Climatic Research Unit Hacked, Files Leaked

huckamania was one of many readers to write with the news that the University of East Anglia's Hadley Climatic Research Unit was hacked, and internal documents released. Some discussion and analysis of the leaked items can be found at Watts Up With That. The CRU has confirmed that a breach occurred, but not that all 61 MB of released material is genuine. Some of the emails would seem to raise concerns about the science as practiced — or at least beg an explanation. From the Watts Up link: "[The CRU] is widely recognized as one of the world's leading institutions concerned with the study of natural and anthropogenic climate change. Consisting of a staff of around thirty research scientists and students, the Unit 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, as well as statistical software packages and climate models. 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 apparently from the CRU. If proved legitimate, these bombshells could spell trouble for the AGW crowd." Reader brandaman supplied the link to the archive of pilfered data. Reader aretae characterized the emails as revealing "...lots of intrigue, data manipulation, attempting to shut out opposing points of view out of scientific journals. Almost makes you think it's a religion. Anyone surprised?" And reader bugnuts adds, for context: "These emails are certainly taken out of context, whether they are legitimate or fraudulent, which adds to the confusion."

Some Funny Things About This Event

[eldavojohn]

The CRU has confirmed that a breach occurred, but not that all 61 MB of released material is genuine.

Rarely do I have enough time to generate 61 MB (let alone 61 compressed MB) of data, code and e-mails that serves my political/religious purposes. So if this is tampered data or correspondence, there would almost certainly be conflicting items inside such a large repository. I'm not saying it isn't possible, it just decreases the odds that this is a hoax.

'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'

Why? Why a random sampling? If you're going to serve up 61 MB zipped, it might as well be 61 GB zipped. Why not release both sets ("the good stuff.tar.gz" and "everything including the inane 'what's for lunch today?' e-mails.tar.gz")?

It's borderline hilarious that the claim is made that this is 'too important to be kept under wraps' followed immediately by the 'we'll decide what you see' cloaked by the equally hilarious word "random." Random? Really? You want me to believe that you printed everything out and put it on a big spinning wheel, blindfolded yourself and then threw darts at it? I mean, come on. Nothing in the political world is random. You would have done yourself much more justice saying you've released what you feel is relevant.

Being one, I know first hand that hackers are highly disorganized. But come on, why not torrent the whole set or wikileaks it or something? I mean, I'm almost waiting for a high quality Ford Fusion ad in PDF to surface right in the middle of the compressed file saying, "Doesn't this worry you enough to go green?"

RealClimate has a big reply on this

[Rei]

Since some of the emails are sent from them, it's worth reading.

Link [realclimate.org]

For the specifics read the whole article. For a general summary, this excerpt will do:

"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."

Re:

[joocemann]

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."

I think it is funny that people would begin to draw conclusions from data and e-mails that are not received in context or understood/interpreted as truth be told.

You could look up almost any e-mail from me and deduce all kinds of crap that isn't real, but if you're not me or the person who received it, you'll never know the truth unless you ask me to explain it.

The same goes for 'data'. Unless you've got a contextual explanation for all of the data, likely by those who collected it, it is pretty reckless t

Re:RealClimate has a big reply on this

[mea37]

Yes, it would be reckless to jump straight to conclusions from these messages. However, this does point to questions that nobody would otherwise know to ask. I guess the question is, should this organization be expected to explain unpublished comments from internal emails/

The thing about climate science is, it's really hard to get an independent dataset from which to test for reproducability of results. To me this makes it reasonable to expect more scrutiny into what the people who are in custody of that data do - not just into what they judge to be suitable for publication.

Re:RealClimate has a big reply on this

[Abcd1234]

There IS at least some evidence of the falsifying of data. From TFA: "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."

Why the hell didn't you quote the rest? Stacking the deck much? Or are you just fishing for modpoints from the nutjobs 'round here?

Here's the entire quote, along with an explanation about why nothing nefarious was actually going on:

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.

But, you know, way to do *precisely* what that paragraph was meant to highlight. ie, use "cherry-picked and poorly-worded "gotcha" phrases ... pulled out of context" to try and illustrate scientific corruption amongst the science community.

Re:RealClimate has a big reply on this

[PatHMV]

While we're demanding completeness, let's look at this quote from the e-mails [wattsupwiththat.com] (that's not a pinpoint cite to the comment; you'll have to search for the text):

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”.

When you read a large number of the e-mails, it becomes clearer and clearer just how much their data must be massaged and adjusted in order to reach the results they have. I don't say that their adjustments are good or bad, simply that the mere making of so many free-hand adjustments reduces the possibility that their conclusions are in fact correct. It's very hard to tell, without digging into the raw data which they won't release, how much of the claimed warming is really real, and how much shows up only because of the assumptions and conclusions and adjustments they have chosen to use.

Re:RealClimate has a big reply on this

[tonique]

"It's very hard to tell, without digging into the raw data which they won't release, how much of the claimed warming is really real, and how much shows up only because of the assumptions and conclusions and adjustments they have chosen to use."

That's a big issue. Without releasing raw data there can be little science, where other people can try to replicate or falsify findings.

Re:RealClimate has a big reply on this

[Cyberax]

Uhm.

I don't think your example proves anything, I've used similar language when investigating data (not climate data, but industrial measurement results). Such language usually means: 'if we can explain that XX% of the effect is caused by instrumentation errors then there's no problem with the rest of the data as the anomaly becomes statistically insignificant'.

Re:RealClimate has a big reply on this

[PatHMV]

The e-mailer says: "if we could reduce the ocean blip by, say, 0.15 degC..." (emphasis added). "Say" sure sounds like he's free-handing it to make it fit better. Where does he ask "what do you think might have caused this blip"? Where does he in anyway try to determine what's caused it? Perhaps there's more e-mails in there where they struggle with this issue, trying to figure out what's really causing the blip. But they sure don't do it here.

He says he chose the .15 degC figure "deliberately" and then explains the consequences of that choice... but all of the consequences are focused just on how it still leaves a blip, because he thinks "one needs to have some form of ocean blip to explain the land blip." The next sentence, about other blips showing a land blip of 1.5 to 2 times the ocean blip, fits a bit with your theory, but he doesn't appear to be calculating backwards from the 1.5 to 2 times figure, he doesn't seem to have applied any particular adjustment formula that can be consistently applied to all blips. He just thinks that this one particular blip should be adjusted by .15 degC, to make it fit better.

Sure sounds like he's free-handing it to me.

Re:

[Abcd1234]

The only question is why did he choose the words "hide" as opposed to "correct" and "decline" as opposed to "error" which the skeptics (of this breach) are trying to imply, that "hide the decline" has the same meaning as "correct the error". I would argue to everyone, that the word hide implies falsification or concealment.

And the original quote in the RC summary specifically points out why your interpretation isn't necessarily correct.

So, either you're right and they're lying, or the RC article is right an

Re:RealClimate has a big reply on this

[phoenix321]

I cant think of any context that would transmute

written "hide the decline"

into

meaning "correct an error"

Feel free to provide a context, a hypothetical context, a flat our fairytale if you like. But make us believe that a self-respecting scientist uses the word "hide" when they mean "correct" and "*the* decline" when they mean "*an* error". This would not happen if the scientist was a dyslexic mutant with Tourette's.

"Hide the decline" means covering a statistical trend and that is truly nefarious and unworthy of any scientist, no matter whose money sponsors the labcoats at this particular place. Even a real error correction would've needed more explanation on what exactly was the noise or error and what was the signal or trend, to make sure it wasn't the other way around.

Futzing results of statistical analysis is a great boo-boo in any but all cases and we caught AGW red-handed.

Re:

[interkin3tic]

The only question is why did he choose the words "hide" as opposed to "correct" and "decline" as opposed to "error" which the skeptics (of this breach) are trying to imply, that "hide the decline" has the same meaning as "correct the error".

