Several people have asked me to write a summary for laypeople of the entire CRU hacked emails and files affair, since it is so complex. They wanted something they could send to mom, dad, aunts, uncles who haven’t a clue about the hockey stick, CRU, HadCRUT, PCA, and YAD061.
I started to do so, but noticed that a blogger in my own hometown, Lon Glazner, who writes “Commission Impossible” dealing with local issues, had written up a pretty good summary on the issue, so I asked if I could print some excerpts of it. He gladly obliged. Here are excerpts from his post “Men behaving badly“.
What’s the hubbub? It all comes down to men behaving badly. Emails and files related to top scientists that support man made global warming theory were released in the hacked files. These scientists have authored/co-authored many of the studies relied on by the UN IPCC, and world governments. The studies have been used to pronounce global warming an immediate, and therefore taxable, threat.
Here are some of the highlights of the documents released.
1. The scientists colluded in efforts to thwart Freedom of Information Act requests (across continents no less). They reference deleting data, hiding source code from requests, manipulating data to make it more annoying to use, and attempting to deny requests from people recognized as contributors to specific internet sites. Big brother really is watching you. He’s just not very good at securing his web site.
2. These scientists publicly diminished opposing arguments for lack of being published in peer-reviewed scientific journals. In the background they discussed black-balling journals that did publish opposing views, and preventing opposing views from being published in journals they controlled. They even mention changing the rules midstream in arenas they control to ensure opposing views would not see the light of day. They discuss amongst themselves which scientists can be trusted and who should be excluded from having data because they may not be “predictable”.
3. The scientists expressed concern privately over a lack of increase in global temperatures in the last decade, and the fact that they could not explain this. Publicly they discounted it as simple natural variations. In one instance, data was [apparently] manipulated to hide a decline in temperatures when graphed. Other discussions included ways to discount historic warming trends that inconveniently did not occur during increases in atmospheric CO2.
4. The emails show examples of top scientists working to create public relations messaging with favorable news outlets. It shows them identifying and cataloging, by name and association, people with opposing views. These people are then disparaged in a coordinated fashion via favorable online communities.
What the emails/files don’t do is completely destroy the possibility that global climate change is real. They don’t preclude many studies from being accurate, on either side of the discussion. And they should not be seen as discrediting all science.
Kudos to Anthony for being there, online, and being prepared to handle the traffic this topic generated. I would hope that this event would precipitate a greater openness regarding publicly funded research. It would be nice to see better adherence to scientific method. At the very least it has exposed some well funded, ivory tower thinkers, behaving very poorly.
I should mention that we all owe Lon Glazner a debt of gratitude, because it was a discussion with him on the science and engineering of thermometer systems that got me thinking about the surface measurement systems in place today used to record climate, and the problems they might have.
See it here, one of my early blog posts: In search of the perfect thermometer.
About two months after that discussions, the surfacestations.org project started.
Be sure to drop a note of thanks for building that fire under me on Lon’s blog, he deserves a traffic flood 😉
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In the 1950’s doctors could do no wrong. They were universally placed on a pedestal. No one questioned a doctor’s diagnosis.
The discovery and widespread use of penicillium deuteromycotina made doctors into supermen. In an era when a simple sore throat could escalate and kill the patient, and everyone knew of someone who had died from an infection, practically overnight doctors had the means to quickly cure most bacterial infections.
Doctors even endorsed cigarette brands in magazine ads.
But now, when there is a serious diagnosis that claims to threaten the entire human race, no second opinion is even tolerated. The mainstream media routinely denigrates all climate skepticism [and all good scientists are skeptics], and allows no opinion other than that of the UN’s IPCC and its clones such as the CRU.
Any evidence contrary to the official diagnosis: that [human emitted] CO2 will cause catastrophic global warming, is casually hand-waved aside, usually with a derogatory comment followed by an appeal to authority — the authority very often being these very same CRU data fabricators.
Now we have extremely strong evidence that the CRU ‘authority’ simply invented data out of whole cloth. They “adjusted” the raw numbers to always show warming, never cooling.
