We have heard the amazing news broken by Anthony Watts of the Hadley Centre hack and download of the 61MB file named FOI2009.zip
Now gone from the original RU site but still available here.
In my opinion it is from Climate Research Unit (CRU) at U of East Anglia, Norwich – UK and is not from the UKMO’s Hadley Centre. It could have been released by a process as simple as a CRU staffer mistakenly leaving the file in a public part of the CRU FTP site.
Marc Morano has set up a very useful searchable list of the emails. I even found emails in there from me. Just over 1,000 email files all told, each one refs to more than one email – so probably several thousand all up. Amazing stuff.
Life changing for CRU.
Incredible that these people paid by the public purse could be so incredibly loose with it and be totally irresponsible to their positions!
I love this one, Geoff Jenkins of the UKMO, trying to get his head around what Jones did in 1986.
www.anelegantchaos.org/cru/emails.php?eid=809
marvellous stuff, circling near the terrible truth.
Which is that CRUT3 is still stuffed with UHI, 23 years later.
I also saw this where Phil confirms he has been funded by the US DoE (Dept of Energy) for 25 years.
” 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.”
Warwick – Re the Jones/Jenkins exchange, yes I noticed years ago that essentially all weather stations in China were in urban areas. How could it be otherwise? A country as poor as China has been for the last 150 years does not install high-precision weather stations in the middle of nowhere. Same goes for the rest of the Third World. And the population of the cities in which these stations are located has usually grown at least tenfold over the past century, injecting massive local warming. So for the vast bulk of world land area, you have not got a snowball’s chance in hades of weather stations pinning down a climatic warming of a few tenths of a degree since 1900.
What is remarkable about Jones’ e-mail is his tone of wonder. Almost as if he had no idea how bad things were until the Chinese told him in 2007. Maybe he should have handed over his data to you long ago, as you asked, instead of refusing on the ground that you only wanted to pick holes in it!
On this last point, have you seen the way Steve McIntyre mentions you in the recent Finnish TV documentary at the 14 minute mark here As he says, Jones’ refusal was “a very unscientific statement”.
Do you think Jones will be forced to resign as head of CRU? In any other walk of life he would have to go immediately, given the conspiracy and mendacity running through scores of these e-mails. But of course he is even slipperier and slimier that the rest of the gang, and his calling in the police to investigate the hack shows where he is heading.
Still, I think he will be forced out, and pretty quickly too. Even some of his more careful cronies (Trenberth, to some extent Wigley) will blanch at many of his messages, and his credibility will be shot with all true scientists, whatever their views.
Especially damning will be the messages in which he urges his mates to delete incriminating messages, including those about to be caught in FOI requests, and his attempts to rig journals and the articles published in them, and keep contrarians out of IPCC reports, “even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!”. (1089318616, marked “HIGHLY CONFIDENTIAL”).
And the hacking itself is a mark against Jones. He is in charge of the CRU, and thus ultimately responsible for the security and integrity of its data and communications. The massive breach now comes only a short while after his claim that the CRU temperature series can no longer be reconstructed – even though he boasts in these documents that in fact he can reconstruct the series.
Finally, he has made a laughing stock of himself by failing to delete his own “HIGHLY CONFIDENTIAL” messages that he tells the recipients to delete. And he calls Pielke (Snr.) a prat!
So I think he will go fairly promptly. It will be too damaging to the warmers to keep him where he is. From the e-mails I have seen, Mann will be a lot of trouble too.
I try again to give link to Finnish TV show here
Heh, the pingback there from my softestpawn blog looks a lot harsher than I meant the article to be!
When and what kind of contact had the Russian hacker (FOIA) with RealClimate?
Was it before or after they dropped the link at the AIR VENT (13/11) posting: „Open Letter On Climate Legislation“ Comment #10.
Who was slow? Who was quick?
