East Anglia University Climate Research Unit Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research Hacked—Scandal Brewing?

Ronald Bailey | 11.20.2009 12:38 PM

The blogosphere is hopping with reports that the British Climate Research Unit's computers have been hacked and possibly embarrassing internal emails and other documents are now circulating on the web. Earlier this year, the CRU, which teams up with the Hadley Centre to produce one of the most cited global temperature datasets*, rejected accusations that it had destroyed original temperature data making it difficult for outside scientists to evaluate their adjustments to the datasets.

Before jumping to conclusions, remember that many of us write private emails that we might not want to see publicly distributed. Will follow up as details become available.

Mucho kudos to threadjacker PicassoIII.

*corrected. The CRU computers have been hacked, not those of the Hadley Centre as originally misreported.

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Death Panelist 14 years ago

Before jumping to conclusions, remember that many of us write private emails that we might not want to see publicly distributed.
Many of us aren’t major cogs in the machinations of forcing Climate Change legislation on us. I’m jumping on those conclusions with both feet.
1. TallDave 14 years ago
  
  Best. Name. Ever.
  1. Death Panelist 14 years ago
    
    And timeless!
    1. Follow the Goddamm Money 14 years ago
      
      There won’t be any deal in Copenhagen, but how about you start paying for it anyway? Reuters:
      UNITED NATIONS, Nov 19 (Reuters) – The U.N. environmental chief called on rich nations on Thursday to pledge $10 billion a year for three years at next month’s Copenhagen summit to help poor states begin to tackle the impact of climate change.
      Yvo de Boer, head of the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat, told a news conference that was a short-term figure and that in 10 or 20 years hundreds of billions of dollars would be needed annually to cope with global warming.
      The Dec. 7-18 meeting in Copenhagen had long been billed as the time when a new treaty to cap greenhouse gas emissions would be signed, but the United Nations has admitted that a legally binding deal will not come until later.
      The slippage has been partly blamed on delays in the United States in pushing new climate change legislation through Congress, a move now anticipated early next year.
      De Boer listed the $10-billion-a-year pledge as one of his three goals for the summit, along with the submission of emission targets for 2020 by rich countries and of planned actions by developing countries.
      http://www.reuters.com/article…..SN19180690
2. Hanyou 14 years ago
  
  I agree.
  I jealously guard my privacy and despise people who attack others’ privacy within their homes or in places where they could reasonably expect privacy.
  When it comes to things like ACORN, which is publicly-funded, or the Hadley Centre, which influences public opinion AND is publicly funded, there is no issue of privacy. Perhaps there’s an issue of ethics in hacking the emails, but honest science is to be expected from an organization like this.
  That’s why, as much as I’d hate to have my emails hacked, I don’t have much of a problem with this.
  1. bobby 14 years ago
    
    agreed, when you are at work, emails belong to the employer. only your private email is private.
3. Warming's Over 14 years ago
  
  If you want it.
4. M. L. Anderegg 14 years ago
  
  Strangely enough, my training in research and statistics started with the premise that research is for the purpose of contributing to knowledge, not contributing to the funding of a particular researcher and certainly not for surpressing information. The person who is ethical and honorable (or even just honest) doesn’t have to fear what is found in his or her emails.
  If funding was based on the premise that all published information conformed to the above, then there might even be the potential for fraud charges on behalf of any funder of subsequent research by the same people who surpressed data which did not support their premises.
Morgan 14 years ago

Exactly. When the output of your work is a set of rules on my life, the onus is on you to be 100% right. So I’m not exactly concerned about overstepping on pushback.
1. 14 years ago
  
  WHERE THE FUCK IS TONY???
  1. Tony 14 years ago
    
    In between cocktails. It’s the weekend!
Jake Boone 14 years ago

From what I’ve seen elsewhere, the emails in question go well beyond embarrassing… they’re almost at the level of Perry Mason courtroom confessions (“Yes! I admit it! I altered the climate change data!”).
This makes me skeptical of this release… I wonder if the most damning emails were inserted into the data after the hack took place.
1. John 14 years ago
  
  Don’t under estimate people’s ability to be arrogant and stupid. Further, if they already had “damning e-mails” why make up more and worse ones and risk destroying your credibility.
  I seriously doubt they were inserted.
  1. django 14 years ago
    
    Never underestimate how chatty people can be if they feel they are bullet-proof. I work at a major university and some of the things tenured faculty freely talk about in in-house emails should land them in prison or at least create a major scandal.
2. Bertha Lewis 14 years ago
  
  That does make sense.
3. briareus 14 years ago
  
  This makes me skeptical of this release… I wonder if the most damning emails were inserted into the data after the hack took place.
  AGENT! TERRIST!
grrizzly 14 years ago

One of the documents hacked from the Hadley Centre is “the rules of the game,” a summary of propaganda techniques to convince laymen that climate change is real and dangerous. It’s quite amusing. Below is the beginning of “the rules.”
Many of the oft-repeated communications methods and messages
of sustainable development have been dismissed by mainstream
communicators, behaviour change experts and psychologists.
Before we go into what works, our principles make a ‘clean sweep’
of what doesn’t:
1. Challenging habits of climate change communication
Don’t rely on concern about children’s future or human
survival instincts
Recent surveys show that people without children may care more
about climate change than those with children. “Fight or flight” human
survival instincts have a time limit measured in minutes ? they are of
little use for a change in climate measured in years.
Don’t create fear without agency
Fear can create apathy if individuals have no ‘agency’ to act upon
the threat. Use fear with great caution.
Don’t attack or criticise home or family
It is unproductive to attack that which people hold dear.
2. Forget the climate change detractors
Those who deny climate change science are irritating, but
unimportant. The argument is not about if we should deal with climate
change, but how we should deal with climate change.
3. There is no ‘rational man’
The evidence discredits the ‘rational man’ theory ? we rarely weigh
objectively the value of different decisions and then take the clear
self-interested choice.
4. Information can’t work alone
Providing information is not wrong; relying on information alone to
change attitudes is wrong. Remember also that messages about
saving money are important, but not that important.
1. progressive values 14 years ago
  
  3. There is no ‘rational man’
  The evidence discredits the ‘rational man’ theory ? we rarely weigh
  objectively the value of different decisions and then take the clear
  self-interested choice.
  4. Information can’t work alone
  Providing information is not wrong; relying on information alone to
  change attitudes is wrong. Remember also that messages about
  saving money are important, but not that important.
  Suck on that, libertarians!
2. Andy 14 years ago
  
  Thats just plain nauseating.
3. Jenni 14 years ago
  
  Actually, these rules make a lot of sense. Not only for people trying to convince others that their climatology work is true, but for ANYONE trying to convince anyone else of something. I’m not sure why Andy calls common sense “nauseating”.
  After all, haven’t we all learned that it’s not productive to rant and rave angrily against something because believe in? That a personal attack, no matter how true, will only get peoples’ backs up and not change opinions? That people often think with their emotions rather than with cold, long-term logic? That, because of that, it’s better to combine logic and emotion, if you want to convince anyone of something they don’t want to believe?
  That’s not “nauseating”, it’s just common sense. It’s neither proof nor disproof that the lab lied or falsified anything, just that they were aware of the best ways to promote what results they had.
Ska 14 years ago

The metadata will tell all. Beautiful, boring, inconspicuous metadata.
grrizzly 14 years ago

More from “the rules”
style
principles
These principles lend some guidance on the evidence of stylistic
themes that have a high chance of success:
16. Create a trusted, credible, recognised voice on
climate change
We need trusted organisations and individuals that the media can
call upon to explain the implications of climate change to the
UK public.
17. Use emotions and visuals
Another classic marketing rule: changing behaviour by
disseminating information doesn’t always work, but emotions
and visuals usually do.
Warty 14 years ago

Deus ex machina is the laziest plot device there is. The writers should be ashamed of themselves.
Colin 14 years ago

They had some listings of the emails at hotair. What I found interesting was how the scientists speak in Fahrenheit.
1. briareus 14 years ago
  
  They are UK scientists, right?
? 14 years ago

What I found interesting was how the scientists speak in Fahrenheit.
It’s a tribute to their German heroes.
1. Max 14 years ago
  
  No German even uses Fahrenheit?! Or did I get something wrong. Down here we are all in Celsius-land =) (Or Kelvin if you ARE a scientist =) ).
Tman 14 years ago

Tim Blair has been all over this.
http://blogs.news.com.au/daily…..our_fire1/
Apparently the webserver at CPR was indeed hacked and these are authentic emails. Take with a grain of salt I suppose, but clearly this would be confirmation of what many suspect already in terms of the continual “data massage” that proponents of AGW have been doing since day one.
John 14 years ago

This is a huge deal. But I bet the media never covers it. This is a nonevent outside of a few webpages. None of the MSM anywhere will touch it. It will be like it never happened. And the next time someone uses the e-mails against some nasty leftist, the response will be
1. attack the messanger; these e-mails were hacked and were released as part of a crime so don’t believe them
2. dissmissed as “old news”. “We have known about those e-mails for years. Try again wingnut!!”
1. Hanyou 14 years ago
  
  Think what you want about Glenn Beck and Fox; when the news station/ his show gets ahold of this, they will hammer at this story for all it’s worth. They did it for Wright and ACORN.
  I look forward to it.
  1. John 14 years ago
    
    I hope so. This needs to be a big deal.
2. Bertha Lewis 14 years ago
  
  Planet Gore at the National Review covered this yesterday (The Blue-Dress Moment May Have Arrived) and they are planning to do more very shortly:
  http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/
SugarFree 14 years ago

The 2nd one.
1. Random Dude 14 years ago
  
  I lol’ed. Very true 🙂
  Out of curiosity, I took a look at the Google Trends data on global warming searches.
  It could be my eyes making up a pattern that doesn’t exist, but is there a consistent dip in traffic in the summer? At first I was surprised, but then I thought that people become skeptical during the winter and push up the traffic during those times.
Hanyou 14 years ago

Is this genuine? It’s almost too bad/good to believe.
Damn.
PR 14 years ago

oh noes. bad news for Climate Change Hoax Denialists. There appears to be a consensus that these are real.
Hal 14 years ago

“Mucho kudos to threadjacker PicassoIII”
Absolutely!
TallDave 14 years ago

But… but… CONSENSUS!!!
1. Hanyou 14 years ago
  
  Because science is about DEMOCRACY!!!
iowahawk 14 years ago

Now might be a good time to subpoena James Hansen.
1. Hanyou 14 years ago
  
  Good idea.
  We can try him for high crimes against humanity and freedom.
2. TallDave 14 years ago
  
  Dave…
  I think you know what needs to be done.
  The world awaits.
  1. iowahawk 14 years ago
    
    Yep. Tomorrow I’m doing a flywheel dyno test on my dual quad 327.
    If this Global Warming thing is really a hoax, somebody’s got to kick start it again.
Episiarch 14 years ago

My tendency is to say “grain of salt”, but these being real would not surprise me at all. If you have to lie some to save the world, who would fault you for doing so, right?
1. Sean W. Malone 14 years ago
  
  Thank you Ozymandias, why I will protect the lie!
anon 14 years ago

People that work at Hadley have confirmed at least some e-mails are genuine. At this point, I believe the kids would say “PWND!”
Vince 14 years ago

I would suggest cautious optimism. Please remember though, if this is true, it could shake societies faith in all science. The unintended consequences of this spectacle could be that Intelligent Design gets taught in US classrooms as science.
It is extremely unfortunate that scientists would cave to political will, but that is the reality of our world. Crowing about human frailty is self serving, and can be self destructive. I’ve long been skeptical of climate change claims, but I had assumed that people were misinterpreting data. I get no happiness from the possibility of collusion on their part.
1. 14 years ago
  
  “The unintended consequences of this spectacle could be that Intelligent Design gets taught in US classrooms as science.”
  What a crock of shit.
2. anon 14 years ago
  
