| Date | 17 November 2009 |
|---|---|
| Location | Climatic Research Unit, University of East Anglia |
| Also known as | "Climategate" |
| Inquiries | House of Commons Science and Technology Committee (UK) Independent Climate Change Email Review (UK) International Science Assessment Panel (UK) Pennsylvania State University (US) United States Environmental Protection Agency (US) Department of Commerce (US) |
| Verdict | Exoneration or withdrawal of all major or serious charges |
The Climatic Research Unit email controversy (also known as "Climategate") began in November 2009 with the hacking of a server at the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia (UEA) by an external attacker, copying thousands of emails and computer files, the Climatic Research Unit documents, to various internet locations several weeks before the Copenhagen Summit on climate change.
The story was first broken by climate change denialists, with columnist James Delingpole popularising the term "Climategate" to describe the controversy. They argued that the emails showed that global warming was a scientific conspiracy and that scientists manipulated climate data and attempted to suppress critics. The CRU rejected this, saying that the emails had been taken out of context and merely reflected an honest exchange of ideas.
The mainstream media picked up the story, as negotiations over climate change mitigation began in Copenhagen on 7 December 2009. Because of the timing, scientists, policy makers and public-relations experts said that the release of emails was a smear campaign intended to undermine the climate conference. In response to the controversy, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the American Meteorological Society (AMS) and the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) released statements supporting the scientific consensus that the Earth's mean surface temperature had been rising for decades, with the AAAS concluding: "based on multiple lines of scientific evidence that global climate change caused by human activities is now underway... it is a growing threat to society".
Eight 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 throughout the investigations.
Timeline of the initial incident
The
incident began when a server used by the Climatic Research Unit was
breached in "a sophisticated and carefully orchestrated attack", and 160 MB of data were obtained including more than 1,000 emails and 3,000 other documents.
The University of East Anglia stated that the server from which the
data were taken was not one that could be accessed easily, and that the
data could not have been released inadvertently.
Norfolk Police later added that the offenders used methods that are
common in unlawful internet activity, designed to obstruct later
enquiries. The breach was first discovered on 17 November 2009 after the server of the RealClimate website was also hacked and a copy of the stolen data was uploaded there. RealClimate's Gavin Schmidt said that he had information that the files had been obtained through "a hack into [CRU's] backup mail server". At about the same time, a short comment appeared on Stephen McIntyre's Climate Audit website saying that "A miracle has happened."
On 19 November, an archive file containing the data was uploaded to a server in Tomsk, Russia, and then copied to numerous locations across the Internet. An anonymous post from a Saudi Arabian IP address to the climate-sceptic blog The Air Vent
described the material as "a random selection of correspondence, code,
and documents", adding that climate science is "too important to be kept
under wraps". That same day, Stephen McIntyre
of Climate Audit was forwarded an internal email sent to UEA staff
warning that "climate change sceptics" had obtained a "large volume of
files and emails". Charles Rotter, moderator of the climate-sceptic blog
Watts Up With That,
which had been the first to get a link and download the files, gave a
copy to his flatmate Steve Mosher. Mosher received a posting from the
hacker complaining that nothing was happening and replied: "A lot is
happening behind the scenes. It is not being ignored. Much is being
coordinated among major players and the media. Thank you very much. You
will notice the beginnings of activity on other sites now. Here soon to
follow." Shortly afterwards, the emails began to be widely publicised on
climate-sceptic blogs. On 20 November, the story emerged in mainstream media.
Norfolk police
subsequently confirmed that they were "investigating criminal offences
in relation to a data breach at the University of East Anglia" with the
assistance of the Metropolitan Police Central e-Crime unit, the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), and the National Domestic Extremism Team (NDET).
Commenting on the involvement of the NDET, a spokesman said: "At
present we have two police officers assisting Norfolk with their
investigation, and we have also provided computer forensic expertise.
While this is not strictly a domestic extremism matter, as a national
police unit we had the expertise and resource to assist with this
investigation, as well as good background knowledge of climate change
issues in relation to criminal investigations." However, the police
cautioned that "major investigations of this nature are of necessity
very detailed and as a consequence can take time to reach a conclusion".
On 18 July 2012, the Norfolk police finally decided to close its
investigation because they did not have a "realistic prospect of
identifying the offender or offenders and launching criminal proceedings
within the time constraints imposed by law". They also said that the
attack had been carried out "remotely via the internet", and that there
was "no evidence to suggest that anyone working at or associated with
the University of East Anglia was involved in the crime".
Content of the documents
The material comprised more than 1,000 emails, 2,000 documents, as well as commented source code, pertaining to climate-change research, covering a period from 1996 until 2009. According to an analysis in The Guardian, the vast majority of the emails related to four climatologists: Phil Jones, the head of the CRU; Keith Briffa, a CRU climatologist specialising in tree ring analysis; Tim Osborn, a climate modeller at CRU; and Mike Hulme, director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research.
The four were either recipients or senders of all but 66 of the 1,073
emails, with most of the remainder of the emails being sent from mailing
lists. A few other emails were sent by, or to, other staff at the CRU.
Jones, Briffa, Osborn and Hulme had written high-profile scientific
papers on climate change that had been cited in reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Most of the emails concerned technical and mundane aspects of
climate research, such as data analysis and details of scientific
conferences. The Guardian's
analysis of the emails suggests that the hacker had filtered them. Four
scientists were targeted and a concordance plot shows that the words
"data", "climate", "paper", "research", "temperature" and "model" were
predominant. The controversy has focused on a small number of emails with "climate sceptic" websites picking out particular phrases, such as one in which Kevin Trenberth said, "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".
