The Washington Post covers the disclosure of e-mails from the University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit — e-mails that appear to have been subject to an FOI request and that were either hacked by an outsider or stolen and released by an insider.
In one e-mail, the center’s director, Phil Jones, writes Pennsylvania State University’s Michael E. Mann and questions whether the work of academics that question the link between human activities and global warming deserve to make it into the prestigious IPCC report, which represents the global consensus view on climate science.
“I can’t see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report,” Jones writes. “Kevin and I will keep them out somehow — even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!”
In another, Jones and Mann discuss how they can pressure an academic journal not to accept the work of climate skeptics with whom they disagree. “Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal,” Mann writes. . . .
Other e-mails detail an innovative approach to FOI requests for data: “When In Doubt, Delete.” More from Charles Martin – and Bishop Hill suggests there could be still more to come.
My prior posts in the CRU e-mail controversy are here and here.
UPDATE: At this point there is signfiicant speculation that the e-mails (and other files) were released by an inside whistleblower, not hacked by an outsider. If so, it may have been due to the CRU’s denial of legitimate FOI requests. More here.
Laura(southernxyl) says:
I have a coworker who insists that AGW is the consensus of all respectable scholars – he knows this because skeptics have not been able to place articles in peer-reviewed journals.
I think I will not ask him what he thinks about this.
November 22, 2009, 11:04 pmKazinski says:
Laura,
It was clear that a large part of their strategy, was to control the peer reviewed literature. I remember being shocked about 6 months ago, when Roy Spencer announced on his blog that he couldn’t get one of his papers published. He then decided turn it into a book project and get it out there. But not having it peer reviewed made it so it was not citeable by other researchers. Spencer is doing great work comparing predictions by the models with what is actually happening in the atmosphere and temperatures. The models are being falsified, according to his research.
I’m sure another prong to their strategy was to control the stream of grant money too, and keep any from skeptics, but I haven’t seen much of that in the emails.
There may be a consensus on global warming, but it has been a manufactured consensus, and even so it is falling apart. In the long term it isn’t going to matter, if in the next 5-10 years temperatures continue to decline or go sideways, then the hysteria, a intense pressure to destroy our economies will recede. If temperatures restart their climb at a rate >= 2C per century, then it will be apparent that something drastic will indeed need to be done. But it may be a lot of the hysteria was ginned up so that the straight jacket on the economy could be put in place before the models could be falsified.
November 22, 2009, 11:31 pmiconoclast says:
Steve McIntyre’s debunking of Mann’s hockey stick and the even more recent debunking of the Yamal hockey stick showed how the AGW believers (they aren’t scientists any longer) operate: hide the data and methodology while trumpeting the doctored results. It was so bad with Yamal that Briffa–the scientist who hid the actual data for years somehow until it leaked out through a journal that believes real science requires open review of results.
The response of the AGW believers on the data leak is as interesting as their response to the debunking of yet another hockey stick: circle the wagons and defend their hypothesis (and integrity) at all costs. Real scientists would be horrified at Briffa’s (and other “researchers”) at CRU trickery hidden through refusal to share data and methodologies. They would call for an investigation. CRU “researchers”? not so you would notice it.
November 22, 2009, 11:34 pmuh_clem says:
I have a coworker who insists that AGW is the consensus of all respectable scholars..
Well, it is.
It’s sort of like the link between smoking and lung cancer. No serious health professional denies it, although the tobacco companies have been fighting a rear guard action for several decades and there’s certainly a substantial body of “research” that denies the relationship. The thing is, nobody takes it seriously, and for good reason.
It was reasonable to be a “smoking skeptic” in 1963. It’s not today. Likewise this issue.
November 22, 2009, 11:35 pmiconoclast says:
Apologies:
Should read:
November 22, 2009, 11:44 pmDavid Schwartz says:
uc_clem: Sure, except you got the actors backwards. It wasn’t the “smoking causes cancer” folks who were trying to hide the studies and suppress competing theories in the literature, it was the “smoking is safe” folks who were. We’re in the phase where the truth is still being hidden from the majority by actions like those revealed in the CRU emails.
November 23, 2009, 12:01 amKazinski says:
Uh-clem,
It was reasonable to be a “smoking skeptic” in 1963. It’s not today. Likewise this issue.
The problem with that is that everybody should drink some of the kool-aid, but they don’t have to drink the whole pitcher. Nobody that has actually looked at the science disputes that doubling the natural levels of CO2 to around 600ppm (.00006 or .06%) of the atmosphere, will increase temperatures, all other things being equal, only about 1.2C.
We’ve already seen .6-.8 degrees of that which means doing nothing won’t increase temperatures enough to worry about. Where the controversy comes in is the assertion by the models that there is a positive feedback, and the warming will be enhanced by other factors, specifically increased humidity in the troposphere. Fortunately the science is contradicting the models and there is no sign of the tell tale signal of positive feedback, the actual observations (as opposed to the models), shows that there is a mild negative feed back, which will dampen the greenhouse effect of CO2 modestly, so we are not likely to get all of additional .6-.4C that we would expect from doubling CO2.
And one thing to keep in mind we are talking about .03% of the atmosphere here, if the atmosphere was this comment, not one word, not one letter of this comment would be a CO2 molecule, either mandmade or naturally occurring.
November 23, 2009, 12:01 amTom T. says:
Prof. Adler, it is perhaps worth noting that the Post print edition has not printed a word about the CRU emails, while the website fronts it as the top story. We are likely seeing some disagreement within the paper playing out publicly.
November 23, 2009, 12:10 ameyesay says:
Kazinski wrote, “And one thing to keep in mind we are talking about .03% of the atmosphere here, if the atmosphere was this comment, not one word, not one letter of this comment would be a CO2 molecule, either mandmade or naturally occurring.” Wow, real scientific. There are many substances that cause severe problems at much smaller concentrations than that. So what?
November 23, 2009, 12:55 amKazinski says:
eyesay:
And so there are, however CO2 is necessary for life on earth, and current levels of CO2 are much lower than natural levels in the past. You are talking about a substance that is the primary nutrient for plants, and the presence of which is what the entire food chain is based on.
November 23, 2009, 2:25 amKazinski says:
The action is moving past the emails to the treasure trove of data and program code that was also released. That is where the real case for data manipulation is being made. When comments in the code such as this:
Once the code that implements that comment is fully analyzed, and the data is traced to the papers that used it, that is where the real impact of the leaked emails and documents will be felt. A lot of the papers on which the AGW case was made may have to be withdrawn as a result of this. So much for the peer review.
November 23, 2009, 2:34 amiconoclast says:
Simply amazing. And that the code along with the data was hidden away from review and validation indicates a definite lack of confidence on the part of CRU researchers. And all of the papers for which the underlying data, methodologies, and code are not release should be withdrawn. There is just too much opportunity for misconduct and simple error when research results cannot be replicated–but still must be trusted.
November 23, 2009, 3:02 ampmorem says:
At this point, it seems likely that the files were retrieved by an insider and released. It may be that the person is covered by UK Whistleblower laws. McIntyre has a discussion here.
The notion of a campaign of censorship to maintain an appearance of consensus is deeply disturbing.
November 23, 2009, 4:06 amBob K says:
IANAL
It says in the post
Can the files be stolen without taking the actual machine? Or was that simply a late-night imprecision?
In any event. I think it was very likely an insider. No family or other extraneous emails were in the package put on the net. Had time to purge extraneous items. Several day gap between the last email date and release into the wild. Likely familiar with what might be useful.
Irate employee hears Steve McIntyre has once again just been denied on a FOI request for different data.(which he was) Probably common knowledge amongst employees. Date of denial letter is one day after the last email date in released emails. Copies what is readily available to a flash drive and walks out.
Since the data is now in wild CRU gets a black-eye. If an employee was found to be the perpetrator, a smart employee might not have released everything and be keeping a bargaining chip for emergency use. CRU didn’t like the 1st black-eye and they certainly don’t want another one. Hide the truth about what happened and blaming super-hacker justifies spending outrageous sums beefing up their computer system. After a couple days you direct all inquiries to the police department.
Could be an actual hacker, still comes out the same.