__The Russian hackers FOIA, placed the link on Tuesday 17 Nov., 09:57 PM, at “The Air Vent” here: noconsensus.wordpress.com/2009/11/13/open-letter/; FOIA said November 17, 2009 at 9:57 pm,
__wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/19 opened this thread on 19. Nov. (first comment:. 13:30) ;
__and The Air Vent here: noconsensus.wordpress.com/2009/11/19/leaked-foia-files-62-mb-of-gold/
__The www.examiner.com November 19, 9:42 PM, : The FTP link first appeared on a blog called The Air Vent.
__TGIF, www.investigatemagazine.com, Nov.20, “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.
Is there more it would be good to know?
It suits Jones and CRU to claim they were hacked – but I doubt that – here is an email
where he gave away FTP access codes to the CRU server – there would be massive FTP access between universities and institutions – I would guess that a CRU staffer just
left this file carelessly on their server somewhere too exposed.
Thanks very much for your timeline G.Val
This will run into 2010.
Warwick, I only find two mentions of your name in the searchable database. However, I wonder if the e-mail you received from Jones on 21 February 2005 – you know, the one that said:
“Even if WMO agrees, I will still not pass on the data. We have 25 or so years invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it.”
– could possibly have been in his mind when he wrote to Mann, Bradley and Hughes, also on 21 February 2005 [1109021312]:
“PS I’m getting hassled by a couple of people to release the CRU station temperature data. Don’t any of you three tell anybody that the UK has a Freedom of Information Act!”
What a witty aside, Phil! Still get a giggle out of it when you re-read it today?
Western governments have committed themselves to raise huge amounts of tax revenue and use the proceeds for worldwide social engineering. If AGW is exposed as a scam, how are they to raise the revenue? How can they set about the noble task they have set for themselves and all of us, if we sabotage their efforts? How are they to feed the huge appetite of international organistations such as the EU and the UN ?
How?
Poor things – now they will have to think of some other excuse.
Nice to see you out and about Dave, yes the timing seems so exact. How the world changes. I bet there will be some good contracts written for IT to beef security at servers for instos and edus.
“Beware the Hitler Diaries”. I’ve seen a number of warning on other blogs to view this data with some suspicion until it is proven to be genuine. It would probably help then if those people who can identify their emails can confirm if those emails are genuine. It will then be much harder for the warmers to claim that the files are forgeries although the sheer volume suggests they are genuine.
Regards,
John Elliot
Not so long ago some greenies broke into a UK power station. No conviction was recorded by the UK court on the grounds that they were acting in the common good even if their actions were illegal. That established an interesting precedent and if the Hadley hacker is ever prosecuted we can expect some interesting arguments to be put before the courts. What goes around comes around.
Any chance of the hacker being nominated for a prize?
John Elliot
Gidday John, I am betting the files are genuine.
And I am not sure it has to be a real hack. Maybe a CRU staffer careless where this FOI2009.zip file got left on the server. I think this will still be playing out in 2010.
#15 “Any chance of the hacker being nominated for a prize?” Not yet, but…..
FOIA deserved a reply and a sign of gratitude, which was expressed at Jeff Id’s posting: Open Letter On Climate Legislation, by Jeff Id on November 13, 2009; Comment #21 (20Nov.3:50am), noconsensus.wordpress.com/2009/11/13/open-letter/#comment-11917 , whereby the OPEN LETTER mentioned is also at: www.whatisclimate.com/
TO: FOIA
You did it. You made many people very, very happy with your visit here and the given link. Luckily Jeff Id discovered it immediately: “This is the biggest news ever broken here. hunter said November 20, 2009 at 12:01 am , „Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. God bless you.“ And at : www.examiner.com Terry Hurlbut (Nov19; 9:42 PM) said: „Commentary on all the blogs involved has been brisk, except, oddly enough, at The Air Vent, where only seven comments have been received.“
Allow me to assume you did it intentionally with regard to the subject OPEN LETTER. That would at least make me very happy, as it would be a clear indication that there are other person out (at minimum one), which would agree with me that a science is nuisance if it is not able and willing to define in a reasonable scientific manner what it is talking about. That the talking about a definition on CLIMATE should not be taken lightly, is indicated in my previous comment. If a nonsense term is used by science it is not only misleading the simple people, but also shows that they do not understand what they are talking about. That is the real tragic of all the talking about the CO2 greenhouse gases since the James Hansen’s AGW claim before the US Senate in 1988. They stare in the air, without knowing where they are going to. OK. Currently, presumably only you, (few other ?) and I know. That should change, and your kind appearance here may have been a help, hopefully, for which you deserves my highest appreciation, and sincere thanks.
