Australian publication Investigate and the Australian Herald-Sun are reporting that leaked e-mails expose a conspiracy to hide detrimental information from the public that argues against global warming:
The internet is on fire this morning with confirmation computers at one of the world’s leading climate research centres were hacked, and the information released on the internet.
A 62 megabyte zip file, containing around 160 megabytes of emails, pdfs and other documents, has been confirmed as genuine by the head of the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit, Dr Phil Jones.
In an exclusive interview with Investigate magazine’s TGIF Edition, Jones confirms his organization has been hacked, and the data flying all over the internet appears to have come from his organisation.
“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.”
As HotAir.com, which has posted a number of the emails, notes: “Do scientists use data to test theories, or do they use theories to test data? Scientists will claim the former, but here we have scientists who cling to the theory so tightly that they reject the data. That’s not science; it’s religious belief.”
Update: Wesley Smith raises a point that I should have noted earlier. Hacking private email accounts is a crime and should be fully prosecuted. Questions should still be asked about the content of the emails but that has no bearing on the legitimacy of the tactics used to aquire the information.
November 20th, 2009 | 4:17 pm
I think we have to condemn hacking and publishing even when it is in support of a position with which we agree, or we will not have a democracy left in which to engage. I opine on this story from that perspective over at Secondhand Smoke–as well, in a different post, of the poor excuses being voiced for the “stall” in global warming.
November 20th, 2009 | 4:38 pm
I completely agree. I think the people who hacked the accounts should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
I would also say, though, that we can’t ignore the content of the emails just because of the way they were obtained. It’s a shame and (literally) a crime the way the information came to light. But it must be factored into the debate.
November 20th, 2009 | 6:11 pm
It’s more complex than that. For starters, we don’t know that this was a hacker. It is just as likely to have been an employee. That doesn’t affect the privacy issue, but it makes this a whistleblower case.
It has been announced that the data and emails are genuine, so we can start to draw conclusions about people and institutions involved based on the contents.
All (or almost all) of these emails are government property. For example, according to the emails, Phil Jones and the Hadley CRU have received 13.7 million pounds in grants since 1990. According to other emails, and to the bitter experience of those who have been trying to get data and code out of Hadley CRU for many years, Phil Jones has gone to great lengths to circumvent the FOI process at the East Anglia University, where Hadley is sited.
Most of this data, including emails, belongs to the governments of the UK and the US. It was requested years ago. It should have been released years ago.
The set of characters whose discussions have been revealed are foundational to the AGW hysteria that has pushed the Western world to the brink of economic and political madness. Read their emails and weep.
November 20th, 2009 | 6:29 pm
[...] Call it Climate-gate! [...]
November 21st, 2009 | 12:56 am
What will be interesting is if, when found, the hacker claims protection as a whistleblower.
November 21st, 2009 | 1:08 am
Cracking may be a crime, but I don’t know that it follows that it “should be fully prosecuted” in every circumstance.
Especially if the information produced is true, accurate, and does indeed bring to light ethical and legal violations (all circumstances that can, I think, be reasonably debated in this case, but not yet proven), then one can argue that the service to the public outweighs whatever illegality is involved.
It’s the same principle that guards investigative journalists and whistle-blowers from retaliation. For those classes of people, they have been accorded certain legal protections because the state has acknowledged that protecting them is in society’s best interests. But remember, they haven’t always had those legal protections, nor do they have them now in most countries. A lack of legal protection doesn’t make their actions less valuable or ethically defensible. Look at Iran for a good example.
Just because we enjoy a comparative degree of protection now in the U.S. doesn’t mean that any extra-legal methods are prima facie illegitimate or unnecessary here.
None of this is to weigh in on the legitimacy of the cracking in this particular case. It remains to be seen whether the documents are authentic and whether their contents really are as damning as they seem so far. But that also means it’s too early to say anything about the legitimacy of the actions that brought them to light.
November 21st, 2009 | 1:11 am
While I wrote about our freedom “now in the U.S.”, what I wrote applies equally to Great Britain, the state whose laws would presumably apply in this instance.
November 21st, 2009 | 11:00 am
Three points come to mind. The 1st is the strong condemnation of hacking is a crime by some here, instead of looking at the content. On wonders what they would say about “Watergate” leaks. In most circumstances, hacking is a crime, AND MAYBE, in the case of uncovering a crime. E-mails, by public officials, which unless has personal matters, or national security, may be confidential, are subject to FOI. In reading a few, which the head of the CRU said are accurate, it reveals a consistent effort to thwart the FOI act by high officials. So here is evidence of a “cover up” by government officials to conceal information FUNDED by taxes, and subject to the FOI act.
