Climategate II: Attack of the Scientists

Two years ago the private e-mails of one of the top climate change research centers were stolen and published online. The timing was such that it occurred just before the Copenhagen Climate Summit in 2009. Now, just two weeks before the Durban, South Africa Climate Summit, the hackers have released a new batch of old e-mails.

But this time the culprits, who authorities have failed to catch, left a message.

It says, “Over 2.5 billion people live on less than $2 a day.”

“Every day nearly 16.000 children die from hunger and related causes.”

“One dollar can save a life” — the opposite must also be true.

“Poverty is a death sentence.”

“Nations must invest $37 trillion in energy technologies by 2030 to stabilize
greenhouse gas emissions at sustainable levels.”

Today’s decisions should be based on all the information we can get, not on
hiding the decline.

This archive contains some 5.000 emails picked from keyword searches. A few
remarks and redactions are marked with triple brackets.

The rest, some 220.000, are encrypted for various reasons. We are not planning
to publicly release the passphrase.

We could not read every one, but tried to cover the most relevant topics such
as…

And unlike last time, the climate scientists accused of scientific misconduct and facilitating a conspiracy surrounding manmade global warming are striking back.

University of East Anglia climatologist Phil Jones, left, and University of East Anglia vice-chancellor Edward Acton address the media during a news conference, London, Wednesday, Nov. 23, 2011. Photo: Raphael Satter / AP

Phil Jones, the man at the center of the 2009 investigation who was cleared of wrongdoing after being investigated for manipulating data and other scientific misconduct, held a news conference following the pre-Thanksgiving leak of 5,000 additional e-mails, dating between 2003 and 2009.

Dr. Jones, who runs the Climate Research Unit at East Anglia University in England, says his heart did sink a bit when he heard there was a new batch of e-mails released on November 22.

So far he says he hasn’t been embarrassed by any of the newly released e-mails but few new tidbits of his private discussions with colleagues have come out yet in what he says are “frank and honest discussions between scientists.” Although much larger than the last batch, Jones says these are still heavily cherry-picked e-mails.

UEA Vice-Chancellor Edward Acton who stood next to Jones at the press conference 24 hours after the latest release says, “Different phrases, same issues.” He predicted much less of a storm about an attempt to revive the furor over “Climategate” again, saysing, “There’s so much deja vu about it.”

In 2009, a hacker broke into the servers at the Climate Research Unit and downloaded untold thousands of e-mails between sent among climate researchers. Just before the Copenhagen Climate Summit, where the world’s nations were to draft a new global treaty to reduce carbon emissions, the e-mails appeared, casting a pall over the climate summit. Over 1,000 e-mails chronicled some nasty internal debates over minute aspects of climate science. It led to several investigations which independently concluded that scientists had committed no wrongdoing.

The University of East Anglia did get its knuckles rapped for its closed-door policy regarding data sharing and access to information. It has since changed its policies to be much more open.

Andrew Watson, a carbon-cycle scientist at UEA, said: “What comes across to me is that climate scientists are a diverse, complex and argumentative bunch, much like any other group of people.”

Now the hacker, who goes by the online handle FOIA 2011, has returned, claiming to still have 220,000 more e-mails that were stolen during the 2009 server breach. He or she has had two years to look them over and this latest batch appears to have a lot of repeats from the first release, including the infamous “hide the decline” phrase which taken out of context gave climate skeptics some fuel to fire the false debate a little longer.

Over at the Union of Concerned Scientists the director of the scientific integrity program says this latest attempt to disrupt U.N. climate talks and create doubt in the minds of the public about global warming merits a collective yawn.

Francesca Griffo says, “It’s time to condemn the real perpetrators in this story: the hackers who stole and released university property. The hackers and their allies are resorting to desperate measures to distract the public when our focus should be on how to respond to climate change.”

The Norfolk Police who have been handling this case view the hack as a criminal act too. A police spokesman tells BBC’s Richard Black that “the contents [of the new release] will be of interest to our investigation which is ongoing”. Black also got a hold of a document that shows just how much the police have spent on this investigation in the last 12 months.

He says, “they have spent precisely £5,649.09 on the investigation.” And, all but £80.05 was spent back in February. No work has been included on invoices in the last six months. Black adds, “Of all the figures surrounding the current story, that is perhaps the one that most merits further interrogation.”

But it’s not just scientists who are concerned over the slow progress of this investigation. U.S. Representative Ed Markey (D-MA) says in a statement released right after the new batch of CRU e-mails, “If this happened surrounding nuclear arms talks, we would have the full force of the Western world’s intelligence community pursuing the perpetrators. And yet, with the stability of our climate hanging in the balance with these international climate treaty negotiations, these hackers and their supporters are still on the loose. It is time to bring them to justice.”

But for the moment, Phil Jones, Michael Mann, Kevin Trenberth, Keith Briffa and the other scientists who were vilified for their role in “Climategate” have the upper hand. The science which has been thoroughly vetted since the first release of e-mails and has proven that there is no conspiracy to manipulate data in favor of global warming and though they disagree — and often hotly — the scientists do not disagree about the overall trend the planet is experiencing — the world is getting warmer over time and human activity is largely the cause.