47,869
edits
Changes
Jump to navigation
Jump to search
m
<references/>{{reflist|2}}
Text replacement - "{{#badges:" to "{{Show badges|"
{{#Show badges: | Climate change | CoalSwarm}}
The '''Climatic Research Unit hacking incident''', which [[global warming skeptics]] refer to as '''Climategate''', came to light in November 2009 with the unauthorized release of thousands of e-mails and other documents obtained through the hacking of a server used by the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia (UEA) in Norwich, England. :"Climate deniers illegally hacked into scientists' emails and claimed they showed scientists, including [Michael] Mann, manipulating data. Their charges were investigated by four separate bodies<ref>{{cite web|publisher=ClimateSight|title=So What Happened with ClimateGate?|url=http://climatesight.org/2010/07/11/so-what-happened-with-climategate/|accessdate=2011-11-02|author=Kate|date=2010-07-11|quote=There were no less than four independent investigations...conducted by scientists, universities, and governments, not general reporters rushing off a story about an area of science with which they were unfamiliar, and trying to make it sound interesting and controversial in the process. So what did these investigations find?...Pennsylvania State University, over a series of two reports...British House of Commons...University of East Anglia...Sir Muir Russell on behalf of UEA...}}</ref>, each one reaffirming the soundness of the science, and exonerating the scientists. In other words, Climategate was over nothing, it turned out. Instead of data, it was the press that had been manipulated", summarized Shawn Otto.<ref name=hpotto>{{cite web|publisher=Huffington Post|title=Climate Scientist Wins A Round for America|url=http://www.huffingtonpost.com/shawn-lawrence-otto/climate-scientist-wins-a-_b_1070426.html|accessdate=2011-11-02|author=Shawn Lawrence Otto|date=2011-11-01}}</ref>==Information on theft== The University of East Anglia described the incident as an illegal taking of data. The police are conducting a criminal investigation of the server breach and subsequent personal threats made against some of the scientists mentioned in the e-mails.<ref name="Gardner">Timothy Gardner, [http://www.reuters.com/article/GCA-GreenBusiness/idUSTRE5AM4AH20091123 "Hacked climate e-mails awkward, not game changer"], ''Green Business'' (Reuters), November 23, 2009.</ref>
Extracts from the e-mails have been publicized and posted online, and allegations have been made that they indicate misconduct by leading climate scientists such as withholding scientific information, interfering with the peer-review process, deleting information, and manipulating data.<ref name="Gardner"/> A December 2009 Associated Press investigation involving examination of the 1,073 e-mails by five reporters, however, found that the allegations are largely unsubstantiated and the "exchanges don't undercut the vast body of evidence showing the world is warming because of man-made greenhouse gas emissions."<ref name="ap">Seth Borenstein, Raphael Satter, and Malcolm Ritter, [http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34392959/ns/us_news-environment/ "Review: E-mails show pettiness, not fraud. Climate experts, AP reporters go through 1,000 exchanges."] AP Press on msnbc news, December 12, 2009.</ref>
Other e-mails expressed concern with skeptics having access to CRU's data, particularly [[Stephen McIntyre]] and [[Ross McKitrick]], who both consistently attack the "hockey stick" study, a graph showing the earth's temperature steadily rising since the 1900s, partially conducted by Michael Mann:
* A February 2, 2005 email from Phil Jones to Michael Mann includes: "And don't leave stuff lying around on ftp sites - you never know who is trawling them. The two MMs [Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick] have been after the CRU station data for years. If they ever hear there is a Freedom of Information Act now in the UK, I think I'll delete the file rather than send to anyone. Does your similar act in the US force you to respond to enquiries within 20 days?—our does! The UK works on precedents, so the first request will test it. We also have a data protection act, which I will hide behind."<ref>[http://www.webcitation.org/5m3AzrwzS "Climate Science and Candor"] The Wall Street Journal (Dow Jones & Company): pp. 1. 2009-11-24</ref> Pro-Vice Chancellor of Research at University of East Anglia, Trevor Davies, said that no data was deleted or "otherwise dealt with in any fashion with the intent of preventing the disclosure"<ref name="gibson">Eloise Gibson [http://www.webcitation.org/5m33TOj7p "A climate scandal, or is it just hot air?"] The New Zealand Herald, November 28, 2009</ref>