  If that is the consequence, the science community has brought this on themselves by not condemning the fraud of its members.
3. John 14 years ago
  
  That is really my big fear to. I really think that AGW is going to be the biggest scandel in the history of science. It is going to continue the process that has been going on for the last 40 years or so of science destroying itself by selling out to politics.
  Forget intelligent design. No one is going to die if they beleive God created the universe rather than universe being the random one of hundreds that just happens to have physcal laws that allow for life as we know it. It is much worse.
  People are starting to no believe in vacines. People are starting to believe that minute traces of pesticides are more harmful to them than things like ecoli. Beliefs that are not only just dumb or quirky but will get you killed. All of that madness I think is the result of people starting to beleive that science is being manipulated by larger forces, be those forces the government or big business. After AGW is reavealed to be a fraud, that thinking will only get worse.
  1. Vince 14 years ago
    
    All much better points than mine John, I was typing in the midst of trying to absorb the impact. It is really unfortunate.
  2. briareus 14 years ago
    
    It is going to continue the process that has been going on for the last 40 years or so of science destroying itself by selling out to politics.
    Incorrect.
    It is going to continue the process that has been going on for the last 40 years or so of an ideologically compromised science industry destroying itself by selling out to politics.
    Correct.
    What is being destroyed by these charlatans is the respect for legitimate and rigorous scientific inquiry by people who comprosed their rigor for ideology.
    1. John 14 years ago
      
      I stand corrected. Good point.
  3. Brian Lockwood 14 years ago
    
    This is really just an outgrowth of people abandoning the ideas of observation and rational thought. Its not just faith in science that people have lost, its faith in objective reality. This is a far harder problem to fix.
  4. Max 14 years ago
    
    Yeah, but that is the follow-up of nationalizing most science disciplines.. You are then like the accountant that answered “2+2 = whatever you want it to be boss”…
4. cmace 14 years ago
  
  But this isn’t science. Its fraud.
  1. JW 14 years ago
    
    With a ‘lil bit of faith thrown in for good measure.
5. DanD 14 years ago
  
  This is precisely why I relentlessly attack the claims of proponents of AGW. They’re doing a disservice to science by calling themselves science. At best, they’re theoretical modelers that incorporate scientific principles from physics and meteorology in their work. They don’t contribute anything to science besides maybe better and more efficient modeling algorithms. If they get their jollies off in their quixotic quest to model a complex chaotic system with variables that are impossible to quantify, then whatever. But I don’t like them sucking up public science funds and then using their specious results to get hack journalists all in a tizzy about the potential of writing headlines such as “climate change could lead to more prostitution in third world countries.”
  1. anon 14 years ago
    
    I feel the same way about mainstream economists.
  2. Tango Mike 14 years ago
    
    “At best, they’re theoretical modelers that incorporate scientific principles from physics and meteorology in their work. They don’t contribute anything to science besides maybe better and more efficient modeling algorithms. If they get their jollies off in their quixotic quest to model a complex chaotic system with variables that are impossible to quantify”
    I’ve never heard it put better.
6. Agent Provacateur 14 years ago
  
  The unintended consequences of this spectacle could be that Intelligent Design gets taught in US classrooms as science.
  That would be cool, butI’d like the “unintended consequence” of scientists burned at the stake
Justin 14 years ago

I remember an incident recently where we were told NOT to jump to conclusions, despite overwhelming evidence – the Muslim that killed 13 people in Ft. Hood.
Now we’re being told, AGAIN, not to jump to conclusions about these e-mails which describe massive fraud.
These jerks are fraudulantly creating research to fit, not support, a finding which was predetermined.
This cap and trade system is a scam to benefit banks and government at the expense of the middle class. That is a FACT.
So you can stay on the fence, but we’re reading the e-mails and the picture they are painting is FRAUD.
Justin 14 years ago

Vince – I’d say that the “scientific” community is being hypocritical here. Atheists don’t like being asked to prove there is no God, why should Global Warming skeptics have to prove a negative as well?
Can’t have your cake and eat it, too.
iowahawk 14 years ago

Quick correction for Mr. Bailey:
this didn’t happen at Hadley Centre, it was at the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit.
1. Ron Bailey 14 years ago
  
  iowahawk: Thank you. Fixed.
TallDave 14 years ago

God bless Russian hackers.
1. iowahawk 14 years ago
  
  Twernt no Russian hackers. It was almost certainly an inside job by a disgruntled employee or whistle blower. The “hacker” simply posted the zip file on a Russian storage site, thereby circumventing legal takedown maneuvers by CRU.
  1. briareus 14 years ago
    
    If so, I’m glad he was disgruntled. His or her peers were obviously more than gruntled to engage in their fraud.
  2. John 14 years ago
    
    I will bet you money, these guys were total assholes to their employees and that they were way to arrogant to think “gee we are committing a giant fraud here, maybe we should be nice to the people who could expose us.”
  3. TallDave 14 years ago
    
    I was told Russian hackers, but your suggestion does seem more likely given the message attached.
    …BTW, this thing just screams to be satirized… (hint, hint, nudge, poke, punch)
2. The Gobbler 14 years ago
  
  And their women!
  1. Clich? Bandit 14 years ago
    
    SECOND!
prolefeed 14 years ago

From:
http://www.examiner.com/x-2506…..and-emails
Some of the excerpts of emails within the archives (edited for brevity, emphasis added):
From Michael E. Mann (witholding of information / data):
Dear Phil and Gabi,
I’ve attached a cleaned-up and commented version of the matlab code that I wrote for doing the Mann and Jones (2003) composites. I did this knowing that Phil and I are likely to have to respond to more crap criticisms from the idiots in the near future, so best to clean up the code and provide to some of my close colleagues in case they want to test it, etc. Please feel free to use this code for your own internal purposes, but don’t pass it along where it may get into the hands of the wrong people.
From Nick McKay (modifying data):
The Korttajarvi record was oriented in the reconstruction in the way that McIntyre said. I took a look at the original reference ? the temperature proxy we looked at is x-ray density, which the author interprets to be inversely related to temperature. We had higher values as warmer in the reconstruction, so it looks to me like we got it wrong, unless we decided to reinterpret the record which I don’t remember. Darrell, does this sound right to you?
From Tom Wigley (acknowleding the urban effect):
We probably need to say more about this. Land warming since 1980 has been twice the ocean warming ? and skeptics might claim that this proves that urban warming is real and important.
From Phil Jones (modification of data to hide unwanted results):
I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.
From Kevin Trenberth (failure of computer models):
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.
From Michael Mann (truth doesn’t matter):
Perhaps we’ll do a simple update to the Yamal post, e.g. linking Keith/s new page–Gavin t? As to the issues of robustness, particularly w.r.t. inclusion of the Yamal series, we actually emphasized that (including the Osborn and Briffa ’06 sensitivity test) in our original post! As we all know, this isn’t about truth at all, its about plausibly deniable accusations.
From Phil Jones (witholding of data):
The skeptics seem to be building up a head of steam here! … The IPCC comes in for a lot of stick. Leave it to you to delete as appropriate! Cheers Phil
PS I’m getting hassled by a couple of people to release the CRU station temperature data. Don’t any of you three tell anybody that the UK has a Freedom of Information Act !
From Michael E. Mann (using a website to control the message, hide dissent):
Anyway, I wanted you guys to know that you’re free to use RC [RealClimate.org – A supposed neutral climate change website] Rein any way you think would be helpful. Gavin and I are going to be careful about what comments we screen through, and we’ll be very careful to answer any questions that come up to any extent we can. On the other hand, you might want to visit the thread and post replies yourself. We can hold comments up in the queue and contact you about whether or not you think they should be screened through or not, and if so, any comments you’d like us to include.
From Phil Jones (witholding of data):
If FOIA does ever get used by anyone, there is also IPR to consider as well. Data is covered by all the agreements we sign with people, so I will be hiding behind them.
If the emails and documents are a forgery, it would be an extremely large one that would likely have taken months to setup. No doubt much more will be coming out about these emails and their possible authenticity. Stay tuned to the Climate Change Examiner for updates as more information becomes available.
Update, 10:30am ? Since the original publication of this article, the story is gaining steam and now the BBC is reporting on it. They report that a spokesman for the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU), “We are aware that information from a server used for research information in one area of the university has been made available on public websites.”
Analysis of the emails and documents in the archives continues. We must stress that the authenticity has not been proven however there have been no denials of such by the Hadley Centre. Some of the more recent revelations include:
From Phil Jones (destroying of emails / evidence):
Mike, Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4? Keith will do likewise. He’s not in at the moment ? minor family crisis. Can you also email Gene and get him to do the same? I don’t have his new email address. We will be getting Caspar to do likewise.
From Tom Wigley (data modification):
Phil, Here are some speculations on correcting SSTs to partly explain the 1940s warming blip. If you look at the attached plot you will see that the land also shows the 1940s blip (as I’m sure you know). So, if we could reduce the ocean blip by, say, 0.15 degC, then this would be significant for the global mean ? but we’d still have to explain the land blip. I’ve chosen 0.15 here deliberately. This still leaves an ocean blip, and i think one needs to have some form of ocean blip to explain the land blip (via either some common forcing, or ocean forcing land, or vice versa, or all of these). When you look at other blips, the land blips are 1.5 to 2 times (roughly) the ocean blips ? higher sensitivity plus thermal inertia effects. My 0.15 adjustment leaves things consistent with this, so you can see where I am coming from. Removing ENSO does not affect this. It would be good to remove at least part of the 1940s blip, but we are still left with “why the blip”. Let me go further. If you look at NH vs SH and the aerosol effect (qualitatively or with MAGICC) then with a reduced ocean blip we get continuous warming in the SH, and a cooling in the NH ? just as one would expect with mainly NH aerosols. The other interesting thing is (as Foukal et al. note ? from MAGICC) that the 1910-40 warming cannot be solar. The Sun can get at most 10% of this with Wang et al solar, less with Foukal solar. So this may well be NADW, as Sarah and I noted in 1987 (and also Schlesinger later). A reduced SST blip in the 1940s makes the 1910-40 warming larger than the SH (which it currently is not) ? but not really enough. So ? why was the SH so cold around 1910? Another SST problem? (SH/NH data also attached.) This stuff is in a report I am writing for EPRI, so I’d appreciate any comments you (and Ben) might have. Tom.
From Thomas R Karl (witholding data) :
We should be able to conduct our scientific research without constant fear of an “audit” by Steven McIntyre; without having to weigh every word we write in every email we send to our scientific colleagues. In my opinion, Steven McIntyre is the self-appointed Joe McCarthy of climate science. I am unwilling to submit to this McCarthy-style investigation of my scientific research. As you know, I have refused to send McIntyre the “derived” model data he requests, since all of the primary model data necessary to replicate our results are freely available to him. I will continue to refuse such data requests in the future. Nor will I provide McIntyre with computer programs, email correspondence, etc. I feel very strongly about these issues. We should not be coerced by the scientific equivalent of a playground bully. I will be consulting LLNL’s Legal Affairs Office in order to determine how the DOE and LLNL should respond to any FOI requests that we receive from McIntyre.
From Tom Wigley (ousting of a skeptic from a professional organization):
Proving bad behavior here is very difficult. If you think that Saiers is in the greenhouse skeptics camp, then, if we can find documentary evidence of this, we could go through official AGU channels to get him ousted.
From Phil Jones (forging of dates):
Gene/Caspar, Good to see these two out. Wahl/Ammann doesn’t appear to be in CC’s online first, but comes up if you search. You likely know that McIntyre will check this one to make sure it hasn’t changed since the IPCC close-off date July 2006! Hard copies of the WG1 report from CUP have arrived here today. Ammann/Wahl – try and change the Received date! Don’t give those skeptics something to amuse themselves with.
From a document titled “jones-foiathoughts.doc” (witholding of data):
Options appear to be:
1. Send them the data
2. Send them a subset removing station data from some of the countries who made us pay in the normals papers of Hulme et al. (1990s) and also any number that David can remember. This should also omit some other countries like (Australia, NZ, Canada, Antarctica). Also could extract some of the sources that Anders added in (31-38 source codes in J&M 2003). Also should remove many of the early stations that we coded up in the 1980s.
3. Send them the raw data as is, by reconstructing it from GHCN. How could this be done? Replace all stations where the WMO ID agrees with what is in GHCN. This would be the raw data, but it would annoy them.
From Mick Kelly (modifying data to hide cooling):
Yeah, it wasn’t so much 1998 and all that that I was concerned about, used to dealing with that, but the possibility that we might be going through a longer ? 10 year ? period of relatively stable temperatures beyond what you might expect from La Nina etc. Speculation, but if I see this as a possibility then others might also. Anyway, I’ll maybe cut the last few points off the filtered curve before I give the talk again as that’s trending down as a result of the end effects and the recent cold-ish years.
1. briareus 14 years ago
  