This was actually part of a discussion on the need for better
monitoring of the energy flows involved in short-term climate
variability, but was grossly mischaracterised by critics.
Many commentators quoted one email in which Phil Jones said that he had used "Mike's Nature trick" in a 1999 graph for the World Meteorological Organization
"to hide the decline" in proxy temperatures derived from tree-ring
analyses when measured temperatures were actually rising. This "decline"
referred to the well-discussed tree-ring divergence problem, but these two phrases were taken out of context by global warming sceptics, including US Senator Jim Inhofe and former Governor of Alaska Sarah Palin,
as though they referred to some decline in measured global
temperatures, even though they were written when temperatures were at a
record high. John Tierney, writing in The New York Times
in November 2009, said that the claims by sceptics of "hoax" or "fraud"
were incorrect, but that the graph on the cover of a report for policy
makers and journalists did not show these non-experts where proxy
measurements changed to measured temperatures.
The final analyses from various subsequent inquiries concluded that in
this context "trick" was normal scientific or mathematical jargon for a
neat way of handling data, in this case a statistical method used to
bring two or more different kinds of data sets together in a legitimate
fashion.
The EPA notes that in fact, the evidence shows that the research
community was fully aware of these issues and that no one was hiding or
concealing them.
Responses
Former Republican House Science Committee chairman Sherwood Boehlert called the attacks a "manufactured distraction", and the dispute was described as a "highly orchestrated" and manufactured controversy by Newsweek and The New York Times.
Concerns about the media's role in promoting early allegations while
also minimising later coverage exonerating the scientists were raised by
journalists and policy experts. Historian Spencer R. Weart of the American Institute of Physics
said the incident was unprecedented in the history of science, having
"never before seen a set of people accuse an entire community of
scientists of deliberate deception and other professional malfeasance". The United States National Academy of Sciences expressed concern and condemned what they called "political assaults on scientists and climate scientists in particular".
In the United Kingdom and United States, there were calls for
official inquiries into issues raised by the documents. The British Conservative politician Lord Lawson
said: "The integrity of the scientific evidence ... has been called
into question. And the reputation of British science has been seriously
tarnished. A high-level independent inquiry must be set up without
delay." Bob Ward of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics
said that there had to be a rigorous investigation into the substance
of the email messages, once appropriate action has been taken over the
hacking, to clear the impression of impropriety given by the selective
disclosure and dissemination of the messages. United States Senator Jim Inhofe, who had previously stated that global warming was "the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people", also planned to demand an inquiry. In a debate in the United States House of Representatives on 2 December 2009, Republicans read out extracts from eight of the emails, and Representative Jim Sensenbrenner
said: "These e-mails show a pattern of suppression, manipulation and
secrecy that was inspired by ideology, condescension and profit". In
response, the president's science adviser John Holdren said that the science was proper, and the emails only concerned a fraction of the research. Government scientist Jane Lubchenco
said that the emails "do nothing to undermine the very strong
scientific consensus" that the Earth is warming, largely due to human
actions.
Climate change sceptics gained wide publicity in blogs and news media, making allegations that the hacked emails showed evidence that climate scientists manipulated data. A few other commentators such as Roger A. Pielke said that the evidence supported claims that dissenting scientific papers had been suppressed. The Wall Street Journal reported that the emails revealed apparent efforts to ensure that the IPCC included their own views and excluded others, and that the scientists withheld scientific data.
An editorial in Nature
stated that "A fair reading of the e-mails reveals nothing to support
the denialists' conspiracy theories." It said that emails showed
harassment of researchers, with multiple Freedom of Information requests to the Climatic Research Unit,
but release of information had been hampered by national government
restrictions on releasing the meteorological data researchers had been
using. Nature considered that emails 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. The Telegraph
reported that academics and climate change researchers dismissed the
allegations, saying that nothing in the emails proved wrongdoing. Independent reviews by FactCheck and the Associated Press
said that the emails did not affect evidence that man-made global
warming is a real threat, and said that emails were being misrepresented
to support unfounded claims of scientific misconduct. The AP said that
the "[e]-mails stolen from climate scientists show they stonewalled
sceptics and discussed hiding data". In this context, John Tierney of The New York Times
wrote: "these researchers, some of the most prominent climate experts
in Britain and America, seem so focused on winning the public-relations
war that they exaggerate their certitude – and ultimately undermine
their own cause".
Climate scientists at the CRU and elsewhere received numerous
threatening and abusive emails in the wake of the initial incidents. Norfolk Police interviewed Phil Jones about death threats made against him following the release of the emails; Jones later said that the police told him that these "didn’t fulfil the criteria for death threats". Death threats against two scientists also are under investigation by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Climate scientists in Australia have reported receiving threatening
emails including references to where they live and warnings to "be
careful" about how some people might react to their scientific findings.
In July 2012, Michael Mann said that the episode had caused him to
"endure countless verbal attacks upon my professional reputation, my
honesty, my integrity, even my life and liberty".
University of East Anglia
The University of East Anglia
was notified of the security breach on 17 November 2009, but when the
story was published in the press on 20 November, they had no statement
ready.