Because it was in a private e-mail and people don't parse their words that carefully in private e-mails.

Perhaps it was even said tongue-in-cheek and the recipient would have understood from previous conversations that it was a joke. I could imagine two colleagues talking

A: "This data shows a decrease!"
B: "Yes, but if you look at it like this, it becomes clear that is an artifact."
A: "Oh. Well then how would I present that"
B: "I read a paper that had a technique that seemed useful, I'll email it to you whe

Re:

[blueg3]

A lot of people commenting here clearly don't know many scientists, and thus don't appreciate how poor their word choice tends to be.

Re:RealClimate has a big reply on this

[radtea]

I would argue to everyone, that the word hide implies falsification or concealment. So the author was knowingly manipulatin data to conceal the truth.

Hey, you sound just like my psycho ex-g/f, who would stop in the middle of an argument to claim that the way I used some particular word could only mean exactly one thing, and it was the thing she wanted it to mean, and not anything else.

Psychotic, abusive people often think this way: they believe they have or can infer from a few words exactly what the original intent of the speaker was, whereas sane people know that we most of us choose our words poorly and sloppily and our utterances simply will not bear anything like such close psychotic analysis.

So sure he used the words "hide the decline", and all that means--unless you're on some kind of witch hunt and don't believe that stupidity explains far more than venality--is that he's being sloppy and casual about what he's doing to clean up a known issue with the data.

I often use the word "fake" when describing data analysis algorithms, as in, "We can fake an XYZ algorithm here," meaning that what I'm doing is not a true XYZ algorithm, but rather some known and valid approximation to it (usually done for reasons of computational efficiency.) Someone like you would see that, declare that I could only possibly mean one thing by "fake", and call me a fraud.

That would be childish, narrow-minded and stupid, and I don't see any reason to make a different judgment of what you're doing here.

Re:

[Korin43]

I heard recently in my atmospheric science class that they had to correct a bunch of temperatures from weather balloons because they changed the color of their boxes from black to white (which causes the temperatures reported to drop). I'm not sure if this is related, but it might be.

Re:

[UltraAyla]

If you'd read further into the RealClimate article, you'd understand that the "trick" is normalization by instrument to understand each instrument's own bias and factor it in. Trick doesn't mean something to fool you here - it's a solution to an issue they were seeing in their data. The RealClimate post also mentions that the scientists who collected the data from 1961 onward in that case recommended not using that data.

Re:RealClimate has a big reply on this

[coaxial]

Since you didn't bother to do any research before tossing around allegations of lying, nor bothering to figure out what exactly "Mike's Nature trick" actually was, let me.

A quick google search of "michael nature global temperature" points to : "Global-scale temperature patterns and climate forcing over the past six centuries" [nature.com] by Michael E. Mann [wikipedia.org], Raymond S. Bradley & Malcolm K. Hughes from Nature 392, 779-787 (23 April 1998) | doi:10.1038/33859

This was a a seminal article in the climatetology community. Mann et al took tree core samples and estimated the global temperature by measuring the spacing between tree rings. (Big rings are caused by rapid growth, which is in turn caused by warmer temperatures. Small rings, slow growth, cooler temperatures.) The fact that tree ring sizes are dependent on temperature has been a long established fact.

Let me now quote the abstract of this article in full:

Spatially resolved global reconstructions of annual surface temperature patterns over the past six centuries are based on the multivariate calibration of widely distributed high-resolution proxy climate indicators. Time-dependent correlations of the reconstructions with time-series records representing changes in greenhouse-gas concentrations, solar irradiance, and volcanic aerosols suggest that each of these factors has contributed to the climate variability of the past 400 years, with greenhouse gases emerging as the dominant forcing during the twentieth century. Northern Hemisphere mean annual temperatures for three of the past eight years are warmer than any other year since (at least) ad 1400.

Mann et al tried to create an accurate record of the global temperature by augmenting the estimated temperatures from the tree ring data with actual measured temperatures from 1981 and 1961 since these are actual known temperatures. This is known as "the MBH98 reconstruction".

Now hang on. Here's where your allegation of "systematic suppression of data" falls all apart.

In 2003, Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick published (*gasp*) Corrections to the Mann et. al. (1998) Proxy Data Base and Northern Hemispheric Average Temperature Series [ingentaconnect.com], whose abstract reads:

The data set of proxies of past climate used in Mann, Bradley and Hughes (1998, "MBH98" hereafter) for the estimation of temperatures from 1400 to 1980 contains collation errors, unjustifiable truncation or extrapolation of source data, obsolete data, geographical location errors, incorrect calculation of principal components and other quality control defects. We detail these errors and defects. We then apply MBH98 methodology to the construction of a Northern Hemisphere average temperature index for the 1400-1980 period, using corrected and updated source data. The major finding is that the values in the early 15th century exceed any values in the 20th century. The particular "hockey stick" shape derived in the MBH98 proxy construction – a temperature index that decreases slightly between the early 15th century and early 20th century and then increases dramatically up to 1980 — is primarily an artefact of poor data handling, obsolete data and incorrect calculation of principal components.

So the worldwide conspiracy of climatetologists breaks down when they behave like scientists, and try to duplicate each others' work, fail to, and publish corrections, and warnings saying, "Hey! You this data set we've all been using? It might be wrong."

Thus begins The Hockey Stick Controversy [wikipedia.org], named after the shape of the curve at the very end of MBH98 reconstruction. Far from being suppressed, it's investigated quite thoroughly

Re:RealClimate has a big reply on this

[Burnhard]

The fact that tree ring sizes are dependent on temperature has been a long established fact.

Sorry, but this isn't so. Tree ring sizes are dependent on a variety of factors, many of which cannot be isolated from ring width alone. Temperature is just one factor and may not even be the most important limiting factor for growth.

Re:RealClimate has a big reply on this

[iggymanz]

you should get your facts straight. anyone who's ever cut down a tree knows that thin rings correspond only to drought years and nothing but. no temperature correlation at all, whatever ivory tower bullshit you might come up with from someone whose never even been in a forest. of course, this well known FACT doesn't discourage people willing to spew nonsense to support their agenda

Re:RealClimate has a big reply on this

[Anonymous Coward]

Before you start throwing around allegations of fraud, you better get your facts straight.

Fact: Mann et al have and continue to deny access to key data.

Fact: The '08 update of the 1998 report is also Mann's work, in part based on his hidden data.

Mann can publish all the updated reports he wants for the rest of his life; until ALL of the DATA is exposed to ANYONE that wishes to examine it his conclusions will be suspect. The longer it takes the access ALL of the data the less credibility (quickly converging on zero) Mann has. Extraordinary claims always require extraordinary evidence; good faith is not assumed and does not count.

Re:RealClimate has a big reply on this

[lorenlal]

what kind of a comment is that? Global warning has been debated so hotly it would be wonderful to see data that doesn't have a hand driven one way or the other by government. Those of us who aren't global warming specialists don't know what to believe other than to be concerned. implying that this person has a part of it is like saying that someone is interested in politics. Like it or not, these types of things involve every person on the planet, so, you know , everyone's interested.

I personally don't know what any of the truths are (note: I don't expect to be swayed completely in either direction by anyone posting here). But I think something's lost in all of this.

I don't know if humans are causing global warming... But if I emit less, and pollute the air less, I get to breathe cleaner air right? Also, how about we think about reducing energy usage to save on the energy bill?

That's good enough for me. I don't need to hear that we're destroying the environment (or not, or frankly whatever). I like paying less often at the pump, and I like not spending as much a month on my electric/gas bill. I also don't mind separating my trash.

Maybe I should've just said, "Can't we all just get along?"

Re:RealClimate has a big reply on this

[TheFlamingoKing]

Because "Can't we all just get along?" doesn't really go well with "Let's use force against individuals to make them comply."

