[incolour (OP)]

I've been following these forums for ages... kind of surprised no one has mentioned this yet!

We should of course be fairly careful about reading too much into this, but it's still pretty bad conduct by the sounds of things.

newbielink:http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8370282.stm [nonactive]

(Apologies this is a lunatic site, but the emails on it are actually real and in the .zip... it's just the only place i could find with good examples in one place!)

newbielink:http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2390911/posts [nonactive]

newbielink:http://www.megaupload.com/?d=75J4XO4T [nonactive] the entire .zip is here. 

I know it doesn't change much, but it's still quite interesting. There's also a lot of data which i guess will be looked at eventually... I can't even work out how to open it!

Have a gander... 

[litespeed]

incolour - you wrote: "I can't even work out how to open it!"  That is a reasonable indication you should not open it.......

[incolour (OP)]

Oh no, i don't mean the .zip of course. In the 'data' folder there's a load of files with weird extensions, is all. And why?

[frethack]

Ive been waiting to see if this can be proven absolutely true or if it is a hoax.  Some of the emails are innocuous, and some are criminal.  So far, all I know to be confirmed is that there were files stolen.  If these truly are the ones that were taken, there will need to be investigations.

One of my former professors is associated with the Michael Mann/Gavin Schmidt circle, and have a REAL dislike for Steve McKitrick and Steve McIntyre at ClimateAudit.org (the target of the "crap criticisms from the idiots in the near future" comment).  They arent climatologists, but statisticians, and were the two that showed the hockey stick graph to be untrue by reworking the statistics of Mann's data.

A very interesting time to be alive...science and politics dont mix.

[LeeE]

Yeah frethack, there does seem to be a good deal of controversy about that hockey stick graph regarding what data was included in it, and what was not.

[litespeed]

Environmental Science Fraud

Gee. WHO would'a thought a SCIENTIST would cook the books. I got an early leason on this WAY back in the 1970's. I was a junior member of a large team of Congressional Investigators tasked to study what policy the US should take regarding conversion to the Metric System.  Two things:

First, everyone assigned to the study initially believed it would be a good idea, but within two weeks of actual study changed their minds. Second, I personally was responsible for 'vetting' a questionare on the subject. We developed a questionaire based on our experiences, and showed it to various 'stake holders' for comment.

One of the questions was simple enough. "If the US considers a switch to the Metric System, how long should be the transition phase: 1) five years 2) ten years 3) fifteen years, 4) never.  The Bureau of Weights and Measures 'scientist' I interviewed flat-out said "Do not even include a choice of never."

[litespeed]

Lee

I think the whole hocky-stick thing never really caught on with anyone who had any actual access to historical data.  I believe [but have not researched] the hocky stick people were a bit on the 'evangelical' side of the arguement.  In Hollywood terms they short of 'jumped the shark'.  This means they just overreached to the point of looking stupid.

[litespeed]

The Metric System - Just For Giggles

The US has something like forty or fifty thousand miles of Interstate Highways, all of which have markers every 1/10th of a mile, with exit and other signs denominating miles. For instance, typically each exit includes two or three signs that include 'Exit 1 Mile; Exit 1/2 Mile; etc.

These signs are very ruggedly constructed and installed to withstand high winds etc. and are not cheap. So. If you convert to the Metric System you have a choice. First, you look really stupid by replacing 'Exit One Mile' with "Exit 1.6 Kilometers".  Or you move the stupid sign....IMHO either one looks as stupid as the other.

But now I am into my third Milwaukees Best Ice and can not restrain myself regarding Metric System. [I accept I am out of order, but its a lot of fun].  I was responsible for examining the construction industry.  One of the peculiar things I found was the Brick Manufacturers were WAY in favor of conversion, while Cement Block Manufacturers were possitively appoplectic against it.

SOLUTION: Bricks are extruded to any size your little heart desires. Cement blocks are made using forms that are good for 50,000 cement blocks each. So. The brick people saw an opportunity to really stick it to the cement block guys. The cement block guys said the government should compensate them for the capital cost of new forms.  You get the overall picture.  Multiply this by one gallon paint v. four liters, v. five liters etc ad infinitum.

The nation ended up doing the right thing: stay the hell away from that particular tar baby.

[frethack]

The Metric System - Just For Giggles

The US has something like forty or fifty thousand miles of Interstate Highways, all of which have markers every 1/10th of a mile, with exit and other signs denominating miles. For instance, typically each exit includes two or three signs that include 'Exit 1 Mile; Exit 1/2 Mile; etc.

These signs are very ruggedly constructed and installed to withstand high winds etc. and are not cheap. So. If you convert to the Metric System you have a choice. First, you look really stupid by replacing 'Exit One Mile' with "Exit 1.6 Kilometers".  Or you move the stupid sign....

