Climatic Research Unit documents
Encyclopedia
Climatic Research Unit documents including thousands of e-mails and other documents were stolen from a server at the Climatic Research Unit
of the University of East Anglia
in a hacking incident in November 2009. The documents were redistributed first through the climate skeptic blogosphere, and allegations were made that they indicated misconduct by leading climate scientists. A series of investigations rejected these allegations, while concluding that CRU scientists should have been more open with distributing data and methods on request. Precisely six committees investigated the allegations and published reports, finding no evidence of fraud or scientific misconduct. The scientific consensus that global warming is occurring as a result of human activity remained unchanged by the end of the investigations.
The incident occurred shortly before the opening December 2009 Copenhagen global climate summit
. It has prompted general discussion about increasing the openness of scientific data (though the majority of climate data have always been freely available). Scientists, scientific organisations, and government officials have stated that the incident does not affect the overall scientific case for climate change. Andrew Revkin
reported in the New York Times that "The evidence pointing to a growing human contribution to global warming is so widely accepted that the hacked material is unlikely to erode the overall argument."
, pertaining to climate change
research covering a period from 1996 until 2009. Some of the e-mails which have been widely publicised included discussions of how to combat the arguments of climate change sceptics, unflattering comments about sceptics, queries from journalists, and drafts of scientific papers. There have been assertions that these discussions indicated efforts to shut out dissenters and their points of view, and included discussions about destroying files in order to prevent them from being revealed under the UK Freedom of Information Act 2000
. A review by the Associated Press
of all the e-mails found that they did not support claims of faking of science, but did show disdain for sceptical critics. Scientists had discussed avoiding sharing information with critics, but the documents showed no evidence that any data was destroyed. Researchers also discussed in e-mails how information they had released on request was used by critics to make personal attacks on researchers. In an interview with The Guardian
, Phil Jones said "Some of the emails probably had poorly chosen words and were sent in the heat of the moment, when I was frustrated. I do regret sending some of them. We've not deleted any emails or data here at CRU." He confirmed that the e-mails that had sparked the most controversy appeared to be genuine.
(PSU), one of the originators of the graph of temperature trends dubbed the "hockey stick graph
".
Climate change sceptics gained wide publicity for allegations that the hacked e-mails showed climate scientists colluded
in manipulating data, withheld scientific information, and tried to prevent dissenting scientific papers from being published in peer review
ed journals. Academics and climate change researchers said that nothing in the emails proved wrongdoing, and dismissed the allegations. Independent reports said that the e-mails did not affect evidence that man made global warming is a real threat, and e-mails were being misrepresented to support unfounded claims of scientific misconduct, but there were disturbing suggestions that scientists had avoided sharing scientific data with sceptical critics.
The Information Commissioner's Office stated that "the prima facie evidence from the published e-mails indicate an attempt to defeat disclosure by deleting information. It is hard to imagine more cogent prima facie evidence. ... The fact that the elements of a [FOIA] section 77 offence may have been found here, but cannot be acted on because of the elapsed time, is a very serious matter." The Science and Technology Select Committee
criticised the ICO for making "a statement to the press that went beyond that which it could substantiate", but also blamed the university for mishandling Freedom of Information requests and called for a full investigtion to resolve the questions raised.
The Associated Press conducted a review of the e-mails and concluded that they showed scientists fending off sceptics, but did not support claims that global warming science had been faked. They stated that "One of the most disturbing elements suggests an effort to avoid sharing scientific data with critics skeptical of global warming", and mentioned ethical problems with this action due to the fact that "free access to data is important so others can repeat experiments as part of the scientific method". They cited a science policy expert as stating that it was "normal science politics, but on the extreme end, though still within bounds". The AP sent the emails to three climate scientists they selected as moderates, who did not change their view that man-made global warming is a real threat. The three scientists are on the record elsewhere supporting an outside, independent review of the allegations of misconduct at both the CRU and Pennsylvania State University
.
Summarising its own analysis, FactCheck
stated that claims by climate sceptics that the emails demonstrated scientific misconduct amounting to fabrication of global warming were unfounded, and emails were being misrepresented to support these claims. While the emails showed a few scientists being rude or dismissive, this did not negate evidence that human activities were largely responsible for global warming, or the conclusions of the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
report which used the CRU as just one of many sources of data.
An editorial in the scientific journal
Nature
stated that the e-mails had not shown anything that undermined the scientific case on human caused global warming, or raised any substantive reasons for concern about the researchers' own papers. Scientific openness requires public availability of data used to reach conclusions, but researchers had been hampered in this by contractual restrictions on some data, and in certain countries national meteorological services were too slow to provide data sets on request. The e-mail theft highlighted "the harassment that denialists inflict on some climate-change researchers, often in the form of endless, time-consuming demands for information under the US and UK Freedom of Information Acts. Governments and institutions need to provide tangible assistance for researchers facing such a burden." While scientists are human and "unrelenting opposition to their work can goad them to the limits of tolerance", they "should strive to act and communicate professionally, and make their data and methods available to others, lest they provide their worst critics with ammunition."
Professor Roger Pielke Sr.
, an atmospheric scientist at Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences
(CIRES) at the University of Colorado at Boulder, in an interview said, "Both those who denounce global warming as a hoax and [those who] claim that this is a 'tempest in a teapot' are incorrect. With respect to the role of humans in the climate system, there is incontrovertible evidence that we exert both warming and cooling effects." With respect to the emails in question, he said, "there are serious issues exposed by the emails — including the goal of these scientists to prevent proper scientific disclosure of their data, as well as to control what papers appear in the peer reviewed literature and climate assessments. The IPCC assessment, with which major policy decisions are being made, involves the individuals in the emails who have senior leadership positions."
The IPCC's chairman, Rajendra Pachauri
, described the CRU's scientists "as highly reputed professionals, whose contributions over the years to scientific knowledge are unquestionable" and described their datasets as "totally consistent with those from other institutions, on the basis of which far-reaching and meaningful conclusions were reached in the [2007 IPCC report]."
On November 24 the University of East Anglia issued a statement on the contents of the e-mails: "There is nothing in the stolen material which indicates that peer-reviewed publications by CRU, and others, on the nature of global warming and related climate change are not of the highest quality of scientific investigation and interpretation."
In its report to the Science and Technology Select Committee
of the Parliament of the United Kingdom
, the Institute of Physics
stated that the emails reveal evidence of "determined and coordinated refusals" to comply with scientific traditions through "manipulation of the publication and peer-review system" and "intolerance to challenge". This report was used by climate sceptics to bolster claims that the problem of global warming is exaggerated. This forced the Institute of Physics to confirm that its position was that "the basic science is well enough understood to be sure that our climate is changing, and that we need to take action now to mitigate that change." Many experts considered that the correction was still inadequate, with climatologist Andy Russell describing the allegation of data suppression as "incorrect and irresponsible". The institute said that the statement had been prepared by their energy subcommittee, but would not reveal who had produced it. It did say that the subcommittee included an IOP official named Peter Gill, whose company provides services to the energy industry and who has written that for many people, the subject of anthropogenic global warming "has become a religion, so facts and analysis have become largely irrelevant". The institute said that Gill was not the main source of information and that other members of the sub-committee were also critical of CRU. Evan Harris
, a Liberal Democrat
member of the Science and Technology Select Committee
, said "Members of the Institute of Physics ... may be concerned that the IOP is not as transparent as those it wishes to criticise." However the institute told the Guardian that the submission was "approved by three members of its science board" and supplied comments from an anonymous board member stating "The institute should feel relaxed about the process by which it generated what is, anyway, a statement of the obvious... the points [the submission] makes are ones which we continue to support, that science should be practiced openly and in an unbiased way."
