UPDATE: The cumulative total is over 2 million USD, the $200k yearly number is generally correct, but varies year to year, see more below. Also, a list of funders to CRU has been added. – Anthony
In the story DOE Funding For CRU Placed On Hold it was reported about the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit (CRU) that:
It has supported the CRU financially since 1990 and gives the unit about £131,000 ($200,000 USD) a year on a rolling three-year contract.
This should have been renewed automatically in April, but the department has suspended all payments since May pending a scientific peer review of the unit’s work.
Some enterprising commenters at WUWT have found evidence in the Climategate emails that the $200K figure may be low, or just one part of a multi-part contract. See below.
UPDATE: Excel file from CRU tells the story and cumulative total, see below:
====================================
Kforestcat says:
July 20, 2010 at 9:36 pm
Gentlemen
On closer inspection, it looks like the DOE was to supply far more in grant funds than the $200,000/year the DOE indicated it suspended. So your $4.0 million estimate is probably too low. A review of the climate gate e-mails shows the Department of Energy Office of Science – Chicago Office – supplyed $1.5 to $1.7 million in FY 2007/2008 alone.
As evidence see the May 7 12:42:32 2008 e-mail (File Name 1210178552.text) entitled “Request for Cost Date for DOE Grant”.
In this e-mail, the UEA’s Office Supervisor for Finance Research, Mrs. Sandra Carter, indicates to Dr. Jones that the EAU had, to 7 May 2008, received for the DOE $1,589,632 in FY 2007/2008 grant money. Against what appears to be a total spent of $1,744,130 as of 30 April 2008.
An additional $58,880 was expected to be spent in April to June 08 time frame and an additional $47,190 to be spent in the July to September 2008 time frame.
The amounts of DOE grant money the EAU spent on staff and travel is frankly astonishing – see details in the e-mail. At a typical $100,000/yr for a full time equivalent (FTE) for each employee, this level of funding is enough to support 15-17 full time employees for a full fiscal year.
My review of the climate gate e-mails also showed that Dr. Jones wasn’t too eager for the U.S. Congress to know that both he and Tom Wigley had been receiving substantial amounts of DOE grant money for 25 years. See Filename 1120676865.txt where it states:
xxxxxxxxx
From: Phil Jones
To: “Neville Nicholls”
Subject: RE: Misc
Date: Wed Jul 6 15:07:45 2005
Neville,
Mike’s response could do with a little work, but as you say he’s got the tone
almost dead on. I hope I don’t get a call from congress ! I’m hoping that no-one
there realizes I have a US DoE grant and have had this (with Tom W.) for the last 25
years.
I’ll send on one other email received for interest.
Cheers
Phil
xxxxxxxxx
h/t to WUWT reader Eric Dailey
=============================
From Verity Jones in comments:
From an Excel file released with the emails in November. US DOE Funding only:
Funding Source, Investigators, Grant Title, Funding, Start Date, End Date
US DEPT OF ENERGY Prof PD JONES, Prof TML WIGLEY Detection of CO2 induced climate change (Suppl.) – cum. total £540,956, original start date 01/12/90 £128,000 01/03/1995 29/02/1996
US DEPT OF ENERGY Prof PD JONES, Prof TML WIGLEY Detection of greenhouse gas induced climate change (Suppl.) – cum. total £672,956, original start date 01/12/90 £132,000 01/03/1996 28/02/1997
US DEPT OF ENERGY Prof PD JONES, Prof TML WIGLEY Detection of greenhouse gas induced climate change (Suppl.) – cum. total £797,956, original start date 01/12/90 £125,000 01/03/1997 28/02/1998
US DEPT OF ENERGY Prof PD JONES, Prof TML WIGLEY Climate data analysis and models for the study of natural variability and anthropogenic change £99,555 01/05/1998 30/04/1999
US DEPT OF ENERGY Prof PD JONES, Prof TML WIGLEY Climate data analysis and models for the study of natural variability and anthropogenic change (Suppl.) £102,752 01/05/1999 30/04/2000
US DEPT OF ENERGY Prof PD JONES Climate data analysis and models for the study of natural variability and anthropogenic change £106,151 01/05/2000 30/04/2001
US DEPT OF ENERGY Prof PD JONES, Prof TML WIGLEY Climate data and analysis from the study of natural variability and anthropogenic change £212,500 01/05/2001 30/04/2003
US DEPT OF ENERGY Prof PD JONES, Prof TML WIGLEY Climate Data and Analysis – Study of Natural Variability and Anthropogenic Change. – Supp awarded £88,756 – 30.3.06 £262,629 01/05/2004 30/05/2006
Yep – including the ‘Cum total’ from 1990 figures that’s about £1.5M. Graph of total funding in this blog post:
http://diggingintheclay.wordpress.com/2009/11/22/fellowship-of-the-tree-rings-an-immoral-tale/
===================================
Note: £1.5M is 2.278 million U.S. dollars
================================
UPDATE:
Partial list of CRU funders
Source: CRU
Below is a partial list of funders for the Climatic Research Unit of climategate fame. These organizations and companies funded Phil Jones and the CRU division of the “hockey stick team.” Notice all the major international oil companies, leftist NGOs and self-interested governments — none of which climate alarmists mention when questioning funding of climate realists.