IMHO either one looks as stupid as the other.

I would have to agree with you that it would take a prohibitive amount of money to convert all of the signs (and it would have to be done twice...once with both systems until people learn to use the metric system...and again once the full conversion is done (I suppose this step is not as necessary).

IMHO though, the standard system of measure is substandard when compared to intuitiveness of the metric system.  Metric makes science and simple conversions sooooooooooooo much easier.

[litespeed]

fret - Just for giggles, I really want to share this with you.  Why do some construction people prefer english to metric?  Metric does not divide as well. For instance, a yard has specifically three feet. Each foot is divisible by two, three, and four and six. It really not that big a deal. However, a standard 4x8 foot piece of plywood might be a bit easier to manage then its metric equivalent.

The bigger issue is all the installed infastructure that is based on yards, feet and inches.  It seems sensless to actually change sizes to evenly match metric. And simply substituting the decimal equivalent of four feet into centimeters is an exercise in maddness. Believe me.  We actually argued whether meter should be spelled metre.

[litespeed]

Fret - Being well into my cups, I offer the following [admittedly streatched] observations on TEMPERATURE.  Zero degrees F is cold, and 100 degrees F is hot. Centegrade (Celcius My Hairy Butt) just does not measure up, IMHO.  []

Besides, a proper Centegrade would ACTUALLY be Kelvin.

[frethack]

I can certainly understand the unfeasability of changing national infrastructure, and I never really had thought of standard vs. metric in the construction field...and I used to work in that field for a short while in my 20's.

For my purposes metric is great, but I wouldnt want to spend the time/money to change it for everyone else

[FuzzyUK]

Phil Jones steps down:
http://www.ajc.com/news/nation-world/uk-climate-scientist-to-221080.html

"The chief of a prestigious British research center caught in a storm of controversy over claims that he and others suppressed data about climate change has stepped down pending an investigation, the University of East Anglia said Tuesday."

[LeeE]

Phil Jones steps down:
http://www.ajc.com/news/nation-world/uk-climate-scientist-to-221080.html

"The chief of a prestigious British research center caught in a storm of controversy over claims that he and others suppressed data about climate change has stepped down pending an investigation, the University of East Anglia said Tuesday."

Well, how about that!

[charlesmojica]

that's bad...

[LeeE]

that's bad...

I have to disagree.  There are very serious questions that need to be answered regarding the way that data was included, or excluded, from the work they were doing, allegedly it seems, at the specific orders of the head of the CRU.

It is claimed that the head of the CRU, along with associates, decided to try to hide data and suppress dissent, which was never going to work; security through obscurity never does.  If the claims are found to be true then all that the head of the CRU has achieved by adopting this fundamentally flawed approach is to invalidate all of the work they have done and it will all need to be redone by truly independent researchers, who are accepted to be independent by everyone (another claim is that much of the peer review of the CRU's work may have been rather incestuous).

There is no going forward until this mess has been sorted out.

I must make it clear however, that this issue remains to be investigated; nothing has yet been proved.  However, the 'evidence' so far strongly indicates that an investigation is required.  Under the current particular circumstances it is impossible for the head of the CRU to remain in post while this investigation takes place.

[BenV]

While it's still available, I suggest people have a look at Nature's editorial on the subject:  http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v462/n7273/full/462545a.html

It'll go off behind a paywall soon though, I suspect.

[litespeed]

BenV

I reviewed the "Nature" response to the East Anglia Mess.  They write: "It is Nature's policy to investigate such matters if there are substantive reasons for concern, but nothing we have seen so far in the e-mails qualifies."  Deleting climate data prior to audit, encouraging named others to do the same and confirming yet others that have already agreed does not rise to so much as even a Koffee Clache.

What fascinates me is their deliberate, repetitive, and prominent use of the word "Heretic" OOPS. I mean the word Denialists and oddly, for a scientific journal, they seem obsessed with the term Republican. You might as well substitute "Copernican". Pope Urban what's-his-number would be proud.

[chris]

Here's a copy of that Nature editorial:

Nature 462, 545 (3 December 2009) | doi:10.1038/462545a; Published online 2 December 2009
(http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v462/n7273/full/462545a.html)

Climatologists under pressure

Stolen e-mails have revealed no scientific conspiracy, but do highlight ways in which climate researchers could be better supported in the face of public scrutiny.

The e-mail archives stolen last month from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia (UEA), UK, have been greeted by the climate-change-denialist fringe as a propaganda windfall (see page 551). To these denialists, the scientists' scathing remarks about certain controversial palaeoclimate reconstructions qualify as the proverbial 'smoking gun': proof that mainstream climate researchers have systematically conspired to suppress evidence contradicting their doctrine that humans are warming the globe.

