Lubos Motls thinks Phil Jones and his cronies belong in the hoosegow.
Hacked: Hadley CRU FOI2009 Files
The University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit (CRU), usually working together with the Hadley center (recall HadCRUT3 global temperatures), has been hacked.
If you want to download an interesting 62-megabyte file, which unpacks to 156 megabytes or so, here are some links:
File dropper (captcha only)
Megaupload (captcha, wait)
Original URL (FTP in Russia, defunct)
BBC story (confirms hacking, nothing about the content)
Real Climate (confirms hacking, suggests that the climate scientists are frustrated angels)
Don't worry. Those 4,556 files in various directories contain no viruses or malware; I have tested it. Stories and discussions:
Anthony Watts (selected correspondence)
Steve McIntyre ( - || - )
Terry Hurlbut (Examiner)
Jeff Id (The Air Vent, the first story)
Other blogs (Blog Search)
Google News (Hot Air, a WSJ blog, American Thinker...)
The files have been confirmed to be authentic.
Since the very beginning, no clear errors had been found and your humble correspondent would have bet that the files had been authentic. Why? Well, it's just pretty difficult to type 156 MB of stuff that looks so legitimate. (See the end of this article for Jones' confirmation of authenticity.) When you unpack the ZIP file, you create two directories, "documents" and "mail". For example, "documents" has these files and subfolders:
So far, the most interesting file I found in the "documents" directory is
pdj_grant_since1990.xls (Google preview, click)
which shows that since 1990, Phil Jones has collected staggering 13.7 million British pounds ($22.6 million) in grants. The major amounts came from HEFCE (6.6 million pounds) and NERC (2.7 million pounds). Later, we will get some idea whether he has used the money to do proper science and whether the truth and objectivity was kept as the key principle, beating a possibility to double the amount. ;-)
What is my reaction to these financial amounts? These numbers are difficult for me to comprehend so I just borrow a reaction from Jeff Id: Big Oil My Ass. :-)
At any rate, the files were clearly real. You really don't want to type all these files by hand. Each subdirectory contains either numerous subfolders or dozens of DOC, PRO, TXT, no-suffix, ARS, CRN, CRNS, DAT, RAW, and other files. I don't know anyone who could create such an amount of authentic things in a finite affine time.
The only alternative explanation to veracity is that the bulk of the files is real and some "cherries" have been added or edited. But that would still require a collaboration of a good hacker with a good person who follows climate science (a well-informed skeptic), or the unification of these two roles in one person. Somewhat unlikely. In my opinion, the most likely story is that all these files are 100% legitimate. Also, Steve McIntyre has confirmed that all e-mails in the hacked file that were sent from/to him are 100% genuine.
The 7-MB "mail" subfolder contains 1073 TXT files with e-mails and it is the main focus of most people who want to look. ;-) There are lots of e-mails in between Briffa, Mann, Revkin, Singer, Peiser, and many other people you know. Before you read the e-mail messages, I recommend you to merge all the TXT files into one TXT file, e.g. by the DOS command "type *.* > ..\hademail.txt" launched in the "mail" directory.
There are many things to love about these e-mails. For example, the word "funded" appears roughly 66 times over there. Stepan Shiyatov instructs his colleagues about the optimal ways to commit tax evasion:
... That is why it is important for us to get money from additional sources, in particular from the ADVANCE and INTAS ones. Also, it is important for us if you can transfer the ADVANCE money on the personal accounts which we gave you earlier and the sum for one occasion transfer (for example, during one day) will not be more than 10,000 USD. Only in this case we can avoid big taxes and use money for our work as much as possible. Please, inform us what kind of documents and financial reports we must represent you and your administration for these money....
But I liked the following description of Phil Jones' 1999 methodology, taken from Michael Mann. He is proudly telling the MBH authors:
From: Phil Jones
To: ray bradley ,mann@virginia.edu, mhughes@ltrr.arizona.edu
Subject: Diagram for WMO Statement
Date: Tue, 16 Nov 1999 13:31:15 +0000
Cc: k.briffa@uea.ac.uk,t.osborn@uea.ac.uk
Dear Ray, Mike and Malcolm,
Once Tim's got a diagram here we'll send that either later today or first thing tomorrow. 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. Thanks for the comments, Ray.
