[puckhog]

First off, let me apologize for the length of this post. I realize that it's very long, but I couldn't cut it down and still say everything I wanted.

I'd like to know why we're still not discussing the original post, which is the released emails from the Climate Research Unit - CRU (either Hadley or the University of East Anglia). It's the data that is being posted in this thread that is being called into question by the release of these emails.



First let's look at a rough timeline of the events last week:

• Prior to last week Steve McIntyre (a Professor in Toronto) filed a request with the CRU under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). As part of this he was asking for the data, models and emails exchanged.
• Early last week the CRU denies this request.
• Still early next week, someone (possibly someone within the CRU, but could easily have been an outsider) obtains over 1000 files from the CRU server, including emails, and Excel files.
• November 17, the hacker tries to post the files to RealClimate.org: "We were made aware of the existence of this archive last Tuesday morning when the hackers attempted to upload it to RealClimate, and we notified CRU of their possible security breach later that day." (http://www.realclimate.org/index.php...ack/#more-1853)
• Later November 17, a user named "FOIA" posts on the Air Vent Site:"We feel that climate science is, in the current situation, too important to be kept under wraps. We hereby release a random selection of correspondence, code, and documents. Hopefully it will give some insight into the science and the people behind it. This is a limited time offer, download now:" He then linked to a Russian FTP site, where the files were stored. At this point, Air Vent's administrator was away, and nothing else was said about it.
• November 18, someone (or a group of people) dump 20 times the normal trading volume of a Green Fund trading on the NASDAQ (http://www.ftportfolios.com/retail/e...px?Ticker=QCLN). At this point, most of the people who knew about this breach were insiders at RealClimate and the CRU, indicating that this stock dump could be insider trading (I recognize that this is speculation on my part).
• Novmber 20, a user at Air Vent published an alert on Climate Audit, and from there the story broke all over the internet.
• Later November 20, RealClimate (in the link I posted above) acknowledged the the emails are real, but denies that they contribute anything to the "denier" side of the debate.

Let's now take a look at the content of some of these emails (I also posted this earlier in the thread):

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.

Seems like there's an attempt to avoid any critical review process here.

From Dr. 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.

This may be innocuous, with a bad choice of words; or it could be, as a treatment of the data to arrive at a pre-conceived result.

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.

So we're all on the same page (I had to look it up) AR4 is referring to the IPCC's Fourth Assessment Report. Having a group of 4 people erase all records of communication about a landmark, possibly policy-guiding report seems a little off, doesn't it? (I know this is also speculation on my part)

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.

If their research is being funded in any part by government, their results and findings are part of the public domain. Trying to stop someone from getting their hands on the data simply because they're a pest is not okay.

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.

Blackballing someone from any organization because they don't share your views is detestable, IMO.

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.

Again, we have possible treatment of data in a manner to avoid sticky issues.

Additionally, there is a file entitled pdj_grant_since1990.xls, which details the funding given to Dr. Phil Jones (the head of the CRU that was hacked) since 1990. The total funding? US$22.6 million. There was also a second file entitled potential-funding.doc, which details sources of funding that have not yet donated. Included in each are some green technology companies that stand to gain quite a lot from pushing green regulations through. Does anyone who claims that climate sceptics are in the pocket of Big Oil care to address this?