I'd love it if the argument was "hey, why don't you guys think about reducing your pollution, it will benefit your pocketbook and your health". Unfortunately, what's being argued is more like "you will adhere to our rules regarding pollution reduction, or we will hurt your pocketbook or your health."

Re:RealClimate has a big reply on this

[TapeCutter]

"CO2 isn't air pollution, CO, Hydrogen Sulfides, Sulfuric Acid, Mercury, Nitrogen oxides DO kill animals and more importantly Plants."

The definition of a pollutant is "a resource out of place". More importantly CO2 is what is turning the ocean acic (carbonic acid) this in turn threatens the very bottom of the global food chain (ie: plankton). Covering the earth with trees would help but it is still not enough to aborb our emmissions. Ironiclly many of the traditional pollutants that you mention form areosols and have a significant cooling effect.

Re:

[Rei]

Right. 60 hours of cherry-picked sources from a paid-off thinktank is a perfect substitute for four years of college, two to four years of graduate school, and a decade or two in the field.

Re:RealClimate has a big reply on this

[indifferent children]

This just in: physicists have a pro-gravity bias. Geologists have an anti-flat-earth bias. Astronomers have a pro-heliocentric bias.

Re:RealClimate has a big reply on this

[jnaujok]

This just in, Physiscists have no idea what causes gravity, Geologists can't tell from the shape of a planet what it's composed of, Astronomers don't know for certain how the Earth formed around the Sun.

You mistake the argument.

1. The Earth has warmed slightly - With solid records for only the last 150 years, (some of which may be questionable, see surfacestations.org) we don't know if this is unprecedented.

2. CO2 has risen since we've been measuring it. With only 100 odd years of instrumental record, we don't know if this is unprecedented.

3. Climate is hideously complex to model. We don't know what all the sources of CO2 are, nor where all the sinks are. Added to this is the intrinsicly chaotic form of weather in general.

4. We don't know what effect water, temperature, ice, etc. has on the total feedback of the system. It could be positive, it could be negative. We don't know. All the computer models are leaning positive (as heat goes up, heating goes up.) Recent studies are showing that it may be negative.

5. Arctic ice was declining in the early half of the decade. We don't know if this is unprecedented, as we only really have 30 years of records from satellites.

6. There is good evidence that a large part of the CO2 delta in the atmosphere comes from C14 poor sources. (Ancient carbon > 50,000 years old.) This could be from fossil fuels, or it could be from prehistoric sources such as melting permafrost. Again, this cannot be proven one way or the other.

Now, here's the leap you need to make (pick one):

1) CO2 increases from man are *CAUSING* the warming. (This is a hypothesis.)

2) CO2 increases in general are *CAUSED BY* warming (A lot of the proxy data for >150 years ago shows this.)

3) The warming is a natural process, but the CO2 has enhanced it to some extent. (This is arguably the most likely.)

4) The warming is a natural cycle, the CO2 increase has nothing, or very little to do with it. (It's a coincidence.)

Choose one of the above.

A physicist can't point at a some squiggle in a particle accelerator and say "that's the gravity particle" any more than a Pastafarian can point at the Great Noodly Appendage pushing down the apple on Newton's head and say, "That's proof of my theory." Gravity is a fact, the cause of gravity is a theory.

You're talking about an AGW bias, as if it were a fact. The equivalent "fact-bias" would be stating they have "a pro-thermometer bias." The idea that Anthropogenic CO2 is the sole cause of any warming is where the debate is.

Re:RealClimate has a big reply on this

[Hatta]

The Earth has warmed slightly - With solid records for only the last 150 years

CO2 has risen since we've been measuring it. With only 100 odd years of instrumental record

Why do you discount the ice core data?

Re:RealClimate has a big reply on this

[jnaujok]

...instrumental record...

Why do you discount the ice core data?

I think you missed the point. Direct measurement is all we can account for with 100% accuracy. Ice core data, while compelling, is not a scientific instrument. It was not designed to measure CO2 concentration. It does not have a gauge embedded in it that says, "280ppm". It has bubbles. We *assume* that those bubbles are pristine samples of the atmosphere at the time the ice was frozen. We *assume* that the bubble hasn't migrated, dissolved, or been concentrated by its time in the ice. We *assume* that because the record of the last 100 years is close to the instrumental record that we can safely extrapolate that relationship back 1000, 5000, or even 800,000 years. (Vostok ice cores)

What if it happens to be a property of ice, left for 150 years, to migrate CO2 into the ice crystal structure until it stabilizes the bubble at 280 ppm? Is it possible? I don't know. Can we do a lab experiment to prove it does or doesn't happen? Sure, but it will take 150 years to run. We assume that we know what will happen, but we have no hard experimental proof of it.

Over time, solid objects will migrate down through ice. Isn't it possible that bubbles would migrate up through the ice? How does this affect where we find the bubbles and their dating?

That's a whole lot of "assumes" to put our 100% faith in. Now, we can *assume* that the scientist took this into account, or we can ask for the data that shows they did. When they refuse to turn over said data and corrective algorithms, they create doubt. That's why this data dump is important. The emails seem to indicate that even the climate scientists have a lot of doubt about their data, and they worked hard to prevent releasing it or their methodologies.

That's why I said 100 years of instrumental records and discounted the ice core data.

Re:RealClimate has a big reply on this

[im_thatoneguy]

You make it sound like we have 150 years of data. That's like the creationist argument that we have no evidence for evolution or geology beyond human observation. We have much more than 150 years of data and your statements are misleading because you cite "C02 increases in general are caused by warming" while simultaneously ignoring the mountain of evidence which we have collected on CO2 and Temperature beyond calibrated thermometers and satellites.

Re:RealClimate has a big reply on this

[phoenix321]

You can have billions of data points over several millenia and the only thing you can hope to prove is a strong correlation between A=CO2 levels and B=global temperature.

But you cannot prove or disprove that A causes B, B causes A - or an unknown C causes A and B. Because of the scientific method, you only have a hypothesis, which can only be judged from the quality of the predictions it made.

And here we come full circle: the theory of global warming predicts a global temperature increase over the next few decades. And then scientists urge us to do something to counter that. With large amounts of money and maybe even a reduction in our quality of life. Let's call this strategy of repentance R and the opposite strategy, doing absolutely nothing and keep on sinning S.

Now we can bring game theory into the fray:

Player Mankind M against Global Warming Theory(tm) W.

Mankind can play strategy SIN or REPENT while Global Warming can play the strategies HOT or NOT.

Now let's look at the payoff matrix:

(S, H) = it's now hot, Global Warming was right, but we saved billions of Dollars, Euros, Yuan and Rubles that happily multiplied on compound interest all those years. Let's spend the money on building dams, counter-desertificaton and storm shelters. And pour some money into researching fusion, we need it. Mankind will suffer, but certainly recover. Countries that pursued Repent anyway will now have a severe disadvantage.

(S, N) = it's cool, Global Warming was wrong. We saved uncounted billions of dollars and are probably on the way of building the spaceship for the Alpha Centauri victory condition. Countries that pursued Repent anyway now have a severe disadvantage.

(R, H) = it's now hot, but we don't know if Global Warming was right OR an unkown variable O (let's call it "Sun Output" just for kicks) was the reason. We spent billions and lost the equivalent of Earth's weight in Gold in missed compound interest. Anyway, we didn't spend enough so we lack the funds to build enough dams and shelters. Those few countries that bailed out of the plan now CAN build dams and shelters and will gain the upper hand.

(R, N) = it's cool now but we spend billions of dollars and missed a lot of compound interest. We either did enough or global warming was weaker than expected or the unkown variable C was decreasing as well. Spaceship victory condition is delayed for several centuries. Those few countries that bailed out of the plan will gain the upper hand.