Gratefully yours AB
___The OPEN LETTER in PDF: www.whatisclimate.com/b202/_Open_Letter_Nov.pdf
Delving more into the content, it is staggering how these e-mails bear out the sceptics’ charges over the years, e.g.:
– Jones was afraid of FOI, and it took “a couple of half-hour sessions” for him to “convince” his “FOI person” not to abide by FOI requests. This was done not on the basis of any scientific or legal reasoning, but by making the FOI person “aware of the types of people we were dealing with” (1228412429)
– Jones stonewalled repeatedly, and urged others to do so: don’t provide anything, release data in unusable formats, delete your messages, delete this message from me, this is for you, don’t even show it to Ray and Malcolm etc. etc.
And on substance:
– Trenberth admits that we don’t understand numerous aspects of the physical processes of heat transfer in the atmosphere (1255523796).
– There are serious problems with just about all proxy records, according to Wigley (839858862)
– There is cooling in the proxies after 1960 – so we hid it with a trick invented by Mann (942777075)
– Mann himself admits that statistical tests give low confidence in his reconstruction in the middle ages, but urges the people he tells not to pass this on (1059664704)
– Wigley rejects Jones’ defence of Wang, who had been charged with fabricating data, saying that Wang’s assertions “seem to be incorrect statements, and that someone (WCW [Wang] at the very least) must have known at the time that they were incorrect” (1188557698). And guess what? – Wang’s collaborator was Jones, so this is actually an insinuation by Wigley that Jones himself may have known the statements were incorrect (link)
– Osborn complains that Mann “rushed around sending preliminary and incorrect responses” to McIntyre and McKitrick’s critique (1068652882).
I could go on but you get the idea. In one controversy after another, the skeptics were right, and in many cases at least somebody on the warmers’ team knew it, and pointed it out to their own camp. But practically none of them ever spoke up. They were all “on board” and “working towards a common goal” (0926010576, where Mann assures Jones of his fidelity to the cause).
I am normally very skeptical of conspiracy theories. But this is about as conspiratorial as real life ever gets. It’s messy, and there is no fixed written plan or official list of conspirators. But there is an abiding sense of a common purpose that is held to trump law or morality, supported by obstruction, obfuscation, propaganda, and judicious silence.
Oh, and manipulation, including of journalists like Andy Revkin of the New York Times and Seth Borenstein of the Associated Press. I wonder if they are smelling the coffee now that they see the background to the “briefings” they have been given over the years.
The emails are genuine. There is one email that quotes from an old blog of mine. The blog ceased years ago and even I wouldn’t know how to locate that quote any more.
This extract of an emails (1213201481.txt) is revealing:
Mann commenting: “OK–thanks, I’ll just go w/ the H=62. That is an impressive number and
almost certainly higher than the vast majority of AGU Fellows.
Enjoy Asheville–say hi to Tom for me.
talk to you later,
mike [Mann]”
[4]P.Jones@xxxx [previously] wrote:
“Mike,
Off to the US tomorrow for 1.5 days in Asheville.
On 1, this is what people call the H index. I’ve tried working this out and there is software for it on the web of science. Problem is my surname. I get a number of 62 if I just use the software, but I have too many papers. I then waded through and deleted those in journals I’d never heard of and got 52. I think this got rid of some biologist from the 1970s/1980s, so go with 52.
