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/
Sponsored IT training links:
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What is most interesting about this information is, I do not get the impression they really understand what is going on.
They are just writing papers, putting together data, manipulating it to serve their purpose, playing petty university politics, putting much more effort into suppressing dissent … to push the AGW cause.
But they do not know what is going on with the climate.
Gavin runs GISS’ models and I don’t see the in-depth knowledge in the emails that would be expected. They are still trying to figure out how the ENSO impacts the climate. UHI is still up in the air. Sulfate Aerosols is still a guess.
The lack of a clear (any) message about what is happening in the climate is more disturbing than anything else.
Deleted files on a hard drive will continue to exist only until other file content writes over that data, then the original deleted files (all or a portion) will be lost. Only tape backups made at the time they were existing files will have copies; a tape backup generally does not copy deleted files (all or any part).
The Daily Mail (UK)
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1229740/Hackers-expose-global-warming-Claims-leaked-emails-reveal-research-centre-massaged-temperature-data.html
This is on the inside front page and prominent.
Apologies of already posted on. There is also a story about the BBC sending 35 staff to Copenhagen to cover the hot air talks.
Interesting that for both pieces, the comments are 95% supportive of the sceptical view.
Cheers
Paul
crosspatch said
“The “ADAM second-order draft.pdf” document is interesting too. It pretty much lays out how they would use “climage chage” to regulate the global economy and ensure a perpetual source of funding for themselves. Basically, the entire world economy was going to be controlled by climate “scientists” using the fear of us all burning ourselves up to manage practically every aspect of life. If you control energy, you control the entire economy. Generally, the output of an economy is directly proportional to their energy consumption.”
Yes that is exactly what Kissinger said: “Control oil [energy] and you control nations; control food and you control the people.”
And that is the plan.
The UN through the IPPC is making a grab to control energy and the UN and the WTO through the Agreement on Ag is making a grab to control food. Congressman Henry Waxman is planning to deliver it up to the UN with a nice neat bow in a one, two punch.
The Cap and Trade Bill HR 2454 and The Food Safety Enhancement Act HR 2749 have both passed the house. Folks this may be the last thanksgiving for us in the USA before all the various steps taken by the UN and the WTO leads us to famine. The grain traders (WTO) have already made sure there are no more grain reserves left so we are one bad harvest away from a catastrophe. The new worldwide UN/WTO regs have been slowly killed off our farmers. In India farmers are suiciding at the rate of one every eight hours…..
Now add in a very quiet sun…..
The truth will always out.
AGW is dead, long live AGW.
Bill Illis (06:51:45) :
The lack of a clear (any) message about what is happening in the climate is more disturbing than anything else.
Bill, one thing that struck me was how little the wonder gas actually gets mentioned. It’s as if when talking amongst themselves, the pretence is dropped.
Whether or not this episode is the catalyst for change, it has cemented in the minds of millions that the existing science cannot be trusted and therefore we should not proceed with costly legislation. Whoever hacked those computers has saved us billions if not trillions of dollars in wasteful spending.
Any news on when Phil Jones will resign – I figure that it will probably happen over the weekend (these things usually do)?
Lets face it – manipulating data, collusion to control journal peer review process, withholding data and deleting correspondence in order to cover up aforementioned criminal activities from FOI.
If Phil Jones does not resign this weekend then it is surely going to go right up the political food chain to the actual people who control these sad excuse for scientists. My thinking Phil Jones will need to be the fall guy and higher ups will simply express surprise and outrage that all this was going on under their watch….
10 to 1 Phil Jones resigns this weekend …any takers?
***********************
William (13:46:16) :
I’m no Sherlock Holmes, but it seems to me the approach to validate the email-data’s authenticity would be a comprehensive time-line reconstruction. If the emails can be lined up with external events, it would pretty much rule out “doctored” data. No one has the time to construct a hoax to that extent.
Having said that, I recommend a cautious and measured response to this. While I hardly find it credible that legal action can follow now that the data is part of the public domain, even a successful defense can be costly. Hopefully, multiple entities have stored it for posterity, because we can rest assured that the original data no longer exists as of last night. They will continue to argue that the data is out of context while assuring that there is no context in which to put it.
*********************
I don’t know about Britain, but the US has laws concerning records retention. Does anyone know if Britain does?
I can’t find this story on Fox News or CNN. That’s a pity. I wonder why?
