporations who harvest energy from coal or oil decide to protect their hides. They know that through peer reviewed research, the scientific community has demonstrated that man made global warming is real. They also know that most of the technology to cut co2 emissions already exists. Their only hope is to minimize the political will to enact these technologies by using enough misdirection and misguided debate to create the illusion that there really is no scientific consensus. Senators and congressmen won't be forced by their constituencies to reign in co2 emissions. How do they create misdirection? They make commercials plugging their new oil drilling technology that has minimal impact on the environment. They invest a miniscule portion (millions) of their record profits (billions) on renewables to greenwash themselves. They pay think-tanks to plant doubt, and grad students to attack all the new research when it comes out in the media.
somebody dreams up a fear franchise that promises taxing the weather and the air you breathe and every hustler wants a piece of the action.
Voila - 21st century Piltdown Man!
"Mr. Burns:I don't understand. Pigs need food, engines need coolant, dynamiters need dynamite…and not a single sea creature was wasted."
A corporation is as evil as a shark, or a plant. Its sole purpose is survival and expansion, and the big ones are pretty damn good at it. They didn't get to the top of the food chain by acting impulsively and without strategy.
What do you think happens with all those record profits? Billionaires don't carry sacks of money with them. All that money is reinvested in the company, to make it even more profitable. As the resources dry up, that'll mean investing in renewable and sustainable profit sources.
Resource needs grow with the size of an enterprise. Megacorps depend on the whole planet. It's in their interest to keep it safe.
Scientists would not need to HIDE anything at any time.
Than again, as others have states, a lot of science is starting to look like a parliament rather than a university hall.
Regardless of whether this turns out to be a real thing or just set-up, I doubt it'll have much effect on the AGW view, at least in the common public. The ball is rolling. Some of the effect is good, but the premise and the final result may be false and worse than the good it does.
Reminds me of religion.
The scientist [and I use that term losely)at CRU have admited that the hacked emails are their's.
Those scientists go to extreme lengths to silence dissent and hide data from the public, they even urge themselves and their collaborators to delete data and emails to prevent them from being accessed under freedom of information act this is potentially a criminal offense.
I certainly cannot trust any scientist who actively frustrates any attempts to replicate his results especially when those results where funded by public money and are so important to our economic policy.
The trick mentioned is explained here
http://wattsupwit...e-trick/
http://bishophill...ntPage=4
Here is one particularly interesting bit from Kevin E. Trenberth, head of the Climate Analysis Section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research and lead author of the 2001 and 2007 IPCC Scientific Assessment of Climate Change:
From: Kevin Trenberth (...)
To: Michael Mann (...)
Subject: Re: BBC U-turn on climate
Date: Mon, 12 Oct 2009 08:57:37 -0600
(...)
The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a
travesty that we can't. The CERES data published in the August BAMS 09 supplement on 2008
shows there should be even more warming: but the data are surely wrong. Our observing
system is inadequate.(...)
http://www.aneleg...2257.txt
It would seem that CRU's peers would have wanted the protocols to reproduce the data for review, incorporation and praise. There was no particular praise for this unit.
There does not seem to be any disavowal now that the data corruption has been revealed.
Stick a fork in it, Glow-Bull Warning is toast, done d-u-n.
"However, Jones denied manipulating evidence and insisted his comment had been taken out of context. "The word 'trick' was used here colloquially, as in a clever thing to do. It is ludicrous to suggest that it refers to anything untoward," he said in a statement Saturday."
Yes, "trick" IS taken out of context BUT when combined w/ "to hide the decline" is all telling. These eco-marxists are only interested in manipulating the data to ensure that they will sponge more grant money from the system.
For those who are still on the fence about this, per usual RealClimate explains a lot: http://www.realcl...ru-hack/
And since when is hacking such a taboo for the environmentalist crowd? It's OK for corp/gov sites to be defaced, both online and offline, but it's "unethical" to see how public-funded scientists talk about their work? If they have nothing to hide and the science is rock-solid, why adopt this "leave Britney alone!" attitude?
So next week we will be back to the new 'Ice Age' also caused by carbon dioxide, the product of full, clean, and efficient combustion!
It's the literally trillions of dollars in wealth transfer from the industrial world to the Zimbabwe's of the world, under the newly established jurisdiction of the UN. Those countries that have led the world by the application of advanced technology will be forced to pay for their 'guilt' by turning over power to UN bureacrats, who will take a sizable cut and turn it over to failed nations.