On 24 November, Trevor Davies, the University of East Anglia
pro-vice-chancellor with responsibility for research, rejected calls for
Jones' resignation or firing: "We see no reason for Professor Jones to
resign and, indeed, we would not accept his resignation. He is a valued
and important scientist." The university announced that it would conduct
an independent review into issues including Freedom of Information requests to the Climatic Research Unit:
it would "address the issue of data security, an assessment of how we
responded to a deluge of Freedom of Information requests, and any other
relevant issues which the independent reviewer advises should be
addressed".
The university announced on 1 December that Phil Jones was to
stand aside as director of the Unit until the completion of the review. Two days later, the university announced that Sir Muir Russell
would chair the inquiry, which would be known as the Independent
Climate Change Email Review, and would "examine email exchanges to
determine whether there is evidence of suppression or manipulation of
data". The review would also scrutinise the CRU's policies and practices
for "acquiring, assembling, subjecting to peer review, and
disseminating data and research findings" and "their compliance or
otherwise with best scientific practice". In addition, the investigation
would review CRU's compliance with Freedom of Information Act requests
and also "make recommendations about the management, governance and
security structures for CRU and the security, integrity and release of
the data it holds". The Independent Climate Change Email Review report was published on 7 July 2010.
On 22 March 2010 the university announced the composition of an
independent Science Assessment Panel to reassess key CRU papers that
have already been peer-reviewed and published in journals. The panel did
not seek to evaluate the science itself, but rather whether "the
conclusions [reached by the CRU] represented an honest and
scientifically justified interpretation of the data". The university
consulted with the Royal Society in establishing the panel. It was chaired by Lord Oxburgh, and its membership consisted of Huw Davies of ETH Zurich, Kerry Emanual of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Lisa Graumlich of the University of Arizona, David Hand of Imperial College London, and Herbert Huppert and Michael Kelly
of the University of Cambridge. It started its work in March 2010 and
released its report on 14 April 2010. During its inquiry, the panel
examined eleven representative CRU publications, selected with advice
from the Royal Society,
that spanned a period of over 20 years, as well as other CRU research
materials. It also spent fifteen person-days at the UEA carrying out
interviews with scientists.
Climatologists
Among
the scientists whose emails were disclosed, the CRU's researchers said
in a statement that the emails had been taken out of context and merely
reflected an honest exchange of ideas. Michael Mann, director of Pennsylvania State University's
Earth System Science Center, said that sceptics were "taking these
words totally out of context to make something trivial appear nefarious"
and called the entire incident a careful, "high-level, orchestrated
smear campaign to distract the public about the nature of the climate
change problem". Kevin E. Trenberth of the National Center for Atmospheric Research
said that he was appalled at the release of the emails but thought that
it might backfire against climate sceptics, as the messages would show
"the integrity of scientists".
He also said that climate change sceptics had selectively quoted words
and phrases out of context and that the timing suggested an attempt to
undermine talks at the December 2009 Copenhagen global climate summit. Tom Wigley, a former director of the CRU and now head of the US National Center for Atmospheric Research,
condemned the threats that he and other colleagues had received as
"truly stomach-turning", and commented: "None of it affects the science
one iota. Accusations of data distortion or faking are baseless. I can
rebut and explain all of the apparently incriminating e-mails that I
have looked at, but it is going to be very time consuming to do so."
In relation to the harassment that he and his colleagues were
experiencing, he said: "This sort of thing has been going on at a much
lower level for almost 20 years and there have been other outbursts of
this sort of behaviour – criticism and abusive emails and things like
that in the past. So this is a worse manifestation but it's happened
before so it's not that surprising."
Other prominent climate scientists, such as Richard Somerville, called the incident a smear campaign. David Reay of the University of Edinburgh
said that the CRU "is just one of many climate-research institutes that
provide the underlying scientific basis for climate policy at national
and international levels. The conspiracy theorists may be having a field
day, but if they really knew academia they would also know that every
published paper and data set is continually put through the wringer by
other independent research groups. The information that makes it into
the IPCC reports is some of the most rigorously tested and debated in
any area of science." Stephen Schneider compared the political attacks on climate scientists to the witch-hunts of McCarthyism.
James Hansen
said that the controversy has "no effect on the science" and that while
some of the emails reflect poor judgment, the evidence for human-made
climate change is overwhelming.
One of the IPCC's lead authors, Raymond Pierrehumbert of the University of Chicago,
expressed concern at the precedent established by this incident:
"[T]his is a criminal act of vandalism and of harassment of a group of
scientists that are only going about their business doing science. It
represents a whole new escalation in the war on climate scientists who
are only trying to get at the truth... What next? Deliberate monkeying
with data on servers? Insertion of bugs into climate models?" Another IPCC lead author, David Karoly of the University of Melbourne,
reported receiving hate emails in the wake of the incident and said
that he believed that there was "an organised campaign to discredit
individual climate scientists". Andrew Pitman of the University of New South Wales
commented: "The major problem is that scientists have to be able to
communicate their science without fear or favour and there seems to be a
well-orchestrated campaign designed to intimidate some scientists."
In response to the incident, 1,700 British scientists signed a joint statement circulated by the UK Met Office
declaring their "utmost confidence in the observational evidence for
global warming and the scientific basis for concluding that it is due
primarily to human activities".
Patrick J. Michaels,
who was criticised in the emails and who has long faulted evidence
pointing to human-driven warming, said: "This is not a smoking gun; this
is a mushroom cloud". He said that some emails showed an effort to
block the release of data for independent review and that some messages
discussed discrediting him by stating that he knew his research was
wrong in his doctoral dissertation, "This shows these are people willing
to bend rules and go after other people's reputations in very serious
ways."
