Climatic Research Unit email controversy

The Climatic Research Unit e-mail hacking incident (also known as Climategate) took place in November 2009 involving the hacking of a server used by the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia (UEA) in Norwich, England, in the United Kingdom. The unknown hacker stole and anonymously disseminated thousands of e-mails and other documents.

The university confirmed that the security breach took place, but responded that the authenticity of the published texts could not be confirmed quickly, and expressed concern "that personal information about individuals may have been compromised." Details of the incident have been reported to the police, who are investigating. Later, Phil Jones, Director of the UEA-CRU, confirmed that all of the leaked emails that had provoked heated debate appeared to be genuine.

Climate change sceptics have asserted that the private correspondence shows a conspiracy by climate scientists to withhold scientific information. Phil Jones, Director of the Climatic Research Unit, called the charges that the emails involve any "untoward" activity "ludicrous." Kevin Trenberth of the National Center for Atmospheric Research stated that the sceptics have selectively quoted words and phrases out of context in an attempt to sabotage the Copenhagen global climate summit in December. Other prominent climate scientists, such as Richard Somerville, have called the incident a smear campaign.

Hacking and leaked documents

Unidentified persons hacked a server used by the Climatic Research Unit, posting online copies of e-mails and documents that they found. The incident is being investigated by police and involved the theft of more than 1,000 e-mails and 3,000 other documents, consisting of 160 MB of data in total.

BBC climate correspondant Paul Hudson stated that he received the chain of leaked e-mails on 12 October, including comments from some climate scientists written after his article "Whatever Happened To Global Warming". The breach was first discovered after someone hacked the server of the RealClimate website on 17 November and uploaded a copy of the stolen files. According to Gavin Schmidt of RealClimate, "At around 6.20am (EST) Nov 17th, somebody hacked into the RC server from an IP address associated with a computer somewhere in Turkey, disabled access from the legitimate users, and uploaded a file FOIA.zip to our server." A link to the file on the RealClimate server was posted from a Russian IP address to the Climate Audit blog at 7.24 am (EST) with the comment "A miracle just happened". The hack was discovered by RealClimate and the University of East Anglia was notified.

On 19 November the files were uploaded to a Russian server before being copied to numerous locations across the Internet. An anonymous statement accompanying the e-mails defended the crime, on the ground that climate science is "too important to be kept under wraps" and describing the material as "a random selection of correspondence, code, and documents." The stolen material was first publicised on 19 November on The Air Vent, a climate-sceptic blog.

Content of the documents

The leaked material comprised more than 1,000 e-mails, 2,000 documents, as well as commented source code, and models pertaining to climate change research covering a period from 1996 until 2009. It included discussions of scientific data and how to combat the arguments of climate change skeptics, unflattering comments about skeptics, queries from journalists, drafts of scientific papers, keeping scientists who have contrary views out of peer-review literature, and talk of destroying various files in order to prevent data being revealed under the Freedom of Information Act. In an interview with The Guardian, Phil Jones, Director of the UEA-CRU, "confirmed that all of the leaked emails that had provoked heated debate – including the now infamous email from 1999 in which he discussed a "trick" to "hide the decline" in global temperatures - appeared to be genuine."

On November 24th the UEA-CRU (whose emails were leaked) issued a detailed explanation of the contents of the controversial e-mails.

Climate Research journal

In one e-mail, as a response to an email indicating that a paper in the scientific journal Climate Research had questioned assertions that the 20th century was abnormally warm, Michael Mann wrote "I think we have to stop considering Climate Research as a legitimate peer-reviewed journal. Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal." Hans von Storch also objected to the paper and resigned from his position as editor of Climate Research shortly after it was published, because he felt there was a breakdown in the peer-review process. Michael Mann said to the Wall Street Journal that he didn't feel there was anything wrong in saying "we shouldn't be publishing in a journal that's activist." Von Storch also said that the University of East Anglia (UEA) had "violated a fundamental principle of science" by refusing to share data with other researchers. "They play science as a power game," he said.

