Hacked off: bad PR or climate conspiracy?
Published: 27 November 2009
Author: Rose Gamble
[ 5 ] Recommendations
[ 12 ] Comments
The emails were originally stated as pointing to a climate change conspiracy
Hackers broke into the email server of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia (UEA) last Friday 20th November, stealing 1,079 emails and over 3,800 documents. The material was posted onto an anonymous server in Russia, as well as on climate sceptic blog Air Vent.
It was accompanied by an anonymous note reading: "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 material has elicited an explosion of criticism, particularly from climate change sceptics, who used segments of the emails to corroborate theories that global warming is a fabrication created by the scientific community.
Covered up - or overcooked?
In an email dated November 1999, one scientist wrote: "I've just completed Mike's Nature [the science journal] trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie, from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith's to hide the decline."
Professor Phil Jones, Director of UEA Climate Change Research Unit said in response to the now infamous email: "The use of the term "hiding the decline" was in an email written in haste."
The bottom line is that temperatures continue to rise and humans are responsible for it.
Lord Lawson, the former Conservative chancellor and long-time climate change sceptic, has called for a high-level independent inquiry. However, despite the unfortunate email revelations, many have remained unwavering in the conviction that global warming is irrefutable.
Reactions and responses
“Do these revelations justify the sceptics' claims that this is 'the final nail in the coffin' of global warming theory?” wrote George Monbiot in the Guardian. “Not at all. They damage the credibility of three or four scientists. They raise questions about the integrity of one or perhaps two out of several hundred lines of evidence. To bury man-made climate change, a far wider conspiracy would have to be revealed.”
Likewise, Jones, who has admitted some of the contents of the emails were a cause for embarrassment, has been quick to claim UEA temperature records (indicative of global warming) match those produced by independent groups of scientists working for Nasa and the National Climate Data Centre in the USA.
A spokesperson for the Met Office, which jointly produces global temperature datasets with the Climate Research Unit, has called the hacking incident “a rather shallow attempt to discredit robust science” and has affirmed man’s damaging role in climate change.
“The bottom line is that temperatures continue to rise and humans are responsible for it,” he said.
Out of context?
With the Copenhagen conference fast approaching, the hacking incident has been perceived as an attempt to discredit scientific research into the effects of global warming.
"One has to wonder if it is a coincidence that this email correspondence has been stolen and published at this time,” said Professor Jones. “This may be a concerted attempt to put a question mark over the science of climate change in the run-up to the Copenhagen talks."
George Marshall of the Guardian describes the email extracts, taken out of context, as an orchestrated smear campaign.
“The denial industry (and hordes of climate nerds) has trawled through these emails and found sentences which, when removed from context, support their storyline that climate science is being deliberately distorted and exaggerated for a mixed bag of self-interested and politicised ends,” he writes.
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“But you could find anything in here. I looked and found lots of references to lunch and fun, 94 to hate, 31 to love. Generally, though, the emails are extremely focused, technical, and, dare I say it, really dull.”
The context, he writes, is that of a competing appeal for the public’s trust. It’s undeniably bad PR for UEA – but does not provide evidence for climate change conspiracy.
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Comments
Al I want is facts and figures and the the truih, not spectulations, guesses, computerized assessments and paronoid statements from tree huggers and scaremongers and people who do not work or or add to the community etc;, and make abig thing of little things. I am only a plumber and therefore un-educated
Regardless of whether or not it was a hacker or a whistle-blower, what sort of scientific method were these guys using? I fully believe that climate change is man made, but am very disappointed to hear that this has been going on, whatever the explanation.
Now who are the conspiracy theorists? The denialists? Hackers?
Let me get this right you assume this was a conspiracy by hackers who stole the e-mails. I have read from other sources that the information was sent from UEA by a whistle-blower.
This is far more likely than 'hackers' theory since Phil Jones et al being so paranoid about sharing data would I am sure have ensured that this data on their servers was kept secure at all costs.
Additionally, if their servers were so insecure hackers would have got in years ago.
An inside job therefore by a whistle-blower and God bless him.
So we look at the cooked up data the same way we looked at the cooked up WMD's in Iraq? I'm also looking at how the CO2 levels rose AFTER the temps climbed back at the beginning of the "hockey stick" graph, not before. I also see more snow in the US in Nov. since back in the 60's.
Sorry, I'm off this bandwagon. Find another follower to take my place.
If you can...
Look at the bigger picture. There is now unrefutable evidence that 'global warming' - 'climate change' however you want to dress it has NO relation to CO2 emissions. If anything CO2 levels reflect past surface temperatures - by around 1000 years. That is real scienctific inference. This is why it is being suppressed by the world media & that is the REAL scandal here. It is a discrace.
if global warming is real why is ever council in the uk have to fit double glazing and insolation if we are warming up is this not a waste of money?
also has anyone ever thought that all this change could be the fault of all those hydrogen bomb test and they have sent the world in a bit of a wobble and nothing we do from now on will solve the problem untill the world stabalises?
Notwithstanding the reason for this hacking, the scientists involved in these emails have certainly demonstrated intellectual arrogance. On the one hand they clamor that scientific evidence is necessary to substantiate claims, and then they turn around and employ non-scientific/unethical methods to "prove" their claims.
This is not unusual though. We are being increasingly assailed by bogus scientists who promote their views in order to secure their place in history. When a paper written by a scientists is disproved (or shown to be based on fabricated data - recall the paper on cloning), it discredits their contributions as a whole. So scientists spend a lifetime advocating their papers/work and there certainly is a strong temptation to deceive the unsuspecting public when portions of their work are questioned by the skeptics. As a college professor, I am alarmed at how many students do not know what statistical reasoning/inference means and yet they will "believe" whatever a "scientist" says without seeking for a legitimate proof.
For example, see the comment by Northern Nelly above! He/She seems to say that "seeing is believing". But if the data that you see is being fabricated, then what do you do?
You're a Denier, Northern Nelly:
"The proof is in the pudding. Glaciers are retreating, northern towns and roads are sinking into the melting permafrost, animals and insects are moving beyond their normal ranges."
Anecdote, not proof. All of this was true from 100AD to 1400AD you need more to link this to fossil fuel emissions. No warming for ten years, says the Met Office.
"You can prove or disprove anything by taking random lines out of anyone's emails."
May I recommend you read the words of George Monbiot and Mike Hulme?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2009/nov/25/monbiot-...
It's no use pretending this isn't a major blow. The emails extracted by a hacker from the climatic research unit at the University of East Anglia could scarcely be more damaging. I am now convinced that they are genuine, and I'm dismayed and deeply shaken by them.
Yes, the messages were obtained illegally. Yes, all of us say things in emails that would be excruciating if made public. Yes, some of the comments have been taken out of context. But there are some messages that require no spin to make them look bad. There appears to be evidence here of attempts to prevent scientific data from being released, and even to destroy material that was subject to a freedom of information request.
Worse still, some of the emails suggest efforts to prevent the publication of work by climate sceptics, or to keep it out of a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. I believe that the head of the unit, Phil Jones, should now resign. Some of the data discussed in the emails should be re-analysed.
- Monbiot
Excellent article. You can prove or disprove anything by taking random lines out of anyone's emails.
The proof is in the pudding. Glaciers are retreating, northern towns and roads are sinking into the melting permafrost, animals and insects are moving beyond their normal ranges.
If people are still intent on disproving the facts they should use actual data to argue with and not a "random selection of correspondence, code and documents." That's just silly.
The choice presented here of EITHER "conspiracy" OR "bad pr" shows the difficulty this site is in, when presented with the evidence.
The New Denialists are the irrational climate change fanatics.
"does not provide evidence for climate change conspiracy"
It does show evidence of
a) manufacturing a bogus historical temperature record
b) controlling the publication process ("peer review")
c) refusing to share data with other researchers
d) destroying evidence in response to FOIA requests
And that's before we've got to the source code.
This is not good enough. On the face of it, these emails do suggest a conspiracy to falsify cientific findings. we cannot write this off on the grounds that they are on 'our side'. It is precisely because I support curbs in climate change gasses as the top priority of our times that I feel we cannot let this go. If this was what it seems, a full apology must be made and these guys and their bosses must be sacked
The deliberate suppression and systematic falsification of scientific data is a crime against science
What a surprise, yet another "article" that ignores the extremely anti-science behavior of the so-called scientists. Any real scientist should be outraged by the attempts to suppress dissenting views, and the refusals to share data and methodologies. Perhaps it's too much to expect the vast majority of the population who have no scientific or engineering training to understand this. It is clearly too much to expect most journalists to understand this.