Misplaced Pages

Talk:Climatic Research Unit email controversy

Article snapshot taken from Wikipedia with creative commons attribution-sharealike license. Give it a read and then ask your questions in the chat. We can research this topic together.

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Elizium23 (talk | contribs) at 10:34, 17 November 2022 ("stolen" data: Reply). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Revision as of 10:34, 17 November 2022 by Elizium23 (talk | contribs) ("stolen" data: Reply)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)
This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Climatic Research Unit email controversy article.
This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject.
Article policies
Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs· FENS · JSTOR · TWL
The contentious topics procedure applies to this page. This page is related to climate change, which has been designated as a contentious topic.

Editors who repeatedly or seriously fail to adhere to the purpose of Misplaced Pages, any expected standards of behaviour, or any normal editorial process may be blocked or restricted by an administrator. Editors are advised to familiarise themselves with the contentious topics procedures before editing this page.

This topic contains controversial issues, some of which have reached a consensus for approach and neutrality, and some of which may be disputed. Before making any potentially controversial changes to the article, please carefully read the discussion-page dialogue to see if the issue has been raised before, and ensure that your edit meets all of Misplaced Pages's policies and guidelines. Please also ensure you use an accurate and concise edit summary.
This article has not yet been rated on Misplaced Pages's content assessment scale.
It is of interest to multiple WikiProjects.
Please add the quality rating to the {{WikiProject banner shell}} template instead of this project banner. See WP:PIQA for details.
WikiProject iconEnvironment Mid‑importance
WikiProject iconThis environment-related article is part of the WikiProject Environment to improve Misplaced Pages's coverage of the environment. The aim is to write neutral and well-referenced articles on environment-related topics, as well as to ensure that environment articles are properly categorized.
Read Misplaced Pages:Contributing FAQ and leave any messages at the project talk page.EnvironmentWikipedia:WikiProject EnvironmentTemplate:WikiProject EnvironmentEnvironment
MidThis article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.
Please add the quality rating to the {{WikiProject banner shell}} template instead of this project banner. See WP:PIQA for details.
WikiProject iconClimate change Mid‑importance
WikiProject iconThis article is within the scope of WikiProject Climate change, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Climate change on Misplaced Pages. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Climate changeWikipedia:WikiProject Climate changeTemplate:WikiProject Climate changeClimate change
MidThis article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.
If you are looking for ways to improve this article, we recommend checking out our recommended sources and our style guide
Please add the quality rating to the {{WikiProject banner shell}} template instead of this project banner. See WP:PIQA for details.
WikiProject iconComputer Security: Computing Low‑importance
WikiProject iconThis article is within the scope of WikiProject Computer Security, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of computer security on Misplaced Pages. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Computer SecurityWikipedia:WikiProject Computer SecurityTemplate:WikiProject Computer SecurityComputer Security
LowThis article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.
Taskforce icon
This article is supported by WikiProject Computing (assessed as Low-importance).
Things you can help WikiProject Computer Security with:
Article alerts will be generated shortly by AAlertBot. Please allow some days for processing. More information...
  • Review importance and quality of existing articles
  • Identify categories related to Computer Security
  • Tag related articles
  • Identify articles for creation (see also: Article requests)
  • Identify articles for improvement
  • Create the Project Navigation Box including lists of adopted articles, requested articles, reviewed articles, etc.
  • Find editors who have shown interest in this subject and ask them to take a look here.
Please add the quality rating to the {{WikiProject banner shell}} template instead of this project banner. See WP:PIQA for details.
WikiProject iconSkepticism Mid‑importance
WikiProject iconThis article is within the scope of WikiProject Skepticism, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of science, pseudoscience, pseudohistory and skepticism related articles on Misplaced Pages. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.SkepticismWikipedia:WikiProject SkepticismTemplate:WikiProject SkepticismSkepticism
MidThis article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.
Please add the quality rating to the {{WikiProject banner shell}} template instead of this project banner. See WP:PIQA for details.
WikiProject iconAlternative views Low‑importance
WikiProject iconThis article is within the scope of WikiProject Alternative views, a collaborative effort to improve Misplaced Pages's coverage of significant alternative views in every field, from the sciences to the humanities. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion.Alternative viewsWikipedia:WikiProject Alternative viewsTemplate:WikiProject Alternative viewsAlternative views
LowThis article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.
Please add the quality rating to the {{WikiProject banner shell}} template instead of this project banner. See WP:PIQA for details.
WikiProject iconWeather: Climate Low‑importance
WikiProject iconThis article is within the scope of WikiProject Weather, which collaborates on weather and related subjects on Misplaced Pages. To participate, help improve this article or visit the project page for details. WeatherWikipedia:WikiProject WeatherTemplate:WikiProject WeatherWeather
LowThis article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.
Taskforce icon
This article is supported by the Climate task force (assessed as Low-importance).
The following Misplaced Pages contributor has declared a personal or professional connection to the subject of this article. Relevant policies and guidelines may include conflict of interest, autobiography, and neutral point of view.
In the newsA news item involving this article was featured on Misplaced Pages's Main Page in the "In the news" column on November 24, 2009.
On this day...Facts from this article were featured on Misplaced Pages's Main Page in the "On this day..." column on November 17, 2011, November 17, 2014, November 17, 2018, November 17, 2019, and November 17, 2021.
This article has been viewed enough times in a single week to appear in the Top 25 Report 3 times. The weeks in which this happened:
? faq page Frequently asked questions

