[N_Fiddledog]

This news broke yesterday on the skeptic blogs. There's stories all over the place, but this article from Andrew Bolt is the best so far.

http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andr ... cked#63657

[sandorski]

negative

[N_Fiddledog]

This story may never make it as far as the American mainstream media, but the alternative media is starting to pick it up, and it may make it as far as Fox News. Here's a right wing blog...

Quote:

Controversy has exploded onto the Internet after a major global-warming advocacy center in the UK had its e-mail system hacked and the data published on line. The director of the University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit confirmed that the e-mails are genuine — and Australian publication Investigate and the Australian Herald-Sun report that those e-mails expose a conspiracy to hide detrimental information from the public that argues against global warming (via Watt’s Up With That)

http://hotair.com/archives/2009/11/20/d ... ing-fraud/

[N_Fiddledog]

Here's a user friendly rendition of the story from an online journal for the details.

Quote:

ClimateGate - Climate center's server hacked revealing documents and emails

Britain’s Climate Research Unit, University of East Anglia, suffered a data breach in recent days when a hacker apparently broke into their system and made away with thousands of emails and documents. The stolen data was then posted to a Russian server and has quickly made the rounds among climate skeptics. The documents within the archive, if proven to be authentic, would at best be embarrassing for many prominent climate researchers and at worst, damning.

The electronic break in itself has been verified by the director of the research unit, Professor Phil Jones. He told Britain’s Investigate magazine's TGIF Edition "It was a hacker. We were aware of this about three or four days ago that someone had hacked into our system and taken and copied loads of data files and emails."

The file that has been making the rounds was initially brought to light by the website The Air Vent. The 61mb file contains thousands of documents and emails. As the archive was just discovered within the last 24 hours, its authenticity has not been determined and as such readers should cast a skeptical eye on the contents.

At least one person that was included in some of the correspondence, Steve McIntyre of the website Climate Audit, verified the authenticity of at least some of the messages. McIntyre said, “Every email that I’ve examined so far looks genuine. There are a few emails of mine that are 100% genuine. It is really quite breathtaking.”

The contents of the archive contain documents and email correspondence from a veritable who’s who in climate science. Among those included in the emails are Phil Jones, Keith Briffa, his assistant, Michael Mann of the University of Virginia, Malcolm Hughes at the University of Arizona, Kevin Trenberth at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, James Hansen of NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies and others.

The emails contain an array of discussions including what appear to be concerted efforts to withhold data. Just as troubling is conversations that allude to potentially manipulating climate data to “hide the decline” of temperatures seen in the last decade.

Some of the excerpts of emails within the archives (edited for brevity, emphasis added):

From Michael E. Mann:

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.


From Nick McKay:

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?


From Tom Wigley:

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.

From Phil Jones:

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.


From Kevin Trenberth:

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.

From Michael Mann:


Perhaps we'll do a simple update to the Yamal post, e.g. linking Keith/s new page--Gavin t? As to the issues of robustness, particularly w.r.t. inclusion of the Yamal series, we actually emphasized that (including the Osborn and Briffa '06 sensitivity test) in our original post! As we all know, this isn't about truth at all, its about plausibly deniable accusations.

From Phil Jones:

The skeptics seem to be building up a head of steam here! ... 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 !

From Michael E. Mann:

Anyway, I wanted you guys to know that you’re free to use RC [RealClimate.org - A supposed neutral climate change website] Rein any way you think would be helpful. Gavin and I are going to be careful about what comments we screen through, and we’ll be very careful to answer any questions that come up to any extent we can. On the other hand, you might want to visit the thread and post replies yourself. 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.

From Phil Jones:

If FOIA does ever get used by anyone, there is also IPR to consider as well. Data is covered by all the agreements we sign with people, so I will be hiding behind them.