This paranoid interpretation would be laughable were it not for the fact that obstructionist politicians in the US Senate will probably use it next year as an excuse to stiffen their opposition to the country's much needed climate bill. Nothing in the e-mails undermines the scientific case that global warming is real — or that human activities are almost certainly the cause. That case is supported by multiple, robust lines of evidence, including several that are completely independent of the climate reconstructions debated in the e-mails.

First, Earth's cryosphere is changing as one would expect in a warming climate. These changes include glacier retreat, thinning and areal reduction of Arctic sea ice, reductions in permafrost and accelerated loss of mass from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets. Second, the global sea level is rising. The rise is caused in part by water pouring in from melting glaciers and ice sheets, but also by thermal expansion as the oceans warm. Third, decades of biological data on blooming dates and the like suggest that spring is arriving earlier each year.

Denialists often maintain that these changes are just a symptom of natural climate variability. But when climate modellers test this assertion by running their simulations with greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide held fixed, the results bear little resemblance to the observed warming. The strong implication is that increased greenhouse-gas emissions have played an important part in recent warming, meaning that curbing the world's voracious appetite for carbon is essential (see pages 568 and 570).

Mail trail
A fair reading of the e-mails reveals nothing to support the denialists' conspiracy theories. In one of the more controversial exchanges, UEA scientists sharply criticized the quality of two papers that question the uniqueness of recent global warming (S. McIntyre and R. McKitrick Energy Environ. 14, 751–771; 2003 and W. Soon and S. Baliunas Clim. Res. 23, 89–110; 2003) and vowed to keep at least the first paper out of the upcoming Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Whatever the e-mail authors may have said to one another in (supposed) privacy, however, what matters is how they acted. And the fact is that, in the end, neither they nor the IPCC suppressed anything: when the assessment report was published in 2007 it referenced and discussed both papers.

If there are benefits to the e-mail theft, one is to highlight yet again the harassment that denialists inflict on some climate-change researchers, often in the form of endless, time-consuming demands for information under the US and UK Freedom of Information Acts. Governments and institutions need to provide tangible assistance for researchers facing such a burden.

The theft highlights the harassment that denialists inflict on some climate-change researchers.
The e-mail theft also highlights how difficult it can be for climate researchers to follow the canons of scientific openness, which require them to make public the data on which they base their conclusions. This is best done via open online archives, such as the ones maintained by the IPCC (http://www.ipcc-data.org) and the US National Climatic Data Center (http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/ncdc.html).

Tricky business
But for much crucial information the reality is very different. Researchers are barred from publicly releasing meteorological data from many countries owing to contractual restrictions. Moreover, in countries such as Germany, France and the United Kingdom, the national meteorological services will provide data sets only when researchers specifically request them, and only after a significant delay. The lack of standard formats can also make it hard to compare and integrate data from different sources. Every aspect of this situation needs to change: if the current episode does not spur meteorological services to improve researchers' ease of access, governments should force them to do so.

The stolen e-mails have prompted queries about whether Nature will investigate some of the researchers' own papers. One e-mail talked of displaying the data using a 'trick' — slang for a clever (and legitimate) technique, but a word that denialists have used to accuse the researchers of fabricating their results. It is Nature's policy to investigate such matters if there are substantive reasons for concern, but nothing we have seen so far in the e-mails qualifies.

The UEA responded too slowly to the eruption of coverage in the media, but deserves credit for now being publicly supportive of the integrity of its scientists while also holding an independent investigation of its researchers' compliance with Britain's freedom of information requirements (see http://go.nature.com/zRBXRP).

In the end, what the UEA e-mails really show is that scientists are human beings — and that unrelenting opposition to their work can goad them to the limits of tolerance, and tempt them to act in ways that undermine scientific values. Yet it is precisely in such circumstances that researchers should strive to act and communicate professionally, and make their data and methods available to others, lest they provide their worst critics with ammunition. After all, the pressures the UEA e-mailers experienced may be nothing compared with what will emerge as the United States debates a climate bill next year, and denialists use every means at their disposal to undermine trust in scientists and science.

[litespeed]

"Stolen e-mails have revealed no scientific conspiracy...Nature's policy to investigate such matters if there are substantive reasons for concern, but nothing we have seen so far in the e-mails qualifies."

Deleted data specifically prior to audit, encouraging other named individuals to do the same while also identifying those that have already agreed? And then there is the inconvenient truth the 'ringleader' resigned his high position for SOME reason. The publication Nature seems to have a denialist problem of its own.