Hadley CRU hacked with release of hundreds of docs and emails

reply to post by weathernut


More from that doc you pointed out...

>-----Original Message-----
>From: David_Robinson [mailto:[email protected]]
>Sent: 19 October 2009 22:45
>To: [email protected]
>Subject: Climate Research Centre crisis spreads
>
>Sir,
>I draw your attention to the growing international climate
>change scandal that is engulfing the CRU and dragging the
>reputation of it, and Norfolk, through the mud.
>
>After several weeks of open criticism of the use of a
>particular, alledgedly flawed, CRU dataset there has been no
>attempted rebuttle by the CRU. Latest information suggests
>that dozens of 'peer reviewed' scientific papers that relied
>on the same dataset are now 'similarly flawed' and should be
>withdrawn. This, unfortunately, draws into question a
>fundamental part of the IPCC conclusion - namely, whether the >recent global warming is in fact abnormal and hence >attributable to man.
>
>I think the continued silence by the CRU on this subject
>profoundly worrying given the importance of the topic.
>
>Any light you can shed on this whole sorry story would be
>greatly in the public interest, especially given the
>Copenhagen summit fast approaching.

edit: # 1256214796 in the Emails section

[edit on 21/11/2009 by Now_Then]



I keep seeing this pop up at the end of some of the mails... (in bold)

Hi Phil,
Thanks--we know that. The point is simply that if we want to talk about about a
meaningful "2009" anomaly, every additional month that is available from which to
calculate an annual mean makes the number more credible. We already have this for
GISTEMP, but have been awaiting HadCRU to be able to do a more decisive update of the
status of the disingenuous "globe is cooling" contrarian talking point,
mike
p.s. be a bit careful about what information you send to Andy and what emails you copy him in on. He's not as predictable as we'd like On Oct 27, 2009, at 1:04 PM, Phil Jones wrote:

(email # 1256735067)

I wonder what they mean by 'not as predictable as we'd like'?... Could this be our hacker? Someone who was just not towing the same line as everyone else?

p.s. Sorry if this is something that has come up earlier in the thread... Not had time to read it all!

Wow it's getting easy to find evidence of changing data to make studies fit!

Keith succeeding in being very restrained in his response. McIntyre knew what he was doing when he replaced some of the trees with those from another site.
Cheers
Phil

(mail # 1256747199)

[edit on 21/11/2009 by Now_Then]

I am beginning to believe that the idea a hacker found this is disinformation.

And i am starting to believe that there may be government involvement in this information being collected.

I am starting to believe that this was collected by ether a person/s at NSA that are anti AGW and published it to a russian site because of upcoming Congressional hearings on cap and trade.

Or was collected/hacked by the Chinese to make Obama look like a part of the AGW scam after his town hall type meeting in china and his speech about how china should treat there people and how they should have FREE Internet access and how they are treating the environment.
What better way to protect there interest then to publish this right now.
(it kills a lot of birds with one stone)
It also would show Obama what could happen to one of his pet projects with a free internet.

Both would likely use a Russian site to protect there self/government from being involved and to hide the real source of the documents.

ether way i believe this information needed no modification to work because its a smoking gun just as hacked.

This is a good one - I thought about quoting parts of it (I may still re-edit the post, bear with me)

