UPDATE: Response from CRU in interview with another website, see end of this post.
The details on this are still sketchy, we’ll probably never know what went on. But it appears that University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit has been hacked and many many files have been released by the hacker or person unknown.
UPDATED: Original image was for Met Office – corrected This image source: www.cru.uea.ac.uk
I’m currently traveling and writing this from an airport, but here is what I know so far:
An unknown person put postings on some climate skeptic websites that advertised 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.
Here is some of the emails just posted at Climate Audit on this thread:
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=7801#comments
I’ve redacted email addresses and direct phone numbers for the moment. The emails all have US public universities in the email addresses, making them public/FOIA actionable I believe.
From: Phil Jones
To: mann@vxxxxx.xxx
Subject: Fwd: John L. Daly dead
Date: Thu Jan 29 14:17:01 2004
From: Timo H‰meranta
To:
Subject: John L. Daly dead
Date: Thu, 29 Jan 2004 12:04:28 +0200
X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook, Build 10.0.4510
Importance: Normal
Mike,
In an odd way this is cheering news ! One other thing about the CC paper – just found
another email – is that McKittrick says it is standard practice in Econometrics journals
to give all the data and codes !! According to legal advice IPR overrides this.
Cheers
Phil
“It is with deep sadness that the Daly Family have to announce the sudden death of John
Daly.Condolences may be sent to John’s email account (daly@john-daly.com)
“
Reported with great sadness
Timo H‰meranta
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Timo H‰meranta, LL.M.
Moderator, Climatesceptics
Martinlaaksontie 42 B 9
01620 Vantaa
Finland, Member State of the European Union
Moderator: timohame@yxxxxx.xxx
Private: timo.hameranta@xxxxx.xx
Home page: [1]personal.inet.fi/koti/hameranta/climate.htm
Moderator of the discussion group “Sceptical Climate Science”
[2]groups.yahoo.com/group/climatesceptics
“To dwell only on horror scenarios of the future
shows only a lack of imagination”. (Kari Enqvist)
“If the facts change, I’ll change my opinion.
What do you do, Sir” (John Maynard Keynes)
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Prof. Phil Jones
Climatic Research Unit Telephone +44 (0)xxxxxx
School of Environmental Sciences Fax +44 (0) xxxxxx
University of East Anglia
Norwich Email p.jones@xxx.xx.xx
NR4 7TJ
UK
—————————————————————————-
References
1. http://personal.inet.fi/koti/hameranta/climate.htm
2. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/climatesceptics
From: Phil Jones
To: ray bradley ,mann@xxxxx.xxx, mhughes@xxxx.xxx
Subject: Diagram for WMO Statement
Date: Tue, 16 Nov 1999 13:31:15 +0000
Cc: k.briffa@xxx.xx.xx,t.osborn@xxxx.xxx
Dear Ray, Mike and Malcolm,
Once Tim’s got a diagram here we’ll send that either later today or
first thing tomorrow.
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. Mike’s series got the annual
land and marine values while the other two got April-Sept for NH land
N of 20N. The latter two are real for 1999, while the estimate for 1999
for NH combined is +0.44C wrt 61-90. The Global estimate for 1999 with
data through Oct is +0.35C cf. 0.57 for 1998.
Thanks for the comments, Ray.
Cheers
Phil
Prof. Phil Jones
Climatic Research Unit Telephone +44 (0) xxxxx
School of Environmental Sciences Fax +44 (0) xxxx
University of East Anglia
Norwich Email p.jones@xxxx.xxx
NR4 7TJ
UK
—————————————————————————-
From: Jonathan Overpeck
To: “Michael E. Mann”
Subject: letter to Senate
Date: Tue, 22 Jul 2003 16:49:31 -0700
Cc: Caspar M Ammann , Raymond Bradley , Keith Briffa , Tom Crowley , Malcolm Hughes , Phil Jones , mann@xxxxx.xxx, jto@xxxxx.xx.xxx, omichael@xxxxx.xxx, Tim Osborn , Kevin Trenberth , Tom Wigley
Hi all – I’m not too comfortable with this, and would rather not sign – at least not
without some real time to think it through and debate the issue. It is unprecedented and
political, and that worries me.