" to deal with a well known issue with some tree ring proxy measurements and "hide the decline" that particular proxy showed for modern temperatures after 1950, when measured temperatures were rising. This was widely misstated to refer to a decline in measured global temperatures, but "[t]his is nonsense. Given the year the email was written, 1999, it cannot be anything of the sort. At that time there was no suggestion of a decline in temperatures. The previous year was the warmest on record." The words came from an excerpt from an e-mail of 16 November 1999 authored by Phil Jones, which the UEA has stated refers to a graph he was preparing as a diagram for the cover of the World Meteorological Organization
(WMO) statement on the status of global climate in 1999. Jones wrote:
The graph showed three series of paleoclimate reconstructions, based on records of tree rings, corals, ice cores, lake sediments, etc., along with historical and instrumental records. "Mike's Nature trick" referred to a paper published by Michael Mann in Nature
in 1998, which combined various proxy records with actual temperature records. Mann described the "trick" as simply a concise way of showing the two kinds of data together while still clearly indicating which was which. He said that there was nothing "hidden or inappropriate" about it, and that his method of combining proxy data had been corroborated by numerous statistical tests and matched thermometer readings taken over the past 150 years. A press release by the University of East Anglia said that the "trick" was using instrumental data to meet a requirement of showing temperatures more recent than those covered by the proxy based temperature reconstructions, and that the use of the word "trick" was not intended to imply any deception. An editorial in Nature said that 'trick' was slang for a clever (and legitimate) technique.
The phrase "hide the decline" referred specifically to the divergence problem
in which post 1960 tree ring proxy data indicate a decline while measured temperatures rise. The reconstruction by Keith Briffa
et al. was based solely on tree ring data, which shows a strong correlation with temperature from the 19th century to the mid 20th century. They had published a statement on the divergence problem in 1998, and had recommended that the post 1960 part of their reconstruction should not be used. Jones stated that the email was "written in haste" and that, far from seeking to hide the decline, CRU had published a number of articles on the problem. The implications of the decline are discussed in Chapter 6 of the 2007 IPCC
Fourth Assessment Report
, which describes discussion of various possible reasons for the divergence which does not affect all the trees, and says that there is no consensus about the cause. It notes that Briffa et al. specifically excluded the post 1960 data, which is therefore not shown in the graph of their reconstruction in the report. In his review comments on the report, Stephen McIntyre
objected to this graph being truncated, and said that the whole reconstruction should be shown with comments to deal with the "divergence problem". The IPCC response was that this would be inappropriate.
John Tierney
wrote in the New York Times that "the graph adorned the cover of a report intended for policy makers and journalists. The nonexperts wouldn’t have realized that the scariest part of that graph — the recent temperatures soaring far above anything in the previous millennium — was based on a completely different measurement from the earlier portion. It looked like one smooth, continuous line leading straight upward to certain doom." Tierney quotes Michael E. Mann replying to a skeptic who raised this very issue about tree-ring data at the RealClimate
blog:
Tierney continued, "Dr. Mann now tells me that he was unaware, when he wrote the response, that such grafting had in fact been done in the earlier cover chart, and I take him at his word. But I don’t see why the question was dismissed so readily, with the implication that only a tool of the fossil-fuel industry would raise it."
Richard Lindzen
of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
accused Mann of data rigging and outright falsification. Lindzen said he's thought for years that the hockey stick graphs were generated through dishonest means. Other climatologists disputed Lindzen's comments. Thomas Peterson of the National Climatic Data Center
said he had seen nothing in the emails that called the fundamental science into question, and Andrew Solow of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
agreed that there was no trickery, saying he would use the word trick to describe some methodological step, but expressed the view that the basis of reconstructions had been unclear. Several scientific sources state that the decline being referred to is a decline in tree ring climate proxy metrics, not temperature. Andrew Watson, Royal Society Research Professor at the UEA, said that the scientists had drawn the line to follow the tree-ring reconstruction up to 1960 and the measured temperature after that."
that questioned assertions that the 20th century was abnormally warm, Mann wrote in an e-mail of 11 March 2003:
Mann told 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."
Mann was not alone in expressing concern about the peer review process of the journal. Half of the journal's editorial board, including editor-in-chief Hans von Storch
, resigned in the wake of controversy surrounding the article's publication. The publisher later admitted that the paper's major findings could not "be concluded convincingly from the evidence provided in the paper. [Climate Research] should have requested appropriate revisions of the manuscript prior to publication."
In a 18 December 2009 column in the Wall Street Journal, Pat Michaels alleged that pressure from Jones and Mann was responsible for the resignations at Climate Research. In a response also published in the Wall Street Journal, von Storch said that he left the post as chief editor of Climate Research "with no outside pressure, because of insufficient quality control on a bad paper – a skeptic's paper, at that."
The independent review commissioned by the University of East Anglia found that the scientists did not subvert the peer review process to censor criticism as alleged.
and Pat Michaels, and another paper by Eugenia Kalnay
and Ming Cai, Jones emailed his colleagues saying, "I can't see either of these papers being in the next IPCC
report. Kevin [TRENBERTH] and I will keep them out somehow - even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!" At that time, Jones and Kevin E. Trenberth
were lead authors on a chapter in the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report
. Trenberth told the investigating journalist "I had no role in this whatsoever. I did not make and was not complicit in that statement of Phil's. I am a veteran of three other IPCC assessments. I am well aware that we do not keep any papers out, and none were kept out. We assessed everything [though] we cannot possibly refer to all literature... Both of the papers referred to were in fact cited and discussed in the IPCC." He also made a statement agreed with Jones, that "AR4 was the first time Jones was on the writing team of an IPCC assessment. The comment was naive and sent before he understood the process." Jones could have been expected to be aware of the rules as he had been a contributing author for more than ten years, but this was his first time as a lead author with a responsibility for content of the complete chapter.
The IPCC has stated that its procedures mean there is "no possibility of exclusion of any contrarian views, if they have been published in established journals or other publications which are peer reviewed." Its chairman, Rajendra Pachauri, stated that the papers that had been criticised "were actually discussed in detail in chapter six of the Working Group I report of the AR4 (IPCC Fourth Assessment Report
). Furthermore, articles from the journal Climate Research, which was also decried in the emails, have been cited 47 times in the Working Group I report."
A Nature
editorial stated that the UEA scientists had been sharply critical of the quality of the two papers, but "neither they nor the IPCC suppressed anything: when the assessment report was published in 2007 it referenced and discussed both papers." Peter Kelemen, a professor of geochemistry
at Columbia University
's Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, said that "If scientists attempted to exclude critics' peer-reviewed papers from IPCC reports, this was unethical in my view." Rajendra Pachauri responded that the IPCC has "a very transparent, a very comprehensive process which ensures that even if someone wants to leave out a piece of peer reviewed literature there is virtually no possibility of that happening."
In another e-mail sent in May 2008, Jones asked Mann:
Critics assert that the e-mails showed that scientists were conspiring to delete e-mails and documents to prevent them from being released. George Monbiot
, a supporter of the scientific consensus, wrote that Jones' resignation is warranted on the basis of his statement in this email alone.
Pro-Vice Chancellor
of Research at the University of East Anglia, Trevor Davies, said that no data were deleted or "otherwise dealt with in any fashion with the intent of preventing the disclosure". In response to allegations that CRU avoided obligations under the UK Freedom of Information Act
, independent investigator Muir Russell plans to review CRU's "policies and practices regarding requests under the Freedom of Information Act".
The UK Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) oversees the application of the Freedom of Information Act 2000
. The Deputy Information Commissioner, Graham Smith, issued a statement which was published on 27 January 2010 and said that the e-mails showed that an FOI request made by David Holland, a climate sceptic from Northampton
, had "not [been] dealt with as they should have been under the legislation." Section 77 of the FOI Act prohibited public authorities from intentionally preventing the disclosure of restricted information, but it was too late to impose sanctions as there was a six-month statutory time limit. He was advising the university of East Anglia on its legal obligations, and the ICO would be considering whether to take regulatory action once reports of the independent and police investigations were available. The university said it had not been made aware of the statement by Smith.
In its submission to the Science and Technology Select Committee, the university denied allegations that it had refused to release raw data in breach of the FOIA. It subsequently released an exchange of correspondence with the Information Commissioner's Office to clarify that, in their opinion, the University had not been found in breach of any part of the FOI Act. UEA stated that the ICO had not completed its investigations and had not established any breach of the law, and that it had not sought any further evidence on the matter. It said that the ICO statement only referred to prima facie
evidence, and that Mr. Holland's request at issue concerned private e-mails. The letter from the ICO had stated that "the prima facie evidence from the published e-mails indicate an attempt to defeat disclosure by deleting information. It is hard to imagine more cogent prima facie evidence. ... The fact that the elements of a [FOIA] section 77 offence may have been found here, but cannot be acted on because of the elapsed time, is a very serious matter." Evan Harris
, a Liberal Democrat
Member of Parliament
, told The Times
that it would be unwise for the university to attempt to portray the ICO's letter in a positive light, as the correspondence would be examined by the Committee. The UEA told the newspaper that the point being made in their submission was that "there has been no investigation so no decision, as was widely reported. The ICO read e-mails and came to assumptions but has not investigated or demonstrated any evidence that what may have been said in emails was actually carried out." The university said that the point being made in their submission was that "there has been no investigation so no decision, as was widely reported. The ICO read e-mails and came to assumptions but has not investigated or demonstrated any evidence that what may have been said in emails was actually carried out." The Science and Technology Select Committee
report blamed the university for mishandling Freedom of Information requests and said it had “found ways to support the culture at CRU of resisting disclosure of information to climate change sceptics”. The committee also criticised the ICO, and said that it made "a statement to the press that went beyond that which it could substantiate", but accepted that the six month statute of limitations restriction was insufficient, and said that this should be reviewed. It called for a full investigation by the Muir Russell inquiry or by the Information Commissioner, to resolve the question of whether there had been a breach of Section 77 of the FOIA.
In an e-mail of 12 November 2009, climate scientist Benjamin Santer of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
commented on an FOI request for data and correspondence from climate sceptic blogger Stephen McIntyre
:
In an Associated Press interview, McIntyre disagreed with his portrayal in emails, and said "Everything that I've done in this, I've done in good faith."
FactCheck
stated that the great majority of CRU's data is already freely available, and the scientists were reluctant to supply their own correspondence, code and data to people whose motives seemed questionable to them. It is not clear that any deliberate obstruction happened, and emails show the scientists discussing with university officials and lawyers their obligations under the new legislation, informing critics that data is already freely available, or that the information has been sent to them. This question is to form part of the East Anglia investigation.
The University of East Anglia stated that the great majority of CRU climate data was already freely available, but the remainder was mainly owned by National Meteorological Services around the globe and subject to non-publication agreements. The Met Office
was requesting new agreements to allow it to republish the raw data. CRU has a web page describing the progress that had previously been made in releasing this data, and giving details of non-publication agreements including the restrictions placed by the Met office on use of its data for bona fide research programmes. In a later BBC interview, Phil Jones said that the land station records developed at CRU show close agreement with the independent NCDC
and GISS
official records, which are based on raw data freely available from the Global Historical Climatology Network
.
on 12 October 2009 that discussed gaps in scientific understanding of recent temperature variations, in which Trenberth wrote:
Trenberth told the Associated Press that the email referred to 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.
In a statement on his NCAR webpage Trenberth states that,
and IDL, programmer comments
and a readme file
. In a BBC Newsnight
report, software engineer
John Graham-Cumming
found the code to be "below the standard you'd expect in any commercial software" because it lacked clear documentation
or an audit history. Graham-Cumming also reported finding a bug
in the code's error handling
which, if it occurred, would ignore data without warning. Computer World
said that in some cases "the coder, supremely frustrated with the poor quality of his data, simply creates some." The Washington Times
stated that the coding information released shows that the data "appear to have been constructed to show an increase in temperatures." In his CBS News
blog, columnist Declan McCullagh
stated that "East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit might have avoided this snafu
by publicly disclosing as much as possible at every step of the way."
Myles Allen
, head of the Climate Dynamics group at the University of Oxford
, said that the code investigated by Newsnight had nothing at all to do with the HadCRUT
temperature record used for climate reconstructions, which is maintained at the Met Office
and not at CRU. When he challenged Newsnight on this, they responded that "Our expert's opinion is that this is climate change code" and declined to retract the story. He commented that on the same basis the quality of code he put together for students could be used to discredit other research code.
Climatic Research Unit
The Climatic Research Unit is a component of the University of East Anglia and is one of the leading institutions concerned with the study of natural and anthropogenic climate change....
of the University of East Anglia
University of East Anglia
The University of East Anglia is a public research university based in Norwich, United Kingdom. It was established in 1963, and is a founder-member of the 1994 Group of research-intensive universities.-History:...
in a hacking incident in November 2009. The documents were redistributed first through the climate skeptic blogosphere, and allegations were made that they indicated misconduct by leading climate scientists. A series of investigations rejected these allegations, while concluding that CRU scientists should have been more open with distributing data and methods on request. Precisely six committees investigated the allegations and published reports, finding no evidence of fraud or scientific misconduct. The scientific consensus that global warming is occurring as a result of human activity remained unchanged by the end of the investigations.
The incident occurred shortly before the opening December 2009 Copenhagen global climate summit
2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference
The 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference, commonly known as the Copenhagen Summit, was held at the Bella Center in Copenhagen, Denmark, between 7 December and 18 December. The conference included the 15th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate...
. It has prompted general discussion about increasing the openness of scientific data (though the majority of climate data have always been freely available). Scientists, scientific organisations, and government officials have stated that the incident does not affect the overall scientific case for climate change. Andrew Revkin
Andrew Revkin
Andrew C. Revkin is a journalist and author who has spent a quarter of a century covering subjects ranging from the assault on the Amazon to the Asian tsunami, from the troubled relationship of science and politics to climate change at the North Pole. From 1995 through 2009, he covered the...
reported in the New York Times that "The evidence pointing to a growing human contribution to global warming is so widely accepted that the hacked material is unlikely to erode the overall argument."
Content of the documents
The material comprised more than 1,000 e-mails, 2,000 documents, as well as commented source codeSource code
In computer science, source code is text written using the format and syntax of the programming language that it is being written in. Such a language is specially designed to facilitate the work of computer programmers, who specify the actions to be performed by a computer mostly by writing source...
, pertaining to climate change
Climate change
Climate change is a significant and lasting change in the statistical distribution of weather patterns over periods ranging from decades to millions of years. It may be a change in average weather conditions or the distribution of events around that average...
research covering a period from 1996 until 2009. Some of the e-mails which have been widely publicised included discussions of how to combat the arguments of climate change sceptics, unflattering comments about sceptics, queries from journalists, and drafts of scientific papers. There have been assertions that these discussions indicated efforts to shut out dissenters and their points of view, and included discussions about destroying files in order to prevent them from being revealed under the UK Freedom of Information Act 2000
Freedom of Information Act 2000
The Freedom of Information Act 2000 is an Act of Parliament of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that creates a public "right of access" to information held by public authorities. It is the implementation of freedom of information legislation in the United Kingdom on a national level...
. A review by the Associated Press
Associated Press
The Associated Press is an American news agency. The AP is a cooperative owned by its contributing newspapers, radio and television stations in the United States, which both contribute stories to the AP and use material written by its staff journalists...
of all the e-mails found that they did not support claims of faking of science, but did show disdain for sceptical critics. Scientists had discussed avoiding sharing information with critics, but the documents showed no evidence that any data was destroyed. Researchers also discussed in e-mails how information they had released on request was used by critics to make personal attacks on researchers. In an interview with The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
, Phil Jones said "Some of the emails probably had poorly chosen words and were sent in the heat of the moment, when I was frustrated. I do regret sending some of them. We've not deleted any emails or data here at CRU." He confirmed that the e-mails that had sparked the most controversy appeared to be genuine.
E-mails
Most of the e-mails concerned technical and mundane aspects of climate research, such as data analysis and details of scientific conferences. The controversy has focused on a small number of e-mails, particularly those sent to or from climatologists Phil Jones, the head of the CRU, and Michael E. Mann of Pennsylvania State UniversityPennsylvania State University
The Pennsylvania State University, commonly referred to as Penn State or PSU, is a public research university with campuses and facilities throughout the state of Pennsylvania, United States. Founded in 1855, the university has a threefold mission of teaching, research, and public service...
(PSU), one of the originators of the graph of temperature trends dubbed the "hockey stick graph
Hockey stick controversy
The hockey stick controversy refers to debates over the technical correctness and implications for global warming of graphs showing reconstructed estimates of the temperature record of the past 1000 years...
".
Climate change sceptics gained wide publicity for allegations that the hacked e-mails showed climate scientists colluded
Collusion
Collusion is an agreement between two or more persons, sometimes illegal and therefore secretive, to limit open competition by deceiving, misleading, or defrauding others of their legal rights, or to obtain an objective forbidden by law typically by defrauding or gaining an unfair advantage...
in manipulating data, withheld scientific information, and tried to prevent dissenting scientific papers from being published in peer review
Peer review
Peer review is a process of self-regulation by a profession or a process of evaluation involving qualified individuals within the relevant field. Peer review methods are employed to maintain standards, improve performance and provide credibility...
ed journals. Academics and climate change researchers said that nothing in the emails proved wrongdoing, and dismissed the allegations. Independent reports said that the e-mails did not affect evidence that man made global warming is a real threat, and e-mails were being misrepresented to support unfounded claims of scientific misconduct, but there were disturbing suggestions that scientists had avoided sharing scientific data with sceptical critics.
The Information Commissioner's Office stated that "the prima facie evidence from the published e-mails indicate an attempt to defeat disclosure by deleting information. It is hard to imagine more cogent prima facie evidence. ... The fact that the elements of a [FOIA] section 77 offence may have been found here, but cannot be acted on because of the elapsed time, is a very serious matter." The Science and Technology Select Committee
Science and Technology Select Committee
The Science and Technology Select Committee is a select committee of the House of Commons in the Parliament of the United Kingdom.The original Science and Technology was abolished upon the creation of the Innovation, Universities, Science and Skills Committee on November 6, 2007...
criticised the ICO for making "a statement to the press that went beyond that which it could substantiate", but also blamed the university for mishandling Freedom of Information requests and called for a full investigtion to resolve the questions raised.
The Associated Press conducted a review of the e-mails and concluded that they showed scientists fending off sceptics, but did not support claims that global warming science had been faked. They stated that "One of the most disturbing elements suggests an effort to avoid sharing scientific data with critics skeptical of global warming", and mentioned ethical problems with this action due to the fact that "free access to data is important so others can repeat experiments as part of the scientific method". They cited a science policy expert as stating that it was "normal science politics, but on the extreme end, though still within bounds". The AP sent the emails to three climate scientists they selected as moderates, who did not change their view that man-made global warming is a real threat. The three scientists are on the record elsewhere supporting an outside, independent review of the allegations of misconduct at both the CRU and Pennsylvania State University
Pennsylvania State University
The Pennsylvania State University, commonly referred to as Penn State or PSU, is a public research university with campuses and facilities throughout the state of Pennsylvania, United States. Founded in 1855, the university has a threefold mission of teaching, research, and public service...
.
Summarising its own analysis, FactCheck
FactCheck
FactCheck.org is a non-partisan, nonprofit website that describes itself as a consumer advocate' for voters that aims to reduce the level of deception and confusion in U.S. politics." It is a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the Annenberg School for Communication at the University...
stated that claims by climate sceptics that the emails demonstrated scientific misconduct amounting to fabrication of global warming were unfounded, and emails were being misrepresented to support these claims. While the emails showed a few scientists being rude or dismissive, this did not negate evidence that human activities were largely responsible for global warming, or the conclusions of the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is a scientific intergovernmental body which provides comprehensive assessments of current scientific, technical and socio-economic information worldwide about the risk of climate change caused by human activity, its potential environmental and...
report which used the CRU as just one of many sources of data.
An editorial in the scientific journal
Scientific journal
In academic publishing, a scientific journal is a periodical publication intended to further the progress of science, usually by reporting new research. There are thousands of scientific journals in publication, and many more have been published at various points in the past...
Nature
Nature (journal)
Nature, first published on 4 November 1869, is ranked the world's most cited interdisciplinary scientific journal by the Science Edition of the 2010 Journal Citation Reports...
stated that the e-mails had not shown anything that undermined the scientific case on human caused global warming, or raised any substantive reasons for concern about the researchers' own papers. Scientific openness requires public availability of data used to reach conclusions, but researchers had been hampered in this by contractual restrictions on some data, and in certain countries national meteorological services were too slow to provide data sets on request. The e-mail theft highlighted "the harassment that denialists inflict on some climate-change researchers, often in the form of endless, time-consuming demands for information under the US and UK Freedom of Information Acts. Governments and institutions need to provide tangible assistance for researchers facing such a burden." While scientists are human and "unrelenting opposition to their work can goad them to the limits of tolerance", they "should strive to act and communicate professionally, and make their data and methods available to others, lest they provide their worst critics with ammunition."
Professor Roger Pielke Sr.
Roger A. Pielke
Roger A. Pielke, Sr. is an American meteorologist with interests in climate variability and climate change, environmental vulnerability, numerical modeling, atmospheric dynamics, land/ocean - atmosphere interactions, and large eddy/turbulent boundary layer modeling...
, an atmospheric scientist at Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences
Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences
The Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences is a research institute that is sponsored jointly by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration /Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research and the University of Colorado at Boulder.- Quick facts :* Established in 1967 as...
(CIRES) at the University of Colorado at Boulder, in an interview said, "Both those who denounce global warming as a hoax and [those who] claim that this is a 'tempest in a teapot' are incorrect. With respect to the role of humans in the climate system, there is incontrovertible evidence that we exert both warming and cooling effects." With respect to the emails in question, he said, "there are serious issues exposed by the emails — including the goal of these scientists to prevent proper scientific disclosure of their data, as well as to control what papers appear in the peer reviewed literature and climate assessments. The IPCC assessment, with which major policy decisions are being made, involves the individuals in the emails who have senior leadership positions."
The IPCC's chairman, Rajendra Pachauri
Rajendra K. Pachauri
Rajendra Kumar Pachauri has served as the chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change since 2002, during which his tenure has engendered controversy. He is also been director general of TERI, a research and policy organization in India, and chancellor of TERI University...
