Posted on 11/20/2009 5:35:11 AM PST by Red Badger
Britain’s 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 Britain’s 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 I’ve 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 who’s 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 NASA’s 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, 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:
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:
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:
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:
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:
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 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:
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:
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.
These may be real, but reading them, they have this tone of, “Boy, it would really be bad if the other side read this email I’m typing!” and “Those evil non-climate change guys sure would love to get their hands on this—let’s hope no one hacks this system, huh?!”
Yes, I agree. But knowing how these types operate, they seem perfectly normal. They live in a vacuum..............
The tone that I get is “the data that has been collected must be really bad, because it doesn’t back up my beliefs” . There is a real sense of “Fake but Accurate” hubris in these emails.
This should be the nail in the coffin of Crap&Tirade...............
Bookmark! Thanks for posting this.
Paranoia is normal for scammers and liars.
I guess that’s how nerds who worship Al Gore talk to each other, like they think they’re secret agents.
Exactly! It is, as you suggest, "too good to be true". On the other hand, what we have here may be a slim selection of a few diamonds as an example.
I hope the entire item is posted. It's a fairly large file and there should be totally undeniable realism, if it's real.
There are probably personal items in there only the writer would know.
LOL!
So, assuming these are real, or at least accurate,
we need to go to the next step and “attribute motive”.
There is a clear intent to deceive. The next thing that needs to be pounded into people is WHY they want to deceive.
It’s not just money - it’s CONTROL.
Asking why these a-holes did this is like the MSM asking why Hasan did the Ft. Hood massacre...............
This should be HEADLINE NEWS everywhere! It should be covered 24/7!
My next question is: Will pimp obama's ho-media even TOUCH IT?
Oh, I know the truth is obvious to us,
but our society has been so saturated with political correctness (ie, LIES),
that the WHY of it has to be proclaimed loud and proud.
Hacking Palins Email Acount - Major News ...
Cooked Global Warming Evidence - Say what?
I agree, we need to go slowly on this. While this may be the change I’ve been hoping for, I have seen to much chicanery on the interwebs not to be suspicious.
I downloaded the entire 61M file and it appears to me that it is very likely legitimate, but much of it is mundane files and not incriminating documents.
I have seen just one or two emails posted over and over as being the smoking gun in this. It would be very easy for someone with bad motives to doctor a few files in a large body of data and correspondence to lend to them an air of legitimacy. If just one of the incriminating files turns out to be doctored, it will tarnish the entire set. I advise caution.
I can't wait to read Hansen's emails. Anybody know if Heidi Cullen is on the list?
Every one of these people should have their bona fides revoked............
Is this why any copenhagen was sidelined? They saw this coming.
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