>Patrick J. Michaels
>
>
> Imagine if there were no reliable
>records of global surface temperature. Raucous
>policy debates such as cap-and-trade would have
>no scientific basis, Al Gore would at this point
>be little more than a historical footnote, and
>President Obama would not be spending this U.N.
>session talking up a (likely unattainable)
>international climate deal in Copenhagen in
>December. Steel yourself for the new reality,
>because the data needed to verify the
>gloom-and-doom warming forecasts have disappeared.
>
> Or so it seems. Apparently, they were
>either lost or purged from some discarded
>computer. Only a very few people know what really
>happened, and they aren't talking much. And what
>little they are saying makes no sense.
> In the early 1980s, with funding from
>the U.S. Department of Energy, scientists at the
>United Kingdom's University of East Anglia
>established the Climate Research Unit (CRU) to
>produce the world's first comprehensive history
>of surface temperature. It's known in the trade
>as the "Jones and Wigley" record for its authors,
>Phil Jones and Tom Wigley, and it served as the
>primary reference standard for the U.N.
>Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
>until 2007. It was this record that prompted the
>IPCC to claim a "discernible human influence on global climate."
> Putting together such a record isn't at
>all easy. Weather stations weren't really
>designed to monitor global climate. Long-standing
>ones were usually established at points of
>commerce, which tend to grow into cities that
>induce spurious warming trends in their records.
>Trees grow up around thermometers and lower the
>afternoon temperature. Further, as documented by
>the University of Colorado's Roger Pielke Sr.,
> many of the stations themselves are placed in
>locations, such as in parking lots or near heat
>vents, where artificially high temperatures are bound to be recorded.
> So the weather data that go into the
>historical climate records that are required to
>verify models of global warming aren't the
>original records at all. Jones and Wigley,
>however, weren't specific about what was done to
>which station in order to produce their record,
>which, according to the IPCC, showed a warming of
>0.6° +/- 0.2°C in the 20th century.
>
> Now begins the fun. Warwick Hughes, an
>Australian scientist, wondered where that "+/-"
>came from, so he politely wrote Phil Jones in
>early 2005, asking for the original data. Jones's
>response to a fellow scientist attempting to
>replicate his work was, "We have 25 years or so
>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?"
> Reread that statement, for it is
>breathtaking in its anti-scientific thrust. In
>fact, the entire purpose of replication is to
>"try and find something wrong." The ultimate
>objective of science is to do things so well that, indeed, nothing is wrong.
>
> Then the story changed. In June 2009,
>Georgia Tech's Peter Webster told Canadian
>researcher Stephen McIntyre that he had requested
>raw data, and Jones freely gave it to him. So
>McIntyre promptly filed a Freedom of Information
>Act request for the same data. Despite having
>been invited by the National Academy of Sciences
>to present his analyses of millennial
>temperatures, McIntyre was told that he couldn't
>have the data because he wasn't an "academic." So
>his colleague Ross McKitrick, an economist at the
>University of Guelph, asked for the data. He was turned down, too.
> Faced with a growing number of such
>requests, Jones refused them all, saying that
>there were "confidentiality" agreements regarding
>the data between CRU and nations that supplied
>the data. McIntyre's blog readers then requested
>those agreements, country by country, but only a
>handful turned out to exist, mainly from Third
>World countries and written in very vague language.
> It's worth noting that McKitrick and I
>had published papers demonstrating that the
>quality of land-based records is so poor that the
>warming trend estimated since 1979 (the first
>year for which we could compare those records to
>independent data from satellites) may have been
>overestimated by 50 percent. Webster, who
>received the CRU data, published studies linking
>changes in hurricane patterns to warming (while others have found otherwise).
> Enter the dog that ate global warming.
>
> Roger Pielke Jr., an esteemed professor
>of environmental studies at the University of
>Colorado, then requested the raw data from Jones. Jones responded:
> Since the 1980s, we have merged the data
>we have received into existing series or begun
>new ones, so it is impossible to say if all
>stations within a particular country or if all of
>an individual record should be freely available.
>Data storage availability in the 1980s meant that
>we were not able to keep the multiple sources for
>some sites, only the station series after
>adjustment for homogeneity issues. We, therefore,
>do not hold the original raw data but only the
>value-added (i.e., quality controlled and homogenized) data.
> The statement about "data storage" is
>balderdash. They got the records from somewhere.
>The files went onto a computer. All of the
>original data could easily fit on the 9-inch tape
>drives common in the mid-1980s. I had all of the
>world's surface barometric pressure data on one such tape in 1979.
> If we are to believe Jones's note to the
>younger Pielke, CRU adjusted the original data
>and then lost or destroyed them over twenty years
>ago. The letter to Warwick Hughes may have been
>an outright lie. After all, Peter Webster
>received some of the data this year. So the
>question remains: What was destroyed or lost,
>when was it destroyed or lost, and why?
>
> All of this is much more than an
>academic spat. It now appears likely that the
>U.S. Senate will drop cap-and-trade climate
>legislation from its docket this fall - whereupon
>the Obama Environmental Protection Agency is
>going to step in and issue regulations on
>carbon-dioxide emissions. Unlike a law, which
>can't be challenged on a scientific basis, a
>regulation can. If there are no data, there's no
>science. U.S. taxpayers deserve to know the
>answer to the question posed above. (Patrick J.
>Michaels is a senior fellow in environmental
>studies at the Cato Institute and author of
>Climate of Extremes: Global Warming Science They Don't Want You to Know.) "

mail # 1256765544

edit: some emphesis

[edit on 21/11/2009 by Now_Then]

Kevin,

I didn't mean to offend you. But what you said was "we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment". Now you say "we are no where close to knowing where energy is going". In my eyes these are two
different things -- the second relates to our level of understanding,
and I agree that this is still lacking.

Tom.

++++++++++++++++++

Kevin Trenberth wrote:
> Hi Tom
> How come you do not agree with a statement that says we are no where
> close to knowing where energy is going or whether clouds are changing to
> make the planet brighter. We are not close to balancing the energy
> budget. The fact that we can not account for what is happening in the > climate system makes any consideration of geoengineering quite hopeless > as we will never be able to tell if it is successful or not! It is a > travesty!
> Kevin

mail # 1255550975

I appreciate the responses regarding my concern about the new 'IPCC'
fossil CO2 emissions scenarios. However, no-one seems to be willing to
grasp the nettle and suggest what can be done about it. From what Hugh
says, all scenarios go through the same 2005 value, so this suggests an
obvious 'fix'.

mail # 0900972000

Another indication that data is being deliberately twisted - I am seeing amny referances simular to this one

[edit on 21/11/2009 by Now_Then]

An alarmist/warmist supporter's view:

greenfyre.wordpress.com...

Climate change Deniers hoax themselves … again

November 21, 2009 by greenfyre

I’m going to go out on a short limb here, but frankly more and more it is sounding like the correct response to “Have you seen the emails?” is “Yeah, have you?“

I refer to the uproar about the hacked CRU site which I posted about a few hours ago.

For all the Sturm und Drang and Denier promises of “final coffin nails”, there doesn’t actually seem to be anything to the story. Sure, some impolitic and not nice things got said, and it’s embarrassing for some, but that seems to be about it.

