While I’ve been getting lots of attention for “take down” of a single file that infringed on my copyright, another, much more broad and serious event is unfolding in the UK at the Hadley Climate Centre.
It appears that the “mole” has caused a Centre-wide panic and they are purging publicly available climate data.
If their climate science is so solid, so unassailable, why would they need to do this? Why hide the climate data gathered from public domain sources worldwide such as NOAA and NCDC? Steve McIntyre tells the story and wonders also. I’m sure all of those who complained in my case will do the same about Hadley, since it will affect the climate community worldwide. I suppose we now have a new term: “Climate Data Deniers” – Anthony
“Unprecedented” Data Purge At CRU
On July 31, 2009, the purge of public data at CRU reached levels “unprecedented” in its recorded history. Climate Audit reader Super-Grover said that the data purge was “worse” than we expected.
On Monday, July 27, 2009, as reported in a prior thread, CRU deleted three files pertaining to station data from their public directory ftp.cru.uea.ac.uk/.
The next day, on July 28, Phil Jones deleted data from his public file – see screenshot with timestemp in post here, leaving online a variety of files from the 1990s as shown in the following screenshot taken on July 28, 2009.
The following day, the following listing of station data available since 1996 (discussed in my post CRU Then and Now) was deleted from public access: ftp.cru.uea.ac.uk/projects/advance10k/cruwlda2.zip, though other data in the file remained.
This morning, everything in Dr Phil’s directory had been removed.
This is part of a broader lockdown at CRU. Ian Harris, Dave Lister, Kate Willett, Tim Osborn, Dimitrios, Clive Wilkinson and Colin Harpham all altered their FTP directories this morning. Only one directory (Tim Osborn -see below) has added material.
Revisiting the Advance 10K webpage this morning, all Advance 10K data was deleted from their FTP site. None of the Advance 10K data links at www.cru.uea.ac.uk/advance10k/climdata.htm work any more.
If you go to the directory page ftp.cru.uea.ac.uk/projects which formerly hosted ftp.cru.uea.ac.uk/projects/advance10k directory, it now contains only two directories between Sept 1999 and the present, both dated 8/1/2008, but containing data from 2001.
On July 31, 2009 at 10:41 am, Tim Osborn published a webpage entitled “controversy.htm”. It is located in a folder entitled www.cru.uea.ac.uk/people/timosborn/censored/ and the webpage www.cru.uea.ac.uk/people/timosborn/censored/controversy.htm itself is of course censored.
I presume that the data has not been totally destroyed, only that, after many years of public availability, it has been put under lock and key. It’s as though CRU is having a collective temper tantrum.
Now that is an abuse of power. Plain and simple. Does climate data threaten the landed gentry?
I think it is a little pre-mature to assume this is because “they” have ulterior motives. I am constantly adding and deleting files at my website for various reasons. Does this mean I have something to hide? Who is to say this is not part of a general re-organization of website?
I think of this like the right to remain silent and right to not allow search without a warrant. Some may say that if you have nothing to hide then you should allow your property to be freely searched by law enforcement. The US government was founded on preventing such broad assumptions.
“Site is temporarily down for maintenance. ”
The SurfaceStations database is down for “maintenance”. Any idea of how long temporarily is likely to be?
That’s pretty weird stuff.
I agree with Wade and others who think this cleanup is being over-hyped.
These are files on an ftp server of a university computer network. Without doubt there are institutional rules governing to files that may be put there along with retention policies. Equally certain, periodically people ignore, forget or simply don’t know the rules – or they get changed.
When a very public security event like Steve’s “mole” occurs, various people cop it in the neck and computer administrators audit and cleanup in accordance with institutional policies. On an optional server like this one the simplest process may even be to archive everything and see what gets put back. The rest likely shouldn’t have been there anyway.
Lol. Why should they make their data available to people might find something wrong with it?
I realise the UK is a long way from California, but you have teh intertubes even there right? If so, you might want to note that the Hadley Centre is a government funded research lab in Exeter, Devon (SW England) which is part of the UK Met Office, while CRU is a centre at the University of East Anglia, in Norwich (SE England). Two different groups, with different employees and different websites.
I agree with Wade that we should hold out hope that this is a reorganization, rather than just assume the worst. However, should the worst turn out to be the case, the justification for paying their salaries fades away.
If their intentions are to cover up the data, this behavior will backfire on them. It is important to keep the heat on them until the media (perhaps the Times) and politicians pay attention. This has the potential to be as much of a scandal as Michael Mann’s behavior regarding the “hockey stick” data. Perhaps this will be another crack in the foundation of AGW orthodoxy.
