OT Hacked E-Mails Fuel Climate Change Skeptics
Matthew Kruk
Hacked E-Mails Fuel Climate Change Skeptics
By ANDREW C. REVKIN
Hundreds of private e-mails and documents hacked from a computer server
at a British university are causing a stir among global warming
skeptics, who say they show that climate scientists conspired to
overstate the case for a human influence on climate change.
The e-mails, attributed to prominent American and British climate
researchers, include discussions of scientific data and whether it
should be released, exchanges about how best to combat the arguments of
skeptics, and casual comments - in some cases derisive - about specific
people known for their skeptical views. Drafts of scientific papers and
a photo collage that portrays climate skeptics on an ice floe were also
among the hacked data, some of which dates back 13 years.
In one e-mail exchange, a scientist writes of using a statistical
"trick" in a chart illustrating a recent sharp warming trend. In
another, a scientist refers to climate skeptics as "idiots."
Some skeptics asserted Friday that the correspondence revealed an effort
to withhold scientific information. "This is not a smoking gun, this is
a mushroom cloud," said Patrick J. Michaels, a climatologist who has
long faulted evidence pointing to human-driven warming and is criticized
in the documents.
Portions of the correspondence portrays the scientists as feeling under
siege by the skeptics' camp and worried that any stray comment or data
glitch could be turned against them.
The cache of e-mails also includes references to journalists, including
this reporter, and queries from journalists related to articles they
were reporting.
Officials at the University of East Anglia confirmed in a statement on
Friday that files had been stolen from a university server and that the
police had been brought in to investigate the breach. They added,
however, that they could not confirm that all the material circulating
on the Internet was authentic.
But several scientists and others contacted by the Times confirmed that
they were the authors or recipients of specific e-mails included in the
file.
The revelations are bound to inflame the public debate as hundreds of
negotiators prepare to hammer out an international climate accord at
meetings in Copenhagen next month, and at least one scientist speculated
that the timing was not coincidental.
The documents will undoubtedly raise questions about the quality of
research on some specific questions and the actions of some scientists.
But the evidence pointing to a growing human contribution to global
warming is so broad and deep that the hacked material is unlikely to
erode the overall argument.
In several e-mail exchanges, Kevin Trenberth, a climatologist at the
National Center for Atmospheric Research, and other scientists discussed
whether a string of recent years of relatively stable temperatures
undermined scientific models that predict long-term warming.
"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," Dr. Trenberth wrote.
Other scientists went on to rebut him, saying that the fluctuations were
not inconsistent with a continuing warming trend.
Dr. Trenberth said Friday that he was appalled at the release of the
e-mails, which he said were private discussions.
But he added that he thought the revelations might backfire against
climate skeptics. If anything, he said, he thought that the messages
showed "the integrity of scientists."
Still, some of the comments might lend themselves to sinister
interpretations.
In a 1999 e-mail exchange about charts showing climate patterns over the
last two millennia, Phil Jones, a longtime climate researcher at the
East Anglia Climate Research Unit, said he had used a "trick" employed
by another scientist, Michael Mann, to "hide a decline" in temperatures.
Dr. Mann, a professor at Pennsylvania State, confirmed in an interview
that the e-mail was real. He said the choice of words by his colleague
was poor but noted that scientists often use the word "trick" to refer
to a good way to solve a problem, "and not something secret." "It sounds
incriminating, but when you look at what you're talking about, there's
nothing there," Dr. Mann said.
Dr. Jones, writing in an e-mail, declined to be interviewed and pasted
in the university's statement.
Stephen McIntyre, a blogger who has for years been using his Web site,
climateaudit.org, to challenge data used to chart climate patterns and
came in for heated criticism in some e-mails, called the revelations
"quite breathtaking."
But several scientists whose names appear repeatedly in the e-mails said
they merely revealed that scientists are human beings, and did nothing
to undercut the body of research on global warming.
"Science doesn't work because we're all nice," said Gavin A. Schmidt, a
climatologist at NASA whose e-mail exchanges with colleagues over a
variety of recent climate studies were included in the cache. "Newton
may have been an ass, but the theory of gravity still works."
He said the breach at the University of East Anglia was discovered after
hackers who had gained access to the correspondence sought Tuesday to
hack into a different server supporting realclimate.org, a blog
unrelated to NASA that he runs with several other scientists pressing
the case for global warming.
The intruders sought to create a mock blog post there and to upload the
full batch of files from Britain - nearly 200 megabytes' worth.
That effort was thwarted, Dr. Schmidt said, and scientists immediately
notified colleagues at the University of East Anglia's Climate Research
Unit. Nearly all the material in the hacked files, which quickly spread
to a variety of servers, originated with or was sent to climate
scientists at the school.
The first posts that revealed details from the files appeared on
Thursday at The Air Vent, a Web site devoted to skeptics' arguments.
Almost instantly readers there and elsewhere began posting excerpts that
they felt illustrated scientific bias or dishonesty.
At first, said Dr. Michaels, the climatologist who has faulted some of
the science undergirding the global warming consensus, his instinct was
to ignore the correspondence as "just the way scientists talk."
But on Friday, he said, after reading more deeply, he felt that some
exchanges reflected a concerted effort to block the release of data for
independent review.
He said that some e-mails mused about a way to discredit him by
challenging the veracity of his doctoral dissertation at the University
of Wisconsin by claiming he knew his research was wrong.
"This shows these are people willing to bend rules and go after other
people's reputations in very serious ways," he said.
Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company
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