Private email data from a leading climate research unit is being quoted on the internet to criticise the scientific consensus around global warming.
Hackers stole private emails from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit and posted them in a 61Mb zip file on a Russian FTP server, it was reported on Friday.
Whoever originally stole the data, it was quickly picked up and used on blogs and news sites to criticise the climate change consensus, and allege a conspiracy.
Quoting an e-mail from ten years ago, Hot Air says the head of of the CRU, Professor Phil Jones “appears to discuss a method of overlaying data of temperature declines with repetitive, false data of higher temperatures”. The email is quoted with no context, however, and the CRU has yet to respond with its own explanation.
Other sites quoting the data include Climate Audit and Watt’s Up With That?.
In today’s Times, former UK chancellor and climate sceptic Lord Lawson says the emails seem to show a cover-up: “What appears, at least at first blush, to have emerged is that (a) the scientists have been manipulating the raw temperature figures to show a relentlessly rising global warming trend; (b) they have consistently refused outsiders access to the raw data; (c) the scientists have been trying to avoid freedom of information requests; and (d) they have been discussing ways to prevent papers by dissenting scientists being published in learned journals.”
The Times article also announces a new “all-party (and non-party)” think-tank, the Global Warming Policy Foundation, of which Lawson is chair. The Foundation, whose site carries an array of sceptical articles, is directed by Benny Peiser, a senior lecturer at Liverpool John Moore’s University’s School of Sport and Exercise Sciences, and a frequent critic of theories about man-made global warming.
“Clearly climate change is a topic which raises strong passions,” said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos, “but I can’t remember an instance of either side resorting to cybercrime and hacking to gather information on the other before.”
While none of the sources quoting the stolen data are likely to have been involved in the original crime of stealing it, they are using data which was stolen, points out Cluley: “it shouldn’t be forgotten that [CRU] are victims of a criminal hack. Personal information, including the email addresses of scientists working at the organisation, is now in the public domain.”
The CRU’s press office confirmed to eWEEK Europe that the hack had happened, but said an official response was still in progress – the Unit is operating on emergency servers and all staff have changed their email passwords.
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If you have to call people 'deniers', obviously to associate it with 'holocaust denial' , it shows how bankrupt the debate is, if there ever was one.
This article is just another exercise in damage limitation.
The hacked data is now being decoded and it seems that it shows further manipulation. Add this to the attempts to control the peer reviewed journals and you have a really damning set of evidence.
As for this 'journalist' (propagandist) using the word deniers as in holocaust deniers (the more usual use) that is meant to stiffle opposition. This alone is enough to make most people smell a rat.
Given that this huge scandal has come hot on the heels of the hockey stick fraud to eliminate the medevil warming period then its obvious that your global warming religion has been exposed as ahoax and is at an end.
The material is highly filtered and targetted to respond to a number of well-known outstanding FOIA requests against CRU. Clearly this is the result of an internal whistleblower, not the result of an outside hacker.
Unless you want to change the meaning of the language, someone who denies something is a "denier", whether they are right or wrong.
The word fits the people - and the space in the headline.
Our story reports the facts that we have at this stage, and if you want to interpret balance as bias, that is your call.
The critics appear to have seized on narrow slices of data from the hacked source, and not responded to rebuttals from the CRU.
We are reporting what is there, and so far we don't see a smoking gun with any real evidence of for the sort of global conspiracy that is alleged.
Peter Judge
UK Editor, eWEEK Europe
Surely it is almost irrelevant whether or not there is climate change either partially or entirely as a result of Human activity. It is in everybody's interest to reduce energy consumption, both to save money and to reduce our reliance on our limited fossil fuel resources. As a nation we should trying to reduce our reliance on imported fossil fuels particularly when we have little or no influence over the security of supply.