November 23, 2009, 4:47 amBenP says:
and I suspect what you will find is along the lines of most of the other quotes of that nature that have already been brought out. That is, they deal with issues in the raw data that are already known and documented extensively. The most discussed quote, I think of this type, is the “It’s a shame that we know that warming is happening but can’t document it” is a good example. It deals with various tree-ring data, which as I understand the issue, for some reason (there are theories but ultimately we don’t know why yet) suffers a dramatic drop in correlation after the mid 60′s. Cliamate scientists know this, but aren’t focusing on it, so in their arguments they find ways to minimize or explain the data.
Is it a weakness that can be exploited by counter arguments? certainly. But peer-reviewed papers are never just lists of facts. They’re always published with a thesis in mind, and like anyone writing a paper with a thesis, if you have some data that doesn’t fit entirely, you’re always going to attempt to emphasize the data that supports your thesis and de-emphasize the data that does not, and or find ways to explain the data that does not. “Science” in the abstract may be objective, but publishing science is inherently a subjective act unless you’re literally doing nothing but posting a list of figures, and even then possibly not.
November 23, 2009, 7:40 amwm13 says:
This statement is undoubtedly true, but imagine the brouhaha and howls of outrage from scientific organizations if these statements were made in a textbook. “When I think back on all the crap I learned in high school/It’s a wonder I can think at all.”
November 23, 2009, 9:17 amWidmerpool says:
More proof of the Wimpy axiom: I will comply with your FOI request Tuesday for emails I will delete today.
November 23, 2009, 9:21 amPaulD says:
“I have a coworker who insists that AGW is the consensus of all respectable scholars..”
One of the frustrations I have with this debate is that many people talk about the “consensus” of scientists regarding AGW without defining what the “consensus” is. If the “consensus” position is that human’s have had a detectable effect on the climate, then it is certainly true that all respectable scholars agree with this proposition, including many who are generally classified as “skeptics” such as Roy Spencer and Richard Lindzen. On the other hand, if one suggests that the “consensus” position is that human beings are causing the earth to warm at a rate that will have catastrophic consequences, then many, many respectable scholars dispute that this consensus is supported by adequate evidence.
November 23, 2009, 9:33 amDerHahn says:
BenP –
That’s warmist BS.
The statements related to the divergence of the tree-ring analysis to real tempatures after 1960 is roughly Here is Mike’s trick for hiding the decline.
They are very focused on it … focused on hiding it because it blows a giant hole in the alarmist case for AGW.
Also, it is absolutely untrue that papers ‘never list just facts’. Most journals require that authors dump their raw data and analysis methodologies for open review. This post explains how Steve McIntyre used Briffa’s publication of a paper in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B to pry the Yamal data and code out of his hands and expose the second Hockey Stick. The post also outlines how alarmist control of peer-review journals was used to stone-wall these requirements by posting data in obscure places with no announcement, releasing incomplete data, providing no explaination for data encoding, and using obsolete formats.
November 23, 2009, 9:51 amThe Volokh Conspiracy » Blog Archive » NYT Policy on Illegally Acquired Documents says:
[...] I posted earler this morning, there are reasons to believe these documents were released by an internal whistleblower, rather [...]
November 23, 2009, 10:06 amAbdul Abulbul Amir says:
As I posted elsewhere, the real scandal is that government policies from Cap and Trade to the EPA’s CO2 endangerment finding are being build on data and methods that the government cannot verify to be true.
November 23, 2009, 10:19 amKazinski says:
Ben P,
For some of the papers maybe, but don’t for get that CRU is the repository of one of the two major data sets of world tempuratures dating back to 1880, and that in August 2009 Phil Jones announced that the raw data had been lost, and that only the “value added” (i.e. after adjustments) data remained. Some of the those programs and data files may give us some insight into what kind of value was added. I expect something similer to this famous graph showing how adjustments to the GISS data making older years cooler, and newer years warmer “increased” the slope temperature changes.
November 23, 2009, 1:00 pmiconoclast says:
Ben P
What these emails show is that AGW (Anthropogenic Global Warming–or assigning the cause of Global Warming to Man) remains a hypothesis–not even a theory yet. If the data, methodology, and code cannot be exhaustively reviewed by other researchers then the hypothesis has not really been demonstrated to be true. CRU knows that (as does Hansen and NASA, but that is another story).