We have all been waiting for the boot, or a shoe, or even a slipper to drop, and so far not even a sock … there’s nothing there. Nada, zilch, gar nichts, mei you. That’s it, there’s no story, go home … get a life.

But read on anyway.

I read the emails as someone who trained as a scientist, but has never had anything to do with climate as a research scientist. Thus I have a sense of the culture of the sciences, but without necessarily having any idea what specifics were being referred to with respect to particular papers and studies. Here is my take on it.

From what I have actually seen it is just “shop talk” taken out of context and nothing more. Very much as if a store clerk said they were going to go “hunt down some customers” and then someone else tried to claim that they were planning a murder. Have you ever said you were going to go “rustle up some grub?” you cattle thief you! Hope you didn’t put it in an email.

Let’s look at a bunch of the “damning” quotes along with climate change Denier Tony Hake’s commentary, and the emphasis he added. Caution, I get frankly rude about the willful convoluted misinterpretations that Hake attempts to impose. It’s dishonest, unethical, and lame.

Dear Phil and Gabi,
I’ve attached a cleaned-up and commented version of the matlab code that I wrote for doing the Mann and Jones (2003) composites. I did this knowing that Phil and I are likely to have to respond to more crap criticisms from the idiots in the near future, so best to clean up the code and provide to some of my close colleagues in case they want to test it, etc. Please feel free to use this code for your own internal purposes, but don’t pass it along where it may get into the hands of the wrong people.

Hake: From Michael E. Mann (witholding of information / data):

1) Computer code is generally proprietary to the institution, NOT information/data;
2) Deniers are notorious for scarfing up drafts etc and releasing them with the claim that they are the final product. Not wanting to release code that is still in testing and potentially flawed (hint “test”) in case some moron doesn’t understand what “in testing” means (the name Hake comes to mind for some reason) is perfectly sensible.

The Korttajarvi record was oriented in the reconstruction in the way that McIntyre said. I took a look at the original reference – the temperature proxy we looked at is x-ray density, which the author interprets to be inversely related to temperature. We had higher values as warmer in the reconstruction, so it looks to me like we got it wrong, unless we decided to reinterpret the record which I don’t remember. Darrell, does this sound right to you?

Hake: From Nick McKay (modifying data):

To “reinterpret” is NOT “modifying data”, it’s analysis (did Hake not even do 1st year college?) Repeating an analysis may be done for any number of reasons and is standard practice. As long as the final result accurately presents the results and describes what was done with them there is no issue whatsoever.

We probably need to say more about this. Land warming since 1980 has been twice the ocean warming — and skeptics might claim that this proves that urban warming is real and important.

Hake: From Tom Wigley (acknowleding the urban effect):

He is NOT acknowleding (sic) the urban effect. He is acknowledging the
fact that land warms twice as much as ocean, and since there are some morons who understand climate science so poorly they might claim it is an urban effect (the name Hake comes to mind for some reason), there is a need to explain it more fully.

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.

Hake: From Phil Jones (modification of data to hide unwanted results):

1) “Nature trick” to me he is referring to a published technique, ie in the Journal Nature (hence capitalized) … or does Hake think they hide data and then publish the fact? Certainly “trick” is a common synonym for “(clever) technique” in the sciences, and everywhere else.

I do not know the literature well enough to suggest exactly which paper and what technique Jones may have been referring to, but maybe someone else does. Unless Hake is suggesting that maybe Jones meant using blades of grass and song birds for his Nature “trick.”

2) Hake wants us to believe that “hide the decline” refers to temperature … “last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards.” There was no decline in temperature from 1981 onwards, it was a period of steep warming. We know from other data sets! Why would Jones want to hide a non-existent decline?

3) Turns out the “adding in the real temps” refers to as opposed to the estimates. So what was Jones referring to? I don’t know, but there are many possible legitimate things such as various forms of statistical ‘noise.’

The answer is probably to be found when the full email exchange is reconstructed and/or the technique referred to is identified, but as read there is not necessarily anything nefarious here.

If a reconstructed exchange shows intent to falsify data, fine, but as it appears here it is no more telling than overhearing a co-worker say “I’m going to kill him” without knowing anything about the context. Could be a fussball match or a Tetris wager.

As expected: Mann said the “trick” Jones referred to was placing a chart of proxy temperature records, which ended in 1980, next to a line showing the temperature record collected by instruments from that time onward. “It’s hardly anything you would call a trick,” Mann said, adding that both charts were differentiated and clearly marked.

[...]

The rather long article continues here

Also more from the Herald Sun:

blogs.news.com.au...

The warmist conspiracy: the emails that most damn Jones

Andrew Bolt
Saturday, November 21, 2009 at 12:19pm


These are the emails that should have Professor Phil Jones most worried about his future.

Jones, head of the CRU unit whose emails were leaked, has been under most fire so far over one email in particular in which he boasted of using a ‘“trick" to “hide the decline” that would have otherwise spoiled his graph showing temperatures soaring ever-upward.

