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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Brian (16:44:55) :
“This looks fake to me. This story should never have been posted here, until it was verified. This story damages the credibility of wattsupwiththat.com.”
You should never have been posted here, until it was verified. I’ve heard this “credibility” story more than once, and the site continues to gain popularity.
Another thought – it is possible that the perpetrator (hacker or insider) has not yet released everything. There could be more files yet to come …
ADVICE
DON’T CLICK ON ANY LINKS FROM THESE COMMENTS, PARTICULARLY
http://ftp.tomcity.ru/XXXcoming/free/XXXXXXX.zip
Okay, to anyone who thinks this is not real… wow… I have been going through it and if this is a fake it is a dang good fake because it has lots of information… I do not believe this to be a fake though what true use it is in the fight against climate alarmist and the current group of intellectuals who at times seem like they take what they do seriously while at the same time slamming anyone who disagrees with their analysis will soon be up to public scrutiny.
That being said it is the science that matters not the scientists. However I do believe this is another cause for opening up the books and letting people who are not in the inner circle have a look at what they are doing. One of the emails I read said that by not doing so it looks like they are hiding something, I actually agree with that, so stop it and make the data publicly available.
Here’s a quote from one of the emails:
“Also, it is important for us if you can transfer the ADVANCE money on the personal accounts which we gave you earlier and the sum for one occasion transfer (for example, during one day) will not be more than 10,000 USD. Only in this case we can avoid big taxes and use money for our work as much as possible.”
I’m not providing the filename or sender’s name because I do not know if the documents are real or not. As others are saying, we need to be careful because these documents may be manufactured plants. However, if the one I quoted from is real, it provides possible evidence of felony tax evasion by “someone.”
I’ve had private email conversations with one person whose name and messages are to be found in the “mail” folder; so it happens that the person shows a certain form of dyslexia and the pattern of the mistypes this person makes are easily recognisable and consistent across this person’s writings. Isn’t much, but it is something. Also, some details referring to the person’s life are accurate as far as i can tell.
Here’s my take:
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2009/11/19/leaked-foia-files-62-mb-of-gold/
While downloading the zip file, I noticed that Sergey has his Parental File listed.
In it are listings such as Warcraft and Bollywood. Didn’t pry any further, but seemed a little odd for a Russkie, or not.
Just downloading my copy as I write, for posterity if for nothing else. Putting on my tin foil hat here, I’d say if it turns out to be true, then it gets the politicians and the MSM off the hook as far as this AGW meme goes. Just posted this message over at RC:
It appears the Hadley CRU server has been hacked and 62MB of zipped files made available over the internet. Is this an elaborate hoax, or can anyone provide a comment/clarification? Thanks.
Unfortunately, it just got swallowed, no “Your comment is awaiting moderation” or anything
“tricks” was the least offensive bit I saw in those emails. Try googling “tips and tricks” and see all the results you get.
Someone this skilled to have hacked CRU would not have made up emails from whole cloth. It’d have been micro edits of some of the existing emails he stole. Not saying it happened, but if it did that would be what it was.
As people go through this stuff, please be on the look out for refrences to Fenton Communications. Fenton will be the link to Al Gore.
@Squidly (16:54:50) :
Thanks for posting that excerpt. I hadn’t got to that one yet. That is pure spin with more than a whiff of professional assistance.
Jabba,
The cracking of TIFF, JPEG is well documented. Buffer overruns
in carefully constructed images can execute arbitrary code in a
variety of common decompression libraries. PDF is a wicked
vector of destruction — I have personally written PDF files that will
delete all the contents of a hard disk. As early as 2000 the
security problems of PDF were openly discussed by Jim King, the
chief scientist at Adobe. There are currently several open ones.
Need to hide your return vector in PDF? Hide it as variation in
the kerning between a few letter pairs, and encode the result in
SIXBIT. That one is hard to spot.
It was just last year Microsoft patched another Enhanced Metafile
vector overrun bug in MS Word.
Do a quick search on “PDF exploit” or “TIFF vulnerability”
This one is huge.
Compare what Trenberth says here : http://fortcollinsteaparty.com/index.php/2009/10/10/dr-william-gray-and-dr-kevin-trenberth-debate-global-warming/
…while exactly at the same moment he writing :
From: Kevin Trenberth
To: Michael Mann
Subject: Re: BBC U-turn on climate
Date: Mon, 12 Oct 2009 08:57:37 -0600
Cc: Stephen H Schneider , Myles Allen , peter stott , “Philip D. Jones” , Benjamin Santer , Tom Wigley , Thomas R Karl , Gavin Schmidt , James Hansen , Michael Oppenheimer
Hi all
Well I have my own article on where the heck is global warming? We are asking that here in
Boulder where we have broken records the past two days for the coldest days on record. We
had 4 inches of snow. The high the last 2 days was below 30F and the normal is 69F, and it
smashed the previous records for these days by 10F. The low was about 18F and also a
record low, well below the previous record low. This is January weather (see the Rockies
baseball playoff game was canceled on saturday and then played last night in below freezing
weather).
Trenberth, K. E., 2009: An imperative for climate change planning: tracking Earth’s global
energy. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 1, 19-27,
doi:10.1016/j.cosust.2009.06.001. [1][PDF] (A PDF of the published version can be obtained
from the author.)
***The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a
travesty that we can’t. The CERES data published in the August BAMS 09 supplement on 2008
shows there should be even more warming: but the data are surely wrong. Our observing
system is inadequate.***
Lucy Skywalker (16:06:47) :Concur re zip file, no virus. Also the grouping looks plausible.
I’d only just said over at CA a few hours ago, “It would be nice to use the Team objection as a reason to press for disclosure of CRU data, as Juraj V suggests.” oh heck… what a disclosure…
Where the heck is this topic on CA? couldnt find it – has it been pulled?
Just to make sure everyone is reading from the same page, I downloaded the file from http://ftp.tomcity.ru/incoming/free/ at 0100 UTC on 20091120 and ran the md5 hash creator on it. For those who would like to verify the authenticity of their download, here’s the hash:
#md5 FOI2009.zip
MD5 (FOI2009.zip) = da2e1d6c453e0643e05e90c681eb1df4
A cursory glance through several of the files gives me the feel of authenticity, but YMMV.
OT: If this mess “Kevin and I will keep them out” turns out to be real, then maybe just maybe people will take PKI seriously.
The director of the CRU admits that everyone “in the know” realizes that Mann’s original 1998 Hockey Stick was faulty. So much for the National Academy of Sciences having vindicated it (with faint praise but still praise).
Mann only used the last century of 1000 years of data for selection of which proxy series to vastly emphasize and it spit out Bristlecone pines since they alone showed a massive change in that single century. Had they showed a downswing they still would have been selected and a reverse hockey stick would have resulted, as it results half of the time when you feed his algorithm random data.
The main thing I take home from these so far is how the scientists transform from laughing at pesky and persistent skeptics to having their whole lives revolve around each and every post on the ClimateAudit site! It shows very clearly that “deniers” are not considered crackpots worth ignoring at all even within the very core of academic scientists. They really are running around putting out each and every fire and altering each detail of their latest papers in appreciation that those details are exactly what will be scrutinized. They are tying themselves in knots over the skeptical community.
From: Phil Jones
To: Tim Osborn , “Tett, Simon”
Subject: Re: Bristlecones!
Date: Fri Jul 29 16:30:35 2005
Cc: Keith Briffa
Simon,
If you go to this web page [1]http://www.ucar.edu/news/releases/2005/ammann.shtml
You can click on a re-evaluation of MBH, which leads to a paper submitted to Climatic Change. This shows that MBH can be reproduced. The R-code to do this can be accessed and eventually the data – once the paper has been accepted.
IPCC will likely conclude that all MM arguments are wrong and have been answered in papers that have either come out or will soon. MBH is just one curve of many – more now than there were in 2001. MBH is still in the spaghetti of curves, and is not an outlier. If there are outliers it will be Esper et al. and another one.
Bristlecones are only crucial to the issue if you are MM. They misused them, by their PCA application. This is all well-known to those in the know.
I have reviewed the CC paper by Wahl and Ammann. It reproduces all the mistakes MM have made, so they know how and why their results have been achieved. I can send you the paper if you want, subject to the usual rules.
MBH have all responded to the same requests as IPCC got from the US Senate. Their responses are all posted at [2]http://www.realclimate.org/
The skeptics have shot themselves in the foot over this one.
Cheers
Phil
All the TOP people in this field are emailing each other discussing how they can continue to perpetuate the …
I can finally say out loud what my data analysis says must have been happening now.
Once I read every single document that is.
Glenn (16:50:50) :
Moderators, I suggest you redact phone numbers and email addys from posts as has been done with the original article. I’d also erase the direct ftp addy as well.
There’s likely to be big trouble with this.
That’s damned good advice. Please follow it and/or consult with an attorney. This is a very serious matter. PLEASE use caution!
magicfingers4 (17:05:23)
why not click on links?
Dom (17:14:30) : Where did that email come from? The hacked site? Whats the address of the site?
“The cracking of TIFF, JPEG is well documented.”
I have checked the files six ways to Sunday. They appear to be legitimate and clean so far.
Robert Wood of Canada (16:13:14) :
I’m downloading now. Massive file. This will provide juice for years. The dog that ate the homework just vomitted
——————————————————–
Errk!… I know, just dragging my fingers through it now, looking for chunks…;-)
For what it’s worth, IMHO this is from a mole within.
The hacking claim is a red (green) herring that attempts to minimise damage and aspires to get a positive by writing this off as a reactionary attack by evil-forces, financed by shatanic capitalism.
Somewhere, within that organisation, there lurks a person brave enough to spill the beans. Yup, laddie or lass, you crossed a line but History will treat you with much respect!
Dunno who you are but you are a Hero