“This list is not fully exhaustive, but we would like to acknowledge the support of the following funders (in alphabetical order):” 
British Council, British Petroleum, Broom’s Barn Sugar Beet Research Centre, Central Electricity Generating Board, Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science (CEFAS), Commercial Union, Commission of European Communities (CEC, often referred to now as EU), Council for the Central Laboratory of the Research Councils (CCLRC), Department of Energy, Department of the Environment (DETR, now DEFRA), Department of Health, Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), Eastern Electricity, Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), Environment Agency, Forestry Commission, Greenpeace International, International Institute of Environmental Development (IIED), Irish Electricity Supply Board, KFA Germany, Leverhulme Trust, Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (MAFF), National Power, National Rivers Authority, Natural Environmental Research Council (NERC), Norwich Union, Nuclear Installations Inspectorate, Overseas Development Administration (ODA), Reinsurance Underwriters and Syndicates, Royal Society, Scientific Consultants, Science and Engineering Research Council (SERC), Scottish and Northern Ireland Forum for Environmental Research, Shell, Stockholm Environment Agency, Sultanate of Oman, Tate and Lyle, UK Met. Office, UK Nirex Ltd., United Nations Environment Plan (UNEP), United States Department of Energy, United States Environmental Protection Agency, Wolfson Foundation and the World Wildlife Fund for Nature (WWF).
Many commenters think the DoE action is a set up for a whitewash, but I can’t help but wonder if it is a fight between Chu and Jackson. There’s a lot of money and power at stake in this business, as both of them see it.
==============
I can’t believe that little bitty building, and those few employees cost that much.
Do the Brits give them any money at all?
The question that comes to my mind, as to others, is – why would the US government pay a UK university department to carry out work which it could easily get done by its own researchers in the USA? What benefit were they getting? I am sure the US Congress and Senate will want answers.
Isn’t it a crime to defraud the US Government of money?
I want my damn money back, Dr. Jones! And your head on a platter! Well, not your real head, but close.
Contrary to many views being expressed here, can I make it clear that the problem with the CRU was not too much money being spent on climate monitoring, but far too little.
Honestly, you can’t both criticise the CRU for their abysmal failure to obtain a monitoring network that measures anything other than the amount of tarmac in the vicinity and then complain they are spending too little.
I used to be put up weather monitoring stations commercially, and we used to charge £10-20k for the station (1k approx for the equipment). Then someone would charge another 10k on top of that to analyse the data.
For a station network of 3000 units (excluding worldwide travel) that is a total of some 30million for monitoring and 30million for equipment — and the equipment I’m talking about was primarily intended for wind monitoring and temperature recording was a very poor second rate measurement. To get equipment accurate to 0.05C and to monitor and maintain sites would add considerably to that overall cost.
So basically, the 4million is at least one order of magnitude too low, if Jones had the faintest clue what he was doing (i.e. was at all professional) he would have had a budget somewhere in the 100s of millions not some mickey mouse outfit at 4million AND THAT IS WHY THE TEMPERATURE DATA IS SO CRAP
Frankly, what Phil Jones said above, basically that he hopes he doesn’t get caught, is utterly despicable, and shows just how much care these people take with public funds – i.e. none.
It’s especially galling that this is coming from public funds from American taxpayers to pay for a shoddy British research outfit.
The Muir-Russell report added some useful information for those of us who are computer scientists and interested in the “hacking” allegation:
Page 101:
“IT Organisation. In common with other areas of the Science Faculty, CRU [the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia] operates largely independently of the central IS [information systems] functions of the UEA. […] CRU has its own local [computer network] architecture based on a mix of individual PC based and server based processing. In common with many other research groups across the university, this is distinct from the UEA preferred model of client-server operation. Internet communications for CRU is however routed over the university network and through the university firewall. CRU has its own IT Manager for whom CRU is 40% of his workload. CRU originally had no central backup arrangements for the individual researchers’ PCs however its IT Manager introduced automated backup (using open source software) to a simple server held securely within the Central IS machine room.”