But far more serious - at least in a legal sense - may be his apparent boasting of destroying data to stop sceptics from checking this alarmist work. If, as some emails suggest, he destroyed it to thwart FOI requests from Professor Ross McKitrick and Steve McIntyre, who’d already exposed as fake the Michael Mann “hockey stick”, Jones, one of the most active of the IPCC lead authors, could even face criminal charges.

(Note: in saying that, I should add that these emails may simply be poorly worded, out of context or even altered by the whistleblower who leaked them. Jones may also not knowingly have done anything wrong, and there is no proof that he did anything against the law. UPDATE: Several updates on Jones below, including his “selfish” wish to see global warming “regardless of the consequences” just to be proved right.)

Whether laws were broken or not, the emails prove beyond doubt how resistant Jones and his colleagues were to having their work properly scrutinised by anyone not of their “team”. No wonder, perhaps, when the documents reveal Jones has so far attracted $25 million in grants.)

The most damning emails on this point are the following, starting with 1107454306.txt, in which Jones refers to MM - McIntyre and McKitrick (bold added):

At 09:41 AM 2/2/2005, Phil Jones wrote:

Mike, I presume congratulations are in order - so congrats etc !

Just sent loads of station data to Scott. Make sure he documents everything better this time ! And don’t leave stuff lying around on ftp sites - you never know who is trawling them. The two MMs have been after the CRU station data for years. If they ever hear there is a Freedom of Information Act now in the UK, I think I’ll delete the file rather than send to anyone. Does your similar act in the US force you to respond to enquiries within 20 days? - our does ! The UK works on precedents, so the first request will test it.We also have a data protection act, which I will hide behind. Tom Wigley has sent me a worried email when he heard about it - thought people could ask him for his model code. He has retired officially from UEA so he can hide behind that. IPR should be relevant here, but I can see me getting into an argument with someone at UEA who’ll say we must adhere to it !

Jones admits he was warned by his own university against deleting data subjected to an FOI request from McIntyre - or anyone:

From: Phil Jones

To: santer1@XXXX

Subject: Re: A quick question

Date: Wed Dec 10 10:14:10 2008

Ben,

Haven’t got a reply from the FOI person here at UEA. So I’m not entirely confident the numbers are correct. One way of checking would be to look on CA, but I’m not doing that. I did get an email from the FOI person here early yesterday to tell me I shouldn’t be deleting emails - unless this was ‘normal’ deleting to keep emails manageable! McIntyre hasn’t paid his £10, so nothing looks likely to happen re his Data Protection Act email.

Anyway requests have been of three types - observational data, paleo data and who made IPCC changes and why. Keith has got all the latter - and there have been at least 4. We made Susan aware of these - all came from David Holland. According to the FOI Commissioner’s Office, IPCC is an international organization, so is above any national FOI. Even if UEA holds anything about IPCC, we are not obliged to pass it on, unless it has anything to do with our core business - and it doesn’t! I’m sounding like Sir Humphrey here!

Makes you wonder very strongly what Jones is trying to hide, doesn’t it? Also makes you laugh all over again at his claim once that the data being sought had, sadly, been ... um, lost.

In1212063122.txtm, Jones urges another colleague, Michael “Hockey Stick”, Mann, to join in the deleting - at least of emails about the IPCC’s controversial ARA report on man-made warming which Jones co-authored, and which claimed warming was “unequivocal” and “most likely” caused by humans:

From: Phil Jones To: “Michael E. Mann”
Subject: IPCC & FOI
Date: Thu May 29 11:04:11 2008

Mike,

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!!

Cheers

Phil:

For years Jones has made clear his determination to keep crucial data from the eyes of sceptics:

From: Phil Jones To: [email protected]
Subject: Fwd: CCNet: PRESSURE GROWING ON CONTROVERSIAL RESEARCHER TO DISCLOSE SECRET DATA
Date: Mon Feb 21 16:28:32 2005
Cc: “raymond s. bradley” , “Malcolm Hughes”

Mike, Ray and Malcolm,

The skeptics seem to be building up a head of steam here ! Maybe we can use this to our advantage to get the series updated !

Odd idea to update the proxies with satellite estimates of the lower troposphere rather than surface data !. Odder still that they don’t realise that Moberg et al used the Jones and Moberg updated series !

Francis Zwiers is till onside. He said that PC1s produce hockey sticks. He stressed that the late 20th century is the warmest of the millennium, but Regaldo didn’t bother
with that. Also ignored Francis’ comment about all the other series looking similar to MBH.

The IPCC comes in for a lot of stick. Leave it to you to delete as appropriate !

Cheers

Phil

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 when Jones is really forced to the point of handing over his data, he considers ways to may checking it more difficult or annoying:

Options appear to be:

Send them the data

Send them a subset removing station data from some of the countries who made us pay in the normals papers of Hulme et al. (1990s) and also any number that David can remember. This should also omit some other countries like (Australia, NZ, Canada, Antarctica). Also could extract some of the sources that Anders added in (31-38 source codes in J&M 2003). Also should remove many of the early stations that we coded up in the 1980s.

Send them the raw data as is, by reconstructing it from GHCN. How could this be done? Replace all stations where the WMO ID agrees with what is in GHCN. This would be the raw data, but it would annoy them.

But Jones figures a way out:

[...]

T he original article continues here with working links and updates

I love it. It's the one thing that has to change about many areas of science: publish your data so others can replicate your models.