The AGW "scientists" are just some of the hired hands. Which is why they don't sound much like actual scientists in their emails.
It appears that Keith Briffa's machine was the one that was hacked, if it was indeed hacked, although
smells more like an inside job to me.
"Uses “corrected” MXD – but shouldn’t usually plot past 1960 because these will be artificially adjusted to look closer to the real temperatures."
I believe this refers to tree ring proxies, which apparently don't match actual measured temps when those are included in the modern historical proxy record. That tells me that the proxies are not properly "calibrated" Good science would dictate that the ring proxies should be calibrated to equate to known measured temps, then use that data to estimate past temps. Unless you're trying to create an artificial "hockey stick".
What a boon for the petro-chemical industry for folks to be distracted, from all the actual toxic crap industry spews into the environment, by focusing on the relatively easy to deal with CO2.
My concern all along, as an environmentalist myself, has been that the eventual discrediting of AGW alarmism will discredit the enviro scene entirely.
This Michael Mann is an egotistical hack, imo.
A white Thanksgiving was held by all in eastern MA four yeas ago.
The Medieval warming period is now The Anomaly.
Greenland is probably due to be renamed Whiteland.
It really is Mann made Global Warming, literally.
They do it for power and celebrity and vanity.
Attila and the Witchdoctor are a team. Now you can see what that Nobel prize was all about - to buy influence for Copenhagen. Appeal to vanity.
the 'trick' to 'hide' the decline is to chop the graph at 1960 and leave off the rest at the point where the slope reverses, so it shows only a rise at the end.
"Tree-ring data from Keith Briffa (CRU, Univ. of East Anglia), corroborated by European data compiled by Mike Baillie (Queen's Univ., Belfast), shows clear evidence of a 535 AD climate perturbation, and it is now known worldwide. "
http://www.ees1.l...atau.htm
I wonder how this paper was treated by the 'peers'?
It simply doesn't matter if a few data points are out of whack or do not agree with the rest. It doesn't matter that the British scientists quoted in the hacked emails are narrow minded individuals who don't understand how science is supposed to work.
There is simply too much data from too many sources to ignore. It is not enough to claim global warming isn't real. You must come up with an alternate theory that also explains all of the data.
http://www.telegr...row.html
What agreements? Mann made a similar comment at one time suggesting his data was his personal property.
If researchers are publicly funded, such data should be released to the public as soon as possible.
Even classified DoD data has a process for releasing research to the community.
Many theories have been proposed and ignored at the insistence of the CO2 conspirators. I posted one above, a volcanic eruption, maybe Krakatoa caused the Dark Ages and the subsequent Medieval Warm period.
If you are suggesting that man hasn't raised CO2 levels you argue badly. CO2 concentrations are really easy to measure with considerable accuracy. They are also easy to pin down to a source because burning organics show a different isotope composition than volcanism (the proportion of C13 is much reduced in organic materials).
This AP columnist David Stringer, is just another in long line liberal CYA apologists in this current Climategate "bruhaha". No matter what is discovered about the climate fraudsters, they will gleefully try to convince us that the darkness outside is really daylight...Really? Well this time fewer are buying it. .We "knowNothings Flatearthers" (REALISTS) have known for a long time that phony demagogues on the left will stop at nothing to lead the naive, the ill-informed, the un-informed and the mis-informed down this disastrous superhighway of deceit, whether it be single payer health care, cap/trade, or CAFE standards for cars. If they really cared about greenhouse gasses, they would shut their traps and include nuclear power and NatGas on the menu. But they don't so, we REALISTS must conclude it's money and control they are after...With the latter being the main dish..HPD out....
Looks like an inside job with outside help to me. At least, that is what the format of the files seems to show. I only wish that more had been released. What has been released is turning out to be pretty damning, in my opinion. And, I am not talking about just the emails. The documents are even more so when compared to the emails.
The format of many of the files, however, require the use of Unix or Linux based filesystems and so forth to properly format them for reading as they were created. It is much easier to go through the data and takes less effort because carriage returns and end of line characters are displayed differently in Windows and Unix/Linux applications.
That is all well and good but the raw data was manipulated the same way in the NOAA datasets. The raw data was removed and data averaged into 50-year blocks was put up in its place. The CRU did it to "attenuate the signal." I have little doubt that the NOAA did the very same thing now that I see that all their and the CRU's datasets match.
The rest of us in the community want to see the raw data for ourselves! We no longer can trust any climatologists who manipulate the data and remove all the raw data from public view at their "word."