Climategate latest

COMPUTER hackers have broken into Britain’s leading climate science research centre, making public thousands of private emails between top climate change scientists and, in the process, laying bare their bitter disagreements about the cause of climate change.

Should they be proved genuine, which is looking likely at this point, in the absence of any denials, these emails are absolute dynamite.

A leading climate change scientist whose private emails are included in thousands of documents stolen by hackers and posted online says the leaks may have been aimed at undermining next month’s global climate summit in Denmark.

Astonishingly, 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.

There may be a perfectly innocent explanation. But what is clear is that the integrity of the scientific evidence on which not merely the British Government, but other countries, too, through the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, claim to base far-reaching and hugely expensive policy decisions, 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.

The emails suggest the authors co-operated covertly to ensure that only papers favorable to CO2-forced AGW were published, and that editors and journals publishing contrary papers were punished. They also attempted to “discipline” scientists and journalists who published skeptical information.

The e-mails leaked suggest the situation was much worse than my analysis "“ but then I was just pointing to the degree of collaboration and the effects of the communications revolution in breaking down the normal safeguards. We now have evidence of: collective "˜dealing’ with inconvenient data; attempts to hijack peer review; the keeping of inconvenient published science out of the IPCC process; keeping that which did appear out of the important Summary for Policy-Makers; attempts to intimidate journal editors; inability to acocunt for observational data which are "˜surely wrong’ . . . .

Really quite amazing stuff! And on this we will base an ETS which assumes we know (because the science is settled) what size the cap should be in a cap-and-trade scheme.

From: Phil Jones

To: Tom Wigley

Subject: Re: MBH

Date: Fri Oct 22 15:13:20 2004

Cc:

Bottom line - their is no way the MWP (whenever it was) was as warm globally as the last 20 years. There is also no way a whole decade in the LIA period was more than 1 deg C on a global basis cooler than the 1961-90 mean. This is all gut feeling, no science, but years of experience of dealing with global scales and varaibility.

Must got to Florence now. Back in Nov 1.

Cheers

Phil

3. Director of the CRU Phil Jones says that if contrarians ever hear there is a new Freedom of Information Act operating in Britain he will:

a) Gladly comply, after all, it is in the interests of good science.

b) Reluctantly comply "“ he has many better things to do with his time

c) Seek legal advice as to the best path to follow

d) Delete the files.