Viva la data freedom.

Wow, just wow.

I now have to find a couple of hours to sift through all this. Amazing work by this hacker - lucky it turned out to be incriminating.

I personally wouldn't be surprised to find out this was an inside job, rather than Russia or China hacking into the system..

I also would not be surprised if this is not the only bits this person uploads..

Shame that it just goes to prove that I wasted a portion of my life implementing EU Environmental directives

reply to post by Shirakawa


Man this is some awesome detective work you have been doing to bring this breaking news to us ATSrs... Well done

To the hacker who liberated the info from the worthless souls who call them selves scientist i believe you should be knighted for you contribution to humanity.

To Al Gore who used his sisters death from cancer as a means to create an emotional tie with the public in order to force this man made global warming bull sh** on us, i say you are the anti Christ and i hope there will be something special waiting for you at the end of the tunnel.

Peace

Still sifting through the files but damn,already came across quite a few that are simply mind blowing...One of the greatest leaks i have came across in quite some time! Hopefully this sticks and slowly eats away at the grand lie certain scientists have woven. I can already see them trying to hit back...but the documents speak for themselves. Can't cover this one up sadly.

What I find disturbing, and rather infuriating, is some of the MSM reporting of this that I have seen so far, where it refers to "Climate change deniers", like we are some kind of holy heretic.
The seemingly undeniable evidence of data misrepresentation, and outright lying, to support the AGW theory seems to be lost on them, or perhaps those organisations, being large corporate entities, are also invested in the carbon credit industry that is springing up?

"Denier" is a bit of a ridiculous word to use though in reality. I don't think that anyone denies that there are changes in climate, it happens on a daily, weekly, monthly, annual, etc...etc... basis globally. What those labeled as deniers are trying to prove is that the AGW theory, is just that, a theory with little or no data to prove it's existence.

If the AGW theory was correct, they would have no issue with freely distributing data to back it up and allow, or even invite, the participation of skeptics in the scientific community in an attempt to solidify opinion. What they have been doing though is to hide, skew, misrepresent and destroy data that proves them incorrect, based on political and financial agendas. This is what they need to be held accountable for. Not just the academics of course but those in the political arena that have used this to push their agenda for financially lucrative legislation.

The argument that "deniers" are somehow against clean energy and environmental issues is lame and without any basis whatsoever.

Angry rant over....ooooh! need more caffeine.

This story is hitting international media too.
From Thaindian:

www.thaindian.com...

Climate Depot Reveals Alleged Global Warming Conspiracy

November 21st, 2009 - 6:55 pm ICT by GD
By Ranjan Bhaduri

Nov. 21, (THAINDIAN NEWS) An astonishing article has been posted on a site called Climate Depot, perceived as an anti-global warming website, which states that a bunch of hackers broke into CRU and got away with some emails and documents which can prove, that the whole issue of global warming is just a hoax.

CRU or Climatic research Unit established in East Anglia is among the world’s top research centers. The hacker, reportedly an insider, illegally accessed the Hadley computers at CRU and released around 1079 confidential emails and 72 documents that show the manipulations of the global warming data being master-minded by top-scientists. The emails ultimately claim that “global warming is nothing but an exaggerated hoax”. In response to the whole agenda, there are some reputed experts and scientists who say, that the emails and documents do not in any way point towards a “conspiracy/ hoax/ falsifying data”.

Phil Jones, the director of CRU also reported that, “It was hacked. We were aware of this about three or four days ago that someone had hacked into our system and taken and copied loads of data files and emails.” Jones went on to explain the whole issue when questioned about the email which talks about “hiding the decline”. According to the story posted, the director of the University also says that the e-mails appear as genuine, and several of the emails can be accessed at various sites by netizens.

If proved true, this could be one of the biggest scandal in modern history and would involve the illegal destruction and manipulation of important data. It is also being reported that after the incident, CRU has also canceled all of its existing passwords.

Original article

Could someone clarify to me if the measurements of the temperatures have been modified??

I think the scientists are talking about a "trick" but this isn't reliable.

The whole matter comes from these measurements.

More from Telegraph news blogger James Delingpole:

blogs.telegraph.co.uk...

ClimateGate: how the MSM reported the greatest scandal in modern science

By James Delingpole Politics Last updated: November 21st, 2009


Here’s what the Times has had to say on the subject:

(Yep. Nada)

And the Independent:

(Yep. Ditto).

And here’s how The New York Times (aka Pravda) reported it:

Hundreds of private e-mail messages and documents hacked from a computer server at a British university are causing a stir among global warming skeptics, who say they show that climate scientists conspired to overstate the case for a human influence on climate change.

(Yep. That’s right. It has only apparently caused a stir among ’skeptics’. Everyone else can rest easy. Nothing to see here.)

And here’s how the Guardian has reported it:

Hundreds of private emails and documents allegedly exchanged between some of the world’s leading climate scientists during the past 13 years have been stolen by hackers and leaked online, it emerged today.

The computer files were apparently accessed earlier this week from servers at the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit, a world-renowned centre focused on the study of natural and anthropogenic climate change.

(Oh. I get it. It’s just a routine data-theft story, not a scandal. And a chance to remind us of the CRU’s integrity and respectability. And – see below – to get in a snarky, ‘let’s have a dig at the deniers’ quote from Greenpeace).

