|
Posted on 11/20/2009 5:35:11 AM PST by Red Badger
Britains Climate Research Unit, University of East Anglia, suffered a data breach in recent days when a hacker apparently broke into their system and made away with thousands of emails and documents. The stolen data was then posted to a Russian server and has quickly made the rounds among climate skeptics. The documents within the archive, if proven to be authentic, would at best be embarrassing for many prominent climate researchers and at worst, damning.
The electronic break in itself has been verified by the director of the research unit, Professor Phil Jones. He told Britains Investigate magazine's TGIF Edition "It was a hacker. We were aware of this about three or four days ago that someone had hacked into our system and taken and copied loads of data files and emails."
The file that has been making the rounds was initially brought to light by the website The Air Vent. The 61mb file contains thousands of documents and emails. As the archive was just discovered within the last 24 hours, its authenticity has not been determined and as such readers should cast a skeptical eye on the contents.
At least one person that was included in some of the correspondence, Steve McIntyre of the website Climate Audit, verified the authenticity of at least some of the messages. McIntyre said, Every email that Ive examined so far looks genuine. There are a few emails of mine that are 100% genuine. It is really quite breathtaking.
The contents of the archive contain documents and email correspondence from a veritable whos who in climate science. Among those included in the emails are Phil Jones, Keith Briffa, his assistant, Michael Mann of the University of Virginia, Malcolm Hughes at the University of Arizona, Kevin Trenberth at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, James Hansen of NASAs Goddard Institute of Space Studies and others.
The emails contain an array of discussions including what appear to be concerted efforts to withhold data. Just as troubling is conversations that allude to potentially manipulating climate data to hide the decline of temperatures seen in the last decade.
Some of the excerpts of emails within the archives (edited for brevity, emphasis added):
From Michael E. Mann:
Dear Phil and Gabi, Ive 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 dont pass it along where it may get into the hands of the wrong people.
From Nick McKay:
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 dont remember. Darrell, does this sound right to you?
From Tom Wigley:
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:
Ive just completed Mikes Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd from 1961 for Keiths to hide the decline.
From Kevin Trenberth:
The fact is that we cant account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we cant. 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:
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:
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 Im getting hassled by a couple of people to release the CRU station temperature data. Dont any of you three tell anybody that the UK has a Freedom of Information Act !
From Michael E. Mann:
Anyway, I wanted you guys to know that youre 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 well 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 youd like us to include.
From Phil Jones:
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.
I work with scientists and engineers every day. Have my own Physics degree, too. I don’t see anything from a science impact in climate change that makes sense with the exception of solar related warming.
That being said - it would not suprise me to find they have no intent to deceive. Many of the science/engineering types become fixated on particular things. I see all the time where an engineer will argue and argue a point that is clearly wrong. They are so focused on these items that they get tunnel vision and literally cannot perceive the error.
Because it is such a strong response, I think it may actually be instinctual to prevent damage to the ego.
And I’m big enough to admit that I do it a lot of times as well. Usually someone finally pops me upside the head and I go “ah sh*t; where did that come from” or “geez, how did I miss that”.
I think a lot of these people really do believe what they are saying. However, I also believe that there are a lot of people that are just using it to pursue thier own agenda - whether for grants, power, fame, etc.
NOT!
Based on the number of threads on FR pertaining to this subject, its dominance on solarcycle24.com and other blogs, I don't think this is going to be wished away by the Gore loving media.
Lot's of new info coming out every hour by folks who are gleaning it for indications of both scientific and monetary fraud. This is hugh and series!
NOT!
Based on the number of threads on FR pertaining to this subject, its dominance on solarcycle24.com and other blogs, I don't think this is going to be wished away by the Gore loving media.
Lot's of new info coming out every hour by folks who are gleaning it for indications of both scientific and monetary fraud. This is hugh and series!
Well, if this snip is genuine it goes a long way towards explaining the baser motives:
http://motls.blogspot.com/2009/11/hacked-hadley-cru-foi2009-files.html
Don’t disagree - as I mentioned some just have their own damn agenda. The rest are just blinded by their myopia (sic).
|
It is damning enough, and pretty obvious. The amount of bias exercised by supposed "peers" in research is an open secret among scientists. Usually the bias is directed at pure self promotion - if he cites me, I approve, else I disapprove - that sort of thing. Here the interest is much more ideological and they think of themselves as fighting righteously against political enemies in the name of science. But in fact they are suppressing anything that hurts their arguments, in Orwellian fashion, instead of just trusting their arguments and airing every point of view.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.