Odd things are going on at the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia.
Widely available data, existing in the public view for years, is now disappearing from public view.
For example this link to Keith Briffa’s Yamal data:
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/people/briffa/yamal2009/
Now redirects to a generic page of UEA. Try it yourself.
Now here is what that page says:
Climatic Research Unit
Due to the present high volume of visitors to this page, you will shortly be directed to the latest news about CRU on the main University of East Anglia website, or you can go there immediately by clicking on this link.
The cached page at Google is still available here, though none of the links to data or papers works there either.
I’ll point out that if indeed “traffic” is a concern, redirecting to another page on the UEA server system doesn’t do much for the load, it just moves it around. The data files are mostly text, and not that large, they don’t have that much more impact that some wab pages with graphics.
The news page that you get redirected to hasn’t much to say, and has not been updated since December 3rd.
And it’s not just subfolders with data, it is the entire Climate Research Unit website that is shielded from public view. Try the main link which has been functional for years:
In the last press release issued by UEA we read:
Professor Edward Acton, Vice-Chancellor said: “The reputation and integrity of UEA is of the upmost importance to us all.
So now apparently, in this newly pledged period of “openness and transparency”, with the promise of releasing new data access, such as the Met office has done here:
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climatechange/science/monitoring/subsets.html
The access to important CRU data is simply denied?
That’s a hell of a way to build public trust.
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Here’s one I’ve found. Anyone interested in Alpine Climate?
http://web.archive.org/web/20070706154131/www.cru.uea.ac.uk/ftpdata/alp_pre.txt
It’s not much, but the pdf is no longer available.
other stuff you can still get, sort of.
http://web.archive.org/web/20080112061951/www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/posters/
http://web.archive.org/web/20080111051849/www.cru.uea.ac.uk/~timm/grid/CRU_TS_2_1.html
And, FWIW, this search shows them to be very busy beavers.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&hs=pFz&as_q=Mike+Hulme+and+Phil+Jones&as_epq=&as_oq=&as_eq=&num=10&lr=&as_filetype=pdf&ft=i&as_sitesearch=&as_qdr=all&as_rights=&as_occt=any&cr=&as_nlo=&as_nhi=&safe=images
They have their paws into so many pies that there will be a LOT of resistance to removing them.
For those needing remedial “civil-service-spotting”:
“How’s the Environment?”
Sir Humphrey, Permanent Secretary for Administrative Affairs: “It about a planning inquiry … rather importatn we get the right result …”
Permanent Secretary for the Environment : “You do know my planning inspectors are absolutely independent … no question of undue influence.. ”
Sir H: “Of course, I would never suggest such a thing … but … if it could be question of giving certain informal guidelines, putting the Inquiry in to the proper perspective, in view of explaining the background to facilitate an informed appreciation of the issues and implications …”
“THAT would be quite proper, of course…”
“Larey (07:21:16) : As previously stated, the rule of thumb should be:
‘Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence.’
– Napolean Bonaparte”
Perhaps, when it comes to regular people. But when it comes to Leftists, never assess as stupidity that which can be attributed to malice.
The AGW all-stars have earned mistrust as the knee-jerk reaction to their actions.
Seriously, I agree that it is likely that a bunch of people who used to have access to various servers are now being kept away in case they were involved. Server oddities are to be expected if inexperienced helpers or outside experts in a hurry are altering things.
Less seriously:
* CRU was asked to date some files, so they’re taking core samples from the disk drives.
* The server being down doesn’t matter because their server statistics are robustly insensitive to the sign of the status.
* You just need a better browser, as you simply don’t have the level of understanding to be able to interpret the data which their webserver is supplying.
* Unavailability is openness, when a hundred years of availability is being measured rather than only a few decades.
* The peers are not trying to access the data, so the data availability has passed peer review.
* The whole world is busy in Copenhagen, so this is a good time for server maintenance.
Once upon a time . . .
We purchased a fireplace insert, and the fellow said if we bought it he would give us an add-on. I asked him to write it on the bill of sale, and he acted upset that I didn’t trust him. I gently insisted, and when he saw he wasn’t going to make the sale without it, he wrote it down. When they delivered it, without the add-on, my wife showed them the receipt, and they grudgingly complied. Lesson – NEVER trust anyone who says, “trust me.”
Adrian (14:29:15) :
“How can Google be allowed to get away with such bias! Will Google be placing links on it’s home page for just the democrats now?”
We are fighting against a very powerful enemy. Do we stand a chance? I think we need help.
” Steve Oregon (09:55:27) :
What’s going on?
I’d like to know what’s going on at RealClimate?
Gavin Schmidt and Ray Ladbury both work for NASA-GISS and are using their public employment to engage in a deliberate manipulation of the public perception of the current climate scandal and debate.
It’s one thing to have professional opinions and distribute them in a public forum.
It’s quite another to filter out and obstruct all of the substantive challenges to their work and science to create false impression.
That’s defrauding the public by public employees.
It has to stop.
RealClimate is prohibiting posts from many skeptics, censoring posts they allow and truncating dialogues when they turn unfavorable to the effort to continue the cover up and distortion of their work on climate science.
Under what premise is this even close to being acceptable?
Their continued misrepresentations are serving as a distribution point for wider falsifying of news for public consumption.
These are public employees using their public employment time, and access to government files to deceive the public.
I challenge any savvy climate observers, researchers to attempt to engage the discussion at RC with germane and specific critiquing and see how it’s received.
You’ll notice the total absence of any of the damning revelations and information appearing there.