Cheers”
Comment number 112 in the Mann’s Nature Trick at ClimateAudit states the following [with my comments added in brackets]:
“This Michael Mann is dishonest from the glimpse of this exchange. In summary, Mann was preparing some package. It was likely for the nomination of Phil Jones to a seat at the national academy of science or some sort [actually for Jones to become an AGU Fellow using a fraudulent rating supplied by Mann]. He needed an index that indicated how significant Jones’ works were. The real number as Jones said himself should be about 52 (many biologists have the same name and the website was mistakenly giving biological publications to Phil Jones) while the software said 62. In reply, Mann said “I will go w/ 62″. This is just unbelievable. I would not expect honest science out of this guy just based on this fact.”
Jones does not object to Mann going with a fraudulent number.
I just checked AGU Fellows.
Jones, Philip D, Atmospheric Sciences, elected in 2009
I believe we need to back off on the use of HACK or HACKER to characterise what has happened. The more likely scenario, especially considering the SELECTIVE NATURE of the material released, is that a WHISTLEBLOWER was at work!!!!
Until the person(s) are identified and their motive(s) determined, the use of hacker is very prejudicial to their activity.
The Harry_Read_Me file discussed at www.tickerforum.org/cgi-ticker/akcs-www?post=118625&page=13 is also very revealing. It apparently mostly discusses the data and programs used to derive the CRU temperature series.
This quote is particularly disturbing: “The problem is, really, the huge numbers of cells potentially involved in one station, particularly at high latitudes.
…
out of malicious interest, I dumped the first station’s coverage to a text file and counted up how many cells it ‘influenced’. The station was at 10.6E, 61.0N.
The total number of cells covered was a staggering 476!”
This is certainly not the way to derive temperature variations. Local variations should not have regional influences. GISS temperatures have the same error in them. I could make lots of recommendations about what they should be doing, but I am sure they would just be denounced.
My conclusion now is the CRU, GISS, and Vinnikov reconstructions cannot be trusted. The only reconstructions I would trust at this point are those done by J. Murray Mitchell in the 1970s. He was a very careful worker and knew most of the problems with temperature measurements. His reconstructions show a large decline in temperatures from 1940 to the mid-1970s, consistent with contemporary worldwide media reports about climate change.
Scientific Doomsday Mania
by
Amitakh Stanford
22nd November 2009
There is a doomsday message that is swiftly gaining global acceptance. The new wave is clothed in acceptable clichés and has won over the support of many of the respected scientific communities.
Unlike most other doomsday messages, this one is supposedly based upon scientific evidence. The scientific “doomsdayers” wear masks and pretend that they are predicting calamities based on hard evidence. This lulls the unsuspecting public into absolute belief and acceptance of the doomsdayers’ ravings.
If the same message were given in a spiritual setting, the adherents would probably be encouraged to turn to God in preparation for the final days. Generally, scientists have sneered at and mocked spiritual predictions regarding the end times, and the same scientists have convinced the general public to do likewise. Further, governments of the world use their police powers to suppress, restrict, or even eliminate these spiritual-based groups. Scientists have now one-upped the spiritual believers by supporting their dire predictions of calamity with supposed scientific evidence. Using their scientific clout, they have now convinced most of the world leaders to meet in Copenhagen. The stated agenda of the gathering is to halt global warming with a unified and urgent approach.
People may remember that there have been similar gatherings to solve the global economic crisis. In those meetings, every leader attending was told to boost their economies by stimulus spending. By and large, the world leaders have dutifully followed those dictates. One might ask: Is the global recession over due to this unified approach – or is it deepening? Many thinking economists have finally realized the latter to be the case.
[…]
Were the carbon traders truly concerned that global warming is a seriously urgent issue, they could perhaps justify following their untested carbon-trading notion. But if it were an urgent situation, why would they offer a solution that will take decades to take effect? If they have decades to work on the solution, by definition, it cannot be that urgent. And, if they have decades to implement their plan, could they not spend at least a few years or even a few months openly and transparently debating which course of action will save the planet from its imminent death?
