Breaking News Story: CRU has apparently been hacked – hundreds of files released

For all those who wonder what we would find if we hacked a climate skeptic’s website, or who defend these e-mails as “science as normal” in terms of behind the scenes communication – I have spent many years doing research based on archived scientific correspondence, and I’ve never seen anything in the twentieth century correspondence of scientists in my chosen area (marine science) communicating with the juvenile vitriol and lack of professionalism revealed by the CRUtape letters. True scientists are gentlemanly and in the past have even assisted the work of scientists whose views they oppose. As for what the skeptics’ e-mails look like: what the heck do you think you’re reading?

@jennifer Hubbard and @Allen Lyne,
Looks like comments here can only be in agreement to yours huh? If generalisations – “True scientists are gentlemanly” (you’re a scientific researcher?: don’t make me laugh) and emotive statements – “hysterical outpourings” are the only comments allowed, it’s no wonder sceptics have a poor reputation and lack of credibility. I’m off to a well-balanced discussion elsewhere.

Should I apologize for a childish post about a government crackdown on the hackers who exposed the open secret of all those grant seekers? I suggested revoking ration cards, withholding health care and canceling retirement income, at least one of which (food) I admit I cadged from dear Ayn.
The worldwide mania to mandate death by a thousand economic cuts in the name of saving the planet is not the only crackpot plan being rushed right now into law. Before it’s removed, download “Principles for allocation of scarce medical interventions” (The Lancet, Jan 31, 2009, p. 423) by Govind Persad, Alan Wertheimer and Ezekiel J. Emanuel.
The graph on P. 438 suggests virtual death sentences based on age alone. Under one year old? Over fifty? It’s your time to sleep with the fishes.
Other criteria are used right now, today, in England’s National Health Service, the model for our new system. The paper lists Lottery; First-Come, First-Served; Sickest First; Youngest First; Save the Most Lives; Prognosis or Life-Years; Instrumental Value; and Reciprocity, all of which sound harmless enough.
At the risk of all our eyes glazing over, allow me to quote, word for word, one of many troubling ideas, this one under Instrumental Value: “… prioritses specific individuals to enable or encourage future usefulness … where a specific person is genuinely indispensable in promoting morally relevant principles, instrumental value allocation can be appropriate.” Yes, welcome to Chicago style, where thumbs judiciously on the scales can and will be buried deep, but it will be there. Getting your life saved at the expense of others will not be outlawed, just transferred from achievers to the politically connected.
Is this merely a fringe article, one whose thoughts will never be implemented? You may recognize the third author, whose brother Rahm is our current President’s chief of staff.
As Robespierre learned too horribly, when committees may decide life and death, those who benefit or even rule today may face the snarling mob tomorrow. From the death panels we are assured are not in today’s exact version of the new, thousand-page law (a latecomer to the Thousand Year Reich?), it is but a few quick steps to jolly public shows urging oldsters to step off smartly to make place for the young ones, then denying inexpensive appendectomies to pensioners to get them fortuitously off the dole roll, then outright mandating cutting off food rations when one’s calendar strikes Old.
According to the keen and well-placed Zeke, Old happens precisely at fifty.

