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CRU E-mails and data


jethro

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Posted
  • Location: South Woodham Ferrers, height 15 metres
  • Location: South Woodham Ferrers, height 15 metres

In case there was any doubt with anyone reading this thread, Phil Jones has verified the authenticity of the stolen data and some emails journalists have specifically asked him to verify.

Nothing is being denied.

Michael Mann via UK Guardian:

“I’m not going to comment on the content of illegally obtained emails. However, I will say this: both their theft and, I believe, any reproduction of the emails that were obtained on public websites, etc, constitutes serious criminal activity. I’m hoping the perpetrators and their facilitators will be tracked down and prosecuted to the fullest extent the law allows.”

:lol:

Edited by AtlanticFlamethrower
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Posted
  • Location: 4 miles north of Durham City
  • Location: 4 miles north of Durham City

Bear in mind that the recipients (and senders) of the e-mails may well have deleted them at their end(s), but mail servers often keep copies in archives. It seems likely that a hacker would not take time to hack numerous e-mail accounts but would aim straight for the archives.

I am not condoning the hack in any way, shape or form, nor am I going to accept this as all true and unmanipulated, but I would have thought that it would be an absolutely gargantuan task to trawl through literally thousands of emails and documents and plant disinformation.

One thing that may point to suspicious goings-on is the fact that, apparently, the hack took place a few days before the documents were released on the web. On the other hand, it may simply be that the hacker(s) spent some time going through the correspondence before releasing it.

Whatever the situation, now is certainly not the time for skeptics to be jumping up and down declaring victory (not accusing anyone here of that!)- if it does turn out to be fraudulent then there's going to be a lot of egg on a lot of faces. At the same time, I am surprised at how aggressively defensive a lot of Pros are becoming already (and I mean across the whole web).

Right now it's a bit of a waiting game while the legitimacy of the documents is determined.

:lol:

CB

I disagree. You could just use a grep utility to return certain phrases from the email list and then randomly insert information in just a few. Also I think people are misreading some of the emails and assuming a context whereas in reality there could be nothing sinister about it.

As far as I'm concerned, this looks like another attempt to stall progress in fighting climate change.

The problem with people though, is that they get all skeptical and conspiratorial about anthropogenic global warming but yet totally accept government reports about health, terrorism, and warfare without question.

http://www.naturalne...vilization.html

An intelligent and rational analysis leads to the conclusion that the government and corporations are exploiting a crisis. As Hillary Clinton once said "never waste a good crisis".

Edited by PersianPaladin
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Posted
  • Location: Worthing West Sussex
  • Location: Worthing West Sussex

This forum seems weary - As LG says WUWT is doing a roaring trade in this "Aunt Sally", as now is RC (Gavin has got his head together with his mates at CRU by whatever means they now use to communicate, and are doing a splendid, and "decent" (in the English sense) job of defending the fort), yet we struggle past 3 pages here! Where's the food-fight!! mentality? :lol:

I would not second the "Shame on the..." comment though, like climate change, it is a reality of the world we live in - nothing is sacred any more, not even "private" conversations. As a scientist, why can't I tell to a mate that a competitor is a "plonker" in a private email, and plot to reveal his flaws in a future rebuttal?

I was up late last night and linked into this story early, even had time to explore the FTP site where the FOI2009.zip first appeared. I don't know why that Russian guy's FTP site ended up hosting the file - it was pretty unremarkable - had a certain amount of stuff for gamers, a bit of mainstream porn, some downloaded music, images and videos, some Linux and other OS stuff, as well as some personal images from the host's latest vacation, I guess - certainly nothing to show that this was some committed hacker intent on destroying the AGW political momentum - I guess that his webspace was just a convenient vehicle for the file.

The actual file content (which will be published elsewhere in fragments ad nauseam...) was also unremarkable, except, possibly, for the content that was not contained within it, if anything. I doubt that any of the published content was faked or embellished, but that there were possibly chunks removed, missing and possibly embarrassing to several individuals, who may be currently considering their futures...

I'd look to a slighted lover if I were (close to the focus of this attack) at CRU, and short of committing suicide (if I were that vulnerable), I would make sure the police nailed the mole before any real damage was done.