JER0ME (19:44:11) :
The responses to the “Hacked E-mails” story in the Daily Mail make for interesting reading. I reckon that 90% are from AGW/CC ‘deniers’.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1229740/Hackers-expose-global-warming-Claims-leaked-emails-reveal-research-centre-massaged-temperature-data.html
George (19:43:36) :
What a load of old bollocks. Imagine – there you are, a conspirator in what would be one of the biggest hoaxes of all time and you incriminate yourself in an email like this?
It’s a mistake to see this as a pure hoax or fraud with Mann, Hansen and the rest concocting a ludicrous scheme, recruiting trusted allies and getting the world to go along with it for fun and profit.
I’d say it was more like taking an originally, basically honest stance on a complex matter. Then came a huge political and commercial movement to which they were significant figures. The science and the workings of science were pretty much irrelevant to the movement. They now found themselves part of something which goes far beyond the academic world. They are priests guarding the secrets of priesthood. They’re certainly not confident of their position, or they would have allowed open scrutiny. They’re now in a position where they can’t say they’re wrong, or even that they are not sure, because the movement demands absolute certainty from them.
So, it wasn’t a huge, deliberate conspiracy, but because they’re not confident of their position, they’re forced to behave conspiratorially. At least, they see a need for confidentiality which wouldn’t be there if if their results could be openly examined and pass any reasonable test.
As for emails, people assume wrongly that emails are purely a matter between the sender and recipient, and they drop their guard. They’re stored on servers, they’re stored on backups, they’re probably the property of an employer anyway.
I know everyone is concentrating on the science collusion fraud by boffins – but has anyone investigated the political angles – the strings that control CRU?
Evidently the BBC is covering up the story behind these details. Posts concerning the content in the emails are being deleted. Furthermore Richard Black is curiously and conspicuously SILENT.
Do we have UK Government ministry involvement here, I smell a massive cover up? Perhaps an official phone call to the head of the BEEB to let them know that they are to downplay the CRU hacking story?
Anyone check the CRU emails for correspondence with influential Government and IPCC persons?
Think about it, how far up might this go?
There are likely many UK Government & IPCC departments that are right now frantically checking email for any incriminating correspondence that could show a link between the political machinations or Phil Jones and his wacky group and the directives or cheer-leading they received from higher ups in political circles. Those departments with a vested interest in the alarmist propaganda of catastrophic climate change due to man-made CO2 might be scared silly over the prospect of being exposed.
After another read through some of the stuff on this thread another thought comes to mind. There appears to be two different camps among the scientists.
One is gung-ho for the IPCC and prepared to “do what they have to do” including changing the data in order to get the answers that they believe to be the “right” ones. They will do their best to refuse data to anyone who might find fault with it and appear to have taken steps to convince their colleagues of the evil (I hope that’s not too strong a word) of those who do not subscribe 100% to ‘The Project’.
The other camp is prepared at the end of the day to go along with this but from several emails its members are less than happy with the extreme stance being taken by the IPCC and show concerns at the exaggerated claims being made where they can see that the science does not support the conclusions.
Somewhere down the line we all need to tease this latter group out from the fanatics and let them pursue some genuine climate research based on real world observations.
Meanwhile, I think that a little less triumphalism on our part (tempting as it might be) could be the order of the day!
To the casual observer you are correct, but there are people who can reconstruct several generations of overwritten data if they have access to the drive and can do sophisticated analysis of the media. If the scandal rises to a level of interest to involve state of the art recovery techniques and experts who know how to use them, the data is very likely still out there somewhere.
That said this information release may have nothing to do with hacking at all, it could also be due to improper disposal of an old lap top computer (lost stolen or sold as surplus) or hard drive that some hacker extracted old data from.
Larry
Fox has been carrying it since yesterday (it is in the sci tech area), CNN, and ABC still do not have a clue best I can tell. I periodically go over to CNN and run a search for “hacked” and have not returned any articles.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,576009,00.html
Larry
This looks real to me. It looks like private correspondence between educated men. It also rings true at to the details. The Hockey stick graph is bull. There is no way the hockey stick graph represents reality. If one aspect is a lie, All aspects of Global warming become suspect, including the massive amount of money the proponents stand to gain from the legislative activity of this Fraud. Thank you for reading. Have a pleasant day.
One more note: The Main Stream Media is in bed with the government currently. Any news that comes from them is suspect from the start.
as Larry ( hotrod (08:34:45) : ) points out; forensic examination of hard drives can recover files even if they have been over written 30 plus times; cost in the UK for a medium sized hard drive (20GB) was a year- 2years ago some £20,000.
You can by software for around £150 that will recover standard format files at least 10 re-writes back.
