Great debunking of the innuendos about the Climate Change leaked emails.

[Imperialism Inc.]

Recently hackers illegally hacked a university computer and gained access to emails between a handful of climate scientist

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/21/AR2009112102186.html?hpid=moreheadlines

Electronic files that were stolen from a prominent climate research center and made public last week provide a rare glimpse into the behind-the-scenes battle to shape the public perception of global warming.

While few U.S. politicians bother to question whether humans are changing the world's climate -- nearly three years ago the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded the evidence was unequivocal -- public debate persists. And the newly disclosed private exchanges among climate scientists at Britain's Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia reveal an intellectual circle that appears to feel very much under attack, and eager to punish its enemies.

In one e-mail, the center's director, Phil Jones, writes Pennsylvania State University's Michael E. Mann and questions whether the work of academics that question the link between human activities and global warming deserve to make it into the prestigious IPCC report, which represents the global consensus view on climate science.

Gavin and others over at realclimate.org (run by actual climate scientists) have been answering some of the accusations that have come up. The below comments provide lengthy responses to the claims being made.

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/11/the-cru-hack/comment-page-17/#comment-143251

6. Phil Jones says he has use Mann’s “Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series”…to hide the decline”

‘The paper in question is the Mann, Bradley and Hughes (1998) Nature paper on the original multiproxy temperature reconstruction, and the ‘trick’ is just to plot the instrumental records along with reconstruction so that the context of the recent warming is clear. Scientists often use the term “trick” to refer to a “a good way to deal with a problem”, rather than something that is “secret”, and so there is nothing problematic in this at all. As for the ‘decline’, it is well known that Keith Briffa’s maximum latewood tree ring density proxy diverges from the temperature records after 1960 (this is more commonly known as the “divergence problem”–see e.g. the recent discussion in this paper) and has been discussed in the literature since Briffa et al in Nature in 1998 (Nature, 391, 678-682). Those authors have always recommend not using the post 1960 part of their reconstruction, and so while ‘hiding’ is probably a poor choice of words (since it is ‘hidden’ in plain sight), not using the data in the plot is completely appropriate’ -Gavin Schmidt.

Surely if your aim is to ‘hide’ something then publishing it in Nature is probably not a great move …

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/11/the-cru-hack/comment-page-7/#comment-142545

8. On “Squeezing dissenting scientists out of the peer review process”
“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?”“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 !”

Report:
This is completely bizarre. Phil is simply suggesting that the group boycott/protest Climate Research due to the poor quality of the paper being discussed which was published within the journal. It is completely within his legitimate right to do so.

Much more at links.

[Birthmark]

1. This whole thing merely highlights...

...just how desperate the denialists are. These emails show some questionable judgment on a personal basis, perhaps, but they completely to show any problem with AGW theory and only some nitpicking problems with process. The denialist leadership must be very, very disappointed. Not that they'd admit that. ;)

[Johonny]

2. I think the whole point of the release was to

blunt any impact from the newly released Copenhagen report. Instead of actually discussing the science those that released these emails simply want to distract.