More CRU Hack Stuff

The release of emails and other documents hacked from the University of East Anglia computer system continues to create a stir in the climate change tribes. Dr. Judy Curry with Georgia Tech University called the different camps "tribes" in a letter she wrote addressing the impact of the released information. She makes very a good point about the need for transparency in the climate science arena. Something that is long overdue. Dr. Curry's letter is posted on Climate Audit and a new ca mirror site on wordpress. It is an interesting read.

One of the more troubling issues exposed by the computer hacker is the attitude of some scientists to Freedom of Information Act (FOI) requests. Dr. Phil Jones would prefer to destroy data than release it under FOI request. How serious he is about destroying data is somewhat debatable, but the legality of such an action is something that he should consider.

The released data is being heatedly discussed on various websites with Bishop Hill providing a good synopsis for the layman on his blog. Gavin Schmitt is moderating the debate on tribe We Be PHD's blog realclimate and doing a good job considering none of the questionable emails were his. It appears he may have a cooler head than other members of the We Be PHD tribe.

The opposing tribes Whatsupies, Climudits, Ventairs and Black Boarders are beating the drums in their respective nations. Chiefs Watts, McIntrye, Id and Lucia have united their nations in cyber war against the We Be PHDs. So while the moist bison chip slinging match continues I will attempt to take the high ground and poke a little fun at some of the hacked emails.

One of my favorite comes from We Be PHD's Colorado village:

Kevin Trenberth wrote:

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. This is January weather (see the Rockies baseball playoff game was canceled on saturday and then played last night in below freezing weather).

Trenberth, K. E., 2009: An imperative for climate change planning: tracking Earth's global energy.

It is difficult to prove global warming when you are freezing your butt off.

This one was picked up by chief McIntyre:

I am sick to death of Mann stating his reconstruction represents the tropical area just because it contains a few (poorly temperature representative ) tropical series. He is just as capable of regressing these data again any other "target" series , such as the increasing trend of self-opinionated verbage he has produced over the last few years , and ... (better say no more)

This one I found:

I know Mike thinks his series is the 'best' and he might be right - but he may also be too dismissive of other data and possibly over confident in his (or should I say his use of other's). After all, the early ( pre-instrumental) data are much less reliable as indicators of global temperature than is apparent in modern calibrations that include them and when we don't know the precise role of particular proxies in the earlier portions of reconstruction it remains problematic to assign genuine confidence limits at multidecadal and longer timescales.

The Mann and Mike reference is Dr. Micheal Mann of the University of Pennsylvania lead author of the most famous hockey stick reconstruction. The author was Dr. Keith Briffa of the University of East Anglia. It seems even educated tribes can have internal conflicts.

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