* In a May 2008 e-mail, Phil Jones writes to Michael Mann, with the subject line "IPCC & FOI": "Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4? Keith will do likewise…Can you also email Gene and get him to do the same? I don't have his new email address."<ref name="gibson"/> Trevor Davies responded by saying that despite Jones' suggestion to delete records, no records were actually deleted. <ref name="gibson"/>
An article in Mother Jones noted that McIntyre was particularly interested in East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit, keepers of one of the most complete sets of temperature records in the world, and had asked the unit for raw data but was rebuffed because of his past efforts at distorting data and facts. In 2008, McIntyre sought raw data and email correspondence from Santer, a scientist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, who refused, arguing that the data were already publicly available. In just the last week of July 2009, CRU received 58 FOIA requests from McIntyre and others. CRU head Phil Jones argued that responding to these requests was creating an "unmanageable burden." In September 2009, RealClimate, a blog launched by Mann and other scientists to fight back against "skeptics," drafted a public statement about what they saw as a pattern: "An unverified accusation of malfeasance is made based on nothing, and it is instantly 'telegraphed' across the denial-o-sphere while being embellished along the way to apply to anything 'hockey-stick' shaped and any and all scientists, even those not even tangentially related. The usual suspects become hysterical with glee that finally the 'hoax' has been revealed and congratulations are handed out all round...Net effect on lay people? Confusion. Net effect on science? Zip." McIntyre's latest requests for both the raw CRU data and the email correspondence between scientists about those data were formally denied on November 13, 2009. Four days later, a massive bundle of files named FOIA.zip was anonymously posted on several prominent skeptic blogs and RealClimate with several years' worth of the climate scientists' email exchanges.<ref>Kate Sheppard, [http://motherjones.com/environment/2011/04/history-of-climategate?page=3 "Climategate: What Really Happened?"] Mother Jones, April 21, 2011.</ref>
===E-mails expressing doubt about quality of skeptics’ research===
* A July 8, 2004 e-mail from Phil Jones to Michael Mann said in part: "The other paper by MM [Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick] is just garbage. [...] I can't see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow — even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!”<ref name="gibson"/> IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri stated that the papers that had been criticized were not suppressed, and "were actually discussed in detail in chapter six of the Working Group I report of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report."<ref>Peter Kelemen,[http://www.webcitation.org/5m33oK4QO "What East Anglia's E-mails Really Tell Us About Climate Change"], ''Popular Mechanics'', December 1, 2009.</ref>
{{#ev:youtube|4OB2prBtVFo|400|right|Climategate II|frame}}
===E-mails concerning scientific data===
Other e-mails expressed frustration with particular scientific data:
*One e-mail that skeptics have been citing often since the messages were posted online is from Phil Jones: "I've just completed Mike's [Mann] '''trick ''' of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years [from 1981 onward] and from 1961 for Keith's to '''hide the decline'''." Jones was referring to tree ring data that indicated temperatures after the 1950s weren't as warm as scientists had determined.<ref name="ap"/> . (re "hide the decline", Phil Jones has explained that "The (World Meteorological) Organisation wanted a relatively simple diagram for their particular audience. What we started off doing was the three series with the instrumental temperatures on the end, clearly differentiated from the tree ring series, but they thought that was too complicated to explain to their audience. So, so what we did was just to add them on and bring them up to the present. And, as I say, this was a World Meteorological Organisation statement. It had hardly any coverage in the media at the time, and had virtually no coverage for the next ten years, until the release of the emails." <ref>{{cite web|publisher=RealClimate|title=Comment on Unforced variations: Mar 2011|url=http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2011/03/unforced-variations-mar-2011/comment-page-4/#comment-203305|accessdate=2011-03-15|author=J Bowers|date=2011-03-15|quote=transcript...Phil Jones — The [World Meteorological] organisation wanted a relatively simple diagram for their particular audience. What we started off doing was the three series with the instrumental temperatures on the end, clearly differentiated from the tree ring series, but they thought that was too complicated to explain to their audience. So, so what we did was just to add them on and bring them up to the present. And, as I say, this was a World Meteorological Organisation statement. It had hardly any coverage in the media at the time, and had virtually no coverage for the next ten years, until the release of the emails.