Your scenario is how climatology should work. The barriers facing Singer, McIntyre, and other researchers not firmly in the AGW camp is how it does work. As others have stated, much of the controversy surrounding the politicized science of AGW centers around the unavailability (through refusal to provide, mysterious loss, or outright intentional destruction) of the data, methodologies, and code. When such tactics are combined with a concerted effort to deny publishing opportunities, funding, and tenure to scientists skeptically researching the AGW hypothesis it looks downright conspiratorial.
November 23, 2009, 2:00 pmJames T. Carrington says:
A nice way to try and combat the rent-seeking of govt funded science would be to require open access to the data as well as methodology. Doe CRU get our money or are they private/non-govt funded? I would worry less about them not playing nice w/ the skeptics on the other items of tenure, publishing in their journals, etc, if the data were available for others to point at. The cap n trade policies moving now as a result of the hidden data results is looking even more shaky now in light of these uncovered emails. I’d rather have public-funded whistle blower legal protection funds than public-funded elections at this point…
November 23, 2009, 2:36 pmBen P says:
You are dramatically overstating your case.
I’m not saying this doesn’t happen at all, and indeed, the CRU people are some of the most preeminent in the field. But at least one study has 928 peer reviewed articles on climate change between 1993 and 2003. I can only imagine there have been even more articles since then but I can’t find any exact figures in the short amount of time that I’m willing to devote to looking for that. (google scholar has 1.5m hits but there’s no telling on the accuracy of that.)
I think by any measure that’s something that you might call a “robust debate.” If there wasn’t something to disagree about, these articles wouldn’t be published, because journals aren’t typically in the business of publishing things that just parrot off one another. I really don’t think the inability (deliberately or otherwise) of several of the most prominent skeptics to get published really changes the fact that there’s an enormous amount of literature being published with what really is a pretty wide range of views.
There’s a lot more interplay between researchers than you’re suggesting, and I think Kazinski demonstrated perfectly well in his 12:01am post what the real extent of “the consensus” is. There’s lot’s of agreement as to the general phenomenon, but the scope, scale and mechanism vary drastically between scientists and models. That leads to even more grey area in discussing whether or not something needs or ought or ought not to be done.
Of course the loudest people get the most coverage, but I think anyone in any academic field (particularly the sciences) should already know that “pop science” (or pop history or whatever your discipline) is often very different from the actual stuff that goes on in real research. Because (1) Climate change is already politicized as is any environmental topic and (2) many climate science papers are all but impenetrable to a layman, the media coverage of this particular area is even worse than is typical.
November 23, 2009, 2:44 pmDan Weber says:
This is very much the naturalist fallacy. It’s one typically made by environmentalists — what nature gave us must be good — but it has no basis in reality.
The Earth once had an atmosphere primarily composed of CO2. All natural. Extremely dangerous for humans.
November 23, 2009, 3:00 pmiconoclast says:
So what? An all O2 atmosphere or all N2 atmosphere would be equally lethal to all organisms. That really isn’t the point. Of course C02 is good for life on earth–arguably levels at 400ppm might be actually better (greenhouses operate at 1000ppm CO2 without any harm to the animals or humans).
The real point is whether the AGW hypothesis is correct. The only way to prove it is to show causation–both theoretically and experimentally–between CO2 rise and global temperature rise. But first of all we do not seem to have the temperature rise that correlates to CO2 rise–now that we have more sensor data and we can see how the CRU dataset (one of 4 in the world) is no longer reliable (they “lost” the raw data). Furthermore, because correlation does not equal causation, the real world physics must be proven to show the positive feedback effect alleged by the AGW computer models. But real world data do not seem demonstrate the positive feedback effect (which makes enormous sense–positive feedbacks are wickedly destructive and thus are “selected against”) needed for the AGW model to have theoretical validity.
The whole point of the released emails/data is that at the very least scientific misconduct has been perpetrated in order to convince both scientists and the lay populace that AGW has been validated. Hiding data, methodologies and code in order to deceive is misconduct at the very least. Snarking about the misconduct as shown by both the CRU emails and CRU code is discreditable.