Judith Curry
wrote that, in her opinion, "there are two broader issues raised by
these emails that are impeding the public credibility of climate
research: lack of transparency in climate data, and 'tribalism' in some
segments of the climate research community that is impeding peer review
and the assessment process". She hoped that the affair would change the
approach of scientists to providing their data to the public and their
response to criticisms of their work. She had herself learned to be
careful about what to put in emails when a "disgruntled employee" made a
freedom of information request. Mann described these comments as
"somewhat naive" considering that in recent years scientists had become
much more open with their data. He said that sceptics "will always
complain about something else, want something more. Eventually, as we
see, they've found a way to get access to private communications between
scientists."
Hans von Storch, who also concurs with the mainstream view on global warming,
said that the University of East Anglia (UEA) had "violated a
fundamental principle of science" by refusing to share data with other
researchers. "They play science as a power game," he said. On 24 November 2009 the university had stated that 95% of the raw station data was accessible via the Global Historical Climatology Network,
and had been for several years. They were already working with the Met
Office to obtain permissions to release the remaining raw data.
Scientific organisations
The
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Working Group I issued
statements that the assessment process, involving hundreds of scientists
worldwide, is designed to be transparent and to prevent any individual
or small group from manipulating the process. The statement said that
the "internal consistency from multiple lines of evidence strongly
supports the work of the scientific community, including those
individuals singled out in these email exchanges".
The American Meteorological Society
stated that the incident did not affect the society's position on
climate change. They pointed to the breadth of evidence for human
influence on climate, stating:
For climate change research, the body of research in the literature is very large and the dependence on any one set of research results to the comprehensive understanding of the climate system is very, very small. Even if some of the charges of improper behavior in this particular case turn out to be true—which is not yet clearly the case—the impact on the science of climate change would be very limited.
The American Geophysical Union
issued a statement that they found "it offensive that these emails were
obtained by illegal cyber attacks and they are being exploited to
distort the scientific debate about the urgent issue of climate change".
They reaffirmed their 2007 position statement on climate change "based
on the large body of scientific evidence that Earth's climate is warming
and that human activity is a contributing factor. Nothing in the
University of East Anglia hacked e-mails represents a significant
challenge to that body of scientific evidence."
The American Association for the Advancement of Science
(AAAS) reaffirmed its position on global warming and "expressed grave
concerns that the illegal release of private emails stolen from the
University of East Anglia should not cause policy-makers and the public
to become confused about the scientific basis of global climate change.
Scientific integrity demands robust, independent peer review, however,
and AAAS therefore emphasised that investigations are appropriate
whenever significant questions are raised regarding the transparency and
rigour of the scientific method, the peer-review process, or the
responsibility of individual scientists. The responsible institutions
are mounting such investigations." Alan I. Leshner, CEO of the AAAS and executive publisher of the journal Science,
said: "AAAS takes issues of scientific integrity very seriously. It is
fair and appropriate to pursue answers to any allegations of
impropriety. It’s important to remember, though, that the reality of
climate change is based on a century of robust and well-validated
science."
UK Met Office
On 23 November 2009, a spokesman for the Met Office,
the UK's national weather service, which works with the CRU in
providing global temperature information, said that there was no need
for an inquiry. "The bottom line is that temperatures continue to rise
and humans are responsible for it. We have every confidence in the
science and the various datasets we use. The peer-review process is as
robust as it could possibly be."
On 5 December 2009, however, the Met Office indicated its
intention to re-examine 160 years of temperature data in the light of
concerns that public confidence in the science had been damaged by the
controversy over the emails. The Met Office would also publish online the temperature records for over 1,000 worldwide weather stations. It remained confident that its analysis would be shown to be correct and that the data would show a temperature rise over the past 150 years.
Other responses
Rajendra Pachauri, as chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change,
told the BBC in December 2009 that he considered the affair to be "a
serious issue" and that they "will look into it in detail".
He later clarified that the IPCC would review the incident to identify
lessons to be learned and rejected suggestions that the IPCC itself
should carry out an investigation.
In a series of emails sent through a National Academy of Sciences (NAS) listserv,
apparently forwarded outside the group by an unknown person, scientists
discussing the "Climategate" fallout considered launching advertising
campaigns, widening their public presence, pushing the NAS to take a
more active role in explaining climate science and creating a nonprofit
to serve as a voice for the scientific community.
A paper by Reiner Grundmann used a limited account of the events to discuss norms of scientific practice in relation to two science ethics approaches, the Mertonian norms as of Robert K. Merton, and Roger Pielke Jr.'s concept of honest brokering in science policy interactions. Sources for the paper were chosen for accessibility, emphasising "critical accounts".
Inquiries and reports
Eight 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. However, the reports urged the scientists to avoid any such allegations in the future, and to regain public confidence following this media storm, with "more efforts than ever to make available all their supporting data – right down to the computer codes they use – to allow their findings to be properly verified".
Climate scientists and organisations pledged to improve scientific
research and collaboration with other researchers by improving data management and opening up access to data, and to honour any freedom of information requests that relate to climate science.
House of Commons Science and Technology Committee
On 22 January 2010, the House of Commons Science and Technology Select Committee
announced it would conduct an inquiry into the affair, examining the
implications of the disclosure for the integrity of scientific research,
reviewing the scope of the independent Muir Russell review announced by
the UEA, and reviewing the independence of international climate data sets.