  Holy Fuck-Me!
grrizzly 14 years ago

Read how skeptics’ articles are published or rather not in peer-reviewed journals. Check the last paragraph.
From: “Michael E. Mann”
To: Phil Jones
Subject: Re: Fwd: Soon & Baliunas
Date: Tue, 11 Mar 2003 08:14:49 -0500
Cc: Thanks Phil,
(Tom: Congrats again!)
The Soon & Baliunas paper couldn’t have cleared a ‘legitimate’ peer review process
anywhere. That leaves only one possibility–that the peer-review process at Climate
Research has been hijacked by a few skeptics on the editorial board. And it isn’t just De
Frietas, unfortunately I think this group also includes a member of my own department…
The skeptics appear to have staged a ‘coup’ at “Climate Research” (it was a mediocre
journal to begin with, but now its a mediocre journal with a definite ‘purpose’).
Folks might want to check out the editors and review editors:
[1]http://www.int-res.com/journals/cr/crEditors.html
In fact, Mike McCracken first pointed out this article to me, and he and I have discussed
this a bit. I’ve cc’d Mike in on this as well, and I’ve included Peck too. I told Mike that
I believed our only choice was to ignore this paper. They’ve already achieved what they
wanted–the claim of a peer-reviewed paper. There is nothing we can do about that now, but
the last thing we want to do is bring attention to this paper, which will be ignored by the
community on the whole…
It is pretty clear that thee skeptics here have staged a bit of a coup, even in the
presence of a number of reasonable folks on the editorial board (Whetton, Goodess, …). My
guess is that Von Storch is actually with them (frankly, he’s an odd individual, and I’m
not sure he isn’t himself somewhat of a skeptic himself), and without Von Storch on their
side, they would have a very forceful personality promoting their new vision.
There have been several papers by Pat Michaels, as well as the Soon & Baliunas paper, that
couldn’t get published in a reputable journal.
This was the danger of always criticising the skeptics for not publishing in the
“peer-reviewed literature”. Obviously, they found a solution to that–take over a journal!
So what do we do about this? I think we have to stop considering “Climate Research” as a
legitimate peer-reviewed journal. Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate
research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal. We would also
need to consider what we tell or request of our more reasonable colleagues who currently
sit on the editorial board…
What do others think?
mike
Mike M. 14 years ago

If the e-mails are being described as “possibly embarrassing”, that can mean one and one thing only in this conext: they obviously cast doubt on the AGW bullcrap we’ve been fed for all these years.
1. prolefeed 14 years ago
  
  If these emails are real, and not some elaborate hoax, they are way beyond “possibly” embarrassing. They are evidence of deliberate fraud, an attempt to manipulate or deny reality. They are the antithesis of the scientific method.
  1. Mike M. 14 years ago
    
    Here’s the problem: if this is indeed legitimate, then the hacker obviously violated a whole slew of laws, and when the Hadley folks claims that the e-mails are fake (as they almost certainly will), there won’t be any way to prove otherwise.
    1. John 14 years ago
      
      If they are faked, then no one violated any laws. They can’t claim, these are faked and then also demand justice agains the people who hacked their server.
      Further, there are so many of them and they are so damaging, it will be difficult to claim they are fake.
      1. Mike M. 14 years ago
        
        True, but I can’t imagine that Hadley could possibly confess that the e-mails are real, if in fact they are.
        There are potentially trillions of dollars, not to mention careers and reputations, that rest on the climate change scam.
    2. James 14 years ago
      
      Metadata, Mike, metadata.
    3. kinnath 14 years ago
      
      If this was a hack-job, then the hackee will have to authenticate the “stolen” correpsondance to prove it was a hack-job.
  2. John 14 years ago
    
    It is amazing how craven they are. They are not even pretending that it is legit. What a bunch of assholes.
2. John 14 years ago
  
  Judging by the ones posted above, I think “possibly embarrassing” is a bit of an understatment.
robc 14 years ago

The unintended consequences of this spectacle could be that Intelligent Design gets taught in US classrooms as science.
That’s okay. My hypothetical kids arent going to public school anyway. Not private school either, if I have my choice.
1. Hanyou 14 years ago
  
  You’re either a right-wing bigot/terrorist/racist/Christian fundamentalist or you’re a hippie.
  Or you’re a very reasonable person, but we know those are a myth.
Joe_D 14 years ago

Wait wait… I don’t know anything about this Hadley Centre… so before I read anything else, I need to know whether it’s a climate-change advocating, and therefore science-based group… or is it some tin-foil hat conservative nut-job conspiracy idiocy that denies the FACT of catastrohpic anthropogenic global climate change?
I need that answer before even beginning to judge the facts of the case and whether internal emails could be damning at all.
1. Mike M. 14 years ago
  
  The Hadley Centre of the Met Office is roughly the UK’s equivalent of our NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies. It’s a government bureaucracy.
2. Tango Mike 14 years ago
  
  That’s what I like, Joe_D, an open mind. By the way, have you noticed yet that this is not a conservative site?
  1. anonymous 14 years ago
    
    Wait, that wasn’t supposed to be a sarcastic impression?
joshua corning 14 years ago

I don’t know anything about this Hadley Centre… so before I read anything else, I need to know whether it’s a climate-change advocating, and therefore science-based group
It is a British government facility that studies climate.
1. LikeATimeBomb 14 years ago
  
  This is incorrect. There was a lot of confusion in the initial reports. But the Hadley Centre is not the same organization as the Climatic Research Unit. The CRU was the target of the hack, wiki describes them as such:
  The Climatic Research Unit is a component of the University of East Anglia and is one of the leading institutions[1] concerned with the study of natural and anthropogenic climate change.
  It has around thirty research scientists and students and has developed a number of the data sets widely used in climate research, including the global temperature record used to monitor the state of the climate system,[2] as well as statistical software packages and climate models.[3]
  In August 2006, the Climatic Research Building was named the Hubert Lamb Building after its first Director.
  The Climate Research Unit came under criticism in 2009 for refusing to release the data used to construct its surface temperature history report. Requests from other researchers and scientists have been denied, and in some cases the authors of the report claimed that the original data no longer exits.[4]
  In November 2009 hackers accessed private files located on the CRU’s servers, posting the emails they found online.[5] Of the 3000 files, several have been cited by climate change critics as evidence that scientist have been tampering with the climate record. [6]
Pain 14 years ago

I downloaded the emails and have been perusing them. I’m not a scientist so I can’t always tell if something is fishy or not. Also reading them out of context could potentially produce the wrong conclusions. That being said this seemed rather odd. Specifically the part about “milking” and juggling the data. Again I don’t much about this stuff but it seemed an odd choice of words. Make what you will.
Keith,
Thanks for your consideration. Once I get a draft of the central
and southern siberian data and talk to Stepan and Eugene I’ll send
it to you.
I really wish I could be more positive about the Kyrgyzstan material,
but I swear I pulled every trick out of my sleeve trying to milk
something out of that. It was pretty funny though – I told Malcolm
what you said about my possibly being too Graybill-like in evaluating
the response functions – he laughed and said that’s what he thought
at first also. The data’s tempting but there’s too much variation
even within stands. I don’t think it’d be productive to try and juggle
the chronology statistics any more than I already have – they just
are what they are (that does sound Graybillian). I think I’ll have
to look for an option where I can let this little story go as it is.
1. Pain 14 years ago
  
  I would also note that there are about a 1000 emails that I have seen not counting the the other data and documents attached.
  If this is fake, it would be one of the biggest cons I have ever seen. I mean this isn’t some lone memo some one found lying around.
2. John 14 years ago
  
  They are just torturing the data and using every mathmatical trick they know to get to the conclusion they want. It is pathetic.
  There is a great clip from a BBC interview with Richard Feynman where they ask him why he is so down on the social sciences. He gives a great answer about how he knows from experience how hard it is to really know something. How careful you have to be not to let your biases interfere with your observations. And how prepared you have to be to be proven wrong. And how he just doesn’t think social sciences even begin to approach that kind of rigor.
  That e-mail is like a cartoon version of what Feynman was talking about.
3. Spartacus 14 years ago
  
  If you torture data enough, it will tell you what you want to hear.
James Ard 14 years ago

Might this become the final straw on Bailey’s flip flopping back?
1. mwt 14 years ago
  
  I think what Bailey has said is that there is evidence for human caused warming and given the evidence, regardless of what these clowns have done, this is a reasonable position. What is really at stake is how much we are responsible for and how much is due to natural forces. So I think Mr. Bailey’s take is more nuanced than it is all AGW or all natural forces.
  1. Max 14 years ago
    
    I concur. CO2 is a “greenhouse” gas, it can influence temperature, that is a physical fact. The problem is its interaction in a complex system with components that can and do counter or amplify effects at the same time.
    So, there is no point around the idea that climate change exists and that humans have an impact (as do animals), but I think the level of impact is by far overstated.
PR 14 years ago

looks like we finally got a climate change post neuj mexican wants no part of.
hoax is starting to seem too mild. conspiracy is more like it.
1. John 14 years ago
  
  No New Mexican, no MNG, not Tony, although in Tony’s defense I am not sure the insitution he resides lets their chrages have internet access before 2 pm est.
Gabe 14 years ago

duh, I already knew this was happening. big deal.
Gabe 14 years ago

If you bothered to read the Club of Rome documents this would be a surprise.
http://www.archive.org/details…..Revolution
James 14 years ago

I would just like to say…I called this when I was in about 8th grade.
Aaron 14 years ago

I wonder how many people here are just blindly consider climate change a hoax or conspiracy just because liberals champion doing something about it. My guess: 99%.
1. John 14 years ago
  
  Yeah because a bunch of e-mails between to scientists who are advocating AGW, admitting that they are fudging data and creating a hoax, has nothing to do with it.
  This post is, however, an example of what the response to this scandal is going to be; ignore the facts and attack the messanger. Global warming is a religion. The believers are not going to let the facts get in the way.
2. SugarFree 14 years ago
  
  I wonder how many liberals champion climate chance so that they can get a chance to force their lifestyle preferences onto everyone else?
  1. SugarFree 14 years ago
    
    My guess: 100%
  2. DanD 14 years ago
    
    “Well Detective Stabler, we’ve got our motive!”
3. Pain 14 years ago
  
  I can truthfully say I wouldn’t care about it as much if they weren’t using governments to force people to forfeit their resources and opprotunities based on questionable science.
  I imagine if they just stuck with telling people about it I would probably care about it as much as people preaching Creationisim or ID. Which would be not a lot.
  But of course the AGW types generally have not been doing that.
4. joshua corning 14 years ago
  
