That's the guy. At the time, Mann refused to release his data and refused to release the methodology behind the creation of the graph. Years later it turned out if you use Gaussian noise for your temperature input you get a graph with the same hockey stick shape.

Right. Same guy. Random number input into his program produced a hockey stick. I downloaded the 61MB zip file and have read most of the emails. Those are damaging in terms of exposing several issues:

1. They manipulated the peer-review process and controlled it to the point of changing what peer-review meant, freezing out contrary authors, reviewing each others' work, getting editors fired, etc. There's a lot of that kind of manipulation revealed.

2. They colluded to avoid the FOIA and deleted emails and threatened to delete data before they would release it under FOIA. This is illegal.

3. They admitted to manipulating data to 'hide the decline' or 'get rid of the Medieval Warming Period.' I don't have a problem with 'trick' being used. No big deal, but 'hide the decline'? Not good.

4. They would manipulate the data by simply not adding it, closing a run on an increase, when the subsequent data showed a decline. They seem dismayed that the last ten years shows an overall redction in temperature, at one point calling it a travesty and suggesting the data must be wrong.

5. Because there were no thermometers 2000 years ago, they use 'proxies' such as tree rings, ice core samples, etc. However, tree ring growth can be caused by wetness and other issues, not just temperature. In ine case they 'proved; warming based on 12 trees in Siberia. When hey went back and measured many more trees, the increase disappeared.

But the more damning evidence is in the programs themselves, including REM statements where 'hide the decline' is found numerous times, data is manually manipulated, and the programs would throw an error and keep on running.

The code, written primarily in FORTAN and IDL, is a mess--not professional. The datasets are often missing or in poor shape. There's one 'Harry Read me' text file where poor Harry is trying to make sense of the code, over several years, and points out many of the flaws.

So what we've got here is email and program code evidence of manipulation, very poor data, and very poor programming.

The thing is, there are only 4 datasets in the world, two terrestrial and two satellite. There are serious problms with both terrestrial data sets. NOAA's, for example, has manually 'adjusted' data over the years as much as 500%! In other words, the observed degree difference was .1 degree C and the 'adjustment' was +.5 degrees C. You'd think the satellite data asets would be more accurate, however, they were 'calibrated' on the 'adjusted' terrestrial data sets.

Remember Gore's CO2 graph? Probably a 95% correlation between CO2 and temperature, which he presented as proof that CO2 CAUSES global warming. Except that the CO2 increased 800 years AFTER the warming trend. In other words, warming CAUSED CO2 increases, the opposite of what he implied.

Phil Jones, the man who just stepped down has received $22.6 million in grants since 1990. [iceagenow.com]

Research has shown [azocleantech.com] that when the Sahara was grassland it was due to a warmer global climate (including more CO2 in the atmosphere).

You're reaction is hilarious because you refuse to look at any facts or allegations. These e-mails show that only a few scientists were corrupt, but they happened to be the ones most influencing policy at the IPCC. The rest of the scientists just flock to grant money and worry about peer pressure.

This in itself has become a major scandal, [telegraph.co.uk] not least Dr Jones's refusal to release the basic data from which the CRU derives its hugely influential temperature record, which culminated last summer in his startling claim that much of the data from all over the world had simply got "lost". Most incriminating of all are the emails in which scientists are advised to delete large chunks of data, which, when this is done after receipt of a freedom of information request, is a criminal offence.

Thank you for the links, best article I've read all day.

A couple of quotes from the Nature editorial for the TL;DR crowd:

A fair reading of the e-mails reveals nothing to support the denialists' conspiracy theories. In one of the more controversial exchanges, UEA scientists sharply criticized the quality of two papers that question the uniqueness of recent global warming (S. McIntyre and R. McKitrick Energy Environ. 14, 751–771; 2003 and W. Soon and S. Baliunas Clim. Res. 23, 89–110; 2003) and vowed to keep at least the first paper out of the upcoming Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Whatever the e-mail authors may have said to one another in (supposed) privacy, however, what matters is how they acted. And the fact is that, in the end, neither they nor the IPCC suppressed anything: when the assessment report was published in 2007 it referenced and discussed both papers.

(Emphasis mine).

The stolen e-mails have prompted queries about whether Nature will investigate some of the researchers' own papers. One e-mail talked of displaying the data using a 'trick' — slang for a clever (and legitimate) technique, but a word that denialists have used to accuse the researchers of fabricating their results. It is Nature's policy to investigate such matters if there are substantive reasons for concern, but nothing we have seen so far in the e-mails qualifies.

