Is Global Warming a Hoax?

[Rahim]

ClimateGate - Climate center's server hacked revealing documents and emails

Britain’s Climate Research Unit, University of East Anglia, suffered a data breach in recent days when a hacker apparently broke into their system and made away with thousands of emails and documents. The stolen data was then posted to a Russian server and has quickly made the rounds among climate skeptics. The documents within the archive, if proven to be authentic, would at best be embarrassing for many prominent climate researchers and at worst, damning.

He told Britain’s Investigate magazine's TGIF Edition "It was a hacker. We were aware of this about three or four days ago that someone had hacked into our system and taken and copied loads of data files and emails."

The file that has been making the rounds was initially brought to light by the website The Air Vent. The 61mb file contains thousands of documents and emails. As the archive was just discovered within the last 24 hours, its authenticity has not been determined and as such readers should cast a skeptical eye on the contents. It should also be noted that it appears the emails were illegally obtained by whoever originally posted them.

At least one person that was included in some of the correspondence, Steve McIntyre of the website Climate Audit, verified the authenticity of at least some of the messages. McIntyre said, “Every email that I’ve examined so far looks genuine. There are a few emails of mine that are 100% genuine. It is really quite breathtaking.”

The contents of the archive contain documents and email correspondence from a veritable who’s who in climate science. Among those included in the emails are Phil Jones, Keith Briffa, his assistant, Michael Mann of Penn State, Malcolm Hughes at the University of Arizona, Kevin Trenberth at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, James Hansen of NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies and others.

The emails contain an array of discussions including what appear to be concerted efforts to withhold data. Just as troubling is conversations that allude to potentially manipulating climate data to “hide the decline” of temperatures seen in the last decade.

Some of the excerpts of emails within the archives (edited for brevity, emphasis added):

From Michael E. Mann (witholding of information / data):

Dear Phil and Gabi,
I’ve attached a cleaned-up and commented version of the matlab code that I wrote for doing the Mann and Jones (2003) composites. I did this knowing that Phil and I are likely to have to respond to more crap criticisms from the idiots in the near future, so best to clean up the code and provide to some of my close colleagues in case they want to test it, etc. Please feel free to use this code for your own internal purposes, but don’t pass it along where it may get into the hands of the wrong people.

From Nick McKay (modifying data):

The Korttajarvi record was oriented in the reconstruction in the way that McIntyre said. I took a look at the original reference – the temperature proxy we looked at is x-ray density, which the author interprets to be inversely related to temperature. We had higher values as warmer in the reconstruction, so it looks to me like we got it wrong, unless we decided to reinterpret the record which I don’t remember. Darrell, does this sound right to you?

From Tom Wigley (acknowleding the urban effect):

We probably need to say more about this. Land warming since 1980 has been twice the ocean warming — and skeptics might claim that this proves that urban warming is real and important.

From Phil Jones (modification of data to hide unwanted results):

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.

From Kevin Trenberth (failure of computer models):

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. Our observing system is inadequate.

From Michael Mann (truth doesn't matter):


Perhaps we'll do a simple update to the Yamal post, e.g. linking Keith/s new page--Gavin t? As to the issues of robustness, particularly w.r.t. inclusion of the Yamal series, we actually emphasized that (including the Osborn and Briffa '06 sensitivity test) in our original post! As we all know, this isn't about truth at all, its about plausibly deniable accusations.

From Phil Jones (witholding of data):

The skeptics seem to be building up a head of steam here! ... The IPCC comes in for a lot of stick. Leave it to you to delete as appropriate! Cheers Phil
PS I’m getting hassled by a couple of people to release the CRU station temperature data. Don’t any of you three tell anybody that the UK has a Freedom of Information Act !

From Michael E. Mann (using a website to control the message, hide dissent):

Anyway, I wanted you guys to know that you’re free to use RC [RealClimate.org - A supposed neutral climate change website] Rein any way you think would be helpful. Gavin and I are going to be careful about what comments we screen through, and we’ll be very careful to answer any questions that come up to any extent we can. On the other hand, you might want to visit the thread and post replies yourself. We can hold comments up in the queue and contact you about whether or not you think they should be screened through or not, and if so, any comments you’d like us to include.

