Climatic Research Unit Hacked, Files Leaked

huckamania was one of many readers to write with the news that the University of East Anglia's Hadley Climatic Research Unit was hacked, and internal documents released. Some discussion and analysis of the leaked items can be found at Watts Up With That. The CRU has confirmed that a breach occurred, but not that all 61 MB of released material is genuine. Some of the emails would seem to raise concerns about the science as practiced — or at least beg an explanation. From the Watts Up link: "[The CRU] is widely recognized as one of the world's leading institutions concerned with the study of natural and anthropogenic climate change. Consisting of a staff of around thirty research scientists and students, the Unit has developed a number of the data sets widely used in climate research, including the global temperature record used to monitor the state of the climate system, as well as statistical software packages and climate models. 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 apparently from the CRU. If proved legitimate, these bombshells could spell trouble for the AGW crowd." Reader brandaman supplied the link to the archive of pilfered data. Reader aretae characterized the emails as revealing "...lots of intrigue, data manipulation, attempting to shut out opposing points of view out of scientific journals. Almost makes you think it's a religion. Anyone surprised?" And reader bugnuts adds, for context: "These emails are certainly taken out of context, whether they are legitimate or fraudulent, which adds to the confusion."

Comments

Lindzen vindicated

[brian0918]

MIT climatologist Richard Lindzen has long made these claims about global warming researchers, as he discusses in a talk from a few weeks ago: "Cooler Heads". It looks like he's slowly being vindicated in his views of both the researchers and the conclusions.

The dog ate it?

[Vinegar Joe]

Is this the same CRU that when asked to release the original raw data used in its climate analysis claimed it had all been lost?

http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2009/08/we-lost-original-data.html

Re:The dog ate it?

[pkphilip]

Yes, it is the same CRU. Fact is, they have refused requests to release data by other scientists (not just Steven McIntyre).

This is a good opportunity for someone to step in and demand that the actual data be released. CRU's claim of having lost data is completely untenable.

Re:Utter bullshit.

[Rockoon]

Let's see ALL the data, and let's not see the E-mail at all -- E-mail isn't data.

You do realize that some of the emails are about hiding data from public view, obstructing freedom of information requests, and campaign to discredit a peer reviewed journal that published something that disagreed with their public stance, right?

If there is one thing I know for sure, its that at least one of the skeptics is entirely open about the data and methodology (with source code, only free tools, etc..) he uses, and he even seeks input from anyone willing to help via his blog. That man is Steve McIntyre.

Publicly funded scientists should be forced to open up their data and methodology, with prison terms for them if they don't. Its time they stopped using public money to boost their own careers while playing fast and loose in their good ol' boy club of like-minded conspirators.

Nothing to see here, move on

[JoeBuck]

I review papers for technical conferences. I regularly try to keep papers out of the publications. It's a necessary part of the job, because the acceptance rate is typically 25%, and because most of the papers are junk. Scientific publications are not free speech platforms; to be published, an article has to meet the standards and it has to advance the state of the art of the field.

The bar for skeptics is always going to be higher. Otherwise we'd have to rewrite the chemistry textbooks every time some student messes up his lab assignment, because this will produce data that contradicts the theory.

Re:Anthropogenic Causes

[brandaman]

Is Richard S. Lindzen of the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at MIT an idiot media personality?
http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=3771

Also: "The global surface temperature record, which we update and publish every month, has shown no statistically-significant “global warming” for almost 15 years. Statistically-significant global cooling has now persisted for very nearly eight years. Even a strong el Nino – expected in the coming months – will be unlikely to reverse the cooling trend. More significantly, the ARGO bathythermographs deployed throughout the world’s oceans since 2003 show that the top 400 fathoms of the oceans, where it is agreed between all parties that at least 80% of all heat caused by manmade “global warming” must accumulate, have been cooling over the past six years. That now prolonged ocean cooling is fatal to the “official” theory that “global warming” will happen on anything other than a minute scale. "
- SPPI Monthly CO2 Report: July 2009
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/originals/co2_report_july_09.pdf

Re:Why is climate science being politicized?

[CannonballHead]

Hm. Who did An Inconvenient Truth again? Who is pushing for "climate change" legislation? The hype and sensationalism is the fault of conservatives?

Re:Utter bullshit.

[scorp1us]

Actually, I read many of the emails last night.

Many are bland as hell. There's a few juicy ones, which have already been highlighted. The attitude that came across from reading email after email is that these people beleive they are doing science. They are well intentioned and don't mean to be pushing an agenda. However some of the emails indicated a desire to please governments and the IPCC. It was not as the AGW skeptics would have you believe that these scientists are forcing the policy, rather, it seems they are trying to do science that both pleases the governing bodies while still remains science.

But I think there should be no consideration of what pleases whomever. It should just report the facts. But that's hard to do when you're funded by them.

Re:RealClimate has a big reply on this

[coaxial]

Since you didn't bother to do any research before tossing around allegations of lying, nor bothering to figure out what exactly "Mike's Nature trick" actually was, let me.

A quick google search of "michael nature global temperature" points to : "Global-scale temperature patterns and climate forcing over the past six centuries" by Michael E. Mann, Raymond S. Bradley & Malcolm K. Hughes from Nature 392, 779-787 (23 April 1998) | doi:10.1038/33859

This was a a seminal article in the climatetology community. Mann et al took tree core samples and estimated the global temperature by measuring the spacing between tree rings. (Big rings are caused by rapid growth, which is in turn caused by warmer temperatures. Small rings, slow growth, cooler temperatures.) The fact that tree ring sizes are dependent on temperature has been a long established fact.