There is far, far too much politics in science. I don't know why Dr. Jones decided to step down, but I'm inclined to believe (after reading the Nature editorial) that the reasons were almost entirely political.

I love how when the "science" behind the global warming religion is shown to be a complete hoax, you warmers just point back to the ALREADY SHOWN TO BE FAKE data as some kind of "proof" that AGW is real.

(Realclimate? Seriously? Realclimate is the freaking Vatican of the Church of Global Warming. We're supposed to take ANYTHING they write seriously? HA!)

Get over it. AGW is a hoax, always has been. Your religion is a lie that was designed to allow AGW scientists to feather their nests with multi-million dollar grants and for their fellow travelers on the political far left to use as a tool to bludgeon free societies into socialist servitude. It's well past time to accept it like a big boy and move on.

Anyone who still believes the AGW crap is a brainwashed moron.

Um, yeah, except that realclimate.org was created by Michael Mann, who is now under investigation by his own university for some of the questionable activities described in the hacked emails.

And if nobody has done anything wrong, why are people stepping down?

For everyone's information: data was not manipulated

Oh, for crying out loud. Not only was it manipulated, they threw out both the raw data and any audit trail.

"SCIENTISTS at the University of East Anglia (UEA) have admitted throwing away much of the raw temperature data on which their predictions of global warming are based ... Climate change sceptics have long been keen to examine exactly how its data were compiled. That is now impossible. "

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6936328.ece [timesonline.co.uk]

I hope you're at least getting a paycheque for throwing out nonsense so easily proved wrong.

Most of your assertions have been debunked a long time ago. To take just one example:

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/myths-vs-fact-regarding-the-hockey-stick/ [realclimate.org]

And, from working in academia as a programmer, I can tell you that the quality of engineering is in general low, because most of the time you don't have professional software engineers working on the product. Unfortunate, but there's not enough money for anything more than an RA, which are often inexperienced.

3. They admitted to manipulating data to 'hide the decline' or 'get rid of the Medieval Warming Period.' I don't have a problem with 'trick' being used. No big deal, but 'hide the decline'? Not good.

Look closer. They actually *replaced* the inconveniently truthful proxy data with instrument measurements to get the fitting they wanted. That's not a 'trick'. That's plain fraud.

So we should believe the same publications who published the fraudulent analysis from the same people who are implicated in this scandal? Yeah, right.

By the way, why don't they show us the data they've been hiding and trying so hard to block FOI requests for? Oh, that's right, they "lost" it.

The e-mails clearly show that they fudged the analysis of the data, not the data itself. The e-mails show they conspired with government officials to block FOI requests, which is a criminal offense. They also discussed deleting data after FOI requests were made, another criminal offense.

Reading two articles where they look at selected e-mails that don't show much isn't impressing anyone. Read the e-mails or at least have the fortitude to look at what dissenters have to say and which e-mails they show.

fyi realclimate.org should be viewed very skeptically. In the leaked emails the fact that realclimate.org is essentially run by these very scientists is discussed in detail

http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=622&filename=1139521913.txt [eastangliaemails.com]

I wanted you guys to know that you're free to use RC in any way you think would be helpful. Gavin and I are going to be careful about what comments we screen through.... We can hold comments up in the queue and contact you about whether or not you think they should be screened through or not, and if so, any comments you'd like us to include.

[T]hink of RC as a resource that is at your disposal.... We'll use our best discretion to make sure the skeptics don't get to use the RC comments as a megaphone.

They ought to be able to use the clean data without need for obfuscation, as these climatologists were caught doing.

Um, do you have any evidence or even a link pointing to evidence for that claim? I submit this as a counter-claim [realclimate.org]:

FTFL:

"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."

Oh yes, the same scientists that were manipulating the peer review process in order to make sure that only their views ever made it to the journals. That's not real peer review. http://politics.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1464428&cid=30301040 [slashdot.org]

Isn't RealClimate.org pretty much the creation of Mr. Jones, et al?

this is pretty much like Wikipedia citing Wikipedia.

Well, it's run by scientists who know more than any of us, which is why it is useful to link to them.

There are also scientists who know more than any of us that oppose global warming, but there are much fewer of them. Therefore, it seems clear that we should believe the majority, since we ourselves are not experts. Linking to some of those experts is the correct thing to do here.

One thing you notice about the site is that the members include Micheal Mann, one of the scientists under fire here. Well, it is no surprise that he believes that he's right and says so. Ok but that doesn't prove anything. So if someone publishes a paper, someone else points out serious problems with said paper, well then I am not going to turn the person who wrote the first paper as one to refute the person who's criticizing him. Of COURSE he'll refute it, however that doesn't mean anything.

