THIS PAGE HAS BEEN ACTIVATED AS THE NEW STATESMAN BLOG IS NOW CLOSED FOR COMMENTS
At 10am this morning, the New Statesman finally closed the Mark Lynas thread on their website after 1715 comments had been added over a period of five months. I don’t know whether this constitutes any kind of a record, but gratitude is certainly due to the editor of of the New Statesman for hosting the discussion so patiently and also for publishing articles from Dr David Whitehouse and Mark Lynas that have created so much interest.
This page is now live, and anyone who would like to continue the discussion here is welcome to do so. I have copied the most recent contributions at the New Statesman as the first comment for the sake of convenience. If you want to refer back to either of the original threads, then you can find them here:
Dr David Whitehouse’s article can be found here with all 1289 comments.
Mark Lynas’ attempted refutation can be found here with 1715 comments.
Welcome to Harmless Sky, and happy blogging.
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I spent too much time in the small hours of this morning looking at the hacked files. There seems to be no doubt that they are genuine to the extent that they were obtained from the source claimed, but whether they have been tampered with is another matter. Some things in them seem just a bit too neat, tidy and convenient.
If this is a complete archive then one of the most important questions to ask is what isn’t there? Where is all the rubbish and trivia that builds up in any mailbox?
The quantity of material is such that it would take weeks or months for a team with appropriate expertise to analyse and evaluate it. Where are such people to be found who can also be expected to be objective? And who would fund such an exercise? Cherry-picking sentences and paragraphs from the most sensational sounding emails and posting them in blog comments is likely to generate more heat than light. But it is inevitable that this will happen and that it will make it easy for some claims to be debunked, thus undermining the significance of the whole.
On the other hand, some of the material can stand alone without much analysis; it’s just a matter of putting two and two together:
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=7806#comment-366173
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=7806#comment-366175
Had this been available in 1997 it would certainly have been very damaging to the IPCC and to Mike Hulme, but it is now over a decade old. Is it headline-grabbing stuff in the run-up to Copenhagen?
I notice that Steve M over at CA is being very cautious, so far only saying “Undelievable” and “Words fail me” while noting that CRU has just cancelled all existing passwords. I think he is right to tread very carfully. Whatever happens next, people are going to get hurt. If the hacked files are genuine then the damage to certain sections of the climate science community are inestimable. If they have been sexed up, then the penalty for the sceptics is likely to be equally devastating.
There is also the matter of legality, but there is an interesting parallel here with the data relating to MPs expenses that were leaked to The Telegraph. In that case attempts to apprehend the culprit were dropped because of public interest considerations. How would that play out in this case?
Oh yes! And will CRU apply to the courts for an injunction against publication?
Interesting “main stream” press skeptic blog article on it from Andrew Bolt. They must have lawyers/ legal protocols for leaks etc:
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/hadley_hacked/
A very thoughtful piece on the CRU hack here:
http://www.examiner.com/x-9111-SF-Environmental-Policy-Examiner~y2009m11d19-Global-warmings-hidden-files?cid=exrss-SF-Environmental-Policy-Examiner
Wow, here we have some of the biggest proponents of global warming actually caught, red handed, doctoring data, in an effort to support a political agenda. For shame……
A concerted effort by some of the top “climatologists” colluding to defraud the world.
Peter Martin,
How would you characterize a group of men, from various “respected” organizations, working in concert, to perpetrate a fraud?
Does the word CONSPIRACY come to mind?
I am EXTREMELY anxious to read your thoughts on this………
Here’s the end of the Jones quote from Luke’s extract above at #8325:
Jones told TGIF he had no idea what me meant by using the words “hide the decline”. “That was an email from ten years ago. Can you remember the exact context of what you wrote ten years ago?”
CRU has started damage limitation with a well placed story at the BBC:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8370282.stm
Evidently they are very much the injured party; no mention of anything remotely embarrassing about the content of the emails.
The story is now in the UK mainstream media at
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100017393/climategate-the-final-nail-in-the-coffin-of-anthropogenic-global-warming/
The article is rather well done (until a few “eco-fascist” jibes in the last paragraphs). 15 hours from leak to MSM is good going. How long between editorialists and other members of the Great and the Green deign to notice it?
Brute and others:
Lets be careful not to jump to conclusions about the significance of what is emerging from the CRU hack. There needs to be a great deal more corroboration before terms like ‘fraud’ can be justified.
TonyN,
Re: 8333
Killjoy…. [insert smiling face]
Of course, you’re right.
I’m interested to see how these guys will talk their way out of this.
Brute:
The link to the BBC story is a first clue. Think CRU – think victim!
the usual warmist commenters at
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2009/nov/19/climate-sceptic-james-delingpole
are having kittens. I tell myself that I’m interested in the search for truth, but I’m really here for the high comedy.
Brute said
“I’m interested to see how these guys will talk their way out of this.”
The actual evidence showing the past is no different to the present is what will eventually condemn them.
Mind you we do have people who refuse to read the evidence let alone believe it. We need to wait and see what else comes out of the Alice in Wonderland rabbit hole that Phil Jones and many others inhabit.
Tonyb
Any response from Real Climate or Joe Romm?
These guys are either extremely stupid, or they feel they were completely beyond touch, which usually indicates that they have some sort of official sanction for this behaviour. So what are the odds that if a public enquiry can be forced and these disgraceful scientists look set to be disgraced that one of them squawks and points the finger at some Governmental directive.
OK this has not been verified, but somewhere someone will spill further beans, and we don’t know whether this is all the data or if there is more to be released.
I’m still struggling to understand the motivation for this level of [snip: sorry Peter, see #8333 above]. The personal financial rewards can not be that much, and they can not all be so totally detached from scientific reality or can they? The notoriety if this is true will be devastating for these individuals and their families; I hope they have considered this before trying to sully the reputations of other scientists that did not agree with them. Let them be treated as they have treated others Consideration should not be shown unless as I say above they were following orders in which case they must immediately state who or what issued those orders.
[TonyN: Everyone: please bear in mind that hacking is a criminal activity and that the police are now investigating. CRU have described these files as data stolen from their computers, and they are right to do so. Blogs are treading a delicate line in reproducing information from this source without corroboration. If or when the CRU admit that the files are genuine, or this can be proved by other means, then that will be a slightly different situation. Even then I have seen nothing that proves fraud, even if there is much cause for suspicion.]
I agree with TonyN that we should be extremely careful about (a) assuming the authenticity of these hacked, leaked, forged or adjusted emails (although the mass of data makes total forgery look unlikely) and therefore (b) jumping to the conclusion that they expose that (contrary to my view) dangerous AGW is a hoax. But nonetheless, amongst other gems, I found this one intriguing. Here’s an extract from an alleged email dated 9th October 2009 from Kevin Trenberth to Michael Mann:
That would mean that, instead of testing theory against data, these “scientists” are testing data against theory. If so, that would be more akin to religion than to science.
Of course, if they’re right and their “observing system is inadequate”, what does that say about all the data we’ve been told about over the years?
According to this, Dr Phil Jones is reported as saying “his organization has been hacked, and the data flying all over the internet appears to be genuine“.
Both the Beeb (link above) and the Grauniad seem to be taking the same “nasty hackers attack science” approach, even citing the approach of Copenhagen as a motive, rather perversely.
The Jones acknowledgement from before is not so clear here:
“When the Guardian asked Professor Jones to verify whether these emails were genuine, he refused to comment.”
Mann is turing up the fighting rhetoric:
“Professor Michael E Mann, director of Pennsylvania State University’s Earth System Science Centre and a regular contributor to the popular climate science blog Real Climate, is another prominent climatologist who features in many of the email exchanges. He said: “I’m simply not going to comment on the content of illegally obtained emails. However, I will say this: both their theft and, I believe, any reproduction of the emails that were obtained on public websites, etc, constitutes serious criminal activity.
I’m hoping that the perpetrators and their facilitators will be tracked down and prosecuted to the fullest extent the law allows.”
Both quotes from the G:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/nov/20/climate-sceptics-hackers-leaked-emails
Robin, TonyN, Tonyb,
Aren’t these E-mails public property?
I’m beginning to think that this was an inside job…..that someone had a crisis of conscience and decided to release this information……Maybe Overpeck? [sp?]…..he seemed to be reluctant to “go along” with the scheme in one of the E-mails that I read.
Great comment on WUWT:
“It’s even worse than we thought.”
PS to Brute: I’m not sure it matters anymore whether or not the emails are public property (BTW I doubt it) – what matters is that they’re in the public domain. Of course, they may be a clever forgery (tampered with rather than made up), although I’d be inclined to believe your whistle-blower theory.
Brute:
I am not sure what the legal position is, but I suspect that it is rather a ‘grey area’. In a sense the emails and data could be seen as stolen property, on the other hand I can’t remember hearing that a newspaper has been prosecuted for publishing leaked information.
Real climate’s take on things…….someone has a lot of explaining to do.
The CRU hack
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/11/the-cru-hack/#more-1853
TonyN, Robin,
No, No, No…..in the sense of falsifying/fabricating data……or collusion.
Let’s just say a (hypothetical) group of guys got together and did something like this.
Would they be subject to prosecution in Civil or Criminal court in Great Britain?
I just re-read my last comment and I wasn’t clear…..
If it could be proven…… that a scientist or group of scientists conspired to commit a fraud in Great Britain, could they be prosecuted?
I don’t think you and the Beeb should worry too much about handling stolen property or quoting possible forgeries.
RealClimate certainly has no such qualms, since they have an article on the Hadley/East Anglia hack, which actually quotes Jones’ comment about Mann’s Nature trick, justifying it thus:
“Scientists often use the term “trick” to refer to “a good way to deal with a problem” … while ‘hiding’ is probably a poor choice of words (since it is ‘hidden’ in plain sight), not using the data in the plot is completely appropriate…”
Interesting, since if Mann and his band can quote and analyse these mails, they can hardly complain if others do the same, and reach different conclusions.
Mann did not attest they are forgeries or altered, which speaks volumes.
These guys are in thick soup.