AGW brought to it's knees by hacker?

23rd Nov 2009 08:28 #1

Member

As suspected and speculated by many over the years the pillars of the AGW movement are far from the people they have been made out to be. The emails alone obtained in 61MB file contain conversation that indicate among other things manipulation of data, manipulation of the peer review process and possible criminal activity involving misappropriated funds and freedom of information requests.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/21/AR2009112102186.html?h...=moreheadlines

In one e-mail, the center's director, Phil Jones, writes Pennsylvania State University's Michael E. Mann and questions whether the work of academics that question the link between human activities and global warming deserve to make it into the prestigious IPCC report, which represents the global consensus view on climate science.

"I can't see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report," Jones writes. "Kevin and I will keep them out somehow -- even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!"

In another, Jones and Mann discuss how they can pressure an academic journal not to accept the work of climate skeptics with whom they disagree. "Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal," Mann writes.

"I will be emailing the journal to tell them I'm having nothing more to do with it until they rid themselves of this troublesome editor," Jones replies.

The emails can be found in their entirety here: http://www.anelegantchaos.org/

In addition to the emails the datasets and code that others have been seeking for many years was also released. One document named HARRY_READ_ME.txt which is a 700KB file is apprentlly a diary of "Harry's" struggle with the datasets which...well we'll let old Harry speak for himself...

Here, the expected 1990-2003 period is MISSING - so the correlations aren't so hot! Yet
the WMO codes and station names /locations are identical (or close). What the hell is
supposed to happen here? Oh yeah - there is no 'supposed', I can make it up. So I have

If an update station matches a 'master' station by WMO code, but the data is unpalatably
inconsistent, the operator is given three choices:

<BEGIN QUOTE>
You have failed a match despite the WMO codes matching.
This must be resolved!! Please choose one:

1. Match them after all.
2. Leave the existing station alone, and discard the update.
3. Give existing station a false code, and make the update the new WMO station.

Enter 1,2 or 3:
<END QUOTE>

You can't imagine what this has cost me - to actually allow the operator to assign false
WMO codes!! But what else is there in such situations? Especially when dealing with a 'Master'
database of dubious provenance (which, er, they all are and always will be).

False codes will be obtained by multiplying the legitimate code (5 digits) by 100, then adding
1 at a time until a number is found with no matches in the database. THIS IS NOT PERFECT but as
there is no central repository for WMO codes - especially made-up ones - we'll have to chance
duplicating one that's present in one of the other databases. In any case, anyone comparing WMO
codes between databases - something I've studiously avoided doing except for tmin/tmax where I
had to - will be treating the false codes with suspicion anyway. Hopefully.

Of course, option 3 cannot be offered for CLIMAT bulletins, there being no metadata with which
to form a new station.

This still meant an awful lot of encounters with naughty Master stations, when really I suspect
nobody else gives a hoot about. So with a somewhat cynical shrug, I added the nuclear option -
to match every WMO possible, and turn the rest into new stations (er, CLIMAT excepted). In other
words, what CRU usually do. It will allow bad databases to pass unnoticed, and good databases to
become bad, but I really don't think people care enough to fix 'em, and it's the main reason the
project is nearly a year late.

And there are STILL WMO code problems!!! Let's try again with the issue. Let's look at the first
station in most of the databases, JAN MAYEN. Here it is in various recent databases:

Here's some other excerpts from the emails, the number in front is the filename. You can look up full email on the site above if you want to get full context:

1107454306 - “The two MMs have been after the CRU station data for years. If they ever hear there is a Freedom of Information Act now in the UK, I think I’ll delete the file rather than send to anyone.”

1109021312 - “Don’t any of you three tell anybody that the UK has a Freedom of Information Act !”

1210341221 - “2. You can delete this attachment if you want. Keep this quiet also, but this is the person who is putting in FOI requests for all emails Keith and Tim have written and received re Ch 6 of AR4. We think we’ve found a way around this.”

1212073451 - “Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4?”

1228330629 - “If he pays 10 pounds (which he hasn’t yet) I am supposed to go through my emails and he can get anything I’ve written about him. About 2 months ago I deleted loads of emails, so have very little - if anything at all. This legislation is different from the FOI”

1089318616 - “I can’t see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow - even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is !”

1092418712 - “Obviously, under no circumstances should any of this get back to Pielke.”

0876437553 - “I am very strongly in favor of as wide and rapid a distribution as
possible for endorsements. I think the only thing that counts is
numbers. The media is going to say “1000 scientists signed” or “1500
signed”. No one is going to check if it is 600 with PhDs versus 2000
without. They will mention the prominent ones, but that is a
different story.”

1106338806 - “Data is covered by all the agreements we sign with people, so I will be hiding behind them.“

0843161829 - “I really wish I could be more positive about the Kyrgyzstan material, but I swear I pulled every trick out of my sleeve trying to milk something out of that. ”

1053461261 - “The various papers apparently in production, regardless of their individual emphasis or approaches, will find their way in to the literature and the next IPCC can sift and present their message(s) as it wishes., but in the meantime , why not a simple statement of the shortcomings of the BS paper as they have been listed in these messages and why not in Climate Research?”

1254108338 - “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.”

1114025310 - “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.”

1106322460 - Trying to get Saiers ousted from GRL

1098472400 - “This is all gut feeling, no science, but years of experience of dealing with global scales and varaibility.”

I will note the hack has been verified and this controversy erupted on the 20th, the authors of some of these emails have already tried to explain away many of them and there has been no denial to there legitimacy. No hoax, it's the real deal.

It should be noted that the work of these people forms the bedrock for all AGW research and was used to form the conclusions in the IPCC reports. In all likelihood by the time this all said and done they will back at square one.