, described the CRU's scientists "as highly reputed professionals, whose contributions over the years to scientific knowledge are unquestionable" and described their datasets as "totally consistent with those from other institutions, on the basis of which far-reaching and meaningful conclusions were reached in the [2007 IPCC report]."
On November 24 the University of East Anglia issued a statement on the contents of the e-mails: "There is nothing in the stolen material which indicates that peer-reviewed publications by CRU, and others, on the nature of global warming and related climate change are not of the highest quality of scientific investigation and interpretation."
In its report to the Science and Technology Select Committee
Science and Technology Select Committee
The Science and Technology Select Committee is a select committee of the House of Commons in the Parliament of the United Kingdom.The original Science and Technology was abolished upon the creation of the Innovation, Universities, Science and Skills Committee on November 6, 2007...
of the Parliament of the United Kingdom
Parliament of the United Kingdom
The Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is the supreme legislative body in the United Kingdom, British Crown dependencies and British overseas territories, located in London...
, the Institute of Physics
Institute of Physics
The Institute of Physics is a scientific charity devoted to increasing the practice, understanding and application of physics. It has a worldwide membership of around 40,000....
stated that the emails reveal evidence of "determined and coordinated refusals" to comply with scientific traditions through "manipulation of the publication and peer-review system" and "intolerance to challenge". This report was used by climate sceptics to bolster claims that the problem of global warming is exaggerated. This forced the Institute of Physics to confirm that its position was that "the basic science is well enough understood to be sure that our climate is changing, and that we need to take action now to mitigate that change." Many experts considered that the correction was still inadequate, with climatologist Andy Russell describing the allegation of data suppression as "incorrect and irresponsible". The institute said that the statement had been prepared by their energy subcommittee, but would not reveal who had produced it. It did say that the subcommittee included an IOP official named Peter Gill, whose company provides services to the energy industry and who has written that for many people, the subject of anthropogenic global warming "has become a religion, so facts and analysis have become largely irrelevant". The institute said that Gill was not the main source of information and that other members of the sub-committee were also critical of CRU. Evan Harris
Evan Harris
Evan Leslie Harris is a British Liberal Democrat politician. He was the Member of Parliament for Oxford West and Abingdon from 1997 to 2010, losing his seat in the 2010 general election by 176 votes to Conservative Nicola Blackwood....
, a Liberal Democrat
Liberal Democrats
The Liberal Democrats are a social liberal political party in the United Kingdom which supports constitutional and electoral reform, progressive taxation, wealth taxation, human rights laws, cultural liberalism, banking reform and civil liberties .The party was formed in 1988 by a merger of the...
member of the Science and Technology Select Committee
Science and Technology Select Committee
The Science and Technology Select Committee is a select committee of the House of Commons in the Parliament of the United Kingdom.The original Science and Technology was abolished upon the creation of the Innovation, Universities, Science and Skills Committee on November 6, 2007...
, said "Members of the Institute of Physics ... may be concerned that the IOP is not as transparent as those it wishes to criticise." However the institute told the Guardian that the submission was "approved by three members of its science board" and supplied comments from an anonymous board member stating "The institute should feel relaxed about the process by which it generated what is, anyway, a statement of the obvious... the points [the submission] makes are ones which we continue to support, that science should be practiced openly and in an unbiased way."
Climate reconstruction graph
The most quoted phrase refers to the "trick" used in Michael E. Mann's graph of temperature trends dubbed the "hockey stick graphHockey stick controversy
The hockey stick controversy refers to debates over the technical correctness and implications for global warming of graphs showing reconstructed estimates of the temperature record of the past 1000 years...
" to deal with a well known issue with some tree ring proxy measurements and "hide the decline" that particular proxy showed for modern temperatures after 1950, when measured temperatures were rising. This was widely misstated to refer to a decline in measured global temperatures, but "[t]his is nonsense. Given the year the email was written, 1999, it cannot be anything of the sort. At that time there was no suggestion of a decline in temperatures. The previous year was the warmest on record." The words came from an excerpt from an e-mail of 16 November 1999 authored by Phil Jones, which the UEA has stated refers to a graph he was preparing as a diagram for the cover of the World Meteorological Organization
World Meteorological Organization
The World Meteorological Organization is an intergovernmental organization with a membership of 189 Member States and Territories. It originated from the International Meteorological Organization , which was founded in 1873...
(WMO) statement on the status of global climate in 1999. Jones wrote:
- "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."
The graph showed three series of paleoclimate reconstructions, based on records of tree rings, corals, ice cores, lake sediments, etc., along with historical and instrumental records. "Mike's Nature trick" referred to a paper published by Michael Mann in Nature
Nature (journal)
Nature, first published on 4 November 1869, is ranked the world's most cited interdisciplinary scientific journal by the Science Edition of the 2010 Journal Citation Reports...
in 1998, which combined various proxy records with actual temperature records. Mann described the "trick" as simply a concise way of showing the two kinds of data together while still clearly indicating which was which. He said that there was nothing "hidden or inappropriate" about it, and that his method of combining proxy data had been corroborated by numerous statistical tests and matched thermometer readings taken over the past 150 years. A press release by the University of East Anglia said that the "trick" was using instrumental data to meet a requirement of showing temperatures more recent than those covered by the proxy based temperature reconstructions, and that the use of the word "trick" was not intended to imply any deception. An editorial in Nature said that 'trick' was slang for a clever (and legitimate) technique.
The phrase "hide the decline" referred specifically to the divergence problem
Divergence problem
The divergence problem is an anomaly from the field of dendroclimatology, the study of past climate through observations of old trees, primarily the properties of their annual growth rings...
in which post 1960 tree ring proxy data indicate a decline while measured temperatures rise. The reconstruction by Keith Briffa
Keith Briffa
Professor Keith R. Briffa is a climatologist employed since 1977 by the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, of which he is currently deputy director. In his professional work, he focuses on the climate change in late Holocene, with a special focus on northern portions of...
et al. was based solely on tree ring data, which shows a strong correlation with temperature from the 19th century to the mid 20th century. They had published a statement on the divergence problem in 1998, and had recommended that the post 1960 part of their reconstruction should not be used. Jones stated that the email was "written in haste" and that, far from seeking to hide the decline, CRU had published a number of articles on the problem. The implications of the decline are discussed in Chapter 6 of the 2007 IPCC
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is a scientific intergovernmental body which provides comprehensive assessments of current scientific, technical and socio-economic information worldwide about the risk of climate change caused by human activity, its potential environmental and...
Fourth Assessment Report
IPCC Fourth Assessment Report
Climate Change 2007, the Fourth Assessment Report of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change , is the fourth in a series of reports intended to assess scientific, technical and socio-economic information concerning climate change, its potential effects, and options for...
, which describes discussion of various possible reasons for the divergence which does not affect all the trees, and says that there is no consensus about the cause. It notes that Briffa et al. specifically excluded the post 1960 data, which is therefore not shown in the graph of their reconstruction in the report. In his review comments on the report, Stephen McIntyre
Stephen McIntyre
Stephen McIntyre is a Canadian mathematician, former minerals prospector, and semi-retired mining consultant who is best known as the founder and editor of Climate Audit, a blog devoted to the analysis and discussion of climate data...
objected to this graph being truncated, and said that the whole reconstruction should be shown with comments to deal with the "divergence problem". The IPCC response was that this would be inappropriate.