I had also wondered if this is not a ‘second hand’ pc that some idle person failed to clean up properly; or a disk that has been rescued from some recycling/correct disposal contract. If I were in the UEA IT department I would be putting my waste disposal contractor(s) under the microscope (& hopping to find illegal practices like dumping….)
Firstly the talk of a hacker is FUD. The e-mails (if real) would have to come from UEA archives, which may well have been on tape. Just imagine even if he got access how long it would take a “hacker” to trawl through 10 years of e-mails, and from what I have seen, all the released material is “relevant”. There are no e-mails booking flights, restaurants etc which would be expected from a simple dump of an e-mail account. Therfore the file was prepared by someone in UEA, my guess as either as as a response to an FOI request or more likely on the foot of a Motion for Discovery in a civil case. This has then been leaked or discovered by the luckiest hacker in the histroy of computing.It could of course also be a fake, but if it is it is in a class of its own.
Bill Illis (06:51:45) :
What is most interesting about this information is, I do not get the impression they really understand what is going on.
They are just writing papers, putting together data, manipulating it to serve their purpose, playing petty university politics, putting much more effort into suppressing dissent … to push the AGW cause.
But they do not know what is going on with the climate.
********************************************
Nor do they show any understanding of biological systems, much less their use as proxies. I really don’t understand why more biologists aren’t speaking up to the utter uselessness of small samples of individual tree-ring proxies for climate. Keiller has tried, but apparently with no success. McIntyre fairly screamed that at them in his Yamal analyses, yet they babble on as if he’s the idiot. The emails are tending to show there’s a lot more ego than intellect going on at CRU, Pa and Livermore (admittedly they too, may not be a “representative sample”). If one’s demeanor is to be all about smug, one has to have something to be smug about.
Comment added to Daily Mail Online article.
There are four main issues.
1) The manipulation of data and the burying of ‘inconvenient’ facts. – This is scientific fraud and dishonesty and should lead to resignations.
2) The Stonewalling of Freedom of Information requests and the deleting of material *after* the requests were made. – This is illegal and will lead to prosecution unless the govt is determined to protect the guilty at any price.
3) The abuse of the tax system and the misuse of grant monies. – This is the money we gave the government through our taxes, which has been used to justify the imposition of further onerous taxes based on false data and hypotheses, maintained by the systematic exclusion of equally valid scientific data which reaches opposite conclusions about the causes of climatic variation
4) The manipulation of the peer review process and the prevention of publication of contrary evidence and hypotheses. -The Journals which offer to sell us the biased research we were forced to pay for had better think
Posted on the Daily Mail about 3hrs ago and its not come through – guess they have a backlog.
Wonder if UK Gov will pull the current CO2 TV ads.
Agree this is a leak not a hack.
I don’t think this has been posted yet on this thread. It’s an admission that tree ring temperature reconstructions are useless and reliance on them undermines climate models and the entire IPCC process. Found it via the search engine at http://www.anelegantchaos.org/cru/
*From:* geoengineering@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
[mailto:geoengineering@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
] *On Behalf Of *David
Schnare
*Sent:* Sunday, October 04, 2009 10:49 AM
*Cc:* Alan White; geoengineering@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
*Subject:* [geo] Re: CCNet: A Scientific Scandal Unfolds
Gene:
I’ve been following this issue closely and this is what I take
away from it:
1) Tree ring-based temperature reconstructions are fraught with
so much uncertainty, they have no value whatever. It is
impossible to tease out the relative contributions of rainfall,
nutrients, temperature and access to sunlight. Indeed a single
tree can, and apparently has, skewed the entire 20th century
temperature reconstruction.
2) The IPCC peer review process is fundamentally flawed if a
lead author is able to both disregard and ignore criticisms of
his own work, where that work is the critical core of the
chapter. It not only destroys the credibility of the core
assumptions and data, it destroys the credibility of the larger
work – in this case, the IPCC summary report and the underlying
technical reports. It also destroys the utility and credibility
of the modeling efforts that use assumptions on the relationship
of CO2 to temperature that are based on Britta’s work, which is,
of course, the majority of such analyses.
As Corcoran points out, “the IPCC has depended on 1) computer
models, 2) data collection, 3) long-range temperature
forecasting and 4) communication. None of these efforts are
sitting on firm ground.
Nonetheless, and even if the UNEP thinks it appropriate to rely
on Wikipedia as their scientific source of choice, greenhouse
gases may (at an ever diminishing probability) cause a
significant increase in global temperature. Thus, research,
including field trials, on the leading geoengineering techniques
are appropriate as a backstop in case our children find out that
the current alarmism is justified.
David Schnare