After being caught red handed engaging in what clearly appears to be fraud in return for grant money and status, just like Dan Rather they’re now claiming that their diagnosis was ‘fake but accurate.’
That’s not good enough when their predictions, based on their faked numbers, is cited as the reason for raising everyone’s taxes by trillions of dollars.
Taxpayers deserve a second opinion.
The most frequently mentioned evidence of anthropogenic global warming was that the computer models could not explain the warming that they were seeing. Approximately half of the warming over the last century could be explained as natural. If the the effects of ‘greenhouse’ gasses was added they could account for all of the warming. Now if the warming in the temperature records was inflated the models might work fine without the anthropogenic effect. Does anyone have the ability to use clean temperature records and compare it with a model run without the greenhouse gas effect?
Does anyone have the ability to use clean temperature records and compare it with a model run without the greenhouse gas effect?
No. Because although the original paper records should still exist somewhere, Phil Jones et al. have flat out stated that the original untampered-with raw data transcribed from the paper records has been lost irretrievably.
That is why some of the comments about “I’d rather delete than hand over XYZ.” are so flipping infuriating. Having a solid grasp of the modifications would be nice – but having access to the actual raw data is crucial. You can’t turn what is available – things like a table of “Yearly Averages” – back into the original charts of daily measurements. Too much data has been subsumed in the averaging process itself.
Some of the raw data exists electronically, but it isn’t directly equivalent.
I do agree though – a ‘Surface Stations’ like project to identify, tabulate, and wedge all of this back together from the original paper records would be most excellent.
REFERENCE MATERIAL
All Climategate, all the time
http://www.climatedepot.com/a/3943/Read-All-About-it-Climate-Depot-Exclusive–Continuously-Updated-ClimateGate-News-Round-Up
The debate about the contents of the HARRY_READ_ME.txt and the validity of the programming and modeling techniques is something only experts and argue over.
However, the main thing the lay person needs to know about the software/data at CRU revealed by the HARRY_READ_ME.txt file (which they can verify for themselves from the file at the links below), is that this file is a THREE YEAR journal of a CRU programmer describing everything he tried with the data and models in an attempt to REPRODUCE existing results CRU had published. Comments in the file make it clear that “HARRY” tried FOR THREE YEARS (2006-2009)to recreate CRU’s published results AND FAILED.
Do you all see the REAL significance of this because it is absolutely fatal to the credibility of anything CRU has produced.
What we have here is a documented THREE year effort by a CRU programmer, who had access to all the data, access to all the code, access to all the people who developed the code and the models and still HE could still NOT duplicate CRU’s OWN results. If he can’t it simply means the CRU’s results cannot be reproduced even by themselves and so there is no point anyone else even trying — CRU themselves have proven it’s a waste of time and so they themselves have proven their own results are plain rubbish. That means any “peer reviewed” document CRU produced along with any other papers that cited the CRU papers are based on data the CRU themselves can’t verify.
Besides, the data manipulation, the absolutely sorry state of affairs in the data handling and software management the HARRY_READ_ME.txt reveals, the utter and total mess of CRU data and software this document reveals is WHY CRU has not released its data and model software.
Given the CRU is one of the most, if not the most cited sources of climate data — upon which trillions of dollars of economic policy is being set, the importance of what the HARRY_READ_ME.txt file reveals becomes scary.
A very nice layman’s summary of some of the issues in the HARRY_READ_ME.txt can be found here
http://www.devilskitchen.me.uk/2009/11/data-horribilis-harryreadmetxt-file.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheDevilsKitchen+%28The+Devil%27s+Kitchen
Details on the data manipulation can be found here
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/25/climategate-hide-the-decline-codified/
the programmers comments are self explanatory
Robert M. Marshall (17:30:06) :
It’s the same in the Pharmaceutical industry. In house QA exists, but that’s just to maintain standards. It is NOT a substitute for independent outside verification, and the tons of paperwork required of every single monitoring event and it’s result, including whether it passed or failed, etc., as you have detailed. Copies of all are required to be kept and maid available to federal inspectors on demand, and they had better be consistent and up to date, or else!