  I think when this stuff first came out i was a “liberal”.
  What got me is that before say 1996 or so i had a pretty good understanding of previous climate change. Ice ages and such. So the idea that “man” was causing all the change when far more drastic changes that were not fully understood happening in the past it seemed implausible that a .1 degree change could be accurately attributed to CO2.
  I think you have the cart before the horse. I would say 99% of the people here don’t trust crappy evidence of any kind and therefor do not trust “liberals”
  *note: I am actually more of a liberal now then i was in 96. I simply expunged the Left which i think you are conflating with liberalism.
5. Aaaron's Mom 14 years ago
  
  Shut the fuck up, bitch. Now clean my asshole! NOW!
Gabe 14 years ago

The larger problem is this…the majority of the country is still stupid enough to almost fall for a ridiculously destructive scam. They really are trying to destroy most of the people on the planet and this story will probably be ignored as much as all the other evidence of a scam has been ignored. At least they won’t be able to pull Ron Bailey’s strings anymore…right Ron? you understand now right?
joshua corning 14 years ago

This is part of a letter send from Michael E. Mann to Phil Jones:
I think we have to stop considering “Climate Research” as a
legitimate peer-reviewed journal. Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate
research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal. We would also
need to consider what we tell or request of our more reasonable colleagues who currently
sit on the editorial board…
What do others think?
mike
At 08:49 AM 3/11/2003 +0000, Phil Jones wrote:
With a group of prominent conspiring to keep studies out of the peer review record it is pretty easy to say that the peer review record is tainted.
Not to mention the ethics violations giong on here. It would seem this goes well beyond simply the data. The peer review literature cannot be trusted as it is biased to only have one view excluding decent to that view.
These emails would seem to throw out all peer reviewed published climate work for the last 15 years.
1. joshua corning 14 years ago
  
  go damn it!!
  “With a group of prominent conspiring”
  should be: “With a group of prominent climate scientists conspiring”
  1. John 14 years ago
    
    In fairness, did they just plot or did they actually succeed? To throw out all of the pier reviewed data you would have to show they actually succeeded in getting stuff supressed.
    1. joshua corning 14 years ago
      
      I will be emailing the journal to tell them I’m having nothing more to do with it
      until they
      rid themselves of this troublesome editor. A CRU person is on the editorial board, but
      papers
      get dealt with by the editor assigned by Hans von Storch.
      Cheers
      Phil
      This is an email from Phil. Plus you can show pretty clearly who was rejected and who was not, and you can ask editors if they were pushed to reject work. This is really only the beginning of all this. I guess we have to rely on the media to investigate all this. I wonder if it is possible to file an ethics violation to the various science societies these guys belong to? Or an ethics violation to their various employers?
      1. John 14 years ago
        
        Wow. Over a real climate.org there are several commenters who are saying that this has shaken their belief in AGW. Of course those maybe skeptics who are trolling. But I sense at least some of them are real.
        This really may be a deathblow to AGW. I am afraid to believe it though. It is almost too good to be true.
        In the mean time, the jerks who sent the e-mails out to be out of a job and never allowed in any academic position again.
2. John 14 years ago
  
  That is a pretty good scam. You control all of the pier reviewed publications and just make sure only your side is ever published. Then, you can claim any dissent is not “pier reviewed science”.
  That also goes a long way towards explaining the “consensus” doesn’t it?
  1. Brian Lockwood 14 years ago
    
    Is “pier reviewed” supposed to be ironic in some way or is it an honest spelling mistake?
    1. John 14 years ago
      
      No just me being stupid. “Peer reviewed”
3. DanD 14 years ago
  
  If you’ve ever published or tried to publish a paper in a scientific journal, the phrase “peer reviewed” will either make you LOL, or gag, or both.
  Peer review is the right idea in theory but in practice it all depends on the integrity, intelligence, intellectual diversity, and open-mindedness of the reviewers.
Ska 14 years ago

So the same guys who lost the computer with all the modeling data and won’t subject their work to peer review are also conspiring to massage numbers, cover up questionable findings, and use coercive tactics to continue being worshipped by a huge number of people from all over the world? Unplausible.
kinnath 14 years ago

So when does Al Gore hold a press conference to give back the Nobel and the Oscar?
1. alan 14 years ago
  
  He can keep the Oscar. That was one HELL of a performance.
Gabe 14 years ago

Aaron,
I wonder how many people just blindly consider the CO2 taxes as a good idea just because liberals champion the idea and claim that southern un-scientific christians are the only people who think CO2 tax is a bad idea?
and when evidence comes out that the CO2 tax promoters are actually lying…the evidence is ignored.
1. TallDave 14 years ago
  
  As a veteran of long debates with them, you nail it.
  It’s not just AGW. When you raise problems with the country-to-country comparisons of perinatal mortality statistics, life expectancy, or amenable mortality, all you get in reply is “It’s science! From respected scientists! Therefore it’s right!” Actually understanding or debating the data is totally irrelevant in their view, because real truth comes from appeals to authority.
  It’s their version of tribalism.
TallDave 14 years ago

Heh, all those years of AGWer cracks about anti-AGWers being conspiracy theorists just became retroactively hilarious.
1. John 14 years ago
  
  Yeah, where the hell is Chicago Tom and Joe the Boyle and every other condescending liberal who all claimed that anyone who doubted AGW just didn’t know anything about science.
  1. grrizzly 14 years ago
    
    They haven’t received their talking points yet. Apparently, MediaMatters doesn’t cover “the climate change denial.”
  2. Enough About Palin 14 years ago
    
    I am sipping on their yummy, yummy tears.
    Except for Tony’s because he has teh AIDS.
  3. Tony 14 years ago
    
    Give us time, we’re working up our talking points to deal with this massive crisis of the century for our devious plan. Al Gore is transmitting them right now.
    1. Mephistopaulus 14 years ago
      
      LOLz, Algore canz wraitz teh talkin’ pernts? Kurrazzy!
chi2inv 14 years ago

“I’ve attached a cleaned-up and commented version of the matlab code that I wrote for doing the Mann and Jones (2003) composites.”
First, it’s MATLAB. Second, all MATLAB users should be appalled at how the software is being used for nefarious reasons…
1. LibertyMark 14 years ago
  
  I am really jazzed about this whole thing and hope they get their asses handed to them – but some statements from these emails are not as bad as others.
  I am a software developer, and “cleaned-up and commented … code” doesn’t seem damning to me. I use it to say that I have scrubbed the code to make sure that the flow is clear and formatting is good, and the like.
2. Lord Jubjub 14 years ago
  
  ummm, isn’t it a good thing that the code is laid out in a way that allows someone else to easily read it and understand exactly what the original programmer was trying?
James Ard 14 years ago

But, but, why don’t you idiots want cleaner air?
1. John 14 years ago
  
  +1. I tried trolling this. But I can’t type a defense with a straight face. My guess is that the AGW people will just pretend it didn’t happen.
matt2 14 years ago

http://www.realclimate.org/ind…..-cru-hack/
RealClimate has admitted that these are real – with some weasel words thrown in about how the emails could potentially have been edited.
They then attempt to contextualize but it looks like the damage has been done.
1. John 14 years ago
  
  That response was pathetic but unsurprising. Basically, it is that they are “out of context” whatever that means. And they don’t show a “world wide conspiracy”. No they just show that AGW science is crap and that its proponents spend most of their time trying to manipulate the data and suppress their critics rather than find the truth.
  I am not sure about the damage being done. These people are shamless. And they have legions of idiots who desparately want to believe.
2. Ska 14 years ago
  
  If they really want to demonstrate the emails were edited, they could release the unedited, original emails. The original content and metadata could show whether and how the emails were changed, and we would all see how these scientists are being made out to be the bad guys.
  Anyone want a hit of this? There’s no dust in here, I swear.
  1. John 14 years ago
    
    Yeah. The emails are selectively edited but we won’t give you the full e-mails. Just trust us that they don’t mean what they say.
3. Mike M. 14 years ago
  
  I’m completely and totally stunned. That’s basically game, set, and match.
  The Road to Copenhagen just got carpet-bombed into oblivion with their own secret ordnance. There’s not a snowball’s chance in hell that any U.S. President or Senate will ever sign any international climate treaty now.
  1. Spartacus 14 years ago
    
    Yep, in fact it might not be a stretch to say that the Russian government facilitated this hack in order to sabotage any sort of treaty. This way, they have a good reason to back out without having to come across as uncooperative.
    1. joshua corning 14 years ago
      
      I say it is the oil companies.
      God Bless em
  2. The Gobbler 14 years ago
    
    +2
    Carpet-bombed. Hee hee!
  3. anonymous 14 years ago
    
    Any President or Senate? I think the current crop definitely could.
4. Pain 14 years ago
  
  I don’t whether to laugh or cry reading those comments. The number of smug excuses people are making is ridiculous.
  A few samples:
  
  Per Edman says:
  20 November 2009 at 2:29 PM
  Trying to reason with the denialists in this thread reflects how that works proceeds in other areas. Trying to explain to some people that they are selectively misreading 62 megabytes of personal e-mails and in-progress documents, when they have already misread the consensus on climate science as a whole, can not possibly succeed.
  Andrew says:
  20 November 2009 at 2:30 PM
  If the biggest idea in the denier world is a stolen corpus of other people’s scientific correspondence, processed data files, and code, then it doesn’t really speak well of what they can produce on their own, does it?
  MapleLeaf says:
  20 November 2009 at 2:43 PM
  (snip)
  The sad thing is that the globe will continue to warm and this fiasco is going to make it extremely difficult to make people proactive.
  1. matt2 14 years ago
    
    It’s the “party of no” meme all over again. Something has to be done, and THIS IS SOMETHING! Can’t you wingnuts see that?
  2. John 14 years ago
    
    Those are pathetic. But there are a few where people are calling bullshit and saying their faith in AGW has been shaken.
    I like the moderator’s responses. The ones about how it is no big deal to destroy data to keep from responding to a FOIA request are especially funny.
5. Bertha Lewis 14 years ago
  
  Oh, yes, they must be edited. Just like those damning videos those two criminals shot at our various offices.
  1. TallDave 14 years ago
    
    I have it on good authority nearly all climate scientists refused to compromise their ethics.
    …
    Well, okay, some of them committed some unethical acts, but these are just a few bad apples.
    …
    OK, several of them.
    …
    Er, would you believe one honest climate scientist and two assistants?
6. joshua corning 14 years ago
  
  with some weasel words thrown in about how the emails could potentially have been edited.
  what is funny is that they lifted this idea from the comments of Climate Audit and Watts up with that.
  Lots of people speculated there that these emails could have been edited. I guess we will find out.
Joe 14 years ago

The lawyers are going to get involved…
James Ard 14 years ago

My guess is the climate change community collectively shit their pants today.
1. The Gobbler 14 years ago
  
  But won’t that raise the global temperature? Methane and all of that.
  1. Ska 14 years ago
    
    What if they all throw their pants into their home composting units?
SugarFree 14 years ago

Nostalgia…
Let a consortium be formed with one aim, to collect names and public statements, with an openly stated goal:

“These people clearly have followed a pattern of obstructing humanity’s efforts to come to grips, to innovate and to solve a desperate threat to our nation, world, children and planetary survival. Their eagerness to jump from one failed rationalization to another has only one common theme — a relentless eagerness to block civilization’s efforts to become more energy efficient.

“Since there are NO other commen elements to their positions, we shall operate under the assujmption that blocking energy efficiency is their central goal.”

This consortium should go on to make a simple declartion:

“From this moment on, we serve notice. All evidence gathered will go toward building a case for civil lawuits, to be filed in future years, holding these people financially responsible for tort damages done to our nation, people, children, civilization and planet, by a conspiracy whose sole aim was to prevent the amelioration of a deadly threat to public health and public welfare. Based upon the utter consistency of their behavior — similar to that of the tobacco companies, during their own denial and obstruction epoch — we plan to reduce some of the pain and damages that this conspiracy will have caused, by seeking civil damages plus major punitive penalties.