This is an absolutely whacky setup. So we have confirmation that the CRU had its emails routed through a central (likely Exchange) server (normal – and sensible – procedure for a large organisation), but that the researcher’s individual work was NOT backed up for a long period of time. However recently (its not clear when), backups were made to a machine held securely within the central IS room (no idea what they mean by a “simple server” though, eh?).
This gives us confirmation that the “hacker” – if there was one – was able to access the University of East Anglia’s central IT infrastructure. Yet all of the reports refer to the “hack” of “the CRU server”. If the UEA’s central systems themselves were directly targeted by a hacker, this would be a league of importance above a direct attack on just machines in the CRU; so why isn’t the question ever phrased to reflect this? The “hacker” had to crack two centralised servers – the Exchange server for emails, and the backup “simple server” (wtf?) in order to collate the files we have today. And they did this without sysadmins noticing. IMHO this swings the evidence very firmly towards an insider.
Also, and with respect to the current thread – it is now clear that they didn’t lack for money. So why the shoddy infrastructure, especially for work that was so expensive, and coming out of the public purses of the U.K. AND U.S. taxpayers? Why did the IT manager opt for an open source solution. I’m a big fan of open source myself, however for a critical backup system if I had the money available I would always use a reliable third party solution as there would then be some kind of external indemnity and accountability for losses. And – why oh why, did they simply not make use of the University’s SAN (Storage Area Network)?
All you people bow down to the ruling class, what are you thinking here? The 1st amendment will be banned soon. The USA is ran by a bunch of lying crooks and if it’s not stopped, we will lose what freedom we still have left.
I suspect the US funds a lot of foreign research, on all sorts of scientific topics. I don’t see that it’s wrong, if there’s a good justification for it. (Of course, we shouldn’t overdo it.)
Hmmmm.
“Isn’t it a crime to defraud the US Government of money?”
Actually it is even more amusing than that. There is a federal law on the books for years that allows private citizens to sue on behalf of the US federal government for cases of fraud. If you win you get to keep a portion of the overall settlement plus legal fees while the remainder goes to the US federal government.
And now there are large aggregate legal firms that pursue these types of cases. So if you have knowledge of fraud and facts to support that … well it’s almost like hitting the lottery.
“I hope I don’t get a call from congress ! I’m hoping that no-one there realizes I have a US DoE grant and have had this (with Tom W.) for the last 25 years.”
Is there anybody out there who is sufficiently competent to explain to my simple mind, how this communication can be taken out of context.
Don’t get me wrong, i know that like all the other innocent e-mails, there is nothing untoward about this particular one, it’s just that i can’t see it.
Please try and respond with extensive explanations, word by word if necessary because i am obviously in need of deep and profound re-education.
In oder not to prejudice any reply, i have resisted my intense desire to express my opinion of this e-mail.
I think the numbers are wrong.
Jones speaks of a “grant” (singular). The instructions specify funding received since the “inception of the grant”. The $1.5 mln is not for FY2007/8, but rather for the “25 years”.
Note that the work done by the CRU for the DoE fall under the US rules for disclosure and documentation.
REPLY: That could be, that’s why I said it could be one part of a multi-part grant. Hopefully we can get some info from DOE to determine the totals sent to CRU and when – Anthony
Richard Sharpe: Yes, the law is called the False Claims Act. It is similar to the state law the Va AG is using to investigate Mann’s activities while at the U of Va. The federal law is far reaching and punitive.
Mike Haseler says:
July 21, 2010 at 1:17 pm
“Contrary to many views being expressed here, can I make it clear that the problem with the CRU was not too much money being spent on climate monitoring, but far too little.”…….