So to see a site that is run by Mann and others he agrees with supporting him, well that doesn't really say much, does it?

Over the last 10 years Exxon has given about 23 million in research grants for climate research projects (pro and con but you can assume mostly con if you want). In that same period the US government alone has given over 2 Billion in grants for just global warming research.

In the last 20 years the US government has spent almost 70 billion on general climate research and anti-global warming technologies (about 50/50). And all this is just for the US government spending. Other governments spend hundreds of million to billions on global warming as well as the various 'green' companies.

The director of the CRU, Phil Jones, alone has collected almost 27 million in grants since 1990. That's $27,000,000 (figured I'd write it out long hand since you don't seem to understand that that is a LOT of money).

So if you follow the money you'll most likely find yourself starting in Washington or some other capital and then straight to a University Campus with no "Big Oil" boogie man anywhere in sight.

....You mean the 800-1300 AD warming period seen in Europe...

That was also the time when Greenland was a green land and the Vikings explored the ice free northwest passage. Where is all the evidence that all that molten ice raise sea level around the world?

I notice you don't mention which data had arbitrary fudge factors applied to it - probably because it sounds more ominous that way. Data from tree cores taken in the Nothern hemisphere post-1960 had arbitrary fudge factors applied to it, and as far as anyone can tell the results were thrown away. It appears the code was part of an attempt to determine why and how the temperatures claculated from the tree cores diverged from the actual temperature. In the end, the researchers didn't find an answer and just advised not using that data.

That didn't ring any alarm bells for you? After all, if you're secretly fudging results, the last thing you want is clear comments stating as much. Perhaps that's because, you know, the code's author didn't want the fudged results to be used...

Yeah, it would do. The trouble with the conspiracy theories is that the algorithm in question wasn't the one that produced the hockey stick graph. You've got it backwards - the fudge factors make the tree data roughly agree with actual temperatures, which are of course hockey-stick shaped.

No there isn't.

Correction: it's run by advocates who are only interested in presenting one side of the argument and suppressing any evidence that doesn't point the way they want it to. It's only useful to link to them if you're more interested in advocacy than facts.

except that we are discussing scientists losing their jobs for manipulating data. The collectors of the data are appearing to be delivering data in ways that prove their personal beliefs, and in ways that dont allow anyone to contradict their personal beliefs. Now, not all of the scientists are manipulative and crooked, but they may have been basing their beliefs on scientific leaders, such as the ones that cooked the books. There is not much of a true source now, especially if the only data left is the "cleansed" data, not the original raw data.

will you stop saying "pol pot" as if that's what people who believe in global warming are. are you even aware of who that is? its actually quite idiotic to even make that comparison. no one is trying to restart civilization here. asking you to change a friggin' lightbulb is *NOT* on par with forced slave labor and executions. i'm sure anybody who had to experience the man would be quite upset with you comparing such a human tragedy to something such as this. you, quite frankly, should be ashamed of yourself. also, why the hell do you have to use it in EVERY OTHER SENTENCE YOU MAKE. The fact that you used such a biased propagandist term just shows that you're probably not speaking much truth, but instead trying to use loaded and persuasive language and not quite caring about the truth.

Therefore it makes no sense *whatsoever* to talk of a percentage of a temperature in those scales

Well, umm, ok. But that makes my argument even stronger, since a 0.1 change from 295K is a miniscule 0.03%. Statisticians call that noise.

any more than it make sense to speak of a percentage of the time of day.

Ummm, 12PM is 50% of the day. 6PM is 75% of the day.

you deniers

I don't deny. However, I've become very jaded by 30 years of over-hyped "science" by Experts With PhDs which then turn out to be wrong.

Yeah, that's so *nothing*. Hardly noticeable!

And a +85K change means a 127,500 m horizontal loss. OMG!! The sky is falling!!!

And on that human timescale, things are changing very fast indeed.

Yes. Yes they are. [spiegel.de] In fact, if the current trend continues, we'll be buried in ice in 50 years! OMG WTF BBQ!

That was also the time when Greenland was a green land

LOL. And another hapless fool falls victim to the greatest false advertising scam in history .

Do you think that at the same period in history, Iceland was an ice land?

LOL.

I don't think anyone has EVER said that per captia China or India are big polluters (due to their massive populations and poverty).

Per captia it IS the developed world that are big polluters.

However China and India as whole contries DO pollute a lot and that the growth of pollution is increasing by several orders of magnitude higher than anyone else in the entire world.

This is the whole rational of what I have written, and what the currently proposed accords agree on. That is the developed world already has high pollution, but for the most part has leveled off. That the developed world will be hit harder as the development and pollution in both China and India are in growth.