It is, I think, time for a volunteer cooperative of scientists and and interested volunteers to be formed to produce another land based temperature index. Perhaps a US centric collection where the records from the best stations with the longest records could be regathered, and published into the public domain. Such a site would not only make available the station temps in .txt files, but could also host PDF files of the scanned images of the old original paper records recorded by station keepers from years ago.
Furthermore, any processing of such data would be done by opensource code stored in an open source code repository and hosted at an open source site such as sourceforge.net. The language would be modern and easy to use. Something like Ruby perhaps — can be used either functionally or in an OOP fashion, and with plenty of useful math and graphics libraries.
Seems to me our Sun has just pulled off one of these data purging tricks. Mr. Sun and Mr. Jones are following the same playbook just to confuse mere mortals.
Seems pretty clear to me that the data access removal is related to the presence of the mole.
Could be coincidence, as some have said, but the “mole” time line speaks volumes.
Sad day for climate science.
So …what are they hiding?
Yes. Two different groups one Hadley funded directly by HMG and the other funded by grants from HMG. Different departments, same central government.
Although I will write a letter to the Times it will do no good, under its new editor it has become a slavish political instrument of the Green brigade.
There are however ways and means of getting at what is going on and I will do some digging but with August, holiday season, not much will start happening until late September.
I am used to doing this kind of thing but it does take time.
The only advantage is that with the Labour administration due to fall civil servants are neither willing to do much for Ministers nor hide their master’s indiscretions provided they can blame them on their policies.
So useful to be whiter than white and in tune with the incoming new government’s policies you know.
So it may be possible to get somewhere. Time will tell.
Kindest Regards.
Somewhat OT but related to data shenanigans, certain persons at wikipedia are again providing an “altered” perspective on the Satellite measurements. As it happens, they had not updated their image from here: satellite temperature measurements since 2005 until I provided a reference to a RSS and UAH graphic updated as of November 2008. They (Kim Peterson) quickly reverted my image reference indicating that trendlines were not okay (although there are linear trend lines in the current image).
So fine. I accessed the up to data public domain UAH and RSS data, loaded it into an Excel workbook, generated a chart, and uploaded it to wiki commons making it public domain. I posted a thumb link to it to the page. I highly doubt it will last as — surprise — suddenly the existing image has been updated as of July 31st 2009. However the RSS and UAH data lines DO NOT look at all like the RSS and UAH data lines posted elsewhere. In fact they mysteriously track with GISS and, the linear trends have been extended.
Interesting, yes?
one of the rare occasions, where the question about motives is productive, because incompetence doesn’t explain this.
I detect the hand of lawyers here. Who will be asking questions like,
If this data is copyright, why are you making it publicly available without the relevant copyright notices?
Otherwise I see the apologists got in early to this thread.
Wade, this may surprise you, but the US Constitution has no legal standing in the UK.
Hummm— A possible UK purgegate in the making?
What is lacking in the discussion, but is occasionally brought up in various threads, is the logical basis for withholding information gained by non-profit, government paid individuals or organizations. If tax dollars paid for the info to be gathered, then on what basis is it withheld? The reasons given in other threads and stories posted have been laughable and very ambiguous. What gives?
I see a move like this doing nothing but fueling public distrust of AGW science. Too bad you don’t hear of this type of stuff in the media.
If tax dollars paid for the info to be gathered, then on what basis is it withheld?
The same basis as info gathered by another entity. The fact tax money paid for it is irrelevant to who owns it or whether it is owned at all.
Americans have a distorted perspective on this issue because the US government makes all tax payer funded data, public domain. The US government is unique in this respect (AFAIAA).
Re: Tim McHenry (19:19:16) :
Well, that isn’t really the problem either. It doesn’t matter why it is being withheld from McIntyre if it is also withheld from everyone else that asks. But it isn’t. If one has a track record of supporting AGW in their research, they apparently don’t have a problem getting the data. If one has a record of questioning AGW, the data is off limits. The bottom line is in a statement made by Jones where he asked why he should give it to someone who wants to find “something wrong with it”. Which defeats the entire purpose archiving data and methods … so that others might “find something wrong” with or validate the conclusion as the case may be.
David (16:50:21)
Not much connection to the gentry, landed or otherwise, surely? I think you give too much credit to HRH’s influence. This is more like the work of apparatchiks.
Have you asked them why?
You know this is pretty tiresome behaviour, if you want to be taken seriously you need to at least portray a semblance of objectivity.
If you want to be part of scientific debate you need to pay some respect to Occam’s razor.
Joe Black (16:57:07) :
“Site is temporarily down for maintenance. ”
The SurfaceStations database is down for “maintenance”. Any idea of how long temporarily is likely to be?
Bump
Also http://mi3.ncdc.noaa.gov/mi3qry/login.cfm is down. Is this typical on weekends?