To view an explanation to the answer, click the link to the right of the question.

Q1: Why is this article not called "Climategate"? A1: There have been numerous discussions on this subject on the talk page. The current title is not the common name, as is generally used for Misplaced Pages articles, but instead a descriptive title, one chosen to not seem to pass judgment, implicitly or explicitly, on the subject. A recent Requested move discussion has indicated that there is no consensus to move the article to the title of Climategate, and so further discussion of the article title has been tabled until at least June 2011. Q2: Why aren't there links to various emails? A2: The emails themselves are both primary sources and copyright violations. Misplaced Pages avoids using primary sources (WP:PRIMARY), and avoids linking to Copyright violations. If a specific email has been discussed in a reliable, secondary source, use that source, not the email. Q3: Why is/isn't a specific blog being used as a source? A3: Blogs are not typically reliable sources. Blogs may, in some circumstances, be acceptable when produced by an established expert on the topic of the article whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable third-party publications. Blogs should never be used as third-party sources about living persons, even if the author is a well-known professional researcher or writer; see WP:BLP#Reliable sources. Q4: Aren't the emails/other documents in the public domain? A4: No. Some of the hacked documents are covered by Crown copyright, others by private copyright. The Freedom of Information Act does not affect copyright. Q5: Why does the article refer to a hacking and to stolen documents? Couldn't this be an accidental release of information or released by a whistleblowing insider ? A5: Misplaced Pages reports the facts from reliable sources. In their most recent statement on the issue, Norfolk Constabulary have said that the information was released through an attack carried out remotely via the Internet and that there is no evidence of anyone associated with the University being associated with the crime. Both the University and a science blog, RealClimate , have reported server hacking incidents directly associated with this affair. The University has stated that the documents were "stolen" and "illegally obtained". Q6: Why is there a biographies of living persons (BLP) notice at the top of this page? This article is about an event, and the Climatic Research Unit is not a living person. A6: The BLP applies to all pages on Misplaced Pages, specifically to all potentially negative statements about living persons. It does not apply solely to articles about living persons. The notice is there to remind us to take care that all statements regarding identifiable living persons mentioned in the article or talk page comply with all Misplaced Pages policies and with the law, per the BLP. Q7: What do I do if I have a complaint about the conduct of other people editing or discussing this article? A7: Follow the dispute resolution policy. It is not optional. Unduly cluttering the talk page with complaints about other editors' behavior is wasteful. In the case of egregiously bad conduct only, consider contacting an administrator. Q8: I think there is inadequate consensus on a matter of policy. What should I do? A8: There are several options. Consider posting the issue on one of the noticeboards, or starting a request for comment (RFC) on the question. Q9: Why doesn't the article report that BBC weather reporter Paul Hudson received an advance copy of the leaked content? A9: Because it isn't true. In fact, the only involvement Paul Hudson reports (see here) is that he had been the subject of emailed complaints from CRU climatologists concerning a blog article he had recently published, and that he was able to confirm that those emailed complaints which had been copied to him by the senders, and which later appeared in the zip file of stolen documents, were authentic. That is to say, Hudson received some of the later leaked e-mails, but only those originally also addressed to him or the BBC, which forwarded them. It appears that some blogs and newspapers have misinterpreted this. This was also confirmed by the BBC on the 27th November 2009 and on the 13th March 2010 when the issue arose again. Q10: Newspapers have reported that this article and a lot of the global warming articles are being controlled and manipulated. Why don't we report that? A10: The items in question are opinion columns by James Delingpole and Lawrence Solomon. Misplaced Pages's guidelines on self-references discourage self-referential material unless publicity regarding a Misplaced Pages article is determined to be significant enough to be included. This requires the Misplaced Pages coverage to be a major part of the controversy. There is no consensus that the two opinion columns meet this criterion. This does not preclude coverage of those writers' opinions on Misplaced Pages in other articles, such as James Delingpole, Lawrence Solomon, Global warming conspiracy theory, and Criticism of Misplaced Pages, but that would be a matter for the editors of those individual articles. On specific charges against an individual named by Lawrence Solomon and repeated uncritically by James Delingpole, please see this discussion on the Conflict of interest noticeboard.
Archiving icon
Archives
Index 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10
11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20
21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30
31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40
41, 42, 43, 44, 45
/Climategate usage, /emails, /RFC Climategate rename policy query, /RFC/CRU Hacking Dispute, /RFC/Death threats against climate scientists, /RfC on article name change, /Subpage


