Friday, November 20, 2009

Oh, My, My. Is this for real?

Update:

There is so much here. May I suggest that if you have students remotely old enough to understand what science ought to be you sit down with them and go over these emails, these articles, and discuss the difference between what appears to have been going on at Hadley CRU and what real science is supposed to look like? This is in an incredibly valuable teaching tool.

There's an update at WUWT as well as a couple other sites (linked at the WUWT link below)- and the HCRU has changed all their passwords, and Phil Jones at first would not respond, but later appears to say at least some of the emails are real.


Mann's response seems quite incompatible with the emails being faked:

“I’m simply not going to comment on the content of illegally obtained emails. However, I will say this: both their theft and, I believe, any reproduction of the emails that were obtained on public websites, etc, constitutes serious criminal activity. I’m hoping that the perpetrators and their facilitators will be tracked down and prosecuted to the fullest extent the law allows.”

The majority idea now seems to be these emails were compiled in a legal response to a legal FOIA request, and then the climate change mythmakers strong armed those involved into illegally refusing the FOIA request. This could have been the last straw for somebody tired of seeing science used and abused, manipulated, and exchanged for public propaganda and personal gain (both political and financial).

Updated links at bottom of post.



This is seriously explosive stuff.

Watts Up With That:
it appears that Hadley Climate Research Unit has been hacked and many many files have been released by the hacker or person unknown
[...]
An unknown person put postings on some climate skeptic websites that advertsied 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 from Phil Jones at CRU to and from many people.

I’ve seen the file, it appears to be genuine and from CRU. Others who have seen it concur- it appears genuine. There are so many files it appears unlikely that it is a hoax. The effort would be too great....


Some excerpts (lifted from the comments:

“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.”

Phil Jones says he would rather destroy the CRU data than release it to McIntyre.

Phil Jones is also purportedly the author of the email which includes this:
"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: Tom Wigley
To: Phil Jones
Subject: LAND vs OCEAN
Date: Fri, 06 Nov 2009 17:36:15 -0700

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.

See attached note.

Comments?

Tom

-----------

It is distressing to read that American Stinker item. But Keith
does seem to have got himself into a mess. As I pointed out in
emails, Yamal is insignificant. And you say that (contrary to
what M&M say) Yamal is *not* used in MBH, etc. So these facts
alone are enough to shoot down M&M is a few sentences (which
surely is the only way to go — complex and wordy responses
will be counter productive).
But, more generally, (even if it *is* irrelevant) how does Keith
explain the McIntyre plot that compares Yamal-12 with Yamal-all? And
how does he explain the apparent “selection” of the less well-replicated
chronology rather that the later (better replicated) chronology?
Of course, I don’t know how often Yamal-12 has really been used in
recent, post-1995, work. I suspect from what you say it is much less
often that M&M say — but where did they get their information? I
presume they went thru papers to see if Yamal was cited, a pretty foolproof method if
you ask me. Perhaps these things can be explained clearly and concisely — but I am not
sure Keith is able to do this
as he is too close to the issue and probably quite pissed of.
And the issue of with-holding data is still a hot potato, one that
affects both you and Keith (and Mann). Yes, there are reasons — but
many *good* scientists appear to be unsympathetic to these. The
trouble here is that with-holding data looks like hiding something,
and hiding means (in some eyes) that it is bogus science that is
being hidden.
I think Keith needs to be very, very careful in how he handles this.
I’d be willing to check over anything he puts together.
Tom.

Prof. Phil Jones
Climatic Research Unit …

-----------------
From: Michael Mann
To: Kevin Trenberth
Cc: Tom Wigley , Stephen H Schneider , Myles Allen , peter stott , “Philip D. Jones” , Benjamin Santer , Thomas R Karl , Gavin Schmidt , James Hansen , Michael Oppenheimer

Kevin Trenberth wrote:

Hi all

Well I have my own article on where the heck is global warming? We are asking that here in Boulder where we have broken records the past two days for the coldest days on record. We had 4 inches of snow. The high the last 2 days was below 30F and the normal is 69F, and it smashed the previous records for these days by 10F. The low was about 18F and also a record low, well below the previous record low. This is January weather (see the Rockies baseball playoff game was canceled on saturday and then played last night in below freezing weather).

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.
=============================
How to change the public's attitudes (very scientific):
7. Link climate change mitigation to positive desires/aspirations Traditional marketing associates products with the aspirations of their target audience. Linking climate change mitigation to home improvement, self-improvement, green spaces or national pride are all worth investigating.

8. Use transmitters and social learning People learn through social interaction, and some people are better teachers and trendsetters than others. Targeting these people will ensure that messages seem more trustworthy and are transmitted more effectively.

===================================================
On the burning question of how to block climate change skeptics (elsewhen known as 'scientists') from publishing in peer reviewed journals:
#1047388489
“This was the danger of always criticising the skeptics for not publishing in the “peer-reviewed literature”. Obviously, they found a solution to that–take over a journal! So what do we do about this? I think we have to stop considering “Climate Research” as a legitimate peer-reviewed journal. Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal. We would also need to consider what we tell or request of our more reasonable colleagues who currently sit on the editorial board…What do others think?”

#1047390562
“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 !”