As the scientific method can only disprove, (S, N) provides the only definite answer: Warming was wrong. All other outcomes are unreliable:
(S, H) could mean Global Warming was right or variable O was the reason
(R, H) could mean Global Warming was right, but we did too little, too late OR variable O was the reason.
(R, N) could mean Global Warming was right and we did enough OR Global Warming was wrong and we wasted oodles of money.

to That means
- even in 20 or 30 years, we will not know for sure if global warming was right.
- those who didn't pursue a Repent strategy will always have outpaced those who did
- defect is the dominant strategy for different factions of Mankind
- we either need a New World Order to force everyone in line or the defectors will laugh at us in any possible outcome.

Great. Just great.

I leave it as an exercise to the reader to map out a more complex scenario with two players, Mankind and Warming, where Mankind can "Repent" or "Sin", but Warming can play "Hot from CO2", "Hot from the Sun" or "Cold either way". I doubt the payoff matrix favors insane spending to Repent.

Anyway, the latest predictions I heard of our holy climate priests were an increase of 2 degrees centigrade in 2100. (no, not 2010). If the global temperature was a random walk with a delta of -0.1, 0 and +0.1 every year, we can and will obtain much greater deltas just by chance alone.

Re:RealClimate has a big reply on this

[phoenix321]

Let's see your basic assumptions in the limelight:

- my post is stupid shit
- my post is full of irrationality and ignorance
- my post is delusionally retarded
- my post comes from the United States
- the United States are a microcosm of insanity
- the United States are dominated by theocratic thuggery and radical free market fundamentalism
- radical free market fundamentalism is far more dangerous and less intelligent than Islam

While every single point you assumed is so absurdly false that a 5-year-old can tear it apart, it's still a nice list of insults you brought there. I kind of hoped for the tried-and-true "your momma"-line of arguments, but was a bit disappointed.

You need to troll more.

Re:RealClimate has a big reply on this

[jameskojiro]

Ok here is a posit....

Vikings build villages in Greenland 1,000 years ago. Those same villages got covered in ice and snow 900 years ago and the viking left cause it was cold as heck, nothing would grow and their animals starved.

Viking villages are just now being exposed that were buried under ice 1,000 years ago in Greenland.

So it is warmer now than when vikings were settling Greenland?????

It is like a robot having a dream and seeing the number 2.....

Re:RealClimate has a big reply on this

[MrHanky]

There's only one tiny little problem with your theory: the people at the top of your pyramid have no power whatsoever. Carbon emissions are steadily increasing. The flow of the control of money goes through -- guess whom! No, not the environmentalists, but the energy sector. Control and power? You're barking up the wrong tree.

Re:

[i kan reed]

Good god, who mods you people up. Here's an interesting thing about global warming research. Whether a scientist's discoveries support or debunk global warming hypotheses, they still get the same amount of grant money. "The money" would only influence the topics a researcher would pick to study, not their results, unless there was some specific expectation for what they get. This. Is. Crazy. Can you not see in your own post that you're claiming a massive global conspiracy and not even ascribing a sour

Re:RealClimate has a big reply on this

[Brickwall]

Whether a scientist's discoveries support or debunk global warming hypotheses, they still get the same amount of grant money.

Good God, who made you up? Grant money flows to scientists whose results are published by respected journals, and cited by other scientists. Apparently, you missed the emails where the following was written:

"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?"

"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.""It results from this journal having a number of editors. The responsible one for this is a well-known skeptic in NZ. He has let a few papers through by Michaels and Gray in the past. I've had words with Hans von Storch about this, but got nowhere. Another thing to discuss in Nice !"

Yes, this sounds like the scientific method at its best - try to shut up and demean anyone who disagrees with you, ensure that they aren't published or cited, and hence are shut out of the grant money gravy train. Meanwhile, hide your data from public view, and privately chat about how you manipulated it.

I'm no authority on whether AGW exists or doesn't, but the actions of those who claim it is true certainly don't fill me with any confidence.

Re:RealClimate has a big reply on this

[Xyrus]

And did you even bother to read the thread about WHY they did this?

One editor in particular, was pressuring several others into allowing shitastic research papers into the publication. The papers were terribly done, used questionable data, had specious conclusions, and overall should not have been allowed in any scientific publication. In other words, despite the peer reviewers and others saying they were crap, they got published anyway. This lead to 6 editors resigning over the publication of these shoddy examples of scientific research.

The point of a peer-reviewed journal is that it's peer reviewed. When others start making decisions what should be published or not IN SPITE OF WHAT THE PEER-REVIEWERS SAY, then contributing or citing other research from said publication becomes, at best dubious.

Context people. You can't read one paragraph or on email and get the whole picture. Not to mention that we don't have the whole story, only what the hacker wants you to see. And of that, we have no idea what parts are real or doctored.

~X~

Re:Some Funny Things About This Event

[eln]

You're missing the most important part of all of this, as revealed in this quote from the emails:

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 !!

These guys are taking advice from McKittrick! That guy almost started World War III back in 1983 because some kid hacked into the WOPR and decided to play a game with it! Do we really want this guy influencing our global climate change policy?

Re:Some Funny Things About This Event

[phantomfive]

This wouldn't have been a problem at all if the climate researchers had released their data in the first place. Then we wouldn't care what their emails said, we could look right at their data. Instead they are being secretive, which obviously is bad science.

Even if the emails say horrible things, it really doesn't help us much to find out about the truth.....these leaks will only help us if it helps us get access to the data.

Re:Some Funny Things About This Event

[phoenix321]

Scientists proving doom from data they claim to have while they only provide the results, but swear they are correct.

How is this different from

Shamans proving doom from reading bones they claim to do while they only provide the results.

Are we back in the stone age yet? Which noob reset the server, dammit?

Re:Some Funny Things About This Event

[pilgrim23]

regards this file. it is 61.9 mb zipped. 157mb when unzipped. the letters are indeed damning but the *.pro files in the FOIA/documents/osborn-tree* folder(s) are even more so. Open these with a reader like text-edit, pico, or notepad and spend some time scanning the db comments. These are TRULY damning! If you can explain how decades of data are skipped to "smooth" results, how "averaging" is determined in other areas... I am not qualified to comment on this research but I can certainly look at code. I smell a rat here.

Re:Some Funny Things About This Event

[CannonballHead]

The climate change denialists are a coalition of christian fundamentalist young earth creationists who see science as a threat to their religious beliefs, and tobacco companies who see science as a threat to their business plan. I think it is very likely that they would be motivated enough to create 61MB of hoax documents to further their cause

Comments like these bug me. Allow me to wax non-eloquent.

1. Denialists: Apparently, denying "climate change" is now a belief system and not founded on any real evidence. Of course, you may define "climate change" differently, but in the mass media and most people's minds, it appears to be taken to refer to human induced climate change. Nobody is sponsoring "climate change" legislation to put caps on volcanic eruption emissions. So, what are all the non-Christian-fundamentalist-young-earth-creationist's agendas do deny climate change even though they have apparently no evidence and are in the "faith based" grouping?
2. Christian fundamentalist ... create ... hoax: Apparently, these Christian fundamentalists believe so strongly in their Bible that they are willing to lie to protect it. So much for being truthful, not bearing false witness, telling the truth, not lying, telling the truth ... did I mention truth? The Bible is extremely clear that truth is important. I don't know what Christians you've come into contact, but if you think they're willing to lie, then you've met some very bad people that are completely dragging the name of the God of the Bible through the mud. And you don't care, you apparently just want to go along with it as though they represent Christian fundamentalist young earth creationists all over the world. (by the way, I know some liberal atheist evolutionists that lie through their teeth, I guess all of them do!)
3. ... see science as a threat to their religious beliefs: Perhaps in practice you see that they do because they disagree with some science; however, the way you put it makes it sound like it's logically impossible to have a Christian-fundamentalist-young-earth-creationist scientist. It's not. They exist. What's more, there are arguments and books about how their worldview is more consistent than an atheists. But that aside, most Christians that I know do not hold science to be a threat to their religious beliefs any more than they hold atheism to be a threat to their religious beliefs. If they think that any ... human "system" (whether good or bad) is a threat to their "religious beliefs," then they have their priorities wrong and are not "Christian fundamentalist." At least, not the ones I know. The Bible is quite clear about man-made vs. God-made systems and who will win. If they don't believe that, then they are just another religious group... and are not really Christians - or at least, not really Biblical. More of a cultic man-following man-pleasing group. And I'm not sure how many of them are young-earth creationists, as that tends to be a very Bible-centered/Bible-focused belief... and seems to not typically coincide with completely going against other parts of the Bible. Unless you get into some of the cults... but then they add so much to the Bible anyway...

