Climatic Research Unit Hacked, Files Leaked 882
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."
Re:I would just like to point out.... (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
What I want to see (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:RealClimate has a big reply on this (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
The Grays clearly used their orbital mind control lasers and a few applications of chemtrails to hide that evidence.
More seriously, why is absence of the more delusional theories considered "more interesting" than signs of unscientific bias and exclusion of certain rival research?
Re:Utter bullshit. (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:Utter bullshit. (Score:3, Interesting)
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 politicians to attempt to shut down the group before any concrete conclusions are released, and destroy an opportunity to finish the research and figure out what's really going on.
I'd dial back the paranoia a little bit, if I were you. The whole story, and all the research, will come out in due time. Let's not jump to conclusions based on half-truths and distorted views of a single piece of the puzzle.
Re:I would just like to point out.... (Score:1, Interesting)
Yes, as long as it fits the Agenda of the Agenda 21 crowd then we must supress
what woul harm the movement to help Agenda 21 happen.
LOL
Bunch of genocidal globalist scum.
Google the georgia guidestones, limits to growth, club of rome ( gore is a member ),
CFR, bilderberg, and you will start to understand what is going on behind closed doors.
If you will not admit the bilderberg meetings are going on,
and US officials attend in violation of the logan act then you are an IDIOT.
Re:Why is climate science being politicized? (Score:2, Interesting)
It is actually pretty simple. There are very popular economic theories that indicate that you control the flow of money by controlling what people are afraid of. Climate science would be a much smaller field with a lot less attention, money for grants and political debates if it wasn't sensationalized.
Also, look at how scientific data (data obstensibly gained through competent scientists following the scientific methods we learned in high school) winds up being consumed by the public. Being able to say you are green is a huge factor in marketing consumer products, without any regulations to explain exactly how your product impacts the climate less.
The real truth of the matter is that climatologists actually understand very little and are operating off modeling systems that can't track all factors and do not accurate predict results. I have yet to hear of a computer model that can take data from the 80s and accurately roll it forward to mirror today's climate.
0880476729.txt is interesting: (Score:5, Interesting)
[...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 (Score:3, Interesting)
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?
Re:RealClimate has a big reply on this (Score:5, Interesting)
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:
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.
illuminati damage control (Score:1, Interesting)
here it comes!
"it was taken out of context!"
"this is utter bullshit!, random emails showing it's a hoax is not how science is done!"
"61 megs of data was cooked up and hoaxed!"
You global warming shills better get to work because you are out of a career now.
Re:RealClimate has a big reply on this (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:RealClimate has a big reply on this (Score:1, Interesting)
"no evidence of the falsifying of data"
Oh really??
This writeup has been lifted from: http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100017393/climategate-the-final-nail-in-the-coffin-of-anthropogenic-global-warming/
Granted it's a biased source but they are actual excerpts from the email posting.
-----------------------
Manipulation of evidence:
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.
Private doubts about whether the world really is heating up:
The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t. The CERES data published in the August BAMS 09 supplement on 2008 shows there should be even more warming: but the data are surely wrong. Our observing system is inadequate.
Suppression of evidence:
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.
Fantasies of violence against prominent Climate Sceptic scientists:
Next
time I see Pat Michaels at a scientific meeting, I’ll be tempted to beat
the crap out of him. Very tempted.
Attempts to disguise the inconvenient truth of the Medieval Warm Period (MWP):
Phil and I have recently submitted a paper using about a dozen NH records that fit this category, and many of which are available nearly 2K back–I think that trying to adopt a timeframe of 2K, rather than the usual 1K, addresses a good earlier point that Peck made w/ regard to the memo, that it would be nice to try to “contain” the putative “MWP”, even if we don’t yet have a hemispheric mean reconstruction available that far back.
And, perhaps most reprehensibly, a long series of communications discussing how best to squeeze dissenting scientists out of the peer review process. How, in other words, to create a scientific climate in which anyone who disagrees with AGW can be written off as a crank, whose views do not have a scrap of authority.
“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 boardWhat 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 !”
Re:Utter bullshit. (Score:1, Interesting)
What irony? Did you read the emails? Blending in data from two sources to support their ALREADY established conclusions? Or the ones about hiding blips in data?
Much like the UN/IPCC hockey stick graph which was totally based on a dozen hand picked trees. All it takes is some light to be shed on the inner workings of the "no debate needed" Global Warming "scientists" to start them scurrying like cockroaches.
This leak does more good in opening up debate than the CRU did by falsifying data. Based on your response, I guess you are against Scientific debate and openness? Seeing as that is the only logical outcome of this leak.
Re:secrecy and data hiding (Score:3, Interesting)
Not the doubting... (Score:5, Interesting)
...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.
Re:Some Funny Things About This Event (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Utter bullshit. (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
This does not falsify AGW (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:Some Funny Things About This Event (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Utter bullshit. (Score:3, Interesting)
That blog with discussion on this story posted an update from that McIntyre saying "Earlier today, CRU cancelled all existing passwords. Actions speaking loudly.". What kind of impartial, sceptical scientist peddles that sort of innuendo? CRU have clearly experienced a major breach in their security, resetting all passwords is hopefully just the first step they're going to take to secure their network.
No wonder there's a CRU email where somebody commented they'd rather destroy all their data than release it to McIntyre. I have no idea who's who in the climate change denier world but simply from what I've read of his comments around this incident, he sounds like a kook.
Re:Utter bullshit. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:RealClimate has a big reply on this (Score:3, Interesting)
A physicist can't point at a some squiggle in a particle accelerator and say "that's the gravity particle"
That's precisely what one of the experiments at the LHC is.