txt.1255550975
From: Tom Wigley
To: Kevin Trenberth
Subject: Re: BBC U-turn on climate
Date: Wed, 14 Oct 2009 16:09:35 -0600
Cc: Michael Mann , Stephen H Schneider , Myles Allen , peter stott , Philip D. Jones , Benjamin Santer , Thomas R Karl , Gavin Schmidt, James Hansen , Michael Oppenheimer
Kevin,
I didn’t mean to offend you. But what you said was “we can’t account
for the lack of warming at the moment”. Now you say “we are no where
close to knowing where energy is going”. In my eyes these are two
different things — the second relates to our level of understanding,
and I agree that this is still lacking.
Tom.
++++++++++++++++++
Kevin Trenberth wrote:
> Hi Tom
> How come you do not agree with a statement that says we are no where
> close to knowing where energy is going or whether clouds are changing to
> make the planet brighter. We are not close to balancing the energy
> budget. The fact that we can not account for what is happening in the
> climate system makes any consideration of geoengineering quite hopeless
> as we will never be able to tell if it is successful or not! It is a
> travesty!
>
> Tom Wigley wrote:
>> Dear all,
>>
>> At the risk of overload, here are some notes of mine on the recent
>> lack of warming.
txt.1255538481
From: Phil Jones
To: Tom Wigley
Subject: Re: FYI–“Phil Jones and Ben Santer respond to CEI and Pat Michaels attack on temperature data record”
Date: Wed Oct 14 12:41:21 2009
Cc: Ben Santer
Tom,
What you’d need to point this out is a pdf of his thesis! Or is there a paper where
the thesis is referred to?
I recall Pat wasn’t very good at writing stuff up. There was one paper about warming in
Alaska that I recall either you or me reviewing. It related to surface warming in Alaska
and the borehole from Lachenbruch/Marshall (?) from about 1986.
With the pdf you wouldn’t need to say that much, as it is as you say stupid to leave the
Trend in with the rest of the variance.
Did the NCDC info help you sort out that data. Tom P told me that they don’t infill
certain areas in early decades, so there is missing data. Tom P isn’t that keen on the
method. He rightly thinks that it discourages them from looking for early data or including
any new stuff they get – as they have infilled it, so it won’t make a difference. It won’t
make a difference, but that isn’t the point.
Cheers
Phil
At 02:45 14/10/2009, Tom Wigley wrote:
Dear folks,
You may be interesting in this snippet of information about
Pat Michaels. Perhaps the University of Wisconsin ought to
open up a public comment period to decide whether Pat Michaels,
PhD needs re-assessing?
txt.1254832684
From: Phil Jones
To: Andrew Manning
Subject: Re: Fwd: Co2 Data
Date: Tue Oct 6 08:38:04 2009
Andrew,
Getting a bit fed up with these baseless allegations.
You could point out several things to Martin.
1. Projections aren’t made with observed data – instrumental or paleo. They are made with
climate models.

Kirsty:
Yes, the timing is suspicious.
What we need is a full disclosure of all of the data and all of the correspondence and a full and extremely public inquiry on both sides of the pond.
The investigation should include finding out about the hack itself – who did it? Who funded it? Why was it done now rather than earlier?

VictorP (11:06:59) :said:
GW skeptic, I find it difficult to believe that Dr. Jones and many of his colleagues have been doing what many people seem to believe they were doing. Let’s wait for Dr. Jones’s explanation and, maybe, an objective investigation before declaring him a crook.
If they have tempered with surface temperature data sets, it would mean a catastrophy for climatology and many other theoretical and applied sciences and their practical applications. This goes beyond and above the global warming controversy. Let’s hope it has not happened.
Victor, I have worked as a chemist in industry for more than 30 years. I have been asked to change, manipulate and down right falsify data on a number of occasions. If upper management has an agenda – honesty goes out the door. That is a fact of life. The only question is if you, as a scientist, will compromise your principles for a pay check.
I even checked with a lawyer in 1979. Someone who is a certified “Professional Engineer” is protected under law, otherwise if the boss asks you to lie you must lie, quit or be fired. Being asked to lie is no defense agains being fired. — GRRrrrr

After all that has been revealed, the Guardian is still banging on about doom and gloom climate change and the Copenhagen thing as though nothing happened:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/climate-change
Looks like this is all going to be forgotten and brushed under the carpet.