There’s only one way for that to be the case.
Deliberate censoring and obstruction.
If this were private individuals and a private blog it would not matter. It is not.
It is our publicly funded officials using their positions to distribute an altered and false presentation of an important issue and process.
It is not ethical or acceptable.
Exactly where would one demand it be stopped?”
…
I wonder if anyone has thought of putting together a new website of screengrabs people have been taking of their questions posed to RealClimate which have been moderated out? I’ve seen a few of these screengrabs from various people now, critical but thoughtful and polite questions which RC seemingly simply would rather not deal with. It could help the wider community get a better idea of the kinds of censoring going on at RC and help clarify the kinds of questions that they’re avoiding.
Perhaps the website could be called “RealQuestions” ?
Could be an interesting project..
Maybe their server overheated due to global warming…
Stu, Try here http://rcrejects.wordpress.com/. I don’t think this blog has legs yet although it has been up for some months. Scroll down to “Post Your RC Rejects Here”. Ray
Someone pointed out that the earliest email usefully points to who the leaker might be. Another useful pointer could be the sequence of attempted recipients for the FOI file. First it was sent to journalists, then, when that failed, to less well known bloggers (compared with WUWT, anyway). This indicates someone who is attuned to the mainstream media and not the blogging community, thus an older insider. So Briffa himself is a good candidate. Maybe his recent illness is stress related as he remembers his ideals and has a “what do you see in the mirror” experience.
Larey (07:21:16) : As previously stated, the rule of thumb should be:
“Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence.”
– Napolean Bonaparte
—
Of course, the correlary to this is Clark’s Law:
“ Sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice. ”
Seems the web archive still has lots of it …
http://web.archive.org/web/20071111095902/www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/people/briffa/data.htm
http://web.archive.org/web/20071113151414/www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/people/briffa/temmaps/
Folks should download before that goes AWOL too.
The Charley-Foxtrot with their web servers is to be expected… it’s not like they have any competent IT folks there… look at Harry’s comments about the code in the data dump.
The certificate issue (This is an untrusted site! error) is probably because they rebuilt the web servers on new iron and the SSL cert does not match the actual name of the server… they will have to get new certs issued and installed.
I am with EM Smith on this one… having done a few forensic examinations of compromised systems, starting over with bare metal is the only way to be sure of what you have.,, or you could nuke it from orbit… that works.
In 6 months, we will see the Willy_Read_Me.txt files.
They will reveal the year long saga of a webserver administrator, who kept trying to hide data where no one could find it. He captured all the emails, sorted them and filled in the missing ones. He made sure that no email was ever deleted. Then one day, he was hungry, and he left the password where someone could find it. Who would have guessed that MannTrick#9 was so easy to guess?
in France i have been black listed on forum science I was giving too good arguments against HUMAN origine of global warming !
http://forums.futura-sciences.com/ethique-sciences/355808-confidentialite-donnees-scientifiques-10.html
According to Netcraft, UEA switched operating systems and server software over the summer and now runs Apache/Coyote on Linux. Presuming that the boxes themselves are robust enough and that the files being requested are mostly text files (as all html files are), taking the site down because of server load is extremely unlikely. Setting up load sharing between several servers using the above setup and a $300 router is a snap, each load-shared site accessing the same database to construct the page.
No, any server admin worth his paycheck would be able to keep the servers humming. If they were going to have a problem, they would have had it two weeks ago, not now. Plus, a decent admin would provide a more reasonable explanation of what is going on.
If they pulled the site to keep people from downloading information that had been available heretofore, that tells us something about the information pulled. That they won’t say what that something is tells us even more.
Crisis Mgmt 101 indicates that the proper response is to leave the information where it is but to disclaim it as being under review. Removing it is exactly the wrong thing to do.
Contact me and I will either send you much o the data that was there or tell you where to get it.
Anyone know where I can get the crutem3 dataset other than Cru site?
http://hadobs.metoffice.com/crutem3/data/download.html
The folks at the CRU are not scientists; they are thugs.
JB (22:51:32) :
The folks at the CRU are not scientists; they are thugs.
I would argue that they are politicians rather than scientist.
Scientist go where the data leads them. Politicians lead the data to where they want the science to go.
In college, I had a text book titled “Rudy’s Red Wagon: Communication Strategies in Contemporary Society”,
http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/custom/portlets/recordDetails/detailmini.jsp?_nfpb=true&_&ERICExtSearch_SearchValue_0=ED071118&ERICExtSearch_SearchType_0=no&accno=ED071118
I recommend it to anyone who wants to understand how the scammers and con artists work. My favorite put-down for a scammer? Thank you for being so transparent.
🙂
Mike
I got in to this late and it might already been discussed. Are there any sites at NOAA, NASA, or American universities where data/sites are now being diverted or hidden?
Thanks
Stu (15:57:49) – There are several existing web sites trying to collect RealClimate’s frequent rejections. For some reason I remember “An Inconvenient Comment”, but you can find more about RC’s rejections if you search for realclimate censorship. It’s a common enough issue that Google suggests it when you type “realclimate”.
I have a hunch its closed to keep additional hackers out. If I were a head of state right now I would have my intelligence agency sending their best and brightest hackers in to verify the leak matches the data on the hard drive and their isn’t stuff in there implicating their current government. The UEA system may have had some very bad intruder traffic jams and ended up with a seriously mangled firewall by now.
you can retrieve any page from Archive.org: this link will list all dates cached..
http://web.archive.org/web
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/people/briffa
And the reason Briffa is not in a lock up, is? …