You may have heard of “Climategate”. What became known by anthropogenic climate change deniers as “Climategate” was when a large number of emails between certain climate scientists at the Climatic Research Unit, University of East Anglia, UK, were hacked in 2009. The culprits were never found despite extensive police investigations although mathematician, miner and denier Stephen McIntyre of Climate Audit and his followers seemed to be prime suspects. He took up an interest in climate science about 20 years ago when aged in his mid 50s. It was sparked by the Michael Mann et al so-called hockey stick graph that McIntyre decided he didn’t like. This 1999 study using tree ring data over 1000 years found that the Medieval Warm Period (c.950–1250) was regional rather the global and was cooler than today. See graph below. Deniers had always assumed the MWP was global and warmer than now.

McIntyre has been talking nonsense about the study ever since, along with his sidekick, economist and denier Ross McKitrick. They wrote papers and met with politicians. Finally, the National Academy of Sciences investigated but it came up with similar results to Mann et al, in the North Report back in 2006 (but McIntyre and McKitrick kept carrying on). Indeed, more than two dozen studies have replicated Mann’s work. See, for example, graph below. McIntyre is full of misinformation and nonsense (including on Trump’s attempted coup). See Steve McIntyre – DeSmog. He actually found a data error in 2007 when checking GISS temperature data that subsequently reduced US average temperatures 0.15°C in 2000–2006 (but it made basically no difference to global average temperatures as the US is only 2% of the globe) and that’s about it.

McIntyre and his Climate Audit readers had been sending FOI requests to the East Anglia University’s Climatic Research Unit asking for raw temperature data of weather stations the unit obtained from weather bureaus through agreements with governments and also for emails relating to the IPCC’s AR4 report. Requests escalated by mid 2009 with the CRU receiving 58 requests in one week in late July. Perhaps McIntyre thought the CRU had nothing else to do. Clearly it was an attempt to compare the raw data with the published data and accuse the scientists of “manipulating” the data to create the impression of global warming. But the data was under confidentiality agreements with governments although the CRU was seeking agreement to put the data online.

A month later, and a few months before the Copenhagen Summit, thousands of CRU emails and computer files were hacked, with Climate Audit declaring: “A miracle has happened”. Climate Audit and other denier blogs madly pasted up copies of the emails with the view to trying to show anthropogenic global warming was a fraud. That was the initial main aim of the hacking. Various scientific organisations such as the AAAS, the AMS and the UCS put out statements on the scientific consensus of anthropogenic global warming. They confirmed basic science such as CO2 being a greenhouse gas, the fact that we’re releasing far too much of it for the environment to absorb, thus the rapid build-up of CO2 in the atmosphere, thus the rapid increase in temperatures. And of course raw temperature data is adjusted for things like urban heat islands, weather stations moving from hot spots in the middle of town to cooler spots in grassed areas at airports, and changes in temperature measuring instruments and methods. This is far more accurate than simply going with what the thermometers show.

None of this stopped the deniers, who had been brainwashed by the fossil fuel industry and its supporters since it basically started the anthropogenic climate change denial political movement in the 1980s when the industry realised that cutting back on fossil fuel use would harm it. Deniers also ploughed through the emails looking for anything and everything that might discredit the climate scientists and the science. This is why CRU director Phil Jones aimed to convince the UEA’s FOI managers (they are the ones who decide whether to release data, not the scientists) not to give out data to “greenhouse skeptics”. He emailed another scientist: “Think I’ve managed to persuade UEA to ignore all further FOIA requests if the people have anything to do with Climate Audit”. Good idea. Who wouldn’t do/say something similar in the circumstances.

The comment in Phil Jones’s email about Michael Mann’s “Nature trick to hide the decline” and similar quotes are actually misquotes, very common in denierland, and whole stories have been invented around “trick to hide the decline” in temperatures as the data went the wrong way for deniers’ liking. This is the actual email: “I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.” The word “trick” is simply jargon for splicing different data sets together. This was done for two sets of tree ring data and actual temperatures. It can be done with other data sets too. The “nature trick” refers to tree ring data and the word “decline” refers to a decline in tree ring sizes in some high latitude areas since 1960, rather than anything to do with temperatures. See Clearing up misconceptions regarding ‘hide the decline’ for more. And besides, there was no temperature decline to hide. Global temperatures have been increasing rapidly since the 1970s.

Thus, hide the decline simply referred to the decline in tree rings in the era of anthropogenic global warming with CO2 levels increasing 100 times faster than coming out of the last glacial period and temperatures 40 times faster. Much of the natural environment can’t keep up. Tree ring data is thus less useful in recent decades and won’t be as accurate. In hindsight, different wording to “hide the decline” should have been used; the scientists should have known that deniers would misquote and misconstrue in their endless pursuit to discredit scientists and science.

Also, no one was trying to obstruct an FOI request. The UEA’s FOI managers are the ones who decide whether to fulfil an FOI request, not the scientists or any other academics or other people at UEA. There are many reasons an FOI request can be denied. The scientists made it clear to the FOI managers in meetings that the deniers would wrongly try and refute the correctness of the data and this could be damaging to reputations, careers, the CRU and the university. Besides, the data in question was under confidentiality agreements with governments although the CRU was seeking agreement to put the data online. At the time, more than 95% of CRU climate data had already been online for years. Then of course the illegal hacking took place.

Had the FOIs gone through before the hacking, and the data (plus denier commentary) published on denier blogs, the university and the scientists might have ended up with good grounds to launch a defamation case against McIntyre and his followers. Defamation is about making false statements harming reputations. In the end, there was a large number of inquiries (which wouldn’t have happened without the hacking) into the whole saga, all of which cleared the victims, i.e. the scientists, of any wrongdoing:

– The UK House of Commons found that “Professor Jones’s actions were in line with common practice in the climate science community”. It also found that “in the instance of the CRU, the scientists were not legally allowed to give out the data”.

– The US EPA “found this was simply a candid discussion of scientists working through issues that arise in compiling and presenting large complex data sets”.

– The Pennsylvania State University found that “there exists no credible evidence that Dr. Mann had or has ever engaged in, or participated in, directly or indirectly, any actions with an intent to suppress or to falsify data”. It also found that “the so-called ‘trick’ was nothing more than a statistical method used to bring two or more different kinds of data sets together in a legitimate fashion by a technique that has been reviewed by a broad array of peers in the field”.

– An international Science Assessment Panel set up by the University of East Anglia found “no evidence of any deliberate scientific malpractice in any of the work of the Climatic Research Unit”.

– The US Department of Commerce found “no evidence in the CRU emails that NOAA inappropriately manipulated data”.

– The US National Science Foundation found “no research misconduct or other matter raised by the various regulations and laws discussed above, this case is closed”.

Thus the climate scientists and climate science were completely unscathed and kept going as before much to the annoyance of deniers. There was a lengthy police investigation that unfortunately didn’t find the culprit/s except that the hacking was via the internet and wasn’t an inside job.