Re:Utter bullshit. (Score:4, Interesting)
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:RealClimate has a big reply on this (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes, and following that, legitimate climate scientists would have a pro-climate bias. Not a pro-warming, pro-cooling, or pro-stable climate change bias. Because science is about data confirmed by successful predictions of theory, and AGW is presently very weak in this area.
Gravity - lots of theory, so lots of ways to predict, lots of uses of those predictions in tests, solid confirmation of the predictions in turn, hence lots of validations of the theory. Hence, gravity is data rich, massively (ha) uniform in its result WRT the predictions of theory, and recognition of that data is widespread. Round earth, same thing - lots of theory, lots of predictions, lots of confirmation, hence, we acknowledge the data. Orbit around the sun, exactly the same thing.
AGW, however, is very far from settled science, and it is disingenuous to compare it to the things you do here. Some predictions have been made. Of those, some have failed (for instance, the current stall/reversal contradicts the models [spiegel.de]); some predictions have yet to come into the time when the prediction can be tested (will the seas rise the way they're predicted? Will temperatures go up as predicted? Would reducing CO2 counter this?) and finally, at least in the public eye, some of the rationales underlying AGW are really very weak, such as the claim that CO2 rising in the past has driven warming, when in fact if one simply looks at the historical graphs of temperature vs. CO2, the very first thing that leaps out at an interested observer is that CO2 spikes occur in the cooling phase subsequent to warming periods, rather than prior to, or coincident with, the actual warming.
AGW is not theory based on past cycles in history we can look at and simply say, "Oh, that's how it always goes." It is new theory, based on new conditions that are now coming into effect for the first time, and it is theory about events that take input from all manner of areas: solar, geological, atmospheric, pollution, plant activity, ocean behavior, CO2 reserves, hydrological issues, the evap/precip engines, and a lot more. The failure of the models to predict near term behavior is something to warm the heart of any interested scientist, because it means there's more research to be done, more to learn, etc. It doesn't mean AGW is wrong or right, it just means the science is inadequate to the task of producing accurate predictions, thus far.
But it does mean that AGW isn't in the same class with gravity, orbits, and the objective fact of our favorite oblate spheroid at this point in time.
Re:Utter bullshit. (Score:3, Interesting)
The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't. The CERES data published in the August BAMS 09 supplement on 2008 shows there should be even more warming: but the data are surely wrong.
Riiiiiight.. if the data don't fit your preconceived notion of what they should be, obviously the data are wrong. No chance that your hypothesis is incorrect; no possibility that your theory doesn't reflect reality. It's the data. I mean, that's what I learned when they taught me the scientific method.
Re:RealClimate has a big reply on this (Score:2, Interesting)
An economist is in a plane high above the pacific when the engines explode and it begins to plummet into the ocean. Everyone starts screaming and running around the aircraft in a panic. But not the economist, he just sits there calmly, watching the water grow bigger in his window.
After a few seconds one of the stewardesses notices and asks him.
"Aren't you afraid?"
"Of course not," he replies. "I'll survive."
"Really," the young woman says. "How?"
"Well," the old sage answers. "The demand for parachutes has just jumped. All I have to do is wait for some entrepreneur to open up a parachute shop and we'll all be saved."
Random my arse! (Score:3, Interesting)
"Give me six lines written by the most honorable of men, and I will find an excuse in them to hang him."
Cardinal Richelieu
Re:RealClimate has a big reply on this (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Comment removed (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:They flipped Finnish data upside down (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't speak Finnish, but based on the graphs themselves and the English transcript, this is a perfect example of how wrong the denialists are.
If you have something like a graph of cloud cover with 0% percent at the bottom and 100% at the top, and you are looking at something like how much sunlight reaches the ground, then it is COMPLETELY CORRECT to "flip that graph upside down" putting 100% cloud cover at the bottom and 0% cloud cover at the top. The first graph curves down with increased sunlight. When you flip the graph "upsidedown" it is still COMPLETELY CORRECT, and easier to read curving upwards with increased sunlight reaching the ground.
(1)It is a trivial undisputed fact that we are dumping gigatons of CO2 (and related gases) into the atmosphere.
(2)It is a trivial and undisputed fact that the levels of CO2 (and related gases) have increased dramatically - due to those human emissions.
(3)It is a trivial and undisputed physics that CO2 (and related gases) *do* trap infrared thermal radiation.
1,2,3 case closed. It is a trivial and indisputable fact that the human-caused heat trapping effect is real. Measuring the size of the effect can be challenging, predicting the future size of the effect can be very difficult, predicting the complex secondary results of that effect can be extremely difficult, and there can be ADDITIONAL climate influences occurring in parallel, but it is impossible for any well informed and clearly thinking person to deny the the existence and reality of that effect.
Many denialists are good intelligent sincere people who have been badly misinformed by fanatical denialist activists. "Flipping the graph upside down" was not some mistake, it was not some deception, it was not some conspiracy, it was completely legitimate and completely appropriate. If you have a graph with high temperature at the bottom and low temperature at the top, it is correct and way easier to read if you flip it "upside down".
The climate change denialists in your linked video are IDIOTS. They are so clueless they can't even read a graph, much less grasp the science behind it. They are wildly ideological with a flaming bias, grasping on to deluded shreds of "evidence" that there is some sort of conspiracy going on.
No, there is no grand conspiracy by scientists to hoax the planet. Anyone who considers it to be a reasonable premise needs to take their meds.
-