At this point, every dataset, code, and methodology at CRU (and Hadley and NASA) should be released into full public review now. If the AGW hypothesis is correct, then the only way to prove it is for a real peer review–not the phony one setup by the folks at CRU and elsewhere.
November 23, 2009, 3:29 pmA. Zarkov says:
Of course any scholar who doubts global warming and shows why is not respectable. According to you AGW is simply not falsifiable.
November 23, 2009, 3:51 pmBen P says:
Hmm,
I had a fairly long post drafted in response to iconoclast. I clicked submit, and it didn’t appear. After several minutes I clicked submit again, and it said I was double posting.
November 23, 2009, 4:47 pmDan Weber says:
If you click the “Kazinski” in my post, you will see what I was responding to. Suggesting that CO2 isn’t really all that bad because the Earth has much less in its atmosphere right now than it did a while back when life was just fine.
That in turn was a response to someone arguing that 0.03% of the atmosphere is nothing to worry about because that’s so small, it can’t possibly hurt us.
If you want to discuss the CRU emails instead, go right ahead, because there are some stinkers in there that should at least cost a few folks their jobs. But I’ll continue to correct people posting scientific nonsense about CO2.
November 23, 2009, 5:27 pmiconoclast says:
Swinging from .03-4% to 100% is not a compelling argument. Also ignoring that Kazinki was exactly right–CO2 is the basis of our foodchain isn’t very compelling either. Attempting to communicate a sense of scale is not scientific nonsense.
As for the stinkers in CRU, it should cost more than a few people their careers. It should throw much of the “consensus” regarding AGW into serious doubt.
November 23, 2009, 6:12 pmAutomatic Caution Door says:
Good grief… the stuff certain people imagine goes on at newspapers. Does the press generally have a liberal bias? Obviously. Is the press some liberal conspiracy? Get a grip.
Journalists are journalists. They’re not activists. Their personal biases may lead them to intuitively gravitate toward certain information. It may lead them to overlook certain other. But it doesn’t make them huddle down in backrooms conspiring on the most effective way to present propaganda. Again: Good grief.
These two stories by Juliet Eilperin ran in the print edition of the Washington Post:
Nov. 21, page A14: Hackers steal electronic data from top climate research center;
Scientists’ e-mails deriding skeptics of warming become public
Nov. 22, page A4: In the trenches on climate change, hostility among foes;
November 23, 2009, 8:26 pmStolen e-mails reveal venomous feelings toward skeptics
Abdul Abulbul Amir says:
Peer review is pretty meaningless when only conclusions but not data or methods are subject to review. It means even less when the reviewers are a group of True Believers that review each others work and non-True Believers are excluded.
November 24, 2009, 12:02 amgravamen says:
Wikipedia articles that should record this event in a neutral and balanced manner, with journalist-written sources (best to discuss on the talk page, don’t just start editing directly):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_e-mail_hacking_incident
November 24, 2009, 7:44 amhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phil_Jones_(climatologist)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_E._Mann
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hockey_stick_controversy
Ben P says:
Not that I’m accusing you of bad faith, but from that comment I’d give greater than even odds that you’ve not actually sat down and tried to read a serious climatology paper and looked at how intensively they justify their conclusions.
The data and methods are absolutely subject to review in most cases, or are at least available for research by other researchers, and you completely ignored my point. Journals don’t often publish “me too” articles, because “me too” articles don’t break any new ground. A peer reviewed journal article in climatology (or any other academic topic) is almost always in the form of “Here’s my new work, and here’s how it’s different from the conclusions of XYZ, (Journal of blah blah, 2002)”
It’s a pretty tough leap from thousands (if not tens of thousands) of articles being published on this topic to snark about “true believers” and the implied assertion that this is all some sort of fraud.
November 24, 2009, 9:24 amuberVU - social comments says:
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November 25, 2009, 6:37 amThe Blackboard » Profero/Unsimplify Clarifies– sort of. says:
[...] news, and Adler commented on those, posting climategate related stories on He also wrote the 21st, 22nd, 23rd, 24th, 25th, but took a break on the 26th, and then continued to [...]
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