SCEPTICS SEIZE ON LEAKED CLIMATE EMAILS
By Barney Porter
The World Today
November 24, 2009
Original Link
As the world's leaders prepare for the Copenhagen climate change meeting next month, a computer hacker has sparked a new round of the debate between sceptics and scientists warning about climate change.
The hacker broke into a prominent British climate research centre and posted more than 1,000 private emails online.
Sceptics have jumped on suggestions that the researchers may have massaged their data.
The Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia is one of Britain's leading climate research centres.
The hacker plundered more than 1,000 emails and more than 3,000 documents from more than a decade of correspondence and sent them all to a server in Russia.
The hacker then posted a link to them, with the following message: "We feel that climate science is too important to be kept under wraps. We hereby release a random selection of correspondence, code, and documents. Hopefully it will give some insight into the science and the people behind it."
Climate change sceptics have jumped on the emails to rail against the science of climate change in online blogs.
In one email in 1999, Phil Jones, the director of the research unit, admitted he had used a non-traditional system to display data in a published paper.
The sceptics have also referred to an email from Kevin Trenberth, a climatologist at the US Centre for Atmospheric Research.
He admitted data published last August tracking the sun's energy flow should have indicated even more global warming and lamented the fact that their observation systems were inadequate.
"This means we can't fully comprehend or understand exactly what is going on. We know that it cooled in 2008 but we are not 100 per cent sure why even though we can point to the fact that there was a major La Nino event," Dr Trenberth said.
But he says the comment has been taken out of context.
"There is a paper on my website that you can look at. The paper is actually called An Imperative for Climate Change Planning, tracking Earth's global energy and that is what it was about," Dr Trenberth said.
There is a reference in some emails to researchers focusing on particular data or presenting data in a non-standard way to come to a particular conclusion.
"There was one which my colleague Phil Jones was involved in where he referred to the word trick and the way that I interpreted that is in two different ways.
"One of them is anytime you've got data, there is always a question about how you best present it in a figure and there are ways in which you can make things or get your message across more effectively than other ways and I interpreted it partly in that regard, but in this case I think it also referred to the paleoclimate record.
"This is the record in pre-industrial times where we are using things like tree rings and in this case the trick I think referred to is simply going back further in time and cutting out the tree ring record a little sooner and adding on the temperature record from instruments and it was how you combine those two that was related to the trick.
"So I think it was all pretty innocent and, in fact, the issue is fully discussed in the IPCC report."
That is not good enough for climate change sceptic William Kininmonth. He is the former head of the National Climate Centre and an adviser to Family First Senator Stephen Fielding.
"I've had a look at quite a number of the emails. What it does show quite clearly is attempts to sort of change the meaning of the data and also certainly to suppress opposition views to their view on how things are going," Mr Kininmonth said.
"And given that these were leading people in the IPCC assessment, it certainly weakens the case of the IPCC assessment that the consensus on the science is settled."
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HACKED DATA FROM UNIVERSITY OF EAST ANGLIA
Original Link
This archive presents over 120Mb of emails, documents, computer code and models from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, written between 1996 and 2009. The CRU has told the BBC that the files were obtained by a computer hacker 3-4 days ago. This archive includes unreleased global temperature analysis computer source code that has been the subject of Freedom of Information Act requests. The archive appears to be a collection of information put together by the CRU prior to a FoI redaction process.
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LEAKED EMAIL CLIMATE SMEAR WAS A PR DISASTER FOR UEA
By George Marshall
The Guardian
Monday, November 23, 2009
Original Link
There was no evidence of conspiracy among climate scientists in the leaked emails -- so why was the University of East Anglia's response so pathetic?
The lay public, when presented with confusing data and competing arguments about climate change, deploy the mental shortcut of believing the people they most trust. Trust in the communicator is therefore crucial.
Unfortunately the three main climate change communicators: politicians, journalists and environmental campaigners, are among the least trusted people in society -- fighting it out for bottom place in the ranking with lawyers and car salesmen. No one would pay any attention to them at all if they were not drawing on the aquifer of public trust in scientists.
But climate scientists have always misunderstood the dynamic of public belief and trust. They assume that belief will be built on their data and that public trust is merited by their authority. With the exception of a few outstanding communicators, they often make no attempt to speak to deeper values or make an emotional connection with the public -- indeed they see that as contrary to their professional independence.
Climate change deniers have always understood this. They use language that is designed to appeal to deeper values (such as freedom, independence, progress). The narrative they tell of being determined (and even persecuted) free-thinkers, standing against the tide of oppressive and self-interested conformity is designed to create an aura of integrity and trustworthiness.
The recent hacking of the servers of the University of East Anglia can only be understood within this landscape of competing appeals to public trust. 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.
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. As noted on realclimate.org, the emails contain "no evidence of any worldwide conspiracy, no mention of George Soros nefariously funding climate research, no grand plan to 'get rid of the MWP', no admission that global warming is a hoax, no evidence of the falsifying of data, and no 'marching orders' from our socialist/communist/vegetarian overlords."
But this is hardly the point. This is an orchestrated smear campaign and does not require balance or context. The speed with which the emails have been cut apart and fed into existing storylines is remarkable. At the very least the UEA email campaign is an application of dirty political tactics to climate change campaigning.
I suspect it goes further than that. The storyline is too clever, the timing on the brink of Copenhagen and the US climate bill too convenient. I wait with interest to find out how these emails were obtained.
The UEA response has been frankly pathetic. It was informed by Real Climate of the hack on 17 November but only reacted two days later when journalists caught on to the story. It refused to confirm whether the emails were accurate or not and, for a long time, refused to comment at all.
Now, in typical scientist fashion, it seeks to argue the data rationally. The UEA website states that "the selective publication of some stolen emails and other papers taken out of context is mischievous and cannot be considered a genuine attempt to engage with this issue in a responsible way". Mischievous? Irresponsible? What naughty pixies.
Then the Climate Research Unit director, Prof Phil Jones, focuses on one of quotes: "I've just completed Mike's Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years and from 1961 for Keith's to hide the decline." For the smear campaign it is only those key words "trick" and "hide" that count -- the rest can be made into anything it wants. Jones ignores this and responds with a detailed technical explanation of the passage with reference to the original graphs. It's like responding to someone calling you a bastard by showing them your birth certificate.
One can only imagine that the UEA's communications team is totally out of its depth. A less charitable conclusion is that they are defending the interests of UEA and are not concerned about (or have not understood) the damage to climate science.
I believe that Jones should speak to every journalist who calls, go on the offensive and defend his science. He ought to clearly state that he is not prepared to have his hard-working and committed colleagues around the world defamed or slandered by the kinds of people who illegally hack into computers. This is a desperate, last-ditch tactic by fanatics who have lost the rational debate.
Sadly, due in part to the lacklustre response, I am sure that these wretched emails have now entered permanently into the mythology of climate denial. Scientists are going to have to be a lot more savvy and on the ball in future.
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