One year ago today, after returning from a conference in Brussels, I sat down in Dulles airport, connected to WiFi, researched and wrote this article, called two people, CEI’s Chris Horner to check legality issues, and Marc Morano (who was traveling in car on the PCH in California) to give him a heads up, and pressed the “publish” button just seconds before they closed the door to my flight back to Sacramento. When I landed five hours later, I immediately got back on WiFi and found the the story had exploded, and we lived in a different world. I spent so much time moderating and checking the responses elsewhere, that when I looked up from the computer, I found the airport deserted, and my bag was to lone one sitting on the carousel.
This story, written in haste, uncertainty, and pressure to board a plane, is the most viewed story on WUWT, and spawned hundreds of other stories and links. I’m repeating it again to mark the event, consider this an open thread on Climategate, one year later. – Anthony
===========================================================
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 rather than direct link because 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/
It’s such a shame that the true lesson to be learned is still not being learned.
Political agenda must be divorced from all publicly funded science. This conflict is little different from that which encourages separation of church and state.
A year later and another tropical resort hosted conference — or is this one at Cancun more like state-sponsored extortion?
Meanwhile, thanks to some anonymous “leaker”, the hoped-for successor to Kyoto remains elusive. Didn’t do it at Copenhagen. Perhaps they’ll tack on a few years to Kyoto (put it on life support) till a new agreement can be hammered out.
Climategate was my motivation for spending the holidays processing the raw, daily data from NCDC. Granted, I only worked up the land based measures, but we live on land 😉
http://justdata.wordpress.com
Despite the inherent UHI influence on the readings, there was only minor warming in the Arctic. The rest of the world temps are quite flat.
Well Anthony, that was a bold move a year ago. Who knows where it might have led.
But I think the way WUWT handled it; and the traffic that visited here subsequently, blazed a new path forward; both to expose the decay of the “Scientific Method”, and alert a lot of the general public to the degree to which they are being maniplated by unseen agendas; or agendae as the case may be.
>c-R< on the other hand chose to allow the keystone to fall out of their arch; and headed them on the path to historical oblivion.
Congratulations Anthony; and those others who pitched into this revelation.
As a reminder of how some of the drama played out; in lieu of the monday morning explanatorium. The "scientists" may have been just behaving like a bunch of naughty boys, as they wouold have us believe; BUT remember that a good many software coding people pointed out for us, just where in the naughty boys' toolbox, could be found the instruments that could be used to "hide the decline", and commit other mayhem.
No they didn't prove such malfeasance occurred; just showed where the tools were to do that whenever one wanted to.
Generally speaking the MSM still act as if this never happened. As the first story today points out, our rulers are carrying on the same as before.
And we’re still not done.
It is sometimes a weary task
or tempting, in the after-glow to bask
but still it remains ahead
to fight until alarmism is dead
the contest is not yet won
and great distance to go until we’re done
the struggle was never for the meek
it is principled science that we seek
yesterday’s economist, he did show
the true enemy we all know
last year, a date for history
how this continues is a great mystery.
so each day against warmists rigor
do we fight with renewed vigor
it is tempting, at times to take a rest
and do the things we enjoy best
But we have promises to keep,
And miles to go before we sleep
My sincerest apologies to R. Frost
So where are we 12 months on?
Our great learned societies realised just how little there was to the evidence, that it was manipulated along with the peer review process, as was the IPCC AR4 assessment, that there was even evidence of inventing data and further evidence of attempts at thwarting the free dissemination of data and codes in direct contravention of one of the first principles of the scientific method, that of reproducibility and/or falsification. So humiliated were these societies that they had been so utterly hoodwinked as to the veracity of the so called science that enmasse, they withdrew their support for the “consensus” and called for a return to fundamental scientific principles in dealings with climate science and for the restoration of a healthy sceptical scientific community. Heads rolled at the very top of these once great organisations for their direction of policy and political interference.
The MSMs eventually picked up the stories and their investigative journalists started delving into the scandal to reveal yet many more skeletons, and whipping up a general hysteria among the general public because of the lies that had been told to them in order to justify policies which caused the rape of our countryside with thousands of ugly wind turbines, which caused the numbers of people in fuel poverty to increase by five fold in only a couple of years and which caused many energy dependant jobs to be permanently exported.