}}</ref>) The "trick" that Jones said he was borrowing from Mann was to add the real temperatures, not what the tree rings showed. And the decline he talked of hiding was not in real temperatures, but in the tree ring data that was misleading.<ref name="ap"/> Before the incident, continuing research had already presented reconstructions based on more proxies, and found similar results with or without the tree ring records. <ref>Mann, M.; Zhang, Z.; Hughes, M.; Bradley, R.; Miller, S.; Rutherford, S.; Ni, F. (2008) [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2527990/?tool=pmcentrez "Proxy-based reconstructions of hemispheric and global surface temperature variations over the past two millennia."] Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 105 (36): 13252–13257</ref>
*Another e-mail expressed frustration about inconsistent figures in the work for a big international report. David Rind told colleagues: "As this continuing exchange has clarified, what's in Chapter 6 is inconsistent with what is in Chapter 2 (and Chapter 9 is caught in the middle!). Worse yet, we've managed to make global warming go away! (Maybe it really is that easy...:)." The AP investigation found that the inconsistent figures for the one report does not undercut the scientific consensus on climate change.<ref name="ap"/>
The AP investigation found none of the CRU e-mails or documents involved falsification of data or "disproved" climate change.<ref name="ap"/>
==Investigation into the hacking==
The investigation into who hacked the server is still ongoing. ''Mother Jones'' reported that the hacker was at least familiar with the climate-science debate to know enough to search through the hacked emails using keywords like "Mann," "hockey stick," and "Phil Jones" and to sort them accordingly. A source close to the CRU explains that the unit's security wasn't very tight—its server is separate from the rest of the university's. But some complexity was involved: once the hacker breached the server, he still would have had to find his way into the system administrator's account, a feat that could have required special software to access the password. Then, in order to remain anonymous when posting the emails online, he would have had to scan the internet for nonsecure servers to work from to cover his own IP address. The hacker also used servers in multiple countries, making it difficult to trace his whereabouts.
It also later became clear that CRU was not the only target. In the fall of 2009, unknown parties posing as network technicians attempted to break into the office of a climate scientist at the University of Victoria in British Columbia. There were also attempts to gain access to servers at the Canadian Centre for Climate Modelling and Analysis. According to a source within the institution, there were also unsuccessful attempts to breach the server at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado. A US diplomatic cable that [[WikiLeaks]] released in late 2010 also revealed "evidence of an attempt to gain unauthorized entry to computer systems" belonging to the State Department's climate bureau in 2009. The cable warned that "as negotiations on the subject of climate change continue, it is probable intrusion attempts such as this will persist."<ref>Kate Sheppard, [http://motherjones.com/environment/2011/04/history-of-climategate "Climategate: What Really Happened?"] Mother Jones, April 21, 2011.</ref>
==Doubt as a tactic of [[climate skeptics]]==