A spokesman for Greenpeace said: “If you looked through any organisation’s emails from the last 10 years you’d find something that would raise a few eyebrows. Contrary to what the sceptics claim, the Royal Society, the US National Academy of Sciences, Nasa and the world’s leading atmospheric scientists are not the agents of a clandestine global movement against the truth. This stuff might drive some web traffic, but so does David Icke.”

Here’s the Washington Post:

Hackers broke into the electronic files of one of the world’s foremost climate research centers this week and posted an array of e-mails in which prominent scientists engaged in a blunt discussion of global warming research and disparaged climate-change skeptics.

The skeptics have seized upon e-mails stolen from the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia in Britain as evidence that scientific data have been rigged to make it appear as if humans are causing global warming. The researchers, however, say the e-mails have been taken out of context and merely reflect an honest exchange of ideas.

(Ah, so what the story is really about is ’skeptics’ causing trouble. Note how as high as the second par the researchers are allowed by the reporter to get in their insta-rebuttal, lest we get the impression that the scandal in any way reflects badly on them).

Here is the BBC:

E-mails reportedly from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU), including personal exchanges, appeared on the internet on Thursday.

A university spokesman confirmed the email system had been hacked and that information was taken and published without permission.

An investigation was underway and the police had been informed, he added.

(Ah yes, another routine data-theft story so dully reported – “the police had been informed, he added” – that you can’t even be bothered to reach the end to find out what information was stolen).

Meanwhile, the ClimateGate scandal (and I do apologise for calling it that, but that’s how the internet works: you need obvious, instantly memorable, event-specific search terms) continues to set the Blogosphere ablaze.

For links to all the latest updates on this, I recommend Marc Morano’s invaluable Climate Depot site.

And if you want to read those potentially incriminating emails in full, go to An Elegant Chaos org where they have all been posted in searchable form.

Like the Telegraph’s MPs’ expenses scandal, this is the gift that goes on giving. It won’t, unfortunately, derail Copenhagen (too many vested interests involved) or cause any of our many political parties to start talking sense on “Climate change”. But what it does demonstrate is the growing level of public scepticism towards Al Gore’s Anthropogenic Global Warming theory. That’s why, for example, this story is the single most read item on today’s Telegraph website.

What it also demonstrates – as my dear chum Dan Hannan so frequently and rightly argues – is the growing power of the Blogosphere and the decreasing relevance of the Mainstream Media (MSM).

This is not altogether the MSM’s fault. Partly it is just the way of things that more and more readers prefer their news and opinion served up in snappier, less reverent, more digestible and instant for.

But in the case of “Climate Change”, the MSM has been caught with its trousers down. The reason it has been so ill-equipped to report on this scandal is because almost all of its Environmental Correspondents and Environmental Editors are parti pris members of the Climate-Fear Promotion lobby. Most of their contacts (and information sources) work for biased lobby groups like Greenpeace and the WWF, or conspicuously pro-AGW government departments and Quangos such as the Carbon Trust. How can they bring themselves to report on skullduggery at Hadley Centre when the scientists involved are the very ones whose work they have done most to champion and whose pro-AGW views they share?

As Upton Sinclair once said:

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it.”

So don’t expect this scandal to be written up in the MSM any time soon. But why would you want to anyway? It’s all here, where the free spirits and independent thinkers are, on the Blogosphere.

Original article

Originally posted by kapodistrias
Could someone clarify to me if the measurements of the temperatures have been modified??

I think the scientists are talking about a "trick" but this isn't reliable.

The whole matter comes from these measurements.

There's a possibility that these scientists were withholding data because of that, but I haven't personally read anything yet about measurements directly modified (charts, calculations, interpolations yes, though). As the amount of data leaked is huge, though, there could be more surprises/revelations in the following days.

[edit on 2009-11-21 by Shirakawa]

Originally posted by Shirakawa

There's a possibility that these scientists were withholding data because of that, but I haven't personally read anything yet about measurements directly modified (charts, calculations, interpolations yes, though).

Well here's one about one guy providing an incorrect dataset, and further more lying about how/why the dataset was put together... It's a long one... edit: So I wonder what this Michael Mann guy is like, seems a little crooked by the tone of this email!

From: Phil Jones
To: [removed email address] Subject: Fwd: Re: Fw: Rutherford et al. [2004]
Date: Tue, 04 Jan 2005 11:22:31 +0000

FYI.
Just look at the attachment. Don't refer to it or send it on to anybody
yet. I guess you could refer to it in the IPCC Chapter - you will have to
some day !
Cheers
Phil

X-Sender: [email protected]
X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 6.1.1.1
Date: Thu, 30 Dec 2004 09:22:02 -0500
To: Phil Jones
From: "Michael E. Mann"
Subject: Re: Fw: Rutherford et al. [2004]
X-UEA-MailScanner-Information: Please contact the ISP for more information
X-UEA-MailScanner: Found to be clean
X-UEA-MailScanner-SpamScore: s
Phil,
I would immediately delete anything you receive from this fraud.
You've probably seen now the paper by Wahl and Ammann which independently exposes
McIntyre and McKitrick for what it is--pure crap. Of course, we've already done this on
"RealClimate", but Wahl and Ammann is peer-reviewed and independent of us. I've attached
it in case you haven't seen (please don't pass it along to others yet). It should be in
press shortly. Meanwhile, I would NOT RESPOND to this guy. As you know, only bad things
can come of that. The last thing this guy cares about is honest debate--he is funded by
the same people as Singer, Michaels, etc...
Other than this distraction, I hope you're enjoying the holidays too...
talk to you soon,
mike
At 09:02 AM 12/30/2004, you wrote:

Mike,
FYI. Just in for an hour or so today as still off until Jan 4.
Not replied to this - too much else with IPCC etc. Not read this
in detail - just printed it off.
Have a good New Year's Eve.
Cheers
Phil

From: "Steve McIntyre"
To: "Phil Jones"
Subject: Fw: Rutherford et al. [2004]
Date: Wed, 29 Dec 2004 10:08:18 -0500
X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2800.1158
X-UEA-MailScanner-Information: Please contact the ISP for more information
X-UEA-MailScanner: Found to be clean
Dear Phil,

I have noticed the following statements in Rutherford et al [2004], in which you are a
co-author. As compared with some of your co-authors, I get the impression that, while
you feel very strongly about your views, you are also concerned with getting to the
bottom of matters and are less concerned with scoring meaningless debating points. In
this spirit, I draw your attention to some incorrect statements in Rutherford et al.
[2004] concerning our material. There is really a quite serious problem with the PC
methods in MBH98 and the comments made in Rutherford et al [2004] are really quite
misleading. For the reasons set out below, I request that these comments be removed from
the manuscript.

Regards, Steve McIntyre



----- Original Message -----
From: [1]Steve McIntyre
To: [2]David Randall
Cc: [3]Scott Rutherford ; [4]Paul Kushner ; [5]Cindy Carrick ; [6]Ross McKitrick
Sent: Tuesday, December 28, 2004 1:48 PM
Subject: Rutherford et al. [2004]
Dear Dr. Randall,

Recently, at the website [7]www.realclimate.org, Michael Mann publicized a submission by
Rutherford et al. to Journal of Climate, entitled Proxy-based Northern Hemisphere
Surface Temperature Reconstructions: Sensitivity to Method, Predictor Network, Target
Season, and Target Domain. This paper contains some untrue statements and
mischaracterizations regarding criticisms we (McIntyre and McKitrick) made of Mann et
al. (1998) [MBH98] in a 2003 paper and subsequent exchanges under the auspices of
Nature. We are writing to request that these untrue statements be removed from the paper
before any further processing of the document by Journal of Climate takes place.

First, Rutherford et al. states that McIntyre and McKitrick [2003] used an incorrect
version of the Mann et al. (1998) proxy indicator dataset. The history of this matter is
summarized below (all relevant emails and other documentation are available at
[8]http://www.climate2003.com/file.issues.htm .

In April 2003, we requested from Mann the FTP location of the dataset used in MBH98.
Mann advised me that he was unable to recall the location of this dataset and referred
the request to Rutherford. Rutherford eventually directed us to a file (pcproxy.txt)
located at a URL at Manns FTP site. In using this data file, we noticed numerous
problems with it, not least with the principal component series. We sought specific
confirmation from Mann that this dataset was the one used in MBH98; Mann said that he
was too busy to respond to this or any other inquiry. Because of the many problems in
this data set, we undertook a complete new re-collation of the data, using the list of
data sources in the SI to MBH98 and using original archived versions wherever possible.
After publication of McIntyre and McKitrick [2003], Mann said that dataset at his FTP
site to which we had been referred was an incorrect version of the data and that this
version had been prepared especially for me; through a blog, he provided a new URL which
he now claimed to contain the correct data set. The file creation date of the incorrect
version was in 2002, long prior to my first request for data, clearly disproving his
assertion that it was prepared in response to my request. Mann and/or Rutherford then
deleted this incorrect version with its date evidence from his FTP site.

It is false and misleading for Rutherford et al. to now allege that we used the wrong
dataset. We used the dataset they directed us to at their FTP site. More importantly,
for our analysis, to avoid the problems with the principal component series, we
re-collated the tree ring data identified in MBH98 from ITRDB archives, calculated fresh
principal component series; in addition, we re-collated other proxy data from archived
versions wherever possible. Thus, our own calculations were not affected by the errors
in the supplied file as we did NOT use the incorrect version in our calculations. To
suggest otherwise, as is done in Rutherford et al [2004], is highly misleading. To date,
no source code or other evidence has been provided to fully demonstrate that the
incorrect version (now deleted) did not infect some of Manns and Rutherfords other work.
In this respect, we note that the now deleted file pcproxy.txt occurs in a legend in a
graphic at Rutherfords website, indicating possible use elsewhere by Rutherford of the
incorrect version.

Accordingly, we request that the above claim be removed from the manuscript.