……….. he would have had a budget somewhere in the 100s of millions not some mickey mouse outfit at 4million AND THAT IS WHY THE TEMPERATURE DATA IS SO CRAP”
Mike,
I don’t believe anyone expects the CRU to put temp monitoring stations all over the world. That wasn’t their function. The monitoring stations are already in place. The CRU merely “processed” the data. Further, read the story, the $4 mill was the original estimate used from the earlier reported $200,000/yr for 20 yrs. Apparently, this isn’t the case. The $1,744,000 seems to be the amount for a fiscal year 2007-2008. It is significantly more than 200,000/yr. Further he states, in 2005, he’s had this grant for 25 years. Which, if it is just now being shut off, the CRU or Phil himself has been receiving the money for 30 years total. If the $1.75 million has been consistently paid out over the 30 years, the U.S. taxpayer has paid the CRU/ Phil $52.5 million dollars for the research he’s already being paid to do? Is he an employee of the University? The British government? Or is he a sole employee of the U.S. federal government? It is my impression, but I don’t know for sure, the CRU also had other sources of funding. In any case, I’ve already phoned my senators and congressman asking for a full accounting of the money our government has spent in this matter to the CRU. This could get interesting, notwithstanding the obvious question as to why the U.S. is funding (even partially) a British research unit. Again, I don’t know enough to make an accusation, but when people start playing shell games with money, accountants and lawyers and in this case lawmakers, should be alerted.
John from CA @ur momisugly July 21, 2010 at 11:18 am
[I can’t believe he said:
“I hope I don’t get a call from congress ! I’m hoping that no-one there realizes I have a US DoE grant and have had this (with Tom W.) for the last 25 years.”]
Watch out!! Here come the usual conspiracy theorists. There is a pretty obvious explanation for this email. Jones wrote this email in 2005 during a Bush era government that was anti anything to do with climate change research. The statement was made in jest and was directed at the fact a government department (DoE) was funding something that its own government failed to give a hoot about.
So be careful with your allegations of “Fraud” etc that your are throwing aroud at Phil Jones. Applying the “Monckton test” for libel and slander (which covers just about anything) it just might land WUWT in court for republishing defamatory statements.
MJK
NOAA gave them money, too.
http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=332&filename=1056478635.txt
“The story we are about to hear is true; only the names have been changed to protect the innocent.”
You couldn’t make it up if you tried. Will the DoE disclose the facts?
“All we want is the facts ma’am, just the facts.”
From link above:
…I reckon most has been spent but we need to show some left to cover the costs of the trip Roger didn’t make and also the fees/equipment/computer money we haven’t spent otherwise NOAA will be suspicious…
Criminal!! I’m all for scientific research but much of it is wasteful…case and point right here. I’ve always earned a paycheck all my life so I don’t know what it is like to get “grant” money, but it seems so shameful. Just like politicians and the freebees they recieve. It’s really quite appalling.
mjk says:
July 21, 2010 at 1:54 pm
“[…]Watch out!! Here come the usual conspiracy theorists. There is a pretty obvious explanation for this email. Jones wrote this email in 2005 during a Bush era government that was anti anything to do with climate change research.[…]”
Ignoring the fact that you’re not making much sense, don’t forget that Bush gave us Rajendra K. Pachauri.
Mike Haseler says:
“[…] the problem with the CRU was not too much money being spent on climate monitoring, but far too little. […] AND THAT IS WHY THE TEMPERATURE DATA IS SO CRAP.”
No, the reason the temperature data is so crap is that the raw data was tweaked by fudge factors iteratively arrived at to make it appear that the world is getting hotter.
Kim says:
“Many commenters think the DoE action is a set up for a whitewash, but I can’t help but wonder if it is a fight between Chu and Jackson. There’s a lot of money and power at stake in this business, as both of them see it.”
I am wondering if Chu is not going under the bus. Obama’s hoping that the oil spill will go away but it won’t. Solution? Throw Chu under the bus. He did make decisions that merit the action.
Jackson sits in an equally unstable seat. I bet she’s having a party tonight now that there will not be a debate on Senate Cap’n Trade before recess. I think a real debate would put Jackson under the bus. Remember that Obama is the champion under-the-bus thrower of all time. That record is established. (Sherrod was dragged from under the bus.)
NIH has a searchable database of grants, grantees, and their institutions. A quick search of the DOE doesn’t let me find such for this agency. Question is what have they got to hide? [no need to answer that question]
mjk:
The conspiracist paranoia directed at the Bush Government (and I am no supporter of the Bush government) is ok, but asking questions about CRU funding in the context of it being held up is ‘conspiracy’?
Are you aware of the whipping up of anti-Bush sentiments within the scientific community practised by Don Kennedey and others during the same period? The moment a government asks questions of climate scientists, it becomes ‘anti-green’, anti-environment etc?
Maybe it is just a hold-up because the EPA will take over funding the CRU?
It is interesting that Climate Science seems to be following in the footsteps of the Military-Industrial complex and the AIDS-Industrial complex.