My vote would be that we don’t do this without a careful discussion first.
I think it would be more appropriate for the AGU or some other scientific org to do this –
e.g., in reaffirmation of the AGU statement (or whatever it’s called) on global climate
change.
Think about the next step – someone sends another letter to the Senators, then we respond,
then…
I’m not sure we want to go down this path. It would be much better for the AGU etc to do
it.
What are the precedents and outcomes of similar actions? I can imagine a special-interest
org or group doing this like all sorts of other political actions, but is it something for
scientists to do as individuals?
Just seems strange, and for that reason I’d advise against doing anything with out real
thought, and certainly a strong majority of co-authors in support.
Cheers, Peck
Dear fellow Eos co-authors,
Given the continued assault on the science of climate change by some on Capitol Hill,
Michael and I thought it would be worthwhile to send this letter to various members of
the U.S. Senate, accompanied by a copy of our Eos article.
Can we ask you to consider signing on with Michael and me (providing your preferred
title and affiliation). We would like to get this out ASAP.
Thanks in advance,
Michael M and Michael O
______________________________________________________________
Professor Michael E. Mann
Department of Environmental Sciences, Clark Hall
University of Virginia
Charlottesville, VA 22903
_______________________________________________________________________
e-mail: mann@xxxxxx.xxx Phone: (434) 924-7770 FAX: (434) xxx-xxxxx
http://www.evsc.virginia.edu/faculty/people/mann.shtml
Attachment converted: Macintosh HD:EOS.senate letter-final.doc (WDBN/MSWD) (00055FCF)
–
Jonathan T. Overpeck
Director, Institute for the Study of Planet Earth
Professor, Department of Geosciences
Mail and Fedex Address:
Institute for the Study of Planet Earth
715 N. Park Ave. 2nd Floor
University of Arizona
Tucson, AZ 85721
direct tel: +xxxx
fax: +1 520 792-8795
http://www.geo.arizona.edu/Faculty_Pages/Overpeck.J.html http://www.ispe.arizona.edu/
It appears that the proverbial Climate Science Cat is out of the bag.
Developing story – more later
UPDATE1: Steve McIntyre posted this on Climate Audit, I used a screen cap rtaher than direct link becuase CA is overloaded and slow at the moment.
UPDATE2: Response from CRU h/t to WUWT reader “Nev”
http://briefingroom.typepad.com/the_briefing_room/2009/11/hadleycru-says-leaked-data-is-real.html
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.”
“Have you alerted police”
“Not yet. We were not aware of what had been taken.”
Jones says he was first tipped off to the security breach by colleagues at the website RealClimate.
“Real Climate were given information, but took it down off their site and told me they would send it across to me. They didn’t do that. I only found out it had been released five minutes ago.”
TGIF asked Jones about the controversial email discussing “hiding the decline”, and Jones explained what he was trying to say….
UPDATE3: McIntyre has posted an article by Jean S at climateaudit.org which is terribly overloaded. We have mirrored it.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/20/mikes-nature-trick/
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The zip file in question expands to 4662 files of 157Mb. I’ve scanned them with 3 good commercial AV products which all found no suspicious files.
But to be on the safe side, I’m only looking at them under a non-admin account (XP)
There’s one helluva lot to wade through
“Anyone checked the ZIP for malicious hacker and cracker type files?”
I am opening only text and pdf documents directly from the zip file, I might unzip it on a linux box and go crazy with grep over the weekend.
Weyhey, paranoia reigns supreme! But like a bathroom turd, the facts always float to the top and bob around a bit… looking forward to more revelations re. the science that really matters. (Yep, still grumpy; but some of the earlier articles on this site momentarily cheered me up.)
Hmmmm… Well if someone “created” this stuff they took a lot of time in doing it. My guess is that it is most likely genuine. However it does not matter what peoples intents are. Data is what is important. 61 Megs can either contain a lot of information or none at all depending on what is in it. Personally lets stick with the facts. People say all kinds of inflammatory things to each other. Disregard those and lets keep working to real understanding of climate and science, just because they are biased does not make them wrong. What makes someone wrong is when data shows they are wrong. Worry about the data is what I say.
