Thursday, November 19, 2009

I Don't Believe It

I mean that literally. I think this will turn out to be bullshit: Hadley Climate Research Unit has been hacked

Supposedly, someone broke into CRU and swiped a huge amount of files (emails and the like) and dumped them out on the web. Included (so they say) is an email which seems to show open falsifying of data to produce warming that didn't happen.

From: Phil Jones
To: ray bradley ,mann@xxxxx.xxx, mhughes@xxxx.xxx
Subject: Diagram for WMO Statement
Date: Tue, 16 Nov 1999 13:31:15 +0000
Cc: k.briffa@xxx.xx.xx,t.osborn@xxxx.xxx


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.

I'm sorry, but I don't believe anybody would be this stupid.

UPDATE:

Turns out CRU is confirming the hack, and Phil Jones is starting to offer "What I meant to say...."

Jeeeeeezus.

UPDATE X2:

It looks like Climate Audit is suffering a denial of service attack. I guess the AGW crowd is playing by "The Chicago Way." Of course this is stupid as we have no idea who did the original hack on CRU, and there is no way Steve McIntyre had anything to do with it. Grow up people, or at least stop acting guilty. Adding: CA is available again, but damn slow. No word that a DOS attack actually happened.

UPDATE X3:

Still almost nothing about this in the MSM. The BBC did a quick story that mentioned only the hack itself and none of the information disclosed. Roy Spencer asks a pertinent question:

If the hacked e-mails — with incriminating content — just happened to be Sarah Palin’s, does ANYONE believe that news reports would avoid disclosing the content of those e-mails?

Not me.

UPDATE X4:

Hot Air has a good run down of some of the most salacious bits of this.

Funny how the American MSM have suddenly decided that Global Warming news isn't anything people are interested in. (The lie in that is shown by the fact the IMW is having more visits then any other day this year...and it's only 1PM.)

4 comments:

Ed Snack said...

Remember the Enron emails ? Pretty explosive stuff in them as well. A lot of people just treat email like it is private, forgetting how easily they can get released.

Nope, I go for real, but I agree that a healthy dose of skepticism is warranted. Now we have a specific piece of data, one can challenge (using FOI or whatever) the putative author to reveal the original, if it exists. Some content has been verified, but the possibility exists of individual file tampering, a huge job to do though, huge.

Rich Horton said...

Maybe you are right...but this reseach is part of a multi-BILLION dollar enterprise. They HAD to know there was a chance people would cast an eye in their direction.

If this turns out to be true we are looking at a Top 10 all time case of hubris.

Unknown said...

Just to set the record straight....

"It looks like Climate Audit is suffering a denial of service attack."

Probably not. CA is the GO-TO place for this kind of stuff, and Steve's server space ain't all that great. Just too many hits at once is all.

Rich Horton said...

I know CA was slow last night, so you may be right. I was just surprised I never could get on from 5am this morning (CST - where else would the Iconic Midwest be?)

But maybe it was just heavy UK traffic slowing stuff down. That makes sense.