To demonstrate the absurdity of the current “green” position, consider that they are proposing massive increases in nuclear power because it is supposed to be carbon friendly. The nuclear proponents do not seem to care about the disposal of nuclear waste from these sites. This means that they are presenting an extremely short-sighted solution, which is not really a solution at all. Besides, the proponents of expanding nuclear power want to tremendously restrict who can and who cannot use nuclear power. For instance, Iran and North Korea are presently being ostracized for, among other things, having nuclear-power programmes. This is a glaring instance where part of the real agenda of the ruling elite shows through; the nuclear proponents are not as concerned about global warming as they are with political dominance.
As indicated earlier, humans are only marginally responsible for global warming. The hotter sun is undeniable, and it is the main reason for global warming.
[…]
This would be all well and good if it could be believed that scientists are acting in the people’s best interests. But, since when have scientists been assumed to be altruistic? Why is it accepted that they will only act in the best interests of humans? And why should it be accepted that the scientists are correct about human causes of global warming?
[…]
The carbon-trading schemes, and other emissions-based solutions presented by the ruling elite’s scientific doomsdayers, will not solve global warming. But, if they get their way, they will change the lives of people for the worse.
Douglas, it’s worth checking Chiefio for his re-exploration of the base temperature data, and his findings: that thermometers have declined in numbers, retreated to lower altitudes, and towards coasts. Yes, like Florida snowbirds, they like the beach.
Conclusion? this gradual change in the composition and placement of thermometers is capable of explaining much of the alleged warming. So, yes, AGW is true. Just not in the trditionally accepted sense….
Waymard, yes I agree with Chiefio in general. I analyzed the CRU data through 1997 back around 1999. Instead of using 30 year long baselines, I used one year long baselines. The baseline years I used were 1880, 1890, … 1980, 1990, or 12 different baselines. Each analysis will use a different set of stations and will give you a different temperature reconstruction. My conclusion was that the temperature variations were much like what J. Murray Mitchell produced in the 1970s; i.e., a strong cooling from 1940 to the mid-70s. It is not at a plateau like CRU and GISS claim. It is now my opinion that these reconstructions are fraudulent.
The temperature reconstructions are really wide-area reconstructions and not global reconstructions. There is insufficient data in the Southern Hemisphere before 1957 to get a reliable reconstruction. One can validate this comment by calculating the hemispheric temperature which should be about 288 K. Before 1957 there is insufficient data to arrive at this number. Afterwards, you get this number. In the Northern Hemisphere there appears to be insufficient data before about 1900.
Re my comment 2 above and the very revealing Geoff Jenkins (UKMO) emails seeking information on exactly what Jones et al DID in their seminal 1986 compilations.
I have now posted online the two key Tables from each TR022 (NH) and TR027 (SH) – the large US Dept of Energy (CDIAC) publications which recorded the station data used by Jones et al. This enabled them to publish shorter journal papers and of course meant that very few people ever saw what they DID, only what they SAID.
If people want to understand, as Geoff apparently did, then the 1988 Wood critique is productive reading, scanned online through my pages.
To go direct to the Wood 1988 paper and Wigley & Jones reply, all scanned.
Next I will post case by case graphics showing how Jones et al 1986 biased their take on Australian data.
A couple of other analyses of the temperature record manipulations are worth referring to here:
diggingintheclay.blogspot.com/2009/11/how-would-you-like-your-climate-trends.html
This essay shows lots of locations get warming trends created using the GISS software.
themigrantmind.blogspot.com/2009/11/giss-says-european-thermometers-dont.html
This essay seems to indicate there are some major problems in the European temperature records.
users.telenet.be/j.janssens/Engaarde.html
On this page there is another analysis of European urban and rural stations. The basic conclusion is “According to urban stations, Europe sees a warming of 0,67°C/century, whereas rural stations only show a 0,37°C/century. Both charts show the same standard deviation (about 0,7°C). Also the overall evolution is very similar.”
The 1940-mid70s cooling that I mentioned before shows up quite clearly in the rural stations.
