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Let's lead off with the BBC article (there are more links below): http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8370282.stm quote:
The emails are online here, searchable by keyword, and you can download the entire archive here (62 MB). Here are some other news articles and reactions: http://www.examiner.com/x-28973-Ess...docs-and-emails http://www.guardian.co.uk/environme...s-leaked-emails http://politics.slashdot.org/articl...9/11/20/1747257 Slashdot http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/21/s...imate.html?_r=1 Andrew Revkin of the New York Times http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/.../hadley_hacked/ Warmists  http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/j...global-warming/ The final nail in the coffin of 'anthropogenic global warming' oh god See this thread for some background and earlier discussion, starting at this post. This thread is for discussion and argument about the contents of the leaked correspondence and documents. edit 2009-11-21: Fixed link to the NYT. Sgs-Cruz fucked around with this message at Nov 21, 2009 around 16:39 |
| # ? Nov 21, 2009 04:11 |
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| # ? Feb 09, 2010 17:47 |
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Here's a roundup of the climate-skeptic blogs that are, let's face it, having a field day with this stuff: http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/20...-62-mb-of-gold/ (this is 'Jeff Id' of Michigan who was the first to get the link to the Russian FTP server with the stolen files posted on his blog) http://rankexploits.com/musings/200...-files-or-fake/ http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=7806 http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=7810 http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/...files-released/ http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/...s-nature-trick/ Here's RealClimate's posting on the topic: http://www.realclimate.org/index.ph...1/the-cru-hack/
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| # ? Nov 21, 2009 04:15 |
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Regardless of whether you believe that the Earth is going into another ice age or we're all going to be underwater in a year due to melting ice caps, the principal villains in this story are Michael Mann, Keith Briffa, and Phil Jones. They have been obstructing, hiding, and doing everything in their power to make sure that their faulty research remains the gold standard in climate science. How has the IPCC determined that we're the warmest in 1000 years? These guys. How do we know that the Earth has been warming since the 19th century? Mostly these guys. I've yet to go through all of the emails but I have been led to believe this confirms various suspicions: that they have colluded to cherrypick paleoclimate proxies; that they actively sought to thwart Freedom of Information requests for data; that they purposefully covered up the divergence in proxy data in the 20th century; that they have an active and childish disdain for researchers such as Steve McIntyre & Pielke Sr.; and generally that they are smarmy assholes. For anyone interested for more details on the goings-on at CRU, I've posted quite a lot of information pertaining to Briffa & Phil Jones here (as well as a link to reading more about Michael Mann): http://forums.somethingawful.com/sh...hreadid=3211218 Arkane fucked around with this message at Nov 21, 2009 around 04:28 |
| # ? Nov 21, 2009 04:25 |
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Sgs-Cruz posted:Here's a roundup of the climate-skeptic blogs that are, let's face it, having a field day with this stuff: Thanks for the links! Admittedly, some more colorful descriptions come to mind for people who actually think that climate change is some sort of cheat instead of an empirical, observable phenomenon. Could I ask you this, though: Is "climate-skeptic" considered the favored, neutral term for them? In other words, have people who are skeptical of climate change coined the term "climate-skeptic" for themselves, and it's considered an acceptable label to use for them? A Google search brings up a blog or two that encapsulates the term in the title, but since I don't particularly go out of my way to read things that try to discredit climate change, I honestly don't know if this is what they like to call themselves or not. Is it?
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| # ? Nov 21, 2009 04:32 |
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Yeah it's kind of like the terminology for pro- and anti-abortion people. Are they pro-choice, anti-choice, pro-life, pro-abortion, anti-abortion, anti-life? They'd call themselves 'climate skeptics' (thus linking themselves to a grand tradition of scientific skepticism), and the mainstream calls them 'denialists' (which semantically links them with Holocaust denialists). Meanwhile the mainstream calls themselves, well, 'scientists', and the skeptics call them 'Warmists'. Personally, I take a cue from the abortion debate and use the terms that each side uses for themselves. Which means, generally, 'skeptics' and 'mainstream scientists'.