The issue has attracted the attention of some in the congressional minority.<ref name="CBS1">Declan McCullough, [http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504383_162-5761180-504383.html "Congress May Probe Leaked Global Warming E-Mails",] ''CBS News'', November 4, 2009.</ref>For example, Republican Senator James Inhofe called for an investigation on November 24, 2009.<ref>Rebecca Terrell, [http://www.thenewamerican.com/index.php/tech-mainmenu-30/environment/2415-congress-launches-climategate-investigation "Congress Launches Climategate Investigation",] ''The New American'', November 27, 2009.</ref> Inhofe asserted that the IPCC and the UN "cooked the science to make this thing look as if the science was settled, when all the time of course we knew it was not."<ref name="CBS1" /><ref>Matt Dempsey, [http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=2188feb3-802a-23ad-4de4-3fbc0a92e126 "Listen: Inhofe Says He Will Call for Investigation on "Climategate" on Washington Times Americas Morning Show",] ''U.S. Senate Committee on Public Works'', November 23, 2009.</ref> The Ranking Member of the House Select Committee for Energy Independence and Global Warming, Republican James Sensenbrenner also declared he would attend the Copenhagen conference on climate change to tell world leaders that regardless of President Obama's promises no more laws would be passed in the U.S. so long as "scientific fascism" persists. Sensenbrenner also wrote Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, leader of the IPCC, demanding that those found to have manipulated climate change data should not be allowed to participate in U.N. reports.<ref>[http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/12/09/sensenbrenner-climate-fascism/ "Sensenbrenner to Tell Copenhagen: No Climate Laws Until 'Scientific Fascism' Ends",] ''Fox News'', December 9, 2009.</ref>
===Foxgate===
On December 15, 2010, [[MediaMatters]] released a Dec. 8, 2009 e-mail sent by [[Fox News]] Washington managing editor [[Bill Sammon]] stating "we should refrain from asserting that the planet has warmed (or cooled) in any given period without IMMEDIATELY pointing out that such theories are based upon data that critics have called into question. It is not our place as journalists to assert such notions as facts, especially as this debate intensifies." The email was sent less than 15 minutes after Fox correspondent [[Wendell Goler]] reported on-air that the [[United Nations]]’ [[World Meteorological Organization]] announced that 2000-2009 was "on track to be the warmest [decade] on record.”<ref name=jf>Jocelyn Fong, [http://climateprogress.org/2010/12/15/leaked-email-fox-news-sammon-cast-doubt-on-climate-science/#comment-312900 "Foxgate: Leaked email reveals Fox News boss Bill Sammon ordered staff to cast doubt on climate science"] Climate Progress, Dec. 15, 2010.</ref>
That night’s Special Report with [[Bret Baier]] – Fox’s flagship news program — featured another report by Goler on the [[Copenhagen]] conference. Anchor Bret Baier introduced the report by saying that as “‘[[climategate]]-fueled skeptics continued to impugn global warming science, researchers today issued new and even more dire warnings about the possible effects of a warmer planet.” Goler’s report featured a clip of Michel Jarraud of the World Meteorological Association explaining the recent finding that 2000-2009 “is likely to be the warmest on the record.” Appearing to echo Sammon’s orders, Goler immediately followed this by saying that [[climate skeptics]] "say the recordkeeping began about the time a cold period was ending in the mid 1800s and what looks like an increase may just be part of a longer cycle.” After running a clip of [[American Enterprise Institute]] scholar [[Kenneth Green]] questioning the “historical context” of the WMO’s climate findings, Goler then brought up the climategate emails, saying the "e-mails cast doubt on the basic scientific message."<ref name=jf/>
Later that night, on the same Special Report broadcast, correspondent [[James Rosen]] advanced the wildly misleading claim that climate scientists “destroyed more than 150 years worth of raw climate data.” A month after Sammon sent his memo, [[NASA]]’s [[Goddard Institute for Space Studies]] released data confirming that 2009 was the second warmest year on record and marked the end of the warmest decade on record. Special Report never mentioned the NASA report.<ref name=jf/>
===Skepticgate===
{{#ev:youtube|fguJod_voPc|400|right|Pat Michaels admits: '40 percent' of funding comes from big oil|frame}}
On January 25, 2011, Rep. [[Henry Waxman]] sent a letter to Rep. [[Fred Upton]] seeking to call in [[global warming denier]] [[Pat Michaels]] for questioning about his science and funding. In the letter, Waxman wrote that Pat Michaels testified before the Energy and Commerce Committee in February 2009 "that widely accepted scientific data had 'overestimated' global warming and that regulation enacted in response to that data could have 'a very counterproductive effect.' Among the scientists who testified before this Committee on the issue of climate change in the last Congress, Pat Michaels was the only one to dismiss the need to act on climate change ... Dr. Michaels may have provided misleading information about the sources of his funding and his ties to industries opposed to regulation of emissions responsible for climate change."<ref name=kd>[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kert-davies/rep-waxman-presses-for-in_b_813251.html "Rep. Waxman Presses for Inquiry on Global Warming Denier Pat Michaels"] HuffPo, Jan. 25, 2011.</ref>
