Climate News ClimateGate emails provide unwanted scrutiny of climate scientists
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21 November 2009
As the contents of a hacked climate change unit’s server in Britain were exposed on the Internet Friday, the event had some of the scientists involved scrambling to explain their emails and skeptics believing they had found a smoking gun. On the surface, the emails seem to indicate scientists modified data to fit the anthropogenic global warming theory, tried to silence dissenting opinions and reflect a concerted effort to restrict access to climate data possibly by deleting it.
The emails and documents were illegally obtained from a server at Britain’s Climate Research Unit, University of East Anglia and then posted to a Russian server. From there, the file and its contents spread like wildfire across the Internet. Inside are over 1,000 emails and dozens of documents that detail private correspondence among some of the world’s top climate scientists.
A spokesman for the university said, “We are aware that information from a server used for research information in one area of the university has been made available on public websites.” Law enforcement is involved and is trying to track down the person responsible for leaking the emails. Speculation is high that it was an ‘inside job’ as the contents were all targeted toward the science and debate about manmade climate change.
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Skeptics of the manmade climate change theory quickly poured over the messages and pointed to what the Australian Herald-Sun called “a scandal that is one of the greatest in modern science.” The emails point to a number of questionable actions by the scientists including the modification of data, destruction of data and evidence, collusion, admissions of errors in data and resistance to having their analysis scrutinized by outsiders.
Emails from Phil Jones, director of the Climate Research Unit, are arguably the most controversial. In multiple messages the director discusses his resistance to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests even alluding to destroying data rather than sharing it. In one message he says, “I think I’ll delete the file rather than send to anyone.” Jones apparently considered ways to stymie or limit FOIA requests by “removing station data” and “omit some other countries” because “it would annoy them [those requesting the data].”
Jones also exhorts his colleagues to delete email discussions saying in an email to Michael Mann, “Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4? Keith will do likewise. He’s not in at the moment - minor family crisis. Can you also email Gene and get him to do the same? I don’t have his new email address. We will be getting Caspar to do likewise.”
The scientists also apparently struggled to account for the cooling the earth has seen over the last 10 years. One scientist, Mick Kelly, discussed giving a presentation and rather than include the cooling he said, “I’ll maybe cut the last few points off the filtered curve before I give the talk again as that’s trending down as a result of the end effects and the recent cold-ish years.”
Kevin Trenberth, a scientist with the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), was particularly frustrated by computer models that failed to predict the cooling. He said, “The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t. The CERES data published in the August BAMS 09 supplement on 2008 shows there should be even more warming: but the data are surely wrong. Our observing system is inadequate.”
The group was also did not approve of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) and its choices allowing opposing views to be heard. The group’s trade publication, Geophysical Research Letters (GRL) was targeted by Michael Mann as he wrote, “I’m not sure that GRL can be seen as an honest broker in these debates anymore.” He however acknowledged the publications importance saying, “We can’t afford to lose GRL.”
Mann seemed particularly concerned about ‘contrarian’ with the name Saiers, presumably James Saiers of the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies. “Apparently, the contrarians now have an “in” with GRL. This guy Saiers has a prior connection w/ the University of Virginia Dept. of Environmental Sciences [where Saiers completed his PhD] that causes m some unease,” Mann wrote.
Tom Wigley, a senior scientist in the Climate and Global Dynamics Division at NCAR, felt though that they could deal with Saiers by getting him removed from the AGU. “If you think that Saiers is in the greenhouse skeptics camp, then, if we can find documentary evidence of this, we could go through official AGU channels to get him ousted.”
Some have questioned the authenticity of the emails and documents with the university saying, “Because of the volume of this information we cannot currently confirm that all of this material is genuine.” Realclimate.org, a website that oftentimes serves as a publicist for many of the scientists, said the messages were ‘possibly edited’ but was unable to cite any examples where that may have occurred.
None of the scientists whose emails were exposed have disputed the contents within the archive. Jones, did not dispute the authenticity of the messages in an interview with TGIF Edition. Kevin Trenberth told Wired that “the email is genuine.” Michael Mann of Pennsylvania State University said, "I'm not going to comment on the content of illegally obtained e-mails." Considering the incendiary nature of the emails one would expect the principles involved would have pointed out any messages that were illegitimate.
The discussion about climate change is at a fevered pitch and these emails and documents will likely damage the cause of those seeking to advance the manmade climate change theory. Those who doubt the theory have had great success this year in getting their voices heard and have been able to demonstrate that the ‘consensus’ in the scientific community on climate change is anything but.
The timing of their release is fortuitous for the skeptics as the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen is set to begin next month. Hopes for a treaty from the conference had already been dashed with the UN willing to settle for a ‘political agreement’ rather than a binding agreement.
Comments
In the socialist mind, the end justifies the means. They will lie, cheat and steal to achieve their socialst agenda.
Socialist killed 300,000,000 people in the last century. Quasi-free market capitalism lifted 300 million from poverty. You choose.
• Manipulation of scientific data;
• Concealing private doubts about global warming;
• Suppression of evidence;
• Contemplating revenge against prominent climate skeptics;
• Attempting to disguise the pre-industrial Medieval Warm Period;
• Scheming to marginalize dissenting scientists out of the peer review process.
Stay tuned. This may be just the tip of the iceberg exposing the biggest scientific and political fraud in the history of mankind.
The global warmists will be defeated and 'new science' will prove that an ice age is on its way UNLESS:
- we drastically reduce our fossil fuels consumption
- we replace our carbonated footprint with a green thumbprint
- we do whatever it takes to prevent our cows from farting
- we move out of suburban sprawls and into well-planned high-density dwellings
- we ban the DDT, again
Not saying we can't be good stewards - just that we shouldn't listen to every "scientist" or politician trying to make a buck or a name for himself. Of course maybe common sense is mostly common in the "flyover" states - not the elitist coastal areas. Who knows?
www.eastangliaemails.com/index.php
I'm always happy to see the skeptical side behaving proper. As a skeptic myself, it makes arguing with alarmists much more civil.
Seems her argument is that the emails in the first place contained nothing damning other than the very real and difficult/tedious work of REAL climate scientists, who got quite understandably frustrated with the dumbbunny denialist crowd, and some email correspondence detailing said frustration.
Many of us would sooner not have some emails revealed and aired out in broad daylight, no?
About the same line of thinking, it seems (though they no longer allow new registrations for comments) showed up on Little Green Footballs, which in turn references an article in New Scientist.
Some excepts from NS:
"Forget about the temperature records compiled by researchers such as those whose emails were hacked. Next spring, go out into your garden or the nearby countryside and note when the leaves unfold, when flowers bloom, when migrating birds arrive and so on. Compare your findings with historical records, where available, and you'll probably find spring is coming days, even weeks earlier than a few decades ago.
You can't fake spring coming earlier, or trees growing higher up on mountains, or glaciers retreating for kilometres up valleys, or shrinking ice cover in the Arctic, or birds changing their migration times, or permafrost melting in Alaska, or the tropics expanding, or ice shelves on the Antarctic peninsula breaking up, or peak river flow occurring earlier in summer because of earlier snowmelt, or sea level rising faster and faster, or any of the thousands of similar examples.
Please read the full context of the articles, as they go over the faux outrage and legal issues surrounding FOI requests that were really harassments, as well as the explanation of the "tricked" out data.
Well check out LGF on this and follow the bouncing threadlines...
www.onlineuniversalwork.com
If I ever get the chance
I'll put my carbon footprint
On the seat of Al Gore's pants
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