SOMEONE hacked into the Climatic Research Unit, CRU, at the University of East Anglia and published thousands of confidential emails between leading climate scientists online in November 2009 [1]. Many of the emails showed that leading proponents of anthropogenic global warming were having great difficulty justifying their own propaganda. One of my favourite emails is from Kevin Trenberth, Head of Climate Analysis at the US National Center for Atmospheric Research, to the infamous Michael Mann complaining that there has been no global warming:
“Well I have my own article on where the heck is global warming? We are asking that here in Boulder where we have broken records the past two days for the coldest days on record. We had 4 inches of snow. The high the last 2 days was below 30F and the normal is 69F, and it smashed the previous records for these days by 10F. The low was about 18F and also a record low, well below the previous record low. This is January weather (see the Rockies baseball playoff game was canceled on saturday and then played last night in below freezing weather)…
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. The CERES data published in the August BAMS 09 supplement on 2008 shows there should be even more warming: but the data are surely wrong. Our observing system is inadequate.”
While the hack was widely condemned by mainstream climate scientists and the hacker would likely go to jail for a long time – if only he could be found. For me, the stolen emails represented a first opportunity to see the extraordinary deceit and corruption within the mainstream climate science community; the very people running the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC, at the United Nations.
Indeed I have always held the hacker in high esteem. He is one of my heroes. Along with Thomas Huxley (1825-1895) and Thomas Kuhn (1922-1996), he is a great champion of science.
Anyway, yesterday the hacker provided several high profile bloggers, including Anthony Watts, with password access to some 220,000 additional emails!
WUWT will be publishing some of the new material over the next few days and probably also weeks and months [2].
In a covering email [3] the hacker explained he had done this because he was keen to off-load the remaining material and was not in a position to sort through the material and cull the sensitive and potentially socially damaging material:
“I prepared CG1 & 2 alone. Even skimming through all 220.000 emails would have taken several more months of work in an increasingly unfavorable environment. Dumping them all into the public domain would be the last resort. Majority of the emails are irrelevant, some of them probably sensitive and socially damaging.”
I have often wondered who the hacker was, and what motivated him. In this latest email he provides significant insights. In particular, like many readers of this blog, he is clearly concerned about the increasing misallocation of resources by government in the name of anthropogenic global warming.
He is acutely aware that the opportunity for any one individual in a community to be fed, clothed and educated depends to a large extent on the collective wealth and wellbeing of that society. Towards this end, the covering email is also a plea for the better allocation of the “assets” at our collective disposal.
Mr FOIA, as he calls himself, wrote:
“Wealth of the surrounding society tends to draw the major brushstrokes of a newborn’s future life. It makes a huge difference whether humanity uses its assets to achieve progress, or whether it strives to stop and reverse it, essentially sacrificing the less fortunate to the climate gods.”
I couldn’t agree more.
Clearly Mr FOIA also places a premium on the truth, writing:
“Even if I have it all wrong and these scientists had some good reason to mislead us (instead of making a strong case with real data) I think disseminating the truth is still the safest bet by far.”
Thank you Mr FOIA.
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[1] All the emails, documents and computer code, from the original release in November 2009, can be downloaded from Wikileaks at
http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_emails,_data,_models,_1996-2009
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[2] I’m guessing that What’s Up With That will be a best place to find new emails as they are released. This morning the following was posted…
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD has worked in industry and government. She is currently researching a novel technique for long-range weather forecasting funded by the B. Macfie Family Foundation.