John Tierney
John Tierney (journalist)
John Marion Tierney is a journalist and author who has worked for the New York Times since 1990.-Career and background:...
wrote in the New York Times that "the graph adorned the cover of a report intended for policy makers and journalists. The nonexperts wouldn’t have realized that the scariest part of that graph — the recent temperatures soaring far above anything in the previous millennium — was based on a completely different measurement from the earlier portion. It looked like one smooth, continuous line leading straight upward to certain doom." Tierney quotes Michael E. Mann replying to a skeptic who raised this very issue about tree-ring data at the RealClimate
RealClimate
RealClimate is a commentary site on climatology. The site's contributors are a group of climate scientists whose goal is to provide a quick response to developing stories and providing the context sometimes missing in mainstream commentary. The discussion is intended to be restricted to scientific...
blog:
Tierney continued, "Dr. Mann now tells me that he was unaware, when he wrote the response, that such grafting had in fact been done in the earlier cover chart, and I take him at his word. But I don’t see why the question was dismissed so readily, with the implication that only a tool of the fossil-fuel industry would raise it."
Richard Lindzen
Richard Lindzen
Richard Siegmund Lindzen is an American atmospheric physicist and Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Lindzen is known for his work in the dynamics of the middle atmosphere, atmospheric tides and ozone photochemistry. He has published more than...
of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.Founded in 1861 in...
accused Mann of data rigging and outright falsification. Lindzen said he's thought for years that the hockey stick graphs were generated through dishonest means. Other climatologists disputed Lindzen's comments. Thomas Peterson of the National Climatic Data Center
National Climatic Data Center
The United States National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, North Carolina is the world's largest active archive of weather data. The center became established in late 1951, with the move into the new facility occurring in early 1952....
said he had seen nothing in the emails that called the fundamental science into question, and Andrew Solow of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution is a private, nonprofit research and higher education facility dedicated to the study of all aspects of marine science and engineering and to the education of marine researchers. Established in 1930, it is the largest independent oceanographic research...
agreed that there was no trickery, saying he would use the word trick to describe some methodological step, but expressed the view that the basis of reconstructions had been unclear. Several scientific sources state that the decline being referred to is a decline in tree ring climate proxy metrics, not temperature. Andrew Watson, Royal Society Research Professor at the UEA, said that the scientists had drawn the line to follow the tree-ring reconstruction up to 1960 and the measured temperature after that."
Peer review issue
In response to an e-mail mentioning a recent paper in the scientific journal Climate ResearchClimate Research (journal)
Climate Research is a peer-reviewed scientific journal published by the Inter-Research Science Center that was established in 1990. Its founder was Otto Kinne. Three volumes are published each year...
that questioned assertions that the 20th century was abnormally warm, Mann wrote in an e-mail of 11 March 2003:
- "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."
Mann told the Wall Street Journal
The Wall Street Journal
The Wall Street Journal is an American English-language international daily newspaper. It is published in New York City by Dow Jones & Company, a division of News Corporation, along with the Asian and European editions of the Journal....
that he didn't feel there was anything wrong in saying "we shouldn't be publishing in a journal that's activist."
Mann was not alone in expressing concern about the peer review process of the journal. Half of the journal's editorial board, including editor-in-chief Hans von Storch
Hans von Storch
Hans von Storch is a German climate scientist. He is Professor at the Meteorological Institute of the University of Hamburg, and Director of the Institute for Coastal Research at the Helmholtz Research Centre in Geesthacht, Germany...
, resigned in the wake of controversy surrounding the article's publication. The publisher later admitted that the paper's major findings could not "be concluded convincingly from the evidence provided in the paper. [Climate Research] should have requested appropriate revisions of the manuscript prior to publication."
In a 18 December 2009 column in the Wall Street Journal, Pat Michaels alleged that pressure from Jones and Mann was responsible for the resignations at Climate Research. In a response also published in the Wall Street Journal, von Storch said that he left the post as chief editor of Climate Research "with no outside pressure, because of insufficient quality control on a bad paper – a skeptic's paper, at that."
The independent review commissioned by the University of East Anglia found that the scientists did not subvert the peer review process to censor criticism as alleged.
Alleged exclusion of papers from IPCC report
In July 2004, referring to Climate Research having published a paper by "MM", thought to be Ross McKitrickRoss McKitrick
Ross McKitrick is a Canadian economist specializing in environmental economics and policy analysis. He is professor of economics at the University of Guelph; a senior fellow of the Fraser Institute, a Canadian free-market public policy think tank; and a member of the academic advisory boards of the...
and Pat Michaels, and another paper by Eugenia Kalnay
Eugenia Kalnay
Eugenia Kalnay is an Argentine meteorologist and a Distinguished University Professor of Atmospheric and Oceanic Science at the University of Maryland, College Park in the United States...
and Ming Cai, Jones emailed his colleagues saying, "I can't see either of these papers being in the next IPCC
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is a scientific intergovernmental body which provides comprehensive assessments of current scientific, technical and socio-economic information worldwide about the risk of climate change caused by human activity, its potential environmental and...
report. Kevin [TRENBERTH] and I will keep them out somehow - even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!" At that time, Jones and Kevin E. Trenberth
Kevin E. Trenberth
Kevin E. Trenberth is head of the Climate Analysis Section at the USA National Center for Atmospheric Research. He was a lead author of the 2001 and 2007 IPCC Scientific Assessment of Climate Change and serves on the Scientific Steering Group for the Climate Variability and Predictability program...
were lead authors on a chapter in the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report
IPCC Fourth Assessment Report
Climate Change 2007, the Fourth Assessment Report of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change , is the fourth in a series of reports intended to assess scientific, technical and socio-economic information concerning climate change, its potential effects, and options for...
. Trenberth told the investigating journalist "I had no role in this whatsoever. I did not make and was not complicit in that statement of Phil's. I am a veteran of three other IPCC assessments. I am well aware that we do not keep any papers out, and none were kept out. We assessed everything [though] we cannot possibly refer to all literature... Both of the papers referred to were in fact cited and discussed in the IPCC." He also made a statement agreed with Jones, that "AR4 was the first time Jones was on the writing team of an IPCC assessment. The comment was naive and sent before he understood the process." Jones could have been expected to be aware of the rules as he had been a contributing author for more than ten years, but this was his first time as a lead author with a responsibility for content of the complete chapter.
The IPCC has stated that its procedures mean there is "no possibility of exclusion of any contrarian views, if they have been published in established journals or other publications which are peer reviewed." Its chairman, Rajendra Pachauri, stated that the papers that had been criticised "were actually discussed in detail in chapter six of the Working Group I report of the AR4 (IPCC Fourth Assessment Report
IPCC Fourth Assessment Report
Climate Change 2007, the Fourth Assessment Report of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change , is the fourth in a series of reports intended to assess scientific, technical and socio-economic information concerning climate change, its potential effects, and options for...
). Furthermore, articles from the journal Climate Research, which was also decried in the emails, have been cited 47 times in the Working Group I report."
A Nature
Nature (journal)
Nature, first published on 4 November 1869, is ranked the world's most cited interdisciplinary scientific journal by the Science Edition of the 2010 Journal Citation Reports...
editorial stated that the UEA scientists had been sharply critical of the quality of the two papers, but "neither they nor the IPCC suppressed anything: when the assessment report was published in 2007 it referenced and discussed both papers." Peter Kelemen, a professor of geochemistry
Geochemistry
The field of geochemistry involves study of the chemical composition of the Earth and other planets, chemical processes and reactions that govern the composition of rocks, water, and soils, and the cycles of matter and energy that transport the Earth's chemical components in time and space, and...
at Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
's Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, said that "If scientists attempted to exclude critics' peer-reviewed papers from IPCC reports, this was unethical in my view." Rajendra Pachauri responded that the IPCC has "a very transparent, a very comprehensive process which ensures that even if someone wants to leave out a piece of peer reviewed literature there is virtually no possibility of that happening."