“Individuals have perfect freedom of speech. But when lies are spread with malicious and selfish intent that results in palpable harm to others, the victims (we and our posterity) do have recourse in court. Participants in this conspiracy are served notice. They should step back and view their relentless campaign against energy efficiency in this light.”

-David Brin
1. JW 14 years ago
  
  I’m so glad I never bought any of this dickhead’s books.
dbcooper 14 years ago

The University of East Anglia has responded:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2…..mate_hack/
We are aware that information from a server used for research information in one area of the university has been made available on public websites. Because of the volume of this information we cannot currently confirm that all of this material is genuine.
1. joshua corning 14 years ago
  
  It is a blind attempt at cover. These guys are scrambling for damage control.
James Ard 14 years ago

I might just have to break my 4pm drinking rule today. It is just too bad that Daddy couldn’t understand when I told him he’d been right all along.
James Ard 14 years ago

Now it’s time to relagate that fucking carbon footprint crap to the dustbin of history.
TallDave 14 years ago

Whoever did this deserves a Nobel Prize.
Preferably Al Gore’s.
SugarFree 14 years ago

Not on the front page of Yglesias, Kos, Huffington, Ezra Klein or Krugman yet.
Curious.
1. John 14 years ago
  
  I am sure journolist is spinning right now trying to figure out what the party line is going to be and how the damage can be minimized. It will take them a bit to figure out the best way to defend the indefensible.
Aaron 14 years ago

Well, I can understand some skepticism about climate change because some people are exaggerating the current effects for political purposes. (such as the ones in this organization) Right now, the effects of rising greenhouse gas concentrations such as carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide are very minimal, and there won’t be any large negative consequences until 30-50 years from now. The real problem with climate change, though, isn’t that the science isn’t true. It’s that the immediate response to climate change as a problem is having the state do something about it.
1. John 14 years ago
  
  “The real problem with climate change, though, isn’t that the science isn’t true.”
  How do you know it is “not true”? We have 7000 e-mails showing that the scientists behind it are frauds who manipulated their data and tried to suppress dissent. What causes you to say it is true other than “you want it to be true”?
  1. Lord Jubjub 14 years ago
    
    There are lies, damn lies and statistics.
    I hated statistics class in college but it did teach me that not all raw data is good data. The problem has to do with the outliers. The vast majority of collection of data points can lie reasonably close to theory, but there will always be those stray points out in the middle of nowhere. What do you do with those points? Generally, you ignore them (clean the data, if you will). Of course, anyone trained in statistics will look at the raw dataset and agree with that position. Someone looking to overturn the theory will focus exclusively on the outliers and ignore the 90% of the data that proves the theory.
    1. John 14 years ago
      
      Yeah, the data and statistics are perfect, that is why they had to manipulate them to fit their pre-existing notions. And further, they just supressed dissent and made sure anyone who disagreed with them didn’t get published because they had to ignore the outlier data. Yeah, that explains everything.
      1. Aaron 14 years ago
        
        I wonder how your pre-existing notion that climate change isn’t true is manipulating your perceptions of this issue. More scientists have worked on this problem than just those in that organization. I want to reiterate the problem is the state as a solution to climate change, not the science of climate change itself.
        
        John 14 years ago
        
        Stop begging the question. These e-mails taint all of the science produced by the people in question. You can’t just pretend they don’t exist and blindly claim “the science is true”. We don’t know that the science is true. All we know is that the people doing the science seem to be frauds. To find out the truth, we will actually have to get some scientists to look into it rather than the frauds who have.
        If this doesn’t shake your faith in the science, you are an idiot.
        
        Aaron 14 years ago
        
        I guess I’m an idiot then. As a scientist who studies the chemistry of the atmosphere, I do not have absolute faith in science. There are plenty of things that have been published in scientific journals in the past that are untrue. Being a skeptic, it is important to not immediately believe anything that goes along with your previous notions. At the same time, it’s equally important not to immediately dismiss anything that goes against your previous conceptions. I am not an expert in climate change by any means. However, my read of the situation based on what I know from physical science and what has been published is that the science is fairly sound. Again, the problem is not that there’s anything wrong with the science, but there are those that would manipulate and exaggerate the science for political purposes to use the state to impose their will. Unfortunately, this causes many people, such as yourself, to become hostile to the actual science because of exaggerations by ideologues.
        
        John 14 years ago
        
        “However, my read of the situation based on what I know from physical science and what has been published is that the science is fairly sound.”
        It seems sound because you are taking what you are reading at face value. These e-mails show that you can’t do that. As I said above, maybe the theory is correct, maybe it is not. We don’t know. And there seems to have been a lot of dishonest research done. At this point, you almost need to throw all of it out and start over again. I don’t see how you can determine what to believe.
        
        ImCold 14 years ago
        
        If the science was sound – it would be warmer now than it was 10 years ago. Obviously, something wasn’t correct. The graphs sure didn’t account for this.
        
        robc 14 years ago
        
        John, He didnt say the science is true. He said that the problem is not with the science not being true.
        Subtle difference. Not that you have the ability to deal with subtle.
        AGW may be true. The pro-AGW folks now have, IMO, no proof of it that can be trusted, but that doesnt change anything about reality.
        
        John 14 years ago
        
        Hey fuck you Rob. Seriously. I didn’t insult you, why do you feel the ned to insult me.
        As far as the “subtlty of it”. Why don’t you read what I am saying? We don’t know that the science is true. All we know is that the people doing the science seem to be frauds.
        This casts a terrible light on all of the science. Much of it out there is based on these guys work and data. More importantly, if these guys were able to be such hacks and get away with it, what does that say about the rest of the science being done? Not good things.
        The science has been called into clear question by these e-mails. And that is a clear problem.
        
        John 14 years ago
        
        “John, He didnt say the science is true. He said that the problem is not with the science not being true.”
        You insult me, but you don’t even understand what he was saying. He is saying the science is true.
        “Again, the problem is not that there’s anything wrong with the science, but there are those that would manipulate and exaggerate the science for political purposes to use the state to impose their will.”
        he is saying the science is true.
        
        nicole 14 years ago
        
        You insult me, but you don’t even understand what he was saying. He is saying the science is true.
        He didn’t say that though. I mean maybe he thinks it, based on subsequent comments, but there was no indication of that in the original comment. And frankly, I think he’s right. I mean, I don’t care either way if the science is or isn’t true. Doesn’t matter a jot. The real problem is the statist solutions proposed.
        
        John 14 years ago
        
        I do care if the science is true. And I dont’ know if the theory is correct or not. As I said above, I really think they need to throw out what has been done to this point and start over. I think the issue has become so political and so many careers depend on it that you just can’t get honest work done on it.
        
        Aaron 14 years ago
        
        Let me try this a different way. Let’s say we didn’t know the shape of the Earth and found out through scientific research that the Earth was round. It was still somewhat debated, but most scientists ended up in agreement. (With some of them exaggerating their claims to prove a point, leaving out that one point, etc.)
        Political ideologues (say, liberals) hear about most scientists agreeing that the Earth is round and decide that the Earth is TOO round. They decide that the state should implement an Earth-flattening scheme to make things equal for everyone. The problem isn’t whether the Earth is round or not; it’s how some people with political motivations use or exaggerate that scientific consensus around a round Earth.
        
        joshua corning 14 years ago
        
        Umm…I am pretty sure Aaron and John are arguing the same thing only saying it differently.
        You two need to go back and reread each others posts with clearer heads.
    2. The Gobbler 14 years ago
      
      There are lies, damn lies and statistics stupid fucks.
      FIFY
    3. Spartacus 14 years ago
      
      If you censor the dataset, you are expected to *say so* in your paper, and an honest researcher would make the original complete set available for anyone who wants to run their own analysis. I believe, in the case of US Govt funded research, the original dataset is generally a public record unless it contains individually identifiable private (e.g. medical) information.
Jason Lewis 14 years ago

Minor correction: It’s not the “Hadley” CRU. That’s a typo in an earlier blog that has been propagated. The CRU is not the same as the Hadely Centre for Climate Research.
1. Ron Bailey 14 years ago
  
  Jason: Yes. You are right. The CRU works closely with the Hadley Centre to create their temperature dataset. I will fix.
SugarFree 14 years ago

Come on, Chad/Tony. Where’s your troll whining now?
Chad/Tony. Or, henceforth: Chody.
1. Ska 14 years ago
  
  So is someone going to start posting as Grundle next?
2. TallDave 14 years ago
  
  Whatever happened to joe? Last I heard he was going on a cruise, then we never heard from him again.
  Did someone get mad and push him overboard? Is he now literally trolling?
  1. John 14 years ago
    
    He left shortly after the election. He claimed that H&R was too racist for him to post there anymore. In reality he just wasn’t man enough to take the beatings he knew were coming over Obama.
  2. Pro Libertate 14 years ago
    
    That’s more chumming, unless he’s being dragged on a line.
TallDave 14 years ago

The new spin will be:
“Hey, this is just how science is done.”
1. Random Dude 14 years ago
  
  From realclimate:
  “Instead, there is a peek into how scientists actually interact and the conflicts show that the community is a far cry from the monolith that is sometimes imagined. People working constructively to improve joint publications; scientists who are friendly and agree on many of the big picture issues, disagreeing at times about details and engaging in ‘robust’ discussions; Scientists expressing frustration at the misrepresentation of their work in politicized arenas and complaining when media reports get it wrong; Scientists resenting the time they have to take out of their research to deal with over-hyped nonsense. None of this should be shocking.”
  lol.
  1. matt2 14 years ago
    
    We’re capitalizing “Scientist” mid-sentence now? Jesus Christ these guys are assholes.
  2. Slut Bunwalla 14 years ago
    
    Scientists sleeping. Scientists engaging in courting rituals, scientists taking time to gather food for their young. Scientists. Noble, majestic scientists. Shocking? No. Beautiful…yes.
    1. Random Dude 14 years ago
      
      +1 because I immediately read that to myself in Morgan Freeman’s voice.
      1. TallDave 14 years ago
        
        That makes all the difference.
      2. Slut Bunwalla 14 years ago
        
        Hahaha, I just tried that, and it is awesome.
    2. DJF 14 years ago
      
      For our next episode of “Scientists in Nature” watch while
      One GW tribe of scientists proclaiming that the tribe of scientists in the next valley are evil and worship false gods.
      The GW tribe of scientists planning to keep the scientists in the next valley away from the waterhole of government grants.
      The GW tribe of scientists spoiling and destroying their surplus data so the tribe of scientists in the next valley will starve from lack of data.
      The GW tribe of scientists planning on destroying peer review journals which has blasphemed against the true word of the GW god
R C Dean 14 years ago

Before jumping to conclusions, remember that many of us write private emails that we might not want to see publicly distributed.
Just because you don’t want them publicly distributed doesn’t mean they aren’t an accurate reflection of your real thinking.
When the Hadley folks claims that the e-mails are fake (as they almost certainly will), there won’t be any way to prove otherwise.
Sure there is. Aside from the metadata (assuming it came over in the compressed files posted), a forensic shakedown of their email server would settle it once and for all.
Now that they’ve confirmed that some of the emails, at least, are genuine, the burden of proof is on them that some of them aren’t.
1. John 14 years ago
  
  They are going to have to admit they are real. Real climate seems to take it as a given they are. They are just going to claim that
  1. They were taken out of context and don’t mean what they plainly do, and
  2. Use a combination of claiming “this is just how science is done” and ignoring it and hoping it goes away.
2. joshua corning 14 years ago
  
  Just because you don’t want them publicly distributed doesn’t mean they aren’t an accurate reflection of your real thinking.
  I guess if it is a private email then it is impossible to commit fraud or ethics violations.
  Anyway Bailey is being cautious. I hope he goes through the emails with a fine toothed comb.
Brian Lockwood 14 years ago