With his 2009 testimony, Pat Michaels submitted a CV including his sources of funding to the Committee. He listed a small number of corporate grants. These sources of income amounted to a small percentage of his income, and failed to list multiple large payments to [[New Hope Environmental Services]], Pat Michaels' private enterprise, which has published the climate denial publication, [[World Climate Report]] dating back to 1995. New Hope's website says it is "an advocacy science consulting firm that produces cutting-edge research and informed commentary on the nature of climate, including patterns of climate change, U.S. and international environmental policy, seasonal and long-range forecasting targeted to user needs, and the relation between the earth's atmosphere and biology. The company also consults on legal matters related to weather and climate." In 2006, it was revealed that energy and coal fired utility interests were funding Pat Michaels.<ref name=kd/>
In a 2007 Vermont lawsuit where Pat Michaels was an expert witness for auto interests suing the state to stop stricter vehicle greenhouse emissions standards, he submitted an affidavit stating that New Hope Environmental Services is a vital source of income for him and other scientists: "Besides modest speaking fees, New Hope is my sole source of income beyond a negotiated retirement package from the University of Virginia." In August 2010, Pat Michaels stated on CNN under direct questioning that he gets 40% of his funding from the oil industry.<ref name=kd/>
Over the course of his career, Michaels has used the titles Virginia State Climatologist (later stripped of that title by the Governor), Senior fellow at the [[Koch]]-founded and funded [[Cato Institute]], and a visiting scientist at the [[George Marshall Institute]], among other groups. Cato Institute was co-founded by [[Charles Koch]] and [[David Koch]] sits on the board. Upton has yet to respond to Waxman's request for questioning.<ref name=kd/>
==Academic Investigations==
===State of Virginia Investigation===
In April 2010 Virginia's Republican Attorney General [[Ken Cuccinelli ]] asked the University of Virginia to produce "documents relating to [Michael] Mann’s receipt of nearly half a million dollars in state grant-funded climate research" conducted from 1999-2005, when Professor Mann was employed by the university.<ref>[http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/04/30/virginia-attorney-general-global-warming-michael-mann/ "State of Virginia to Investigate Global Warming Scientist Mann",] ''FOX News'', April 30, 2010.</ref> This investigation has been called a political "witchhunt."<ref>Bud Ward, [http://www.yaleclimatemediaforum.org/2010/05/michael-mann-witch-hunt "Lynchburg, Va. TV Meteorologist Blasts State’s A.G. for Michael Mann 'Witch Hunt'",] ''The Yale Forum on Climate Change & the Media'', May 18, 2010.</ref>
===More Freedom of Information Act Requests===
In May 2010, [[Christopher Horner]], following his previous Freedom of Information Act request three years ago, stated that he would file a lawsuit against [[NASA]] for release of potential 'Climategate' emails. Horner asserted that NASA might be withholding them long enough to prevent their impact on an upcoming Senate debate on climate change.<ref>Stephen Dinan, [http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/may/26/nasa-accused-of-climategate-stalling/ "NASA accused of 'Climategate' stalling",] ''Washington Times'', May 26, 2010.</ref>
==U.S. Polling and Public Perception==
===References===
===External resources===
*[http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200910/cmselect/cmsctech/387/387i.pdf "The disclosure of climate data from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia",] ''House of Commons Science and Technology Committee'', March 24, 2010.
* List of submissions to UK Parliamentary Enquiry http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200910/cmselect/cmsctech/387b/387we01.htm
* {{cite web
|publisher=SkepticalScience
|title=What do the 'Climategate' hacked CRU emails tell us?
|url=http://www.skepticalscience.com/Climategate-CRU-emails-hacked.htm
|accessdate=2010-12-08
|author=John Cook
|date=2010-07-09
}}
===External articles===
* Kate Sheppard, [http://motherjones.com/environment/2011/04/history-of-climategate "Climategate: What Really Happened?"] Mother Jones, April 21, 2011
*Stewart Fist, [http://www.electric-words.com/junk/carlo/carlo2.html "The Sound Science Coalition"], 2000?