I could go on talking about it, but that's enough. As for tobacco companies, I wouldn't know.

And by the way... what do you think about Al Gore (and the rest)? He seems to be doing ok with his business plan. Or do you think that "corruption" is only on one side of this debate? That if you believe that humans are causing global warming you are obviously free from corruption ... and hypocrisy and greed and ... ?

Re:Some Funny Things About This Event

[smoker2]

There have been many such papers, but the committee in charge (IPCC ?)has repeatedly decided not to submit these papers to its members for review. Hardly unbiased behaviour.

Re:Some Funny Things About This Event

[Daniel Dvorkin]

A skeptic is someone who is dubious, but willing to be convinced by sufficient evidence.

A denialist is someone whose mind is made up, and will never be convinced by any amount of evidence.

There isn't much skepticism about anthropogenic climate change these days, but there's a hell of a lot of denial.

Re:

[Daniel Dvorkin]

If you object to my definitions, please feel free to offer your own. Or do you genuinely not recognize the difference between skepticism and denial?

My grasp of science is based on being a scientist. Yours, I suspect, is based on whatever garbage Bill O'Reilly and Glenn Beck spoonfeed into your otherwise empty brain.

Utter bullshit.

[EWAdams]

Reading random chunks of leaked data and E-mail is not the way science is done, nor policy made.

Let's see ALL the data, and let's not see the E-mail at all -- E-mail isn't data.

Otherwise, STFU, this isn't helping anything.

Re:Utter bullshit.

[Rei]

Anyone else reveling in the irony of the hackers cherry-picking data to support their pre-conceived premises? :)

Re:Utter bullshit.

[scorp1us]

Actually, I read many of the emails last night.

Many are bland as hell. There's a few juicy ones, which have already been highlighted. The attitude that came across from reading email after email is that these people beleive they are doing science. They are well intentioned and don't mean to be pushing an agenda. However some of the emails indicated a desire to please governments and the IPCC. It was not as the AGW skeptics would have you believe that these scientists are forcing the policy, rather, it seems they are trying to do science that both pleases the governing bodies while still remains science.

But I think there should be no consideration of what pleases whomever. It should just report the facts. But that's hard to do when you're funded by them.

Re:

[blueg3]

It's called being a scientist -- giving funding agencies information they're interested in while not misrepresenting the facts (and hopefully not giving them the tools to easily misrepresent the facts) is challenging and a little ugly. It's fairly easy if you assume the agency doesn't desire a particular answer. Most scientists know better than that, though.

Re:Utter bullshit.

[MozeeToby]

Email isn't science but that doesn't mean it isn't interesting. If the email says "Hey Bob, your algorithm didn't produce the level of warming we were expecting, we need you to rework it so it is in line with our expectations" that would say a lot about how the 'science' is being done. Furthermore, random chunks of data isn't science, but it does have the possibility of revealing any number of things, anything from numbers not matching what is published to problems with software to inconsistent data.

I'm not saying that is what the leaked information says, nor am I saying that the leak is real; there isn't enough information to know that yet. But your instant dismissal of this because it isn't every piece of data ever collected is a little disconcerting in my opinion.

They flipped Finnish data upside down

[Vuojo]

There was a documentary about climate change hoax on Finnish YLE channel (it's like BBC of Finland) couple of weeks ago. It basically told that the climate data collected from Finland was turned upside down so that it would show warming instead of cooling etc. People who understand Finnish can check it out from Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gmJiZfyDPE [youtube.com] People who don't understand Finnish can just check these few seconds where they show how they flipped Finnish data: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=suySkDny-zk#t=7m00s [youtube.com]

Re:Utter bullshit.

[Rary]

If the email says "Hey Bob, your algorithm didn't produce the level of warming we were expecting, we need you to rework it so it is in line with our expectations" that would say a lot about how the 'science' is being done.

What if the person sending the email to Bob is someone testing Bob's algorithm in a controlled test scenario where the outcome is already known, and therefore the algorithm not meeting expectations actually means that the algorithm is wrong and needs to be reworked? Then the quote wouldn't be quite the smoking gun, would it?

That's why context is essential.

Re:Utter bullshit.

[Sir_Lewk]

Believe it or not (I know you won't) but not everyone who disagrees with you is on some big oil company's payroll. You are just as bad a conspiracy theorist as anyone else here.

Re:Utter bullshit.

[students]

I heard a talk by an executive at one of Exxon's research branches two years ago. They believe in global warming, and they support cap and trade legislation. They want the government to force all the oil companies to cut carbon emissions. They won't do it until the government takes action because then they could not complete in the marketplace. Exxon already has the carbon sequestration technology they need to continue making money from selling oil after cap and trade happens. It is people who do not want to pay more for oil who are the problem, not the oil companies.

Re:Utter bullshit.

[PatHMV]

Part of the problem is that the global warming proponents whose e-mails were hacked have REFUSED to release the data upon which they rely. In fact, the e-mails discovered are chock-full of references to their efforts to fight against any disclosure of much of their data. Other e-mails routinely discuss efforts to manipulate and massage the data to account for various political difficulties the data are causing them. For example, one e-mail discusses using a particular modifier to minimize a warming "blip" in the 1940s, without making the "blip" go away entirely, because it appears in both the sea temp and the land temp data. So you're right, e-mail isn't data. But that cuts both ways, and in this case particularly hard against the global warming fear-mongerers.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Have they refused to release the data at all? Or are they maybe refusing to release it until the project is done. Every experiment has to post progress and updates, but aren't a lot of the methods hidden until the final report is published?

To publish methods and incomplete data can create an alarmist and conspiratorial picture of what's going on without giving people viewing this fragment the whole picture might be dangerous and jeopardize legitimate research. Leaks like this could cause enough PACs and pol

Re:Utter bullshit.

[PatHMV]

Got nothing to do with experiments in progress. Dr. Phil Jones, the head of the organization whose e-mail was hacked, once said [wattsupwiththat.com]:

Even if WMO agrees, I will still not pass on the data. We have 25 or so years 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.

They are hiding behind alleged confidentiality agreements they supposedly have with scientists who, according to them, provided some of the data. But they won't even so much as identify, as best I can tell today, those scientists, so that the data could be requested from them directly. Scientists who refuse to release raw data when serious questions are raised about their conclusions are not real scientists, and their work is entitled to no credibility whatsoever. As for due time, the House has passed an enormous "cap and trade" bill based on the conclusions of the global warming scare crowd... these scientists who refuse to release their data. I've got no problem waiting for more research... so long as we don't enact massive tax increases and other major interference in the economy while we wait. They are the ones demanding immediate action, however, so they have no right to say "let's wait for more data and more research" before releasing the data which they claim supports their fatalistic conclusions.

Data deletion and evading the law - "New Science"

[Dobeln]

They go as far as telling others to delete information that (I reckon) could be incriminating.

"
> 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.
>
> I see that CA claim they discovered the 1945 problem in the Nature
> paper!!"

CA is the principal "climate sceptic" website.

Of course, much effort is also dedicated to avoiding Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests.