The second point is how e-mails show/imply how data was modified to get certain results, so show earth temperature rising. Having been in the technical field for many years, I know how it works. A book on many desks was “How to Lie with Statistics”, is still out after almost 50 years. The book itself shows how to detect false conclusions, or in some case out and out lies.
The last point is how a small group of people can “suggest” to others, to ignore other points of view, or shut these other views down. Remember there are billions of $’s at stake here. So it seems that a cover was “blown” here.
November 21st, 2009 | 1:47 pm
clearly a case of ethical hacking, i see no benefit to the public good in pursuing a prosecution, quite the opposite in fact
November 21st, 2009 | 6:01 pm
Thanks, Joe, for posting the item, which otherwise would have eluded me. However the material came to light, one hopes it will influence the discussion. Let’s see if the story makes the cut at the NYTimes and Washington Post (as anything but another example of right-wing treachery).
November 21st, 2009 | 10:25 pm
On the FOI issue, the reason that the information was not released is that it is confidential government weather service information. If the data was released to third parties, then the revenue stream for the weather service would have been undermined.
I’ve looked at some of the supposedly most objectionable leaked material, and I have to conclude that there is little of interest there. There was nothing out of the ordinary as far as normal reconciliation of data with other data in scientific inquiry is concerned.
Even though I don’t think that there’s been a huge and rapid human impact on the climate, I find the irresponsibility and hatred of so-called ‘climate skeptics’ in this instance to be morally repugnant.
November 22nd, 2009 | 4:52 am
Yes, prosecute the hackers. But since the information is out, it can be discussed.
If the case for global warming is so strong, why do these scientists find it necessary to cover up data that doesn’t support their views?
The late Michael Crichton, the novelist, medical doctor, and atheist, delivered a devestating critique of global warming on January 25, 2005 at the National Press Club. See http://www.crichton-official.com/speech-ourenvironmentalfuture.html
To anyone with a lot more brain cells than me, is there a way that global warming could be proved without using computer models?
November 22nd, 2009 | 7:06 am
Steve,
You claim to have “looked at some of the supposedly most objectionable material” before having “to conclude that there is little of interest there.” This is a dazzling conclusion.
I have read some of the material, too. I can’t say that I have read the most objectionable material, because there is so much of it, and it is being examined as I write, but my attention has been drawn to much truly objectionable material. I also have the advantage of having followed the FOI saga, particularly with reference to Steve McIntyre’s repeated requests, for a few years now. I also have the benefit of having seen the Amman and Wahl scandal unfold, and having been in the gallery when Yamal was revealed. For useful summaries of both of these events, which are indeed, in climate science, “nothing out of the ordinary”, see http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2008/8/11/caspar-and-the-jesus-paper.html and the yamal implosion
I would not suggest trying to access Steve McIntyre’s Climate Audit blog http://www.climateaudit.org/ at the moment, because his server has been overwhelmed by the interest generated by this leak. However, when things settle down, and if you are interested in forming conclusions based on evidence, go there and search out the ongoing story of his attempts to get data from Phil Jones at CRU. Read the ongoing litany of excuses, only at the last coming up with the excuse that some of the data was protected by agreements with some other national met offices.
Then, before drawing your conclusions, look into these new emails, and follow the story from the inside, where sole concern is to prevent the data falling into the hands of the hated critics. No stone is left unturned in this quest. The responsible FOI officers at Uni of East Anglia will be extremely embarrassed by these revelations, as they should be.
Your summary dismissal of this event echoes the line being taken by those implicated, and by some of the MSM.
This is, in fact, a major event for climate science and for the standing of science in general. It draws double bold underlines beneath Robert Lindzen’s paper, already mentioned by Stephen Barr in the following article: http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/firstthoughts/2009/06/29/save-science-from-the-planetary-saviors/
In his article, Barr says:
“My doubts have grown in proportion to the number of apodictic assertions I have heard that there is no room for doubt. And now I have come across a document written by Richard Lindzen that has turned my doubts into serious alarm. Not alarm over the state of the globe, but alarm over the state of science right now on this issue. I recommend that everyone who cares about science read this document. It is an eye-opener. The behavior of some global warming advocates in the scientific community is truly Orwellian.”
The article in question is http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0809/0809.3762.pdf
November 22nd, 2009 | 2:17 pm
Peter,
I merely assume that the “worst” emails written are the ones that have been publicized by the so-called “skeptics,” and these really haven’t shown anything that gives me pause. Are the people who wrote them always nice to their opponents? No, and, given the way their opponents are gloating over the theft of information from which they are already drawing huge inferences, I can’t say I blame them for disliking such barbarians at the gates.
All that Lindzen’s article seems to say is that the issue has become intensely politicized, which is what happens when people outside of a scientific community interfere with it. I’m not a scientist, but if massive organizations outside of my area of expertise started telling me that I needed to prove the validity of my work to the mostly ignorant general public, I would probably have the same reaction that these climate scientists have had (according to their pilfered emails).
I don’t see why the “MSM” should be relevant to anything, since the 24/7 news media cycle is not where scientific arguments should be made. Unless, that is, a large number of leading scientists are deliberately lying, which is hard to believe (so I hesitate to trust my own relatively uninformed judgments on any evidence that I’ve seen).
November 22nd, 2009 | 3:49 pm
Apparently, climate scientists can’t explain why global warming has stagnated in the last decade, http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,662092,00.html
November 23rd, 2009 | 4:46 am
Steve,
The problem is indeed that politicisation of science, but the politicisation is happening from the inside, and it’s not the sceptics who did it. The primary symbol of that is the IPCC itself. This institution, headed by an economist, is held up as the epitome of disinterested science, and the pronouncements of that body have been used to justify a radical attack on the economies of the western world.
Sceptics have known for a long time that the internal processes of the IPCC have been subject to highly dubious interference by groups committed to a certain point of view, and some of the contents of the leaked files lend weight o this view.
Even more distressing than the exposure of the IPCC as a crassly political organisation should surprise no-one; it’s a UN initiative, after all. What is more problematical is the failure of the much-vaunted peer-reviewed journals, the gatekeepers of science, as people like Mann kept insisting to journalists like Andy Revkin. Too many formerly prestigious journals simple fell into line, and became gatekeepers, not of disinterested science, but of the party line.
This scandal, and I’m talking about the whole history of AGW, could well destroy the credibility of science, and not just climate science, for a generation. That may be a good thing. When the Al Gores of this world can no longer trot out “peer-reviewed science” to support their agendas, scientists may be able to get on with their work in relative peace and quiet.
That, however, raises the issue of how science (and that’s a very broad church, of course) is going to be funded. According to the leaked material, Phil Jones alone received grants of 13.7 million pounds in the period since 1990. That buys a lot of science, and it also buys a grim determination to keep the source of the funds on tap.
As I have indicated, this is an enormous issue, the reverberations from which will rumble on for years. But then, maybe that’s just me.
Here’s a take from the former Chancellor (Lord) Nigel Lawson, published in The Times, and reported via Andrew Bolt, , whose blog coverage of this has been superb.
Astonishingly, what appears, at least at first blush, to have emerged is that (a) the scientists have been manipulating the raw temperature figures to show a relentlessly rising global warming trend; (b) they have consistently refused outsiders access to the raw data; (c) the scientists have been trying to avoid freedom of information requests; and (d) they have been discussing ways to prevent papers by dissenting scientists being published in learned journals.
There may be a perfectly innocent explanation. But what is clear is that the integrity of the scientific evidence on which not merely the British Government, but other countries, too, through the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, claim to base far-reaching and hugely expensive policy decisions, has been called into question. And the reputation of British science has been seriously tarnished. A high-level independent inquiry must be set up without delay.
November 23rd, 2009 | 11:33 am
@bob g
“Let’s see if the story makes the cut at the NYTimes and Washington Post (as anything but another example of right-wing treachery).”
Because the right has always been champion of the climate change agenda;)
November 23rd, 2009 | 8:38 pm
We now know it was not a mole but a hacker, someone considerable hacking skills and with a demonstrated lack of interest in other people’s property rights over their computers,but what he was taking was in this case information that had been wrongfully withheld from Freedom of Information requests, information that rightfully belonged to the public, had been wrongfully withheld from the public, and he proceeded, Robin Hood style, to give this information to its rightful owners.
November 26th, 2009 | 6:55 pm
I find these heavy duty discussions interesting but as a member of the long suffering public who also happens to have a degree in geophysics and extensive formal training in geology I must take exception with all the drama. It seems any single scientist, politician or pundit, either pro and con, can become an instant celebrity by claiming others are liars or corrupt. I am bombarded by semi-hysterical rhetoric to the point reality has become totally obscure. The simple truth is no one has “silenced” anyone whether they claim climate change is a hoax or is real. I see their comments every day in newspapers and on the internet. I hear them on television with incr4asing regularity. Apparently thousands and thousand and thousands of reputable scientists will be proven simpleminded idiots when the final vote is taken.
NO ON HAS BEEN SILENCED. Freedom of speech has clearly triumphed.
Simply put it is not possible to “whistle blow’ something that is already open to public debate. Hacking is a crime and in this case seems to be more intented to discredit people rather then help people undertsand the “truth”.
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