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What do the 'Climategate' hacked CRU emails tell us?

The skeptic argument...

Climategate CRU emails suggest conspiracy

Hackers have broken into the database of the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit - and put the files they stole on the Internet. The 1079 emails and 72 documents seem indeed evidence of a scandal involving scientists pushing the man-made warming theory, suggesting conspiracy, collusion in exaggerating warming data, possibly illegal destruction of embarrassing information, organised resistance to disclosure, manipulation of data, private admissions of flaws in their public claims and much more. (Andrew Bolt, Herald Sun)

What the science says...

While some of the private correspondance is not commendable, an informed examination of their "suggestive" emails reveal technical discussions using techniques well known in the peer reviewed literature. Focusing on a few suggestive emails merely serves to distract from the wealth of empirical evidence for man-made global warming.

In November 2009, the servers at the University of East Anglia in Britain were illegally hacked and emails were stolen. When a selection of emails between climate scientists were published on the internet, a few suggestive quotes were seized upon by many claiming global warming was all just a conspiracy. So just what do these emails tell us?

Some of the emails are certainly embarrassing for the authors. One email responds in poor taste to the death of a well known skeptic. There's scathing discussion of skeptics such as Steve McIntyre and Roger Pielke, including imaginings of violence. However, the crucial question is whether these emails reveal that climate data has been falsified. To determine this, some understanding of the science discussed in the emails is required to avoid taking isolated quotes out of context.

"Mike's Nature trick" and "hide the decline"

The most quoted email is from Phil Jones discussing paleo-data used to reconstruct past temperatures (emphasis mine):

"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) and from 1961 for Keith's to hide the decline."

"Mike's Nature trick" refers to a technique (aka "trick of the trade") used in a paper published in Nature by lead author Michael Mann (Mann 1998). The "trick" is the technique of plotting recent instrumental data along with the reconstructed data. This places recent global warming trends in the context of temperature changes over longer time scales.

The most common misconception regarding this email is the assumption that "decline" refers to declining temperatures. It actually refers to a decline in the reliability of tree rings to reflect temperatures after 1960. This is known as the "divergence problem" where tree ring proxies diverge from modern instrumental temperature records after 1960. The divergence problem is discussed in the peer reviewed literature as early as 1995, suggesting a change in the sensitivity of tree growth to temperature in recent decades (Briffa 1998). It is also examined more recently in Wilmking 2008 which explores techniques in eliminating the divergence problem. So when you look at Phil Jone's email in the context of the science discussed, it is not the schemings of a climate conspiracy but technical discussions of data handling techniques available in the peer reviewed literature. More on the hockey stick divergence problem...

Trenberth's "travesty we can't account for the lack of warming"

The second most cited email is from climate scientist and IPCC lead author Kevin Trenberth. The highlighted quote is this: "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." This has been most commonly interpreted (among skeptics) as climate scientists secretly admitting amongst themselves that global warming really has stopped. Trenberth is actually discussing a paper he'd recently published that discusses the planet's energy budget - how much net energy is flowing into our climate and where it's going (Trenberth 2009).

In Trenberth's paper, he discusses how we know the planet is continually heating due to increasing carbon dioxide. Nevertheless, surface temperature sometimes shows short term cooling periods. This is due to internal variability and Trenberth was lamenting that our observation systems can't comprehensively track all the energy flow through the climate system. More on Trenberth's travesty...

The full body of evidence for man-made global warming

An important point to realise is that the emails involve a handful of scientists discussing a few pieces of climate data. Even without this data, there is still an overwhelming and consistent body of evidence, painstakingly compiled by independent scientific teams from institutions across the world.

What do they find? The planet is steadily accumulating heat. When you add up all the heat building in the oceans, land and atmosphere plus the energy required to melt glaciers and ice sheets, the planet has been accumulating heat at a rate of 190,260 Gigawatts over the past 40 years (Murphy 2009). Considering a typical nuclear power plant has an output of 1 Gigawatt, imagine over 190,000 power plants pouring their energy output directly into heating our land and oceans, melting ice and warming the air.