The fact that they were not subject to external Q.A. audit was a train wreck waiting to happen.
anon (18:47:18) basically stated what I’ve determined.
It’s ALL about the Harry file.
And the Harry file completely devastates ANY AND ALL credibility they may have had. The “temperature record” as used by virtually every climate researcher is a fabrication, thus the entire field is invalidated, and MUST start again, from zero. Oh yeah, we all know that’s never going to happen, but it would be the only way to gain any credibility or accuracy.
exit(0);
This is more than boys behaving badly. That can’t be blamed on too much alcohol and testosterone. This is the application of sheer force and power, and not very pretty at that.
To me, the whole concept of this release of information can be encapsulated in the issue of peer review. Here, the team exhibits their hubris and the attempts of total control and gatekeeping. In short, they stack the deck. Start to play the game and rules may change at their option at any time.
You are not to be considered a serious climate scientist unless you have peer reviewed literature. Just ask Andrew Revkin (who’s been prompted) or check out the real scientists at Real Climate (who are owned). What, you say, a publication is going to put up an opposing view. We have to get that editor fired. What, that didn’t work, we’ll just embargo the publication so they don’t get content from the “real climate scientists”. What, still not working, let’s get them excluded from the list of approved peer reviewed literature. What, still not working, we’ll just redefine the meeting of peer reviewed literature.
Sorry Team if I took any of your implications out of context.
Alvin (17:39:53) :
From the scientific american article linked by Tsk Tsk
The past decade recorded nine of the warmest years in recent history as well as the rapid dwindling of Arctic sea ice, surely the result of imminent global cooling if climate change contrarians are to be believed.
I suggest they change their name to “Scientific La-La Land”
Actually I think it might be all about Dr. Tim Mitchell. He is the one whose work Harry is trying to replicate. Here is a link about CRU 2.0:
http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/guide/Data/cruts20.html
Dr. Tim Mitchell appears to have worked as a climate scientist at CRU and Tyndall center since 1997. He is an author on a Tyndall paper as late as 2008. He is not listed as working at CRU or Tyndall anymore. Oddly enough he seems to have vanished. Certainly his help does not seem available to Harry. Links don’t “work” due to the server crisis and even cached pages are blank (just /head stuff in source): http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/~timm/index.html
Anyone have any idea where Dr. Mitchell has gone? Not to NCAR or any obvious climate center.
A few days ago a google search I did for “Tim Mitchell CRU” turned up two links, one a job in the US (computer modeling but not climate) and one a community award. I didn’t bookmark either and now can’t find them using any search engine. It may be there are so many new references that those two are buried.
If I were a reporter, I would sure want to find and talk to Dr. Mitchell. I suppose Pulitzer’s Prizes are not so valuable any more either. Could Dr. Mitchell be ClimageGate’s “Deep Throat”?
Regards,
Bob
Reference:
http://www.pcc.org.uk/case/resolved.html?article=NTk1Mw==
Purposely deleting or hiding any information subject to FOIA, especially AFTER the FOIA request has been filed is a criminal act, at least in the US it is. It is one of the few things public servant can go to jail for.
Can we stop referring to the data as “hacked emails and files”? It’s bad enough we have to get that unfounded charge from the MSM, we shouldn’t be jumping to that conclusion here, with all the evidence to the contrary. For one thing, the proper term is “cracked” not “hacked”. And it is almost certainly not the work of an external cracker. That cover story certainly suits the CRU, portraying themselves as the victim. But I haven’t heard any definitive evidence of an intrusion.
Information this comprehensive, relevant and inculpatory was almost certainly selected and organized by someone on the inside who knew what they were doing and where to look. A leak by a whistle-blower. I can’t prove it but what does it look like to you?
(Disclaimer: If I missed something, never mind.)
Thanks so much for the extended comments and coverage of this incident. There’s much to digest and follow, and to date, I’ve seen little coverage of some of the interesting comments in the files.