Cheers
Phil
Prof. Phil Jones
Climatic Research Unit Telephone +44 (0) 1603 592090
School of Environmental Sciences Fax +44 (0) 1603 507784
University of East Anglia
Norwich Email p.jones@uea.ac.uk
NR4 7TJ
UK
When we talk about tricks, this message is even more entertaining by its honesty and chosen vocabulary:
From: Gary Funkhouser
To: k.briffa@uea.ac.uk
Subject: kyrgyzstan and siberian data
Date: Thu, 19 Sep 1996 15:37:09 -0700
Keith,
Thanks for your consideration. Once I get a draft of the central and southern siberian data and talk to Stepan and Eugene I'll send it to you.
I really wish I could be more positive about the Kyrgyzstan material, but I swear I pulled every trick out of my sleeve trying to milk something out of that. It was pretty funny though - I told Malcolm what you said about my possibly being too Graybill-like in evaluating the response functions - he laughed and said that's what he thought at first also. The data's tempting but there's too much variation even within stands. I don't think it'd be productive to try and juggle the chronology statistics any more than I already have - they just are what they are (that does sound Graybillian). I think I'll have to look for an option where I can let this little story go as it is.
Not having seen the sites I can only speculate, but I'd be optimistic if someone could get back there and spend more time collecting samples, particularly at the upper elevations.
Yeah, I doubt I'll be over your way anytime soon. Too bad, I'd like to get together with you and Ed for a beer or two. Probably someday though.
Cheers, Gary
Gary Funkhouser
Lab. of Tree-Ring Research
The University of Arizona
Tucson, Arizona 85721 USA
phone: (520) 621-2946
fax: (520) 621-8229
e-mail: gary@ltrr.arizona.edu
Gary Funkhouser has tried and done a lot but his stomach capacity for fraud is apparently smaller than in the case of Jones, Mann, and similar thugs, so you can't be surprised that Funkhouser is less famous a climate scientist and he has probably collected less than Jones' 13.7 million pounds in grants. The rules of this game are tough.
By the way, "FOI" in the file name stands for "Freedom Of Information", a bill in the U.S. The e-mails are full of Phil Jones' and other tricks how to circumvent the FOIA legislation: search for "FOIA".
Read it. (The book on the left is the NIPCC report: recommended.) The conclusion looks pretty clear. These people should be put in jail as soon as possible. You know, these are not just small tricks in an academic discussion. These people have acquired millions if not billions of taxpayers' money by methods that seem to be provably fraudulent.
You know, I was a bit skeptical in the morning - about the hints that this is a big story. But let me admit that right now I feel a little bit like at the beginning of the Velvet Revolution 20 years ago, after the students were beaten and a big change was in the air.
Update: legitimate
Phil Jones, the main criminal according to this correspondence, has personally confirmed that the website was hacked and that the documents are authentic. See Briefing Room.
He says that he "can't remember" what he meant by "hiding the decline." Well, let me teach him some English. First, dictionaries say that hide means
1. to conceal from sight; prevent from being seen or discovered: Where did she hide her jewels?
2. to obstruct the view of; cover up: The sun was hidden by the clouds.
3. to conceal from knowledge or exposure; keep secret: to hide one's feelings.
4. to conceal oneself; lie concealed: He hid in the closet.
5. British. a place of concealment for hunting or observing wildlife; hunting blind.
6. hide out, to go into or remain in hiding: After breaking out of jail, he hid out in a deserted farmhouse.
The definition (6) will only become relevant for Mr Jones once the e-mails are fully appreciated so Jones' original sentence meant that if he hadn't done the "trick", the actual data would show a decline (of the temperature, in various intervals, as described in the e-mail). The decline of the temperature is also known as the cooling. There was one cooling period according to the thermometers, between the 1940s and 1970s, but reconstructions of the temperatures via the same trees that are used in paleoclimatology also show cooling since the 1980s in many or most cases. But by doing the "trick" and adding some different data, the decline disappeared. In other words, it was "hidden" by the "trick".
This procedure is also known as "scientific fraud".
Immorality of hacking
Some fine souls among climate skeptics are disturbed by the very fact of hacking - and to a lesser extent, so am I - and by the promotion of the results of the hacker's work - I am not. Well, I fully understand the moral problems with breaking someone's privacy in this way. I have these emotional problems, too.
How many readers play Mafia Wars? Moscow? ;-)
On the other hand, this is just about the privacy of some business e-mails about the climate - which is really a public issue these days and it is paid by the taxpayers in the U.K., U.S., and elsewhere - while the proponents of the carbon regulation want to restrict the privacy and rights of billions of other people, and not only the privacy of their business correspondence.
So there are positive and negative factors on both sides when you consider whether the event has been a good one. In my case, the overall result is that the transparency that has been artificially brought to the extremely secretive Hadley Center is a good thing.
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