Like others have said – I’d be, well, you know…skeptical.
Yeah, I’ve got my copy too. If this is a stunt by some well-meaning skeptic, then I say hunt him down and throw the book at him. There needs to be two investigations… one on the provenance of this stuff, and one on the content.
This smacks of a “drag”, a device to create a scent trail to lure the hounds in the absence of a fox. Jolly good ride, but no kill at the end. Hope I’m wrong.
No way.
O, what a tangled web we weave, When first we practice to deceive!
Apparently the truth is stronger than we thought…
Open science is the best science.
I have no idea what is going on here.
I note wiser and cooler heads, no pun intended, are treating it with caution.
But if it has a basis in fact, that is these are not forged documents, then there are quite a lot of questions to answer.
But then it always amazes me how careless people are in leaving written evidence about the place. The methods of communication may have changed but there are always people too lazy or too self important to understand how their scribblings might betray them.
Assuming anybody was bothered to collect, collate and interpret these these billet doux.
Kindest Regards
“Worry about the data is what I say.”
Great idea. The problem is, if the substance of these e-mails is correct, they’re talking about corrupting the data to prove their point. That’s way beyond merely letting off steam in an inflammatory e-mail. It’s out and out fraud.
‘”Options appear to be:
1. Send them the data
2. Send them a subset removing station data from some of the countries who made us pay in the normals papers of Hulme et al. (1990s) and also any number that David can remember. This should also omit some other countries like (Australia, NZ, Canada, Antarctica). Also could extract some of the sources that Anders added in (31-38 source codes in J&M 2003). Also should remove many of the early stations that we coded up in the 1980s.
3. Send them the raw data as is, by reconstructing it from GHCN. How could this be done? Replace all stations where the WMO ID agrees with what is in GHCN. This would be the raw data, but it would annoy them.”‘
lol.
What p’s me off is
RulesOfTheGame.pdf
Anthony, CA is crawling right now. Is it being slammed by people wanting to see more?
I’ve figured it out. It is a conspiracy to crash WUWT and CA and LUCIA. It seems the whole world is hitting these sites and even WordPress is struggling.
Devilish cunning.
@TonyB (15:12:51) :
But if it is true […] what on earth are we all going to do with ourselves now?
Can I popose a renunion party to talk about the good old days scheduled for this day in five years time?
Nah – we’ll all still be here dealing with the next hobgoblin 😉
unfortunately, it looks a bit too good to be true. If it is, perhaps it’s a preemptive strike to immunize themselves from any last minute real revalations or expose’ and perhaps as a tool to discredit high profile skeptics. It’s even possible that a lot of the data might possibly be real – then again…. It will be interesting to see the response from this and how they spin it.
Unfortunately, even if this turns out to be false, I no longer think that the implications about those invoved are unrealistic of what went on.
Holy Carp!
As an IT person, I can say, that to fake all that information not to mention keeping the email headers consistent, is near impossible for that volume of information. You would need some serious funding of manpower to do such a thing.
I’m going to parse through as much of it as I can.. Any keywords I should be looking for that anyone can suggest?
…walks like scam, smells like a scam and it’s even yelling “SCAM, SCAM, SCAM!!!….
Don’t miss the possibility that this file doesn’t need to be hoax or legit. It can be both. There could be a lot of the real thing in there, and seeded here and there some manufactured evidence meant to discredit. An ideologically motivated hacker (as this seems to be) smart enough to hack CRU is smart enough to do such a thing.
I’m not saying that’s what happened here, but one must not rule out the possibility.
I’m waiting for the response over at RC…
No wonder they “lost” the data!!!
It seems that Phil Jones reads WUWT – he notified Gavin Schmidt and Michael Mann about a post seemingly hours after it was posted.
See mail #1237474374 for details.
He also makes a reference to the comments made at CA so I guess he also confirmed he reads Climate Audit too: “The responses are even worse than you get on CA.”