Watts Up With That

The details on this are still sketchy, we’ll probably never know what went on. But it appears that Hadley Climate Research Unit has been hacked and many many files have been released by the hacker or person unknown

Here is what I know so far:

An unknown person put postings on some climate skeptic websites that advertised an FTP file on a Russian FTP server, here is the message that was placed on the Air Vent today:

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.

The file was large, about 61 megabytes, containing hundreds of files. It contained data, code, and emails from Phil Jones at CRU to and from many people.

I’ve seen the file, it appears to be genuine and from CRU. Others who have seen it concur- it appears genuine. There are so many files it appears unlikely that it is a hoax. The effort would be too great.

Here is some of the emails just posted at Climate Audit on this thread.

I’ve redacted email addresses and direct phone numbers for the moment. The emails all have US public universities in the email addresses, making them public/FOIA actionable I beleive.

See post and be sure to read the comments with some interesting alleged e-mails from/to Michael Mann, Phil Jones, Jonathan (we have to get rid of the Medeival Warm Period) Overpeck, Santer, Wahl, Briffa and others here.  As Jeff Id on Air Vent where it first appeared notes “There are also budgetary items and grant monies- you wouldn’t believe how much money these boys play with.” Much more to come. See this post here. See also Andrew Bolt’s column in the Herald Sun “Hadley hacked: warmist conspiracy exposed?” here. As embarrassing as the e-mails are, some of the documents are more embarrassing. They include a five-page PDF document titled The Rules of the Game, that appears to be a primer for propagating the AGW message to the average subject/resident of the United Kingdom. And there is an email disclosing how best to modify data and access readily available money in ways to avoid taxes reforted on in The Reference Frame here. We may soon know why Phil Jones was unwilling to share his data and methods. This will prove to the world what an elaborate and shameful hoax this whole movement has been.

What is unfolding today, is the long-sought information, including many damning admissions, represent precisely what Chris Horner addressed in his book released at the end of 2008, “Red Hot Lies: How Global Warming Alarmists Use Threats, Fraud and Deception to Keep you Misinformed” (Amazon link here). All of the leading players in these emails played leading roles in the information he put together and arguments he made.

WASHINGTON, D.C. - U.S. Senator James Inhofe (R-Okla.), Ranking Member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, today delivered a hour long Senate Floor speech in which he declared 2009 the “Year of the Skeptic,” noting that the “tide has turned” against global warming alarmism. Senator Inhofe’s Floor remarks follow President Obama’s announcement earlier this week that no climate agreement will be reached at the United Nations Global Warming Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark in December. Through his leadership position on the Senate EPW Committee, Senator Inhofe has led the fight against costly cap and trade legislation over the past seven years. “The bottom line,” Inhofe concluded in his speech today, “is that efforts to pass the largest tax increase in American history have clearly failed, handing the American people a tremendous victory.”

Excerpts from Inhofe Speech:

“Next month, thousands of UN delegates from over 190 nations, members of the press, and eco-activists from around the world will descend upon Copenhagen, Denmark as part of the United Nations Conference on Global Warming. Yet, even before it begins, the UN conference is being called a “disaster.” Just this morning, the Telegraph, a UK newspaper, noted, ‘The worst kept secret in the world is finally out-the climate change summit in Copenhagen is going to be little more than a photo opportunity for world leaders.’

“Not too long ago, however, the Copenhagen meeting was hailed as the time when an international agreement with binding limits on carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases would finally be agreed to. Eco-activists believed a Democratic President and a Democratic Congress would push through mandatory cap-and-trade legislation and that the United States would finally be ready to succumb to the demands of the United Nations. The reality, of course, is that Copenhagen will be a disaster. The failure comes at a high cost. Despite the millions of dollars spent by Al Gore, the Hollywood Elites, and the United Nations, climate alarmism has failed.

“Mr. President, through my position as the Chair and Ranking Member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee since 2003, I have been the lead Senator standing up and exposing the science, the costs, and the hysteria behind global warming alarmism. And I will be travelling to Copenhagen, leading what I call the “Truth Squad,” to say exactly what I said six years ago in Milan, Italy: The United States will not support a global warming treaty that will significantly damage the American economy, cost American jobs, and impose the largest tax increase in American history. Further, as I stated in 2003, unless developing nations are part of the binding agreement, the US will not go along. Given the unemployment rate of 10 percent, and given all of the out of control spending in Washington, the last thing we need is another thousand-page bill that increases costs and ships jobs overseas, all with no impact on climate change. I also said in Milan that the science is not settled. That was an unpopular view back then.  But now, since Al Gore’s science fiction movie, more and more scientists, reporters, and politicians are questioning global warming alarmism. I proudly declare 2009 as the “Year of the Skeptic"-the year in which scientists who question the so-called global warming consensus are being heard. Rather than continue down a road that will harm the US economy, the international community should forge a new path forward that builds on international trade, new and innovative technology, jobs, development, and economic growth. 

“Mr. President, over the last several years, we’ve seen a growing number of Democrats-yes, Democrats-agreeing with my position. Today, with a Democratic Congress and a Democratic President, some may be surprised by the number of Democrats who want nothing to do with cap-and-trade...Perhaps the biggest blow to any Senate climate bill came last week from 14 Senate Democrats, primarily from the Midwest, who, in a letter, challenged the allocation formula of Kerry-Boxer and Waxman-Markey. The letter was signed by Senators Al Franken, Amy Klobuchar, Mark Udall, Michael Bennet, Robert Byrd, Carl Levin, Debbie Stabenow, and Sherrod Brown...By now the message should be clear: it’s not just Republicans, but Democrats, who are blocking passage of cap-and-trade in the United States Senate. The sooner we are honest with the international community of the impossibility of the Senate moving forward with cap-and-trade, the sooner we can begin work on an all-of-the-above energy bill to develop domestic energy resources, create jobs, and provide consumers with affordable, reliable energy.

“Of course, from the most memorable tidbit from my two-hour global warming speech in July of 2003 were my comments about the science behind global warming. Now, six years later, and as I head to the next UN global warming conference, I am pleased by the vast and growing number of scientists, politicians, and reporters all over the world who are publicly rejecting climate alarmism. When I made those comments on the Senate Floor, few people were there to stand with me. Today, I have been vindicated, and I am proud to share the stage with all those who now dare to question Al Gore, Hollywood elites, and the United Nations...What do I credit for the reversal? You might be surprised my answer: it’s none other than the winner of a Nobel Peace Prize and an Oscar.  It’s Al Gore.

“Yet, it will be 2009 that will be best remembered as the “Year of the Skeptic.” Until this year, any scientist, reporter, or politician who dared raise even the slightest suspicion about the science behind global warming was dismissed and repeatedly mocked...Aside from the distasteful and derogatory ridicule by such alarmists, a major statement by a man-made global warming believer severely undercut their claims. Just this year, one UN IPCC climate scientist told more than 1,500 climate scientists gathered at the UN’s World Climate Conference in Geneva, Switzerland: “People will say this is global warming disappearing. I am not one of the sceptics. However, we have to ask the nasty questions ourselves or other people will do it."And remember, this quote comes from Mojib Latif, who Andrew Revkin of the New York Times describes as ‘a prize-winning climate and ocean scientist from the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences at the University of Kiel, in Germany.’ This remarkable admission of the need to “ask nasty questions,” comes nearly two years after I first pointed out these very facts on the Senate Floor. In my October 26, 2007 Senate Floor speech, I noted: “It is important to point out that the phase of global warming that started in 1979 has itself been halted since 1998. You can almost hear my critics skeptical of that assertion. Well, it turns out not to be an assertion, but an irrefutable fact, according to the temperature data that the UN relies on.  Paleoclimate scientist Dr. Bob Carter, who has testified before the US Senate Committee on Environment & Public Works, noted on June 18 of this year: ‘The accepted global average temperature statistics used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) show that no ground-based warming has occurred since 1998. Oddly, this eight-year-long temperature stability has occurred despite an increase over the same period of 15 parts per million (or 4 per cent) in atmospheric CO2. Second, lower atmosphere satellite-based temperature measurements, if corrected for non-greenhouse influences such as El Nino events and large volcanic eruptions, show little if any global warming since 1979, a period over which atmospheric CO2 has increased by 55 parts per million (17 %).” The very people that had long called the science settled, and those that went so far as to say the science behind global warming was “unequivocal,” are now admitting that “nasty questions” must be raised.

“Mr. President, let me conclude by saying just how encouraged I am to say that the tide has turned. The skeptics’ challenge has been heard, and I am glad to see that more and more journalists are no longer reporting the hyped fears that many want the American public to believe.  Media outlets around the world are more skeptical today of man-made climate fears, and they are also more aware of the enormous costs of climate legislation.  And more importantly, polls are showing that the people are no longer buying the hype either. The bottom line is that efforts to pass the largest tax increase in American history have clearly failed, handing the American people a tremendous victory.” See full speech here.

By Carl Wieland

According to Thomas Bouchard, a US psychologist famous for his research on twins raised apart, even scientists with good reason to believe that the majority are wrong can be silenced. The reason is the huge pressure to conform, the “powerful human urge to belong inside the group, to think like the majority and to win the group’s approval by trashing dissenters.”

Bouchard, being interviewed in the journal Science on his retirement, cited the example of Larry Summers who resigned as president of Harvard University after an outcry over his saying that discrimination alone doesn’t account for women’s lower representation in math-based disciplines.

“Nowadays, I’m sure there are people who are not publishing stuff on sex differences,” Bouchard says, adding that he sees self-censorship as a “great danger”, where data is not published because it does not fit the prevailing belief system. “I talk about those things in my class all the time - that males and females have different interests; in a sense, females have a broader and richer view of life. There are a lot of people who simply won’t talk about those things. Academics, like teenagers, sometimes don’t have any sense regarding the degree to which they are conformists.” (Emphasis added.)

A New York Times article about Bouchard’s views cited the case of economist Robert Shiller, an expert on house prices. While an advisor to the US Federal Reserve, he became deeply concerned about the bubbles developing in the US housing and stock markets. But rather than shout from the rooftops in warning the Fed, he expressed his views “very gently”. He said he “felt vulnerable”, because deviating too far from consensus “leaves one feeling potentially ostracized from the group, with the risk that one may be terminated.”

The New York Times article goes on to say that “conformity and group-think are attitudes of particular danger in science because progress often depends on overturning established wisdom”. Bouchard was not suggesting that forming a consensus view was wrong, but the problem lay in the peer-pressure silencing of critics, saying that his field has “whole domains we can’t talk about”. The NY Times article says that if “the brightest minds on Wall Street got suckered by group-think into believing house prices would never fall”, who knows about such bandwagons as global warming, saying sarcastically, “You mean it might be harder to model climate change 20 years ahead than house prices 5 years ahead? Surely not - how could so many climatologists be wrong?”

Science journal editor admits: Peer review censors against-the-trend papers

Interesting that against-the-trend papers on anthropogenic global warming are treated with the same disdain as papers critical of evolution. And note that Bruce Alberts’ final sentence above attempts to define against-the trend papers as “unscientific”, thus with one fell swoop removing them from scientific discourse.

See here why this resistance or inertia brought on by peere presssure makes it hard to bring sanity back to science here and expanded on here.