radio news Part five: Changing weather posts in China led to accusations of scientific fraud Climate emails suggest Phil Jones may have attempted to cover up flawed temperature dataIn a unique experiment, The Guardian has published online the full manuscript of its major investigation into the climate science emails stolen from the University of East Anglia, which revealed apparent attempts to cover up flawed data; moves to prevent access to climate data; and to keep research from climate sceptics out of the scientific literature. As well as including new information about the emails, we will allow web users to annotate the manuscript to help us in our aim of creating the definitive account of the controversy. This is an attempt at a collaborative route to getting at the truth. We hope to approach that complete account by harnessing the expertise of people with a special knowledge of, or information about, the emails. We would like the protagonists on all sides of the debate to be involved, as well as people with expertise about the events and the science being described or more generally about the ethics of science. The only conditions are the comments abide by our community guidelines and add to the total knowledge or understanding of the events. The annotations - and the real name of the commenter - will be added to the manuscript, initially in private. The most insightful comments will then be added to a public version of the manuscript. We hope the process will be a form of peer review. If you have a contribution to make, please email climate.emails@guardian.co.uk. The anonymous commenting facility under each article will also be switched on so that anyone can contribute to the debate.It is difficult to imagine a more bizarre academic dispute. Where exactly are 42 weather monitoring stations in remote parts of rural China?But the argument over the weather stations, and how it affects an important set of data on global warming, has led to accusations of scientific fraud and may yet result in a significant revision of a scientific paper that is still cited by the UN's top climate science body.It also further calls into question the integrity of the scientist at the centre of the scandal over hacked climate emails, the director of the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit (CRU), Dr Phil Jones. The emails suggest that he helped to cover up flaws in temperature data from China that underpinned his research on the strength of recent global warming.The Guardian has learned that crucial data obtained by American scientists from Chinese collaborators cannot be verified because documents containing them no longer exist. And what data is available suggests that the findings are fundamentally flawed.Jones and his Chinese-American colleague Wei-Chyung Wang, of the University at Albany in New York, are being accused of scientific fraud by an independent British researcher over the contents of a research paper back in 1990.That paper, which was published in the prestigious journal Nature, claimed to answer an important question in climate change science: how much of the warming seen in recent decades is due to the local effects of spreading cities, rather than global warming?It is well-known that the concrete, bricks and asphalt of urban areas absorb more heat than the countryside. They result in cities being warmer than the countryside, especially at night.So the question is whether rising mercury is simply a result of thermometers once in the countryside gradually finding themselves in expanding urban areas.The pair, with four fellow researchers, concluded that the urban influence was negligible. Some of their most compelling evidence came from a study of temperature data from eastern China, a region urbanising fast even then.The paper became a key reference source for the conclusions of succeeding reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – including a chapter in the 2007 one co-authored by Jones. It said that globally "the urbanisation influence … is, at most, an order of magnitude less than the warming seen on a century timescale". In other words, it is tiny.But many climate sceptics did not believe the claim. They were convinced that the urban effect was much bigger, even though it might not change the overall story of global warming too much. After all, two-thirds of the planet is covered by ocean, and the oceans are warming, too.But when Jones turned down requests from them to reveal details about the location of the 84 Chinese weather stations used in the study, arguing that it would be "unduly burdensome", they concluded that he was covering up the error.And when, in 2007, Jones finally released what location data he had, British amateur climate analyst and former City banker Doug Keenan accused Jones and Wang of fraud.He pointed out that the data showed that 49 of the Chinese meteorological stations had no histories of their location or other details. These mysterious stations included 40 of the 42 rural stations. Of the rest, 18 had certainly been moved during the story period, perhaps invalidating their data.Keenan told the Guardian: "The worst case was a station that moved five times over a distance of 41 kilometres"; hence, for those stations, the claim made in the paper that "there were 'few if any changes' to locations is a fabrication". He demanded that Jones retract his claims about the Chinese data.The emails, which first emerged online in November last year following a hack of the university's computer systems that is being investigated by police, reveal that Jones was hurt, angry and uncertain about the allegations. "It is all malicious … I seem to be a marked man now," he wrote in April 2007.Another email from him said: "My problem is I don't know the best course of action … I know I'm on the right side and honest, but I seem to be telling myself this more often recently!"An American colleague, and frequent contributor to the leaked emails, Professor Michael Mann at Pennsylvania State University, advised him: "This crowd of charlatans … look for one little thing