This morning a story broke, quietly at first, about the possibility that hackers had managed to infiltrate the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit email system.  The CRU is one of the worlds most powerful and influential global warming research bodies.  At some point, almost every bit of research that climate change activists cite as “evidence” passes through their hands.

Rumors of what these hackers had managed to get their hands on started to circulate immediately but no one was sure if it was genuine or not.  Now, the BBC is confirming it.  The hack was real.

A zip file containing 160 megabytes worth of stolen text was uploaded to a Russian server early this morning.  Then it started to disseminate.  Now you can get a hold of it from any torrent or file-sharing site on the net.

Inside are documents and emails, all of which point to what could be the biggest scientific scandal in history.

Keep in mind, these are still just alleged emails because, while the break in has been confirmed, the content of what was taken has not.  If they are proven to be genuine, however, the information will destroy companies, damage politicians, and likely cast a very dark shadow over the legitimacy of the movement.

For example, here’s the head of the Climate Research Unit, Dr Phil Jones, discussing the method by which he was combing data indicating temperature declines with false data indicating increases:

From: Phil Jones
To: ray bradley ,mann@[snipped], mhughes@
[snipped]
Subject: Diagram for WMO Statement
Date: Tue, 16 Nov 1999 13:31:15 +0000
Cc: k.briffa@[snipped],t.osborn@[snipped]
Dear Ray, Mike and Malcolm,

Once Tim’s got a diagram here we’ll send that either later today or first thing tomorrow. 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 series got the annual land and marine values while the other two got April-Sept for NH land N of 20N. The latter two are real for 1999, while the estimate for 1999 for NH combined is +0.44C wrt 61-90. The Global estimate for 1999 with data through Oct is +0.35C cf. 0.57 for 1998.

Thanks for the comments, Ray.

Cheers, Phil
Prof. Phil Jones
Climatic Research Unit 

Here they are, admitting they can’t figure out why the world isn’t heating up, and how it’s a “travesty” that their data isn’t keeping up with the plan.

From: Kevin Trenberth
To: Michael Mann
Subject: Re: BBC U-turn on climate
Date: Mon, 12 Oct 2009 08:57:37 -0600
Cc: Stephen H Schneider , Myles Allen , peter stott , “Philip D. Jones” , Benjamin Santer , Tom Wigley , Thomas R Karl , Gavin Schmidt , James Hansen , Michael Oppenheimer

Hi all

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.

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.***

Other information in the emails includes the following, entitled FOIA Thoughts, which suggests ways to deal with troublesome Freedom Of Information Act requests:

Options appear to be:

1. Send them the data
2. Send them a subset removing station data from some of the countries who made us pay in the normals papers of Hulme et al. (1990s) and also any number that David can remember. This should also omit some other countries like (Australia, NZ, Canada, Antarctica). Also could extract some of the sources that Anders added in (31-38 source codes in J&M 2003). Also should remove many of the early stations that we coded up in the 1980s.
3. Send them the raw data as is, by reconstructing it from GHCN. How could this be done? Replace all stations where the WMO ID agrees with what is in GHCN. This would be the raw data, but it would annoy them.

Care to hear about bogus statistics?  That’s in there too….

ith,

Thanks for your consideration. Once I get a draft of the central and southern siberian data and talk to Stepan and Eugene I’ll send it to you.

I really wish I could be more positive about the Kyrgyzstan material, but I swear I pulled every trick out of my sleeve trying to milk something out of that. It was pretty funny though – I told Malcolm what you said about my possibly being too Graybill-like in evaluating the response functions – he laughed and said that’s what he thought at first also. The data’s tempting but there’s too much variation even within stands. I don’t think it’d be productive to try and juggle the chronology statistics any more than I already have – they just are what they are (that does sound Graybillian). I think I’ll have to look for an option where I can let this little story go as it is.

Not having seen the sites I can only speculate, but I’d be optimistic if someone could get back there and spend more time collecting samples, particularly at the upper elevations.

Yeah, I doubt I’ll be over your way anytime soon. Too bad, I’d like to get together with you and Ed for a beer or two. Probably someday though.

Cheers, Gary

The Zip file contains a whopping 1,073 emails in one folder, and 3,485 documents in another.  It will take some time to dig through it all, particularly since most of it is quite complex.  That said, the first few hours of investigation have already turned up evidence that is extremely damaging to the CRU’s cause, and there is no reason to think there won’t be more.

If you want to look for yourself, the Zip file torrent is available at The Pirate Bay.  Alternately, you can grab it from this link at MegaUpload.

More info HERE at Hotair.com and HERE at AirVent.com where the story originally broke.