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Posted
  • Location: 4 miles north of Durham City
  • Location: 4 miles north of Durham City
The scientists involved have also refused to comment on the record, although they insist privately that "the e-mails are being taken out of context and ... are part of the normal hurly-burly of conversations between scientists working on some of the most complicated questions of our times."

And...

Scientists are also weighing in on the controversy. Brian Angliss at Scholars & Rogues, for example, finds the claims of fraud "highly unlikely."

"I work in electrical engineering where I use words and phrases that, taken out of context, could be misinterpreted as nefarious by people who are ignorant of the context or who have an axe to grind," he explains. "For example, I regularly talk about 'fiddling with' or 'twiddling' the data, 'faking out' something, 'messing around with' testing, and so on. ... No matter how much the deniers scream, these emails aren't likely to reveal any evidence of scientific malfeasance. And even if they do, there's an entire globe of researchers whose independent research has bolstered the case that climate disruption is real and that it's predominantly caused by human civilization."

The blog at RealClimate.org has also had a look at the emails and points out, "More interesting is what is not contained in the emails. There is no evidence of any worldwide conspiracy, no mention of George Soros nefariously funding climate research, no grand plan to 'get rid of the MWP', no admission that global warming is a hoax, no evidence of the falsifying of data, and no 'marching orders' from our socialist/communist/vegetarian overlords."

http://rawstory.com/...l-warming-hoax/

I wish the deniers would actually make a decent case. Their argument is as weak as ever.

Edited by PersianPaladin
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Posted
  • Location: Rossland BC Canada
  • Location: Rossland BC Canada

This episode tends to reveal something I found out the hard way much earlier, that many people in the atmospheric sciences have a juvenile and arrested personality that makes them very suspicious of motivations of all who question their own orthodox views.

This has held back meteorology and climate science for the whole period of the 20th and early 21st centuries.

It encourages mediocrity and data manipulation, and discourages critical analytical thought. It also elevates second-raters and forces the best minds out of the science.

This has been going on for at least thirty years, and possibly a lot longer.

And this is what we have to show for it, a largely contrived theory supported on behalf of a political agenda that does not belong in science at all.

The only complete solution is to do a complete housecleaning of climate science from top to bottom, and ban the miscreants, but who's going to take charge of that?

Scientists are not accountable to anyone but each other. When politicians or religious leaders mess up, they are subject to censure and removal from office by various electorates. Sometimes this process doesn't work smoothly, granted, but there is a process and it often does work. With misbehaving scientists, if there are enough of them in collaboration with one another, they can keep all of their co-conspirators in power by mutually agreeing not to call each other on their fouls. Who else can remove them? Science is at the top of the public opinion pyramid. Scientists are the foremost "experts" in an expert class that the media turn to for guidance, and in this case, the politicians as well.

Meanwhile, those who might be capable of delivering a reformed climate science that would be trustworthy are probably people like myself who are so far removed from the mainstream that other sciences and government overseers would balk at our supposed lack of credibility.

So instead they will turn to fence-sitters who enabled this scam in the first place, probably knew all about it, and just have enough independence from the scam to pose as reformers. We will get a tiny bit of reform, but the theory will not die, it will mutate and reappear as something else when the furore dies down.

You watch, they will make a sacrificial offering of one or two unlucky chaps who said the wrong thing in an e-mail, and then it will be business as usual, more scare stories, more misleading videos, more fancy computer models showing fantasies of future climate that cannot be.

Didya hear, the Martians are coming.

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Posted
  • Location: Beccles, Suffolk.
  • Weather Preferences: Thunder, snow, heat, sunshine...
  • Location: Beccles, Suffolk.

It's interesting just how little interest is being shown by the real News-outlets???

One would hardly expect anything but fanfare from WUWT et al, however; it being their raison detre to discredit climate scientists?

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Posted
  • Location: Sheffield South Yorkshire 160M Powering the Sheffield Shield
  • Weather Preferences: Any Extreme
  • Location: Sheffield South Yorkshire 160M Powering the Sheffield Shield

Had a look at some of the content at randomn. First of all this seems to be a come and grab raid as there's a lot of day to day normal stuff. Whoever took it doesn't seem very interested in the content otherwsie they'd have dumped the day to day stuff.

What I have seen though is.

1) Admission that solar cycle effects the climate.

2) Removal of the medievil warm period as it doesn't fit in properly.

3) Admission that the climate is within normal bounds and theres little evidence of man made warming.

4) With holding and altering data and I never said or told you to that mentatlity and delete those emails asap.

5) A man in the BBC to deal with awkward stuff. one email said how did he let that get through for instance.

6) Website who's sole aim is to pedal propaganda where any questions they can't answer is filtered out.

The way forward now is that all data is published and not kept behind close doors. Certainly the science is discredited and being open is the only forward.

It also seems posters on here are more interested in how wrong the hack is rather who wrong the methods are behind climate change. I.E altering the data.

Again another very good post by Rodger by the way.

All in all a real conspiracy which is right up PP street who seems to be barking up the wrong tree at the moment.

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Posted
  • Location: Rochester, Kent
  • Location: Rochester, Kent

I think it is probably sensible and rational to wait a while and see what is contained in those emails.

A good move by the University of East Anglia (not the Hadley Centre, btw) is to verify that each and every character in the content of download is genuine/not-genuine and is untampered/tampered with. A good piece of software will do the trick in no time.

In the meantime I would find it highly unsurprising that some of the leading proponents of AGW have not, at some point, expressed doubts about what they are doing, why they are doing it, and whether or not their conclusions are right. Since this lot is supposed to be going back some 15 years - which you will all recall, back then, the science was even more controversial back then - then I suspect there will be private correspondence dealing with that.

One has to remember that people talk in private in a different way that they talk in their professional caoacity. Do you talk about your colleagues at work when you are at home with your spouse? If such conversations got out what would you and everyone else think? Private is, well, private - and there's a reason why we are all entitled to a private life.

The only complete solution is to do a complete housecleaning of climate science from top to bottom, and ban the miscreants, but who's going to take charge of that?

I suppose I'd better get my CV together .... :D Do you think that now would be a good time to attempt to get the LI hypothesis published?

Edited by VillagePlank
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Posted
  • Location: Near Newton Abbot or east Dartmoor, Devon
  • Location: Near Newton Abbot or east Dartmoor, Devon

I think it is probably sensible and rational to wait a while and see what is contained in those emails.

A good move by the University of East Anglia (not the Hadley Centre, btw) is to verify that each and every character in the content of download is genuine/not-genuine and is untampered/tampered with. A good piece of software will do the trick in no time.

I think I read somewhere these are actually IPCC e mails being kept as part of a IPCC requirement.

In the meantime I would find it highly unsurprising that some of the leading proponents of AGW have not, at some point, expressed doubts about what they are doing, why they are doing it, and whether or not their conclusions are right. Since this lot is supposed to be going back some 15 years - which you will all recall, back then, the science was even more controversial back then - then I suspect there will be private correspondence dealing with that.

One has to remember that people talk in private in a different way that they talk in their professional caoacity. Do you talk about your colleagues at work when you are at home with your spouse? If such conversations got out what would you and everyone else think? Private is, well, private - and there's a reason why we are all entitled to a private life.

I suppose I'd better get my CV together .... :D Do you think that now would be a good time to attempt to get the LI hypothesis published?

it is rather amazing that for some the definition of 'private' is now 'in the public realm'.

Edited by Devonian
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Posted
  • Location: Rochester, Kent
  • Location: Rochester, Kent

Personally, I think that the only way to get to the bottom of it is to order a judicial inquiry. It is very unlikely that we (the general public) will be able to get to the bottom of whatever is contained in those emails, and, for the most part, there will be a sentence or two that will be out of place, and will be seized upon.

This does the sceptic argument (of which, I suppose, I am part of) no favours at all. I wish the hacker hadn't done it, as I feel things like the LI can actually have some part to play in climatology - if not only to factor in latency (and to open up new branches of interest to investigate such hysteresis) Indeed, there is some crossover with Roger's work, too - because the LI relies on sunspots and not insolation so requires other effects, such as magnetism, to be considered - and there is evidence that planetary motion is correlated to sunspot activity.

Anyway, for me, a sad sad episode - and the only way to clear the air is for some form of official inquiry to be set up and implemented.

it is rather amazing that for some the definition of 'private' is now 'in the public realm'.

I think some people might be shocked if their behaviour for the last 15 years was listed out in a plain text file and was published for all to read and critique. I mean, who can stand up and say that in the last 15 years they have done nothing of which they might be ashamed or embarrassed?

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Posted
  • Location: Beccles, Suffolk.
  • Weather Preferences: Thunder, snow, heat, sunshine...
  • Location: Beccles, Suffolk.

I'm sure someone (having nothing better to do!) could take many of our 'tongue-in-cheek' posts sufficiently out of context, and paint an entirely unrepresentative impression of the posters?

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Posted
  • Location: A small planet somewhere in the vicinity of Guildford, Surrey
  • Location: A small planet somewhere in the vicinity of Guildford, Surrey

Having had a trawl around the internet, I am heartened that the discussion on these boards has been so tentative. As most of us are probably aware, there are dozens (possibly hundreds) of sites that have exploded into activity with accusations here are counter attacks there.

In response to Persian Paladin I would like to point out that, as yet, nobody has claimed that their emails have been altered - only that their remarks have been taken out of context. The contextual thing is going to be a rather difficult thing to prove either way, I would have thought, without the complete archives.

I have only read excerpts posted on various websites, having not found a link to the archive that works so far. Even if I could download the archive I'm not entirely sure, at this point, that I would want to read it - some of the pdfs might be interesting if they are drafts of papers, especially if they show a progression of the drafting process.

Finally I would like to add that if the archives are genuine and in context then there are some serious questions to be answered about the possibilities of corruption of the peer review process. It's all very well to say that, despite these messages, nobody has countered the actual science of global warming, but if the peer review process is shown to be biased against alternative hypotheses, regardless of how good their science is, then that argument doesn't hold any water.

But I can not stress the if enough.

Anyway, I don't have anything else to add at this point, I think. Until there is something more to go on it's all pretty speculative.

:D

CB

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Posted
  • Location: South Yorkshire
  • Location: South Yorkshire

The problem with people though, is that they get all skeptical and conspiratorial about anthropogenic global warming but yet totally accept government reports about health, terrorism, and warfare without question.

Um,I don't PP! Just that the AGW sham is closest to my heart for reasons I'm frankly not sure of,and therefore the most vocal about. Given that you see almost the entire world as one big conspiracy,I'm amazed that you haven't seen through the most obvious one. Anyway,I bet they didn't see this one coming down their mythical 'pipeline'smile.gif .

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Posted
  • Location: Newton Aycliffe, County Durham
  • Location: Newton Aycliffe, County Durham

Oh dear, well what do we have here?

Surely not a load of warmalists bricking it about being found out?

I've said it for years, "Climate Change" is an INDUSTRY first and foremost. Too many people have their fingers in the pie to expect completely unbiased research into the climate change.

Lets face it, we stopped warming a decade ago, and this has resulted in the change of tack from "Global warming" to "Climate change" which is of course much more malleable a term and keeps those research grants rolling in - you can call almost any weather events "Climate change".

We are all being taken for a ride.

Edited by paul tall
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Posted
  • Location: Sheffield South Yorkshire 160M Powering the Sheffield Shield
  • Weather Preferences: Any Extreme
  • Location: Sheffield South Yorkshire 160M Powering the Sheffield Shield

Emails taken out of context. LOL basically we've been caught with our trousers down. How can we pull our dishomest pants up and get away with it.

Anyway if I was a minister I'd be looking at some saving some money by reducing some grants. I know what would move up my list right now.

I'm sure someone (having nothing better to do!) could take many of our 'tongue-in-cheek' posts sufficiently out of context, and paint an entirely unrepresentative impression of the posters?

Out of interest have you got a copy of these emails???

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Posted
  • Location: Beccles, Suffolk.
  • Weather Preferences: Thunder, snow, heat, sunshine...
  • Location: Beccles, Suffolk.

Emails taken out of context. LOL basically we've been caught with our trousers down. How can we pull our dishomest pants up and get away with it.