they can say is wrong, and thus generalise that the science is entirely compromised. The last thing you want to do is help them by feeding the fire. Best thing is to ignore them completely."Another colleague, Kevin Trenberth at the National Centre for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, urged a fightback. "The response should try to somehow label these guys and [sic] lazy and incompetent and unable to do the huge amount of work it takes to construct such a database."In August 2007, Keenan submitted a formal complaint about Wang to his employers. The university launched an inquiry. Reporting in May 2008, it found "no evidence of the alleged fabrication of results" and exonerated him. But it did not publish its detailed findings, and refused to give a copy to Keenan.By then, Keenan had published his charges in Energy & Environment, a peer-reviewed journal edited by a Hull University geographer, Dr Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen.The paper was largely ignored at the time, but Guardian investigations of the hacked emails now reveal that there was concern among Jones's colleagues about Wang's missing data — and the apparent efforts by Jones and Wang over several years to cover this up.Those concerns were most cogently expressed to Jones by his ex-boss, and former head of the CRU, Dr Tom Wigley. In August 2007, Wigley warned Jones by email: "It seems to me that Keenan has a valid point. The statements in the papers that he quotes seem to be incorrect statements, and that someone (W-C W at the very least) must have known at the time that they were incorrect."Wigley was concerned partly because he had been director of the CRU when the original paper was published in 1990. As he told Jones later, in 2009: "The buck should eventually stop with me."Wigley put to Jones the allegations made by the sceptics. "Wang had been claiming the existence of such exonerating documents for nearly a year, but he has not been able to produce them. Additionally, there was a report published in 1991 (with a second version in 1997) explicitly stating that no such documents exist."This is believed to be a report from the US department of energy, which obtained the original Chinese temperature data.Wang's defence to the university inquiry says that he had got the Chinese temperature data from a Chinese colleague, although she is not an author on the 1990 Nature paper.Wang's defence explains that the colleague had lost her notes on many station locations during a series of office moves. Nonetheless, "based on her recollections", she could provide information on 41 of the 49 stations.In all, that meant that no fewer than 51 of the 84 stations had been moved during the 30-year study period, 25 had not moved, and eight she could not recollect.Wang, however, maintained to the university that the 1990 paper's claim that "the stations were selected on the basis of station history: we chose those with few, if any, changes in instrumentation, location or observation times." The inquiry apparently agreed.Wigley, in his May 2009 email to Jones, said of Wang: "I have always thought W-C W was a rather sloppy scientist. I would …not be surprised if he screwed up here … Were you taking W-C W on trust? Why, why, why did you and W-C W not simply say this right at the start? Perhaps it's not too late." There is no evidence of any doubts being raised over Wang's previous work.Jones told the Guardian he was not able to comment on the allegations. Wang said: "I have been exonerated by my university on all the charges. When we started on the paper we had all the station location details in order to identify our network, but we cannot find them any more. Some of the location changes were probably only a few metres, and where they were more we corrected for them."The story has a startling postscript. In 2008, Jones prepared a paper for the Journal of Geophysical Research re-examining temperatures in eastern China. It found that, far from being negligible, the urban heat phenomenon was responsible for 40% of the warming seen in eastern China between 1951 and 2004.This does not flatly contradict Jones's 1990 paper. The timeframe for the new analysis is different. But it raises serious new questions about one of the most widely referenced papers on global warming, and about the IPCC's reliance on its conclusions.It is important to keep this in perspective, however. This dramatic revision of the estimated impact of urbanisation on temperatures in China does not change the global picture of temperature trends. There is plenty of evidence of global warming, not least from oceans far from urban influences. A review of recent studies published online in December by David Parker of the Met Office concludes that, even allowing for Jones's new data, "global near-surface temperature trends have not been greatly affected by urban warming trends."Keenan accepts that his allegations do not on their own change the global picture. But he told the Guardian: "My interest in all this arises from concern about research integrity, rather than about global warming per se. Jones knew there were serious problems with the Chinese research, yet continued to rely upon the research in his work, including allowing it to be cited in the IPCC report."Jones on HughesOne of Jones's earliest detractors was Warwick Hughes. Today Hughes, describes himself as a freelance earth scientist from Perth in Australia, and calls global warming a "fraudulent notion". Back in 1991, he was working for the Tasman Institute, a now defunct free-market thinktank based in Melbourne. He analysed a study of temperature trends in the southern hemisphere published by Jones five years before, and claimed that virtually all the warming found by Jones was a result of growing urban influences. Later, he investigated Jones's South African and Siberian data, claiming of the latter that "cities are the source of the apparent warming, which is not apparent at nearby small town or rural stations."The leaked emails reveal a civilised correspondence in 2000 between Hughes and Jones. Jones admitted that Hughes had seemingly found significant "anomalies" in his published data and asking for more details about what he had uncovered. But in 2004, when Hughes asked Jones for monthly temperature data from 3,000 weather stations described on the CRU website as "the foundation of Dr Jones' published papers", relations soured. After six months of delay, Jones told Hughes in February 2005 that some of the data was confidential but "even if WMO [the World Meteorological Organization] agrees, we will still not pass on the data. We have 25 or so years invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?"This was at least honest. In emails to his colleagues, Jones often said confidentiality agreements were a useful excuse. As he told Wigley in January 2005: "Data is covered by all the agreements we sign with people, so I will be hiding behind them." But for Hughes, he didn't bother with the pretence. The statement is damaging nonetheless, because the entire purpose of scientific replication is to try to find something wrong with existing data and theories. That is how science advances.Climate changeHacked climate science emailsClimate changeClimate change scepticismHackingUniversity of East AngliaEmailInternetData and computer securityFred Pearceguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds   guardian.co.uk   2010-02-09 Part 10: Search for hacker may lead police back to East Anglia's climate research unit Truth could turn out more embarrassing for university, but CRU 'dissidents', a corporate leak ahead of Copenhagen or bloggers intent on data 'liberation' are all still in the frame.In a unique experiment, The Guardian has published online the full manuscript of its major investigation into the climate science emails stolen from the University of East Anglia, which revealed apparent attempts to cover up flawed data; moves to prevent access to climate data; and to keep research from climate sceptics out of the scientific literature. As well as including new information about the emails, we will allow web users to annotate the manuscript to help us in our aim of creating the definitive account of the controversy. This is an attempt at a collaborative route to getting at the truth. We hope to approach that complete account by harnessing the expertise of people with a special knowledge of, or information about, the emails. We would like the protagonists on all sides of the debate to be involved, as well as people with expertise about the events and the science being described or more generally about the ethics of science. The only conditions are the comments abide by our community guidelines and add to the total knowledge or understanding of the events. The annotations - and the real name of the commenter - will be added to the manuscript, initially in private. The most insightful comments will then be added to a public version of the manuscript. We hope the process will be a form of peer review. If you have a contribution to make, please email climate.emails@guardian.co.uk. The anonymous commenting facility under each article will also be switched on so that anyone can contribute to the debate.Last November, the University of East Anglia called in the police to investigate what it said was a criminal theft of data. Under Superintendent Julian Gregory, a group of officers from the counter-terrorism squad and Scotland Yard's electronic crimes unit set to work. But it remains unclear if a crime was committed at all.Who are the likely hackers, or liberators, of the emails and other data, and how was it done? There were three stages to the release, and each may have been done by someone different.There was the assembly of the material. There were 4,660 files, including documents, raw data and computer code. Some of the data, for instance on tree rings, dates back to 1991. The 1,073 files containing emails (often several in a string) began in 1996 and ended on 12 November 2009. This can only be a small subset of the emails sent and received by CRU staff during that time. They mostly discuss work (no social memos or invitations to eat birthday cake in the lab) and they cover many scientific issues, mostly without rancour or hint of conspiracy. Most involve a handful of individuals at CRU: Phil Jones, Keith Briffa, Tim Osborn and Mike Hulme. Only 66 did not involve these four people. Also, most but not all were in discussion with foreign collaborators, particularly in the US.At first sight it looks like someone, probably with some knowledge of the issues and within CRU, collected the files for purposes unknown. Equally, the subset may be a result of some fairly crude sifting using a search routine, either before or after their release. But the university has confirmed that all the material was simply sitting in an archive on a single back-up CRU server, when it was copied.There was the release itself, either a deliberate leak from within the system, a hack from outside or a chance find, in which a file containing the material was retrieved from a part of the CRU server available (deliberately or inadvertently) to outsiders. At this point the distinction between a hack and happenstance may become blurred. The material may simply have been sitting in cyberspace. Likewise, the distinction between outside and inside release becomes blurred, since someone within might have directed an outsider to where the files lay.Finally there was the distribution. We know a CD of the files existed prior to its widespread release. But also that it was loaded remotely onto websites. In the latter case, we know it was done in a reasonably sophisticated manner, using one of the "open proxies" favoured by hackers to cover their traces, at various points using servers in Turkey, Russia, Malaysia and Saudi Arabia. The location of these servers is probably entirely opportunistic. Hackers can go online and choose from a range of open proxies round the world.Who might have been involved? Three groups of people have been suggested.