There is significant and demonstrable distortion in the evidence advanced to support the view that warming is occurring at a level that demands political action.
In the same week we have seen the opening of the Chilcot Enquiry and the revelations about the University of East Anglia and the alleged distortion of climate change statistics.
There is a connection.
Chilcot is reviewing the issue of distortion of evidence of WMD (Weapons of Mass Destruction) advanced to justify the declaration of war on Iraq. The issue is one of amplitude. If the WMD available to Saddam Hussain was capablE of only local and low level deployment then there was no case for war. If delivery by ICBM to devastate areas of London was a serious risk then the need for action could be made. The dividing line between the point at which wmd (low-threat) became WMD (serious and actionable) was not precisely defined although it clearly existed.
The climate change issue hinges on the reality of GW (Global Warming). This is in practice quantified as GWC or Global Warming occurring over the period of a Century. It has also been assigned a specific value at which it is deemed to become critical so that major action on an international scale is justified. That level of GWC has been set at 2 degrees C, so that beyond that point gwc (low-threat warming) becomes GWC and action needs to be instituted or reinforced. That is what the Copenhagen meeting is for.
In both cases much depends on the validity of the assessment of the defined value and the determination of when the amplitude reaches the critical level.
Can that assessment be subject to major distortion without departing from reliance upon the truth? In other words is it possible for there to be substantial deception without provable lying?
To answer that let us consider a relevant analogy.
We have in the past formed a company, the Secure Consolidated Automated Machine company or SCAM Ltd. It has traded successfully for two years producing profits of £1m in each year. It has now come unstuck, and shows a loss of £0.5 million in the third year. We need to effect a sale quickly but the ability to do so depends on a critical number. That number is the AP or Annual Profit.
The solution lies in a measure of statistical manipulation. This requires no departure from the truth. What we report is average AP. Over the three years this is £0.5 million per year. Without lying we can therefore conceal that the current reality is a loss of half a million and convey the impression of a profit of that amount.
We can however do better than that. Profit commonly relates to turnover. We have seen the combination of some expansion and inflation yield a 10% growth in revenue in each of the three relevant years. If we therefore make a projection based on these correctly stated facts we can now show a PAP (Projected Annual Profit) ten or so years ahead at the level of £1m. That should make the sale.
We will have avoided any lie but soundly cheated any buyer.
Now let us apply this model to the Climate Change issue. The objective is yield a PGWC figure (projected warming over a century) that exceeds the 2 degree C threshold.
In 1998 that is easy. In the first two decades, or more precisely between 1976 and 1998, there was a measured 0.5 degree C warming. This is the equivalent of our first two years trading at SCAM Ltd. The GWC figure is correctly stated as 2.2 degrees C and exceeds the threshold.
However in the third decade, as in the third year of trading for SCAM Ltd, there is a dramatic downturn. Actual temperature gain as measured by the ground stations recorded by Hadley is only 0.7 of a degree C, or one third of the required level to qualify as GWC rather than gwc. Moreover the more reliable satellite figures show less than half that amount of gain.
We can however tackle the issue as did SCAM Ltd, that is by some manipulation that at no point departs from the truth. The 32 year gain has been 0.57 degrees C and can therefore legitimately be represented as an average GWC over that period of 1.7 degrees C,
This is close to the required 2 degrees C but is capable of further extension by quoting a projected level, as was done in the SCAM prospectus. As gain is associated with CO2 concentration and that has been rising at 2 p.p.m each year we can project a doubling in the century and on that basis double the value we compute as the PGWC figure or projected gain over the century.
This therefore becomes 3.4 degrees C and comfortably exceeds the 2 degree C threshold.
It is of course in one sense a ‘true’ figure, in that it does not depend upon any misstatement of fact, just as the SCAM prospectus adhered to factual data. With current losses of £0.5, SCAM could declare a projected £1m profit. With current warming of less than 0.7 degrees C, the IPCC, based on Hadley representations, can assert a level in excess of 3 degrees C.
It is however a gross distortion of the truth, fully comparable with that which parlayed wmd into WMD and took the world to war on a substantial deception.
Manipulation of data really does matter. We are being offered a false prospectus. This time we should not wait for a Chilcot Enquiry well after the damage is done. Let us insist on the real truth now.

“Recent global temperatures demonstrate human-induced warming: Over the past 25 years temperatures have increased at a rate of 0.19°C per decade, in very good agreement with predictions based on greenhouse gas increases. Even over the past ten years, despite a decrease in solar forcing, the trend continues to be one of warming. Natural, short-term fluctuations are occurring as usual, but there have been no significant changes in the underlying warming trend.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/nov/25/copenhagen-diagnosis-ipcc-science
Have these people even heard of ClimateGate?

Philincalifornia
Thanks for the suggestion. I have now posted in Harry’s Place.
My email is dvdfairbairn@googlemail.com and I also have a booklet published on this issue and a policy analysis that can be accessed on these URLs
[snip – these are for pay links – blog policy violation]

The offhand remark, above, about the President should give the hacker a medal personally calls to mind that the President has problems of his own and will soon be busy blasting his grandmother with ridicule.
As a much younger woman she witnessed the birth of her grandson IN KENYA!
http://obamacrimes.com/philjberg/BergasRelator/Berg,%20QuiTam%20Complaint%20Exb%20B-D.pdf
Sooner or later your pants fall down and everyone sees you aren’t as big as you said you were.

The most blaring flag that man-made GW is a bunch of crap is the false concern for people and their disapearing habitat. If we as a species are to blame for the problem, and if our distruction is an end, then why would they be concerned about the elimination of the problem? This has always been about power and money. Control what the people do and skim the money as you redistribute it. Problem is, the major population centers of China and India are never going to sign on to any treaty and will continue their ways. So after you have taken any wealth left in the West, China will crush the West and continue polluting. Listen up you whining manatee hugging freaks who still think the end is near, there have been 5 major mass extinction events in the history of the earth. Nothing we can do can stop one. Weather or not we make it through, life will continue.