The University of East Anglia's Hadley Climatic Research Centre appears to have suffered a security breach earlier today, when an unknown hacker apparently downloaded 1079 e-mails and 72 documents of various types and published them to an anonymous FTP server. These files appear to contain highly sensitive information that, if genuine, could prove extremely embarrassing to the authors of the e-mails involved. Those authors include some of the most celebrated names among proponents of the theory of anthropogenic global warming (AGW).
The FTP link first appeared on a blog called The Air Vent. The blog's owner, identified as "Jeff Id", downloaded the file, examined it, and posted a brief summary on his blog. Another commenter, identified as "Steven Mosher," passed the information on to Steven McIntyre's Climate Audit blog and to another blog, The Blackboard, run by a blogger identified as "Lucia." Most recently, blogger Anthony Watts, who runs a blog titled "Watts Up With That?" mentioned the FTP archive in his own blog.
Commentary on all the blogs involved has been brisk, except, oddly enough, at The Air Vent, where only seven comments have been received.
The FTP server is in a Russian domain and uses the anonymous FTP protocol, which does not require a pre-registered user account or password for downloading. The file is named FOI2009.zip, an apparent reference to US Public Law 89-554, 80 Stat. 383, the Freedom of Information Act.
Several commentators have expressed skepticism as to the authenticity of the archive, pointing to its lack of clear provenance and suggesting that someone was attempting to embarrass, either directly or indirectly, the dignitaries attending the upcoming climate-change conference in Copenhagen. Other commentators who have examined the e-mails in the archive conclude that the header and other information that they contain is too detailed to be a hoax. Thus far, no commentator has found anything in the e-mail headers that appears to be mistaken.
Some of the most embarrassing e-mails are attributed to Philip Jones, the Director of the CRU; Keith Briffa, his assistant; Michael E. Mann of the University of Virginia; Malcolm Hughes at the University of Arizona; and others. One such e-mail makes references to the famous "hockey-stick" graph published by Mann in the journal Nature:
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. Mike's series got the annual land and marine values while the other two got April-Sept for NH land N of 20N. The latter two are real for 1999, while the estimate for 1999 for NH combined is +0.44C wrt 61-90. The Global estimate for 1999 with data through Oct is +0.35C cf. 0.57 for 1998.
The emphasis in the above quote was added.
Mr. Mosher offered this summary of the rest of the e-mails that he had found:
And, you get to see somebody with the name of phil jones say that he would rather destroy the CRU data than release it to McIntyre. And lots lots more. including how to obstruct or evade FOIA requests. and guess who funded the collection of cores at Yamal.. and transferred money into a personal account in Russia[.] And you get to see what they really say behind the curtain.. you get to see how they “shape” the news, how they struggled between telling the truth and making policy makers happy. [Y]ou get to see what they say about Idso and pat micheals, you get to read how they want to take us out into a dark alley, it’s stunning all very stunning. You get to watch somebody named phil jones say that John daly’s death is good news.. or words to that effect. I don’t know that its real.. But the CRU code looks real
John Daly (not to be confused with the professional golfer of the same name) is identified in one of the e-mails as a global-warming skeptic who died in January of 2004.
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. The document suggests that it is a precis of a longer document housed at the Web site of the UK Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.
Developing...
Update: The Russian FTP server administrator appears to have deleted the archive. The text of the link was: <http://ftp.tomcity.ru/incoming/free/FOI2009.zip>
Activity on The Air Vent has picked up considerably since this story broke.
Further Update: Two other possessors of the file have uploaded it to two other file-sharing services: MegaUpload and FileDropper.
Further Update: A Pirate Bay torrent link is now available.
Also: The "72 documents" refers to 72 files and folders at the top level of a directory called "documents." In fact, reliable counts indicate at least 3485 documents present, not counting the e-mails.
Correction: The Hadley Centre and the Climatic Research Unit are not the same institution. See here for a full explanation of where the confusion came from. However, recent perusal of the archive indicates that the two institutions were pursuing several joint projects. Research continues.
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Comments
Whether an inside job or an infiltration the individual responsible deserves a knighthood.
