The Blackboard

Free the e-mails!

If its a hoax it’s rather elaborate. dates, times, plane flights, telephone numbers.

Plus, I’ve seen a mail sent out of the CRU that alerts everybody to the breach of security.

Wanna see guys at Noaa invite people to Boulder?

And say stuff like… we will ask for extra money so we can have quality time ( you like to ski)

From: “Raymond S. Bradley”
To: k.briffa@uea.ac.uk
Subject: CENSORED!!!!!
Date: Mon, 19 Apr 1999 10:41:31 -0400

>Date: Mon, 19 Apr 1999 10:06:52 -0400
>To: juppenbrink@science-int.co.uk
>From: “Raymond S. Bradley”
>Subject: Climate warming prespctives article
>Cc: mann@snow.geo.umass.edu, mhughes@ltrr.arizona.edu
>
>I have just returned from Finland and have now read all the correspondence
regarding the Science perspectives article you asked Keith Briffa & Tim
Osborn to write. I’ve sent Tim Osborn & Keith Briffa a few suggestions re
their perspectives article. If you would like to see them, let me know.
>I would like to diasassociate myself from Mike Mann’s view that
“xxxxxxxxxxx” and that they “xxxxxxxxxxxxx”. I find this notion quite
absurd. I have worked with the UEA group for 20+ years and have great
respect for them and for their work. Of course, I don’t agree with
everything they write, and we often have long (but cordial) arguments about
what they think versus my views, but that is life. Indeed, I know that they
have broad disagreements among themselves, so to refer to them as “the UEA
group”, as though they all march in lock-step seems bizarre.
>As for thinking that it is “Better that nothing appear, than something
unnacceptable to us” …..as though we are the gatekeepers of all that is
acceptable in the world of paleoclimatology seems amazingly arrogant.
Science moves forward whether we agree with individiual articles or not….
>
>Sincerely,

From: “Michael E. Mann”
To: Keith Briffa , “Folland, Chris” , ‘Phil Jones’
Subject: RE: IPCC revisions
Date: Wed, 22 Sep 1999 12:35:24 -0400
Cc: tkarl@ncdc.noaa.gov, mann@virginia.edu

Thanks for your response Keith,

For all:

Walked into this hornet’s nest this morning! Keith and Phil have both
raised some very good points. And I should point out that Chris, through no
fault of his own, but probably through ME not conveying my thoughts very
clearly to the
others, definitely overstates any singular confidence I have in my own
(Mann et al) series. I believe strongly that the strength in our discussion
will be the fact that certain key features of past climate estimates are
robust among a number of quasi-independent and truly independent estimates,
each
of which is not without its own limitations and potential biases. And I
certainly don’t want to abuse my lead authorship by advocating my own work.

I am perfectly amenable to keeping Keith’s series in the plot, and can ask
Ian Macadam (Chris?) to add it to the plot he has been preparing (nobody
liked my own color/plotting conventions so I’ve given up doing this myself).
The key thing is making sure the series are vertically aligned in a reasonable
way. I had been using the entire 20th century, but in the case of Keith’s,
we need to align the first half of the 20th century w/ the corresponding mean
values of the other series, due to the late 20th century decline.

So if Chris and Tom (?) are ok with this, I would be happy to add Keith’s
series. That having been said, it does raise a conundrum: We demonstrate
(through comparining an exatropical averaging of our nothern hemisphere
patterns with Phil’s more extratropical series) that the major
discrepancies between Phil’s and our series can be explained in terms of
spatial sampling/latitudinal emphasis (seasonality seems to be secondary
here, but probably explains much of the residual differences). But that
explanation certainly can’t rectify why Keith’s series, which has similar
seasonality
*and* latitudinal emphasis to Phil’s series, differs in large part in
exactly the opposite direction that Phil’s does from ours. This is the
problem we
all picked up on (everyone in the room at IPCC was in agreement that this
was a problem and a potential distraction/detraction from the reasonably
concensus viewpoint we’d like to show w/ the Jones et al and Mann et al
series.

So, if we show Keith’s series in this plot, we have to comment that
“something else” is responsible for the discrepancies in this case. Perhaps
Keith can
help us out a bit by explaining the processing that went into the series
and the potential factors that might lead to it being “warmer” than the Jones
et al and Mann et al series?? We would need to put in a few words in this
regard. Otherwise, the skeptics have an field day casting
doubt on our ability to understand the factors that influence these estimates
and, thus, can undermine faith in the paleoestimates. I don’t think that
doubt is scientifically justified, and I’d hate to be the one to have
to give it fodder!

The recent Crowley and Lowery multiproxy estimate is an important
additional piece of information which I have indeed incorporated into the
revised draft.
Tom actually estimates the same mean warming since the 17th century in his
reconstruction, that we estimate in ours, so it is an added piece of
information that Phil and I are probably in the ballpark (Tom has used
a somewhat independent set of high and low-resolution proxy data and a very
basic compositing methodology, similar to Bradley and Jones, so there is
some independent new information in this estimate.

One other key result with respect to our own work is from a paper in the
press in “Earth Interactions”. An unofficial version is available here:

http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/paleo/ei/ei_cover.html

THe key point we emphasize in this paper is that the low-frequency
variability in our hemispheric temperature reconstruction is basically the
same if we don’t use any dendroclimatic indicators at all (though we
certainly resolve less variance, can’t get a skillful reconstruction as far
back, and there are notable discrepancies at the decadal and interannual
timescales). A believe I need to add a sentence to the current discussion
on this point,
since there is an unsubstantiated knee-jerk belief that our low-frequency
variability is suppressed by the use of tree ring data.

We have shown that this is not the case: (see here:
http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/paleo/ei/ei_datarev.html
and specifically, the plot and discussion here:
http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/paleo/ei/ei_nodendro.html
Ironically, you’ll note that there is more low-frequency variability when
the tree ring data *are* used, then when only other proxy and
historical/instrumental data are used!

SO I think we’re in the position to say/resolve somewhat more than, frankly,
than Keith does, about the temperature history of the past millennium.
And the issues I’ve spelled out all have to be dealt with in the chapter.

One last point: We will (like it or not) have SUBSTANTIAL
opportunity/requirement to revise much of this discussion after review, so
we don’t have to resolve everything now. Just the big picture and the
important details…

I’m sure we can can up with an arrangement that is amenable to all, and I’m
looking forward to hearing back from Keith, Phil, and Chris in particular
about the above, so we can quickly move towards finalizing a first draft.

Looking forward to hearing back w/ comments,

mike

At 04:19 PM 9/22/99 +0100, Keith Briffa wrote:
>
>Hi everyone
> Let me say that I don’t mind what you put in the policy makers
>summary if there is a general concensus. However some general discussion
>would be valuable . First , like Phil , I think that the supposed
>separation of the tree-ring reconstruction from the others on the grounds
>that it is not a true “multi-proxy” series is hard to justify. What is true
>is that these particular tree-ring data best represent SUMMER temperatures
>mostly at the northern boreal forest regions. By virtue of this , they also
>definately share significant variance with Northern Hemisphere land and
>land and marine ANNUAL temperatures – but at decadal and multidecadal
>timescales – simply by virtue of the fact that these series correlated with
>the former at these timescales. The multi proxy series (Mann et al . Jones
>et al) supposedly represent annual and summer seasons respectively, and
>both contain large proportions of tree-ring input. The latest tree-ring
>density curve ( i.e. our data that have been processed to retain low
>frequency information) shows more similarity to the other two series- as do
>a number of other lower resolution data ( Bradley et al, Peck et al ., and
>new Crowley series – see our recent Science piece) whether this represents
>’TRUTH’ however is a difficult problem. I know Mike thinks his series is
>the ‘best’ and he might be right – but he may also be too dismissive of
>other data and possibly over confident in his (or should I say his use of
>other’s). After all, the early ( pre-instrumental) data are much less
>reliable as indicators of global temperature than is apparent in modern
>calibrations that include them and when we don’t know the precise role of
>particular proxies in the earlier portions of reconstruction it remains
>problematic to assign genuine confidence limits at multidecadal and longer
>timescales. I still contend that multiple regression against the recent
>very trendy global mean series is potentially dangerous. You could
>calibrate the proxies to any number of seasons , regardless of their true
>optimum response . Not for a moment am I saying that the tree-ring , or any
>other proxy data, are better than Mike’s series – indeed I am saying that
>the various reconstructions are not independent but that they likely
>contribute more information about reality together than they do alone. I do
>believe , that it should not be taken as read that Mike’s series (or
>Jone’s et al. for that matter) is THE CORRECT ONE. I prefer a Figure that
>shows a multitude of reconstructions (e.g similar to that in my Science
>piece). Incidently, arguing that any particular series is probably better
>on the basis of what we now about glaciers or solar output is flaky indeed.
>Glacier mass balance is driven by the difference mainly in winter
>accumulation and summer ablation , filtered in a complex non-linear way to
>give variously lagged tongue advance/retreat .Simple inference on the
>precidence of modern day snout positions does not translate easily into
>absolute (or relative) temperature levels now or in the past. Similarly, I
>don’t see that we are able to substantiate the veracity of different
>temperature reconstructions through reference to Solar forcing theories
>without making assumptions on the effectiveness of (seasonally specific )
>long-term insolation changes in different parts of the globe and the
>contribution of solar forcing to the observed 20th century warming .
> There is still a potential problem with non-linear responses in the
>very recent period of some biological proxies ( or perhaps a fertilisation
>through high CO2 or nitrate input) . I know there is pressure to present a
>nice tidy story as regards ‘apparent unprecedented warming in a thousand
>years or more in the proxy data’ but in reality the situation is not quite
>so simple. We don’t have a lot of proxies that come right up to date and
>those that do (at least a significant number of tree proxies ) some
>unexpected changes in response that do not match the recent warming. I do
>not think it wise that this issue be ignored in the chapter.
> For the record, I do believe that the proxy data do show unusually
>warm conditions in recent decades. I am not sure that this unusual warming
>is so clear in the summer responsive data. I believe that the recent warmth
>was probably matched about 1000 years ago. I do not believe that global
>mean annual temperatures have simply cooled progressively over thousands of
>years as Mike appears to and I contend that that there is strong evidence
>for major changes in climate over the Holocene (not Milankovich) that
>require explanation and that could represent part of the current or future
>background variability of our climate. I think the Venice meeting will be
>a good place to air these isssues.
> Finally I appologise for this rather self-indulgent ramble, but I
>thought I may as well voice these points to you . I too would be happy to
>go through the recent draft of the chapter when it becomes available.
>
> cheers to all
> Keith
>
>At 01:07 PM 9/22/99 +0100, Folland, Chris wrote:
>>Dear All
>>
>>A proxy diagram of temperature change is a clear favourite for the Policy
>>Makers summary. But the current diagram with the tree ring only data
>>somewhat contradicts the multiproxy curve and dilutes the message rather
>>significantly. We want the truth. Mike thinks it lies nearer his result
>>(which seems in accord with what we know about worldwide mountain glaciers
>>and, less clearly, suspect about solar variations). The tree ring results
>>may still suffer from lack of multicentury time scale variance. This is
>>probably the most important issue to resolve in Chapter 2 at present.
>>
>>Chris
>>
>>> —–Original Message—–
>>> From: Phil Jones [SMTP:p.jones@uea.ac.uk]
>>> Sent: 22 September 1999 12:58
>>> To: Michael E. Mann; k.briffa@uea.ac.uk
>>> Cc: ckfolland@meto.gov.uk; tkarl@ncdc.noaa.gov
>>> Subject: Re: IPCC revisions
>>>
>>>
>>> Mike,
>>> Been away in Japan the last week or so. Malcolm was there in a
>>> wheelchair
>>> because of his ruptured achilles. We both mentioned the lack of evidence
>>> for global scale change related to the MWE and LIA, but all the later
>>> Japanese speakers kept saying the same old things.
>>>
>>> As for the TAR Chap 2 it seems somewhat arbitrary divison to exclude
>>> the
>>> tree-ring only reconstructions. Keith’s reconstruction is of a different
>>> character to other tree-ring work as it is as ‘hemispheric in scale’ as
>>> possible so is unlike any other tree-ring related work that is reported
>>> upon.
>>> If we go as is suggested then there would be two diagrams – one simpler
>>> one with just Mann et al and Jones et al and in another section Briffa et
>>> al. This might make it somewhat awkward for the reader trying to put them
>>> into context.
>>> The most important bit of the proxy section is the general discussion
>>> of
>>> ‘Was there an MWE and a LIA’ drawing all the strands together. Keith and
>>> I
>>> would be happy to look through any revisions of the section if there is
>>> time.
>>>
>>> One other thing, did you bring up the possibility of having a
>>> proxy-only
>>> chapter ( albeit short) for the next assessment ?
>>>
>>> On Venice I suggested to Peck that you and Keith give talks on the
>>> reconstructions – frank and honest etc emphasising issues and I lead a
>>> discussion with you both and the rest of those there where the issues
>>> can be addressed ( ie I would like to get the views of other proxy types
>>> and
>>> the modellers/detectors there). I suggested to Peck that this was early
>>> in the week as I have to leave on the Thursday to go to the last day of
>>> a Working Group meeting of the Climate Change Detection group in Geneva
>>> ( a joint WMO Commission for Climatology/CLIVAR). I hope to report on the
>>> main findings of the Venice meeting.
>>>
>>> Another issue I would like to raise is availability of all the series
>>> you use in your reconstructions. That old chestnut again !
>>>
>>> How is life in Charlottesville ? Do you ever bump into Michaels or is
>>> always off giving skeptical talks ?
>>>
>>> Tim Osborn is making great progress with his NERC grant and will be
>>> looking
>>> into dates soon for coming to see you.
>>>
>>> Cheers
>>> Phil
>>>
>>>
>>> Prof. Phil Jones
>>> Climatic Research Unit Telephone +44 (0) 1603 592090
>>> School of Environmental Sciences Fax +44 (0) 1603 507784
>>> University of East Anglia
>>> Norwich Email p.jones@uea.ac.uk
>>> NR4 7TJ
>>> UK
>>>
>>> ————————————————————————–
>>> –
>>>
>>>
>>
>–
>Dr. Keith Briffa, Climatic Research Unit, University of East Anglia,
>Norwich, NR4 7TJ, United Kingdom
>Phone: +44-1603-592090 Fax: +44-1603-507784
>
>
>
_______________________________________________________________________
Professor Michael E. Mann
Department of Environmental Sciences, Clark Hall
University of Virginia
Charlottesville, VA 22903
_______________________________________________________________________
e-mail: mann@virginia.edu Phone: (804) 924-7770 FAX: (804) 982-2137
http://www.evsc.virginia.edu/f...../mann.html