This page has archives. Sections older than 30 days may be automatically archived by Lowercase sigmabot III when more than 4 sections are present.

Issues related to this article elsewhere on Misplaced Pages

BLP noticeboard:

NPOV noticeboard:


Requested moves:

The following references may be useful when improving this article in the future:


The scientific consensus (sic) was changed completely

This discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.


The emails showed that the current scientific consensus (sic) is that there was a "decline" in the rate of warming despite massive increases in co2 which is easily apparent in the satellite lower troposphere measurements This dramatically changes it and disproved all of their previous models. It also proved that they wanted "hide" this decline which definitively did show misconduct. Editorial claims to the contrary are just claims. Facts are facts — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.195.65.126 (talk) 03:50, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

Do you have any credible sources whatsoever that confirm your "facts"? Can you please tell us where you're getting this from?Gireen (talk) 03:31, 4 June 2017 (UTC)
I was not the author of the original statement by 70.195.65.126 above but, I just read it and am returning an answer to your question Gireen. It is old news but it might lead you to the answer. I think Forbes is not a bad source that could be used for your consideration: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamestaylor/2011/11/23/climategate-2-0-new-e-mails-rock-the-global-warming-debate/?sh=509978a227ba
See this part, in particular: “Observations do not show rising temperatures throughout the tropical troposphere unless you accept one single study and approach and discount a wealth of others. ” writes Peter Thorne of the UK Met Office.24.225.161.193 (talk) 20:43, 1 May 2021 (UTC)
Forbes isn't a great source, particularly for science, the article's almost a decade old and that's a cherry-picked quote from an earlier private discussion. Outdated. And the article's not by Forbes staff, it's by James M. Taylor at The Heartland Institute, well known source of climate change denial.. . dave souza, talk 04:39, 2 May 2021 (UTC)

Meaning of 'trick'

The recent BBC TV film titled 'The Trick' is likely to arouse new interest in the meaning of this key word. The present article refers to an inquiry report by Penn State, which said that the 'trick' was 'a statistical method used to bring two or more different kinds of data sets together in a legitimate fashion'. Is there a source for the statistical method used, preferably with some explanation that might be intelligible to a lay person? The impression given in the film was that Phil Jones simply decided that the proxy data after a certain date (I think he said 1960) was wrong or unreliable, since it conflicted with the instrumental data, and therefore omitted it from the relevant diagram. This may have been a correct judgement, and a legitimate decision, but it is not on the face of it a *statistical* method. Nor does it seem to justify the use of the term 'trick', which in a scientific or math context usually implies something especially neat or clever. Just cutting out data you think is incorrect may be justified, but it is not especially clever. There *might* be some statistical reason for excluding data from a graph, for example if it is an outlier known to be due to measurement error. If there is in fact some technical statistical basis for the 'trick', a reference would be helpful. 2A00:23C8:7907:4B01:28AF:6BB6:74DF:B930 (talk) 16:10, 23 October 2021 (UTC)

As is linked in the article, this is fully covered at Climatic Research Unit documents#Climate reconstruction graph, including the point that tree ring data post 1960 was an outlier known to be due to the (already published) divergence problem, a detail Jones chose to exclude from the figure for the WMO report cover illustration. For the statisticl basis of MBH98/99, see the hockey stick graph. . dave souza, talk 10:22, 8 March 2022 (UTC)

Why hack UEA?