As I said on the Air Vent, if this is real, it is a GAME CHANGER. It seems far too detailed to be a hoax, but if it is a hoax, it's brilliant. I wonder what Phil and his cohorts are doing right now. If he really gloated at the death of John Daly, that is really sick and demonstrates how low they have stooped. Oh to be a fly on the wall...
Remember that forged document that was supposed to be an unsatisfactory record of George W. Bush's Air Guard duty? That was probably the equal of a couple of kilobytes data. This is 30 thousand times as big, so it would be enormously difficult to fake. I will be watching this with some serious interest.
I wish I could download the file. I can't find it anywhere.
And I do think it's very important that people be careful about being punked with this...
FOI could be a reference to British Freedom of Information regulations. The U.S. law seem to be more frequently referred to as FOIA. But then again, the file name was obviously not chosen to be very descriptive.
Trust but verify. No one should assume this is anything more than an elaborate prank until it can be verified as authentic. That said, it sure looks like the real thing.
If it is, heads will roll.
Threatening and (potentially) very damaging to the climate warming industry (researchers and investors). If the Warmers lose credibility and pursusive power with the public and politicians, who benefits?
This is all over the internet - except Fenton Communications, I mean RealClimate! There is a reference to a new location to download the file on Jeff's site. I am waiting for the techies to declare that there are no nasty surprises before I unzip my copy.
i am pretty surprised by this post Tom.
you did a survey about the "sceptics" not so long ago. now you know something more about them:
the majority of "sceptic sites", and the majority of comments i skimmed there, immediately accepted those e-mails as true. very few "sceptics" asked for caution. basically no one had any trouble with the illegal source.
so would it be acceptable if someone stole your e-mails?
As I said on the Air Vent, if this is real, it is a GAME CHANGER. It seems far too detailed to be a hoax, but if it is a hoax, it's brilliant. I wonder what Phil and his cohorts are doing right now. If he really gloated at the death of John Daly, that is really sick and demonstrates how low they have stooped. Oh to be a fly on the wall...
The file is available for download here. http:www.megaupload.com/?d=75J4XO4T
Original Archive
i am pretty surprised by this post Tom.
you did a survey about the "sceptics" not so long ago. now you know something more about them:
the majority of "sceptic sites", and the majority of comments i skimmed there, immediately accepted those e-mails as true. very few "sceptics" asked for caution. basically no one had any trouble with the illegal source.
so would it be acceptable if someone stole your e-mails?
Torrents to the data files
.mininova.org/tor/3168330
.thepiratebay.org/torrent/5171206
There is no "Hadley CRU"
The Hadley Centre is part of the Met Office, funded by the state.
The CRU is at The University of East Anglia.
The headline is misleading and should be corrected.
Sod - the headers look pretty solid and the detail here is revealing.
Sorry for the previous duplicated comment. Not sure how that happened.
WRT sod, if this is legitimate, then fraud has been committed on a massive scale by Phil and his cohorts and their heads should roll, irrespective of whether the email was "stolen" or not.
@sod - You must be mistaking me for someone else. I don't know who "Tom" is, or what disputes you might or might not have on whatever blog-comment thread that you and "Tom" are part of.
To those worried about viruses: My computer runs on Linux, so I imagine that it's immune. I have the original.
For those of you worried about verification: You can check Phil Jones' e-mail and telephone numbers against his CRU staff listing; ditto for Keith Briffa. Further details as the story unfolds, of course...
"so would it be acceptable if someone stole your e-mails?"
Is it acceptable for an organization to engage in fraud and deception? when a whistleblower exposes it by allowing their fraud and deception to go public, is it acceptable to deny the truth and sweep the deception under the rug?
I guess the Enron whistleblower should have been arrested and jailed according to you? And the New York Times journalists that publish classified info should also be jailed.
convenient for some.
what fraud have you discovered so far?
we could talk about stolen e-mails, if they were exposing a group of child abusers.
there is no smoking gun among the stuff i read so far.
but how this is handled, is pretty exposing. "sceptics" don t seem to be sceptic at all.
and those who call themselves "fence sitters" show their true face.
ps: sorry, i got Terry confused with Tom Fuller. my fault.
I'm loving it. I'll be u all nigt reading.
It's about time
Update from CA, SM notes that CRU cancelled ALL existing PASSWORDS earlier today. That is an action that says volumes. Would they cancel passwords for a obviously provable hoax ?
All the same, I agree with the "take it quietly and carefully" approach. If, and I say IF, these are genuine, and I suggest almost everything about the archive strongly suggests that these are at the very least based on original emails, then the content is striking and will undermine many reputations. IF original, then that undermining is thoroughly deserved.
Beware of those who "season the truth with a little falsehood". In other words, the vast majority of the documents could be real, but the most damaging ones fake. Don't get me wrong, I'd love for them all to be true, but if we go overboard on this and it turns out to be not entirely genuine then that will rebound badly. And that could destroy the reputations of people we have in the skeptic camp.
megaupload[DOT]com/?d=XD050VKY
Take out the [dot] and place a period there
The Air Vent was very slow for the last several days because I've been gone. Blog traffic was less than 1/3 of normal which is probably expected when not posting new material. The link was added in a comment while I was completely out of contact with the electronic world.
Without absolute proof, my impressions are that the data is very real, everything about it seems far too real including the code - which would take a long time to fake. I believe the public will learn a lot of lessons about AGW 'science' but the real stinkers may be in the code and data provided.
Over the next few weeks there will be many revelations.
Thanks though for the mention. TAV broke the old record day in the first 2.5 hours of today.
There are links for download on torrent servers and multiple other sources. Check ClimateAudit and Wattsupwiththat threads for links.
I wendy, I wonder, why some people would focus on the words "to hide the decline" rather than the words "adding in the real temps to each series".
Personally, I'm glad to see science deniers have finally raised their level of rhetoric to that of common theft.
@per edman
lol your kinda funny man. Go ahead and read this article.
http(colon)//briefingroom(dot)typepad(dot)com/the_briefing_room/2009/11/hadleycru-says-leaked-data-is-real(dot)html
(replacing the () with the needed information)
As you see, phil doesn't even DENY that he wrote the 'hide the decline' statement. Instead he's going to go in and tell us what he 'really meant' :rolleyes:
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.
briefingroom.typepad.com/the_briefing_room/2009/11/hadleycru-says-leaked-data-is-real.html
sod:
I've been to Lucia's "The Blackboard", Jeff Id's "The Air Vent", Anthony Watts' "Watts Up With That" and Steve McIntyre's "Climate Audit" and I have to disagree with you. There are a lot of people suggesting caution. The authors of these blogs are either exercising caution (i.e. Jeff Id and Lucia) or presently remaining relatively silent (Watts and MnIntyre). You are misrepresenting those blogs and trying to turn this event into a skeptic smearing campaign. If these emails are real, they illuminate the old boy network at play in some of the climate science community. That worries me.
This is an obvious hoax.
Sorry, but there is no Hadley Climatic Research Centre at the University of East Anglia. The University of East Anglia has a Climatic Research Unit, which is based at the University, which is in Norwich, Norfolk. Meanwhile, the British Government's Met Office has a Hadley Centre which looks at climate change. This is not part of the University of East Anglia, and is based several hundred miles away in Exeter, Devon. Given this fundamental factual error in the article, should we trust any of it?
Oh my, if proven who will join me in a class action suit against Al Gore....all I want i the big azz houseboat of his, I want to torch it in NYC harbor!
Are any of you actually listening? This looks like a hoax. They can't even get the name of the research centre right!
Give it up Barry, the truth will 'out'.
The CC adherist argument had to fall apart at some point.
Wish it had been before the tax-to-the-hilt brigade had visited.
Per Edmon, the point of using the real data only for the latest years is that all the other data in the series has been modified downward to account for the Urban Heat Island effect. The upshot of this blatant horseshit technique of theirs is that the real decline in global mean temperature over the past decade is no longer present in graphs which use the series as a source. In short, they are not practicing science but instead are practicing politics.
Fair enough, Johnny. I'll leave you to your half baked conspiracy theories that fly in the face of common sense. There is a huge question over the reliability of this supposed leak.
Bary, you realize that the person who was hacked is not denying but instead admitting, right? Ah well. I guess you will never let things like facts get in the way of your mission.
Not fake e-mails... Just Fake science.
8.15 PM UPDATE: The Hadley CRU director admits the emails seem to be genuine: The director of Britain’s leading Climate Research Unit, Phil Jones, has told Investigate magazine’s TGIF Edition tonight ..."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."…
Scammers you have been caught ,i have downloaded the files and the we are decoding them they are real alright and in fact match with the lord monckton claims and evidence ,anyone with common sense knows its all a scam c02 follows temps by up to 800 yrs it does not drive the climate .eu agenda 21 is the goal look it up on u tube prepare for a shock .
The global warming house of cards continues to fall
Whilst global warming skeptics have long been vilified by the likes of Phill Jones it looks like he is about to get a taste of his own medicine!
www.twawki.wordpress.com
"These files appear to contain highly sensitive information"
No they don't. They contain data should have been PUBLIC. That is why this stuff is so intensely embarrassing....
... if it's true.
Bary, you realize that the person who was hacked is not denying but instead admitting, right? Ah well. I guess you will never let things like facts get in the way of your mission.
To sod: According to the FOIA, these emails are public property because they are from a taxpayer funded source and should have been made available upon request. Is it stealing when you steal something that is your right to possess?
The file is downloadable as a torrent from both Pirate Bay and Mininova:
thepiratebay[DOT]org/torrent/5171206
www[DOT]mininova[DOT]org/tor/3168330
Digital data is extremely easy to fake, especially if you have some real data in the mix. Assuming there was a security breach and someone did get a folder full of emails from an institution, it would be trivial to write additional emails into that folder with perfectly normal set of email headers. And there is no way to detect that. At all.
The Urban Heat Island is a real effect - all the weather stations in the past were located near cities and, over time, even inside cities. This makes their data higher than real data by several percent and also more susceptible to local man-made aberrations such as an economic depression causing people to drive less.
But in reality such effect would only be local and concentrated around urban centers and not reflect the real global situation. That is exactly the reason for the corrections using non-urban data.
Some of the emails have been authenticated. Steve Mcintyre a well know skeptic has had email correspondece with some of these well known "scientists" and these emails have turened up in the Zip file. Here is Mr. McIntyres post on Rankexploits:
Steve McIntyre (Comment#23773)
November 19th, 2009 at 6:08 pm
I’m having trouble getting into CA right now.
I made up a pdf of the emails to help browse through them and it’s over 2000 pages. 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.
Mr. McIntyre has also stated on his own Blog ClimateAudit that his emails are real.
<i>The Blackboard, run by a blogger identified as "Lucia."
</i>
It's no secret: "lucia" is Lucia Liljegren.
Terry, sorry again for the confusion with Tom Fuller. but i was following a link from climate audit, that claimed to be linking to Tom.
Wade: stealing back is an interesting concept. have you discussed this with anyone who has some understanding of law?
oakgeo: i did NOT misrepresent those blogs. if they were sceptics, they would NOT have published this. period.
a sceptic thinker would assume some problems with stuff, provided by a criminal. a sceptic would also first investigate, before he makes stuff public. the approach is about as un-sceptic, as one can get.
the comments are not sceptic either. the majority of those who call for caution, expect some hoax by AGW believers. that is not sceptic either, but a conspiracy theory.
and again: where is that smoking gun for fraud?
wouldn t a sceptic wait until he found that, before publishing something like this?
As some of you have alerted me, Phil Jones admitted to Investigate mag that the files are genuine. I invite you to see my next article for details. Thanks to the commenters who gave me this lead.
I understand that Britain has (or perhaps that should be "have") its own equivalent of the US Freedom of Information Act. This dust-up might have occurred because someone, seeing a FOI request being ignored, took the law into his own hands. I am still trying to chase that down.
In the meantime, I stand by my reporting, and my conclusion--now admitted to by the Centre Director himself--that these files are genuine.
British Barry are you calling Phil Jones a liar?
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