Of particular interest, has been the summary of review comments for IPCC WGI THIRD ASSESSMENT REPORT (see the title in the link below – APRIL-JUNE 2000)
http://ukginger.net/FOI2009/FOIA/documents/ipcc-tar-master.rtf
This is subtitled “Collated Expert Comments”.
Now I – the layman – was lead to believe that the concensus was settled. That the expert scientific establishment had reviewed and approved these IPCC reports. Frankly, I thought the support was basically unanomymous.
So, the comments from this rather short file are exceptionally interesting – and include the names and institutions of those making the comments.
On quick review, I count 16 separate comments in this review. Some of these are fascinating. Here’s a few examples:
—————
“My primary concern is with the misuse of a particular non-peer-reviewed report: Spouge and Vaughan (2000). One misuse is the assignation of “majority” to a view of the report participants that I believe will be read to imply a majority view of the community. This occurs not only in Chapter 11, but also in the Summary for Policymakers and in the Technical Summary. The second misuse is in a quantitative statement of collapse probability made in Chapter 11 that has already been extracted by the media–a tragic violation of a document not yet intended for the public. I state my objections more specifically below. – Robert Bindschadler, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, USA, (Exp.)”
————–
“In light of the second assessment which concluded that “….the balance of the evidence suggests a discernable human influence on global climate….”, the balance of the evidence suggests that the findings of the third assessment will be just as strong or stronger. I believe that sentiment is too strong given the uncertainties and gaps that still exist in our knowledge regarding climate change issues. Nonetheless, the real argument may yet be the extent to which the current climate changes are naturally forced versus anthropogenically forced. Given what we know today, and the uncertainties in properly assessing climate and measuring change, I would have to lean toward the former being far more prevalent (see comments below on chapter 1). – Anthony R. Lupo,University of Missouri , USA, (Exp.)
—————
“The idea that climate without human intervention can only undergo “natural variability”, and that “climate change” can only result from human activity is false and fallacious. It is in conflict with all that we know of evolution and geology. It is simply wrong to assume that “ climate change” automatically implies human influence on the climate.
This fallacy is embraced by the Framework Convention on Climate Change, but the IPCC (Footnote to “Summary for Policymakers. Page 1) claim that they are prepared to accept “natural variability” as “climate change”. They are, however, unwilling to accept the truth, which is that climate can change without human intervention.
This fallacy renders worthless several conclusions of the Report, notably, that “there has been a discernible human influence on the climate”. The surface temperature rise, however “unprecedented” could be “natural”, and the entire Chapter 12 “Detection of Climate Change and Attribution of Causes” should be rejected as based on a false premise.
An additional fallacy adopted by the IPCC is the claim that it is possible to “attribute” cause and effect from a correlation. Science can assign probability levels of the likelihood of a cause and effect relationship, but it can never attribute a cause and effect relationship with certainty. This Report does not assign any quantitative probability levels to correlations.
(snip – much more in this comment)
There is undue emphasis throughout on the importance of surface temperature trends measured by weather stations. Chapter 2 has 10 diagrams showing these data, but only one thoroughly confusing diagram (Figure 2.12) for other methods of global temperature measurement. The fact that satellite and weather balloon measurements in the lower troposphere do not show a warming for the past 21 years suggests strongly that the surface data are influenced by proximity to human habitation, rather than by greenhouse warming. There is insufficient attention paid to the evidence that this is so, which is
•A quadrupling of human population and increases in human prosperity in the last century have led to a great increase in buildings, fuel consumption and vehicles in the vicinity of weather stations.
•Weather stations do not take any precautions against these influences
•Many remote weather stations do not show a warming
•Much recent warming has been from a rise in the minimum temperature rather than the maximum
•Recent warming took place mainly in cold climates, in winter, and at night
•Two thirds of the weather stations operating in 1975, mainly rural, have been closed down
•Many scientific studies have identified “urbanization” effects, but these have been underestimated, because “rural” stations are assumed to be free of such effects.
•Vegetation growing around stations usually increases, but is rarely reduced.