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Climatic Research Unit email controversy article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject.

UEA is a largely unknown 'university' in the UK. Why such a furore over the hacking of this University's online data when there must be more 'credible' targets (such as Oxford, Cambridge, etc) who must have a huge trove of data on climate change? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:1000:B11D:A35A:7923:574A:289E:EF41 (talk) 22:01, 17 November 2021 (UTC)

Is this still Misplaced Pages?

I admit it, I am not educated on the topic of "Climategate", so after hearing someone mention it today, I visited this article to learn what the supposed emails said. Having read the article, I still don't know. In paragraph after paragraph, I was informed that a laundry list of people and organizations disagree with "Climate Skeptics" interpretation of the emails, yet, outside of some vague "trick", I still have no idea what the emails said. As such, I don't what, specifically, they are disagreeing with. Furthermore, it really feels like the author(s) don't want me to know what they're disagreeing with ... only that they disagree, and disagree strongly. This may be the least informative article I've ever read on Misplaced Pages. It's just one breathless denial of Climategate after another, while doing it's very best to never mention what they actual claims were that they so vehmently disagree with. I am unable to believe that anyone could say with a straight face that this article is even remotely encyclopedic. All I learned was what a bunch of supposed experts thought of the controversy.

It's like going to an article about a 'Lion Controversy', where the content was:

Lion experts disagree with the Lion Controversy. 98% of good lion people agree that people who agree with the Lion Controvesy are very bad people, and deserve nothing but scorn and derision. NBC News called people who believe in the Lion Controversy "sad and pathetic people", and they state that the Lion Controvery dramatically overstated the real nature of lions. Leona Liontamer, the keeper of a lion herself, stated "I haven't found the Lion Controversy to be true with MY lions!", while Jack Lionlover said "The Lion Controversy is preposterous, and no one should talk or think about it ever again!" When asked if they would consider dating Lion Controversy believers, 102.85% of supermodels said, "No way, I don't find Lion Controversy believers to be attractive at all! In fact, every one I've ever known is poorly-endowed!" When asked if they believe in the Lion Controversy, 205% of non-racists said "No way!" while the tiny minority who did believe in the Lion Conteroversy lifted their hands in a nazi salute and shouted "Hail Satan!", before sacrificing, then consuming whole, two infant children. "No, really, I don't believe it either", said one, fresh infant blood still dripping from her fangs, "I'm just here for the infants .... you gonna finish yours?"

I can only surmise that none of the Sr. Misplaced Pages editors have gotten around to looking at this thing. At least I sincerely hope that's what it is. This is embarassing, and I'm holding out hope that, if nothing else, maybe it was an attempt at parody. If so, well done, except you may want to pull it back a little. There's a fine line between parody and absurdity and this one crosses a little too far into the latter, IMHO, and when asked by Newseek, 98% of Absurdity experts agree with me. Opie8 (talk) 07:00, 28 August 2022 (UTC)

The second section of the article is titled "Content of the documents". It generally describes them, and includes specific details as relevant to the controversy (rather than everything about the contents) because this here article is focused on the "Climatic Research Unit email controversy". The very beginning of that section has a prominent link to the separate Climatic Research Unit documents article. That article goes into further detail about what they contain. DMacks (talk) 07:27, 28 August 2022 (UTC)

"stolen" data

It seems that RS, at least the AP, seem to agree that the data was "stolen" except for the fact that the rightful owners were never deprived of access to it, which is a key component to conventional theft. It is unfortunate that sources want to draw analogues between theft of conventional property and copying of data, because data piracy is a different thing altogether. Elizium23 (talk) 10:01, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

So what? I think it is unfortunate that the reliable sources do not call the people who bought the stolen mails "fences".
Why is this on this Talk page? How is it connected to any suggested article improvement? --Hob Gadling (talk) 10:30, 17 November 2022 (UTC)
Because we don't need to call them "stolen" if we can agree on a more accurate term for pirated data. Unless editors believe we should blindly follow the sources, or they are unanimous in this point. Elizium23 (talk) 10:34, 17 November 2022 (UTC)
Categories: