Breaking News Story: CRU has apparently been hacked – hundreds of files released

Watts Up With That? ^ | 19/11/2009 | Anthony Watts

[jsh3180]

UPDATE: Response from CRU in interview with another website, see end of this post.

The details on this are still sketchy, we’ll probably never know what went on. But it appears that University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit has been hacked and many many files have been released by the hacker or person unknown.

http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/annrep93/cru.jpg

UPDATED: Original image was for Met Office – corrected This image source: www.cru.uea.ac.uk

I’m currently traveling and writing this from an airport, but here is what I know so far:

An unknown person put postings on some climate skeptic websites that advertised an FTP file on a Russian FTP server, here is the message that was placed on the Air Vent today:

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

The file was large, about 61 megabytes, containing hundreds of files.

It contained data, code, and emails from Phil Jones at CRU to and from many people.

I’ve seen the file, it appears to be genuine and from CRU. Others who have seen it concur- it appears genuine. There are so many files it appears unlikely that it is a hoax. The effort would be too great.

Here is some of the emails just posted at Climate Audit on this thread:

http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=7801#comments

I’ve redacted email addresses and direct phone numbers for the moment. The emails all have US public universities in the email addresses, making them public/FOIA actionable I believe. From: Phil Jones To: mann@vxxxxx.xxx Subject: Fwd: John L. Daly dead Date: Thu Jan 29 14:17:01 2004

From: Timo H‰meranta To: Subject: John L. Daly dead Date: Thu, 29 Jan 2004 12:04:28 +0200 X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook, Build 10.0.4510 Importance: Normal

Mike, In an odd way this is cheering news ! One other thing about the CC paper – just found another email – is that McKittrick says it is standard practice in Econometrics journals to give all the data and codes !! According to legal advice IPR overrides this.

Cheers Phil

“It is with deep sadness that the Daly Family have to announce the sudden death of John Daly.Condolences may be sent to John’s email account (daly@john-daly.com) “ Reported with great sadness

Timo H‰meranta xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Timo H‰meranta, LL.M. Moderator, Climatesceptics Martinlaaksontie 42 B 9 01620 Vantaa Finland, Member State of the European Union

Moderator: timohame@yxxxxx.xxx Private: timo.hameranta@xxxxx.xx

Home page: [1]personal.inet.fi/koti/hameranta/climate.htm

Moderator of the discussion group “Sceptical Climate Science” [2]groups.yahoo.com/group/climatesceptics

“To dwell only on horror scenarios of the future shows only a lack of imagination”. (Kari Enqvist)

“If the facts change, I’ll change my opinion. What do you do, Sir” (John Maynard Keynes)

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Prof. Phil Jones Climatic Research Unit Telephone +44 (0)xxxxxx School of Environmental Sciences Fax +44 (0) xxxxxx University of East Anglia Norwich Email p.jones@xxx.xx.xx NR4 7TJ UK —————————————————————————-

References

1. http://personal.inet.fi/koti/hameranta/climate.htm 2. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/climatesceptics From: Phil Jones To: ray bradley ,mann@xxxxx.xxx, mhughes@xxxx.xxx Subject: Diagram for WMO Statement Date: Tue, 16 Nov 1999 13:31:15 +0000 Cc: k.briffa@xxx.xx.xx,t.osborn@xxxx.xxx

Dear Ray, Mike and Malcolm, Once Tim’s got a diagram here we’ll send that either later today or first thing tomorrow. 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. Mike’s series got the annual land and marine values while the other two got April-Sept for NH land N of 20N. The latter two are real for 1999, while the estimate for 1999 for NH combined is +0.44C wrt 61-90. The Global estimate for 1999 with data through Oct is +0.35C cf. 0.57 for 1998. Thanks for the comments, Ray.

Cheers Phil

Prof. Phil Jones Climatic Research Unit Telephone +44 (0) xxxxx School of Environmental Sciences Fax +44 (0) xxxx University of East Anglia Norwich Email p.jones@xxxx.xxx NR4 7TJ UK

—————————————————————————- From: Jonathan Overpeck To: “Michael E. Mann” Subject: letter to Senate Date: Tue, 22 Jul 2003 16:49:31 -0700 Cc: Caspar M Ammann , Raymond Bradley , Keith Briffa , Tom Crowley , Malcolm Hughes , Phil Jones , mann@xxxxx.xxx, jto@xxxxx.xx.xxx, omichael@xxxxx.xxx, Tim Osborn , Kevin Trenberth , Tom Wigley

Hi all – I’m not too comfortable with this, and would rather not sign – at least not without some real time to think it through and debate the issue. It is unprecedented and political, and that worries me.

My vote would be that we don’t do this without a careful discussion first.

I think it would be more appropriate for the AGU or some other scientific org to do this - e.g., in reaffirmation of the AGU statement (or whatever it’s called) on global climate change.

Think about the next step – someone sends another letter to the Senators, then we respond, then…

I’m not sure we want to go down this path. It would be much better for the AGU etc to do it.

What are the precedents and outcomes of similar actions? I can imagine a special-interest org or group doing this like all sorts of other political actions, but is it something for scientists to do as individuals?

Just seems strange, and for that reason I’d advise against doing anything with out real thought, and certainly a strong majority of co-authors in support.

Cheers, Peck

Dear fellow Eos co-authors, Given the continued assault on the science of climate change by some on Capitol Hill, Michael and I thought it would be worthwhile to send this letter to various members of the U.S. Senate, accompanied by a copy of our Eos article. Can we ask you to consider signing on with Michael and me (providing your preferred title and affiliation). We would like to get this out ASAP. Thanks in advance, Michael M and Michael O

______________________________________________________________ Professor Michael E. Mann Department of Environmental Sciences, Clark Hall University of Virginia Charlottesville, VA 22903 _______________________________________________________________________ e-mail: mann@xxxxxx.xxx Phone: (434) 924-7770 FAX: (434) xxx-xxxxx http://www.evsc.virginia.edu/faculty/people/mann.shtml

Attachment converted: Macintosh HD:EOS.senate letter-final.doc (WDBN/MSWD) (00055FCF)

–

Jonathan T. Overpeck Director, Institute for the Study of Planet Earth Professor, Department of Geosciences Mail and Fedex Address: Institute for the Study of Planet Earth 715 N. Park Ave. 2nd Floor University of Arizona Tucson, AZ 85721 direct tel: +xxxx fax: +1 520 792-8795 http://www.geo.arizona.edu/Faculty_Pages/Overpeck.J.html http://www.ispe.arizona.edu/ It appears that the proverbial Climate Science Cat is out of the bag.

Developing story – more later

UPDATE1: Steve McIntyre posted this on Climate Audit, I used a screen cap rtaher than direct link becuase CA is overloaded and slow at the moment.

UPDATE2: Response from CRU h/t to WUWT reader “Nev”

http://briefingroom.typepad.com/the_briefing_room/2009/11/hadleycru-says-leaked-data-is-real.html

The director of Britain’s leading Climate Research Unit, Phil Jones, has told Investigate magazine’s TGIF Edition tonight that his organization has been hacked, and the data flying all over the internet appears to be genuine.

In an exclusive interview, Jones told TGIF, “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.”

“Have you alerted police”

“Not yet. We were not aware of what had been taken.”

Jones says he was first tipped off to the security breach by colleagues at the website RealClimate.

“Real Climate were given information, but took it down off their site and told me they would send it across to me. They didn’t do that. I only found out it had been released five minutes ago.”

TGIF asked Jones about the controversial email discussing “hiding the decline”, and Jones explained what he was trying to say….

[devistate one four]

Now all we need is for the second hand smoke fraud to be hacked.

This will show the folks that the gov. is taking away thier rights by any means possible including lieing out thier tailpipe.

[BOBTHENAILER]

Just mass emailed this proof of the gahorrible warming crew-—spewing lies like we all knew they were. Gotta get this out so far and wide the lamestream presstitutes can’t ignore it.

[Domandred]

FTP site appears down or hammered. But did manage to get another copy downloaded from torrent sites.

[headstamp 2]

“Because of the volume of this information we cannot currently confirm that all of this material is genuine.”

Here’s the spin.

[kpp_kpp]

i’m afraid this post is all i’ll ever see on this topic.

if it shows up on slashdot i’ll be impressed. (not that the slashdot community is anything to aspire to, but they certainly have ‘volume’)

[TWfromTEXAS]

bttt

[sawoody]

Someone needs to send this to Senator Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma.

[unixfox]

Watch for said hacker to become “mysteriously” missing or die in a “mysterious” accident.

[bustinchops]

If this is for real.......THEY ARE TOAST! Robbing, thieving Marxists caught red-handed!!!!!!!

[bustinchops]

.....and Rathergate.....to the 10th power!

[AdamBomb]

Scientists Lied - SUV’s Died

[nina0113]

Hadley’s running off an emergency server now.

http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/

[Marty62]

I posted one of their propaganda docs
THE RULES OF THE GAME...VERY ENLIGHTENING.

[Cheerio]

Now that hacker needs to get busy in Hawaii.

Why? No one is going to do anything - he can be impeached commencing on Jan 2, 2011 with a GOP House.

We all know his daddy was a British subject, and that mommie was not old enough under then-existing HI law to confer her US citizenship on baby messiah. The only problem is that no one in America will do anything to go against this man-child. I am coming around to believe he is the Anti-Christ.

[winoneforthegipper]

Mikey Mann, responds:

“I’m simply not going to comment on the content of illegally obtained emails. However, I will say this: both their theft and, I believe, any reproduction of the emails that were obtained on public websites, etc, constitutes serious criminal activity. I’m hoping that the perpetrators and their facilitators will be tracked down and prosecuted to the fullest extent the law allows.”

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/nov/20/climate-sceptics-hackers-leaked-emails

[bustinchops]

LMAO! :)

[ichabod1]

Oh those cold earthers. We should not stoop to their level. I will fire anyone from my campaign who says anything negative about my opponent.

[DariusBane]

Many of us suspected this was happening. So many logical problems with the GW theory that even as a non scientist it was just very hard to swallow. The institutional pressures applied to demand belief were my starting point to think about the probability of the “scientific consensus” of GW. For me as a lay person my skepticism was based on historical accounts that in the past Europe had been colder and Europe had been warmer. I coupled that in my thinking about the short time line we are looking at. How long have we had temperature measuring stations in place? A couple of hundred years. How consistent were the instruments? How much had change around the instruments? Had the instruments changed? The sample seemed too small and the data seemed tenuous. Scientist also were trying to construct evidence based on non instrument data, tree rings in siberia and ice core samples. That was always the fall back argument when I brought up sample size and temperature samples. But the bottom line was the historical temperature readings were integral to the argument! Then the next question in my mind was why, given the very shaky evidence was the theory being pushed so hard? After asking those questions but being crushed by institutional pressures it is very gratifying to see the evidence of what I and we believed was happening in the climate science industry! So happy day. The beginning of the end I hope!

[wigswest]

Can’t WAIT to hear Rush crowing about this!! :D

[Melchior]

Mikie Mann: UC Berkeley and Yale grad. Predictable.