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| # ? Nov 21, 2009 04:37 |
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Arkane posted:Regardless of whether you believe that the Earth is going into another ice age or we're all going to be underwater in a year due to melting ice caps, the principal villains in this story are Michael Mann, Keith Briffa, and Phil Jones. They have been obstructing, hiding, and doing everything in their power to make sure that their faulty research remains the gold standard in climate science. How has the IPCC determined that we're the warmest in 1000 years? These guys. How do we know that the Earth has been warming since the 19th century? Mostly these guys. So why was Pres. Bush allegedly suppress information coming out of NASA? If the information was always there why was it suppressed?
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| # ? Nov 21, 2009 04:38 |
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Sgs-Cruz posted:Yeah it's kind of like the terminology for pro- and anti-abortion people. Are they pro-choice, anti-choice, pro-life, pro-abortion, anti-abortion, anti-life? Wow, I wasn't aware that global climate change denial and holocaust denial were so similar!
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| # ? Nov 21, 2009 04:41 |
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Here's the one that's got everybody talking. Bolding is mine.942777075.txt posted:From: Phil Jones <email address removed>
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| # ? Nov 21, 2009 04:44 |
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Fist of Fury posted:Thanks for the links! Admittedly, some more colorful descriptions come to mind for people who actually think that climate change is some sort of cheat instead of an empirical, observable phenomenon. I would consider myself a climate skeptic and I wouldn't consider the term derogatory. You should know, though, that there are various types of climate skeptics. Some people believe that it is a myth, full-stop. You will find these people at Wattsupwiththat, which is the site you'd basically go to if you weren't at all interested in the science but just the big topic/political-type stuff. The comment section is a cesspool. Some people believe that humanity is obviously having an impact on the climate, but that the general view on global warming is filled with unsubstantiated exaggerations (natural disasters, sea level rise, melting ice caps) & propped up by some VERY questionable research (reconstructions & models). This is where the vast majority of learned "skeptics" reside, and where I reside. You will find these people at Steve McIntyre's blog, Lucia's blog, Pielke Jr.'s blog, etc. Actually I would add that these people are far more interested in the science than those that actually believe in catastrophic global warming. People roll the two together constantly, though, with the term "denier." That term is derogatory most of the time, because most of the people that are called deniers aren't in denial of anything. Well I guess you could say they deny bullshit? Arkane fucked around with this message at Nov 21, 2009 around 04:49 |
| # ? Nov 21, 2009 04:44 |
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downout posted:Wow, I wasn't aware that global climate change denial and holocaust denial were so similar! they are similar insofar as they are both fringe ends of their science, widely disdained among the mainstream, who have had their causes picked up and promoted by ideologues whose goals are served by their theories.
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| # ? Nov 21, 2009 04:45 |
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Sgs-Cruz posted:Here's the one that's got everybody talking. Bolding is mine. quote:NASA's Gavin Schmidt: Critics "are using language used in science and interpreting it in a completely different way." Wired's Threat Level blog reported on November 20 that Gavin Schmidt, a climate scientist at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said: "There's nothing in the e-mails that shows that global warming is a hoax. ... There's no funding by nefarious groups. There's no politics in any of these things; nobody from the [United Nations] telling people what to do. There's nothing hidden, no manipulation. It's just scientists talking about science, and they're talking relatively openly as people in private e-mails generally are freer with their thoughts than they would be in a public forum. The few quotes that are being pulled out [are out] of context. People are using language used in science and interpreting it in a completely different way." Schmidt is a contributor to the Real Climate blog, which has stated that some of the stolen CRU emails "involve people" at Real Climate. quote: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, as is further research to understand why this happens. quote:No doubt, instances of cherry-picked and poorly-worded "gotcha" phrases will be pulled out of context. One example is worth mentioning quickly. Phil Jones in discussing the presentation of temperature reconstructions stated that "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) and from 1961 for Keith's 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.
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| # ? Nov 21, 2009 04:49 |
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My advice to the RC guys would be to drop talk about illegalities and personal tone and to build up a list of the biggest gotchas from the emails that are being trumpeted around the blogosphere and address them. I have no idea what this stuff represents, having no scientific knowledge of the topic and having been reading various blogs for only the last few hours, but as I've been clicking around from link to link the two things that are clear is that the skeptics are largely posting stories about specific things they're pointing to and saying "this demonstrates that such and such is a lie" and the climate scientists are largely posting stories with generalities, talking about how anything can be taken out of context or how personal emails are written with a different tone. That RC post is a good example, it's all about esoteria, but then in the comments the editor spends a lot of time refuting specific things. He needs to have a big post refuting the specific things if they're refutable, because no one's going to forward around page 4 of some blog comments and say "scroll down" and even if they do no one is going to read it. I know it's a tactical point, but as the emails mention, wording matters. Of course at the end of the day the net result is probably going to basically just be bad for the scientists whether they're right or wrong about what's in the emails. Almost no one's going to understand whether they're right or wrong, so all that's going to matter is what the appearance is and the appearance is that there's chicanery going on.
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| # ? Nov 21, 2009 04:52 |
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I agree ReindeerF. I tend to disdain the field of 'public relations', because in general I like to think that ones actions should speak for themselves. However in the case of private emails being leaked, it's very easy to ascribe malice to people who weren't intending that. It sounds like Mann and Jones especially need a good PR firm right now.
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| # ? Nov 21, 2009 04:54 |
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downout posted:Wow, I wasn't aware that global climate change denial and holocaust denial were so similar! Usually I'd dismiss that analogy as childish name calling but in this case it's actually quite a useful comparison If the Simon Wiesenthal Center's email got hacked and it revealed discussions between employees conspiring to delete embarrassing emails for fear they'd be seized by legal means, discussing methods by which they could inflate the number of Jews killed during the Holocaust and privately admitting that they had no evidence to suggest that certain alleged war criminals were even guilty, they'd come under extreme scrutiny and for good reason. I would continue to believe that the Holocaust had happened and that millions of Jews were in fact killed by the Nazis but it would cast a black shadow over the ethics of Holocaust researchers, at a minimum it would indicate that many Holocaust researchers were either intentionally deceptive or morally apathetic. The least we can expect from Global Warming's true believers is that they admit that the CRU fostered a culture of political barracking and secrecy that is incompatible with universally accepted notions of scientific ethics. The public will be rightfully outraged by this whole debacle and Climate Change research will need to become more open and transparent if it is to once again be taken seriously be the public.
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| # ? Nov 21, 2009 04:59 |
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It seems to be that it's going to be a losing battle. 15 years worth of e-mails being searched for every bit of out-of-context bullshit they can find. also I have to laugh at Arkane, who seems to be convinced that one of the largest academic frauds in the history of science (which is what this would be) would be exposed through e-mail.
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| # ? Nov 21, 2009 04:59 |
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Concerned Citizen posted:It seems to be that it's going to be a losing battle. 15 years worth of e-mails being searched for every bit of out-of-context bullshit they can find. Arkane is generally not on speaking terms with reality. And none of this is the least bit surprising. Given the number of people who dismiss evolution as "just a theory", people with an agenda are always ready to misread scientific terms when it's convenient. They aren't interested in truth - merely in pushing their toxic ideology.
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| # ? Nov 21, 2009 05:03 |
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60mb really isn't a whole hell of a lot of data when you are talking about storage on a server. Considering that most if not all e-mails seem germane and the most recent one was on Nov 12, I would not be at all surprised if this is a small subset of the data stolen. Considering the constant calls for transparency coming from the denialsit camp, what didn't the hackers want to include in these files?
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| # ? Nov 21, 2009 05:06 |
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I found one interesting email exchange. It's quite long, but concerns the journal Geophysical Research Letters, which published several sceptical papers, and they fear has been taken over by sceptics. This is the most interesting part to me.Tom Wrigley posted:If you think that Saiers is in the greenhouse skeptics camp, then, if we can find documentary evidence of this, we could go through official AGU channels to get him ousted.
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| # ? Nov 21, 2009 05:10 |
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BEST OF CLIMATE RESEARCH UNIT E-MAIL EXPOSE!!! SCIENCE UNDERMINED!!quote:Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4? Why AR4? Who knows?? But they're deleting e-mails!! THEY'RE DELETING THE EVIDENCE OF THEIR WRONGDOING!! WHY ELSE WOULD YOU DELETE E-MAILS!! If only they had deleted the e-mail about the (clearly illegal) deletion of e-mail, we would have never known. quote:Next Threats of violence against Pat Michaels!?!? Saint Pat Michael? No... no......... quote:……Phil and I have recently submitted a paper using about a dozen NH records that fit this category, and many of which are available nearly 2K back–I think that trying to adopt a timeframe of 2K, rather than the usual 1K, addresses a good earlier point that Peck made w/ regard to the memo, that it would be nice to try to “contain” the putative “MWP”, even if we don’t yet have a hemispheric mean reconstruction available that far back…. This makes absolutely no sense to the layman, but it sure sounds sinister! "Contain" this, CRU!!
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| # ? Nov 21, 2009 05:14 |
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Concerned Citizen posted:also I have to laugh at Arkane, who seems to be convinced that one of the largest academic frauds in the history of science (which is what this would be) would be exposed through e-mail. I guess the NAS panel on Mann's hockey stick was a figment of my imagination? Or the revelation about the data from Briffa's paper? How about Mann being caught using a graph UPSIDE-DOWN (the proxy showed cooling, but when you flip it upside down, it shows warming)? Or Jones subverting FOI request after FOI request? The e-mails put into word form what has already been discovered. Mann & his compatriots at CRU have been fudging numbers for years. What's important about this e-mail dump is the attention that this will get in the mainstream, because I really doubt you've heard about any of the rhetorical questions I posed. They were colluding to deceive and it's now in black and white.
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| # ? Nov 21, 2009 05:14 |
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No doubt the entire world of climatology will be flipped upside down by this wild series of out-of-context quotations.
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| # ? Nov 21, 2009 05:18 |
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Guys, I know this is a really hot topic but let's try to keep down the insults towards other posters, or else the thread is just going to get closed or gassed, and then we'll have nowhere to talk about it.
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| # ? Nov 21, 2009 05:19 |
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The entire establishment of climate science, conspiring only for funds to continue the research for "global" "climate" "change" (in order, no doubt, to line their pockets with TENS OF THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS A YEAR) was defeated in 2009 by a few hackers, a rogue team of blogging scientists operating out of their basement, and a 50 billion dollar 20 year long PR effort by major energy corporations. Truly a modern day David and Goliath.
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| # ? Nov 21, 2009 05:21 |
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Concerned Citizen posted:No doubt the entire world of climatology will be flipped upside down by this wild series of out-of-context quotations. You're backing the wrong horse here. Regardless of what you believe about climate change, these guys are the bad guys. They have been hiding data for years. They fudge graphs. They have been caught doing it. We now have emails where they talk about doing it. The bottom line: they have long since crossed the line between science and advocacy.
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| # ? Nov 21, 2009 05:26 |
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Is CRU even subject to the FOI?
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| # ? Nov 21, 2009 05:31 |
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Can we focus on the emails themselves? I'm trawling through them right now. Most seem completely innocent, but I am disturbed by the quote I posted above claiming that they could get an editor of a scientific journal ousted if they could prove he was a sceptic.
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| # ? Nov 21, 2009 05:31 |
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Arkane posted:You're backing the wrong horse here. Regardless of what you believe about climate change, these guys are the bad guys. They have been hiding data for years. They fudge graphs. They have been caught doing it. We now have emails where they talk about doing it. The bottom line: they have long since crossed the line between science and advocacy. No, they haven't been caught hiding date and fudging graphs, and we don't have e-mails where they talk about doing it. That's just not true at all. In fact, out of the 15 years worth of e-mails, the deniers have found maybe 8 or 9 quotes to throw around as "proof" of CRU's nefarious deeds. You'd think such massive academic fraud would produce more evidence than that.
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| # ? Nov 21, 2009 05:32 |
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Kitiara posted:Can we focus on the emails themselves? I'm trawling through them right now. Most seem completely innocent, but I am disturbed by the quote I posted above claiming that they could get an editor of a scientific journal ousted if they could prove he was a sceptic. Would it be a surprise? You'd get ousted from editing a biology journal if you denied evolution. You'd get ousted from a history journal if you believed that the holocaust didn't happen. You'd get ousted from a physics journal if you started publishing articles about "free energy." The downside of being on the fringe is that people don't like you editing their mainstream scientific journals and filling it up and adding credence to stuff that nearly every scientist agrees is complete babble. (For one thing, it devalues the contributions of everyone else who got their articles in there)
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| # ? Nov 21, 2009 05:36 |
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Not sure if anyone else has found this yet, but...Phil Jones posted:From: Phil Jones <p.jones@uea.ac.uk>
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| # ? Nov 21, 2009 05:36 |
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Kitiara posted:Can we focus on the emails themselves? I'm trawling through them right now. Most seem completely innocent, but I am disturbed by the quote I posted above claiming that they could get an editor of a scientific journal ousted if they could prove he was a sceptic. There is more to it than that. Two really flimsy skeptic papers got published which led to a bunch of resignations. So it wasn't just ousting people in the skeptic camp solely for that reason but ousting them because they are allowing bad science to be published because of their views.