The committee invited written submissions from interested parties, and
published 55 submissions that it had received by 10 February. They
included submissions from the University of East Anglia, the Global Warming Policy Foundation, the Institute of Physics, the Royal Society of Chemistry, the Met Office, several other professional bodies, prominent scientists, some climate change sceptics, several MEPs and other interested parties. An oral evidence session was held on 1 March 2010.
The Science and Technology Select Committee inquiry reported on
31 March 2010 that it had found that "the scientific reputation of
Professor Jones and CRU remains intact". The emails and claims raised in
the controversy did not challenge the scientific consensus that "global
warming is happening and that it is induced by human activity". The MPs
had seen no evidence to support claims that Jones had tampered with
data or interfered with the peer-review process.
The committee criticised a "culture of non-disclosure at CRU" and
a general lack of transparency in climate science where scientific
papers had usually not included all the data and code used in
reconstructions. It said that "even if the data that CRU used were not
publicly available—which they mostly are—or the methods not
published—which they have been—its published results would still be
credible: the results from CRU agree with those drawn from other
international data sets; in other words, the analyses have been repeated
and the conclusions have been verified." The report added that
"scientists could have saved themselves a lot of trouble by aggressively
publishing all their data instead of worrying about how to stonewall
their critics." The committee criticised the university for the way that
freedom of information requests were handled, and for failing to give adequate support to the scientists to deal with such requests.
The committee chairman Phil Willis
said that the "standard practice" in climate science generally of not
routinely releasing all raw data and computer codes "needs to change and
it needs to change quickly". Jones had admitted sending "awful emails";
Willis commented that "[Jones] probably wishes that emails were never
invented," but "apart from that we do believe that Prof. Jones has in
many ways been scapegoated as a result of what really was a frustration
on his part that people were asking for information purely to undermine
his research."
In Willis' view this did not excuse any failure to deal properly with
FOI Act requests, but the committee accepted that Jones had released all
the data that he could.
It stated: "There is no reason why Professor Jones should not resume
his post. He was certainly not co-operative with those seeking to get
data, but that was true of all the climate scientists".
The committee was careful to point out that its report had been
written after a single day of oral testimony and would not be as
in-depth as other inquiries.
Science Assessment Panel
The
report of the independent Science Assessment Panel was published on 14
April 2010 and concluded that the panel had seen "no evidence of any
deliberate scientific malpractice in any of the work of the Climatic
Research Unit." It found that the CRU's work had been "carried out with
integrity" and had used "fair and satisfactory" methods. The CRU was
found to be "objective and dispassionate in their view of the data and
their results, and there was no hint of tailoring results to a
particular agenda." Instead, "their sole aim was to establish as robust a
record of temperatures in recent centuries as possible."
The panel commented that it was "very surprising that research in
an area that depends so heavily on statistical methods has not been
carried out in close collaboration with professional statisticians." It
found that although the CRU had not made inappropriate use of
statistical methods, some of the methods used may not have been the best
for the purpose, though it said that "it is not clear, however, that
better methods would have produced significantly different results." It
suggested that the CRU could have done more to document and archive its
work, data and algorithms and stated that the scientists were "ill
prepared" for the amount of public attention generated by their work,
commenting that "as with many small research groups their internal
procedures were rather informal." The media and other scientific
organisations were criticised for having "sometimes neglected" to
reflect the uncertainties, doubts and assumptions of the work done by
the CRU. The UK Government's policy of charging for access to scientific
data was described as "inconsistent with policies of open access to
data promoted elsewhere." The panel was also stated that "Although we
deplore the tone of much of the criticism that has been directed at CRU,
we believe that this questioning of the methods and data used in
dendroclimatology will ultimately have a beneficial effect and improve
working practices." It found that some of the criticism had been
"selective and uncharitable" and critics had displayed "a lack of
awareness" of the difficulties of research in this area.
Speaking at a press conference to announce the report, the
panel's chair, Lord Oxburgh, stated that his team had found "absolutely
no evidence of any impropriety whatsoever" and that "whatever was said
in the emails, the basic science seems to have been done fairly and
properly." He said that many of the criticisms and allegations of
scientific misconduct had been made by people "who do not like the
implications of some of the conclusions" reached by the CRU's
scientists. He said that the repeated FOI requests made by climate
change sceptic Steve McIntyre and others could have amounted to a
campaign of harassment, and the issue of how FOI laws should be applied
in an academic context remained unresolved.
Another panel member, Professor David Hand, commended the CRU for being
explicit about the inherent uncertainties in its research data,
commenting that "there is no evidence of anything underhand – the
opposite, if anything, they have brought out into the open the
uncertainties with what they are dealing with."
At the press conference, Hand also commented on the well
publicised 1998 paper produced in the United States by scientists led by
Michael E. Mann, saying that the hockey stick graph
it showed was a genuine effect, but he had an "uneasy feeling" about
the use of "inappropriate statistical tools" and said that the 1998
study had exaggerated the effect. He commended McIntyre for pointing out
this issue. Mann subsequently told The Guardian that the study had been examined and approved in the US National Academies of Science North Report, and described Hand's comment as a "rogue opinion" not meriting "much attention or credence".
The UEA's vice-chancellor, Edward Acton, welcomed the panel's
findings. Describing its report as "hugely positive", he stated that "it
is especially important that, despite a deluge of allegations and
smears against the CRU, this independent group of utterly reputable
scientists have concluded that there was no evidence of any scientific
malpractice."
He criticised the way that the emails had been misrepresented, saying
that "UEA has already put on record its deep regret and anger that the
theft of emails from the University, and the blatant misrepresentation
of their contents as revealed both in this report and the previous one
by the Science and Technology Select Committee, damaged the reputation
of UK climate science."
The UEA issued a statement in which it accepted that "things might have
been done better." It said that improvements had already been
undertaken by the CRU and others in the climate science community and
that the University would "continue to ensure that these imperatives are
maintained."
It later emerged that the Science Assessment Panel was not
assessing the quality but instead the integrity of the CRU's science.
Phil Willis described this a "sleight of hand" and was not what the
Parliamentary Committee he had chaired had been led to believe. There
were also questions about the selection of publications examined by the
panel.
Lord Oxburgh said that Acton had been wrong to tell the Science and
Technology Select Committee in March that his inquiry would look into
the science itself. "I think that was inaccurate," Oxburgh said. "This
had to be done rapidly. This was their concern. They really wanted
something within a month. There was no way our panel could evaluate the
science."
Pennsylvania State University
Pennsylvania State University announced in December 2009 it would review the work of Michael E. Mann, in particular looking at anything that had not already been addressed in the 2006 North Report review by the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences which had investigated Mann's "hockey stick graph"
studies and found some faults with his 1998 methodology but agreed with
the results which had been reaffirmed by later studies using different
methods. In response, Mann said he would welcome the review.
The inquiry committee determined on 3 February 2010 that there was no
credible evidence Mann suppressed or falsified data, destroyed emails,
information and/or data related to the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report,
or misused privileged or confidential information. The committee did
not make a definitive finding on the final point of inquiry – "whether
Dr Mann seriously deviated from accepted practices within the academic
community for proposing, conducting, or reporting research or other
scholarly activities". The committee said that the earlier NAS inquiry
had found "that Dr Mann’s science did fall well within the bounds of
accepted practice", but in light of the newly available information this
question of conduct was to be investigated by a second panel of five
prominent Penn State scientists from other scientific disciplines.
The second Investigatory Committee reported on 4 June 2010 that
it had "determined that Dr Michael E. Mann did not engage in, nor did he
participate in, directly or indirectly, any actions that seriously
deviated from accepted practices within the academic community."
Regarding his sharing unpublished manuscripts with colleagues on the
assumption of implied consent, it considered such sharing to be
"careless and inappropriate" without following the best practice of
getting express consent from the authors in advance, though expert
opinion on this varied. It said that his success in proposing research
and obtaining funding for it, commenting that this "clearly places Dr
Mann among the most respected scientists in his field. Such success
would not have been possible had he not met or exceeded the highest
standards of his profession for proposing research." Mann's extensive
recognitions within the research community demonstrated that "his
scientific work, especially the conduct of his research, has from the
beginning of his career been judged to be outstanding by a broad
spectrum of scientists." It agreed unanimously that "there is no
substance" to the allegations against Mann.
Mann said he regretted not objecting to a suggestion from Jones
in a 29 May 2008 message that he destroy emails. "I wish in retrospect I
had told him, 'Hey, you shouldn't even be thinking about this,'"
Mann said in March 2010. "I didn't think it was an appropriate
request." Mann's response to Jones at the time was that he would pass on
the request to another scientist. "The important thing is, I didn't
delete any emails. And I don't think [Jones] did either."
Independent Climate Change Email Review
First
announced in December 2009, a British investigation commissioned by the
UEA and chaired by Sir Muir Russell, published its final report in July
2010.
The commission cleared the scientists and dismissed allegations that
they manipulated their data. The "rigour and honesty" of the scientists
at the Climatic Research Unit were found not to be in doubt.
The panel found that they did not subvert the peer review process to
censor criticism as alleged, and that the key data needed to reproduce
their findings was freely available to any "competent" researcher.
The panel did rebuke the CRU for their reluctance to release
computer files, and found that a graph produced in 1999 was
"misleading," though not deliberately so as necessary caveats had been
included in the accompanying text.
It found evidence that emails might have been deleted in order to make
them unavailable should a subsequent request be made for them, though
the panel did not ask anyone at CRU whether they had actually done this.
At the conclusion of the inquiry, Jones was reinstated with the newly created post of Director of Research.
United States Environmental Protection Agency report
The United States Environmental Protection Agency
(EPA) had issued an "endangerment finding" in 2009 in preparation for
climate regulations on excessive greenhouse gases. Petitions to
reconsider this were raised by the states of Virginia and Texas, conservative activists and business groups including the United States Chamber of Commerce, the Competitive Enterprise Institute and the coal company Peabody Energy, making claims that the CRU emails undermined the science.
The EPA examined every email and concluded that there was no
merit to the claims in the petitions, which "routinely misunderstood the
scientific issues", reached "faulty scientific conclusions", "resorted
to hyperbole", and "often cherry-pick language that creates the
suggestion or appearance of impropriety, without looking deeper into the
issues." In a statement issued on 29 July 2010, EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson
said the petitions were based "on selectively edited, out-of-context
data and a manufactured controversy" and provided "no evidence to
undermine our determination. Excess greenhouse gases are a threat to our
health and welfare."
The EPA issued a detailed report on issues raised by petitioners and responses, together with a fact sheet,
and a "myths versus facts" page stating that "Petitioners say that
emails disclosed from CRU provide evidence of a conspiracy to manipulate
data. The media coverage after the emails were released was based on
email statements quoted out of context and on unsubstantiated theories
of conspiracy. The CRU emails do not show either that the science is
flawed or that the scientific process has been compromised. EPA
carefully reviewed the CRU emails and found no indication of improper
data manipulation or misrepresentation of results."
Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Commerce
In May 2010 Senator Jim Inhofe requested the Inspector General of the United States Department of Commerce to conduct an independent review of how the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) had dealt with the emails, and whether the emails showed any wrongdoing. The report, issued on 18 February 2011,
cleared the researchers and "did not find any evidence that NOAA
inappropriately manipulated data or failed to adhere to appropriate peer
review procedures". It noted that NOAA reviewed its climate change data
as standard procedure, not in response to the controversy. One email
included a cartoon image showing Inhofe and others marooned on a melting
ice floe, NOAA had taken this up as a conduct issue. In response to
questions raised, NOAA stated that its scientists had followed legal
advice on FOIA requests for information which belonged to the IPCC and
was made available by that panel. In two instances funding had been
awarded to CRU,
NOAA stated that it was reviewing these cases and so far understood
that the funds supported climate forecasting workshops in 2002 and 2003
assisting the governments of three countries.
National Science Foundation
The Office of the Inspector General (OIG) of the National Science Foundation closed an investigation on 15 August 2011 that exonerated Michael Mann of Pennsylvania State University of charges of scientific misconduct. It found no evidence of research misconduct, and confirmed the results of earlier inquiries.
The OIG reviewed the findings of the July 2010 Penn State panel, took
further evidence from the university and Mann, and interviewed Mann. The
OIP findings confirmed the university panel's conclusions which cleared
Mann of any wrongdoing, and it stated "Lacking any evidence of research
misconduct, as defined under the NSF Research Misconduct Regulation, we
are closing the investigation with no further action."
ICO decisions on Freedom of Information requests
In two cases, the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) issued decisions on appeals of Freedom of Information (FOI) requests which had been turned down by the university.
David Holland, an electrical engineer from Northampton, made a 2008 FOI request for all emails to and from Keith Briffa about the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report;
the university's information policy and compliance manager refused the
request. On 23 November 2009, after the start of the controversy, he
wrote to the Commissioner explaining in detail the relevance of the
alleged CRU emails to his case, with specific reference to a May 2008 email in which Phil Jones asked others to delete emails discussing AR4 with Briffa.
In January 2010 news reports highlighted that FOI legislation made it
an offence to intentionally act to prevent the disclosure of requested
information, but the statute of limitations
meant that any prosecution had to be raised within 6 months of the
alleged offence. This was discussed by the House of Commons Science and
Technology Select Committee. The ICO decision on Holland's requests published on 7 July 2010 concluded that the emails indicated prima facie
evidence of an offence, but as prosecution was time-barred the
Commissioner had been unable to investigate the alleged offence. On the
issue of the university failing to provide responses within the correct
time, no further action was needed as Holland was content not to proceed
with his complaint.
The Climatic Research Unit developed its gridded CRUTEM data set of land air temperature anomalies from instrumental temperature records held by National Meteorological Organisations
around the world, often under formal or informal confidentiality
agreements that restricted use of this raw data to academic purposes,
and prevented it from being passed onto third parties. Over 95% of the
CRU climate data set had been available to the public for several years
before July 2009,[72] when the university received numerous FOI requests for raw data or details of the confidentiality agreements from Stephen McIntyre and readers of his Climate Audit
blog. Phil Jones of CRU announced that requests were being made to all
the National Meteorological Organisations for their agreement to waive
confidentiality, with the aim of publishing all the data jointly with the Met Office. McIntyre complained that data denied to him had been sent to Jones's colleague Peter Webster at the Georgia Institute of Technology for work on a joint publication, and FOI requests for this data were made by Jonathan A. Jones of the University of Oxford and Don Keiller of Anglia Ruskin University. Both requests were refused by the UEA by 11 September 2009.
Though some National Meteorological Organisations gave full or
conditional agreement to waive confidentiality, others failed to
respond, and the request was explicitly refused by Trinidad and Tobago and Poland.
In discussions with the ICO, the university argued that the data was
publicly available from the Met organisations, and the lack of agreement
exempted the remaining data. In its decision released on 23 June 2011,
the ICO stated that the data was not easily available, and required the
university to release the data covered by the FOIA request.
On 27 July 2011 CRU announced that the raw instrumental data not
already in the public domain had been released and was available for
download, with the exception of Poland which was outside the area
covered by the FOIA request. The university remained concerned "that the
forced release of material from a source which has explicitly refused
to give permission for release could have some damaging consequences for
the UK in international research collaborations."
In September 2011 the ICO issued new guidance to universities,
taking into account issues raised in relation to the CRU information
requests. This describes exceptions and exemptions to protect research,
including allowance for internal exchange of views between academics and
researchers, leaving formulation of opinions on research free from
external scrutiny. It notes the benefits of actively disclosing
information when it is in the public interest, and disclosure of
personal email information related to public authority business.
Media coverage
The initial story about the hacking originated in the blogosphere, with columnist James Delingpole picking up the term "Climategate" from an anonymous blogger on Watts Up With That?, a blog created by climate sceptic Anthony Watts.
The site was one of three blogs that received links to the leaked
documents on 17 November 2009. Delingpole first used the word
"Climategate" in the title of his 20 November article for The Telegraph:
"Climategate: the final nail in the coffin of 'Anthropogenic Global
Warming'?" A week later, his co-worker Christopher Booker gave
Delingpole credit for coining the term.
Following the release of documents in the blogosphere, unproven
allegations and personal attacks against scientists increased and made
their way into the traditional media. Physicist Mark Boslough
of the University of New Mexico noted that many of the attacks on
scientists came from "bloggers, editorial writers, Fox News pundits, and
radio talk show hosts who have called them liars and vilified them as
frauds". According to Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum in their book Unscientific America (2010), the accusations originated in right-wing media and blogs, "especially on outlets like Fox News". Journalist Suzanne Goldenberg of The Guardian reported that according to an analysis by Media Matters,
"Fox had tried to delegitimise the work of climate scientists in its
coverage of the hacked emails from the University of East Anglia" and
had "displayed a pattern of trying to skew coverage in favour of the
fringe minority which doubts the existence of climate change".
The intense media coverage of the documents stolen from climate
researchers at the University of East Anglia created public confusion
about the scientific consensus on climate change, leading several
publications to comment on the propagation of the controversy in the
media in the wake of a series of investigations that cleared the
scientists of any wrongdoing. In an editorial, The New York Times
described the coverage as a "manufactured controversy" and expressed
hope that the investigations clearing the scientists "will receive as
much circulation as the original, diversionary controversies". Writing for Newsweek, journalist Sharon Begley
called the controversy a "highly orchestrated, manufactured scandal",
noting that the public was unlikely to change their mind. Regardless of
the reports exonerating the scientists, Begley noted that "one of the
strongest, most-repeated findings in the psychology of belief is that
once people have been told X, especially if X is shocking, if they are later told, 'No, we were wrong about X,' most people still believe X."
Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, vice-chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and science historian Naomi Oreskes
said that the "attacks on climate science that were made ahead of the
Copenhagen climate change summit were 'organised' to undermine efforts
to tackle global warming and mirror the earlier tactics of the tobacco
industry". Noting the media circus that occurred when the story first broke, Oreskes and Erik Conway writing about climate change denial,
said that following the investigations "the vindication of the climate
scientists has received very little coverage at all. Vindication is not
as sexy as accusation, and many people are still suspicious. After all,
some of those emails, taken out of context, sounded damning. But what
they show is that climate scientists are frustrated, because for two
decades they have been under attack."
Bill Royce, head of the European practice on energy, environment and climate change at the United States communications firm Burson-Marsteller,
also described the incident as an organised effort to discredit climate
science. He said that it was not a single scandal, but "a sustained and
coordinated campaign" aimed at undermining the credibility of the
science. Disproportionate reporting of the original story, "widely
amplified by climate deniers", meant that the reports that cleared the
scientists received far less coverage than the original allegations, he
said. Journalist Curtis Brainard of the Columbia Journalism Review
criticised newspapers and magazines for failing to give prominent
coverage to the findings of the review panels and said that "readers
need to understand that while there is plenty of room to improve the
research and communications process, its fundamental tenets remain as
solid as ever". CNN media critic Howard Kurtz expressed similar sentiments.
Public opinion and political fallout
Jon Krosnick, professor of communication, political science and psychology at Stanford University,
said that scientists were overreacting. Referring to his own poll
results of the American public, he said: "It's another funny instance of
scientists ignoring science." Krosnick found that "Very few professions
enjoy the level of confidence from the public that scientists do, and
those numbers haven't changed much in a decade. We don't see a lot of
evidence that the general public in the United States is picking up on
the (University of East Anglia) emails. It's too inside baseball."
The Christian Science Monitor,
in an article titled "Climate scientists exonerated in 'climategate'
but public trust damaged", stated: "While public opinion had steadily
moved away from belief in man-made global warming before the leaked CRU
emails, that trend has only accelerated." Paul Krugman, columnist for The New York Times,
argued that this, along with all other incidents that called into
question the scientific consensus on climate change, was "a fraud
concocted by opponents of climate action, then bought into by many in
the news media". But UK journalist Fred Pearce called the slow response of climate scientists "a case study in how not to respond to a crisis" and "a public relations disaster".
A. A. Leiserowitz, Director of the Yale University Project on Climate Change, and colleagues found in 2010 that:
Climategate had a significant effect on public beliefs in global warming and trust in scientists. The loss of trust in scientists, however, was primarily among individuals with a strongly individualistic worldview or politically conservative ideology. Nonetheless, Americans overall continue to trust scientists more than other sources of information about global warming.
In late 2011, Steven F. Hayward wrote that "Climategate did for the global warming controversy what the Pentagon Papers did for the Vietnam war 40 years ago: It changed the narrative decisively." An editorial in Nature
said that many in the media "were led by the nose, by those with a
clear agenda, to a sizzling scandal that steadily defused as the true
facts and context were made clear".
Further release, 2011
On
22 November 2011, a second set of approximately 5,000 emails,
apparently hacked from University of East Anglia servers at the same
time as those in the 2009 release, was posted on a Russian server, with
links distributed to the message boards on several climate-sceptic
websites.
A message accompanying the emails quoted selective passages from them,
highlighting many of the same issues raised following the original
incident. Juliette Jowit and Leo Hickman of The Guardian said
that the new release was "an apparent attempt to undermine public
support for international action to tackle climate change" with the
start of the 2011 United Nations Climate Change Conference scheduled in Durban, South Africa, a week later. Nature
described the further release as a "poor sequel" and claimed that "it
is hard for anyone except the most committed conspiracy theorist to see
much of interest in the content of the released e-mails, even taken out
of context".