Perhaps related to my comment 23 above, one of the released code comments states:
“From the file pl_decline.pro: check what the code is doing! It’s reducing the temperatures in the 1930s, and introducing a parabolic trend into the data to make the temperatures in the 1990s look more dramatic.”
My guess at this point is the mixing together of information from nearby stations leads to this behavior, but more investigation is needed. Whatever the cause, it appears the software is introducing a spurious warming.
If you look at the Briffa MXD time series for the northern boreal forests (see camirror.wordpress.com/2009/11/26/new-the-deleted-data/) and compare it to the J. Murray Mitchell temperature reconstruction for the Northern Hemisphere, they both look very similar. If I had the two data sets, I would do a comparison.
At the risk of only talking to myself, here is some information on Mitchell’s temperature reconstruction for the Northern Hemisphere (0-80 N). It comes from his paper “A preliminary evaluation of atmospheric pollution as a cause of the global temperature fluctuation in the past century.” The paper appears in the book Global Effects of Environmental Pollution published in 1970. The book can be found on google.scholar.
A quote from that paper: “By analysis of climatological data for stations distributed as uniformly as possible over the earth’s surface, it can be established that the mean temperature of the whole planetary atmosphere, at least in its surface layers, has fluctuated systematically during the last century [5]. The data reflect a net worldwide warming of about 0.6 C between the 1880s and 1940s, followed by a net cooling of about 0.2 C between the 1940s and 1959, the most recent year of data in our most recent analysis. Additional data for 1965-67, as published by Schlerlag [6], were later incorporated into the analysis in order to estimate the further movement of world mean temperature after 1960 (see Figure 1). On this tentative basis, it appears that the cooling trend which first set in during the 1940s has continued essentially up to the present time, and that the net temperature drop in the last quarter century has now accumulated to about 0.3 C.”
Skipping now to his Figure 1, we can tabulate his temperature fluctuations which are given as decadal or 5 year means with 1880 set at 0.0 C. The results (as best as I read them) are in the second column and the Briffa raw MXD values in terms of temperature from email 939154709.txt are in the third column and, in the fourth column, Briffa raw values have 0.312 C added to all values to make 1880 have a zero anomaly so as to compare to the second column:
Year Mitchell Briffa (raw) Briffa (adj)
1870 0.22 -0.282 0.03
1880 0.00 -0.312 0.00
1890 0.01 -0.254 0.06
1900 0.19 -0.198 0.11
1910 0.17 -0.221 0.09
1920 0.10 -0.210 0.10
1925 0.38 -0.203 0.11
1930 0.40 0.012 0.32
1935 0.54 -0.001 0.31
1940 0.52 0.026 0.34
1945 0.60 -0.034 0.28
1950 0.50 -0.126 0.19
1955 0.40 -0.141 0.17
1960 0.33 -0.170 0.14
1965 0.27 -0.299 0.01
1970 0.17 -0.440 -0.13
The last temperature anomaly for 1970 comes from an NCAR publication from about 1975 where Mitchell estimates the 1970 temperature to be the same as for 1910.
The correlation between Mitchell’s number’s and Briffa’s numbers is 0.77 or 60% of the variance is common. The amplitude of the Briffa temperature variations is about half of what Mitchell calculates. Briffa gets a 0.34 C warming to 1940 compared to 0.52 for Mitchell. Briffa’s cooling to 1970 is 0.47 C, compared to Mitchell’s cooling of 0.35 C.
These results are suggestive that Briffa’s uncorrected MXD values are a good proxy for the temperature variations of the Northern Hemisphere land masses.
Spirina, from Russia, also independently derived a temperature reconstruction for the northern hemisphere which is much like Mitchell’s reconstruction. The paper is
Spirina, L. P., 1971. On the influence of volcanic dust on the thermal regime of the northern hemisphere (in Russian). Meterol. Gidrol., 10, 38-45.
Looking at the plot in that paper, the temperature anomaly in 1900 is 0.0 C and in 1967 is about -0.05 C. There is a rise to a maximum of 0.4 C around 1935 followed by a steady decrease.