From Phil Jones (witholding of data):

If FOIA does ever get used by anyone, there is also IPR to consider as well. Data is covered by all the agreements we sign with people, so I will be hiding behind them.

If the emails and documents are a forgery, it would be an extremely large one that would likely have taken months to setup. No doubt much more will be coming out about these emails and their possible authenticity. Stay tuned to the Climate Change Examiner for updates as more information becomes available.

Update, 10:30am – Since the original publication of this article, the story is gaining steam and now the BBC is reporting on it. They report that a spokesman for the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit (CRU), "We are aware that information from a server used for research information in one area of the university has been made available on public websites.”

Analysis of the emails and documents in the archives continues. We must stress that the authenticity has not been proven however there have been no denials of such by the climate center. Some of the more recent revelations include:

From Phil Jones (destroying of emails / evidence):

Mike, Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4? Keith will do likewise. He’s not in at the moment – minor family crisis. Can you also email Gene and get him to do the same? I don’t have his new email address. We will be getting Caspar to do likewise.

From Tom Wigley (data modification):

Phil, Here are some speculations on correcting SSTs to partly explain the 1940s warming blip. If you look at the attached plot you will see that the land also shows the 1940s blip (as I’m sure you know). 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. I’ve chosen 0.15 here deliberately. This still leaves an ocean blip, and i think one needs to have some form of ocean blip to explain the land blip (via either some common forcing, or ocean forcing land, or vice versa, or all of these). When you look at other blips, the land blips are 1.5 to 2 times (roughly) the ocean blips — higher sensitivity plus thermal inertia effects. My 0.15 adjustment leaves things consistent with this, so you can see where I am coming from. Removing ENSO does not affect this. It would be good to remove at least part of the 1940s blip, but we are still left with “why the blip”. Let me go further. If you look at NH vs SH and the aerosol effect (qualitatively or with MAGICC) then with a reduced ocean blip we get continuous warming in the SH, and a cooling in the NH — just as one would expect with mainly NH aerosols. The other interesting thing is (as Foukal et al. note — from MAGICC) that the 1910-40 warming cannot be solar. The Sun can get at most 10% of this with Wang et al solar, less with Foukal solar. So this may well be NADW, as Sarah and I noted in 1987 (and also Schlesinger later). A reduced SST blip in the 1940s makes the 1910-40 warming larger than the SH (which it currently is not) — but not really enough. So … why was the SH so cold around 1910? Another SST problem? (SH/NH data also attached.) This stuff is in a report I am writing for EPRI, so I’d appreciate any comments you (and Ben) might have. Tom.

From Thomas R Karl (witholding data) :

We should be able to conduct our scientific research without constant fear of an "audit" by Steven McIntyre; without having to weigh every word we write in every email we send to our scientific colleagues. In my opinion, Steven McIntyre is the self-appointed Joe McCarthy of climate science. I am unwilling to submit to this McCarthy-style investigation of my scientific research. As you know, I have refused to send McIntyre the "derived" model data he requests, since all of the primary model data necessary to replicate our results are freely available to him. I will continue to refuse such data requests in the future. Nor will I provide McIntyre with computer programs, email correspondence, etc. I feel very strongly about these issues. We should not be coerced by the scientific equivalent of a playground bully. I will be consulting LLNL's Legal Affairs Office in order to determine how the DOE and LLNL should respond to any FOI requests that we receive from McIntyre.

From Tom Wigley (ousting of a skeptic from a professional organization):

Proving bad behavior here is very difficult. If you think that Saiers is in the greenhouse skeptics camp, then, if we can find documentary evidence of this, we could go through official AGU channels to get him ousted.

From Phil Jones (forging of dates):

Gene/Caspar, Good to see these two out. Wahl/Ammann doesn't appear to be in CC's online first, but comes up if you search. You likely know that McIntyre will check this one to make sure it hasn't changed since the IPCC close-off date July 2006! Hard copies of the WG1 report from CUP have arrived here today. Ammann/Wahl - try and change the Received date! Don't give those skeptics something to amuse themselves with.

From a document titled "jones-foiathoughts.doc" (witholding of data):

Options appear to be:
1. Send them the data
2. Send them a subset removing station data from some of the countries who made us pay in the normals papers of Hulme et al. (1990s) and also any number that David can remember. This should also omit some other countries like (Australia, NZ, Canada, Antarctica). Also could extract some of the sources that Anders added in (31-38 source codes in J&M 2003). Also should remove many of the early stations that we coded up in the 1980s.
3. Send them the raw data as is, by reconstructing it from GHCN. How could this be done? Replace all stations where the WMO ID agrees with what is in GHCN. This would be the raw data, but it would annoy them.

From Mick Kelly (modifying data to hide cooling):

Yeah, it wasn’t so much 1998 and all that that I was concerned about, used to dealing with that, but the possibility that we might be going through a longer – 10 year – period of relatively stable temperatures beyond what you might expect from La Nina etc. Speculation, but if I see this as a possibility then others might also. Anyway, I’ll maybe cut the last few points off the filtered curve before I give the talk again as that’s trending down as a result of the end effects and the recent cold-ish years.

Update, 3:45pm MDT: In regards to the authenticity, not one report disputing the veracity of the emails has come out. Many sources have talked to some of the email authors and they have not disputed the messages.
RealClimate, a website on which many of the scientists in the emails actively write has posted a response and does not deny their authenticity.
According to TIGF, a New Zealand new magazine, “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.”
A spokesman for the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit (CRU) told the BBC, “We are aware that information from a server used for research information in one area of the university has been made available on public websites.”

Wired reports that Kevin Trenberth from NCAR “acknowledged the e-mail is genuine.”

Nature reports quotes Michael Mann of Pennsylvania State University as saying, "I'm not going to comment on the content of illegally obtained e-mails."

It would appear at this point that there is little doubt that the emails are authentic. If they were not, the principle players would certainly have said so by now.

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Source of The Article

Open-Sourcing the Global Warming Debate

 

[Anorion]

^lol yeah, nice to see soemthing about this show up.
I'm just of the opinion that humans can never really change the climate, that it is a force beyond our control and comprehension, and that there are periods when the planet is warm and when it is cool

When you are blaming farting cows in Australia and wheat fields in India, but ignoring all industrial pollutant reduction protocols yourself, there is a trend that not too many can overlook.

Also, a lot of jobs to be lost if everyone stopped believing in environmentalism and climate change

 

[Rahim]

^YAh!! There has been too much iffy going on to trust these "intellectuals".

 

[Faun]

Global warming is a nice way of looting people. Carbon tax etc will squeeze the hell out of mango people.

I think India should not take this BS when 70% pollution is caused by developed countries. We are still a bunch of "thode mein gujara" type people and we should not be imposed with more taxes. India must not act as a sacrificial lamb. Let the West cut down their life style of gas guzzling SUVs.

 

[Rahim]

IF there is a mess, then its created by Developed countries; but now they want the developing and 3rd world countries to pay or I should put, is contribute to a World Fund, which will be used for giving out loans.

USA is talking all about need to curb the carbon-content but dont want to implement on their own country and companies, rather as USA has been doing is lecturing others.

Sau chuhe khaakar, Billi chali Hajj ko

 

[Krow]

Global warming is a nice way of looting people. Carbon tax etc will squeeze the hell out of mango people.

I think India should not take this BS when 70% pollution is caused by developed countries. We are still a bunch of "thode mein gujara" type people and we should not be imposed with more taxes. India must not act as a sacrificial lamb. Let the West cut down their life style of gas guzzling SUVs.

Exactly my views.

I would recommend you guys read State of Fear by Michael Crichton for more about this. The story is fiction, but all the sources and facts cited are non-fiction. I changed my outlook on global warming after reading that book.

 

[rhitwick]

I would recommend you guys read State of Fear by Michael Crichton for more about this. The story is fiction, but all the sources and facts cited are non-fiction. I changed my outlook on global warming after reading that book.

Same here dude, same here....

That book is just awesome and eye opener.
No, it does not ask (and we are also not asking) about believing it blindly, but it sure helps question what is being fed to us by media.

I've already quoted the points made by Crichton in some threads here, would quote again for u guys here.

 

[DigitalDude]

read last few chapters of 'Super Freakonomics' there is some good info on Geo Engineering which offers diff views on this global warming topic

_

 

[jrkraj]

How can we believe on books which written long time ago at that time they don't even known that our earth is round and about environment. It just a little guess.

 

[Faun]

No, it does not ask (and we are also not asking) about believing it blindly, but it sure helps question what is being fed to us by media.

What I am baffled by is the fact that in our education system we are fed with this Global Warming BS in every year science textbooks and then it continues in Engg text books too. Probably its same in other countries too.

Only if we are introduced to the other side too like Solar flare phenomenon etc. But then we get to know about it thru the Internet onlee and everyone know the plight of Internet here.

 

[Anorion]

Super Freakonomics? Would like to read that. Freakonomics was interesting.

Basically I think it's a scam to keep the underdeveloped world underdeveloped only. As development means using technology that makes the world go warm.

 

[Krow]

Basically I think it's a scam to keep the underdeveloped world underdeveloped only. As development means using technology that makes the world go warm.

They are making our land an experimentation ground so that they can know what are the perils of each new "green" technology before they use it themselves. Plus, they will make sure we have to import the necessary technologies/components required to implement it from them and thus its two birds killed with merely a fake gas filled rumour stone.

 

[nix]

I disagree. Global warming is not a hoax. If it were a hoax, all major governments would not have recognized it. Governments around the world, including china, are making efforts to curb the emissions of greenhouse gases.

the below link is about china's carbon emission targets:

*news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-world/china-unveils-carbon-emissions-targets-20091126-jukh.html

It is not right for India to duck responsibility. If we are an under-developed nation, it is only our fault. A lot of other south asian countries (singapore etc...) were very similar to us when they got independence, but they got ahead. how?

success and excuses don't go together.

global warming will only affect us and other animals, but not our planet. Earth will bounce back. Earth has faced many catastrophes, but with time, all wounds heal. our species may die, we may push other species to extinction. but new ones will come around, with time. its evolution.

india is a big contributor to greenhouse gases. the fact that we are exploiting forest area only aggravates the problem. fewer trees=reduced capability to handle CO2.

 

[thewisecrab]

State of Fear by Michael Crichton . .That will answer all your doubts AND clear the air of this media created hypocrisy.

TBH, if it means saving the environment, greener futures or cleaner air to breathe, I wouldn't mind if the media continues to play the same story of hysteria and eventually, get the world to clean up their act

 

[rhitwick]

@nix, yes, read "State of Fear"
FYI..some facts (authors note) from the book

>We know astonishingly little about every aspect of the environment, from its past history, to its present state, to how to conserve and protect it. In every debate, all sides overstate the extent of existing knowledge and its degree of certainty.

>Atmospheric carbon dioxide is increasing, and human activity is the probable cause.

>We are also in the midst of a natural warming trend that began about 1850, as we emerged from a four-hundred-year cold spell known as the “Little Ice Age.”

>Nobody knows how much of the present warming trend might be a natural phenomenon.

>Nobody knows how much of the present warming trend might be man-made.

>Nobody knows how much warming will occur in the next century. The computer models vary by 400 percent, de facto proof that nobody knows. But if I had to guess—the only thing anyone is doing, really—I would guess the increase will be 0.812436 degrees C. There is no evidence that my guess about the state of the world one hundred years from now is any better or worse than anyone else’s. (We can’t “assess” the future, nor can we “predict” it. These are euphemisms. We can only guess. An informed guess is just a guess.)

>I suspect that part of the observed surface warming will ultimately be attributable to human activity. I suspect that the principal human effect will come from land use, and that the atmospheric component will be minor.

>Before making expensive policy decisions on the basis of climate models, I think it is reasonable to require that those models predict future temperatures accurately for a period of ten years. Twenty would be better.

>I think for anyone to believe in impending resource scarcity, after two hundred years of such false alarms, is kind of weird. I don’t know whether such a belief today is best ascribed to ignorance of history, sclerotic dogmatism, unhealthy love of Malthus, or simple pigheadedness, but it is evidently a hardy perennial in human calculation.

>There are many reasons to shift away from fossil fuels, and we will do so in the next century without legislation, financial incentives, carbon-conservation programs, or the interminable yammering of fearmongers. So far as I know, nobody had to ban horse transport in the early twentieth century.

>I conclude that most environmental “principles” (such as sustainable development or the precautionary principle) have the effect of preserving the economic advantages of the West and thus constitute modern imperialism toward the developing world. It is a nice way of saying, “We got ours and we don’t want you to get yours, because you’ll cause too much pollution.”

>The “precautionary principle,” properly applied, forbids the precautionary principle. It is self-contradictory. The precautionary principle therefore cannot be spoken of in terms that are too harsh.

>I believe people are well intentioned. But I have great respect for the corrosive influence of bias, systematic distortions of thought, the power of rationalization, the guises of self-interest, and the inevitability of unintended consequences.

>I have more respect for people who change their views after acquiring new information than for those who cling to views they held thirty years ago. The world changes. Ideologues and zealots don’t.

>In the thirty-five-odd years since the environmental movement came into existence, science has undergone a major revolution. This revolution has brought new understanding of nonlinear dynamics, complex systems, chaos theory, catastrophe theory. It has transformed the way we think about evolution and ecology. Yet these no-longer-new ideas have hardly penetrated the thinking of environmental activists, which seems oddly fixed in the concepts and rhetoric of the 1970s.

>We haven’t the foggiest notion how to preserve what we term “wilderness,” and we had better study it in the field and learn how to do so. I see no evidence that we are conducting such research in a humble, rational, and systematic way. I therefore hold little hope for wilderness management in the twenty-first century. I blame environmental organizations every bit as much as developers and strip miners. There is no difference in outcomes between greed and incompetence.

>We need a new environmental movement, with new goals and new organizations. We need more people working in the field, in the actual environment, and fewer people behind computer screens. We need more scientists and many fewer lawyers.

>We cannot hope to manage a complex system such as the environment through litigation. We can only change its state temporarily—usually by preventing something—with eventual results that we cannot predict and ultimately cannot control.

>Nothing is more inherently political than our shared physical environment, and nothing is more ill served by allegiance to a single political party. Precisely because the environment is shared it cannot be managed by one faction according to its own economic or aesthetic preferences. Sooner or later, the opposing faction will take power, and previous policies will be reversed. Stable management of the environment requires recognition that all preferences have their place: snowmobilers and fly fishermen, dirt bikers and hikers, developers and preservationists. These preferences are at odds, and their incompatibility cannot be avoided. But resolving incompatible goals is a true function of politics.

>We desperately need a nonpartisan, blinded funding mechanism to conduct research to determine appropriate policy. Scientists are only too aware whom they are working for. Those who fund research—whether a drug company, a government agency, or an environmental organization—always have a particular outcome in mind. Research funding is almost never open-ended or open-minded. Scientists know that continued funding depends on delivering the results the funders desire. As a result, environmental organization “studies” are every bit as biased and suspect as industry “studies.” Government “studies” are similarly biased according to who is running the department or administration at the time. No faction should be given a free pass.

 

[Anorion]

@nix: It's called "the greenhouse effect for a reason". Plants live on co2, so the more the co2, the better for plants. The last time there was a lot of co2 in the atmosphere, I think it was in the late Jurrasic period, but am not sure, the rain forests sprouted around the world.
There is very little scientific evidence that points at a man made global warming. Little scientific evidence of worldwide warming at all.
Think about it, everythign from UV-protective contact lenses to "green" and low power consumption hardware is priced at a premium.

 

[Rahim]

Money making move

 

[Faun]

This thread is approved by Al Gore...NOT.

 

[Krow]

An Inconvenient Truth is hogwash. him.

 

[p_dude]

not just hog wash these are very famous politicians and scientists supporting this propaganda
and many people believes it without questioning because of this reason

it has to do much more than just making money through carbon tax and other sh1t