"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 !"

And so on.

Of course, they also find time to gloat of the death of "sceptics", etc. etc. All classy stuff.

"Science" indeed.

Re:

[smoker2]

The whole story, and all the research, will come out in due time.

And that's where you're wrong. This will never end, much like the war on terror, because it is based on a lie. If they ever "finished" the project, then they prove themselves to be liars because climate change is an ongoing event. So they will never finish, but to continue they must have public funds and govt support. So we will never see the data released in a relevant and usable format, and a lot of effort put into the political scare machin

Re:Utter bullshit.

[Rockoon]

Let's see ALL the data, and let's not see the E-mail at all -- E-mail isn't data.

You do realize that some of the emails are about hiding data from public view, obstructing freedom of information requests, and campaign to discredit a peer reviewed journal that published something that disagreed with their public stance, right?

If there is one thing I know for sure, its that at least one of the skeptics is entirely open about the data and methodology (with source code, only free tools, etc..) he uses, and he even seeks input from anyone willing to help via his blog. That man is Steve McIntyre.

Publicly funded scientists should be forced to open up their data and methodology, with prison terms for them if they don't. Its time they stopped using public money to boost their own careers while playing fast and loose in their good ol' boy club of like-minded conspirators.

Re:Utter bullshit.

[BobMcD]

Let's see ALL the data, and let's not see the E-mail at all -- E-mail isn't data.

You do realize that some of the emails are about hiding data from public view, obstructing freedom of information requests, and campaign to discredit a peer reviewed journal that published something that disagreed with their public stance, right?

It seems to me that this would be the point of raising the objection. Its a classic double standard. On the one hand we can freely draw conclusions about the nature of the Earth's changes in temperature using a relatively limited set of data. On the other hand we are forbidden to draw conclusions about the content of these emails because we do not have the complete, unmodified, set of data.

They are smart enough to correctly draw conclusions, but no one else may do so.

Classic stuff, there.

Re:

[Ex-MislTech]

Pieces of the truth are still the truth.

I agree we should see all the data.

As for your demanding them to STFU, I think we will stick with the 1st amendment.

Lindzen vindicated

[brian0918]

MIT climatologist Richard Lindzen has long made these claims about global warming researchers, as he discusses in a talk from a few weeks ago: "Cooler Heads [youtube.com]". It looks like he's slowly being vindicated in his views of both the researchers and the conclusions.

Imagine a Beowulf cluster leaks....

[Anonymous Coward]

From HARRY_READ_ME.txt, one of the leaked files.

...This could be a result of my mis-setting of the parameters on Tim's programs (although I have followed his recommendations wherever possible), or it could be a result of Tim using the Beowulf 1 cluster for the f90 work. Beowulf 1 is now integrated in to the latest Beowulf cluster so it may not be practical to test that theory.

What I want to see

[WindBourne]

are the new CO2 emissions files, in particular, what each country emits. Everybody has it up until 2006, but after that, it stops. Why? After 2006 is important information. For starters, a number of western countries have dropped emissions (particularly, America), while others have increased greatly (Canada, Australia, South Korea). The real issue that I would like to see is what BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, and China), along with Mexico, Venezuela, Iran, etc have done.

Re:

[Rockoon]

Well, first off, the world gov are all pushing CO2 emissions as being the big thing.

Of course they are. All economic activity emits CO2. This is the next big power grab, and it will create the largest system of back scratching and kickbacks this world has ever seen... and may ever see. It really and truly doesnt get any bigger than this, folks.

The dog ate it?

[Vinegar Joe]

Is this the same CRU that when asked to release the original raw data used in its climate analysis claimed it had all been lost?

http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2009/08/we-lost-original-data.html [blogspot.com]

Re:The dog ate it?

[pkphilip]

Yes, it is the same CRU. Fact is, they have refused requests to release data by other scientists (not just Steven McIntyre).

This is a good opportunity for someone to step in and demand that the actual data be released. CRU's claim of having lost data is completely untenable.

In the spirit of transparency

[snowwrestler]

I'm sure Anthony Watts and Steve McIntyre are just about to release their own personal e-mail histories as well.

Anthropogenic Causes

[bugnuts]

Many people who doubted AGW (humans causing the hockey stick graph, or the graph itself) are claiming this is some sort of smoking gun. I claim it's scientists being scientists, and failing at being politicians.

The very fact that this reveals some scientists are doubting some results is exactly what should happen in science. This is why there is a consensus [newscientist.com] among scientists. Doubting is a part of science and skeptics alike, but discovering the reasons for the doubt and changing a viewpoint when good, conflicting data are found are hallmarks of the scientist. Skeptics will cling to disproved data, hoping it somehow becomes true if they believe it hard enough.

There is no doubt that the earth is warmer, but mark my words: some idiot media personality will make claims to the contrary due to this. They thrive on confusion, and there's nothing more confusing (and humorous) than watching scientists wrestle with politics.

Re:Anthropogenic Causes

[brandaman]

Is Richard S. Lindzen of the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at MIT an idiot media personality?
http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=3771 [climaterealists.com]

Also: "The global surface temperature record, which we update and publish every month, has shown no statistically-significant “global warming” for almost 15 years. Statistically-significant global cooling has now persisted for very nearly eight years. Even a strong el Nino – expected in the coming months – will be unlikely to reverse the cooling trend. More significantly, the ARGO bathythermographs deployed throughout the world’s oceans since 2003 show that the top 400 fathoms of the oceans, where it is agreed between all parties that at least 80% of all heat caused by manmade “global warming” must accumulate, have been cooling over the past six years. That now prolonged ocean cooling is fatal to the “official” theory that “global warming” will happen on anything other than a minute scale. "
- SPPI Monthly CO2 Report: July 2009
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/originals/co2_report_july_09.pdf [scienceand...policy.org]

Re:

[sexconker]

The very fact that this reveals some scientists are doubting some results is exactly what should happen in science.

No, this reveals that some "scientists" are disappointed with the results and are actively withholding data and actively altering what data they do reveal in an effort to support the conclusion they want.

There is no doubt that the earth is warmer

I doubt this. Warmer than what?
Seems to me the earth was much warmer in the past and was plenty hospitable to various manners of life and has gone through more extreme changes on it's own accord, before humans even came into the picture.

The earth's climate is changing, as it tends to do.
Humans are not affe

Not the doubting...

[Dobeln]

...but the data deletion conspiracies, the conspiring to disrupt the peer review process in various clever ways, the knowing avoidance of Freedom of Information Act Requests, the slurs against "sceptics", including celebrating their deaths, and so on.

And that's just from the emails I have read so far.

"Doubting" indeed. And these assholes have had the nerve to indignantly drape themselves in the flag of science.

Nothing to see here, move on

[JoeBuck]

I review papers for technical conferences. I regularly try to keep papers out of the publications. It's a necessary part of the job, because the acceptance rate is typically 25%, and because most of the papers are junk. Scientific publications are not free speech platforms; to be published, an article has to meet the standards and it has to advance the state of the art of the field.

The bar for skeptics is always going to be higher. Otherwise we'd have to rewrite the chemistry textbooks every time some student messes up his lab assignment, because this will produce data that contradicts the theory.

Re:Nothing to see here, move on

[Dobeln]

They aren't discussing the merits of papers. They are trying to get people (journal editors) fired, based on their perceived loyalty (or lack thereof) to 'the cause'.

Of course, that is when they aren't deleting data in order to prevent if from falling into the wrong hands, or conspiring to avoid the law in order to keep their data under wraps. Data that has now sadly been lost forever in a mysterious accidental deletion.

Or celebrating the deaths of "sceptics" (clearly these people are a bunch of dispassionate scientists).

And so on.

If this is Science as Usual (TM), then Science needs serious reform.

Re:

[blueg3]

Are you really telling us that you reject papers only because they contain data that does not fit the prevailing theory?

He's not, but this is a good example of how you can woefully misinterpret honestly-made statements.

What he's saying is that research that claims that well-tested, well-accepted principles are false is held up to a higher level of scrutiny than research that doesn't. This is only natural: if your research shows results that disagree with the results of multiple earlier studies, it is more likely that you have made a mistake than that the multiple studies have. If further scrutiny indicates that your research

secrecy and data hiding

[zerosomething]

The primary issue is that most climate science has not truly been scrutinize and reviewed. I've been reading the files and it's very damming. It's almost as bad as cold fusion. For example. In note 1075403821.txt Timo Hmeranta states.

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.

So they are going to hide behind Intelectual Property Rights to keep their data from being reviewed!. Holy Fucking Shit! How can science do that and still remain respectable?

Re:

[Anarchduke]

Science and IPR are joined at the hip. The entire world economy is tied into science based IPR. Healthcare, electronics, space exploration, agriculture, etc. Every single area of science is tied up with IPR. How many scientists have done significant research and not patented their discoveries. So yeah, they can use IPR because its standard practice. Even in academia, patent licensing has made some Universities fat and happy.

0880476729.txt is interesting:

[inviolet]

[...header information omitted...]
Subject: Re: ATTENTION. Invitation to influence Kyoto.
Date: Tue, 25 Nov 1997 11:52:09 -0700 (MST)

Dear Eleven,

I was very disturbed by your recent letter, and your attempt to get
others to endorse it. Not only do I disagree with the content of
this letter, but I also believe that you have severely distorted the
IPCC "view" when you say that "the latest IPCC assessment makes a
convincing economic case for immediate control of emissions." In contrast
to the one-sided opinion expressed in your letter, IPCC WGIII SAR and TP3
review the literature and the issues in a balanced way presenting
arguments in support of both "immediate control" and the spectrum of more
cost-effective options. It is not IPCC's role to make "convincing cases"
for any particular policy option; nor does it. However, most IPCC readers
would draw the conclusion that the balance of economic evidence favors the
emissions trajectories given in the WRE paper. This is contrary to your
statement.

This is a complex issue, and your misrepresentation of it does you a
dis-service. To someone like me, who knows the science, it is
apparent that you are presenting a personal view, not an informed,
balanced scientific assessment. What is unfortunate is that this will not
be apparent to the vast majority of scientists you have contacted. In
issues like this, scientists have an added responsibility to keep their
personal views separate from the science, and to make it clear to others
when they diverge from the objectivity they (hopefully) adhere to in their
scientific research. I think you have failed to do this.

[...]

more manipulated data

[night_flyer]

kinda hard to get a good reading of the temperature, when stations are placed next to parking lots, AC vents and other heat generating sources

http://www.norcalblogs.com/watts/weather_stations/ [norcalblogs.com]

and what happened to the Ice Age they were trying to scare us with in the 80s?

The shame of it

[idontgno]

isn't that these files and this correspondence got hacked.

The shame of it is that hacking was necessary at all.

Transparency, People. We're debating public policy and making decisions for the benefit of all Mankind. Credibility is only hindered by opacity and closed data.

You don't have to hack to get information

[BitHive]

If you think climate science is important and want to know more about it maybe you should spend some time GOING TO FUCKING SCHOOL.

This does not falsify AGW

[freejung]

The important thing to note about this story is that, even if it's all true and all of the emails are genuine, and even if it completely discredits every scientist involved and all of the work they've ever done, this does not falsify AGW theory.

The great thing about a robust scientific theory is that it's not dependent on any one line of evidence or the work of any particular individual or group. Most of the research this calls into question are proxy studies of the temperature over the last couple of millennia. This is only one of many lines of evidence supporting AGW, and it is not the primary line of evidence.

Even if you throw out every piece of research done by every scientist mentioned in this data, there will still be plenty of evidence to show that global warming is real and created by human activity.

So ultimately this is a tempest in a teacup. The deniers will make a huge deal about it, and it may have an impact on public opinion, but it will have very close to zero impact on actual science.

Another good writeup

[Eukariote]

Another good writeup on the leaked emails can be found here [telegraph.co.uk]. Summary: manipulation of evidence, private doubts about whether the world really is heating up, suppression of evidence, fantasies of violence against prominent Climate Sceptic scientists, attempts to disguise the inconvenient truth of the Medieval Warm Period , and communications discussing how best to squeeze dissenting scientists out of the peer review process.

My heart goes out to those researchers.

[inhuman_4]

I feel really bad for these researchers.

I have published only a few papers and would be mortified if my emails got released to the public. I am constantly joking around with other lab denizens about fudging stuff, and removing data that doesn't fit the expectations. The opportunity for out of context quotations is scary to contemplate. Not to mention all of the politically incorrect jokes about such-and-such a graph's sexual orientation.

If one of these guys said anything like that over the years of emails in this dump, they are in some deep shit for nothing. Image someone going through all of the comments for all of the code you have ever written just looking for any tiny detail to prove you're a hack.

"just added one to this variable now it works" = screwed.
"need to go back and fix this" = screwed.
"not sure why this works but it does" = screwed.
"Bob is an idiot, I am just going to comment out his code" = screwed.

Like Cardinal Richelieu said:
“If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him”

Right or wrong, these guys are gonna get the shaft.

Re:

[rotide]

While I don't totally disagree with you in principle, is "stolen" data still considered "stolen" if it is posted to Wiki Leaks and linked from there?

Basically, if this data set was pushed to Wiki Leaks first and SD linked to their version, would you have posted in protest?

Leaked data is leaked data is leaked data.

Re:

[Jhon]

But it's OK for slashdot to publish stores re: Sarah Palin's [slashdot.org] email getting hacked -- and linked to "what is, according to the story, STOLEN DATA", as you say.

I think it's all news worthy. Don't you?

Re:Scepticism is universal

[oldspewey]

Yup, Earth's climate has been changing for billions of years and will continue to do so. What Earth hasn't been doing for billions of years is supporting a single species who's civilization utterly depends on stable crop yields, stable weather patterns, and a stable climate. If humans go ahead and alter atmospheric chemistry enough to reduce rainfall and crop yields by 20% across several major agricultural regions, the Earth will be just fine with that. The atmosphere and climate have been changing for millenia. You know who won't be fine with it though?

Us.

As a species humans already appropriate well over half the productive ecological capacity on this planet (estimates I've seen range to as high as 90%), so anything we do to appreciably diminish that ecological capacity will hit one species particularly hard.

Us.

Earth, however, will soldier on, whether with a human population of around 10 billion, a dramatically reduced human population, or no human population at all.

Re:

[Ex-MislTech]

This is funny and telling because the "movement" even started calling it climate change instead of global warming
once the temps started to drop.

I assume CO2 caused the massive decrease in sunspots and the record breaking cold temps.

Re:

[Ex-MislTech]

Tis a thing of beauty, one of the founders of green peace even said
that green movement had been hijacked by disaffected communists
as a tool to further their agenda.

You can see it in things like Agenda 21 as well, And the Georgia Guidestones.

They do not even try to hide it.

Re:Oh, yes, this is the conspiracy of all time

[CannonballHead]

You sound like you're arguing from information given to you by Al Gore. I'm not sure he's a trustworth source.

Since I think the Polar Bear thing is particularly funny (I think a lot of teen girls think they are so cute, in spite of the fact that they are apparently some of the most aggressive and violent bears), this is certainly not Fox News [ncpa.org]. nor are these folks. [telegraph.co.uk] But with proof like simply SEEING them so far off shore and presuming global warming is the reason, [sciencedaily.com] it's so obvious that any criticism must be wrong! I guess since the food that Polar Bears eat - like seals - are remaining completely stationary while the snow/ice presumably recedes. I've seen reports that polar bears can swim anywhere from 60 to 100s of miles, so apparently they aren't completely sure.