#1051156418
“This second case gets to the crux of the matter. I suspect that deFreitas deliberately chose other referees who are members of the skeptics camp. I also suspect that he has done this on other occasions. How to deal with this is unclear, since there are a number of individuals with bona fide scientific credentials who could be used by an unscrupulous editor to ensure that ‘anti-greenhouse’ science can get through the peer review process (Legates, Balling, Lindzen, Baliunas, Soon, and so on)…. deFreitas is such a poor scientist that he may simply disappear. I saw some work from his PhD, and it was awful (Pat Michaels’ PhD is at the same level).”

#1051190249
“Note that I am copying this view only to Mike Hulme and Phil Jones. Mike’s idea to get editorial board members to resign will probably not work — must get rid of von Storch too, otherwise holes will eventually fill up with people like Legates, Balling, Lindzen, Michaels, Singer, etc. I have heard that the publishers are not happy with von Storch, so the above approach might remove that hurdle too.”

#1051230500
“Since the IPCC makes it quite clear that there are substantial grounds for concern about climate change, is it not partially the responsibility of climate science to make sure only satisfactorily peer-reviewed science appears in scientific publications? – and to refute any inadequately reviewed and wrong articles that do make their way through the peer review process?”

----------------------------------------------------------

Some skepticism in order, possibly total skepticism. The files could be largely real with some fake stuff somehow inserted. They could be a total hoax. Or the real hoax could be the whole manmade global warming shtick and these files a series of red hot smoking guns.

The comments at WUWT are urging further fact checking. A few suggest that rather than the work of a hacker this could be the work of a mole tired of seeing science suborned in this fashion.

Chris Horner at Planet Gore says
:
If legit, this apparently devastating series of revelations will be very hard for the media to ignore. I didn't say impossible — they're fully vested partners in the global warming industry, because catastrophism sells. But so does scandal, and this appears to be the makings of a very big one. Imagine this sort of news coming in the field of AIDS research. Then reflect that the taxpayer spends more on climate-related research than on the entire suite of AIDS programs, far beyond drug research.

More at The Blackboard
:
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

Prof. Phil Jones

------------------------------------------

Again- could be tampered with, could be a most elaborate hoax. Interesting, anyway.


Related: this article on Steve McIntyre is a must-read.

And look at the air-brushing and faux-to-shopping Gore had to have done for the cover of his new book! He keeps claiming that we have all these horrible hurricanes as a result of climate change- even though we are at a thirty year low. So he had four of them added to the photo of the globe- including at least one that spins the wrong way for its hemisphere!

------------------------------------------

Climategate
(I prefer CRUppaquidick):

When you read some of those files – including 1079 emails and 72 documents – you realise just why the boffins at Hadley CRU might have preferred to keep them confidential. As Andrew Bolt puts it, this scandal could well be “the greatest in modern science”. These alleged emails – supposedly exchanged by some of the most prominent scientists pushing AGW theory – suggest:

Conspiracy, collusion in exaggerating warming data, possibly illegal destruction of embarrassing information, organised resistance to disclosure, manipulation of data, private admissions of flaws in their public claims and much more.

One of the alleged emails has a gentle gloat over the death in 2004 of John L Daly (one of the first climate change sceptics, founder of the Still Waiting For Greenhouse site), commenting:

“In an odd way this is cheering news.”

But perhaps the most damaging revelations – the scientific equivalent of the Telegraph’s MPs’ expenses scandal – are those concerning the way Warmist scientists may variously have manipulated or suppressed evidence in order to support their cause.


Australia: It's a scandal:

So the 1079 emails and 72 documents seem indeed evidence of a scandal involving most of the most prominent scientists pushing the man-made warming theory - a scandal that is one of the greatest in modern science. I’ve been adding some of the most astonishing in updates below - emails suggesting conspiracy, collusion in exaggerating warming data, possibly illegal destruction of embarrassing information, organised resistance to disclosure, manipulation of data, private admissions of flaws in their public claims and much more. If it is as it now seems, never again will “peer review” be used to shout down sceptics.

This is clearly not the work of some hacker, but of an insider who’s now blown the whistle.

and here's more (there's a lot more here- excerpts from the emails sent in by readers, all the juicy bits, like Reason # 987 why you home school, because you remember when you were in high school you and your pals passing around highlighted copies of the latest steamy novel. Only THIS? This is legit and unbelievable and important reading):

Reader Chemist finds more which - if true - make this proof of a conspiracy which is one of the largest, most extraordinary and most disgraceful in moderrn science, given the stakes:

Here are some gems. “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!""Yes, I am aware of the confusion surrounding what the Hadley Centre did and why. It is even messier than you realize. I have forcing data sets (more than one!) from Jonathon Gregory that differ from the numbers yougave in your email!!""Ed to be really honest, I don’t see how this was ever accepted for publication in Nature.""Mike,I’d rather you didn’t. I think it should be sufficient to forward the para from Andrew Conrie’semail that says the paper has been rejected by all 3 reviewers. You can say that the paper was an extended and updated version of that which appeared in CR.Obviously, under no circumstances should any of this get back to Pielke.Cheers""we are having trouble to express the real message of the reconstructions - being scientifically sound in representing uncertainty , while still getting the crux of the information across clearly.”

There is so much here. May I suggest that if you have students remotely old enough to understand what science ought to be you sit down with them and go over these emails, these articles, and discuss the difference between what appears to have been going on at Hadley CRU and what real science is supposed to look like? This is in an incredibly valuable teaching tool. Pin It