This build-up of heat is causing ice loss across the globe, from the Arctic to the Antarctic. Both Greenland and Antarctica are losing ice at an accelerated rate (Velicogna 2009, ). Even East Antarctica, previously thought to be too cold and stable, is now losing ice mass (Chen 2009). Glacier shrinkage is accelerating. Arctic sea ice has fallen so sharply, observations exceed even the IPCC worst case scenario. The combination of warming oceans and melting ice has resulted in sea level rise tracking the upper limit of IPCC predictions.

Rising temperatures have impacted animal and plant species worldwide. The distribution of tree lines, plants and many species of animals are moving into cooler regions towards the poles. As the onset of spring is happening earlier each year, animal and plant species are responding to the shift in seasons. Scientists observe that frog breeding, bird nesting, flowering and migration patterns are all occurring earlier in the year (Parmeson 2003). There are many other physical signs of widespread warming. The height of the tropopause, a layer in our atmosphere, is rising (Santer 2003). Arctic permafrost, covering about 25% of Northern Hemisphere land, is warming and degrading (Walsh 2009). The tropical belt is widening (Seidel 2007). These results are all consistent with global warming.

What’s causing this heat build-up? Humans are emitting huge amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere - 29 billion tonnes in 2009 (CDIAC). Greenhouse theory predicts that more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will trap heat energy as it escapes out to space. What do we observe? Carbon dioxide absorbs heat at certain wavelengths. Satellites over the past 40 years find less heat escaping to space at these wavelengths (Harries 2001, Griggs 2004, Chen 2007). Where does the heat go? Surface measurements find more heat returning back to the Earth's surface (Philipona 2004). Tellingly, the increase occurs at those same carbon dioxide absorption wavelengths (Evans 2006). This is the human fingerprint in global warming.

There are multiple lines of empirical evidence that global warming is happening and human activity is the cause. A few suggestive emails may serve as a useful distraction for those wishing to avoid the physical realities of climate change. But they change nothing about our scientific understanding of humanity’s role in global warming.

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Further viewing

Further reading

The House of Commons report on the emails stolen from CRU has vindicated Phil Jones -- he has "no case to answer":

The focus on Professor Jones and CRU has been largely misplaced. On the accusations relating to Professor Jones's refusal to share raw data and computer codes, we consider that his actions were in line with common practice in the climate science community. We have suggested that the community consider becoming more transparent by publishing raw data and detailed methodologies. On accusations relating to Freedom of Information, we consider that much of the responsibility should lie with UEA, not CRU.

In addition, insofar as we have been able to consider accusations of dishonesty--for example, Professor Jones's alleged attempt to "hide the decline"--we consider that there is no case to answer. Within our limited inquiry and the evidence we took, the scientific reputation of Professor Jones and CRU remains intact. We have found no reason in this unfortunate episode to challenge the scientific consensus as expressed by Professor Beddington, that "global warming is happening [and] that it is induced by human activity"

Official statement from Climatic Research Unit (CRU)

In an interview with Andrew Freeman, historian Spencer Weart puts Climategate and the global warming skeptic phenomenon in perspective:

"...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."

George Monbiot reveals the most damaging email in The Knights Carbonic. Here is an excerpt, revealing the depth of the climate conspiracy:

"Then began the most hazardous task of all: our attempt to control the instrumental record. Securing the consent of the scientific establishment was a simple matter. But thermometers had by then become widely available, and amateur meteorologists were making their own readings. We needed to show a steady rise as industrialisation proceeded, but some of these unfortunates had other ideas. The global co-option of police and coroners required unprecedented resources, but so far we have been able to cover our tracks.
Our co-option of the physical world has been just as successful. The thinning of the Arctic ice cap was a masterstroke. The ring of secret nuclear power stations around the Arctic Circle, attached to giant immersion heaters, remains undetected, as do the space-based lasers dissolving the world’s glaciers.
Altering the migratory and reproductive patterns of the world’s wildlife has proved more challenging. Though we have now asserted control over the world’s biologists, there is no accounting for the unauthorised observations of farmers, gardeners, bird-watchers and other troublemakers. We have therefore been forced to drive migrating birds, fish and insects into higher latitudes, and to release several million tonnes of plant pheromones every year to accelerate flowering and fruiting. None of this is cheap, and ever more public money, secretly diverted from national accounts by compliant governments, is required to sustain it."