To me, the Polar Bear thing is a good example of someone seeing something and it getting blown completely out of proportion and people like Al Gore picking up on it and trying to use it for their own gain. Al Gore does not appear to be struggling financially.

Incidentally, from here [reason.com]:

Gore shows an animation of a polar bear (very reminiscent of the Coca Cola bears) swimming pitifully in the sea trying to haul itself up onto the last piece of ice floating in the Arctic Ocean. In 2002, the World Wildlife Fund issued a report warning that global warming was endangering polar bears. Arctic sea ice is thawing sooner and this means that the bears who hunt seals on the ice have fewer opportunities to feed themselves. This week saw an alarming report that hungry polar bears are turning cannibal. Yet, the WWF report itself found that most bear populations are either stable or increasing (see page 9 of the report). And remember, polar bears evidently survived when Arctic temperatures were warmer 6000 years ago. Of course, if predictions that the entire Arctic Ocean will be ice free in 100 year turn out to be right, then the polar bears will have a problem.

(emphasis mine)

That "ice free" bit was a link to "sciencedaily.com."

Zero chance

[WindBourne]

That crap has been out for ages, and nearly all on the list have been proved to be idiots, not involved with climate research, and in a number of cases, not even scientists.

Re:

[WindBourne]

Have they been caught red handed? Probably. They have certainly been caught obstructing freedom of information requests (with a group of them emailing each other making sure they ALL deleted their shit.) Will this matter? Probably not. Politicians don't give a shit whats true and whats not. Global Warming is a chance to regulate everybody on the planet.
Actually, if we are lucky, this will change things. I would like to see far far more openness about this issue. The world needs to see not just what is goi

Re:Why is climate science being politicized?

[CannonballHead]

Hm. Who did An Inconvenient Truth again? Who is pushing for "climate change" legislation? The hype and sensationalism is the fault of conservatives?

Re:Why is climate science being politicized?

[Wonko the Sane]

And with this, liberals have a hard time soaking the rich

You mean soaking the middle class.

The rich will stay rich because they will be collecting transaction fees from the climate exchanges as well as tax credits for green buisnesses.

The poor will be taken care of via transfer payments.

The middle class will pay for all of it.

Re:

[CptPicard]

Follow slashdot for a sufficient amount of time and you will see that whatever is "commonly accepted wisdom" is countered here by the kids who like to think they're smarter than everyone else and that they can see through the conspiracy -- although admittedly IIRC the Iraq War was pretty popular around 2002-03. It is a fairly typical right wing political reaction to just resist everything everyone else seems to be accepting in particular if it requires some sort of collective action, even if it actually was

Re:A new low for the slashdot anti-intellectualism

[jnaujok]

Well, I think the big thing that this data-dump shows is that it's actually a small group of tightly knit e-mail connected individuals that are driving a whole lot of the AGW effort.

Someone else wrote that this is all Exxon Astroturfing going on to make us knock out Copenhagen. In other words, arguing that a global conspiracy of oil-company funded individuals, like a meterologist in California and a retired statistician are all on payroll along with hackers in Russia, and new posters on SlashDot, are all working to convince us of a global conspiracy to promote AGW... These people are somehow secretly communicating behind the scenes, transferring billions of dollars of off-the-books money to individuals, all without anyone being able to point to a money trail.

On the other side, we have three groups, CRU, Mann/RealClimate and GISS, who have been clearly communicating and using their supposedly "neutral" Web Site (RealClimate) to promote one-sided views of the science, and apparently "fudge" the data until it matches their theory. These people openly receive grants of hundreds of millions of dollars every year, and have access to governments, prime ministers, and corporations, all of whose funding depends on perpetuating and establishing AGW as *the* science.

So, you'd have to believe it was all a big plan to release data on a minor Russian FTP site, found by accident on a blog almost no one reads, and then forwarded to a blog that *is* read often, in an un-threaded discussion while the site owner is on a trip overseas. This well coordinated group then uses these actual emails (admitted as valid and real by Phil Jones, head of CRU) to somehow concoct a story that a small group of climate scientists are colluding to support a theory by ignoring the facts, by using their own words to that effect.

On the one hand, you have individuals scanning through, admittedly, purloined emails and saying, "Whoa! What's going on here." Opposite that, you have the post on RealClimate today saying, "Move along, nothing to see here!" Some of those emails involve apparent schemes to transfer US funds overseas to avoid taxation. That alone is "something to see," despite what RealClimate is saying. And that's ignoring whether the science was done according to any standards of ethics.

We're talking millions of dollars in budgets from publicly funded programs. If there's even a hint of malfeasance in these documents, then a serious investigation should be started. I don't care which side is the global conspiracy. Only one side is spending *my money* to perpetrate it. The oil companies can spend however many trillion dollars they want without it coming out of *my* pocket.

You make it sound like there's only one campaign

[Quila]

You forget the massive PR campaign being waged on the side of the GW proponents.

Al Gore's been running around publicizing his new book in advance of Copenhagen.

You know, that book with the massive scientific impossibilities in the picture of what the Earth would look like due to GW.

Re:simple theory

[presidenteloco]

Here are two really simple theories:

1. Sun heats Earth with radiation in many wavelengths. Lots of optical-band + ultraviolet.
2. Solar radiation interacts with matter on Earth and heats Earth.
3. Some of the heat re-radiates upwards away from Earth, but much of the radiation is now in
the lower energy infrared band, since some energy has gone into heating Earth.
4. CO2, methane etc molecules in atmosphere reflect infrared radiation back down to Earth, heating Earth more.
5. Humans are pumping lots of carbon out

Re:

[Rockoon]

For your theory #1, the current data doesn't fit. Its been cooling for a decade and there is even an email about it with one of those guys asking the other what they should do about the current evidence, with a hint that the instrumental record (direct observations!) must be wrong.

Thats how deeply they feel about maintaining their position. They have real data, direct observations of temperature, that disagrees with their theory and their thinking is that the direct observations must be wrong... but all t

Re:simple theory

[Burnhard]

1. Sun heats Earth with radiation in many wavelengths. Lots of optical-band + ultraviolet. 2. Solar radiation interacts with matter on Earth and heats Earth. 3. Some of the heat re-radiates upwards away from Earth, but much of the radiation is now in the lower energy infrared band, since some energy has gone into heating Earth. 4. CO2, methane etc molecules in atmosphere reflect infrared radiation back down to Earth, heating Earth more. 5. Humans are pumping lots of carbon out of the ground, and burning forests that store carbon. This carbon is being released into atmosphere as CO2, methane etc. Increasing CO2, methane etc concentrations in atmosphere (concentration of these molecules in atmosphere is roughly doubled so far compared to recent thousands /10s of thousands of years.) 6. So there is now net heating of the Earth, due to this excess trapping of Infrared radiation by reflection.

Theory 3, the Earth warms, the heat is radiated back out into space. The warmer it gets, the more heat is radiated back into space. Some evidence, for example Lindzen and Choi [leif.org], for low climate sensitivity:

Climate feedbacks are estimated from fluctuations in the outgoing radiation budget from the latest version of Earth Radiation Budget Experiment (ERBE) nonscanner data. It appears, for the entire tropics, the observed outgoing radiation fluxes increase with the increase in sea surface temperatures (SSTs). The observed behavior of radiation fluxes implies negative feedback processes associated with relatively low climate sensitivity. This is the opposite of the behavior of 11 atmospheric models forced by the same SSTs. Therefore, the models display much higher climate sensitivity than is inferred from ERBE, though it is difficult to pin down such high sensitivities with any precision. Results also show, the feedback in ERBE is mostly from shortwave radiation while the feedback in the models is mostly from longwave radiation. Although such a test does not distinguish the mechanisms, this is important since the inconsistency of climate feedbacks constitutes a very fundamental problem in climate prediction.