From: Phil Jones
To: ray bradley ,mann@virginia.edu, mhughes@ltrr.arizona.edu
Subject: Diagram for WMO Statement
Date: Tue, 16 Nov 1999 13:31:15 +0000
Cc: k.briffa@uea.ac.uk,t.osborn@uea.ac.uk

Dear Ray, Mike and Malcolm,
Once Tim’s got a diagram here we’ll send that either later today or
first thing tomorrow.
I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps
to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd from
1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline. Mike’s series got the annual
land and marine values while the other two got April-Sept for NH land
N of 20N. The latter two are real for 1999, while the estimate for 1999
for NH combined is +0.44C wrt 61-90. The Global estimate for 1999 with
data through Oct is +0.35C cf. 0.57 for 1998.
Thanks for the comments, Ray.

Cheers
Phil

Prof. Phil Jones
Climatic Research Unit Telephone +44 (0) 1603 592090
School of Environmental Sciences Fax +44 (0) 1603 507784
University of East Anglia
Norwich Email p.jones@uea.ac.uk
NR4 7TJ
UK

—————————————————————————-

From: Kevin Trenberth
To: Michael Mann
Subject: Re: BBC U-turn on climate
Date: Wed, 14 Oct 2009 08:36:36 -0600
Cc: Tom Wigley , Stephen H Schneider , Myles Allen , peter stott , “Philip D. Jones” , Benjamin Santer , Thomas R Karl , Gavin Schmidt , James Hansen , Michael Oppenheimer

Mike
Here are some of the issues as I see them:
Saying it is natural variability is not an explanation. What are the physical processes?
Where did the heat go? We know there is a build up of ocean heat prior to El Nino, and a
discharge (and sfc T warming) during late stages of El Nino, but is the observing system
sufficient to track it? Quite aside from the changes in the ocean, we know there are major
changes in the storm tracks and teleconnections with ENSO, and there is a LOT more rain on
land during La Nina (more drought in El Nino), so how does the albedo change overall
(changes in cloud)? At the very least the extra rain on land means a lot more heat goes
into evaporation rather than raising temperatures, and so that keeps land temps down: and
should generate cloud. But the resulting evaporative cooling means the heat goes into
atmosphere and should be radiated to space: so we should be able to track it with CERES
data. The CERES data are unfortunately wonting and so too are the cloud data. The ocean
data are also lacking although some of that may be related to the ocean current changes and
burying heat at depth where it is not picked up. If it is sequestered at depth then it
comes back to haunt us later and so we should know about it.
Kevin
Michael Mann wrote:

Kevin, that’s an interesting point. As the plot from Gavin I sent shows, we can easily
account for the observed surface cooling in terms of the natural variability seen in
the CMIP3 ensemble (i.e. the observed cold dip falls well within it). So in that sense,
we can “explain” it. But this raises the interesting question, is there something going
on here w/ the energy & radiation budget which is inconsistent with the modes of
internal variability that leads to similar temporary cooling periods within the models.
I’m not sure that this has been addressed–has it?

m

On Oct 14, 2009, at 10:17 AM, Kevin Trenberth wrote:

Hi Tom
How come you do not agree with a statement that says we are no where close to knowing where
energy is going or whether clouds are changing to make the planet brighter. We are not
close to balancing the energy budget. The fact that we can not account for what is
happening in the climate system makes any consideration of geoengineering quite hopeless as
we will never be able to tell if it is successful or not! It is a travesty!
Kevin
Tom Wigley wrote:

Dear all,

At the risk of overload, here are some notes of mine on the recent

lack of warming. I look at this in two ways. The first is to look at

the difference between the observed and expected anthropogenic trend relative to the pdf
for unforced variability. The second is to remove ENSO, volcanoes and TSI variations
from the observed data.

Both methods show that what we are seeing is not unusual. The second

method leaves a significant warming over the past decade.

These sums complement Kevin’s energy work.

Kevin says … “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”. I do not

agree with this.

Tom.

+++++++++++++++++++++++

Kevin Trenberth wrote:

Hi all

Well I have my own article on where the heck is global warming? We are asking that here
in Boulder where we have broken records the past two days for the coldest days on
record. We had 4 inches of snow. The high the last 2 days was below 30F and the normal
is 69F, and it smashed the previous records for these days by 10F. The low was about
18F and also a record low, well below the previous record low. This is January weather
(see the Rockies baseball playoff game was canceled on saturday and then played last
night in below freezing weather).

Trenberth, K. E., 2009: An imperative for climate change planning: tracking Earth’s
global energy. /Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability/, *1*, 19-27,
doi:10.1016/j.cosust.2009.06.001. [PDF]

(A PDF of the published version can be obtained from the author.)

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.

That said there is a LOT of nonsense about the PDO. People like CPC are tracking PDO on
a monthly basis but it is highly correlated with ENSO. Most of what they are seeing is
the change in ENSO not real PDO. It surely isn’t decadal. The PDO is already reversing
with the switch to El Nino. The PDO index became positive in September for first time
since Sept 2007. see
[2]http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/GODAS/ocean_briefing_gif/global_ocean_monitorin
g_current.ppt

Kevin

Michael Mann wrote:

extremely disappointing to see something like this appear on BBC. its particularly odd,
since climate is usually Richard Black’s beat at BBC (and he does a great job). from
what I can tell, this guy was formerly a weather person at the Met Office.

We may do something about this on RealClimate, but meanwhile it might be appropriate for
the Met Office to have a say about this, I might ask Richard Black what’s up here?

mike

On Oct 12, 2009, at 2:32 AM, Stephen H Schneider wrote:

Hi all. Any of you want to explain decadal natural variability and signal to noise and
sampling errors to this new “IPCC Lead Author” from the BBC? As we enter an El Nino
year and as soon, as the sunspots get over their temporary–presumed–vacation worth a
few tenths of a Watt per meter squared reduced forcing, there will likely be another
dramatic upward spike like 1992-2000. I heard someone–Mike Schlesinger maybe??–was
willing to bet alot of money on it happening in next 5 years?? Meanwhile the past 10
years of global mean temperature trend stasis still saw what, 9 of the warmest in
reconstructed 1000 year record and Greenland and the sea ice of the North in big
retreat?? Some of you observational folks probably do need to straighten this out as my
student suggests below. Such “fun”, Cheers, Steve

Stephen H. Schneider

Melvin and Joan Lane Professor for Interdisciplinary Environmental Studies,

Professor, Department of Biology and

Senior Fellow, Woods Institute for the Environment

Mailing address:

Yang & Yamazaki Environment & Energy Building – MC 4205

473 Via Ortega

Ph: 650 725 9978

F: 650 725 4387

Websites: climatechange.net

patientfromhell.org

—– Forwarded Message —–

From: “Narasimha D. Rao” <[3]ndrao@stanford.edu >

To: “Stephen H Schneider” <[5]shs@stanford.edu >

Sent: Sunday, October 11, 2009 10:25:53 AM GMT -08:00 US/Canada Pacific

Subject: BBC U-turn on climate

Steve,

You may be aware of this already. Paul Hudson, BBC’s reporter on climate change, on
Friday wrote that there’s been no warming since 1998, and that pacific oscillations will
force cooling for the next 20-30 years. It is not outrageously biased in presentation as
are other skeptics’ views.

[7]http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8299079.stm

[8]http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/damianthompson/100013173/the-bbcs-amazing-u-turn-on
-climate-change/

BBC has significant influence on public opinion outside the US.

Do you think this merits an op-ed response in the BBC from a scientist?

Narasimha

——————————-

PhD Candidate,

Emmett Interdisciplinary Program in Environment and Resources (E-IPER)

Stanford University

Tel: 415-812-7560

–

Michael E. Mann

Professor

Director, Earth System Science Center (ESSC)

Department of Meteorology Phone: (814) 863-4075

503 Walker Building FAX: (814) 865-3663

The Pennsylvania State University email: [9]mann@psu.edu

University Park, PA 16802-5013

website: [11]http://www.meteo.psu.edu/~mann/Mann/index.html

“Dire Predictions” book site:
[13]http://www.essc.psu.edu/essc_web/news/DirePredictions/index.html

–

****************

Kevin E. Trenberth e-mail: [14]trenbert@ucar.edu

Climate Analysis Section, [15]www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/trenbert.html

NCAR

P. O. Box 3000, (303) 497 1318

Boulder, CO 80307 (303) 497 1333 (fax)

Street address: 1850 Table Mesa Drive, Boulder, CO 80305

–
****************
Kevin E. Trenberth e-mail: [16]trenbert@ucar.edu
Climate Analysis Section, [17]www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/trenbert.html
NCAR
P. O. Box 3000, (303) 497 1318
Boulder, CO 80307 (303) 497 1333 (fax)
Street address: 1850 Table Mesa Drive, Boulder, CO 80305

–
Michael E. Mann
Professor
Director, Earth System Science Center (ESSC)
Department of Meteorology Phone: (814) 863-4075
503 Walker Building FAX: (814) 865-3663
The Pennsylvania State University email: [18]mann@psu.edu
University Park, PA 16802-5013
website: [19]http://www.meteo.psu.edu/~mann/Mann/index.html
“Dire Predictions” book site:
[20]http://www.essc.psu.edu/essc_web/news/DirePredictions/index.html

–
****************
Kevin E. Trenberth e-mail: [21]trenbert@ucar.edu
Climate Analysis Section, [22]www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/trenbert.html
NCAR
P. O. Box 3000, (303) 497 1318
Boulder, CO 80307 (303) 497 1333 (fax)

Street address: 1850 Table Mesa Drive, Boulder, CO 80305

References

1. http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/Tr.....9final.pdf
2. http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/p.....urrent.ppt
3. mailto:ndrao@stanford.edu
4. mailto:ndrao@stanford.edu
5. mailto:shs@stanford.edu
6. mailto:shs@stanford.edu
7. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/sci.....299079.stm
8. http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/n.....te-change/
9. mailto:mann@psu.edu
10. mailto:mann@psu.edu
11. http://www.meteo.psu.edu/~mann/Mann/index.html
12. http://www.meteo.psu.edu/%7Emann/Mann/index.html
13. http://www.essc.psu.edu/essc_w.....index.html
14. mailto:trenbert@ucar.edu
15. http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/trenbert.html
16. mailto:trenbert@ucar.edu
17. http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/trenbert.html
18. mailto:mann@psu.edu
19. http://www.meteo.psu.edu/%7Emann/Mann/index.html
20. http://www.essc.psu.edu/essc_w.....index.html
21. mailto:trenbert@ucar.edu
22. http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/trenbert.html

Wow! If these are real there is not only a smoking gun, but bullet wounds in the feet of several senior and vocal scientists. Anyone believe in conspiracies?