Following this general up swelling of discontent among the population, our political leaders eventually threw in the towel, realising that their new source of taxation had been foiled along with an even more useful source of secondary income for themselves and their families. They called for an unbiased and objective judicial review of the whole sorry process of climate science and its associated political leveraging following which they reversed all their earlier edicts and returned to the process of trying to direct policy for the enrichment of all classes of society.
This is where we are now, one year on, isn’t it?
I still have a press-release re:Climategate hanging on my office door with my added annotation:
“SOMETHING JUST HIT THE FAN”
I earnestly hope Reps. Jim Sensenbrenner (Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming) and Joe Barton (Committee on Energy and Commerce) will hold the necessary hearings to expose what’s been going on with US tax $$$ in the name of “climate research”.
Time to cut through the “FOIA dance”, put people under oath and penalty of perjury, and ask the inconvenient questions about manipulation of data, collusion in peer review, suppression of non-CAGW research, and unprofessional liaisons with green-leaning reporters, enviro organizations/foundations, and the Hollywood/media cliques.
Climategate is a major black eye for a bunch of climate researchers, and unfortunately, many of the rest of us scientists get tarred with the same brush. It’s time for us to help clean up this mess by focusing on geologic, cryologic, climatological evidence (verifiable facts) of natural cycles and processes of change.
I was not surprised at all by anything in the emails. I expect many labs and departments around the world had disk failures in the days after ClimateGate and lost all of their archived inboxes.
…I’m for one curious what’s in the rest of the emails that were supposedly stolen from CRU…I suspect Darrell Issa will figure it out with help from the blogosphere which will happily provide guidance in the questioning of certain figures…
The liberated (where’s the proof of hacking?) e-mails made a BIG splash in the AGW pond and the ripples are still spreading. Good.
After one year, they haven’t said who did it and we still don’t know who Harry is. It’s not such a big place; there are a limited number of people who could be in the Harry lineup. IMHO, this had to be an inside job, by someone more technically competent than the the usual UEA bigshots. IMHO, they know who did it, but they can’t say, either because it would embarrass them deeply or because he has some even worse dirt on them. This is an even more incredible story than the Nixon tapes, but the media still willfully misses the point.
Time to remember….:
An email from Mr.Jones and “Mannmade Hockeystick”
Me and Mr Jones, we got a thing going on
We both know that it´s wrong
But it´s much too strong to let it go now
We meet ev´ry day at the same cafe
Six-thirty I know he´ll be there
Holding hands, making all kinds of plans
While the jukebox plays our favorite song
Me and Mr, Mr. Jones, Mr Jones, Mr Jones
We got a thing going on
We both know that it´s wrong
But it´s much too strong to let it go now
We gotta be extra careful
That we don´t build our hopes too high
Cause he´s got her own obligations and so do I
Me, me and Mr, Mr Jones, Mr Jones, Mr Jones
Well, it´s time for us to be leaving
And it hurts so much, it hurts so much inside
And now he´ll go his way, I´ll go mine
But tomorrow we´ll meet at the same place, the same time
Me and Mr Jones, Mr Jones, Mr Jones
after seeing what was in the climategate documents i spent the whole of 10 minutes on google discovering the fraud behind CAGW…10 whole minutes it took.
until then i was a “lukewarmer”
I have it on good word that there are going to be some permanent seats for the likes of
Lisa Jackson, et.al. in front of congress…
As an aside, if ever a movie was made of the Hadley/CRU mess I nominate John
Cleese as “Harry”-I can see him beating the keyboard….
Congrats to the person on WUWT who coined the phrase Climategate! it went worldwide bud!!
Anthony, thanks for all that you do.
Just hit your tip jar.
_________________________________________
From one year ago:
Tom in Texas says: November 19, 2009 at 7:46 pm
Bill Marsh (18:53:03) : Where do you see this statement?
Bill, Steven was the first to break this story on CA. Below is his comment:
101 steven mosher:
November 19th, 2009 at 1:58 pm
Found this on the airVent.
Posted on Lucia. This is huge.
Lucia,
Found this on JeffIds site.
http://noconsensus.wordpress.c…..en-letter/
It contains over 1000 mails. IF TRUE …
1 mail from you and the correspondence that follows.
And, you get to see somebody with the name of phil jones say that he would rather destroy the CRU data than release it to McIntyre.
And lots lots more. including how to obstruct or evade FOIA requests. and guess who funded the collection of cores at Yamal.. and transferred money into a personal account in Russia
And you get to see what they really say behind the curtain..
you get to see how they “shape” the news, how they struggled between telling the truth and making policy makers happy.
you get to see what they say about Idso and pat micheals, you
get to read how they want to take us out into a dark alley, it’s stunning all very stunning. You get to watch somebody named phil jones say that John daly’s death is good news.. or words to that effect.
I don’t know that its real..
But the CRU code looks real
I well remember the day this story broke–I was working with some cohorts and I turned to them after reading it and pronounced that AGW was dead. They didn’t believe me then but I still believe it now, primarily because the movers and shakers have recently and openly stated their nefarious motivations behind this whole sordid affair–redistribution of wealth and promulgation of socialism through global governance.
The enemy of freedom-loving people everywhere has been exposed.
I nominate Anthony Watts and Steve McIntyre for the investigative journalism award of the year.
Alexa documents how WUWT traffic tripled ~overnight due to ClimateGate and then sustained double its previous 2009 traffic. Running neck and neck in 2009, ClimateAudit.org and Realclimate.org similarly tripled in traffic. Then ClimateAudit.org settled down to double the traffic of RealClimate.org.
People are voting with their “fingers”.
I remember that day as it was today! I grabbed the files, and with a computer friend of mine I made some quick search and compiled a list of the most interesting phrases in the email. In the last year, it is by far the most viewed page in my blog:
http://ecotretas.blogspot.com/2009/11/rolo-compressor-de-verdades.html
The same friend understood the computing language also, and made some other interesting discoveries in the code:
http://ecotretas.blogspot.com/2009/11/bugs-do-climategate.html
Those were very interesting times!
Ecotretas
Google Earth 52° 37′ 18.38″ N, 1° 14′ 18.8″ E
I can’t help myself. I love Henry V:
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say ‘To-morrow is Climategate Day.’
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars,
And say ‘These wounds I had on Climategate Day.’
Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot,
But he’ll remember, with advantages,
What feats he did that day. Then shall our names,
Familiar in his mouth as household words-
Anthony Watts, Bishop Hill, the woman with the blackboard
Be in their flowing cups freshly rememb’red.
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Climategate Day shall ne’er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered-
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers
Phil Jones did recently refer to the as yet unpublished Climategate emails, the balance held back from the server of Tomsk. So there is a second helping coming, and while we wait, a sword of Damocles for the warmers.
*sigh* One of the great moments in the history of science! Thanks, Anthony, this was the signal event that brought me to your fine blog WUWT.
Upon downloading & reading the files off the Russian server, I searched them for Sen. Jim Inhofe’s name, which I found in several emails. I was a campaign volunteer for Jim’s first run for Congress in 1984 & still know a few of his folks.
On Nov. 24, 2009, I humbly offered this suggestion to the Senator through his staff:
“Jim should have the entire collection of emails read into the record of the US Senate…”
He did me one better with the Minority Report!! Way to go, Jim!!
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/02/23/climategate-minority-report/
Talk about “tipping points”….this was the moment when the earth moved under the feet of the CAGW crowd. What a fascinating year!! Thanks to all, Chuck the DrPH
Yes, they were interesting (and educational) times, before Climategate I didn’t think much about the reasons for the great big new taxes but when Climategate occurred I took an interest and since then have become a skeptic or denialist or whatever the current word is
Perhaps what Politicisation has done in the name of science is demonstrate that there are inquiring and courageous scientific and other minds that do not close
And where’s Bulldust (I think he is Australian as I am) and the coiner of the phrase ‘Climategate’
Happy anniversary everyone, thank you Anthony for a wonderful site
RobB says:
November 19, 2010 at 8:39 am
“Steve McIntyre’s site has been very quiet recently…….is he working on something perhaps? :)”
Yes that’s interesting.
Nigel Calder have also been quiet and he is working on something.
He says so himself:
http://calderup.wordpress.com/2010/10/23/whoosh-not-missing-just-busy/#comments
Most likely the CERN cloud experiment. Keep an eye on that, Anthony.