What IS being said that given the amount of growth, the amount of pollution both will potentially emit will be astronomical (and thus what is the point in doing anything about it, let alone limiting our own economies). The ONLY reason why both are relatively low in comparison is that much of the population in both countries is rural, poor, and undeveloped, which is changing.

I don't know about India, but China like the USA has VAST resources of coal, which is really what this is all about. It is cheap and fueling the energy driving development and pollution.

Having said all that, the amount of "cheap" oil is in decline and likely over the next 40 years will only become more so. Not to mention China is a huge importer. Also on top of that China is already coming to grips with massive pollution due to coal usage and the inherent problems assoicated with that.

So it may be that China will have to no choice but to come to grips with its own budding energy addiction on the way and perhaps make better choices than was made in the past by other developed nations. China's commitments modest as they might be may be higher than required by any accord for the reason.

This is all acedemic though as the political situation is a mess both in the topic, as well as the closely linked economic one. If you are a diplomat, buisness is good!

Science apparently is saying something much be done soon, however the political situation is such that makes that all but impossible from my perspective (at least in any meaningful timeframe).

The grant source doesn't care what you do with your salary, so OF COURSE you can take some of the grant money -- which pays your SALARY -- and buy a house or take a vacation.

GRANTS PAY SALARIES. No grants, no salary. I don't know why you keep denying this simple fact of research life.

Even if your grant doesn't pay salaries (which would be unusual) it DOES pay for research, which can include a rented vacation home while conducting research at a remote site (three months, with catered dinners five nights of the week -- been there, done that, very nice), and it can pay for conference attendance, which is why many of the conferences take place in Hawaii and other vacation-like places. As a standard practice when I go anywhere unusual for research, I stay a few days extra. That means, in essence, a GRANT has paid for my transportation to and from a vacation. Quite legal. Quite common, too. If the best airfare requires staying the weekend, I've got a paid vacation.

Political Action Committee - Funded [wikipedia.org].

Not nitpicking, I promise, but seriously? You may want to consider using a different source than 'Mann's friends and defenders posting on a left-leaning PAC funded website' if you're going to use the word "Lie" in such a definitive manner.

He no doubt meant to type "Montana" and typed "Missouri" instead, just one of those dumb errors we all make from time to time. He did type "Missoula, Missouri," after all. I was just giving him some friendly guff for it.

As far as the flood goes, there is indeed evidence of an ice dam bursting and releasing the water from a huge glacial lake* which scoured the badlands of eastern Washington state. However, that happened on the opposite side of the continental divide from where the Missouri River runs in eastern Montana.

*And wouldn't you have liked to watch that from a safe vantage point?

Let me help clarify that for you a little... [reuters.com]

First, it isn't clear how Al Gore would instantly become a billionaire if cap and trade becomes law. Second, you really think one man is more influential than several, already, multi-billion dollar industries?

It's quite clear how he would become a multibillionaire. He started a company that does nothing but buy and sell carbon credits. He'd be the founder and owner of the biggest company on the carbon credit version of Wall Street. I also never said he was more influential than multi-billion dollar industries. However he is one of the most influential people in the world in terms of environmental policy.

While this may be true, they already are the completely dominant force in commerce and so they'll make even more money if they don't have to retool anything.

Incorrect. The cost of doing business in the developed world is more expensive than in the undeveloped world. The western factories are steadily losing ground to the Daewoos and Tatas of the world. Their profits (adjusted for inflation) are shrinking. They have a few choices: compete from a position that is inferior in the long term, level the playing field by getting rid of wealth destroying laws like western income taxes and minimum wages (which the economically ignorant would never let happen), or use the fear of the scientifically ignorant to pressure the developing nations to level the playing field the other way. These are the same mega-corps that promote ideas like mandatory worker health benefits, minimum wage, and complicated tax accounting rules. Sure it costs them money, but it costs their small scale competitors a greater amount (in relative terms), so they win. If the American corporations didn't want greater regulation and global environmental treaties, why did they give record amounts of money to the Obama campaign? It certainly wasn't because he wanted to make the US a capitalist country again.

What? Are you counting yourself and all the other posters on slashdot?

No I'm counting world renowned scientists:
Astrophysicist Dr. Sallie Baliunas [tylerpaper.com]
Statistician Stephen McIntyre [wikipedia.org]
Professor Habibullo Abdussamatov
Geologist Astrid Lyså [sciencedaily.com]
Prof. Roy Spencer, NASA scientist [amazon.com]
Professor Richard Lindzen of MIT [examiner.com]
a few dozen here [rightsidenews.com]...including an IPCC member.
and these 32 000 guys [petitionproject.org].
That should be enough people to show there is no "consensus" on global warming.

