Hacker Gets the Goods on Global Warming... or something

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

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.

Of interest on the topic o Global Climate Change, several emails which appear to indicate that data was manipulated to hide cooling trends and recommendations were made on how to avoid requests for information etc. Here's a bit from an email that has the GL Skeptics in a tizzy:

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.

I have always been in the 'I dunno' category on this since I'm not a climate scientist.  However, not poisoning your own environment seems to be a no-brainer to me, just from a survival standpoint.

I'm making no claim as to the validity of the data or the interpretation its currently being given... just posting it because it's interesting.

[Thurnez Isa]

so the director of a climate research group in Britain is influencing the hundreds of peer reviewed journals (where of course anyone could replicate and look at the same data as the scientists who wrote the journal and draw their own conclusions) in a vast conspiracy according to an internet leek

ya something doesn't smell right here

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

so the director of a climate research group in Britain is influencing the hundreds of peer reviewed journals (where of course anyone could replicate and look at the same data as the scientists who wrote the journal and draw their own conclusions) in a vast conspiracy according to an internet leek

yay something doesn't smell right here

Hey, if the Illuminati is capable of secretly running the planet... 

[Thurnez Isa]

This comment has it right

This is sounding more and more ridiculous. Jones "hasn't talked to the police", but for some reason gave an exclusive interview to a web site known for its hostility to climate science.

Is there any evidence their site was hacked into at all? Isn't it more likely the files are just files already released under an FOI request?

And how were they ever on RealClimate's site? I didn't see them.

Even if the files are real, how do we know they haven't been doctored? Some original extracts sounded plausible. Now they're sounding as if they were concocted to confirm familiar right-wing talking-points.

You would have to be crazy to base any conclusions on this information.

and considering that site spends most of its time trying to advertise Ian Wishart book (which is bad by the way)

The best advice I could give is that if your reading something that is giving you a yes or no answer it's probably not that reliable. Because the data is very ambiguous (at least it is in Geology Magazine) As it should be. Climate is incredibly complicated. There's hundreds of factors determining temperature. It would by like trying to maintain a constant temperature in your home with a hundred different furnaces, all in flux.
So when I hear Al Gore, or something that sounds like conspiracy, or anecdotal evidence (like there's lots of polar bears where I live) I usually become very skeptical of the claims.

I will guarantee though that this will circle through the internet like a virus.

Also I will say if it is a conspiracy its a really poor one. Cause as I said in Geology magazine at least the data is very ambiguous, and can be interpreted several ways.
Unfortunately the debate though is almost no longer a scientific one, but a social one.

[Cain]

I wondered about the veracity of the information too, on a quick skimming, but hadn't gone back over it in enough depth to make a decision.

It seems there are multiple points where false information could have been introduced, and no independent verification of the particular claims.  So...

[Triple Zero]

you can do text searches of the emails at http://www.anelegantchaos.org/ (they did xxxx out the addresses though, but afaik they can be found in the original data, available from several torrents)

however, what I wonder about most is why these exact 1073 emails? they range from 1996 till current day so I really doubt this is more than just a small part of the total email exchanges that could have been found at that server.

could have been they just did a quick keyword scan of mails that were at all related to the research, as 90% might have been personal communication.

however I wouldnt rule out the selection is rather biased.

[Kai]

I'll trust climatologists over some "hacker" any day.

[Thurnez Isa]

What I don't understand is if these people wanna take a political position and deny global warming why don't they just drop 20 bucks and get a subscription to Geology Magazine or Lithosphere and just go through the actual data, cause like I said for every article in which the data seems to support global warming in the popular sense there is one that seems to challenge some aspect of it. I can't vouch for Nature or what ever climatologists read.
If these people are going to be nit picky, then why don't they just be nit picky with the actual data rather then this conspiratorial crap?

[Triple Zero]

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/11/the-cru-hack/ also has an explanation of what "nature trick" might mean (but they also might be saying the same thing as you, Thurnez, I didnt quite understand).

I'll trust climatologists over some "hacker" any day.

Sorry but I think that's a really bad reason to discount this information. I agree this information doesn't point out some big global warming eco hippie conspiracy, but I will conclude that from the fact that the information doesn't actually show any super-shady stuff is going on, not because climatologists are somehow inherently more trustworthy than hackers.

even though they might be.

but they are monkeys too.

[Kai]

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/11/the-cru-hack/ also has an explanation of what "nature trick" might mean (but they also might be saying the same thing as you, Thurnez, I didnt quite understand).

I'll trust climatologists over some "hacker" any day.

Sorry but I think that's a really bad reason to discount this information. I agree this information doesn't point out some big global warming eco hippie conspiracy, but I will conclude that from the fact that the information doesn't actually show any super-shady stuff is going on, not because climatologists are somehow inherently more trustworthy than hackers.

even though they might be.

but they are monkeys too.

Maybe its because climatologists are scientists that study climate. Since when can you just sit down and UNDERSTAND climate? I'm guessing this hacker hasn't gone through 8 years of schooling to understand, so why should I trust a damn thing he says?

There is way too much armchair "science" going on these days. Every schmuck thinks they can sit down with a data set and wikipedia and deem themselves an expert. All part and parcel of politicization of science, I guess.


I really wish we had a climatologist on board to talk with about this stuff.

[Triple Zero]

Maybe its because climatologists are scientists that study climate. Since when can you just sit down and UNDERSTAND climate? I'm guessing this hacker hasn't gone through 8 years of schooling to understand, so why should I trust a damn thing he says?

There is way too much armchair "science" going on these days. Every schmuck thinks they can sit down with a data set and wikipedia and deem themselves an expert. All part and parcel of politicization of science, I guess.

but the hacker is not saying anything. he just put the data out there.

in fact, I haven't seen anywhere who this hacker is or how they did it.

but I think I get you now, I suppose you were trying to say that you trust the climatologists more than the people on all the blogs drawing conclusions from whatever they think they can distill from that leaked data. And with that, I would agree.

Unless they do have schooling on climatology, which some of them do btw, but then, they are also the people that are skeptical about the whole thing supposedly exposing a big scandal.

[Kai]

Maybe its because climatologists are scientists that study climate. Since when can you just sit down and UNDERSTAND climate? I'm guessing this hacker hasn't gone through 8 years of schooling to understand, so why should I trust a damn thing he says?

There is way too much armchair "science" going on these days. Every schmuck thinks they can sit down with a data set and wikipedia and deem themselves an expert. All part and parcel of politicization of science, I guess.

but the hacker is not saying anything. he just put the data out there.

in fact, I haven't seen anywhere who this hacker is or how they did it.

but I think I get you now, I suppose you were trying to say that you trust the climatologists more than the people on all the blogs drawing conclusions from whatever they think they can distill from that leaked data. And with that, I would agree.

Unless they do have schooling on climatology, which some of them do btw, but then, they are also the people that are skeptical about the whole thing supposedly exposing a big scandal.

You got it.

I was confusing the hacker with the people on that website drawing conclusion.

[Kai]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QlyorcJ28UA

A TED talk relevant to this thread.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

So something keeps bothering me with this...

When I learned about the Scientific Method the value of a theory was specifically around Predictive Power. IE, the model says "IF X then Y" and we see X then Y and say "Oh, good theory!" Thus far, it seems to me that a lot of the support for the Climate Change thing is based on "consensus" between Scientists rather than its predictive power. Now it may be due to the nature of news reports vs. being neck deep in the actual scientific papers... but there seem to be a lot of reports that appear as "NASA Satellites Detect Unexpected Ice Loss in East Antarctica" http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/11/091125230727.htm

Earlier models predicted steady increases in the temperatures, but we appear to be experiencing bizarre fluctuations instead (no one predicted the 1998-2008 flatline etc).

Now, on top of that, I'm reading through these emails and the notes from software developers and the whole thing strikes me as weird. One developer eventually recommended throwing a whole database of recorded temps out because they couldn't get the numbers to match earlier reports on the same numbers.

I am not claiming its a hoax or the real deal or anything else. I have a friend that has been to the Antarctic 6 times over seven years, spending months there... he seems to think that the place is warming up based on his direct experiences there. I have no reason to doubt him.

Unlike the deniers, I'm not worried that there's nothing wrong and Scientists are making it up in order to take over the world... mostly I'm concerned that they're pretending to know what's going on and keep holding out the "We're not fucked yet" plan, when maybe we should be moving on to the "We are fucked now" plan.

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.

Shouldn't scientists say this sort of stuff publicly? The data are surely wrong? I mean, that may be out of context, but I have yet to imagine a context where it isn't uhhh... something a scientist should say.

ESR pointed out a bit in the stolen code which is also disturbing:

;
; Apply a VERY ARTIFICAL correction for decline!!
;
yrloc=[1400,findgen(19)*5.+1904]
valadj=[0.,0.,0.,0.,0.,-0.1,-0.25,-0.3,0.,- 0.1,0.3,0.8,1.2,1.7,2.5,2.6,2.6,$
2.6,2.6,2.6]*0.75 ; fudge factor
if n_elements(yrloc) ne n_elements(valadj) then message,'Oooops!'
;
yearlyadj=interpol(valadj,yrloc,timey)

It flattens a period of warm temperatures in the 1930s — see those negative coefficients? Then, later on, it applies a positive multiplier so you get a nice dramatic hockey stick at the end of the century.

Making assumptions and artificial corrections may be fine for trying to develop a model... but this code was being written BASED on an existing model.

If the model says X and the data disagrees... what kind of science manipulates the data?

Since I'm not an expert on scientific methods or climate change, I could be completely misreading this stuff... maybe the models being supplied are correctly predicting everything and I just misunderstand. Maybe there's a valid reason to throw out data that doesn't match expectations... or maybe thats not what's actually being done, I dunno.

However, it does appear to me, based on my current mixed level of knowledge and ignorance on the subject, that some rather unsciency stuff is going on at least among these few individuals at IPCC.

[Thurnez Isa]

Ill reread your post again soon
Im sort of busy so i only scanned it
...so if i get something wrong please forgive me

As with Antarctica, it is warming up, the question is why? hole in the ozone layer, global temperatures (which tends to effect the poles worse) the movement of the continent, ect? There is no accepted theory that I know of. The best explanation seems to be global climate change, but it's only an explanation not a theory - there is a difference in a scientific sense.
The weirdness comes from up north where Greenland is warming up and the ice is melting but the western coast of the arctic is not warming up and the glaciers are advancing. What accounts for this?

Scientist do say these things all the time, the media tends not to report on that, or they tend to spin it as a yes or no answer. Basically the media hate ambiguity and tries to interpret what the scientist is saying rather then what evidence he is trying interpret.  There is a distinction. From what I read on the emails I would say this accounts for a lot of what is being reported.

I'm basically just summarizing a report I just handed in on a separate issue
That's kind of weird.

Either way I hope that answers some things...

My opinion is as data is collected we should probably try to act as if it's us screwing everything up. Sort of a best to be safe then sorry kind of attitude, since even if the worse case scenario is only partly right we could really fuck some stuff up.