Freedom of information
Several e-mails relating to freedom of information issues were the focus of controversy. In a 2 February 2005 e-mail, Phil Jones advised Michael Mann:- "And don't leave stuff lying around on ftp sites - you never know who is trawling them. The two MMs have been after the CRU station data for years. 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. Does your similar act in the US force you to respond to enquiries within 20 days?—our does! The UK works on precedents, so the first request will test it. We also have a data protection act, which I will hide behind.
In another e-mail sent in May 2008, Jones asked Mann:
- "Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4IPCC Fourth Assessment ReportClimate Change 2007, the Fourth Assessment Report of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change , is the fourth in a series of reports intended to assess scientific, technical and socio-economic information concerning climate change, its potential effects, and options for...
? Keith will do likewise.... Can you also email Gene and get him to do the same? I don't have his new email address."
Critics assert that the e-mails showed that scientists were conspiring to delete e-mails and documents to prevent them from being released. George Monbiot
George Monbiot
George Joshua Richard Monbiot is an English writer, known for his environmental and political activism. He lives in Machynlleth, Wales, writes a weekly column for The Guardian, and is the author of a number of books, including Captive State: The Corporate Takeover of Britain and Bring on the...
, a supporter of the scientific consensus, wrote that Jones' resignation is warranted on the basis of his statement in this email alone.
Pro-Vice Chancellor
Pro-Vice-Chancellor
In a university, an assistant to a vice-chancellor is called a pro-vice-chancellor . These are sometimes teaching academics who take on additional responsibilities. Some of these responsibilities are in charge of Administration, Research and Development, Academic and Education affairs...
of Research at the University of East Anglia, Trevor Davies, said that no data were deleted or "otherwise dealt with in any fashion with the intent of preventing the disclosure". In response to allegations that CRU avoided obligations under the UK Freedom of Information Act
Freedom of information in the United Kingdom
Freedom of information legislation in the United Kingdom is controlled by two Acts of the United Kingdom and Scottish Parliaments respectively, which both came into force on 1 January 2005.* Freedom of Information Act 2000...
, independent investigator Muir Russell plans to review CRU's "policies and practices regarding requests under the Freedom of Information Act".
The UK Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) oversees the application of the Freedom of Information Act 2000
Freedom of Information Act 2000
The Freedom of Information Act 2000 is an Act of Parliament of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that creates a public "right of access" to information held by public authorities. It is the implementation of freedom of information legislation in the United Kingdom on a national level...
. The Deputy Information Commissioner, Graham Smith, issued a statement which was published on 27 January 2010 and said that the e-mails showed that an FOI request made by David Holland, a climate sceptic from Northampton
Northampton
Northampton is a large market town and local government district in the East Midlands region of England. Situated about north-west of London and around south-east of Birmingham, Northampton lies on the River Nene and is the county town of Northamptonshire. The demonym of Northampton is...
, had "not [been] dealt with as they should have been under the legislation." Section 77 of the FOI Act prohibited public authorities from intentionally preventing the disclosure of restricted information, but it was too late to impose sanctions as there was a six-month statutory time limit. He was advising the university of East Anglia on its legal obligations, and the ICO would be considering whether to take regulatory action once reports of the independent and police investigations were available. The university said it had not been made aware of the statement by Smith.
In its submission to the Science and Technology Select Committee, the university denied allegations that it had refused to release raw data in breach of the FOIA. It subsequently released an exchange of correspondence with the Information Commissioner's Office to clarify that, in their opinion, the University had not been found in breach of any part of the FOI Act. UEA stated that the ICO had not completed its investigations and had not established any breach of the law, and that it had not sought any further evidence on the matter. It said that the ICO statement only referred to prima facie
Prima facie
Prima facie is a Latin expression meaning on its first encounter, first blush, or at first sight. The literal translation would be "at first face", from the feminine form of primus and facies , both in the ablative case. It is used in modern legal English to signify that on first examination, a...
evidence, and that Mr. Holland's request at issue concerned private e-mails. The letter from the ICO had stated that "the prima facie evidence from the published e-mails indicate an attempt to defeat disclosure by deleting information. It is hard to imagine more cogent prima facie evidence. ... The fact that the elements of a [FOIA] section 77 offence may have been found here, but cannot be acted on because of the elapsed time, is a very serious matter." Evan Harris
Evan Harris
Evan Leslie Harris is a British Liberal Democrat politician. He was the Member of Parliament for Oxford West and Abingdon from 1997 to 2010, losing his seat in the 2010 general election by 176 votes to Conservative Nicola Blackwood....
, a Liberal Democrat
Liberal Democrats
The Liberal Democrats are a social liberal political party in the United Kingdom which supports constitutional and electoral reform, progressive taxation, wealth taxation, human rights laws, cultural liberalism, banking reform and civil liberties .The party was formed in 1988 by a merger of the...
Member of Parliament
Member of Parliament
A Member of Parliament is a representative of the voters to a :parliament. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, the term applies specifically to members of the lower house, as upper houses often have a different title, such as senate, and thus also have different titles for its members,...
, told The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
that it would be unwise for the university to attempt to portray the ICO's letter in a positive light, as the correspondence would be examined by the Committee. The UEA told the newspaper that the point being made in their submission was that "there has been no investigation so no decision, as was widely reported. The ICO read e-mails and came to assumptions but has not investigated or demonstrated any evidence that what may have been said in emails was actually carried out." The university said that the point being made in their submission was that "there has been no investigation so no decision, as was widely reported. The ICO read e-mails and came to assumptions but has not investigated or demonstrated any evidence that what may have been said in emails was actually carried out." The Science and Technology Select Committee
Science and Technology Select Committee
The Science and Technology Select Committee is a select committee of the House of Commons in the Parliament of the United Kingdom.The original Science and Technology was abolished upon the creation of the Innovation, Universities, Science and Skills Committee on November 6, 2007...
report blamed the university for mishandling Freedom of Information requests and said it had “found ways to support the culture at CRU of resisting disclosure of information to climate change sceptics”. The committee also criticised the ICO, and said that it made "a statement to the press that went beyond that which it could substantiate", but accepted that the six month statute of limitations restriction was insufficient, and said that this should be reviewed. It called for a full investigation by the Muir Russell inquiry or by the Information Commissioner, to resolve the question of whether there had been a breach of Section 77 of the FOIA.
In an e-mail of 12 November 2009, climate scientist Benjamin Santer of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory , just outside Livermore, California, is a Federally Funded Research and Development Center founded by the University of California in 1952...
commented on an FOI request for data and correspondence from climate sceptic blogger Stephen McIntyre
Stephen McIntyre
Stephen McIntyre is a Canadian mathematician, former minerals prospector, and semi-retired mining consultant who is best known as the founder and editor of Climate Audit, a blog devoted to the analysis and discussion of climate data...
:
- "My personal opinion is that both FOI requests [for data related to a 2008 paper and for correspondence dating back to 2006] are intrusive and unreasonable. Steven McIntyre provides absolutely no scientific justification or explanation for such requests.... McIntyre has no interest in improving our scientific understanding of the nature and causes of climate change. He has no interest in rational scientific discourse.... We should be able to conduct our scientific research without constant fear of an "audit" by Steven McIntyre; without having to weigh every word we write in every email we send to our scientific colleagues."
In an Associated Press interview, McIntyre disagreed with his portrayal in emails, and said "Everything that I've done in this, I've done in good faith."
FactCheck
FactCheck
FactCheck.org is a non-partisan, nonprofit website that describes itself as a consumer advocate' for voters that aims to reduce the level of deception and confusion in U.S. politics." It is a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the Annenberg School for Communication at the University...
stated that the great majority of CRU's data is already freely available, and the scientists were reluctant to supply their own correspondence, code and data to people whose motives seemed questionable to them. It is not clear that any deliberate obstruction happened, and emails show the scientists discussing with university officials and lawyers their obligations under the new legislation, informing critics that data is already freely available, or that the information has been sent to them. This question is to form part of the East Anglia investigation.
The University of East Anglia stated that the great majority of CRU climate data was already freely available, but the remainder was mainly owned by National Meteorological Services around the globe and subject to non-publication agreements. The Met Office
Met Office
The Met Office , is the United Kingdom's national weather service, and a trading fund of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills...
was requesting new agreements to allow it to republish the raw data. CRU has a web page describing the progress that had previously been made in releasing this data, and giving details of non-publication agreements including the restrictions placed by the Met office on use of its data for bona fide research programmes. In a later BBC interview, Phil Jones said that the land station records developed at CRU show close agreement with the independent NCDC
National Climatic Data Center
The United States National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, North Carolina is the world's largest active archive of weather data. The center became established in late 1951, with the move into the new facility occurring in early 1952....
and GISS
Goddard Institute for Space Studies
The NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies , at Columbia University in New York City, is a component laboratory of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center Earth-Sun Exploration Division and a unit of The Earth Institute at Columbia University...
official records, which are based on raw data freely available from the Global Historical Climatology Network
Global Historical Climatology Network
The Global Historical Climatology Network is a database of temperature, precipitation and pressure records managed by the National Climatic Data Center, Arizona State University and the Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center....
.
Gaps in understanding temperature variations
Critics also highlighted a passage in an e-mail sent by Kevin TrenberthKevin E. Trenberth
Kevin E. Trenberth is head of the Climate Analysis Section at the USA National Center for Atmospheric Research. He was a lead author of the 2001 and 2007 IPCC Scientific Assessment of Climate Change and serves on the Scientific Steering Group for the Climate Variability and Predictability program...
on 12 October 2009 that discussed gaps in scientific understanding of recent temperature variations, in which Trenberth wrote:
- "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 told the Associated Press that the email referred to 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.
In a statement on his NCAR webpage Trenberth states that,
- "It is amazing to see this particular quote lambasted so often. It stems from a paper I published this year bemoaning our inability to effectively monitor the energy flows associated with short-term climate variability. It is quite clear from the paper that I was not questioning the link between anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions and warming, or even suggesting that recent temperatures are unusual in the context of short-term natural variability."
Code and documentation
The CRU files also included temperature reconstruction programs written in FortranFortran
Fortran is a general-purpose, procedural, imperative programming language that is especially suited to numeric computation and scientific computing...
and IDL, programmer comments
Comment (computer programming)
In computer programming, a comment is a programming language construct used to embed programmer-readable annotations in the source code of a computer program. Those annotations are potentially significant to programmers but typically ignorable to compilers and interpreters. Comments are usually...
and a readme file
README
A readme file contains information about other files in a directory or archive and is commonly distributed with computer software. Such a file is usually a text file called README.TXT, README.1ST, READ.ME, or simply README, although some Microsoft Windows software may occasionally include a...
. In a BBC Newsnight
Newsnight
Newsnight is a BBC Television current affairs programme noted for its in-depth analysis and often robust cross-examination of senior politicians. Jeremy Paxman has been its main presenter for over two decades....
report, software engineer
Software engineer
A software engineer is an engineer who applies the principles of software engineering to the design, development, testing, and evaluation of the software and systems that make computers or anything containing software, such as computer chips, work.- Overview :...
John Graham-Cumming
John Graham-Cumming
John Graham-Cumming is a British programmer best known for having originated a successful petition to the British Government asking for an apology for its persecution of Alan Turing for his homosexuality....
found the code to be "below the standard you'd expect in any commercial software" because it lacked clear documentation
Software documentation
Software documentation or source code documentation is written text that accompanies computer software. It either explains how it operates or how to use it, and may mean different things to people in different roles....
or an audit history. Graham-Cumming also reported finding a bug
Software bug
A software bug is the common term used to describe an error, flaw, mistake, failure, or fault in a computer program or system that produces an incorrect or unexpected result, or causes it to behave in unintended ways. Most bugs arise from mistakes and errors made by people in either a program's...
in the code's error handling
Exception handling
Exception handling is a programming language construct or computer hardware mechanism designed to handle the occurrence of exceptions, special conditions that change the normal flow of program execution....
which, if it occurred, would ignore data without warning. Computer World
Computer World
Computer World is the eighth studio album by the German electronic music band Kraftwerk, released in May 1981. The album deals with the themes of the rise of computers within society. Critics see this album as a peak in the career of Kraftwerk, along with Autobahn and Trans-Europe Express...
said that in some cases "the coder, supremely frustrated with the poor quality of his data, simply creates some." The Washington Times
The Washington Times
The Washington Times is a daily broadsheet newspaper published in Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States. It was founded in 1982 by Unification Church founder Sun Myung Moon, and until 2010 was owned by News World Communications, an international media conglomerate associated with the...
stated that the coding information released shows that the data "appear to have been constructed to show an increase in temperatures." In his CBS News
CBS News
CBS News is the news division of American television and radio network CBS. The current chairman is Jeff Fager who is also the executive producer of 60 Minutes, while the current president of CBS News is David Rhodes. CBS News' flagship program is the CBS Evening News, hosted by the network's main...
blog, columnist Declan McCullagh
Declan McCullagh
Declan McCullagh is an American journalist and columnist for CBSNews.com. He specializes in computer security and privacy issues. He is notable, among other things, for his early involvement with the media interpretation of U.S...
stated that "East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit might have avoided this snafu
SNAFU
SNAFU is an acronym that stands for situation normal: all fucked up. It is sometimes bowdlerized to all fouled up or similar. In simple terms, it means that the normal situation is in a bad state, as it always is, therefore nothing unexpected. It is usually used in jest, or as a sign of frustration...
by publicly disclosing as much as possible at every step of the way."
Myles Allen
Myles Allen
Myles R. Allen is head of the Climate Dynamics group at the University of Oxford's Atmospheric, Oceanic and Planetary Physics Department. He is the Principal Investigator of the distributed computing project Climateprediction.net , and was principally responsible for starting this project.He has...
, head of the Climate Dynamics group at the University of Oxford
University of Oxford
The University of Oxford is a university located in Oxford, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest surviving university in the world and the oldest in the English-speaking world. Although its exact date of foundation is unclear, there is evidence of teaching as far back as 1096...
, said that the code investigated by Newsnight had nothing at all to do with the HadCRUT
HadCRUT
HadCRUT is the dataset of monthly temperature records formed by combining the sea surface temperature records compiled by the Hadley Centre of the UK Met Office and the land surface temperature records compiled by the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia.The data is variance...
temperature record used for climate reconstructions, which is maintained at the Met Office
Met Office
The Met Office , is the United Kingdom's national weather service, and a trading fund of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills...
and not at CRU. When he challenged Newsnight on this, they responded that "Our expert's opinion is that this is climate change code" and declined to retract the story. He commented that on the same basis the quality of code he put together for students could be used to discredit other research code.
External links
- Unwinding “Hide the Decline” Unwinding “Hide the Decline”, detailed video coverage on Climategate, 28 April 2011.