Emails

An excerpt from one November 1999 email authored by the head of the CRU, Phil Jones, reads, "I've just completed Mike's Nature [the science journal] trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie, from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith's to hide the decline." The RealClimate website, in their response to the CRU hack, offers this explanation of the excerpt:

The paper in question is the Mann, Bradley and Hughes (1998) Nature paper on the original multiproxy temperature reconstruction, and the 'trick' is just to plot the instrumental records along with reconstruction so that the context of the recent warming is clear. Scientists often use the term "trick" to refer to a "a good way to deal with a problem", rather than something that is "secret", and so there is nothing problematic in this at all. As for the 'decline', it is well known that Keith Briffa's maximum latewood tree ring density proxy diverges from the temperature records after 1960 (this is more commonly known as the "divergence problem"–see e.g. the recent discussion in this paper) and has been discussed in the literature since Briffa et al in Nature in 1998 (Nature, 391, 678-682). Those authors have always recommended not using the post-1960 part of their reconstruction, and so while 'hiding' is probably a poor choice of words (since it is 'hidden' in plain sight), not using the data in the plot is completely appropriate, as is further research to understand why this happens.

Several websites of global-warming skeptics quoted a line written by Trenberth, a climatologist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, discussing gaps in understanding of recent temperature variations: "The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't," Trenberth wrote. However, Trenberth told the Associated Press that the phrase was actually used in an article he authored calling for improvement in measuring global warming to describe unusual data, such as rising sea surface temperatures. The word travesty refers to what Trenberth sees as an inadequate observing system that, were it more adequate, would be able to track the warming he believes is there.

FOI requests

Antonio Regalado, a journalist at Science Magazine, wrote in Science Insider: "[U]niversity researchers may [...] find themselves in legal jeopardy if they deleted emails requested under the U.K.'s Freedom of Information (FOIA) legislation, a crime under U.K. law." The hacker who released the documents used the name "FOIA", Regalado pointed out, adding, "the emails, which appear to be genuine, though their authenticity could not be confirmed, indicate a concerted effort to fight the FOI requests that may itself have slipped into questionable territory." Regalado quoted one purported email said to be sent by Phil Jones, Director of the Climatic Research Unit, to Michael Mann. Jones declined to comment about it, but Mann responded to Regalado, "I did not delete any emails at all in response to Phil Jone's [sic] request, nor did I indicate to him that I would." Regalado wrote that the e-mails showed some scientists were concerned about wasting their time by being drawn into controversies if some of the documents were released in response to FOI requests.

The UEA issued this statement in regards to the FOI requests:

"The raw climate data which has been requested belongs to meteorological services around the globe and restrictions are in place which means that we are not in a position to release them. We are asking each service for their consent for their data to be published in future."

Reactions

According to the University of East Anglia, the stolen documents and e-mails had been selected deliberately to undermine the strong consensus that human activity is affecting the world's climate in ways that are potentially dangerous. The university said in a statement: "The selective publication of some stolen e-mails and other papers taken out of context is mischievous and cannot be considered a genuine attempt to engage with this issue in a responsible way".

The CRU's researchers said in a statement that the e-mails had been taken out of context and merely reflected an honest exchange of ideas. Phil Jones, Director of the Climatic Research Unit, called the charges that the emails involve any "untoward" activity "ludicrous." Michael Mann, director of Pennsylvania State University's Earth System Science Center, said that skeptics were "taking these words totally out of context to make something trivial appear nefarious", and called the entire incident a careful, "high-level, orchestrated smear campaign to distract the public about the nature of the climate change problem." Kevin E. Trenberth of the National Center for Atmospheric Research said that he was appalled at the release of the e-mails but thought that it might backfire against climate skeptics, as the messages would show "the integrity of scientists." He has also said that the theft may be aimed at undermining talks at next month's Copenhagen global climate summit.

The American Association for the Advancement of Science has "expressed concern that the hacked emails would weaken global resolve to curb greenhouse-gas emissions".

Climatologist James Hansen said that the controversy has "no effect on the science" and that while some of the e-mails reflect poor judgement, the evidence for human-made climate change is overwhelming.

George Monbiot said that while he did not see the vast conspiracy that global warming skeptics saw, he did see this as a "major blow" and that "emails extracted by a hacker from the climatic research unit at the University of East Anglia could scarcely be more damaging". Moreover, Monbiot was concerned with the apparent attempts to conceal and even destroy data that was subject to a freedom of information request and the alleged collusion to prevent peer reviewed publication by climate skeptics.

