More than 1,700 private e-mail messages were illegally nabbed from a university-based climate-science lab by computer hackers, with the apparent goal of discrediting the authors’ research on global warming just days before a major climate summit begins.
The incident is an unusual one. Though data breaches happen almost every week in higher education, most involve Social Security numbers or other university records, and the biggest concern is usually identity theft. In this case, personal e-mail messages of scientists were illegally obtained from a university server, and bloggers have been using quotes from the messages to argue that the scientists exaggerated their data on global warming.
In a statement issued Monday, officials from the University of East Anglia, in England, confirmed that the messages were stolen from a server in its Climate Research Unit. The university is working with law-enforcement officials to investigate the matter, and the server that was attacked has been taken offline, said the statement, signed by Simon Dunford, a university spokesman.
“The selective publication of some stolen e-mails and other papers taken out of context is mischievous and cannot be considered a genuine attempt to engage with this issue in a responsible way,” said the statement.
The scientists whose e-mail messages are now public say that their words are being twisted for political reasons. They argue that nothing in the messages discredits their findings.
“I think we’re looking at a really nasty smear campaign, and the people responsible are despicable,” said Michael E. Mann, director of the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University. “There’s nothing in here that calls into question the reality of the climate change.”
Next month world leaders will gather to discuss the contentious environmental-policy issues at the United Nations Climate Change Conference, in Copenhagen.
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7 Responses to Hackers Strike Climate-Research Center, Hoping to Change the Debate
lexalexander - November 24, 2009 at 4:41 pm
They’re now calling this the Global Warming Hoax Hoax. Please keep up.A few questions for anyone who actually thinks these e-mails somehow undo thousands of studies by hundreds of researchers: http://greenfyre.wordpress.com/2009/11/21/cru-hack-time-to-hit-back-hard/
samueloulrey - November 24, 2009 at 4:46 pm
Were they hackers or merely insiders releasing public data?
steiny - November 24, 2009 at 5:04 pm
Or did FOX News break in?
hafajc - November 24, 2009 at 5:09 pm
Hmmmm,Sounds like someone who is commenting is saying: “Which are you going to believe? Me , or your lying eyes?”Is your greenfrye.wordpress objective–or is it another person or group promoting an agenda? Sounds much like someone’s pseudoreligion has been offended.Thousands of studies? Why do the individuals who are pushing the whole “Global Warming, oops, No, I meant global climate change” agenda seek to suppress opposing points of view? How many thousands of ‘studies’ have been suppressed in order to further a POLITICAL AGENDA in the name of ‘science?’
11299051 - November 25, 2009 at 12:52 pm
Since when is it ok for peer reviewers to keep important findings from the learning community–even if the reviewers disagree with the conclusion the only reasonable argument should center on the quality of the research. Are academics now casting us to think as they do and eschew critical thinking?
laoshi - November 27, 2009 at 6:30 am
Pot calls kettle black.What these hackers have uncovered is evidence of global warming proselytizers changing the debate since 1995. What this columnist has uncovered is the bias of the Chronicle toward perpetuating the myth of anthropogenic global warming. Frankly, we should have all woken up when Al Gore touted a “consensus” amongst scientists in the first place. If anything, these scientists should be tarred and feathered for selling out to political agendas, the IPCC dissolved, and tax refunds distributed to all victims of this fourteen year global warming hoax.
samueloulrey - November 30, 2009 at 6:36 pm
“Data breaches” happen thousands of times a day at US universities. The worst cases are the admissions application forms, which commonly illegally demand socialist insecurity numbers without informing the applicants (as explicitly required by federal law) that disclosure is completely voluntary and that admission cannot be denied for failure or refusal to disclose it. But the “data breaches” continue after that as socialist insecurity numbers and other personal private data demanded for other purposes are integrated and abused for grade records, library records including fines, parking permits and fines, transactions at university stores and eateries, and even to brow-beat students into keeping quiet about other irregularities and problems at the university… No university executive or administrator I’ve ever met has any business pointing fingers at anyone about any so-called “data breach”.Modifying data, deleting embarrassing data, refusing to comply with FOIA and refusal to publish the data, methods, etc. in their journal articles, barring legitimate article submissions from being published in journals, boycotting journals that publish articles that are not in line with their agenda are all violations of the scientific process. Experiments and measurements need to be reproducible. Hypotheses and theories and even “laws” are always subject to disproof, and methods always subject to challenge.I had stopped paying attention after a couple people with solid backgrounds in meteorology and oceanography had told me that, at that point, the available data were below the noise/volatility level and that much more, much better data was needed. But with this group of Warmist political propagandizers at work instead of scientists we’re being fed their opinions rather than the data and means to reach our own conclusions.