Secondly, Rutherford et al. [2004] argues that the difference between MBH98 results and
MM03 results occurs because of our misunderstanding of a stepwise procedure in MBH98 for
the calculation of principal component series for tree ring networks. Again, this claim
is misleading on its face. While our 2003 paper did not implement the (then undisclosed)
stepwise procedure, as soon as this matter was raised in subsequent correspondence in
November 2003, we implemented it and we continued to observe the discrepancies in
principal component series and final results. The current manuscript ignores a refereed
exchange at Nature in which we specifically clarified (in response to a reviewers
question) that we had obtained such results while using the exact stepwise procedure
described in MBH98. Mann is aware of this refereed exchange.

The reason for the difference between our results and MBH98 results is primarily due to
the fact that the tree ring principal component series in MBH98 cannot be replicated
using a conventional principal components method. The MBH98 principal component series
can only be replicated by standardizing on a short segment a procedure nowhere mentioned
in MBH98 and only recently acknowledged in the SI to the Corrigendum of Mann et al.
[Nature 2004] in response to our concerns on the subject expressed to Nature. In
effect, MBH98 did not use a conventional centered PC calculation, but used an uncentered
PC calculation on de-centered data. The impact of this method is the subject of ongoing
controversy, which is well-known to the authors, but the existence of the method in
MBH98 is no longer in doubt. In discussions of PC calculations in 2004 exchanged with
the authors through Nature, we implemented the stepwise procedures of MBH98 referred to
in the present manuscript and demonstrated that important differences remain even with
stepwise procedures, as long as the uncentered and decentered methods of MBH98 are
used. The differences in PC series resulting from using centered and uncentered series
has been fully agreed to by all parties in the Nature exchange, although the parties
continue to disagree on the ultimate effect on final NH temperature calculations.
Accordingly, the discussion in Rutherford et al. [2004] is very in

[edit on 21/11/2009 by Now_Then]

The reason for the difference between our results and MBH98 results is primarily due to
the fact that the tree ring principal component series in MBH98 cannot be replicated
using a conventional principal components method. The MBH98 principal component series
can only be replicated by standardizing on a short segment a procedure nowhere mentioned
in MBH98 and only recently acknowledged in the SI to the Corrigendum of Mann et al.
[Nature 2004] in response to our concerns on the subject expressed to Nature. In
effect, MBH98 did not use a conventional centered PC calculation, but used an uncentered
PC calculation on de-centered data. The impact of this method is the subject of ongoing
controversy, which is well-known to the authors, but the existence of the method in
MBH98 is no longer in doubt. In discussions of PC calculations in 2004 exchanged with
the authors through Nature, we implemented the stepwise procedures of MBH98 referred to
in the present manuscript and demonstrated that important differences remain even with
stepwise procedures, as long as the uncentered and decentered methods of MBH98 are
used. The differences in PC series resulting from using centered and uncentered series
has been fully agreed to by all parties in the Nature exchange, although the parties
continue to disagree on the ultimate effect on final NH temperature calculations.
Accordingly, the discussion in Rutherford et al. [2004] is very incomplete and
misleading in this respect. While we recognize that Mann et al. have argued that they can salvage MBH98-type results using alternative methodologies (e.g. increasing the
number of PC series used in the 1400-1450 period), these salvage efforts are themselves
a matter of controversy and do not validate the claims being put forward in the
Rutherford et al. paper.

Accordingly we ask that this claim also be deleted from the manuscript.

Regards,
Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick


Prof. Phil Jones
Climatic Research Unit Telephone +44 (0) 1603 592090
School of Environmental Sciences Fax +44 (0) 1603 507784
University of East Anglia
Norwich Email [removed email address]
NR4 7TJ
UK
----------------------------------------------------------------------------


______________________________________________________________
Professor Michael E. Mann
Department of Environmental Sciences, Clark Hall
University of Virginia
Charlottesville, VA 22903
_______________________________________________________________________
e-mail: [removed email address] Phone: (434) 924-7770 FAX: (434) 982-2137
[9]http://www.evsc.virginia.edu/faculty/people/mann.shtml

Prof. Phil Jones
Climatic Research Unit Telephone +44 (0) 1603 592090
School of Environmental Sciences Fax +44 (0) 1603 507784
University of East Anglia
Norwich Email [removed email address]
NR4 7TJ
UK
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Attachment Converted: "c:\documents and settings\tim osborn\my
documents\eudora\attach\Wahl_MBH_Recreation_JClimLett_Nov22.pdf"

References

1. mailto:[removed email address]
2. mailto[removed email address]
3. mailto:[removed email address]
4. mailto:j.[removed email address]
5. mailto:[removed email address]
6. mailto:[removed email address]
7. www.realclimate.org...
8. www.climate2003.com...
9. www.evsc.virginia.edu...

That's going to take me a while to re read, I think it's one of the more interesting ones I have found (mail # 1104855751)


[edit on 21/11/2009 by Now_Then]

[edit on 21/11/2009 by Now_Then]

Wow!

I downloaded the files but haven't looked over them yet.

All I can say is; it doesn't really matter whether the emails were taken out of context... the real issue is that it's put a taint on the whole Global Warming legitimacy, and now that it's in the MSM, people might start to make up their own minds about climate change rather than relying on Al Gore.

reply to post by Now_Then


From a fast reading I do not conclude to anything.

Whose method is the right one?

The first guy gave them a faulty dataset and then a right one.
They say that they modified the dataset and the results because it had not been used the right method and these were wrong.

But who is right and who is wrong here?