Supposedly hacked docs on climate causing an uproar.

[HeresyLives]

The Hadley Climate Research Unit in Britain was hacked yesterday, apparently by Russian black hats, and thousands of sensitive documents, including emails from climate scientists dating back a decade, were posted online.

snip-


Some of the old emails from scientists made public apparently make references to things like “hid the decline,” referring to global temperature series and different ways to slice and dice climate data.


http://blogs.wsj.com/environmentalcapital/2009/11/20/hacked-sensitive-documents-lifted-from-hadley-climate-center/

[earth mom]

1. Here is one of the comments from the link that makes me think this story is bogus:

This is an obvious hoax.

Sorry, but there is no Hadley Climatic Research Centre at the University of East Anglia. The University of East Anglia has a Climatic Research Unit, which is based at the University, which is in Norwich, Norfolk. Meanwhile, the British Government's Met Office has a Hadley Centre which looks at climate change. This is not part of the University of East Anglia, and is based several hundred miles away in Exeter, Devon. Given this fundamental factual error in the article, should we trust any of it?

[jpak]

4. Cheney hacked Hadley?

:evilgrin:

[HeresyLives]

6. Sounded bogus to me, and conveniently timed

as well. Thank you!

[FBaggins]

8. It's possible... but by no means "obvious".

"The director of Britain's leading Climate Research Unit, Phil Jones, has told Investigate magazine's TGIF Edition tonight that his organization has been hacked, and the data flying all over the internet appears to be genuine.

In an exclusive interview, Jones told TGIF, "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."



http://briefingroom.typepad.com/the_briefing_room/2009/11/hadleycru-says-leaked-data-is-real.html

[timeforpeace]

27. No biggie. It's proven that when temps go down, it's also global warming. We got it

covered.

[FBaggins]

31. There is a good joke there... but

it's more of a right-wing thing because it's oversimplified.

Many prefer the term "global climate change" to just "warming" because it involves more than temperature increased (and can, in fact, result in some unusually cold weather (not "climate").

The joke points out that there are some global warming "true believers" (not scientists usually) who see a bad hurricane and blame it on GW... then a year with remarkably low hurricane activity and that too is laid on the doorstep of global warming. Lots of rain and flooding? Global warming. Years of drought? Global warming.

Of course the other side sees Al Gore give a global warming speech in DC on a record-cold day and finds that hilarious (and I get it... it's just not politically relevant).

The problem is that people on both sides look to short term WEATHER and draw conclusions about the CLIMATE. We could have a few years of cooling in an otherwise warming cycle (in fact, some predict that) and it could seriously set back climate legislation... or we could have some real scorchers that will make passing real reform easy. Neither SHOULD have anything to do with it.

[FBaggins]

2. This is pretty scary stuff - IF true.

I've been more skeptical than most, but the early tone of this looks like a conspiracy to hide the truth.

Let's hope it's much ado about nothing.

[ret5hd]

5. .

:rofl: your deep concern is duly noted

[jpak]

10. The published peer reviewed data says you are WRONG

and there is no conspiracy to hide the truth.

fail

[FBaggins]

11. So... .the people who would be involved in the hypothetical conspiracy...

...say there's no conspiracy?

Well... THAT's refreshing.

I'd rather just learn that "evidence" of the conspiracy is just "reading into" a few minor statements and then dishonestly spreading them as reflecting the body of the material.

If the "story" were true (that someone at Jones' level has played fast and loose with the truth) then "peer reviewed data" wouldn't mean much (he's one of the guys doing the reviewing after all).

I prefer to just wait and see how they respond.

And the peer review data doesn't say that I am wrong. All I've said is that I'm concerned if the story (and what it implied) are true... and that I hope it isn't. There realy isn't any data that applies to that. :)

[jpak]

15. Bush falsified and fabricated and altered climate data for years to cover up "the truth"

that is a fact

this story has no there there

sorry

[FBaggins]

17. And if we had some emails from him

saying "here's how we'll cover it up"... that would be big news.

[jpak]

18. It was big news

sorry

[FBaggins]

19. "Was" and "news" don't go so well together

But thanks. :)

Blue_Tires #16 is what I was hoping for.

[jpak]

23. Bush-era EPA document on climate change released (LaT)

http://articles.latimes.com/2009/oct/14/nation/na-epa-climate14

WASHINGTON — The Environmental Protection Agency on Tuesday released a long-suppressed report by George W. Bush administration officials who had concluded -- based on science -- that the government should begin regulating greenhouse gas emissions because global warming posed serious risks to the country.

