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Beam me to Planet Gore !
Posted on 11/20/2009 11:33:27 AM PST by markomalley
As many of you will be aware, a large number of emails from the University of East Anglia webmail server were hacked recently (Despite some confusion generated by Anthony Watts, this has absolutely nothing to do with the Hadley Centre which is a completely separate institution). As people are also no doubt aware the breaking into of computers and releasing private information is illegal, and regardless of how they were obtained, posting private correspondence without permission is unethical. We therefore aren’t going to post any of the emails here. We were made aware of the existence of this archive last Tuesday morning when the hackers attempted to upload it to RealClimate, and we notified CRU of their possible security breach later that day.
Nonetheless, these emails (a presumably careful selection of (possibly edited?) correspondence dating back to 1996 and as recently as Nov 12) are being widely circulated, and therefore require some comment. Some of them involve people here (and the archive includes the first RealClimate email we ever sent out to colleagues) and include discussions we’ve had with the CRU folk on topics related to the surface temperature record and some paleo-related issues, mainly to ensure that posting were accurate.
Since emails are normally intended to be private, people writing them are, shall we say, somewhat freer in expressing themselves than they would in a public statement. For instance, we are sure it comes as no shock to know that many scientists do not hold Steve McIntyre in high regard. Nor that a large group of them thought that the Soon and Baliunas (2003), Douglass et al (2008) or McClean et al (2009) papers were not very good (to say the least) and should not have been published. These sentiments have been made abundantly clear in the literature (though possibly less bluntly).
More interesting is what is not contained in the emails. There is no evidence of any worldwide conspiracy, no mention of George Soros nefariously funding climate research, no grand plan to ‘get rid of the MWP’, no admission that global warming is a hoax, no evidence of the falsifying of data, and no ‘marching orders’ from our socialist/communist/vegetarian overlords. The truly paranoid will put this down to the hackers also being in on the plot though.
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.
It’s obvious that the noise-generating components of the blogosphere will generate a lot of noise about this. but it’s important to remember that science doesn’t work because people are polite at all times. Gravity isn’t a useful theory because Newton was a nice person. QED isn’t powerful because Feynman was respectful of other people around him. Science works because different groups go about trying to find the best approximations of the truth, and are generally very competitive about that. That the same scientists can still all agree on the wording of an IPCC chapter for instance is thus even more remarkable.
No doubt, instances of cherry-picked and poorly-worded “gotcha” phrases will be pulled out of context. One example is worth mentioning quickly. Phil Jones in discussing the presentation of temperature reconstructions stated that “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) and from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.” The paper in question is the Mann, Bradley and Hughes (1998) Nature paper on the original multiproxy temperature reconstruction, and the ‘trick’ is just to plot the instrumental records along with reconstruction so that the context of the recent warming is clear. Scientists often use the term “trick” to refer to a “a good way to deal with a problem”, rather than something that is “secret”, and so there is nothing problematic in this at all. As for the ‘decline’, it is well known that Keith Briffa’s maximum latewood tree ring density proxy diverges from the temperature records after 1960 (this is more commonly known as the “divergence problem”–see e.g. the recent discussion in this paper) and has been discussed in the literature since Briffa et al in Nature in 1998 (Nature, 391, 678-682). Those authors have always recommend not using the post 1960 part of their reconstruction, and so while ‘hiding’ is probably a poor choice of words (since it is ‘hidden’ in plain sight), not using the data in the plot is completely appropriate, as is further research to understand why this happens.
The timing of this particular episode is probably not coincidental. But if cherry-picked out-of-context phrases from stolen personal emails is the only response to the weight of the scientific evidence for the human influence on climate change, then there probably isn’t much to it.
There are of course lessons to be learned. Clearly no-one would have gone to this trouble if the academic object of study was the mating habits of European butterflies. That community’s internal discussions are probably safe from the public eye. But it is important to remember that emails do seem to exist forever, and that there is always a chance that they will be inadvertently released. Most people do not act as if this is true, but they probably should.
It is tempting to point fingers and declare that people should not have been so open with their thoughts, but who amongst us would really be happy to have all of their email made public?
Let he who is without PIN cast the the first stone.
Posted by: Jim Hlavac Nov 20, 09:00 AM
"While hacking into the institute's records is inappropriate if not illegal" ?
Just a thought -- radical even -- but isn't breaking the enemy's code in time of war or peril a social good?
I'm sure the Nazis had a law against hacking into Enigma. The British did not follow that law.
Would a private Brit in WWII not have 'hacked' into the mail of a neighbor he knew was a Nazi to save the nation from the enemy within?
Ditto the Russians in the cold war. And spies among us. Ditto not following the law.
If a group of people somewhat paid by us the taxpayer (a public university, indeed,) is out to steal more of our money and our liberty do not we, a free people, have the right to defend ourselves from further fraud? If they did conspire to commit scientific fraud did they not commit the crime? And are the hackers but whistleblowers? In my eyes, whistleblowing in the defense of freedom is no vice.
Ping the list if you please!
“Gravity isn’t a useful theory because Newton was a nice person. QED isn’t powerful because Feynman was respectful of other people around him.”
When climatologist’s theories and models make predictions that are confirmed (almost perfectly) by observation as Newton’s laws (Laws!) of motion and gravity, or Feynman’s quantum elctrodynamics, I’ll start taking warning of global warming seriously. As it is, none of them, or their models, predicted the period of slightly declining temperatures of the last decade or so. Obviously there are some factors that their models don’t take into account, or give appropriate weight to - assuming there is any validity in them at all As it is, there is no reason at all to believe their predictions of future temperature increases.
I hear the sounds of cat’s paws on the tin roof, attempting to cover it’s poop.
Sounds like the author is claiming that he “did not have sex with that woman!”
Exactly what the argument should naturally point. If they take the bait it would mean opening up all of the global warming cult scientist's correspondence. You then pick and choose what scientist you can isolate and isolate him/her, humiliate them..... errr... never mind. I must have channeled Saul Alinsky.
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The RealClimate guys remind me alot of Charles @ LGF. RC has been outed in this story as big time defenders of their crooked bros @ the UEC.....they are furiously tring to tamp down all posters at their site. These frauds are running scared! Prison time should be in their future!
Yeah, but I think there is enough fishy stuff for people to call for a deeper investigation.
LOL! The cat’s out of the bag!
If we can kill Cap and Trade legislation we will have done something that is likely a bigger TAX than Obamacare....
Everyone needs to know about this development.....
Taking advantage of lists I built and used on the Fort Hood Jihad Attack.....
I love what you say....pinging others.
Sounds good to me!
“We’ll deal with the ethics of the hacker AFTER we deal with the ethics (or lack of depending on your POV”
I don’t think the CRU server was hacked. This smells like an inside job. Maybe a whisleblower or a disgruntled “honest” researcher who was fed up with the lies and deception.
Sorry, who is McKintyre?
Climate Audit Blog http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=7806
Looks like there’s a lot going on at his blog.
My PC is so bogged down right now, too many things open & loading :-) I believe he is a scientist, climatologist. You’ll probably get better answers. But do go check out his blog. Many answers there.
Thank you.
Not surprised you are not aware of his work....he and his friends have been exposing the data manipulation of the Scientists favored by the Global Warming Research funding financiers....
His site is too busy to load right now.
I’ll try again later.
Thanks.
McIntyre is responsible for some of the major debunking of AGW . Most recently the Yamal Tree Rings. Also see Watts Up With That, I may be wrong on who was first with the data, but I think it was McIntyre.
Worth going back to catch up on the history. I’m sorry if I’m getting anything wrong.
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