• UEA dissidents. Disaffected people at the University of East Anglia, potentially with routine access to internal servers. Probably because they would be aware of the climate issues and might have clashed with Jones and colleagues, in either CRU or the university's environment department. People in the environment department said there were some grumblings and jealousies about CRU, but no outright hostility.Another possible source within UEA would be the Freedom of Information office, which administered requests under the Freedom of Information Act. There is no hint in the emails that the officials there were anything other than friends, nor any hints or concerns about leaks from there. But they were turning down the majority of the applications and and individual there may have felt this was inappropriate.Superficially there is a case that the hack must have been an "inside job", say computer experts. Charles Rotter, the moderator of the sceptic website WattsUpWithThat which "broke" the story by putting up the link to the emails on a Russian server, says: "It would take a hacker massive amounts of work to parse through decades of emails and files, but stealing or acquiring a single file is distinct possibility and does not require massive conspiracy... An ongoing process of internally collating this information for an FoI response is entirely consistent with what we find in the file."• A corporation or shadowy state entity perhaps anxious to disrupt the climate negotiations in Copenhagen. Here, the main evidence is the sophisticated of the hack and release, leaving no known traces. And the timing. While "climategate" did not have a direct effect on the Copenhagen negotiations, its timing just before that event ensured maximum publicity. And was also well-timed to influence discussions in the US Senate on a climate change bill. It would be consistent with the "stealth" agenda of using citizens groups to spearhead opposition to both healthcare reform and climate legislation during 2009. But I have seen nothing specifically linking corporate America to the hack.• Bloggers. Maybe those citizens groups hostile to climate change science acted alone. The first releases of the emails all involve the west coast group of bloggers. They included Steve Mosher, an "open-source software developer", Lucia Liljegren's blog The Blackboard, Jeff "id" Condon's The Air Vent and Warren Meyer's blog Much the biggest though was, Anthony Watts' WattsUpWithThat (WUWT), often run by its moderator, Charles Rotter. He is Mosher's San Francisco flatmate and a frequent figure in the story, usually known online as "Charles the moderator".Here is what is known about how it happened. Over the weekend beginning Friday 13 November, someone copied files from a back-up server at the university's Climatic Research Unit, which were then posted anonymously on the internet and various bloggers were alerted.On 17 November at 6.20am EST, someone tried to upload the zip file containing the CRU emails onto the RealClimate website via a Turkish server. They then created a draft post that read: "We feel the climate science is, in the current situation, too important to be kept under wraps. We hereby release a random selection of correspondence, codes and documents. Hopefully, it will give some insight into the science and the people behind it." It gave 20 samples from the emails and a link to download more.Gavin Schmidt, the Nasa scientist running the site, swiftly spotted it and took it down. Having read the files he alerted CRU. But even as he did that, a cryptic comment appeared on McIntyre's ClimateAudit site at 7.24am. "A miracle has happened," it said, providing a link via the RealCimate website. Nobody noticed this initially or tried to use the link, which in any case would not have worked.Meanwhile as dawn broke in California, a link to a Russian server holding the FOA2009.zip file was posted to WUWT, where Charles the moderator held it and alerted his boss the California weatherman Anthony Watts, awaiting approval to put it on the site. By that evening links were also posted to Jeff id's Air Vent blog and to a blog site called Climate Skeptic, run by Warren Meyer out of Phoenix, Arizona. Online journalist Patrick Courrielche, who has investigated the affair, says Jeff id, an aeronautical engineer, was out deer-hunting and didn't notice the upload till he got an email from Mosher pointing it out.McIntyre says Charles the moderator made backup CD copies of the file and gave one to his flatmate Mosher, who began poring over its contents. McIntyre says Mosher then called him. "I couldn't believe my ears. Mosh...asked me to confirm emails attributed to me - which I did. They didn't give me the email link." This version of events is consistent with Mosher's claim, in a blog last week (12th) that "on the morning of Nov 19th two people held the file (that I know of). Me on a CD and a blog moderator who was holding the FOIA comment. Embargoed at the request of the blog owner... Did I download the files? No. How did you [I] get them? On a CD. Who gave them to you? Can't say."On 19 November McIntyre received an email from a regular correspondent to his blog site from the University of East Anglia. This was the head of the university isotope analysis unit, Paul Dennis, a public advocate of greater data freedom whose own researches on ice core data leave him unimpressed by more alarming speculation about climate change. Dennis has since been interviewed by police in connection with the alleged hack.On the same day, Dennis told McIntyre that CRU people were trying to secure their servers, following the discovery of a leak. This gave the bloggers the evidence they needed that the material they had was genuine.Mosher says that he independently got confirmation. "I called people mentioned in the mails. I read them mails. The actual person inside CRU had no clue what this message meant to me. He passed me no information, just told me what I needed to know." Whatever that was, it proved they were genuine.Courrielche writes: "Shortly after confirming the authenticity of the Climategate files, Mosher says he saw a link to the files on the [Jeff id's] