The scandal involving the anonymous, presumably Russian, hackers who first shared highly damaging information from the Climatic Research Unit on the blog called The Air Vent, has now reached the print media.
The story broke in several places at once during the last twenty-four hours. From The Air Vent it spread to the Climate Audit site (presently crashed, presumably by sheer demand overload), The Blackboard, and Watts Up With That. Ian Wishart's Investigate magazine and Briefing Room blog picked it up in New Zealand, while this page picked it up here and reviewed it here twelve hours later. (At the same time, the Climate Change Examiner also reviewed the story, up to the point at which Dr. Jones was forced to admit that the files were genuine.)
From the climate-skeptic blogs, the story next spread to Hot Air, Pajamas Media, and National Review's Planet Gore blog--and from these sources, and this page, it spread to the blog page of The Wall Street Journal.
What made the story a scandal was that Stephen McIntyre of Climate Audit has been filing Freedom of Information requests, according to British FOI law, for years, according to the journal Nature, which took note of these requests as recently as three months ago. That, plus the sensational nature of the revelations, combined to give the story ever more prominence. And now the on-line pages of the Herald-Sun (Melbourne, Victoria, Australia) and the Daily Telegraph (London, England, UK) have picked the story up. (The story now appears also on WorldNetDaily and Reason online.)
Reason points out that the CRU had earlier denied repeated accusations of falsification, and even destruction, of data deemed less than favorable to the anthropogenic global warming (AGW) scenario. That denial ran in The New York Times about five weeks ago. The Times at first cited "scientists familiar with the data," but later specifically named Phil Jones of the CRU.
The site RealClimate.org left this defense of the CRU and their condemnation of the initial hack late this afternoon (UTC/GMT):
More interesting is what is not contained in the emails. There is 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. The truly paranoid will put this down to the hackers also being in on the plot though.
A cursory examination of multiple examples of the e-mails reveals that the above characterization is true--as far as it goes. However, that characterization ignores the actual tone of those e-mails: of a group of scientists desperately wishing their theory to be true, figuratively wringing their hands when the data suggest otherwise, and certain unscientific behavior that no one can defend. This demonstrably includes manipulation of data and a conspiracy to conceal unfavorable data from other scientists who express skepticism of their theories. Furthermore, Jones' use of the phrase "to hide the decline" does indeed suggest falsification of data.
More to the point, whatever mind-set the e-mails did or did not reveal, the presence in the archive of a five-page PDF file titled The Rules of the Game that radical activist Saul Alinsky could have written begs explanation.
The file continues to be available for download from MegaUpload and FileDropper, and from Pirate Bay's torrent servers. Several commentators on multiple sites boast of participating in the torrent as "seeds."
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Comments
Why was this data released in such a way? As it is we’re never going to know if the e-mails are genuine or not, simply because someone could, if they wanted to, modify the original files so that they look different from the hacked files. If, however, instead of releasing the files the hacker had got the authorities to seize the original files, there would not have been any way to modify them. Hence there would be no doubt about their authenticity.
FWIW, my opinion is that this is a last ditch attempt to muddy the waters before Copenhagen.
These appear to be text formats of the original emails. The fact that they are not in their native format explains the modifications. The original emails in their native format should still be on CRU servers and could be verified by authorities. I believe, legally, in this case the emails cannot be deleted by CRU persons and should still be intact.
wow, stay classy Climate Audit. Nothing defends your position as well as a straw man.
The e-mails are only half the story.
The other half are those 3500-plus documents that the hackers took along with the e-mails.
Besides: why did Phil Jones acknowledge his own words, when Ian Wishart of Investigate magazine read them right back at him, if those files were forged, as you say? Why did he even admit that the hack had taken place? Did you not read, in my previous article, that Dr. Jones did not even call the police until after this story broke?
The only desperate people were Jones and his cronies. Desperate to believe a thing that they now found impossible to substantiate. Desperate not only to hide the truth but also to stop others from learning it.
Jones and RealClimate have admitted the mail server was breached. Jones also admitted grafting the temp record onto a proxy series, something Mann and others had denied for a long time. So the content of this email has been confirmed. I am more interested in the email urging people to delete emails to avoid complying with a FOIA request. It names several people who deleted emails already. This appears to be evidence of criminal action and it seems Jones and Mann have hired lawyers. They are no longer commenting on the emails. I hope a real tiger of a prosecutor gets hold of this on both sides of the Atlantic.
Turbobloke posits: “a last ditch attempt to muddy the waters before Copenhagen.”
Perhaps a last ditch attempt to make overly-credulous politicians examine facts rationally before making stupid policy based on hype at Copenhagen.
The real scandal is that anyone would believe anything based on NOTHING but consensus. If we were to accept all previous consensus, the sun revolves around the earth, the earth is flat, and disease is caused by vapors.
How incredibly stupid can some humans be?
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