A general defense of computational science. Just as computer models are never perfect, neither are experiments.
Throwing out a data point here or there because you think it is the result of some experimental error or choosing to compare against data sets that more accurately reflect what your model is trying to capture (in terms of experimental setup, not necessarily outcome) is perfectly acceptable. From what I’ve read of the emails, some (not saying all) of the so-called data manipulation is nothing more than throwing out crappy experimental data or comparing against a data set you view as more accurate.
Obviously, like any aspect of science, you have to be up front and open about the entire validation process and justify any omissions or perceived cherry picking of results. This is where the climate people have definitely dropped the ball.
Another aspect of this is just plain arrogance. Sometimes in computational science, you begin trusting the models more than experiments. In the eyes of a computational scientist, the model has fewer sources of error than any experiment.
Taken to the extreme, this attitude leads them to disregard any experimental data that does not confirm their model and justifies extreme data manipulation in order to show the result that they think they already know, namely that the model is accurate.
Luckily, most of computational science isn’t a religion so people tend to be open about their validation procedures and welcome outside scrutiny.
1. John 14 years ago
  
  All true. But if you read them together, it is amazing the group think that is going on. All of their efforts are put towards trying to disprove the skeptics. They never act under any assumption except that the skeptics are wrong and the data must show it. If the data doesn’t, it must be ignored or manipulated. I can’t see how you can call any of their work legitimate.
  1. joshua corning 14 years ago
    
    John…you have to understand there are 1073 emails….and they were selected from a bigger pile. The hacker who posted them eluded to that.
    “random selection” is the words he used.
    Each of the emails selected contain bombshells. I don’t know if the hacker made a best of list or if there are more to come or what.
    the looking at a whole thing is really only a minor issue. The monstrous scope of the 1073 and how each one is explosive is what is really going on here.
    I will admit much of the discussions in the emails is pretty dense and looks like plain science. But that is an illusion. You have to know what they are writing about, the nuts and bolts of the science, and the history of all this to really get how each one is a breach in scientific ethics method and general rules of peer review.
    1. John 14 years ago
      
      Do you think the e-mails are typical of their thought process or exceptions? Were they doing good science or just trying to disprove the skeptics by any means necessary?
      I am not sure what you are saying.
      1. joshua corning 14 years ago
        
        I think they were trying to change the world because they believed the world was dying.
        Somewhere along the line they abandoned good science for the greater good and simply became mouth pieces for that they believed rather then honest scientists searching for the truth.
        Anyway i don’t like going in depth about other peoples motives. I don’t think i am good at it or accurate about it and i genuinely don’t care. I only answered cuz you asked.
        What i am trying to say is that each email alone is a bombshell and for the most part a broad picture does not have to be made. Not saying that one cannot be made. But that the biggest impact will be from specific quotes damning these people on a large range things.
        I have already mentioned some of them.
        *deleting files while under an FOI
        *a dirty tricks campaign to block critical work from the peer reviewed literature.
        Most of the changing of the scientific record is pretty dense for me to parse. The most damning one i have seen is the “trick” quote. But i don’t think we have seen half of it, and i generally await people like Bailey and the Climate Audit crowed to go through this stuff and parse it so i can understand it.
        I guess what i am saying is no need for a broad global idea about what all this means. It is to big to digest to do that yet.
        Just download the zip pick a random file and try to find the bullshit. That is what i have done and only randomly….yet almost in every case i have been finding money quotes that damn these people on specific issues….issues i can understand.
Barack Obama 14 years ago

Did I mention that I too am Lonewacko?
Gabe 14 years ago

This whole thing will be easily ignored. This is NOT the first time they have been caught lying and conspiring. They will ignore this. Most people DO NOT even have the ability to read. Those people will never read these emails. The media will not cover it and anyone who does cover it will be called a “conspiracy theorist”. Congrats you are all conspiracy nuts now.
1. John 14 years ago
  
  Sadly I think you are right. Look at the comments of AAron and the ones on Real climate and you can see that is what is going to happen. They have too much invested in this and too many people want to believe that it is true.
  1. joshua corning 14 years ago
    
    John Gabe…you need to read the emails…these things are cannot be ignored.
    Every time one of these guys speaks about consensus or peer review or evidence they will be shouted down with quotes from their emails. Reading them only one response is possible “unbelievable”.
    At the very least this is like the pimp and hooker videos were to Acorn.
    1. Bertha Lewis 14 years ago
      
      At the very least this is like the pimp and hooker videos were to Acorn.
      Bitch set me up.
    2. Enough About Palin 14 years ago
      
      I agree. Think of all the major corporations that have had to alter their business models (a great expense to their bottom line) that are going to now be able to say there is no way in hell they are going to do anything to lower CO2 emissions now that AGW has been found to be a fraud.
      This impacts tens of thousand of business models.
    3. John 14 years ago
      
      I hope you are right. I really do. I am just very cynical about these lying bastards.
      1. Enough About Palin 14 years ago
        
        There’s an old saying that applies here, John. Money talks, bullshit walks. AGW has just put on its walking shoes.
  2. Mike M. 14 years ago
    
    Since we know that the left-wing media in America is going to ignore this story, like they always do whenever it’s something they don’t like, the easy solution is to not depend on those guys to disseminate it.
    Inform everyone you know who might have an open mind. Send them e-mails and links to this info. If the person is a lefty and doesn’t want to hear about it, forget him and move on to the next person whose mind might be open to new information.
    We should know by now that a story can get out without any help from the New York Times.
    1. joshua corning 14 years ago
      
      Since we know that the left-wing media in America is going to ignore this story
      Yeah you are not getting how this cannot be ignored. The richness and sheer size of the 1073 and all the terrible things you can quote from these guys is not even being touched on at the moment.
      The only way I can see how this does not totally change the politics of climate change is if it is a fake.
      These guys use to go to testify to congress. They made the science of climate change. Now every time time they go capital hill they will be attacked with quotes from their own emails.
      1. I "Scooter" Libby 14 years ago
        
        Isn’t it against the law to lie to a congressional committee?
    2. kinnath 14 years ago
      
      The emails are sampled from a 10 year period. The implications are:
      Prolonged, systematic efforts to make the data conform to the model instead of making the model conform to the data.
      Prolonged, concerted efforts to squash dissenting opinions from the publich sphere.
      Systematic efforts to prevent the release of data request per legal FOI requests.
      There is no way that this can be covered up. This is going to be in the news for a decade or more.
James Ard 14 years ago

I just saw an Exxon commercial where they claim to be spending a hundred million dollars to build a system to take co2 out of natural gas. Seems like kind of a waste now, doesn’t it?
Enough About Palin 14 years ago

My point exactly. If you are a shareholder, you can sue the company if it wastes money foolishly.
And if I own 40,000 share of Exxon, you can bet your ass I and others like me will file a class action suit.
FTR, I hold no Exxon stock directly.
Enough About Palin 14 years ago

This:
https://reason.com/blog/2009/11…..nt_1462766
You got $30B to waste on a fairy tale?
Ska 14 years ago

Well, the story is finally showing up on my google news widget under science/tech.
Bertha Lewis 14 years ago

OH SHIT!!!
http://www.docstoc.com/docs/16956824/HRES911
1. 14 years ago
  
  House Resolution 911. Hee hee!
  1. 14 years ago
    
    Breitbart to AG Holder: Investigate ACORN or We’ll Release More Tapes Before 2010 Elections:
    Breitbart: There’s a lot of hypocrisy and the dust has settled for ACORN and at the end of the day they’ve recognized that Eric Holder, the Attorney General, has not initiated an investigation into ACORN after we now have seven tapes. There were five initially that came out, ACORN was defunded by the Senate, was defunded by the House, lost it’s link to the Census; while all that damage occurred, Congress didn’t come in to investigate them, obviously not the Attorney General’s office, and they’ve now realized let’s get back into business because they realized that the dust settled and they were not being investigated, it was Hannah, James, and me who were being investigated, that’s why we’ve been forced to offer this latest tape.
    Hannity: Are you saying, Andrew, that there are more tapes?
    Breitbart: Oh my goodness there are! Not only are there more tapes, it’s not just ACORN. And this message is to Attorney General Holder: I want you to know that we have more tapes, it’s not just ACORN, and we’re going to hold out until the next election cycle, or else if you want to do a clean investigation, we will give you the rest of what we have, we will comply with you, we will give you the documentation we have from countless ACORN whistleblowers who want to come forward but are fearful of this organization and the retribution that they fear that this is a dangerous organization. So if you get into an investigation, we will give you the tapes; if you don’t give us the tapes, we will revisit these tapes come election time.
    http://biggovernment.com/2009/…..-election/
John 14 years ago

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…..64783.html
Now we know how Steve Smith has been making a living all of these years.
Barack Obama 14 years ago

EVERYTHING IS FALLING APART!
Congressional Report: Rhee did ‘damage control’ after sex charges against fiance Kevin Johnson
A congressional investigation of the volunteer organization AmeriCorps contains charges that D.C. schools chief Michelle Rhee handled “damage control” after allegations of sexual misconduct against her now fiance, Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson, a former NBA star and a prominent ally of President Obama, The Washington Examiner has learned.
The charges are contained in a report prepared by Sen. Charles Grassley, the ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, and Rep. Darrell Issa, ranking Republican on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.
http://www.washingtonexaminer……hnson.html
Barack Obama 14 years ago

At the time, Rhee was on the board of St. Hope. A former St. Hope employee who reported one of the allegations of inappropriate sexual conduct by Johnson told Walpin’s investigators that Rhee “learned of the allegations and played the role of a fixer, doing ‘damage control,'” the congressional report says.
The employee told investigators that Rhee told her that “she was making this her number one priority, and she would take care of the situation.” A short time later, the employee learned that the girl who had complained about Johnson had received a visit from Johnson’s personal attorney.
The congressional report quotes the girl as saying the attorney “basically asked me to keep quiet,” and Johnson offered her $1,000 a month for the duration of her time with St. Hope. Once investigators learned about that, the report says, they had “reasonable suspicions about potential hush money payments and witness tampering at a federally funded entity.”
Rhee did not respond to calls for comment Friday.
1. John McCain 14 years ago
  
  Lets not jump to any conclusions until we get the gang of 12 together ol’buddy.
2. alan 14 years ago
  
  Holy crap, I wondered why her name was familiar. The Newshour on PBS promotes the hell out of this woman. I have seen several reports on her over the past few years, mainly from the Newshour, but also in the Network media. Given the desperate feel of the PR campaign, they seem to believe she is the last great hope for public education in America. Or, they are grooming her for higher office.
  1. Seriously 14 years ago
    
    ACORN scandal
    AGW hoax
    10.2% unemployment
    AIG scandal
    NY terror trials
    Etc.
    Dumbest. President. Ever.
    1. Prissy Obama 14 years ago
      
      “I don’t know nothin’ ’bout birthin’ babies!”
Andrew D 14 years ago

This is just too good… I feel like reading it is making me fat or giving me lung cancer or something.
joshua corning 14 years ago

This is funny
From: Michael Mann
To: Andrew Revkin
Subject: Re: mcintyre’s latest?.
Date: Tue, 29 Sep 2009 17:27:25 -0400
Cc: t.osborn@uea.ac.uk
HI Andy,
Yep, what was written below is all me, but it was purely on background, please don’t quote
anything I said or attribute to me w/out checking specifically?thanks.
Re, your point at the end?you’ve taken the words out of my mouth. Skepticism is essential
for the functioning of science. It yields an erratic path towards eventual truth. But
legitimate scientific skepticism is exercised through formal scientific circles, in
particular the peer review process. A necessary though not in general sufficient condition
for taking a scientific criticism seriously is that it has passed through the legitimate
scientific peer review process. those such as McIntyre who operate almost entirely outside
of this system are not to be trusted.
mike
especially considering the same guy wrote this:
I think we have to stop considering “Climate Research” as a
legitimate peer-reviewed journal. Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate
research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal. We would also
need to consider what we tell or request of our more reasonable colleagues who currently
sit on the editorial board…
What do others think?
mike
Lignin For All 14 years ago