Another amusing parody is Newtongate: the final nail in the coffin of Renaissance and Enlightenment ‘thinking’ which scrutinizes the private correspondance of Isaac Newton to cast doubt on Newtonian physics and integral calculus.

MediaMatters examines many of the claims coming out of "Climategate", exposing how the emails have been distorted and misrepresented.

Comments

Comments 1 to 21:

  1. As stated above: "However, the crucial question is whether these emails reveal that climate data has been falsified."

    It's your website, but, for what it's worth, I disagree with your line of reasoning here.

    I think the crucial question is: was this scientist attempting to mislead? And if so, what was his motivation? Also, could this same motivation broadly exist in the climate science community.

    If we are intellectually honest, we have to address this question.

    I think reasonable people could agree that the climate issue has been so politicized over the last decade that it is often extremely difficult to discern the truth. I appreciate the efforts of this site to attempt to coherently dispute the disputers.

    I do, however think that the recently publicized e-mails by a "ranking" member of the non-skeptic climate community are harmful to the cause of discerning the truth, at least for those people who have not drawn a final conclusion about the evidence, which apparently concludes that anthropogenic CO2 + feedbacks = catastrophy, and that climate sensitivity is a solved problem.
  2. As i see it, there are two parts in this story. One is the behaviour of the few scientists involved in the stolen emails, the other is the broad impact on climate science.

    Starting from the latter, which i think is the topic of this post, i can see no impact whatsoever. Luckly, science is not a matter of a few guys or a few experiments. So even if some fake science could have made it's way through the selection of the scientific community, it does not affect climate science as a whole.
    And even admitting (i do not) scientific misconduct by those CRU scientists, are we allowed to doubt of hundreds of other? Not for sure, each of us is responsible of its own actions and there is nothing in the emails pointing to a much broader involvement of the whole community.

    Here is the link to the first part of the problem. What did they actually do? I mean, actions, not words. At the very least, from the emails we can't deduce anything and there are no facts elsewhere confirming any action. There is some not appropiate wording, but nothing regarding arbitrary data manipulation. While I can understand that they might be "condemned" for their personal attitudes i strongly disagree to involve the science.

    Finally, a political consideration. Before a couple of decades ago, global warming was not a political issue. But then, when the "risk" of concrete actions became too high, it switched to a political issue. The explicit interest was to confuse the two planes, politics and science. This is not new, indeed, we've seen this happen before (mainly in the USA i admit).
    Who is responsible? Not scientists for sure, they kept doing their work while were being involved in the arena. Some of them even started to be advocate, which is definitely a right for anyone.
    Should we conclude that AGW is now politics and not science? Not at all. The solution of the problem is politics, indeed; its assessment is science.
  3. Nicely put Riccardo, but unfortunately the few scientists involved were in positions of high authority which changes the dynamic somewhat. Public confidence will take a dive regardless, boosted by those who have opted out because their work has been (so they say) misrepresented/misused.
  4. Whenever scientists fight disclosure - as is evident in the emails - everyone should be concerned. As for it being a couple of scientists, given they control the main temperature history used by the IPCC the fact that they are few in number is somewhat less relevant than the position they hold. I'm no scientist but it seems to me that in the CO2 caused global warming debate the temperature record is of a certain significance. I don't see why the temperature record including unadjusted data and methodologies should not be publicly available. After all we wouldn't trust a government to run an election, count the votes and then tell us who won. The main thing that the emails demonstrate is that the politics and science are very tightly intertwined. This serves politicians more than scientists.
  5. There's an elegant counter to the skeptic argument that scientists adjusted ground temperature data to bias it toward warming. Giorgio Gilestro simply plotted all the adjustments made to each of the GHCN/CRU individual temperatures. The average adjustment is... zero degrees. And a nicely uniform, normal distribution around zero.
  6. "What do the 'Climategate' hacked CRU emails tell us?"