The report, known as an "endangerment finding," was done in 2007. The Bush White House refused to make it public because it opposed new government efforts to regulate the gases most scientists see as the major cause of global warming.

The existence of the finding -- and the refusal of the Bush administration to make it public -- were already known. But no copy of the document had been released until Tuesday.

The document "demonstrates that in 2007 the science was as clear as it is today," said Adora Andy, EPA spokeswoman. "The conclusions reached then by EPA scientists should have been made public and should have been considered."

<more>

FYI

[FBaggins]

24. Thanks!

Sounds like our side kept a little powder dry as well.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

3. The original piece was a satire.

I guess the Murdoch Journal just got trolled.

[HeresyLives]

7. Do you know the name of the

original satire? Any way of finding it?

I've been trying title combos with no luck.

[jmodden]

9. Hadley CRU

This is a right-wing scam to discredit Copenhagen.

Convenient timing, n.w.?

[FBaggins]

12. Yes. Incredibly convenient.

Of course... if it were real they're smary enough to keep the powder dry until it was of the most value.

[FBaggins]

13. A more reliable (non blog) source link

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8370282.stm

[Blue_Tires]

14. i seriously doubt the e-mails are authentic

so far i've just seen the snippets posted at the most extreme RW blogs...all the legit news services are saying so far is that there has been a hack with no confirmation of the contents...while the right goes premature ejeaculation all over the internets, I'll wait and observe calmly...

and i say this as a person who downloaded a supposed early leaked copy of the Mitchell Report AND who forwarded it on to everyone in my office (including my baseball fan boss)....I was the king of the world for a few hours...until the real one came out and EVERY name on my early was incorrect...

[Blue_Tires]

16. more discussion and debunkings here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x7055930

http://scienceblogs.com/islandofdoubt/2009/11/the_hacked_climate_science_ema.php

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/11/the-cru-hack/

so this piece of journalism dynamite had a shelf life of what? 90 minutes??

now that that's over, i'm starting to wonder who was really behind the hack...i'm getting the feeling it wasn't some random Russian punk teenager...

[FBaggins]

21. Amazing how short the half-life is for such things online, eh?

You went from "they're not real" to "they're real but aren't incriminating" in eight minutes. Pretty impressive.

Of course... none of us have really read any significant portion of the documents (and neither have the early debunkers).

Should make for entertaining political bloodsport heading into Copenhagen.

Those were the kinds of links I was hoping for when I first saw a hint of this. Thanks!

[Blue_Tires]

25. i was basing that on my infamous mitchell report experience

and some of the stranger things I've seen commenters in the stories and blogs allege the e-mails contained....

but hey...someone somewhere will pore through a decade of archived e-mails and scientific data hoping to find gold...better them than me...I'll be surprised if this even gets a mention in Copenhagen unless a miracle happens, and the deniers DO find pure, undisputed gold in the e-mails...But one way or the other the truth will reveal itself, so that is the least of my concerns...Now I'd like to know who hacked the server, what were they really trying to find, and who were they working for??

[JonQ]

28. Those aren't really great debunkings

the first just contains a quote and link to the second. Which says:

I downloaded the 62 MB file and took a quick look at a random selection of what are mostly dull little missives bereft of the context required to understand them in any meaningful way. Just as you'd expect from bits and piece of correspondence never intended for public consumption. Next.

The original file 160MbB, he downloaded less than half and effected a "quick look" at random bits which he deemed irrelevant. As they are email correspondence I suspect they contain a lot of meaningless drivel. No one said that 100% of it was damning evidence. But it only takes a few incidents to really undermine their credibility. And briefly skimming less than 40% of the total is not really an exhaustive search.

The third was written by climate scientists. The people being accused in this story. I believe they may be somewhat biased on this.

Declaring that "now that that's over" is a bit premature at this stage.

[Blue_Tires]

35. ok, call it a 'response' then...

I still have yet to see any confirmation that the deniers have finally uncovered that huge, "Michael Crichton-climate change conspiracy cover-up" that I keep reading over and over in the comments...But if there is something (authentic) in there for the deniers to find, i'm sure they will find it...not betting the house on it, though...but at least it keeps them busy when they are not looking for obama's kenyan birth certificate...