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| # ? Nov 21, 2009 05:37 |
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monkeyspank posted:Is CRU even subject to the FOI? FOIA was passed in 2000 in the UK
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| # ? Nov 21, 2009 05:37 |
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Concerned Citizen posted:Would it be a surprise? You'd get ousted from editing a biology journal if you denied evolution. You'd get ousted from a history journal if you believed that the holocaust didn't happen. You'd get ousted from a physics journal if you started publishing articles about "free energy." The downside of being on the fringe is that people don't like you editing their mainstream scientific journals and filling it up and adding credence to stuff that nearly every scientist agrees is complete babble. (For one thing, it devalues the contributions of everyone else who got their articles in there) Trouble is that then you run into a No True Scotsman issue. How do we know that climate scepticism is a bunch of crap? No scientific journal publishes sceptical papers. Why don't they publish sceptical papers? Because if they do, their editors get ousted. Why do their editors get ousted? Because climate scepticism is a bunch of crap. How do we know climate scepticism is a bunch of crap? Etc, etc.
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| # ? Nov 21, 2009 05:42 |
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Arkane posted:FOIA was passed in 2000 in the UK With a lengthy list of exemptions. The UK FOI is probably the weakest Freedom of Information Act on earth. Also while EAU is a public institution, my understanding of public schools in the UK is that they are independent entities to the point that employees are not even civil servants. Edit: just did some more research and the FOI only applies to "public authorities." Public authorities are defined here: http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts200...0036_en_10#sch1 If you don't want to follow the click, the only part of a public university that is bound by the FOI is the school's governing body. Somehow I doubt that CRU is the school's governing body. monkeyspank fucked around with this message at Nov 21, 2009 around 05:56 |
| # ? Nov 21, 2009 05:44 |
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Kitiara posted:Trouble is that then you run into a No True Scotsman issue. You seem to ignore the other reason why climate skepticism is a bunch of crap, that being that there is overwhelming evidence indicating that global warming is caused by man.
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| # ? Nov 21, 2009 05:46 |
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I'm slowly going through them. Ughquote: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 [Arkane: Steve McIntyre & Ross Mckitrick] 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. FYI as a follow-up: they have never released this data, and they have been tested with many, many FOI requests. The original, unaltered data is now claimed as "lost" by Phil Jones. Arkane fucked around with this message at Nov 21, 2009 around 05:59 |
| # ? Nov 21, 2009 05:53 |
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Concerned Citizen posted:You seem to ignore the other reason why climate skepticism is a bunch of crap, that being that there is overwhelming evidence indicating that global warming is caused by man. How much of the warming is due to man, and how much is due to natural variations in climate? This is a root question, and dependent upon having (1) reliable climate reconstructions and (2) reliable instrumental records.
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| # ? Nov 21, 2009 05:56 |
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Arkane posted:I'm slowly going through them. Ugh quote:Yes, we've learned out lesson about FTP. We're going to be very careful in the future what gets put there. Scott really screwed up big time when he established that directory so that Tim could access the data.
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| # ? Nov 21, 2009 06:01 |
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Arkane posted:How much of the warming is due to man, and how much is due to natural variations in climate? Do you have any doubts about the greenhouse effect? What are your views on gas concentrations found in ice core samples?
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| # ? Nov 21, 2009 06:03 |
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Arkane posted:I'm slowly going through them. Ugh Unless I am reading something wrong, you are about as subject to the UK FOI as Phil Jones is.
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| # ? Nov 21, 2009 06:08 |
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Concerned Citizen posted:Why AR4? Who knows?? But they're deleting e-mails!! THEY'RE DELETING THE EVIDENCE OF THEIR WRONGDOING!! WHY ELSE WOULD YOU DELETE E-MAILS!! If only they had deleted the e-mail about the (clearly illegal) deletion of e-mail, we would have never known.
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| # ? Nov 21, 2009 06:08 |
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