Anyway if I was a minister I'd be looking at some saving some money by reducing some grants. I know what would move up my list right now.

Out of interest have you got a copy of these emails???

No. But I have seen some of them on the Web...

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Posted
  • Location: Sheffield South Yorkshire 160M Powering the Sheffield Shield
  • Weather Preferences: Any Extreme
  • Location: Sheffield South Yorkshire 160M Powering the Sheffield Shield

No. But I have seen some of them on the Web...

Check your pm.

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Posted
  • Location: Epsom, Surrey
  • Location: Epsom, Surrey

I think some people might be shocked if their behaviour for the last 15 years was listed out in a plain text file and was published for all to read and critique. I mean, who can stand up and say that in the last 15 years they have done nothing of which they might be ashamed or embarrassed?

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Posted
  • Location: W Kent/E Sussex border (T Wells) 139m ASL
  • Location: W Kent/E Sussex border (T Wells) 139m ASL

I'm sure someone (having nothing better to do!) could take many of our 'tongue-in-cheek' posts sufficiently out of context, and paint an entirely unrepresentative impression of the posters?

The difference here being that no-one on this forum (as far as I am aware) is being paid a salary from a government sponsored agency to provide us with scientific input which affect energy, taxation and no doubt many other strategies.

No one likes theft, but are we glad or not that someone stole the details of MPs expenses? That was one theft that I was not offended by! If you are playing with the truth expect to be found out - by people whose motives (political or personal) do not match your own.

We'll find out in due course whether these e/mails are "doctored" or "taken out of context". However the the sound of denials are hardly deafening. If this does turn out to have some basis then this will, inevitably, do their "cause" no good at all.

Finally, I learned long ago that there is no such thing as an *unofficial e-mail". I'm surprised that the senders were not of the same view. Once written and sent an e-mail almost certainly exists somewhere and it is quite likely to hang around for a long time. In that sense there is a similarity to postings on this forum!

MM

Edited by Mr Maunder
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Posted
  • Location: Sheffield South Yorkshire 160M Powering the Sheffield Shield
  • Weather Preferences: Any Extreme
  • Location: Sheffield South Yorkshire 160M Powering the Sheffield Shield

The difference here being that no-one on this forum (as far as I am aware) is being paid a salary from a government sponsored agency to provide us with scientific input upon which affect energy, taxation and no doubt many other strategies.

No one likes theft, but are we glad or not that someone stole the details of MPs expenses? That was one theft that I was not offended by! If you are playing with the truth expect to be found out - by people whose motives (political or personal) do not match your own.

We'll find out in due course whether these e/mails are "doctored" or "taken out of context". However the the sound of denials are hardly deafening. If this does turn out to have some basis then this will, inevitably, do their "cause" no good at all.

Finally, I learned long ago that there is no such thing as an *unofficial e-mail". I'm surprised that the senders were not of the same view. Once written and sent an e-mail almost certainly exists somewhere and it is quite likely to hang around for a long time. In that sense there is a similarity to postings on this forum!

MM

One of the reasons why you've got to be careful what you say in an email and also on forums as they can come back to haunt you as some have found out.

At the moment they're lucky as there's more important news items such as the flooding in the news. If it was a quiet news day it maybe different.

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Posted
  • Location: Bedworth, North Warwickshire 404ft above sea level
  • Location: Bedworth, North Warwickshire 404ft above sea level

This all smacks to me of propaganda, I'm just going to ignor this and the majority of what all scientists think and just get on with what I believe to be true...i.e nothing :whistling:

Seems to to me like science has turned into the new religion that we all have to believe in or we won't be taken seriously.

We don't even know if this material was stolen or not, may be a "reverse psychology" thing lol!

And even if it is true, it will serve them right for being so flippant across the information super highway.

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Posted
  • Location: Lincoln, Lincolnshire
  • Weather Preferences: Sunshine, convective precipitation, snow, thunderstorms, "episodic" months.
  • Location: Lincoln, Lincolnshire

Well, I'll be the first to admit that CRU could have handled some aspects of this fiasco better. Doesn't justify the hacking into the servers though.

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