[The Night Owl]

20. Real Climate responds...

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/11/the-cru-hack/#more-1853

[JonQ]

29. A blog by climate scientists

finds that climate scientists are innocent.

[The Night Owl]

32. The accused deserve to have their voices heard, don't they? {EOM}

[JonQ]

34. Sure, but I'd hardly call that an unbiased debunking

as others are.

I would grant philip morris the right to respond to accusations that they lied to cover up the effects of smoking, but I would take whatever they had to say with a grain of salt.

[Blue_Tires]

38. i think the BOP is on the deniers, not the climate scientists

it is the deniers who are claiming this massive conspiracy of the science world, the scope of which would dwarf anything Dan Brown wrote about...and it is the deniers who claim to finally have the smoking gun in their hands...let them present real, unedited emails that proves their case definitively and beyond a reasonable doubt...all i've seen so far are loose implications, and one selectively quoted passage from an e-mail (assuming it is even authentic)...

[JonQ]

39. So far very little has come out

so nothing has been proven.

However to take the climate scientists word that climate scientists are not misbehaving and use that to declare that the thing has been thoroughly debunked is ridiculous.

[underpants]

40. Thank you. RW radio has been all over this all day

listened twice (at lunch-guess who and our local idiot). The fact that they had three sentences from "a 1,000 emails and 3,000 documents" raised flags to say the least. I had read a bit on this previously but I wasn't sure of the actual details. Now I am. Thank you.

[tkmorris]

22. Tempest in a teapot

My initial, cursory examination leads me to believe that the archive is probably authentic, at least in part. It is very possible that some creative editing has taken place, but it will take some time to discover that due to the sheer number of emails disclosed.

More importantly however I have yet to see anything particularly damning in any of them. Taken out of context there are a number of comments that can be made to appear as if there is skepticism amongst top climate researchers about climate change and there have even been attempts made to make it appear as if some scientists are manipulating data for public consumption but closer examination has so far revealed that this is not actually the case, at least not in the excerpts I have seen the anti-climate change crowd crowing about. I'll wait to see what else may be discovered in the files but I doubt that much will come of this.

Interesting response from Real Climate: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/11/the-cru-hack/#more-1853

[Yo_Mama]

30. I saw some awfully incriminating stuff

Like this - they are just massaging the data to get the results they want.

I also saw weird stuff about money, emails about controlling who gets publications, etc. It all is the most damning justification of the Wegman report.

From: Tom Wigley <...>
To: Phil Jones <...>
Subject: 1940s
Date: Sun, 27 Sep 2009 23:25:38 -0600
Cc: Ben Santer <...>
Phil,
Here are some speculations on correcting SSTs to partly explain the 1940s warming blip. If you look at the attached plot you will see that theland also shows the 1940s blip (as I’m sure you know).
So, if we could reduce the ocean blip by, say, 0.15 degC, then this would be significant for the global mean – but we’d still have to explain the land blip. I’ve chosen 0.15 here deliberately. This still leaves an ocean blip, and i think one needs to have some form of ocean blip to explain the land blip (via either some common forcing, or ocean forcing land, or vice versa, or all of these). When you look at other blips, the land blips are 1.5 to 2 times (roughly) the ocean blips—higher sensitivity plus thermal inertia effects. My 0.15 adjustment leaves things consistent with this, so you can see where I am coming from.
Removing ENSO does not affect this.
It would be good to remove at least part of the 1940s blip, but we are still left with “why the blip”.

[Viking12]

36. Out of context.

The 1940s 'blip' refers to a problem with data collection during WWII. Understandably, the quality and spatial coverage was not ideal when torpedoes were swimming at sailors. It has been a known problem since the time it was collected and the discussion refers to homogenizing the data with records before and after the war. It has nothing to do with massaging the data for nefarious political purposes. It was/is a legitimate scientific, statistical problem.

[underpants]

41. "was not ideal when torpedoes were swimming at sailors"

That's a great line :thumbsup:

[Blue_Tires]

37. if that was real, that would have been the FIRST thing the stories led off with...

oh, and please, for our personal enjoyment, post the "pretty incriminating stuff" dealing with money and publications...

[Blue_Tires]

26. i sent a short e-mail to the WSJ

been a full day and the piece hasn't been amended or edited yet, aside from the "kiwi" change...for some reason that doesn't surprise me...

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[underpants]

42. Are we supposed to believe the scientist they already thought were liars or...

the scientists that these emails prove are liars but not lying like they said they were lying?

I am a bit confused