1003 emails and attachments.

Now in the hands of a journalist. get ready for more FOIA

I still can’t find the directory. Is it gone?

Given the length and detail in the posts above, if it is a hoax, it is a very elaborate one indeed! Wow!

Can’t find the link either.

These examples have the banality of truth, imho.
Is someone in the ‘loop’ getting tired of something?

Test, can’t seem to post

Maybe they are Real Files. Then they would be Real AND fake,

Andrew

I’d take the position that if it looks too good to be true. . .

(but I also have a touch of sour grapes as I can’t seem to find the link that everyone is abuzz over!!)

Seems to me that someone has hacked UAH computers. All e-mails seem to contain at least an addrees ending uea.ac.uk. Also all the files seem to be UAH-related. At least some of the material has to be real, there are just so many small details that were just impossible to fake (for instance under briffa-treering-external/timonen there are some file names only a Finn would use).

http://ftp.tomcity.ru/incoming/free/FOI2009.zip

Seems almost too good to be true…..but, almost too detailed and on-point to be a hoax….man someone could get a great legal thriller out of this stuff.

You can’t fake those emails. Too many details, too much insight. They are without a doubt real IMO.

hmmm will we see this bannered in red tomorrow at Drudge?

heh heh

Bill-
If someone hacked in, they could create a few fake ones to mix in with real ones.

I agree that the main body of the emails rings true. Mind you, if you can hack a computer you could spike the emails. No idea really! It’s interesting correspondence anyway, quite apart from any shock-horror moments.

Lucia – you just said what I said before I said it!

This one was interesting…if true….

From: Phil Jones
To: “Michael E. Mann”
Subject: IPCC & FOI
Date: Thu May 29 11:04:11 2008

Mike,

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.
I see that CA claim they discovered the 1945 problem in the Nature paper!!
Cheers
Phil

Prof. Phil Jones
Climatic Research Unit Telephone +44 (0) 1603 592090
School of Environmental Sciences Fax +44 (0) 1603 507784
University of East Anglia
Norwich Email p.jones@uea.ac.uk
NR4 7TJ
UK
—————————————————————————-

I’ve been looking through the data portion, and it is clear that there is real data here. Briffa’s Yamal series are there… all 96 of them.

The party’s over, turn out the lights (sob). The party’s over, please turn out the lights (more sobbing).

jones-foiathoughts.doc:

Options appear to be:

1.Send them the data
2.Send them a subset removing station data from some of the countries who made us pay in the normals papers of Hulme et al. (1990s) and also any number that David can remember. This should also omit some other countries like (Australia, NZ, Canada, Antarctica). Also could extract some of the sources that Anders added in (31-38 source codes in J&M 2003). Also should remove many of the early stations that we coded up in the 1980s.
3.Send them the raw data as is, by reconstructing it from GHCN. How could this be done? Replace all stations where the WMO ID agrees with what is in GHCN. This would be the raw data, but it would annoy them.

Lucia:

If someone hacked in, they could create a few fake ones to mix in with real ones.

Well that’s the worry.

If these emails are real, and that’s a major *if*, there are some people who should be worried about their tenured positions at this point.

In an ideal, sexy soap-opera universe, not only would these emails be real.. the hacker would return in a week to show what Phil Jones and Michael Mann have been talking about in the last week!

XD

Steve Geiger, that one is a humdinger. I wonder what the IPCC will have to say for their open and transparent review system when their lead authors are emailing stuff like that to each other. Really shocking.

Carrick–
Surely, the agencies will beef up their security?

Carrick says,

“If these emails are real, and that’s a major *if*, there are some people who should be worried about their tenured positions at this point.”

I don’t see what you think is so damning. All I see is a debate over the significance of the hockey stick that was contradicted by later public statements. Embarrassing sure. Grounds for dismissal – I don’t think so.

Lucia:

Surely, the agencies will beef up their security?

I’m betting this was an inside job. So stopping the leak may be tough in this case.

If I were Phil Jones, I’d get a gmail account. (Hm… Wonder if that’s even legal though? Remember the Bushies who got flak over that?)

Raven:

Embarrassing sure. Grounds for dismissal – I don’t think so.

Some of the (supposed) emails amount to a conspiracy to falsify and destroy data.

That would be grounds for termination of tenure and dismissal at any place I’ve worked at.

Some examples:

I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.

and

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.

These are for starters.

We don’t know these emails are legitimate yet, but if the administration of Univ East Anglica wanted to determine whether they were real or not, it wouldn’t require Phil Jone’s cooperation to do so.

Destroying data that is subject to a UK FoI request is a criminal offence.

Carrick,

Yes, those do look, prima facie, incriminating. However, I’m also suspicious of an email asking someone to delete emails which hasn’t itself been deleted. What do you think?

This stuff is explosive and merits investigation. If it was fabricated, it needs criminal prosecution. If it was NOT fabricated… well that needs criminal prosecution too.

From: Michael Mann
To: Andrew Revkin
Subject: Re: mcintyre’s latest….
Date: Tue, 29 Sep 2009 17:27:25 -0400
Cc: t.osborn@uea.ac.uk

HI Andy,

Yep, what was written below is all me, but it was purely on background, please don’t quote
anything I said or attribute to me w/out checking specifically–thanks.

Re, your point at the end–you’ve taken the words out of my mouth. Skepticism is essential
for the functioning of science. It yields an erratic path towards eventual truth. But
legitimate scientific skepticism is exercised through formal scientific circles, in
particular the peer review process. A necessary though not in general sufficient condition
for taking a scientific criticism seriously is that it has passed through the legitimate
scientific peer review process. those such as McIntyre who operate almost entirely outside
of this system are not to be trusted.

mike

On Sep 29, 2009, at 5:19 PM, Andrew Revkin wrote:

thanks heaps.
tom crowley has sent me a direct challenge to mcintyre to start contributing to the
reviewed lit or shut up. i’m going to post that soon.
just want to be sure that what is spliced below is from YOU … a little unclear . ?
I’m copying this to Tim, in hopes that he can shed light on the specific data assertions
made over at climateaudit.org…..
I’m going to blog on this as it relates to the value of the peer review process and not on
the merits of the mcintyre et al attacks.
peer review, for all its imperfections, is where the herky-jerky process of knowledge
building happens, would you agree?

p.s. Tim Osborn ([1]t.osborn@uea.ac.uk) is probably the best person to contact for
further details, in Keith’s absence,

mike

On Sep 29, 2009, at 5:08 PM, Michael Mann wrote:

Hi Andy,

I’m fairly certain Keith is out of contact right now recovering from an operation, and
is not in a position to respond to these attacks. However, the preliminary information I
have from others familiar with these data is that the attacks are bogus.

It is unclear that this particular series was used in any of our reconstructions (some
of the underlying chronologies may be the same, but I’m fairly certain the versions of
these data we have used are based on a different composite and standardization method),
let alone any of the dozen other reconstructions of Northern Hemisphere mean temperature
shown in the most recent IPCC report, which come to the conclusion that recent warming
is anomalous in a long-term context.

So, even if there were a problem w/ these data, it wouldn’t matter as far as the key
conclusions regarding past warmth are concerned. But I don’t think there is any problem
with these data, rather it appears that McIntyre has greatly distorted the actual
information content of these data. It will take folks a few days to get to the bottom of
this, in Keith’s absence.

if McIntyre had a legitimate point, he would submit a comment to the journal in
question. of course, the last time he tried that (w/ our ‘98 article in Nature), his
comment was rejected. For all of the noise and bluster about the Steig et al Antarctic
warming, its now nearing a year and nothing has been submitted. So more likely he won’t
submit for peer-reviewed scrutiny, or if it does get his criticism “published” it will
be in the discredited contrarian home journal “Energy and Environment”. I’m sure you
are aware that McIntyre and his ilk realize they no longer need to get their crap
published in legitimate journals. All they have to do is put it up on their blog, and
the contrarian noise machine kicks into gear, pretty soon Druge, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn
Beck and their ilk (in this case, The Telegraph were already on it this morning) are
parroting the claims. And based on what? some guy w/ no credentials, dubious connections
with the energy industry, and who hasn’t submitted his claims to the scrutiny of peer
review.

Fortunately, the prestige press doesn’t fall for this sort of stuff, right?

mike

I’m sure you’re aware that you will dozens of bogus, manufactured distortions of the
science in the weeks leading up to the vote on cap & trade in the U.S. senate. This is
no

On Sep 29, 2009, at 4:30 PM, Andrew Revkin wrote:

needless to say, seems the 2008 pnas paper showing that without tree rings still solid
picture of unusual recent warmth, but McIntyre is getting wide play for his statements
about Yamal data-set selectivity.
Has he communicated directly to you on this and/or is there any indication he’s seeking
journal publication for his deconstruct?
–
Andrew C. Revkin
The New York Times / Environment
620 Eighth Ave., NY, NY 10018
Tel: 212-556-7326 Mob: 914-441-5556
Fax: 509-357-0965
[2]http://www.nytimes.com/revkin

–

Michael E. Mann
Professor
Director, Earth System Science Center (ESSC)
Department of Meteorology Phone: (814) 863-4075

503 Walker Building FAX: (814) 865-3663
The Pennsylvania State University email: [3]mann@psu.edu
University Park, PA 16802-5013
website: [4]http://www.meteo.psu.edu/~mann/Mann/index.html

“Dire Predictions” book site:

[5]http://www.essc.psu.edu/essc_web/news/DirePredictions/index.html

–

Michael E. Mann
Professor
Director, Earth System Science Center (ESSC)
Department of Meteorology Phone: (814) 863-4075
503 Walker Building FAX: (814) 865-3663
The Pennsylvania State University email: [6]mann@psu.edu
University Park, PA 16802-5013
website: [7]http://www.meteo.psu.edu/~mann/Mann/index.html

“Dire Predictions” book site:

[8]http://www.essc.psu.edu/essc_web/news/DirePredictions/index.html

–

Andrew C. Revkin
The New York Times / Environment
620 Eighth Ave., NY, NY 10018
Tel: 212-556-7326 Mob: 914-441-5556
Fax: 509-357-0965
[9]http://www.nytimes.com/revkin

–
Michael E. Mann
Professor
Director, Earth System Science Center (ESSC)
Department of Meteorology Phone: (814) 863-4075
503 Walker Building FAX: (814) 865-3663
The Pennsylvania State University email: [10]mann@psu.edu
University Park, PA 16802-5013
website: [11]http://www.meteo.psu.edu/~mann/Mann/index.html
“Dire Predictions” book site:
[12]http://www.essc.psu.edu/essc_web/news/DirePredictions/index.html

References

Visible links
1. mailto:t.osborn@uea.ac.uk
2. http://www.nytimes.com/revkin
3. mailto:mann@psu.edu
4. http://www.meteo.psu.edu/~mann/Mann/index.html
5. http://www.essc.psu.edu/essc_w.....index.html
6. mailto:mann@psu.edu
7. http://www.meteo.psu.edu/~mann/Mann/index.html
8. http://www.essc.psu.edu/essc_w.....index.html
9. http://www.nytimes.com/revkin
10. mailto:mann@psu.edu
11. http://www.meteo.psu.edu/~mann/Mann/index.html
12. http://www.essc.psu.edu/essc_w.....index.html

Hidden links:
13. http://www.met.psu.edu/dept/faculty/mann.htm
14. http://www.met.psu.edu/dept/faculty/mann.htm
15. http://www.met.psu.edu/dept/faculty/mann.htm

The contact information within the email does not seem to be accurate. Mann is at Penn State not Virginia.

Although I am on dialup, I am presently downloading. This is just too good to miss out on.
.
Though, I must say I’m far more interested in snippets of code than I am the emails.

Seth – Mann was at UVA prior to PSU

Simon:

Yes, those do look, prima facie, incriminating. However, I’m also suspicious of an email asking someone to delete emails which hasn’t itself been deleted. What do you think?

Depends on where the file was that these emails were extracted from. If it is from the mail server, it wouldn’t matter whether Jones had deleted it on his own computer or not. (In fact, it would be much more likely that the mole/hacker would have access to the server files than to Phil Jone’s personal system.)

That said, I obviously hope they are fake.

Oh, my mistake. I wonder if anyone at CA can determine if this may be real.

Seth– If the hacker had gotten the raw headers, we would have more to look at. But it’s only the texts of the emails.

I’m betting a bunch are real and a few are fakes.

Lucia, there is enough information on these emails for IT people at Univ East Anglica to determine whether they were legitimate or not.

I’m not making any bets myself (not even Quatloos), but if I were colluding to destroy data, I wouldn’t do it using email.

Ben Santer’s nickmame for Steve: Mr. Mc “I’m not entirely there in the head”.

Phil Jones was hoping he wouldn’t run into Steve at the Spring AGU meeting in Toronto.

#1233249393

Does the person who posted that file at the Russian FTP site have the courage to come forward and identify himself? You can identify yourself to Steve, Anthony, Jeff or Lucia simply by posting a comment with your real e-mail address and asking them to contact you. The rest of us will never know who you are and they will never reveal your identity. But the provenance of this material needs to be proved.

I’m having trouble getting into CA right now.

I made up a pdf of the emails to help browse through them and it’s over 2000 pages. Every email that I’ve examined so far looks genuine. There are a few emails of mine that are 100% genuine.

It is really quite breathtaking.

“However, I’m also suspicious of an email asking someone to delete emails which hasn’t itself been deleted. What do you think?”

I think lots of people, including climate scientists, don’t realize that e-mail never gets deleted.

that being said i am leaning to the “looks to good to be true” and “real stuff mixed with fake stuff” camp.

the person who procured and posted that data, real or not, likely committed crimes.

The effected persons are not going to take this lightly, nor should they since their reputations and livelihoods are at stake.

Keep this in mind, take a deep breath, and proceed very carefully.

All the documents I looked at, had the right author/organization in the properties.

Its possible to fake, but damn tedious.

I see a file called

mbh98-osborn.zip

That should interest some people.

It’s no scam.

un-freakin’ believable.

Greenpeace asking CRU for help in setting up a Climate Justice Conference.

.
Hi Mick,

—————
Paul V. Horsman
Oil Campaigner
Greenpeace International Climate Campaign
Greenpeace,

.
.
I see a Harry_read_me.txt file. Should be interesting.

It would appear that every claim of skeptics that AGW promoters have been cynical is true.
Since a lot of this data is US govt. property, it calls for a criminal investigation, at the least.
Serious journalists can find career making info in this, if they care to over come their prejudices.

Post hasn’t gotten through at CA because CA is rather sluggish, but the content was to ask whether anyone thought an FOI request for the raw IT files at UEA would be in order. Since several of the emails indicate deliberate attempts to avoid legitimate FOI requests, it would seem that the email records at UEA are now subject to FOI.
.
Thoughts?

Tamino’s name is there.

Hey, if Al Gore can photoshop a hurricane to rotate backwards, he could fake these tens of thousands of emails.

right Al ?

I love this comment from Phil Jones: “Mike Mann refuses to talk to these people [skeptics] and I can understand why. They are just trying to find if we’ve done anything wrong.”

Why yes, that is the goal! If they haven’t done anything wrong – and by wrong I’m referring to the science! – they shouldn’t have anything to worry about.

#1091798809

Lucia, see yourself in 1225412081.txt

Dear Gav,
. . .
Love Lucia

No-one who could make up this stuff and get all the details right and the syntax “comfortable” would ever ever ever have been so audacious as to say such things on record. It has to be real.

My God…..

Wouldn’t this qualify as “civil disobedience” approved by Dr. James Hansen?
Remember as well how often we’ve been told there is no political hanky panky going on?

If nothing else it proves there really is a good ole boy network and what an entangled web it is! It looks like skeptics are vindicated after all.

Ryan O (Comment#23780)

Ryan,

I am no legal expert, but I would doubt from my reading of the UK FOI ACT that such emails would be deemed to be ‘held’ by a public body, or even if so that they would not be excluded from any FOI request on the grounds of it being “information provided in confidence” -

http://www.opsi.gov.uk/Acts/ac.....#pt2-l1g41

I’m not making any judgement on whether or not such emails should. be thus accessible, just giving a guess on the basis of my reading.

Of course, if there were any criminal aspect involved (such as, perhaps, conspiracy to avoid an FOI request) then emails would be admissible as evidence in any trial, but that would not be as a matter of an FOI request.

Lucia, this is too big and too detailed to be fake. I will spend the weekend going through all this. Don’t forget, there is not only e-mails here but also “THE SECRET CODES” of software roputines available that can be checked.

Re: Simon Evans (Comment#23787) November 19th, 2009 at 6:37 pm

On FOI. One approach may be to request under FOI something known to be contained in the zipbomb, then wait to see if it’s denied and grounds for denial. I’ve seen comments that there are documents suggesting deletion of data requested under FOI, which would be a criminal offence. If that’s true, then it might be worth passing to the UK ICO for investigation.

Real or fake? I dunno, but it reminds me of this:

“I am the eyes and ears of this institution, my friends.”

It may have been the janitor, but I’m guessing it was the Computer Guy.

Ya’ll have no idea what we really do upstairs in the Data Center, do you?

He ha ha!

Andrew

“Mike’s Nature trick” ??!! That just does not sound real.

Hi bender,

I tend to agree with you. Hey, I’m a sceptic!

1248785856.txt seems so … I don’t know how to put it. But it certainly gives a lot of insight in there about the coordination going on among people and making it appear as if they are all individual actors. Seems so conspiratorial when you see them discussing how to manipulate opinion and organizing ways of discrediting things.

From : Phil Jones [1]
To: Kevin Trenberth [2]
References: [3]
[4] [5]
[6] [7]

Kevin,
Right on ! Assumes precip doesn’t change – i.e. it’s constant. Difficult to do much more for some regions, but could do a lot better for the Alps. Ch 4 has swallowed this hook, line and sinker and it is really a Ch 6 issue. Ch 6 wasn’t even aware of it.

Can’t decide who on Ch 4 knew about it as Oerlemans isn’t there and the Swiss Glacier people didn’t know about the paper 2 weeks ago when I saw them.

I like the curve as does Mike Mann, but its not for any scientific reason.

Any jury is still out on whether this is right, but I’m glad someone has tried the approach. It is a quantification of what people have assumed, but there likely isn’t enough detail in the paper to show how it was done.

I’ve not seen this paper in a proper issue of Science yet. As such I’ve not been able to get the supporting material. This paper is totally independent of all other paleo work. It is much better science than Mobeg et al. in Nature in February. Susan has been sending a few emails to Ch 6 about how to display the various millennium series – some of which she’s not thought through.

Just be glad we haven’t got paleo in out chapter !
Cheers
Phil

***

Better than any soap opera (This one is 1114025310)

One thought I had … regarding this smoking gun quote

“I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline. Mike’s series got the annual land and marine values while the other two got April-Sept for NH land N of 20N. The latter two are real for 1999, while the estimate for 1999 for NH combined is +0.44C wrt 61-90. The Global estimate for 1999 with data through Oct is +0.35C cf. 0.57 for 1998.”

It should be possible to find the data, find the claimed temps that were added in, the Nature article, and see if in fact this is what was done. If that matches, this is genuine.

marooned.jpg

Beautiful quote from Mike Mann (email 1254259645.txt):
.

if McIntyre had a legitimate point, he would submit a comment to the journal in question. of course, the last time he tried that (w/ our ‘98 article in Nature), his comment was rejected. For all of the noise and bluster about the Steig et al Antarctic warming, its now nearing a year and nothing has been submitted. So more likely he won’t submit for peer-reviewed scrutiny, or if it does get his criticism “published” it will be in the discredited contrarian home journal “Energy and Environment”. I’m sure you are aware that McIntyre and his ilk realize they no longer need to get their crap published in legitimate journals. All they have to do is put it up on their blog, and the contrarian noise machine kicks into gear, pretty soon Druge, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and their ilk (in this case, The Telegraph were already on it this morning) are parroting the claims. And based on what? some guy w/ no credentials, dubious connections with the energy industry, and who hasn’t submitted his claims to the scrutiny of peer review.

.
I will shortly have a surprise for you, Mike.

IMO this is not a hack. Looking through it looks like it is someones folders. The emails are all text files which is not the native format of email (some have the full headers). It appears that someone, for whatever reason, wanted to save them as text documents. It would appear from a cursorary examination that the files came from the CRU. There are 1073 text email files. I did a text search of the email folder looking for “uea.ac.uk” which returned 1030 files.

My initial thoughts are this is another data muck up like the one that allowed Steve McIntyre to download the CRU data. It seems likely to me, that after that episode, there would be at least a few people keeping an eye out for another episode of data leaking.

well this must be end…for AGW

email # 1257874826.txt
Phil Jones writes:
“One final thing – don’t worry too much about the 1940-60 period, as I think we’ll be changing the SSTs there for 1945-60 and with more digitized data for 1940-45.”

vg (Comment#23802) November 19th, 2009 at 7:33 pm

well this must be end…for AGW

You mean someone’s hacked some emails and that has removed any influence of anthropogenic emissions upon the climate?

Cool – I didn’t know it would be so easy! Why didn’t someone think of this simple solution before?

@ Simon

ClimateGate

Simon Evans — “You mean someone’s hacked some emails and that has removed any influence of anthropogenic emissions upon the climate?”

Your keen sense of irony tells me you are very much a smart guy and aware that “any” influence” is not the game, or the dispute, and politics requires “all” or “most” to get lucrative laws passed on the AGW bandwagon.

But, congrats, you found a meme to reblame your enemy by rebranding and standing still on the side of truth–seemingly. Your comment did more than anyone else’s here to tell me this is big–you knew it instantly, yes? You are a sharp guy.

FTM, you take yourself too seriously

Climate Gate,

Fantastic.

Zer0th (Comment#23784)

Pretty funny! The odd thing is the person at CA who thought there was a typo thought the paper was right because he was sure it contained a typo. However, I though the method in the paper was right because it did not contain a typo!

Now I’ll have to blog about that. I’ll see if I still have the rest of the correspondence.

FTM,

Yes, I think it is potentially ‘big’ in terms of its impact upon opinion. I don’t think it’s ‘big’ in terms of analysing what is happening, or is likely to happen, with the climate. I’ve never put too much weight upon the usefulness of palaeo reconstructions of the past thousand years anyway (and yes, I have said that before now).

I suspect these emails are either entirely authentic or else nearly so. There’s quite a bit of difference between those two possibilities, but let’s go with the former, for consideration.

If entirely authentic, then they will be picked over, with the old fine-toothed comb, for whatever indications they may contain of impropriety. The effect of this, almost regardless of whether or not such indications are substantial, will be to cast doubt upon the motives of scientists in this particular field.

The effect of that will be to fuel doubt of scientists in all fields related to considering the climate. That would be unreasonable, of course, but that’s what will happen.

None of which will tell us anything one way or the other about what the climate is likely to do. That is, actually, what I am interested in.

Simon Evans says:

“None of which will tell us anything one way or the other about what the climate is likely to do. That is, actually, what I am interested in.”

I agree completely. But we have to trust that the scientists who are trying to answer this question are interpreting the data objectively. If we can’t trust those scientists then we cannot trust their conclusions.

Looks like the file just got deleted off the Russian server.

Simon Evans: If entirely authentic, then they will be picked over, with the old fine-toothed comb, for whatever indications they may contain of impropriety.

And if this is so, they tell you a lot about the real purpose of the RC website; just one example:

Anyway, I wanted you guys to know that you’re free to use RC in any way you think would be helpful. Gavin and I are going to be careful about what comments we screen through, and we’ll be very careful to answer any questions that come up to any extent we can. On the other hand, you might want to visit the thread and post replies yourself. We can hold comments up in the queue and contact you about whether or not you think they should be screened through or not, and if so, any comments you’d like us to include.

You’re also welcome to do a followup guest post, etc. think of RC as a resource that is at your disposal to combat any disinformation put forward by the McIntyres of the world. Just let us know. We’ll use our best discretion to make sure the skeptics dont’get to use the RC comments as a megaphone…

There are dozens (56 containing realclimate and 12 real climate) of e-mails discussing what and when should be posted. These are not the scientists you are looking for

The original post:

>>>>
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.
Hopefully it will give some insight into the science and the people behind it.

This is a limited time offer, download now: http://ftp.tomcity.ru/incoming/free/FOI2009.zip

Sample:

0926010576.txt * Mann: working towards a common goal
1189722851.txt * Jones: “try and change the Received date!”
0924532891.txt * Mann vs. CRU
0847838200.txt * Briffa & Yamal 1996: “too much growth in recent years makes it difficult to derive a valid age/growth curve”
0926026654.txt * Jones: MBH dodgy ground
1225026120.txt * CRU’s truncated temperature curve
1059664704.txt * Mann: dirty laundry
1062189235.txt * Osborn: concerns with MBH uncertainty
0926947295.txt * IPCC scenarios not supposed to be realistic
0938018124.txt * Mann: “something else” causing discrepancies
0939154709.txt * Osborn: we usually stop the series in 1960
0933255789.txt * WWF report: beef up if possible
0998926751.txt * “Carefully constructed” model scenarios to get “distinguishable results”
0968705882.txt * CLA: “IPCC is not any more an assessment of published science but production of results”
1075403821.txt * Jones: Daly death “cheering news”
1029966978.txt * Briffa – last decades exceptional, or not?
1092167224.txt * Mann: “not necessarily wrong, but it makes a small difference” (factor 1.29)
1188557698.txt * Wigley: “Keenan has a valid point”
1118949061.txt * we’d like to do some experiments with different proxy combinations
1120593115.txt * I am reviewing a couple of papers on extremes, so that I can refer to them in the chapter for AR4

WTH–
Well… I sent the url to Gavin. So, I’m guessing they figured out how to do the equivalent of a DMAC. That said, this genie ain’t going back in the bottle.

Raven,

And I agree with you. And if it were to turn out to be the case that we should not trust the conclusions of a particular group of scientists regarding the temperature history of the past thousand years then where does that leave us? We hardly have robust global or hemispheric reconstructions lined up to step in to take the place of their analyses, do we?

We end up, I think, having the uncertainty regarding the past thousand years that prevailed ten+ years ago.

That doesn’t make much change to my own thinking about this, though I recognise that it may do to others.

Rats! The link to the file is dead.

Chad (Comment#23819)

I imagine someone will have it on a torrent soon enough. The md5sum for the file is da2e1d6c453e0643e05e90c681eb1df4 so if you get a different md5sum, there is something different.

Simon Evans says,

“we should not trust the conclusions of a particular group of scientists regarding the temperature history of the past thousand years then where does that leave us?”

The group is not limited to paleo reconstructions. Some of the e-mails suggest that people are interfering in the peer review process by threatening editors that accept sceptical papers. There are others suggesting that HadCRUT data may have been compromised.

It does not mean that the IPCC conclusions are wrong but it does mean that we cannot make policy based on the assumption that they are likely to be right.

I’ve just managed to download from the originally posted site and get the same md5sum value as crosspatch above and what was posted earlier at WUWT.

It’s all pretty exciting, hopefully its not just some elaborate ruse where all the team members are sitting back and chuckling over their beers watching the ’skeptics’ fall over themselves with it…

The more I think about this, the more I believe this will be the case, if the truth gets out:
1 – This is not a hack, in the sense of vandals breaking in. This is probably someone legitimately involved in the communications who has had a conscience attack, and has dumped their e-mail archive to the public. Hadley is calling it a hack, but this was probably done by an insider accessing their e-mail record and dumping it. Think of the Pentagon Papers, or the NYT publishing leaked CIA papers.
2- this is real. It is too complex and massive to be a false-but-true, or even a false-and-false scam.
3- the behavior of the principals, as shown so far, is entirely compatible with the idea of a self-absorbed self-declared elite controlling the data, their image,a nd the discussion of their work.
4- this archive needs to be widely and openly posted.
5- This confirms that the crisis atmosphere of AGW is contrived.

I managed to get about 15Mb before the download was cancelled, and now the link is dead. After repairing the zip and extracting what I got, I have to concur it looks genuine.

Also,

D MacKenzie (Comment#23822)
…hopefully its not just some elaborate ruse where all the team members are sitting back and chuckling over their beers watching the ’skeptics’ fall over themselves with it…

I really, truly don’t believe they’re either that smart or that motivated… and they don’t see “skeptics” as much of a threat. At the moment they still believe they’re untouchable.

Wow. Pretty incredible stuff, if legit. Better than Grisham, either way!

Crosspatch. Not being very wise in the ways of the web – if someone deletes these files from the ru site can whoever did it be traced? If this were done then a nail in the coffin too far?

If you want to know if it is real… Request one of the emails from the public institutions involved in one of the emails. If you have names and dates, you can craft a rather specific request.

#23816 Well as long as Gavin and his fellow conspirators are happy. Well done Lucia. Help the Climate Criminals conceal their crime why don’t you. Sheesh. And please don’t bang on about ethics etc. These guys have cause Billions of damage.

Raven:

It does not mean that the IPCC conclusions are wrong but it does mean that we cannot make policy based on the assumption that they are likely to be right.

For me that was already a safe assumption.

MarkR,

“Well as long as Gavin…”

You mean ‘Gav’?

Love,

Andrew

If anyone has the original download, please send copies to National Newspapers, especially in the UK. Daily Telegraph,Times of London, Daily Mail, Daily Express, Sun, also New York Post, Wall Street Journal, Washington Times. FOX News.

This has to break in the Mainstream.

Also anyone brave enough to post their copy on an ftp location?

I’m not buying it.

This hits too many of our “hot buttons”, right on point.

But, you know, if I’m right, whoever did it has spent a lot of time reading skeptic blogs.

MarkR–
Gavin emailed me out of the blue. He told me the link was down at JeffId’s. I’d taken a screen shot so I sent the screen shot to Gavin. I don’t know if Gavin’s efforts led to getting the link down, or if that .ru server is down due to the link going viral. I mean…even though the link is not posted, do you have any idea how many people must be slamming that server?

lucia #23816

I dunno about that, my guess would be something more mundane like the server admin saw a big spike in traffic and whacked the file. I got about 14M downloaded when I was dropped and got 404s when I retried. Seems like an odd coincidence that the file got deleted 5 minutes after I started downloading, so if I had to guess it would be they exceeded their bandwdith limit.

Andrew_KY (Comment#23830) Hi. I’m afraid if I was overfamiliar with the High Priest of the Climate Model, I would be struck by a lightning bolt from the Climate Gods. Forgive me Gaia. (Smiley thing goes here)
Regards
MarkR

Posted this at WUWT ealier and will post it at CA when I can get in.

Folks,

I really want to believe that what’s now in the wild is genuine and unedited. The reason I want to believe this is that so many of the partisans named in the e-mails I’ve seen posted in comments (haven’t looked at the .zip) have so brutally abused my BS detectors over the last few years. Making press releases ahead of journal publications, stonewalling on data and method transparency and giving nonsense answers to reasoned and valid criticism have, for quite some time, had the Scotsman in Engineering calling me saying “Captain, the BS detectors ‘r nah gonna take this much lunger!”.

Unfortunately (for at least me I suppose), what I’ve seen of this event to date is setting off those same BS detectors in a big way. Call me naïve, but I simply can’t imagine that folks as smart and determined (if not principled on the face of the evidence prior to this event) as the named Team members would engage in e-mail discussions as presented.

I can buy arrogance (just from a regular read of RC), but the utter stupidity instantiated in the e-mail samples I’ve seen so far makes me instantly skeptical.

Tread cautiously on this.

All of that said, I hope my BS detectors are malfunctioning as a consequence of previous abuse

OA

Lucia (Comment#23834) So we can expect a full, open and free discussion of said emails over at Gav’s Place Real Climate? I don’t think so. His motivation for wanting the link was to try to limit damage, not to highlight any possible malfeasance at the CRU.

Whoever has the whole archive should post it on megaupload or rapidshare. I haven’t found a torrent yet.

MarkR–
Oh… Gavin didn’t actually ask me for the link. He said the comment was down, plus a few other things. I sent the screen shot.

There is more to the story. Maybe someday, all Gavin and my correspondences will end up in a zip file.

MarkR,

I hear ya talkin’. I threw salt over my shoulder when I hit ‘Submit.’ Then I asked my Al Gore poster for a reprieve, for lo, I did typeth a name unworthily and with much mockery!

Andrew

The file is here: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=75J4XO4T

If anyone has the FOI2009.zip file, please upload it to http://www.wikileaks.org. This is a highly replicated site spanning many jurisdictions. The file will be safe for posterity there. I doubt the details will be lost, now its in the wild but Wikileaks is safer for any individual rather than hosting the file themselves.

Wow ….

From a file called: jones-foiathoughts.doc

Options appear to be:

Send them the data

Send them a subset removing station data from some of the countries who made us pay in the normals papers of Hulme et al. (1990s) and also any number that David can remember. This should also omit some other countries like (Australia, NZ, Canada, Antarctica). Also could extract some of the sources that Anders added in (31-38 source codes in J&M 2003). Also should remove many of the early stations that we coded up in the 1980s.

Send them the raw data as is, by reconstructing it from GHCN. How could this be done? Replace all stations where the WMO ID agrees with what is in GHCN. This would be the raw data, but it would annoy them.

ya raven that a good one. Interesting how a scientist is giving advice on how to comply with FOI. The ones that interest me are the ones where people talk about the dangers of releasing code and data, the tactics to avoid releasing, at one point one author says something like he doesnt want to release the data because he knows they will just try to prove him wrong. The circle the wagons mentality.

Oh, remember the debate we had about whether certain people read CA or not..

Also available via bit torrent at:

http://www.mininova.org/tor/3168330

I’m hoping that the leaker is monitoring these sites and understands that provenance is important. I am confident that Steve, Anthony, Lucia, Jeff Id or Tom Fuller would respect your anonymity. Just contact them… get a throw-away e-mail address at hotmail, use it to post a comment and simply say, “please contact me”… there are lots of questions that need to be answered… many of the posters on these sites are easily found and would probably be honored to act as a cut-out if you felt you needed one. Please come forward.

I have already done a couple of posts on this and sent some of the details to my Senate Contact.

True or false (I’m inclined to true) this is going to put a lot of ink in the water and destroy a forest or two.

Also I link back to here.

[...] I’m not quite sure what to make of this story, but computer files seem to have been hacked at the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit, home of the obstructive Phil Jones. Many of the emails certainly look genuine, and as Steve McIntyre of Climate Audit posted on Lucia’s blog: [...]

Lucia, frequent reader, never commented before. To all BS detector wielders. You need to re-read the transcripts of the ENRON meltdown, contemporaneous to many of these emails. Back then, no one could believe that emails were not ABSOLUTELY private, and they said the most amazing things for the record. Remember that we are reading material from the 90s and early ‘oughts through the paranoid prism of 2009…

Lets let it play out.

To build on earlier posters comments, there are very serious issues here that deeply impact not just individual lives and institutions, but also the credibility of scientists and trust w/the public.

Let’s stay tru to the ethos both here and on CA and keep the debate kept centered on facts and keep preasure on the civil and public institutions and authorities to get to the bottom of this. Once the facts are settled, appropraitely, then judgements can be made.

Trial balloon: who would be in favor of singing a statement that –

* condemns the illegal appropriation of data from any source;
* affirms commitment to operating within the law;
* encourages a swift and impartial settlement of all facts related to the revealing of the alledged data;
* discourages hasty conclusions and reserve judgement until truthfulness is established;
* expresses support for transparency and archiving

Any takers?

The download site I found is this;

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=XD050VKY

Not sure about it as am no scientist but I started at ;

http://cbullitt.wordpress.com/.....-released/

Great to see this getting across the blogosphere. Looks like they are real. Lets see what happens with the mainstream press. Have sent it to the pollies in Aus – should give them something to think about!

[...] more here [...]

I’ll post here what I already posted elsewhere:

Don’t use this information at all. Three reasons

1) it could be a trap. It is all to possible it has been tweaked and once it goes public that you use this kind of higly suspicious data you will be damaged beyond repair.

2) It infuriates the opposite party. I mean, the conversation they though was private is now being reviewed. I don’t know about you; but I would be disgusted if this happened to me. Stay courteous.

3) It doesn’t add anything usefull. I mean, the data will either prove IPCC or the sceptics right. If you can wait another 10 years, and you should be able to do that, nature itself will prove your case.

peeke,

I’d be willing to wait 10 years if our masters promise no carbon or energy taxes until then.

Uh. Wait. A Climate Tax law is in the US Senate?

Well then.

Publish and be damned

How to do science:

At 06:25 28/09/2009, Tom Wigley wrote: Phil, Here are some speculations on correcting SSTs to partly explain the 1940s warming blip. If you look at the attached plot you will see that the land also shows the 1940s blip (as I’m sure you know). So, if we could reduce the ocean blip by, say, 0.15 degC, then this would be significant for the global mean — but we’d still have to explain the land blip. I’ve chosen 0.15 here deliberately. This still leaves an ocean blip, and i think one needs to have some form of ocean blip to explain the land blip (via either some common forcing, or ocean forcing land, or vice versa, or all of these). When you look at other blips, the land blips are 1.5 to 2 times (roughly) the ocean blips — higher sensitivity plus thermal inertia effects. My 0.15 adjustment leaves things consistent with this, so you can see where I am coming from. Removing ENSO does not affect this. It would be good to remove at least part of the 1940s blip, but we are still left with “why the blip”. Let me go further. If you look at NH vs SH and the aerosol effect (qualitatively or with MAGICC) then with a reduced ocean blip we get continuous warming in the SH, and a cooling in the NH — just as one would expect with mainly NH aerosols. The other interesting thing is (as Foukal et al. note — from MAGICC) that the 1910-40 warming cannot be solar. The Sun can get at most 10% of this with Wang et al solar, less with Foukal solar. So this may well be NADW, as Sarah and I noted in 1987 (and also Schlesinger later). A reduced SST blip in the 1940s makes the 1910-40 warming larger than the SH (which it currently is not) — but not really enough. So … why was the SH so cold around 1910? Another SST problem? (SH/NH data also attached.) This stuff is in a report I am writing for EPRI, so I’d appreciate any comments you (and Ben) might have. Tom.

@M. Simon

This is about science, not taxes. If your country taxes you too much fight that in the political arena. BTW, didn’t the US just postponed the whole thing? That’s one year.

The possibility is very real that someone downloaded the file, but edited it slightly. Guess who is damned then? Don’t use it, however tempting it may be.

NOT AN HOAX (emails etc..) ITS REAL!! real Phil Jones has admitted it! Excuse Caps….

From WUWT

UPDATE2: Response from CRU h/t to WUWT reader “Nev”

http://briefingroom.typepad.co.....-real.html

The director of Britain’s leading Climate Research Unit, Phil Jones, has told Investigate magazine’s TGIF Edition tonight that his organization has been hacked, and the data flying all over the internet appears to be genuine.

In an exclusive interview, Jones told TGIF, “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.”

“Have you alerted police”

“Not yet. We were not aware of what had been taken.”

Jones says he was first tipped off to the security breach by colleagues at the website RealClimate.

“Real Climate were given information, but took it down off their site and told me they would send it across to me. They didn’t do that. I only found out it had been released five minutes ago.”

TGIF asked Jones about the controversial email discussing “hiding the decline”, and Jones explained what he was trying to say….

Sorry to be such a pain Lucia but no one really gives a XXXX about the Oct GISS temps ect compared to the main story about the HADLEY HACK…

1168356704.txt

Phil Jones

“This is all getting quite complex. It clearly isn’t something that
should be discussed online on RC – at least till we know all
the detail and have got the history right as best we can. A lot
of this history is likely best left buried, but I hope to summarise enough to avoid all the skeptics wanting copies of these non-mainstream papers. Finding them in CRU may be difficult!”

Lucia said: “WTH–
Well… I sent the url to Gavin. So, I’m guessing they figured out how to do the equivalent of a DMAC. That said, this genie ain’t going back in the bottle.”

but the original post said, “This is a limited time offer, download now”

so it the original poster intended it to be up for a brief period. No need to invoke dramatic action from Gavin.

The Phil Jones press statement left me with the Seinfeld thought:
“They’re real, and they’re spectacular!”

I think we need to be careful here. Any material – especially anything that might validate our own views – should be treated sceptically until we have a lot more informaton.

http://geckkosworld.blogspot.c.....icism.html

I would also like to see independent confirmation of the supposed Phil Jones quote and some clarification an expansion on what the CRU know.

To those who think “people that are that smart would not be stupid enough to write such things in emails”…I can assure you they are. I worked with these PhD academia types and their private sector counterparts in the field of analytical instruments (mass spectrometers, atomic emission detectors…).

The PhD academia types as a group were dumber than rocks compared to their private sector counterparts, but what make it worse was the academia types actually believe themselves to be brilliant.

On numerous occasions while investigating instrument malfunctions I witnessed them falsify data and actively attempt to deceive reviewers and themselves when the data did not reinforce their preconceived ideas.

Since their work never fell under any type of legal action (lawsuits from damages) and they believed themselves to be brilliantly omnipotent, they really do write this kind of stuff. Another aspect is these type have no clue how the IT world functions and saves data in routine backups.

On the flip side the PhD private sector counterparts (those in pharmaceutical, agricultural, chemical ) really were brilliant and understood the legal ramifications of falsifying data or even discussing such behavior.

Their behavior exposed here fits exactly in line with what I witnessed in academia.

[...] http://rankexploits.com/musing.....s-or-fake/ http://wattsupwiththat.com/200.....-released/ http://blogs.news.com.au/heral.....ey_hacked/ [...]

So Lucia.. are you now at least a bit skeptical about AGW..??? just joking LOL

Surely lots of this must be genuine.

I think this post perhaps is more illuminating, and much less likely to be manipulated, than some of the more incriminating examples that have been posted. (I have removed phone numbers and email addresses.)

Rasmus Benestad writes (of fig 7.1 of 1990 IPCC):

“The general scientific side of the IPCC report (i.e. all the peer-reviewed papers ad the scientific theories) is still sound,
but to explain how *one* figure was shoe-horned into the report is harder to defend. The sceptics may argue that the IPCC reports are political after all, and this is also what it sounds like if governments ‘hoisted the national flag’ by having it’s own figures inserted last minute.”

Further:
“We should also put this in perspective – the report is large and
covers a wide range of topics, and most (all but our case?) is true to the science. There are sometimes a few rotten apples in a good batch, unfortunately. But the important part is that we don’t accept rotten apples and that we sort it out! Forthcoming and up-front. Another important side is that this can provide a lesson for the scientific communities.”

Hardly incriminating. Claiming that the IPCC is _only_ about science, is surely to oversell it, as this email clearly demostrates. Claiming that it is mostly about politics, is not at all supported by emails like this.

Does this affect the AGW hypothesis? In principle, hardly. But practically important parameters, like short-term positive feedback, may be grossly over-estimated by the IPCC. But, to dispense with AGW entirely, you probably have to assume strong long-term negative feedback. And, as Stefan Rahmstorff puts it in this email exchange: “what we are finding out now makes the IPCC process look somewhat unsophisticated back in 1990″ – maybe the current process will similarly look “somewhat unsophisticated” in a couple of decades. Which does not make it basically wrong, just far less conclusive at the present stage of knowledge.

Will it affect climate politics? Surely. But delaying policy changes do not have a net positive expected value in a longer perspective unless you set the probability of negative effects from anthropogenic contributions close to zero. That may turn out to be true, but it will take a long time before we know that, and so far, neither well-understood physics nor extensive observations supports it strongly. It’s just the “safety first” principle of defensive driving: Good drivers prepare for a lot of situations that might occur, but mostly don’t.

FOIA/mail/1069630979.txt:
From: “Rasmus Benestad”
To:
Subject: Re: Figure 7.1c from the 1990 IPCC Report
Date: Sat, 6 Jan 2007 17:58:46 -0000 (GMT)
Reply-to:
Cc:

I think that this story could possible catch on and make headlines, so I
agree that we should be careful. But it’s important that we bring the
*true* picture out, and it is best that this is done by RealClimate rather
than a sceptic site. The general scientific side of the IPCC report (i.e.
all the peer-reviewed papers ad the scientific theories) is still sound,
but to explain how *one* figure was shoe-horned into the report is harder
to defend. The sceptics may argue that the IPCC reports are political
after all, and this is also what it sounds like if governments ‘hoisted
the national flag’ by having it’s own figures inserted last minute.
However, by providing an account of the ‘evolution of the IPCC report
writing’, we could possibly give the story a softer landing. E.g. how many
times of review the first report underwent as compared to the present
report. We should also put this in perspective – the report is large and
covers a wide range of topics, and most (all but our case?) is true to the
science. There are sometimes a few rotten apples in a good batch,
unfortunately. But the important part is that we don’t accept rotten
apples and that we sort it out! Forthcoming and up-front. Another
important side is that this can provide a lesson for the scientific
communities.

Rasmus

> Phil, I fully agree. The point is not to blame anyone at all – at least
> my point was to track down the source in order to be able to show the
> skeptics (or in my special case, the school authorities) that this old
> graph is completely superseded and should not be used any more in
> teaching! And I also see your problem: what we are finding out now makes
> the IPCC process look somewhat unsophisticated back in 1990, so it is a
>
> diplomatic conundrum how to be completely truthful in reporting this, as
> we need to be as scientists, without providing the skeptics undue
> fodder for attacking IPCC. But maybe we’re too concerned – the skeptics
> can’t really attack IPCC easily in this case without shooting
> themselves in the foot.
>
> Cheers, Stefan
>
> –
> Stefan Rahmstorf
> http://www.ozean-klima.de
> http://www.realclimate.org

What about mainstream media? They’re all strangely silent.

Robert E. Phelan (Comment#23854) November 20th, 2009 at 1:03 am Edit This

I’m hoping that the leaker is monitoring these sites and understands that provenance is important. I am confident that Steve, Anthony, Lucia, Jeff Id or Tom Fuller would respect your anonymity. Just contact them…

I don’t want the leaker to reveal himself to me. As for provenance issues: revealing himself confidentially to Steve, Anthony, Jeff, Tom or me would not solve that problem.

Besides that, what basis would I have to not reveal the name of a leaker if someone investigating a computer break-in were to ask me? If the FBI, police, interpol etc. asked me, I’d have to tell them.

Well, well, Xmas came early, huh guys?

I am confident that Steve, Anthony, Lucia, Jeff Id or Tom Fuller would respect your anonymity.

I agree that Steve, Anthony and Jeff would protect the identity of a criminal, but I don’t think Lucia would.

lol. perfect cross post.

Nimby– We find all this exciting, but it isn’t exactly as if the US invaded Canada to seize the oil sands. It’s not front page news.

Boris–
If I had information, and random people asked, I wouldn’t divulge. But, if interpol, FBI, police or any proper investigative authority asked, I’d tell them. As it happens, I learned about the issue from steven mosher.

Lucia,
Now that we know Hadley has lied about being hacked, perhaps we should not worry so much about the leaker or the legal implecations of the data.
Let us, instead, look towards the data.
This data dump is clearly a result of an attack of conscience.
We should hold this leaker, and their conscience, in great regard.
We do no less for Watergate’s ‘Deep Throat’, etc.
The fact that so many people are confusing the method of the release with the content of the release tells me that it is devastating to the consensus that has been so rudely dominating the public square for so many years.
That devastation could not happen to a more deserving bad idea than AGW.

Boris (Comment#23880) You want all this to remain secret so no-one will know how the AGW Climate Mafia have hoodwinked the world. And guess what Boris? You’re part of the cover for it. By the way, deleting information subject to the UK Freedom of Information Act is a Criminal Offence in the UK. I expect plod to be gearing up at this very moment for a dawn raid. I hope someone has a camera. Jones, Briffa et al in handcuffs? I wonder if that would find its way onto the front page of Nature. Also look forward to a very keen US Prosecutor looking to “send a message” about the conduct of Gav, and Mike.

cool down guys..
I have no doubts this will hit mainstream media either very soon or in
weeks ahead…and heads will roll. I think that we should be gracious in
our victory and not persecute or demean any of these people. After all
they were probably well intentioned academics who simply lost the plot
(and many scientist do, I am one of them..) and we should remember
that the only contention here was that Anthropogenic CO2 is/was
responsible for increased averaged global temperatures. Other issues
are pending but not related to global temperatures such as
overpopulation, waste, local land use and I’m sure and hopeful some of
those brilliant minds will find employment in these areas such as
environmental science et

Lucia Bet you a zillionmillion quatloos it will be front page news
re :Nimby– We find all this exciting, but it isn’t exactly as if the US invaded Canada to seize the oil sands. It’s not front page news.

and BTW hadley has confirmed the files are real
http://briefingroom.typepad.co.....-real.html so there!!!

Notice that even now, when it is clear that AGW – the hysteria, the smug condescension to skeptics, the relentless media propaganda, is all a fabrication of a small group of ethically challenged promoters, how the AGW faithful respond.
These creeps at Hadley CRU, and apparently the US, have been destroying data, hiding data, corrupting the peer review process, misleading and manipulating the press, all for the self-declared ‘truth.
How dare any AGW believer who claims to have integrity not acknowledge that they have been misled.
Thank all that is god for the bravery of this leaker.
And on the legal side, I think there is no way that discussing, posting or possessing these papers from public institutions, whic none of us here have had any part in improperly removing, has any negative implications at all.
I have a friend who is ‘known’ legal advisor in the world of electronic communications, and I will be speaking with him today on this.
Meanwhile, as soon as I get to my office, if I was successful last night in down loading a zip file of the archive, I am forwarding it to a journalist I know who writes on science for a large newspaper, and we can see what he makes of it.
To Boris: its too late, baby.

“It’s not front page news.”

♫ This whole world is out there just trying to score
I’ve seen enough I don’t want to see any more,
Cover me, come on and cover me
I’m looking for a lover who will come on in and cover me ♫

Andrew

“BTW hadley has confirmed the files are real”
.
Prove these “Phil Jones” quotes are legitimate.

Announcing that Hadley has been hacked is not at all the same as vetting these files. Come-on guys.

Let us just let Jones speak for himself:
“http://briefingroom.typepad.com/the_briefing_room/2009/11/hadleycru-says-leaked-data-is-real.html

The director of Britain’s leading Climate Research Unit, Phil Jones, has told Investigate magazine’s TGIF Edition tonight that his organization has been hacked, and the data flying all over the internet appears to be genuine.

In an exclusive interview, Jones told TGIF, “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.”

“Have you alerted police”

“Not yet. We were not aware of what had been taken.”

Jones says he was first tipped off to the security breach by colleagues at the website RealClimate.

“Real Climate were given information, but took it down off their site and told me they would send it across to me. They didn’t do that. I only found out it had been released five minutes ago.”

TGIF asked Jones about the controversial email discussing “hiding the decline”…..

j ferguson (Comment#23893) November 20th, 2009 at 8:07 am

Announcing that Hadley has been hacked is not at all the same as vetting these files. Come-on guys.
———————————————————————–
Perhaps doesn’t validate them completely – but there are e-mail correspondence from skeptic Steve McIntyre that he has verified at his ClimateAudit site.

Down load the files. Look at the info. That’s a whole ton of fudging of relevant data – with a coordinated admittance of a breach.

It could be a vast right wing conspiracy – but the obvious conclusion is that this is legit.

“Prove these “Phil Jones” quotes are legitimate.”

Who needs proof of anything anymore? Climate Science doesn’t need proof. If fact, proof doesn’t even exist. Yep. I read it right here on this totally objective and Non-Cover-For Your-Friends blog.

Andrew

“Let us just let Jones speak for himself”
.
How do you know that is Jones speaking for himself?
How do you know it’s not someone putting words in his mouth?

“our victory”? “climate mafia”? You guys are delusional. You can type “it’s all a hoax” into your keyboards as furiously as you like over the next few years. It will keep you busy.

Hey Boris! Your defense is becoming increasingly more desperate, ain’t it time to admit it was all manipulation and focussed on blocking McSteve and all the other CA boys at all cost?

TGIF asked Jones about the controversial email discussing “hiding the decline”, and Jones explained what he was trying to say….

Already on the defensive?!? OMFG! This is huge!

“I know Mike thinks his series is the ‘best’ and he might be right – but he may also be too dismissive of other data and possibly over confident in his (or should I say his use of other’s). After all, the early ( pre-instrumental) data are much less reliable as indicators of global temperature than is apparent in modern calibrations that include them and when we don’t know the precise role of particular proxies in the earlier portions of reconstruction it remains problematic to assign genuine confidence limits at multidecadal and longer timescales.”

“I still contend that multiple regression against the recent very trendy global mean series is potentially dangerous. You could
calibrate the proxies to any number of seasons , regardless of their true optimum response . Not for a moment am I saying that the tree-ring , or any other proxy data, are better than Mike’s series – indeed I am saying that the various reconstructions are not independent but that they likely contribute more information about reality together than they do alone. I do believe , that it should not be taken as read that Mike’s series (or Jone’s et al. for that matter) is THE CORRECT ONE. I prefer a Figure that shows a multitude of reconstructions (e.g similar to that in my Science
piece). Incidently, arguing that any particular series is probably better on the basis of what we now about glaciers or solar output is flaky indeed.”

“Glacier mass balance is driven by the difference mainly in winter
accumulation and summer ablation , filtered in a complex non-linear way to give variously lagged tongue advance/retreat .Simple inference on the precidence of modern day snout positions does not translate easily into absolute (or relative) temperature levels now or in the past.”

Wow, is this Briffa talking? or bender?

[...] Zdroj > 1, 2 [...]

rom: “W, E R”
To: “KB”
Subject: RE: confidential
Date: Sat, 12 Aug 2006 13:02:44 -0400

“5) FINALLY, note that all of this rests on the foundation that keeping the bristlecone pine records in the data is appropriate, which Caspar and I find can be reasonable presumption. If one believes that the bristlecone data should be removed, then the 1400-1449 reconstruction does not pass verification testing with the RE statistic, and the MBH reconstruction should commence from 1450 on out.

Although there are a number of reasons to keep the bristlecone data in, maybe the most compelling reason they are a NON-ISSUE is that, over the common period of overlap (1450-1980), the reconstruction based on using them from 1400-1980 is very close to the reconstruction based on omitting them from 1450-1980. Since the issues about the bristlecone response to climate are primarily about 1850 onwards, especially 1900 onwards [K -- PLEASE LET ME KNOW IF I AM NOT ACCURATE IN THIS], there is no reason to expect that their behavior during 1400-1449 is in any way anomalous to their behavior from 1450-1850. Thus, THERE IS NO REASON TO THINK THAT THE BRISTLECONES ARE SOMEHOW MAKING THE 1400-1449 SEGMENT OF THE MBH RECONSTRUCTION BE INAPPROPRIATELY SKEWED.”

from 1155402164.txt, appears to be how the peer review process works in the real world of climate science.

TGIF is not Phil Jones.

airhead,
So which part is inaccurate? The hacking part, the data part, the part where they have known of the data going out the door for a few days part?
The important thing is Phil Jones, Hadley CRU in general, and the leadership of hte AGW promotion community, are not to be trusted.

I have trouble accessing Climate Audit. Too much traffic?

Until he admits to presenting rumors as fact hunter is not to be trusted.

Well the BBC has now picked up the story
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/sci.....370282.stm

And The Guardian:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/envi.....ked-emails

Hey Boris! Your defense is becoming increasingly more desperate, ain’t it time to admit it was all manipulation and focussed on blocking McSteve and all the other CA boys at all cost?

Apparently you are having trouble reading if you think I presented anything like a defense. I’m certainly not going to parse emails that may or may not have been altered from their originals. It has always been clear that Jones and Mann hate McSteve. Of course, McSteve himself has an agenda and hates ‘em right back.

hunter (Comment#23889)
“How dare any AGW believer who claims to have integrity not acknowledge that they have been misled.”

Simple. Use independent sources of information, put in your own conservative estimates of key parameters, and keep the physics sound.

As an example: Take the no-feedback 1.1 oC warming per doubling of CO2 as the mode of your conservative pdf for net CO2 feedbacks, but be careful about underestimating positive feedbacks, as you know relative humidity will tend to vary little, i.e. water vapor will increase with temperature – producing a tendency to positive feedback that, long-term, does not seem to be completely balanced by things like albedo changes etc. You’ll get AGW, far less than IPCC estimates, but, with a considerable probability, more than enough to get us in trouble over time.

And, if skeptics like Akasofu is right, that we have a considerable natural global warming, “Little Ice Age recovery”, going on, any extra antropogenic contribution, however small, will just make it “worse”, stronger. You may choose to disagree with the estimation of AGW, but you just can’t say the estimates are unfounded. Nor that they are contradicted by the data.

For instance, if you assume Akasofu is right, with the 40-60 year cycle PDO a major determinant of climate, you have to use observational periods of that length to be able to say anything precise about trends. And the present trends over such longer periods are quite clear. They may turn out to be completely misleading over the next decades, but we don’t know, and if the trend for AGW is stipulated as, say 0.05 oC/decade, it may take quite some time to establish that it’s wrong.

The IPCC estimate of 0.2 oC/decade is much more readily refuted, BUT: It is refuted by observational data, not by some of the researchers having low ethical standards.

Bender, I think Briffa’s going to be the canary.

“When the Guardian asked Professor Jones to verify whether these emails were genuine, he refused to comment.”

“Who needs proof of anything anymore?”
.
What trustworthy source talks like this?

Lucia asked a question. Let’s try answering. What are the most reliable tests for determining real from fake?

Bender,

Re: Real or Fake

Let’s see, someone can perpetrate a hoax ABOUT an AGW Hoax, but they couldn’t perpetrate a hoax that IS an AGW Hoax.

Hmmm…

Andrew

the file can be found at
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=75J4XO4T

airhead (Comment#23914) November 20th, 2009 at 11:05 am
“When the Guardian asked Professor Jones to verify whether these emails were genuine, he refused to comment.”

This is what I was trying to get at. In the time which has elapsed since this thing surfaced, how could Dr. Phil have had time to read the pertinent emails and try to remember if he could actually have written them as they are now reported? Some of these are from 10 years ago.

Is it so hard to imagine that there could be someone who is both capable of obtaining these files and altering some of the documents to prove a point?

Having said that, my own take is that these are exactly what they appear to be, the real thing. People can get pretty giddy when they are on a roll, and these guys were certainly on a roll at that time.

BTW, isn’t breath abated or ‘bated not baited. Unless of course you need some toothbrushing. This error along with confusion of affect and effect appears to be most prevalent in comments in this subject area.

Well, looks like RC has it now.

http://www.realclimate.org/ind.....-cru-hack/

Seems that Google “News” picked it up IMMEDIATELY. Wonder how that happened.

Also, they claim exclusive credit for notifying the authorities and having the stuff removed from the Russian server.

Wonder why Gavin bothered to contact you.

John M,

RC is, as always, the master of a strawman. Did you see the attempt to claim that the emails are NOT evidence of a conspiracy because Soros was not mentioned?

hunter (Comment#23889)
“How dare any AGW believer who claims to have integrity not acknowledge that they have been misled.”

Simple. Use independent sources of information, put in your own conservative estimates of key parameters, and keep the physics sound.

As an example: Take the no-feedback 1.1 oC warming per doubling of CO2 as the mode of your conservative pdf for net CO2 feedbacks, but be careful about underestimating positive feedbacks, as you know relative humidity will tend to vary little, i.e. water vapor will increase with temperature – producing a tendency to positive feedback that, long-term, does not seem to be completely balanced by things like albedo changes etc. You’ll get AGW, far less than IPCC estimates, but, with a certain probability, more than enough to get us in trouble over time.

And, if skeptics like Akasofu is right, that we have a considerable natural global warming, “Little Ice Age recovery”, going on, any extra antropogenic contribution, however small, will just make it “worse”, stronger. You may choose to disagree with the estimation of AGW, but you just can’t say the estimates are unfounded. Nor that they are contradicted by the data.

For instance, if you assume Akasofu is right, with the 40-60 year cycle PDO a major determinant of climate, you have to use observational periods of that length to be able to say anything precise about trends. And the present trends over such periods are quite clear. They may turn out to be completely misleading over the next decades, but we don’t know, and if the trend for AGW is stipulated as, say 0.05 oC/decade, it may take quite some time to establish that it’s wrong.

The IPCC estimate of 0.2 oC/decade is much more readily refuted, BUT: It is refuted by observational data, not by some of the researchers having low ethical standards.

I also suspect that it is easier to “win” the discussion about “global warming” if it is made to be about the competence of people like Jones and Mann, than about science and observations.

RC may be digging themselves in too deep trying to explain the context of the files while a police investigation is on going. If they are not on the same page this will not look good.

[...] skeptic community, appearing in comments at Climate Audit, and in posts at Watts Up With That and The Blackboard. The files purport to have been extracted via a hack on the Hadley Climatic Research Unit (CRU), a [...]

Those guys are at least discussing what is going on. I think I am willing to risk the criminal persecution Michael Mann requests just to bring this recent discussion to the light

From FOIA/mail/1255530325.txt:

“On Oct 14, 2009, at 10:17 AM, Kevin Trenberth wrote:

Hi Tom
How come you do not agree with a statement that says we are no where close to knowing where energy is going or whether clouds are changing to make the planet brighter. We are not close to balancing the energy budget. The fact that we can not account for what is happening in the climate system makes any consideration of geoengineering quite hopeless as we will never be able to tell if it is successful or not! It is a travesty!
Kevin

Tom Wigley wrote:

Dear all,

At the risk of overload, here are some notes of mine on the recent
lack of warming. I look at this in two ways. The first is to look at
the difference between the observed and expected
anthropogenic trend relative to the pdf for unforced variability.
The second is to remove ENSO, volcanoes and TSI variations
from the observed data.

Both methods show that what we are seeing is not unusual. The
second method leaves a significant warming over the past
decade.

These sums complement Kevin’s energy work.
Kevin says … “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”. I do not
agree with this. “

BBC Hack story:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/sci.....370282.stm

[...] Real or fake – is this issue just some vast elaborate hoax? [...]

SNRatio (Comment#23934) I think you are running interference .

NatureNews reports: Leading British climate centre hacked E-mails and documents have been taken from the University of East Anglia.

All about the illegality of hacking, nothing on the content. Citing Mann as the final word:

“The deniers will probably do anything they can to distract the public from the reality of the problem [of climate change], and the threat that it poses,” he says. “Cherry-picked, out-of-context quotes, stolen from private e-mails, is the best they’ve got.”

Will NatureNews accept “comments” on the contents?

Gather.com provides extracts of CRU email appearing to show authors modifying data, hiding unwanted results, failure of computer models, destroying of emails / evidence, withholding data, ousting a skeptic from a professional organization, forging dates, and withholding information. e.g. see: “Breaking News – ClimiteGate” (sic)

“You’ll get AGW, far less than IPCC estimates, but, with a considerable probability, more than enough to get us in trouble over time.”

The question is over how much time? As the saying goes, in the long run, we’re all dead. I’m sure some clever person in 1890 calculated the rising population vs the levels of horse dung required to keep civilization moving and concluded that the earth would be covered in it by 2010. A single technological breakthrough ends up confining that disaster to a few elite campuses. If we’re talking about hundreds of years, the economics of gradual mitigation while our technology finds cheaper solutions makes more and more sense.

“Boris (Comment#23898″,

Oh really Boris, comrade, pls don’t play the innocent. Your remarks here and at Pielke Jr’s blog say enough. Why do you think Mike and Phil hate Mc Steve? Just tell me the truth and no more evasive answers, pls.

Mark Buehner (Comment#23964)

>>“You’ll get AGW, far less than IPCC estimates, but, with a considerable probability, more than enough to get us in trouble over time.”

>The question is over how much time? As the saying goes, in the long run, we’re all dead.

If we stay with zero-feedback 1.1 oC per doubling, and we double CO2 concentrations in 40 years, it will not be in a very long run. If the increase in emissions underlying that doubling takes instead, say 120 years, we will have much more modest effects, and a lot more time to adjust to them. If feedbacks are higher, changes will occur faster.

If spread over long enough time, it may happen that admissible CO2 emissions will be limited by ocean acidification rather than greenhouse warming. And if we adapt agriculture and forestry so that a lot of carbon is bound in slowly decaying organic content in soils, maybe we can leave it to the market mechanisms to limit the emissions.

And, yes, I think horse dung is a good analogy for fossile fuel CO2 emissions

If this is true, can we dub this “Climategate”?

AirFiero– The contenders seem to be “Climategate” and “Crugate”.

Ooops, sorry Lucia. Looks like some folks already beat me to the punch. Oh, well, it’s OK…this is getting JUICY!

I saw this quoted on a different site. Does anyone have the file this is from?

“And, perhaps most reprehensibly, a long series of communications discussing how best to squeeze dissenting scientists out of the peer review process.”

a mail server will keep all emails on file. even deleted emails.

One can delete emails from ones personal file. Even so, they will be forever recorded on the mail server unless some administrator does a file dump or deletion purposely.

[...] ethics of this are dubious, to say the least. But the files suggest, on a very preliminary glance, some other very dubious practices, too, and a lot of collusion [...]

michael mann caught out fiddling with the figures AGAIN-

seems to be a habit with him and his mates-why???

anything he (or anyone using his figures) should be taken with a `pinch’ (definition of a pinch in this case being any amount being held between the fingers of a galaxy sized entitity- about 20000 trillion megatonnes…. ) of salt

hockeystick all over again

Airfiero, this is from Delingpole’s Telegraph column.

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/n.....l-warming/

EW – Yes, thanks. I was asking if we know who said it to whom, which file it came from, and so on. It’s a great article, but doesn’t list any attributions.

I’ve set up a high-capacity mirror for the HadleyCRU files. You can download them here: http://bit.ly/4Ztg1f

SNRatio (Comment#23981) “Simple. Use independent sources of information, put in your own conservative estimates of key parameters, and keep the physics sound.

As an example: Take the no-feedback 1.1 oC warming per doubling of CO2 as the mode of your conservative pdf for net CO2 feedbacks, but be careful about underestimating positive feedbacks…”

Without the evidence from the tainted sources, where does your belief that a 1.1 Deg C can be attributed th doubling CO2 come from? Surely that itself is the purpose of the myth created by the dodgy/corrupt statistics coming out of CRU and NASA GISS?

What you are advocating amounts to accepting that the structure of a building is sound after the foundations have been undermined.

Thats a silly idea, along with your other silliness of pretending that because some of the Climategate emails are trivial, that counters the criminality of the remainder.

Where is the link to the emails? Interested graduate student.

[...] [2] http://rankexploits.com/musing.....s-or-fake/ [...]

Well,interesting PROOFS of a Theory which,in “regimes” words “simply is not existent”.

CCTV,CO2-Ly,Afghanistzan and Iraq-Robbery (Oil and Drugs and Rock’n'Roll)…

HOW MUCH MUST THE FOLK,ALL PEOPLE, SUFFER to realize,that its gonna be slaved ?

[...] The Blackboard: Where Climate Talk Gets Hot! – Real files or fake? Uncategorized [...]

This report in Der Spiegel from a German expert opens another closed door:
Global warming appears to have stalled. Climatologists are puzzled as to why average global temperatures have stopped rising over the last 10 years. Some attribute the trend to a lack of sunspots, while others explain it through ocean currents.

Otherwise, however, not much is happening with global warming at the moment. The Earth’s average temperatures have stopped climbing since the beginning of the millennium, and it even looks as though global warming could come to a standstill this year.

Ironically, climate change appears to have stalled in the run-up to the upcoming world summit in the Danish capital, where thousands of politicians, bureaucrats, scientists, business leaders and environmental activists plan to negotiate a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. Billions of euros are at stake in the negotiations.

Reached a Plateau

The planet’s temperature curve rose sharply for almost 30 years, as global temperatures increased by an average of 0.7 degrees Celsius (1.25 degrees Fahrenheit) from the 1970s to the late 1990s. “At present, however, the warming is taking a break,” confirms meteorologist Mojib Latif of the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences in the northern German city of Kiel. Latif, one of Germany’s best-known climatologists, says that the temperature curve has reached a plateau. “There can be no argument about that,” he says. “We have to face that fact.”

[...] files sat dormant there until November 19, when another user alerted The Blackboard to its existence. This was quickly followed by a blog commentary by Anthony Watts and stories in [...]

[...] Unit, the virtual organism moved to halt their promulgation. Early on, a few of the emails were posted on Lucia Liljegren’s skeptic blog The Blackboard. Shortly after the post, Lucia, a PhD and [...]

[...] Unit, the virtual organism moved to halt their promulgation. Early on, a few of the emails were posted on Lucia Liljegren’s skeptic blog The Blackboard. Shortly after the post, Lucia, a PhD and [...]

[...] Unit, the virtual organism moved to halt their promulgation. Early on, a few of the emails were posted on Lucia Liljegren’s skeptic blog The Blackboard. Shortly after the post, Lucia, a PhD and specialist in fluid mechanics, received an email from [...]

[...] of posting personal emails. What he did notice, however, was that both Anthony Watts’ blog and Lucia had posted several of the emails. With two from the network opening the door, Jeff thought to [...]

[...] The Climategate files were under the fierce scrutiny of the peer-to-peer review network at both The Blackboard and WattsUpWithThat. The origin of the term Climategate can even be tracked to the commenters of [...]

[...] downloaded the files and at 3:09 Eastern (14:09 blog time), Lucia made the first blog post on the topic entitledReal files or fake? Lucia: Steve Mosher alerted us to an interesting [...]

[...] schrijven en vlak daarna op Climate Audit. Lucia pikte het commentaar van Mosher op en publiceerde het eerste bericht over de CRU e-mails. Daarna begon hij op Climate Audit berichten achter te laten verwijzend naar [...]

[...] af private e-mails. Hvad han ikke bemærkede, var at både Anthony Watts’ blog og Lucia havde bragt flere af e-mailsene. Med to andre fra netværket til at åbne døren, tænkte Jeff [...]