Hackers 'expose global warming con': Sceptics claim that leaked emails reveal research centre massaged temperature data
By Fiona Macrae
Last updated at 6:50 PM on 21st November 2009
One of the world’s leading climate change research centres has been accused of manipulating data on global warming after thousands of private emails and documents were leaked.
Hackers targeted the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit and published the files, including some personal messages, on the internet.
Among the most damaging is one which appears to suggest using a ‘trick’ to massage years of temperature data to ‘hide the decline’.
Hackers targeted the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit, pictured, and published sensitive emails on the internet
The CRU, which plays a leading role in compiling UN reports and tracks long-term
changes in temperature, has repeatedly refused to provide detailed information about the data underlying the temperature records.
It is thought that this could have triggered the theft. Climate change sceptics claim that some of the leaked messages discuss ways of manipulating data that fails to comply
with the establishment view that climate change is real and is being driven by man.
The email suggesting ‘hiding the decline’ is purported to be from Phil Jones, the unit’s
director.
He denied trying to mislead, telling the TGIF digital newspaper he had no idea what he
meant by the phrase.
‘That was an email from ten years ago,’ he said. ‘Can you remember the exact context of an email you wrote ten years ago?’
Another message has been interpreted as an attempt to control the publication of
research carried out by sceptical scientists.
One way of doing this would be by loading the panel of researchers who review papers ahead of publication with experts who are ‘on-message’.
Talk of a figure being ‘shoehorned’ into a report from the UN’s International Panel of
Climate Change appears in another of the documents.
Although the data was stored on the university’s computer system, the email exchanges also involve experts from other institutions around the world.
A spokesman for the University of East Anglia said: ‘We are aware that information from a server used for research information in one area of the university has been made available on public websites.
‘Because of the volume of this information we cannot currently confirm that all of
this material is genuine.
‘This information has been obtained and published without our permission and we took immediate action to remove the server in question from operation.
‘We are undertaking a thorough internal investigation and we have involved the
police in this inquiry.’
The Met Office collaborates with the East Anglia unit on a variety of research projects,
including global temperature records.
Spokesman Dave Britton said the two organisations had to turn down numerous Freedom of Information requests because they did not hold the copyright to the data.
‘There is a feeling we are hiding something,’ he said. ‘But we are not, we just can’t
release the data.’
He said that is was unclear whether some of the documents had been tampered
with, adding: ‘We are not concerned about the robustness of the science we are pushing but we are worried about it being interpreted out of context.’
University of East Anglia logo
Unknown individuals gained access to a server of University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit (CRU). As a result, around thirteen years of email correspondence between researchers is now available worldwide. Substantial previously unpublished climate change observations are included.

According to initial reports by TGIF Newspaper and the Watt's Up With That blog, hundreds of emails and documents were made available from a FTP site on a Russian server with an accompanying statement:

:''"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"''

Some journalists suppose that this event is a consequence of increased attention on CRU after it played a substantial role in the IPCC fourth assessment report (2007).

The released data is a 62 megabyte zip file, containing around 160 megabytes of emails, pdfs and other documents.  Some of the contents have been confirmed as genuine by the head of the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit, Dr Phillip Jones. In an interview with TGIF Newspaper, he stated that a breach of security had taken place and that a large quantity of files had been "stolen". The interviewer discussed one of Dr. Jones' published e-mails:



The interviewer asked Dr. Jones to explain the phrase "hide and decline", but he answered that he had no idea what he meant by using them (as they were made in the context of a discussion taking place 10 years ago), and he had not attempt to mislead:



In a press release by the University of East Anglia, Dr. Jones stated that:
:''"That the world is warming is based on a range of sources: not only temperature records but other indicators such as sea level rise, glacier retreat and less Arctic sea ice.''

:''"Our global temperature series tallies with those of other, completely independent, groups of scientists working for NASA and the National Climate Data Center in the United States, among others. Even if you were to ignore our findings, theirs show the same results. The facts speak for themselves; there is no need for anyone to manipulate them.''

:''"...My colleagues and I accept that some of the published emails do not read well. I regret any upset or confusion caused as a result. Some were clearly written in the heat of the moment, others use colloquialisms frequently used between close colleagues."''  

One such colloquialism, "trick," is frequently used by scientists and engineers to refer to an essential or non-obvious element in the solution of a problem, as opposed to the common political usage connoting deception.

Commentators argue that the published messages show the researchers' reluctance to publish scientific material, though it contains serious global warming observations. Some of the correspondence portrays the scientists as feeling under siege by skeptics’ and worried that any stray comment or data glitch could be turned against them.

The East Anglia University has shut down the original server, from which the information was stolen. A university spokesman stated that data was published without permission, but did not confirm whether ''all'' of the published communication is genuine:



The release of the documents comes just weeks before a major climate-change summit in Copenhagen, Denmark, meant to lay the groundwork for a new global treaty to curb greenhouse-gas emissions and fight climate change.