Judith Curry, a climatologist at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta (who has been described as a mainstream scientist on global-warming issues), wrote that the e-mails reflect a problem with scientists lacking openness about their data and attacking those they disagree with: "[I]t is difficult to understand the continued circling of the wagons by some climate researchers with guns pointed at skeptical researchers by apparently trying to withhold data and other information of relevance to published research, thwart the peer review process, and keep papers out of assessment reports. Scientists are of course human, and short-term emotional responses to attacks and adversity are to be expected, but I am particularly concerned by this apparent systematic and continuing behavior from scientists that hold editorial positions, serve on important boards and committees and participate in the major assessment reports. It is these issues revealed in the HADCRU emails that concern me the most [...]" Computerworld magazine reported that the CEO of the consultancy Errata Security felt it was likely that an insider was responsible for the incident. It cited the view of the RealClimate blog that what was not contained in the e-mails was the most interesting element: "There is no evidence of any worldwide conspiracy, no mention of George Soros nefariously funding climate research, no grand plan to 'get rid of the MWP' [Medieval Warm Period], no admission that global warming is a hoax, no evidence of the falsifying of data, and no 'marching orders' from our socialist/communist/vegetarian overlords." The science historian Spencer R. Weart, interviewed in the Washington Post, commented that the theft of the e-mails and the reaction to them was "a symptom of something entirely new in the history of science: Aside from crackpots who complain that a conspiracy is suppressing their personal discoveries, we've never before seen a set of people accuse an entire community of scientists of deliberate deception and other professional malfeasance. Even the tobacco companies never tried to slander legitimate cancer researchers."

The Daily Telegraph reported that academics and climate change researchers have dismissed allegations from skeptics that the emails are evidence of a collusion or international conspiracy, saying that nothing in the emails proves wrongdoing.

Some people have asserted that the e-mails showed scientists had colluded to overstate the case for man-made global warming and manipulated the evidence. Criticism of the content of the e-mails tended to focus on ethical concerns related to the alleged discrediting of skeptics and withholding of information. Patrick J. Michaels, a senior fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute and a climatologist who has found fault with some of the science girding the consensus on global warming, said some e-mails showed an effort to block the release of data for independent review. He said some messages discussed discrediting him by claiming he knew his research was wrong in his doctoral dissertation. "This shows these are people willing to bend rules and go after other people's reputations in very serious ways."

Myron Ebell, the Director of Global Warming and International Environmental Policy at the libertarian think tank Competitive Enterprise Institute, said the e-mails showed that some climate scientists "are more dedicated to promoting the alarmist political agenda than in scientific research. Some of the e-mails that I have read are blatant displays of personal pettiness, unethical conniving, and twisting the science to support their political position." Michaels said of the correspondence, "this is not a smoking gun; this is a mushroom cloud" and blogger Stephen McIntyre of Climate Audit called the revelations "quite breathtaking."

Calls for inquiries

In the United Kingdom and United States, there were calls for official inquiries into issues raised by the documents, and calls for Jones' firing or resignation. Former Chancellor, Lord Lawson who in 2005 called for the IPCC to be shut down, said "The integrity of the scientific evidence... has been called into question. And the reputation of British science has been seriously tarnished. A high-level independent inquiry must be set up without delay", and the campaigning climate skeptic, Senator Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma also planned to demand an inquiry. Bob Ward, director of policy and communications at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics, said: "There needs to be an assurance that these email messages have not revealed inappropriate conduct in the preparation of journal articles and in dealing with requests from other researchers for access to data. This will probably require investigations both by the host institutions and by the relevant journals." A government scientific agency could also conduct an inquiry, he said.

A spokesman for the Met Office, a government agency which works with the Climate Research Unit in providing global-temperature information, said there was no need for an inquiry. "The bottom line is that temperatures continue to rise and humans are responsible for it. We have every confidence in the science and the various datasets we use. The peer-review process is as robust as it could possibly be."

Columnist George Monbiot, an environmental and political activist, called for the resignation of the CRU head, Phil Jones, saying that, "[These revelations] raise questions about the integrity of one or perhaps two out of several hundred lines of evidence. To bury man-made climate change, a far wider conspiracy would have to be revealed."

Trevor Davies, the University of East Anglia pro-vice-chancellor with responsibility for research, rejected calls for Jones' resignation or firing: "We see no reason for Professor Jones to resign and, indeed, we would not accept his resignation. He is a valued and important scientist." The university announced it would to conduct an independent review to "address the issue of data security, an assessment of how we responded to a deluge of Freedom of Information requests, and any other relevant issues which the independent reviewer advises should be addressed". Monbiot strongly criticized the UEA's response, calling it "a total trainwreck: a textbook example of how not to respond." Monbiot continued, "The handling of this crisis suggests that nothing has been learnt by climate scientists in this country from 20 years of assaults on their discipline."

See also

• Global warming controversy
• Hockey stick controversy