Let me now quote the abstract of this article in full:

Spatially resolved global reconstructions of annual surface temperature patterns over the past six centuries are based on the multivariate calibration of widely distributed high-resolution proxy climate indicators. Time-dependent correlations of the reconstructions with time-series records representing changes in greenhouse-gas concentrations, solar irradiance, and volcanic aerosols suggest that each of these factors has contributed to the climate variability of the past 400 years, with greenhouse gases emerging as the dominant forcing during the twentieth century. Northern Hemisphere mean annual temperatures for three of the past eight years are warmer than any other year since (at least) ad 1400.

Mann et al tried to create an accurate record of the global temperature by augmenting the estimated temperatures from the tree ring data with actual measured temperatures from 1981 and 1961 since these are actual known temperatures. This is known as "the MBH98 reconstruction".

Now hang on. Here's where your allegation of "systematic suppression of data" falls all apart.

In 2003, Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick published (*gasp*) Corrections to the Mann et. al. (1998) Proxy Data Base and Northern Hemispheric Average Temperature Series, whose abstract reads:

The data set of proxies of past climate used in Mann, Bradley and Hughes (1998, "MBH98" hereafter) for the estimation of temperatures from 1400 to 1980 contains collation errors, unjustifiable truncation or extrapolation of source data, obsolete data, geographical location errors, incorrect calculation of principal components and other quality control defects. We detail these errors and defects. We then apply MBH98 methodology to the construction of a Northern Hemisphere average temperature index for the 1400-1980 period, using corrected and updated source data. The major finding is that the values in the early 15th century exceed any values in the 20th century. The particular "hockey stick" shape derived in the MBH98 proxy construction – a temperature index that decreases slightly between the early 15th century and early 20th century and then increases dramatically up to 1980 — is primarily an artefact of poor data handling, obsolete data and incorrect calculation of principal components.

So the worldwide conspiracy of climatetologists breaks down when they behave like scientists, and try to duplicate each others' work, fail to, and publish corrections, and warnings saying, "Hey! You this data set we've all been using? It might be wrong."

Thus begins The Hockey Stick Controversy, named after the shape of the curve at the very end of MBH98 reconstruction. Far from being suppressed, it's investigated quite thoroughly

Re:simple theory

[Burnhard]

1. Sun heats Earth with radiation in many wavelengths. Lots of optical-band + ultraviolet. 2. Solar radiation interacts with matter on Earth and heats Earth. 3. Some of the heat re-radiates upwards away from Earth, but much of the radiation is now in the lower energy infrared band, since some energy has gone into heating Earth. 4. CO2, methane etc molecules in atmosphere reflect infrared radiation back down to Earth, heating Earth more. 5. Humans are pumping lots of carbon out of the ground, and burning forests that store carbon. This carbon is being released into atmosphere as CO2, methane etc. Increasing CO2, methane etc concentrations in atmosphere (concentration of these molecules in atmosphere is roughly doubled so far compared to recent thousands /10s of thousands of years.) 6. So there is now net heating of the Earth, due to this excess trapping of Infrared radiation by reflection.

Theory 3, the Earth warms, the heat is radiated back out into space. The warmer it gets, the more heat is radiated back into space. Some evidence, for example Lindzen and Choi, for low climate sensitivity:

Climate feedbacks are estimated from fluctuations in the outgoing radiation budget from the latest version of Earth Radiation Budget Experiment (ERBE) nonscanner data. It appears, for the entire tropics, the observed outgoing radiation fluxes increase with the increase in sea surface temperatures (SSTs). The observed behavior of radiation fluxes implies negative feedback processes associated with relatively low climate sensitivity. This is the opposite of the behavior of 11 atmospheric models forced by the same SSTs. Therefore, the models display much higher climate sensitivity than is inferred from ERBE, though it is difficult to pin down such high sensitivities with any precision. Results also show, the feedback in ERBE is mostly from shortwave radiation while the feedback in the models is mostly from longwave radiation. Although such a test does not distinguish the mechanisms, this is important since the inconsistency of climate feedbacks constitutes a very fundamental problem in climate prediction.

Re:RealClimate has a big reply on this

[TheFlamingoKing]

Because "Can't we all just get along?" doesn't really go well with "Let's use force against individuals to make them comply."

I'd love it if the argument was "hey, why don't you guys think about reducing your pollution, it will benefit your pocketbook and your health". Unfortunately, what's being argued is more like "you will adhere to our rules regarding pollution reduction, or we will hurt your pocketbook or your health."

Re:RealClimate has a big reply on this

[TapeCutter]

"CO2 isn't air pollution, CO, Hydrogen Sulfides, Sulfuric Acid, Mercury, Nitrogen oxides DO kill animals and more importantly Plants."

The definition of a pollutant is "a resource out of place". More importantly CO2 is what is turning the ocean acic (carbonic acid) this in turn threatens the very bottom of the global food chain (ie: plankton). Covering the earth with trees would help but it is still not enough to aborb our emmissions. Ironiclly many of the traditional pollutants that you mention form areosols and have a significant cooling effect.