An Inconvenient Leak

Hackers have apparently crashed the computers at Hadley CRU (The Met).

According to Watt's Up With That, "An unknown person put postings on some climate skeptic websites that advertsied an FTP file on a Russian FTP server, here is the message that was placed on the Air Vent today:

"''We feel that climate science is, in the current situation, too important to be kept under wraps.
We hereby release a random selection of correspondence, code, and documents.'

"The file was large, about 61 megabytes, containing hundreds of files."

The site I rely upon for most of the best critical evaluation of claims made by the AlGore ManBearPig crowd is Climate Audit. But that site is down now and there is reason to doubt--remain skeptical--about the authenticity of the material involved in this "alleged release."

How damaging could this be? Take this series of e-mails:

#1047388489“This was the danger of always criticising the skeptics for not publishing in the “peer-reviewed literature”. Obviously, they found a solution to that–take over a journal! So what do we do about this? 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. We would also need to consider what we tell or request of our more reasonable colleagues who currently sit on the editorial board…What do others think?”

#1047390562“I will be emailing the journal to tell them I’m having nothing more to do with it until they rid themselves of this troublesome editor.”
“It results from this journal having a number of editors. The responsible one for this is a well-known skeptic in NZ. He has let a few papers through by Michaels and Gray in the past. I’ve had words with Hans von Storch about this, but got nowhere. Another thing to discuss in Nice !”

#1051156418“This second case gets to the crux of the matter. I suspect that deFreitas deliberately chose other referees who are members of the skeptics camp. I also suspect that he has done this on other occasions. How to deal with this is unclear, since there are a number of individuals with bona fide scientific credentials who could be used by an unscrupulous editor to ensure that ‘anti-greenhouse’ science can get through the peer review process (Legates, Balling, Lindzen, Baliunas, Soon, and so on)…. deFreitas is such a poor scientist that he may simply disappear. I saw some work from his PhD, and it was awful (Pat Michaels’ PhD is at the same level).”

#1051190249“Note that I am copying this view only to Mike Hulme and Phil Jones. Mike’s idea to get editorial board members to resign will probably not work — must get rid of von Storch too, otherwise holes will eventually fill up with people like Legates, Balling, Lindzen, Michaels, Singer, etc. I have heard that the publishers are not happy with von Storch, so the above approach might remove that hurdle too.”

Imagine all these real sciency guys discussing avoiding the vetting by the science community of their research. And, say what if there was a bunch of data that was basically all made up, they knew it and worked together to conceal their collusion?

We better hope we can pass Cap & Trade soon. I understand that Senator Reid has promised to bring this before the Senate on Saturday.

You know what they say, "Timing is everything."

UPDATE: From Say Anything:

"We feel that climate science is, in the current situation, too important to be kept under wraps.We hereby release a random selection of correspondence, code, and documents.Hopefully it will give some insight into the science and the people behind it.This is a limited time offer, download now: http://ftp.tomcity.ru/incoming/free/FOI2009.zip"

Remember, anything that you download from the net may have nasties like viruses that you don't want to deal with. But Carrick writes, " Let’s just say this stuff would make the Pentagon Papers look tame, if it’s true and accurate."

UPDATE: It appears this story broke on "The Air Vent." Here's what happened:

"This is the biggest news ever broken here. The first thing I have to say is that I have no connection to the source of these files. It was left as a link on my blog while I was hunting for cloaked deers (fruitlessly) in the Upper Penninsula. These files are real IMO but they cannot be one hundred percent verified as such. How can we be certain but IMO, real. They were potentially scraped from multiple computers in my opinion by a hacker or an insider involved in some of the endless FOIA requests."

While he was "oot and aboot" fellers were planting the seeds of something else that wasn't apparent.

UPDATE: Nice article on this from the Essex County Conservative Examiner. From the article:

As embarrassing as the e-mails are, some of the documents are more embarrassing. They include a five-page PDF document titled The Rules of the Game, that appears to be a primer for propagating the AGW message to the average subject/resident of the United Kingdom. The document suggests that it is a precis of a longer document housed at the Web site of the UK Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

UPDATE: Some video from AlGore's Recent Unpleasantness in Portland.




UPDATE: The Growing Renewable Energy Scandal in Salem from Rogue Pundit. "And remember that gubernatorial hopeful Bill Bradbury is another climate catastrophist."