But… but… HOCKEY STICK!
Paul 14 years ago

Attachment converted: Macintosh HD:EOS.senate letter-final.doc (WDBN/MSWD) (00055FCF)
You’re right, this is a scandal…
joshua corning 14 years ago

Here is a copy of the original hackers post at air vent:
We feel that climate science is, in the current situation, too important to be kept under wraps.
We hereby release a random selection of correspondence, code, and documents.
Hopefully it will give some insight into the science and the people behind it.
This is a limited time offer, download now: http://ftp.tomcity.ru/incoming/free/FOI2009.zip
Sample:
0926010576.txt * Mann: working towards a common goal
1189722851.txt * Jones: “try and change the Received date!”
0924532891.txt * Mann vs. CRU
0847838200.txt * Briffa & Yamal 1996: “too much growth in recent years makes it difficult to derive a valid age/growth curve”
0926026654.txt * Jones: MBH dodgy ground
1225026120.txt * CRU’s truncated temperature curve
1059664704.txt * Mann: dirty laundry
1062189235.txt * Osborn: concerns with MBH uncertainty
0926947295.txt * IPCC scenarios not supposed to be realistic
0938018124.txt * Mann: “something else” causing discrepancies
0939154709.txt * Osborn: we usually stop the series in 1960
0933255789.txt * WWF report: beef up if possible
0998926751.txt * “Carefully constructed” model scenarios to get “distinguishable results”
0968705882.txt * CLA: “IPCC is not any more an assessment of published science but production of results”
1075403821.txt * Jones: Daly death “cheering news”
1029966978.txt * Briffa – last decades exceptional, or not?
1092167224.txt * Mann: “not necessarily wrong, but it makes a small difference” (factor 1.29)
1188557698.txt * Wigley: “Keenan has a valid point”
1118949061.txt * we’d like to do some experiments with different proxy combinations
1120593115.txt * I am reviewing a couple of papers on extremes, so that I can refer to them in the chapter for AR4
I don;t know if the link still works or if it is flooded or what.
Paul 14 years ago

I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps
to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd from
1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.
You’re right, I wouldn’t want anyone seeing this email, either.
1. 14 years ago
  
  This is bigger than Watergate.
  1. Paul 14 years ago
    
    Oooh! Oooh! Climategate! Huh? Huh?
Paul 14 years ago

1075403821.txt * Jones: Daly death “cheering news”
I used to correspond a little with John Daly. These guys are fuckwads.
joshua corning 14 years ago

#
Michael R:
November 19th, 2009 at 11:21 pm
As on WUWT I have posted another link to the file
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=75J4XO4T
There are also several other readers who have posted copies
http://rapidshare.com/files/309496568/FOI2009.zip.html
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=XD050VKY
http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/5171206
#
117
reply and
paste link
jeez:
November 19th, 2009 at 11:22 pm
Alternate download locations:
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=XD050VKY
A torrent file:
http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/5171206
Here are some places you can get the zip file. Copied from posts at Climate Audit.
joshua corning 14 years ago

Here is an ice email showing how the “consensus” was manufactured.
From: Joseph Alcamo
To: m.hulme@uea.ac.uk, Rob.Swart@rivm.nl
Subject: Timing, Distribution of the Statement
Date: Thu, 9 Oct 1997 18:52:33 0100
Reply-to: alcamo@usf.uni-kassel.de
Mike, Rob,
Sounds like you guys have been busy doing good things for the cause.
I would like to weigh in on two important questions ?
Distribution for Endorsements ?
I am very strongly in favor of as wide and rapid a distribution as
possible for endorsements. I think the only thing that counts is
numbers. The media is going to say “1000 scientists signed” or “1500
signed”. No one is going to check if it is 600 with PhDs versus 2000
without. They will mention the prominent ones, but that is a
different story.
Conclusion ? Forget the screening, forget asking
them about their last publication (most will ignore you.) Get those
names!
Timing ? I feel strongly that the week of 24 November is too late.
1. We wanted to announce the Statement in the period when there was
a sag in related news, but in the week before Kyoto we should expect
that we will have to crowd out many other articles about climate.
2. If the Statement comes out just a few days before Kyoto I am
afraid that the delegates who we want to influence will not have any
time to pay attention to it. We should give them a few weeks to hear
about it.
3. If Greenpeace is having an event the week before, we should have
it a week before them so that they and other NGOs can further spread
the word about the Statement. On the other hand, it wouldn’t be so
bad to release the Statement in the same week, but on a
diffeent day. The media might enjoy hearing the message from two
very different directions.
Conclusion ? I suggest the week of 10 November, or the week of 17
November at the latest.
Mike ? I have no organized email list that could begin to compete
with the list you can get from the Dutch. But I am still
willing to send you what I have, if you wish.
Best wishes,
Joe Alcamo
?????????????????-
Prof. Dr. Joseph Alcamo, Director
Center for Environmental Systems Research
University of Kassel
Kurt Wolters Strasse 3
D-34109 Kassel
Germany
Phone: +49 561 804 3898
Fax: +49 561 804 3176
1. Mike M. 14 years ago
  
  “The cause”, “Get those names”, “Delegates who we want to influence”.
  The entire thing is completely political from the first word to the last! This has nothing whatsoever to do with real science.
R C Dean 14 years ago

You would think that some of these emails would get their authors called on the carpet, if not shown the door, at their respective universities.
Or is the groupthink too strong for that?
DanD 14 years ago

As someone who has been fighting the AGW suggestion for years and trying to preach a humble and common sense approach to natural, complex scientific questions, can I just say that I’m so damn happy these frauds got exposed?
WHERE ARE YOU NOW, TONY? COME ON BITCH!!!!!!
🙂
🙂
😀
joshua corning 14 years ago

Here is a nice email about deleting information while under an FIO request.
From: Phil Jones
To: santer1@llnl.gov, Tom Wigley
Subject: Re: Schles suggestion
Date: Wed Dec 3 13:57:09 2008
Cc: mann , Gavin Schmidt , Karl Taylor , peter gleckler
Ben,
When the FOI requests began here, the FOI person said we had to abide
by the requests. It took a couple of half hour sessions ? one at a screen, to convince
them otherwise
showing them what CA was all about. Once they became aware of the types of people we were
dealing with, everyone at UEA (in the registry and in the Environmental Sciences school
? the head of school and a few others) became very supportive. I’ve got to know the FOI
person quite well and the Chief Librarian ? who deals with appeals. The VC is also
aware of what is going on ? at least for one of the requests, but probably doesn’t know
the number we’re dealing with. We are in double figures.
One issue is that these requests aren’t that widely known within the School. So
I don’t know who else at UEA may be getting them. CRU is moving up the ladder of
requests at UEA though ? we’re way behind computing though. We’re away of
requests going to others in the UK ? MOHC, Reading, DEFRA and Imperial College.
So spelling out all the detail to the LLNL management should be the first thing
you do. I hope that Dave is being supportive at PCMDI.
The inadvertent email I sent last month has led to a Data Protection Act request sent by
a certain Canadian, saying that the email maligned his scientific credibility with his
peers!
If he pays 10 pounds (which he hasn’t yet) I am supposed to go through my emails
and he can get anything I’ve written about him. About 2 months ago I deleted loads of
emails, so have very little ? if anything at all. This legislation is different from the
FOI –
it is supposed to be used to find put why you might have a poor credit rating !
In response to FOI and EIR requests, we’ve put up some data ? mainly paleo data.
Each request generally leads to more ? to explain what we’ve put up. Every time, so
far, that hasn’t led to anything being added ? instead just statements saying read
what is in the papers and what is on the web site! Tim Osborn sent one such
response (via the FOI person) earlier this week. We’ve never sent programs, any codes
and manuals.
In the UK, the Research Assessment Exercise results will be out in 2 weeks time.
These are expensive to produce and take too much time, so from next year we’ll
be moving onto a metric based system. The metrics will be # and amounts of grants,
papers and citations etc. I did flippantly suggest that the # of FOI requests you get
should be another.
When you look at CA, they only look papers from a handful of
people. They will start on another coming out in The Holocene early next year. Gavin
and Mike are on this with loads of others. I’ve told both exactly what will appear on
CA once they get access to it!
Cheers
Phil
i am not legal expert but isn’t deleting information while under an FOI illegal?
Anyway John i hope you are getting the idea about how this is not just about a few scientists working on science.
We have possible criminal activity and ethical violations to boot.
Cap and Trade Bill 14 years ago

So long, it’s been good to know yuh;
So long, it’s been good to know yuh;
So long, it’s been good to know yuh.
This dusty old dust is a-gettin’ my home,
And I got to be driftin’ along.
A dust storm hit, an’ it hit like thunder;
It dusted us over, an’ it covered us under;
Blocked out the traffic an’ blocked out the sun,
Straight for home all the people did run,
Singin’:
So long, it’s been good to know yuh;
So long, it’s been good to know yuh;
So long, it’s been good to know yuh.
This dusty old dust is a-gettin’ my home,
And I got to be driftin’ along.
We talked of the end of the world, and then
We’d sing a song an’ then sing it again.
We’d sit for an hour an’ not say a word,
And then these words would be heard:
So long, it’s been good to know yuh;
So long, it’s been good to know yuh;
So long, it’s been good to know yuh.
This dusty old dust is a-gettin’ my home,
And I got to be driftin’ along.
Johnny Longtorso 14 years ago

Taking a bite out of climate data
…In the early 1980s, with funding from the U.S. Department of Energy, scientists at the United Kingdom’s University of East Anglia established the Climate Research Unit (CRU) to produce the world’s first comprehensive history of surface temperature. It’s known in the trade as the “Jones and Wigley” record for its authors, Phil Jones and Tom Wigley, and it served as the primary reference standard for the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) until 2007. It was this record that prompted the IPCC to claim a “discernible human influence on global climate.”
Putting together such a record isn’t at all easy. Weather stations weren’t really designed to monitor global climate. Long-standing ones were usually established at points of commerce, which tend to grow into cities that induce spurious warming trends in their records. Trees grow up around thermometers and lower the afternoon temperature. Further, as documented by the University of Colorado’s Roger Pielke Sr., many of the stations themselves are placed in locations, such as in parking lots or near heat vents, where artificially high temperatures are bound to be recorded.
So the weather data that go into the historical climate records that are required to verify models of global warming aren’t the original records at all. Jones and Wigley, however, weren’t specific about what was done to which station in order to produce their record, which, according to the IPCC, showed a warming of 0.6? +/? 0.2?C in the 20th century.
Now begins the fun. Warwick Hughes, an Australian scientist, wondered where that “+/?” came from, so he politely wrote Phil Jones in early 2005, asking for the original data. Jones’s response to a fellow scientist attempting to replicate his work was, “We have 25 years or so invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?”…
…Roger Pielke Jr., an esteemed professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado, then requested the raw data from Jones. Jones responded:
Since the 1980s, we have merged the data we have received into existing series or begun new ones, so it is impossible to say if all stations within a particular country or if all of an individual record should be freely available. Data storage availability in the 1980s meant that we were not able to keep the multiple sources for some sites, only the station series after adjustment for homogeneity issues. We, therefore, do not hold the original raw data but only the value-added (i.e., quality controlled and homogenized) data.
The statement about “data storage” is balderdash. They got the records from somewhere. The files went onto a computer. All of the original data could easily fit on the 9-inch tape drives common in the mid-1980s. I had all of the world’s surface barometric pressure data on one such tape in 1979.
If we are to believe Jones’s note to the younger Pielke, CRU adjusted the original data and then lost or destroyed them over twenty years ago. The letter to Warwick Hughes may have been an outright lie. After all, Peter Webster received some of the data this year. So the question remains: What was destroyed or lost, when was it destroyed or lost, and why?…
James Ard 14 years ago