If the emails and documents are a forgery, it would be an extremely large one that would likely have taken months to setup. No doubt much more will be coming out about these emails and their possible authenticity. Stay tuned to the Climate Change Examiner for updates as more information becomes available.

http://www.examiner.com/x-25061-Climate ... e-Examiner

[DrCaleb]

This is just awesome. Science has built in checks to prevent this sort of bullshit, and I just love seeing people get busted for taking the shortcuts or out-and-out fabrications.

[Tricks]

Wow.

[gigs]

sandorski wrote:

negative

[Zipperfish]

And yet...the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere remains at about 380 ppm. And its radiative properties remain unchanged by this scandal.

It's funny how the guy Infidel linked to is so outraged--and yet has no problem with people hacking into people's private emails.

[ridenrain]

This is like an alternate scripture being uncovered that contradicts Al Gore's church of green. So sad, pathetic.. and fitting.

[commanderkai]

Zipperfish wrote:

It's funny how the guy Infidel linked to is so outraged--and yet has no problem with people hacking into people's private emails.

There are rumors it might be a whistle-blower as well. Either way, if somebody hacks into a server to expose a fraud, does that make the hacking right? The hell do I know. It's an ethical question, and ethics is subjective.

[Zipperfish]

commanderkai wrote:

Zipperfish wrote:

It's funny how the guy Infidel linked to is so outraged--and yet has no problem with people hacking into people's private emails.

There are rumors it might be a whistle-blower as well. Either way, if somebody hacks into a server to expose a fraud, does that make the hacking right? The hell do I know. It's an ethical question, and ethics is subjective.

Ethics is subjective. But some internal consistency is called for. It's hard to take someone seriously about their ethical outrage (that they have been misled by writers of these emails) when that person is posting personal emails illegally hacked from a site.

Mind you the writers should have known better. I'm very careful about what I put in emails, regardless of how well the person with whom I'm corresponding.

Should be interesting to see how this plays out though.

[2Cdo]

Zipperfish wrote:

Mind you the writers should have known better. I'm very careful about what I put in emails, regardless of how well the person with whom I'm corresponding.

E-mails are just as bad as directly talking to a camera crew. These idiots deserve to be exposed for the frauds they are.

[commanderkai]

Zipperfish wrote:

Ethics is subjective. But some internal consistency is called for. It's hard to take someone seriously about their ethical outrage (that they have been misled by writers of these emails) when that person is posting personal emails illegally hacked from a site.

But, and I hate using this as an example because I know it'll start a separate discussion, but when Sarah Palin's private email account was hacked, those on the left were hoping it'd expose some ethics violations on her part when she was Governor of Alaska. Nothing was exposed, and the story died. Now, it's the right's turn, and we're discussing the content, while the left will be discussing the hacking. Is there a double standard? Sure, no doubt about it, but such is politics.

I'm not sure what to think, myself. If a cop illegally searches a home, and finds a freezer of dead bodies, the bodies are tossed out as evidence, even if the evidence is damning of another crime that is much more severe. Now, this case is the reverse, an individual illegally hacks into a government funded facility (all universities get their government grants, thus why I'm saying it as such), and discovers a deception by the government, or at least among these scientists, to falsify information to make their case better. Does the hacker warrant the status as a whistle-blower for exposing this deception? Or is he just as wrong as those who deceived? Once again, ethics. And ethics is subjective.

Edit: Added stuff to the second paragraph

[DerbyX]

2Cdo wrote:

Zipperfish wrote:

Mind you the writers should have known better. I'm very careful about what I put in emails, regardless of how well the person with whom I'm corresponding.

E-mails are just as bad as directly talking to a camera crew. These idiots deserve to be exposed for the frauds they are.

Yep. Email, Facebook, even stuff on forums like this. Cyberspace isn't safe. Its why my sister had a talk (at my prodding) with her 11 year old daughter about how even private photos meant for a single person can end up in the public domain.

Her response was "Yuck, I'd never do that!" Hopefully that thought will take.

[djakeydd]

ridenrain wrote:

This is like an alternate scripture being uncovered that contradicts Al Gore's church of green. So sad, pathetic.. and fitting.

and as far as the msm goes, it will never ever see a glimpse of daylight