What cooling? The temperatures may be slightly cooler than the absolute peak, but to say there is a cooling trend is simply not true.

The "trend", as you call it, is a decade long...so far, and it's projected to last another few decades. How long was the warming that proceeded it? Twenty five years? I find it interesting that you quote a man (James Hansen of GISS) who was forced to retract falsified evidence [telegraph.co.uk] that had claimed that the 2000s were the hottest decade in recorded history. And whose revised (i.e. more truthful) report showed that the world has cooled since the 1940s, while at the same time CO2 production skyrocketed. Additionally, wasn't he implicated in the CRU data manipulation? Yeah, he was. He's a trustwo

The problem I have with Green technology is not the Green technology. It is the threat of losing access to the not-so-green technology. The access would not go away because the not-so-green technology isn't popular, but rather because the liberty to use the not-so-green technology is unimportant to many people.

The unsupported theory that the Earth is heating up because of the use of the not-so-green technology is being used as a political tool to limit liberty.

So... we look for the supporting data. A theory with incomplete supporting data should not be used as a justification for limiting liberty!

Perhaps a little context and some actual data might be useful here.

Tasmania does not lack water. Indeed, it doesn't have water restrictions. Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]

Firestorms, which are usually deliberately lit (most are) or caused by things like power lines are representative of land management practices, particularly green policies that have reduced hazard reduction, and planning failures such as the growth in populations in bush fire risk areas.

None of the "firestorms" (are you even Australian, because if you were, you'd call it a bushfire) turn land into grassland of desert. Indeed, I can drive out to the worst affected areas from February and see the regrowth now.

Issues with occasional dust storms date back to the first European arrivals; dust storms are everything to do with weather patterns (and occasionally poor land management) and nothing to do with global warming

Toxic lakes and dead red gums are a reflection of water management policies, of which Australia is a disgrace on. Global warming isn't stopping natural flows down the Murray or Darling Rivers, farmers raping the rivers in conjunction with state governments are.

Desal has everything to do with environmentalism and nothing to do with global warming: places like Melbourne haven't built a new dam in over 20 years while the population has grown by over a million. Governments won't build new dams because of the perceptions of voter backlash based on green policies.

Or the tree ring data later used that was based on that if a tree grew more that year, it surely must have been because of a higher temperature. Or the ice cores which are supposed to measure CO2 rather than temperature?

>>You, sir (or madam), are not a scientist

It's amazing you can tell that from my post on here. I suppose being a computer scientist in and of itself doesn't make me a scientist, even though I've written a thesis, published peer-reviewed articles, etc.

>>All the time is data not released, due to constraints by whoever is funding the research.

They released the data, just not to people who would use it to argue against them. In the CRU emails, you see them intentionally finding ways of avoiding responding to an FOIA request, as well as instructing people to delete emails.

When I was working at the San Diego Supercomputer Center doing modeling work, we certainly never did anything nefarious like Phil Jones and his crew.

>>I fully understand guys for not desiring to have unprocessed data around which _will_ get quoted out of context but nutcases.

Or have errors found in their processing, like McIntyre has found before.

>>I will add that when raw data is anomalous, does not match with the expected result, etc. it is normal to try and correct it based on your understanding of what might have gone wrong. And you call that a "trick".

I didn't use the word trick, so I don't know what you're talking about. Phil Jones called it a trick, I guess.

And yeah, I would actually say its very important to see how they correct the data. That's the entire value-added step they perform there.

it is normal to try and correct it based on your understanding of what might have gone wrong. And you call that a "trick".

Well, since the code is out - what's your opinion of using an array of made-up numbers with which to interpolate the real readings - causing that which you want to claim?

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/04/climategate-the-smoking-code/ [wattsupwiththat.com]

1 ;
2 ; Apply a VERY ARTIFICAL correction for decline!!
3 ;
4 yrloc=[1400,findgen(19)*5.+1904]
5 valadj=[0.,0.,0.,0.,0.,-0.1,-0.25,-0.3,0.,-0.1,0.3,0.8,1.2,1.7,2.5,2.6,2.6,2.6,2.6,2.6]*0.75 ; fudge factor
6 if n_elements(yrloc) ne n_elements(valadj) then message,'Oooops!'
7
8 yearlyadj=interpol(valadj,yrloc,timey)

NOTE: This is an actual snippet of code from the CRU contained in the source file: briffa_Sep98_d.pro