•Airports have made a transition from “rural” to “heat island”
•Surface temperature compilations make inadequate corrections for urban effects
A human influence on climate from these effects is highly likely. An influence from emissions of greenhouse gases is yet to be established.
– Vincent Gray, Climate Consultant, New Zealand, (Exp.)
———————
While it is still the best chapter in the WG1 document, I find that the quality of Chapter 2 has declined some, with comments detailed below. By extension, the rest of the document suffers greatly. The Policymakers Summary contains several rhetorically alarming statements that are sure to misused in the hue and cry that will result from the leaking of this document at a critical time in the American election cycle. Some of the SRES scenarios are simply politically correct fantasies that are logically inconsistent.
-Patrick J. Michaels, University of Virginia, USA, (Exp.)
—————
This individual review paper focuses on IPCC’s three most essential modelling and core parameter errors. The impacts on all modelling results would be so tremendous that if the TAR would be corrected for these errors, there would hardly be any more justification for it. So this paper addresses only few individual TAR fallacies, but focuses on the nondisclosed flawed science it is based on. (snip discussion of several issues)
I suppose IPCC can hardly cope with my arguments. So as I basically do not consent with the TAR, please do not use my name within the listing of reviewers.
– Peter Dietze, Germany, (Exp.)
———————-
Wow.
Some concensus.
COLLATED EXPERT COMMENTS
I have started a petition for Uk residents and expats on the Number 10 web site. If you are a UK resident or national please support it.
http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/HADLEY-LEAK/
if we make enough noise we can get a hearing.
REPLY: There’s another at No. 10 already in progress , see the WUWT front page, your effort is a duplicate and likely to confuse.
Wow
Surely you could have found a still shot from classic UK sitcom “Men Behaving Badly” instead of US classic “Sinfeld”?
REPLY: I write for a mostly American audience, but as you’ve demonstrated (even though spelled incorrectly) Seinfeld has international appeal, and the Babu scene where he says “You are a very bad man” is a classic.
Tell you what – instead, maybe we’ll put up a picture of you riding a bike? With your previous uniformed comment about the use of “deniers” it is you who are now behaving badly, especially if you are using your university address (and the IP says you are) during work hours on the taxpayers dime? See the policy page – Anthony
Veddy bad man, you a veddy bad man.
Has anyone else noticed- trolls are pretty quiet lately!
WAIT WAIT WAIT
The essence of this FRAUD is soooo very straight and plainly visible.
By adding data from the true warming period, 1921-1935, with ’34 being the warmest of the 20th century, all of the numbers being presented are contaminated. This plain and simple manipulation of the numbers is the actionable fraud. All of the rest confirms this.
The motives are clear-a pretend problem needing continued funding for employment. The kinship of criminals involved in this hoax-that is what this is-stuns the unwashed masses.
Barney Frank should take lessons on concealment from this group.
Political types should be running away in terror, for the Tea Party people are going to have NO PROBLEM increasing membership now.
Lon / Anthony:
You are overlooking in your summary the outright manipulation of records & data sets and the fact that they cannot replicate the results, which IS IN FACT DAMAGING to their claims of Man Made Global Warming. This is more than just “Men Behaving Badly” , its FRAUD, and it would not be tolerated in another field of work.
I was astonished to discover that the uncorrected views per day chart for WUWT on Lon’s blog shows a distinct “hockey stick” shape. We can reliably predict from this that unless drastic global action is taken, over half of all Internet page-views will be of your site by 2050.
We would suggest that an international conference be set up to set policy for the reduction of the influence of your site by, say, 80% Giga-Watt’s hits by 2015.
:*)
Hi, denier here.
Given the current revelations, I found this warmist video most poignant, as it destroyed illusions about global warming with undeniable facts.
Poor fellow must be wondering how he can pull a video off Youtube.
Am I the only one to have a growing conviction that these emails were not hacked by some mysterious Russian? To me, it looks like an inside job and that this data was leaked.
Also, there would be no purpose served for the UEA to call in the police to investigate their security breach if they believed the Russian hacker version of events. Our detectives can’t arrest anyone in Russia.
Anyone remember “wild about Harry”?