    It tells us what we already known since long; the science behind climate changes is far from well understood - if it was then it would not be any interesting Nature/Science articles left to write and the whole area would "degrade" into an engineering discipline taught as an academic subject at universities where one could graduate as a climate engineer. However we dont have any graduated climate engineers - only climate researches.
  7. RE:#6 batsvensson.

    From your attack on science articles it sounds like you have absolutely no experience with academic scientific research so I suggest you start doing the homework yourself and tell us all why it only takes excerpts from two leaked emails over 13 years to prove that the whole of climate science is far from settled.
  8. "While some of the private correspondance is not commendable"... It is more than that. The authors said they were going to erase emails subject to a Freedom of the Information Act request. That is a felony.
  9. Michael949,
    please stick to the facts. None of them ever said they were going to delete the email.
  10. michaelkourlas at 06:31 AM on 24 January, 2010
    Regarding "hide the decline":

    If it is true that tree rings are definitely inaccurate after 1960 (having compared them with the instrumental temperature record), shouldn't we question the entire data set, as that might be flawed too?
    Response: This is a good question and is explored in Tree-ring proxies and the divergence problem. In short, tree-ring proxies show good agreement with other proxies before 1960 and also show good agreement with tree-ring proxies that don't show divergence (eg - at lower latitudes). This indicates divergence is a purely recent phenomenon (and hints that there's a good chance it's anthropogenic in cause).
  11. Riccardo : '' None of them ever said they were going to delete the email.''

    Maybe not, but this quote is rather close (from Phil Jones). Close enough for me!:

    ''If they ever hear there is a Freedom of Information Act now in the UK, I think I'll delete the file rather than send to anyone...''
  12. Argus,
    did it never happen to you to say in a private conversation "if he does this i'm going to kill him" or "i love this thing, i'm going to steal it" or something like this? Wow, that's incredible.
  13. One thing is how it seems these emails mentions intentions to make graphs fit the claims of Co2 and global warming, another thing is to loose the raw data? Woops, that was unfortunate.

    Which basically takes just about all the evidence on this website, and invalidates it. Seems it is back to the drawing board. At the moment, too much of the world do not accept the lack of raw data, and the whole thing is being looked looked into.
  14. kblood, the raw data were not lost by the organizations that are actually responsible for collecting and keeping them. The U. of East Anglia was only one of many consumers of those data. The data still are available to the U. of East Anglia, and even to, say, you! A big list of links to the data sources has been compiled at RealClimate, for your convenience.
  15. doug_bostrom at 04:11 AM on 31 March, 2010
    kblood, you're claiming that failure of a small research unit to efficiently maintain backups of copies of data obtained from a primary source still able to supply the data in question invalidates all of the research findings presented here at Skeptical Science?

    Can you demonstrate how the loss of copies of a a few years' temperature data invalidates the work of thousands of persons working in a plethora of fields pursuing numerous lines of inquiry? No, obviously you can't. You make a ridiculous charge, harmful to your own credibility.

    Take a few moments to read what others write here, rejectionists and skeptics included. Get calibrated, please.
  16. It's particularly silly to complain about "loss of data from UEA" since there are now a whole bunch of replications of the same results using 100% publicly available data from GHCN.

    If you don't like the UEA temperature reconstruction, use the one from GISS or NCDC or any of the various open-source efforts that people have developed in the past few months. They all show the same thing.

    Link 1
    Link 2
  17. nice to see what the supporters have been saying confirmed, but many will say the judgment was rigged.



    Inquiry backs scientists in global warming row
  18. Good to hear that the second enquiry into CRU has (generally) backed them.
    I know the so-called skeptics will be shouting 'whitewash' again, but they must be ever-so desperate now for something to come out of the final enquiry - not that anything will, of course, but surely the more intelligent of them will be questioning some of their scepticism ? That is, will they be true sceptics or so-called skeptics ?
  19. Here's a link to the report from that second inquiry: the Oxburgh Report.
  20. Obviously the whole point of the hacking was to look for dirt to publish. I'd love to know how many other people got hacked with nothing published, because there was no dirt to find.

    I know the answer might be "none", but equally, it could be hundreds.
  21. Here’s a link to the final and most comprehensive inquiry: the Muir Russell report.

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