Still waiting, Neu. Surely we are missing the whole point of all this. Please enlighten us.
Shoebox 14 years ago

These appear to be the leaked documents:
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=75J4XO4T
joshua corning 14 years ago

HOLY SHIT!! I made it through the moderation at Real Climate!!
Hmmm…makes me wonder….
Number 222
joshua corning says:
20 November 2009 at 6:07 PM
[Response: Bad papers clutter up assessment reports and if they don’t stand up as science, they shouldn’t be included. No-one can ‘redefine’ what the peer-reviewed literature is. – gavin]
I think we have to stop considering “Climate Research” as a
legitimate peer-reviewed journal. Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate
research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal. We would also
need to consider what we tell or request of our more reasonable colleagues who currently
sit on the editorial board?
What do others think?
mike
At 08:49 AM 3/11/2003 +0000, Phil Jones wrote:
I don’t see how the peer reviewed literature can be trusted when several of the prominent researchers in the field conspired in a dirty tricks campaign to block research from entering the peer reviewed literature.
1. ap 14 years ago
  
  that was the most disingenuous gavin could have given. you can’t redefine “peer reviewed” unless it is your buddies redefining it in their favor. his buddies weren’t black-balling bad science, they were black-balling a publication to reduce its prominence.
Warty 14 years ago

Did something amusing/crazy happen that caused Lonewacko’s post to be deleted, or am I just inventing memories?
1. Solanum 14 years ago
  
  Instead of just sitting there, how about confronting the editors at Reason with this question, videotape it, and post the response.
  And don’t bother responding to this, as surely it will be an ad hom and concede my point.
  1. DanD 14 years ago
    
    Shut the fuck up, Lon—–
    Sorry, reflex…
alan 14 years ago

1089318616.txt
From: Phil Jones
To: “Michael E. Mann”
Subject: HIGHLY CONFIDENTIAL
Date: Thu Jul 8 16:30:16 2004
I can’t see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow ? even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!
Cheers
Phil
DanD 14 years ago

I have the original ZIP file that was posted to the Russian FTP. If you want it, e-mail me at the address in my name.
The Man 14 years ago

I must say, that after reading Mann’s response (several years ago) to McIntyre’s initial criticism of the hockey stick, this stuff comes as no surprise. Mann’s analysis was “tricky” and his data management poor and McIntyre called him on it. Mann’s response was essentially “Oh yeah, so’s yer old lady.”
Alas, these revelations do create a credibility problem for scientific research in general. Speaking from personal experience, I know that science is not the paragon of impartiality and reason that it is thought to be, but it is generally a not sewer. I’m afraid that most people’s knowledge of science and its practices come from the media and the media will tar everyone with the same brush, even the skeptics. And it’s the skeptics who seem to have been doing their jobs as scientists despite the hostility and obstruction from the warmers.
And finally, this does nothing to advance climate science. However unscrupulous or dishonest these researchers might be (as the emails suggest) they could still be right. The question whether anthropogenic global warming is occurring is still open. It is not, on its face, an unreasonable assertion, merely unproven.
1. joshua corning 14 years ago
  
  The question whether anthropogenic global warming is occurring is still open. It is not, on its face, an unreasonable assertion, merely unproven.
  At least now the perception will be that it is a question…rather then it is “proven science” and the “consensus” says so.
  You are correct that this does not prove a negative but Climate Scientists have been running wild making pretty outrageous claims and avoiding any criticism and using pretty dirty tricks to make sure those criticisms are not allowed in the peer reviewed literature. Furthermore they have blocked request from outsiders from doing independent analysis of their work going so far as deleting files pertaining to FOI requests let alone refusing to provide data used in their research.
  Sure we don’t know about climate change, but these guys sure spent a lot of other peoples time and tax payer dollars making sure we do not know.
  The appropriate response is not “we still don’t know” everyone who is not a bulldog partisan knows that. What your response should be is “These people disgust me and need to be replaced.”
  1. The Man 14 years ago
    
    Well, in fact, I have believed that climate change is unproven for quite a while and these emails don’t change that. But I can have many responses to this release of files and emails. One might be shock, but as I said above none of this behavior really surprises me. In scientific and funding circles I think adjustments will be made and sanctions applied. I don’t see why I must make my outrage louder than yours. We’ve been down that road; that’s how we got here.
Johnny Longtorso 14 years ago

The question whether anthropogenic global warming is occurring is still open
You cannot demand govt action Right Now Before It’s Too Late based on an open question.
1. The Man 14 years ago
  
  That’s true. I think the hysteria surrounding possible warming has been out of proportion to the “known” size of the problem and has lead to foolish and costly policies that won’t solve the problem if the problem is real and will be a complete waste if it’s not.
James Ard 14 years ago

Does anyone know of a good global warming wagering site? I’d like to put some money down before the odds get adjusted.
joshua corning 14 years ago

from the washington post:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/…..04093.html
In another e-mail Ben Santer, a research scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, offered to beat up Pat Michaels, a senior fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute and a climate skeptic, out of sympathy for Jones.
haha…i read this email but did not realize Pat Michaels was a CATO guy.
Tony 14 years ago

So much disinterested objectivity in this thread. You guys aren’t even attempting to understand the methodology involved, which would make you appreciate why almost nothing you are freaking out over is out of line for climate science, or science in general. You’re just jumping at whatever you can rationalize into being evidence for your completely inflexible preconceived narrative.
1. Kreel Sarloo 14 years ago
  
  Inquiring minds want to know who it is that has the “completely inflexible preconceived narrative.”
2. The Man 14 years ago
  
  On the contrary Tony. I do understand the methodology. I don’t fault the models for being imperfect but I do fault the modelers for their lack of forthrightness. The sort of behavior evidenced by the emails may not be out of line for climate science, as you say, but undocumented data manipulation, data and code obfuscation, manipulation of the peer review process are not routine science.
  Data is sacred, if you change it you document it and note it in the publication. If you delete outliers, you note which and why. If you make a particular change to some data but not others, you note which and why. If your data analysis uses *any* non-standard analytical techniques you must describe them in sufficient detail to allow someone else to recreate the result. If another researcher asks how or why you performed a particular analysis, you tell him or her, in detail. If he asks for your computer codes you provide them, in the same state in which they were used.
  And finally, the peer review process is not gentle. Often the reviewer knows more about your topic than you do and he lets you know it. The reviewer can also be obtuse, unfair or even incompetent but he or she is your audience. You have to have a thick skin when he criticizes you for pointing out that his entire body of research is now obsolete. But it’s not all bad. Sending a paper for review by an anonymous reviewer is quite like posting here at Reason. The responses can be frustrating but also challenging, forcing you to think harder, write better and make a more significant contribution to the conversation. But ya gotta enjoy the process; not everybody does, especially climate modelers, apparently. Tough. If they can’t stand the heat. . . well, you know.
  1. RHSwan 14 years ago
    
    The Man,
    You are The Man. +1000
    1. joshua corning 14 years ago
      
      I think it might be Thoreau.
      Is that you Thoreau?
      1. The Man 14 years ago
        
        Who? Me?
Blissfull Ignorance 14 years ago

So much disinterested objectivity in this thread. You guys aren’t even attempting to understand the methodology involved, which would make you appreciate why almost nothing you are freaking out over is out of line for climate science, or science in general. You’re just jumping at whatever you can rationalize into being evidence for your completely inflexible preconceived narrative.
Ladidada — hop, skip, jump and stomp in the puddles, I’m on my way.
JesterII 14 years ago

Q. What’s the difference between a cargo cult and an AGW scientist?
A. What ever wrong conclusions they may draw, the rituals taken up by cargo cults are at least based upon an initial empirical observation. AGW scientist, not so much.
EscapedWestOfTheBgMuddy 14 years ago

They are just torturing the data and using every mathmatical trick they know to get to the conclusion they want. It is pathetic.
Beating the living crap of out the data—and employing a vast array of powerful mathematical tools to do it—is part and parcel of the analysis processes. What would be disturbing here (if the documents are real, a matter about which I will venture no opinion) if the forthright tone of trying to get the “right” answer. When you do that, you’re doing it wrong.
It is becoming increasingly common in my field to guard against the unconscience version of this behavior by “blinding” the data in some way. As a side effect, it is much harder to engage in an intentionally fraudulent analysis as well.
Withholding judgment for now…
Jason 14 years ago

Computer techs at East Anglia have reported the Zip file containing the emails was compiled ON a computer AT the university just moments before it was released onto the internet. Furthermore, the file was released to MULTIPLE servers from that computer. Both of these things demonstrate that the emails WERE NOT HACKED….they were leaked by an inside whistle blower. Saying they were hacked is mainstream news media “spin” that attempts to give a measure of cover to the true criminals here….the scientists engaged in massive fraud. The content of the emails demonstrates the fraud was (and still is) organized and orchestrated by the UN for a political outcome. Claiming the emails were hacked speaks directly to a news sources’ journalistic integrity.
John M. Quinn 14 years ago

I have examined the Global Temperature Anomaly (GTA)data from the Hadley Centre and have found it to be of good quality. There are various ways that these data can be checked. One way is to compare these to the temperature archive maintaind by NOAA’s National Climate Data Center (unless of course you are accusing that organization of being complicit with the misdeeds of UEA Hadley Centre staff). These two data sets compare well.
But, another more independent way of checking the Hadley GTA set is to compare it with the X and Y components of Earth’s Mean Pole Position (MPP) supplied by the International Earth Rotation Service (IERS). The comparison is done by computing the annual means of both data sets since about 1850 to the present and just running both sets of data through an 11-year running average, to minimize solar cycle effects in both data sets. When one does this, the Global Temperature Anomaly temporal profile mirrors that of both the X and Y components of the Mean Pole Position of Earth’s rotational axix. This tells me that (1) the Hadley GTA data is good, and (2) The GTA correlates better with X and Y component MPP changes than with CO2 changes. That is, in my opinion, as a physicsist/geophysicist working for the U. S. Fedeeral Government for 32 yeears, CO2 has absolutely nothing at all to do with Global Warming
There are other reasons for making this claim as well. For instance,
consider Mars. It has been shown (Fenton et. al., Nature 2009) that there is Global Warming on Mars that is comparable to that on Earth. Although the Martian atmosphere is 95% CO2, there is no means to increase Martian CO2 to obtain an Enhanced Greenhouse Effect because Mars is a dead planet and there are no Martians around with vehicles and factories to generat CO2.
So, what causes Martian Global Warming? Increased dust in the atmosphere which reduces the Martian albedo, which allows more irradiance absorption. But how does the dust come about in the first place? Increased Martian winds. How does the increased wind come about? Increased energy flux (irradiance as well as other energies associated with the solar wind). It is not well known but while the solar irradiance has not increased much in the past century, solar energy flux, and the solar magnetic field in particur have more than doubled since 1900. The IPCC has completely ignored this, or cast it aside by hand waving arguments.
To my mind, the integrity of the GTA data set is quite good, even if the people maintaining that data set are somewhat bias and biggoted in their views, and may be guilty of thwarting the scientific process by collusion with others to prevent legitimate science research from being published in journals, merely becasue they do not agree with the conclusions of the research.
John M. Quinn
Lakewood, CO
USA
Mike Laursen 14 years ago

OK then, show us how it should be done. Let us know when you’re granted an interview with Al Gore.
John 14 years ago

You guys don’t understand. Obama’s Kenyon birth certificate is in those e-mails. Reason is just playing up the climate angle to cover up the truth.
Warty 14 years ago

That’s because they all voted for Obama since they’re just Republicans who want to smoke pot.
JW 14 years ago

Obama’s from Ohio?
Tango Mike 14 years ago

(Now that was funny!)

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