[Vision2020] East Anglia University's Climatic Research Unit E-Mail Hack: "One Year Later"

[Ted Moffett]

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2010/11/one-year-later/ One
year later
Filed under:

   - Climate Science<http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/category/climate-science/>
   - Communicating
Climate<http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/category/communicating-climate/>

— gavin @ 20 November 2010

I woke up on Tuesday, 17 Nov 2009 completely unaware of what was about to
unfold. I tried to log in to RealClimate, but for some reason my login did
not work. Neither did the admin login. I logged in to the back-end via ssh,
only to be inexplicably logged out again. I did it again. No dice. I then
called the hosting company and told them to take us offline until I could
see what was going on. When I did get control back from the hacker (and
hacker it was), there was a large uploaded file on our server, and a draft
post ready to go announcing the theft of the CRU emails. And so it began.

>From that Friday, and for about 3 weeks afterward, we were drafted into the
biggest context setting exercise we’d ever been involved in. What was the
story with Soon and Baliunas? What is the difference between tree ring
density and tree ring width? What papers were being discussed in email X?
What was Trenberth talking about? Or Wigley? Or Briffa or Jones? Who were
any of this people anyway? The very specificity of the emails meant that it
was hard for the broader scientific community to add informed comment, and
so the burden on the people directly involved was high.

The posts we put up initially are still valid today – and the 1000’s of
comment stand as testimony to the contemporary fervour of the conversation:

   - The CRU Hack<http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/11/the-cru-hack/>
   - The CRU Hack:
Context<http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/11/the-cru-hack-context/>
   - Where’s the
Data?<http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/11/wheres-the-data/>
   - The CRU Hack: More
Context<http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/12/cru-hack-more-context/>

I think we did pretty well considering – no other site, nor set of
scientists (not even at UEA) provided so much of the background to counter
the inevitable misinterpretations that starting immediately spreading. While
some commentators were predicting resignations, retractions and criminal
charges, we noted that there had not been any scientific misconduct, and
predicted that this is what the inquiries would find and that the science
would not be affected. (Note, the most thorough inquiry, and one that will
have to withstand judicial review, is the one by
EPA<http://epa.gov/climatechange/endangerment/petitions.html>which,
strangely enough, has barely been discussed in the blogosphere).

Overall, reactions have seemed to follow predictable lines. The Yale Forum
has some interesting
discussions<http://www.yaleclimatemediaforum.org/2010/11/scientists-and-journalists-on-lessons-learned/>from
scientists, and there are a couple of
good <http://climatesight.org/2010/11/17/the-real-story-of-climategate/>
overviews<http://ourchangingclimate.wordpress.com/2010/11/17/climategate-scandal-that-wasnt-and-scandal-that-was/>
available<http://www.skepticalscience.com/The-question-that-skeptics-dont-want-to-ask-about-Climategate.html>.
Inevitably perhaps, the emails have been used to support and reinforce all
sorts of existing narratives – right across the spectrum (from ‘GW hoaxers’
to Mike Hulme<http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/nov/15/year-climate-science-was-redefined>to
UCS to open source advocates).

Things have clearly calmed down over the last year (despite a bit of a media
meltdown<http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2010/02/whatevergate/>in
February), but as we predicted, no inquiries found anyone guilty of
misconduct, no science was changed and no papers retracted. In the meantime
we’ve had one of the hottest
years<http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/2010vs2005+1998.gif>on
record, scientists continue to do
science <http://www.agu.org/meetings/fm10/program/index.php>, and
politicians…. well, they continue to do what politicians
do<http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2010/11/live-coverage-house-climate-hear.html>
.

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Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett
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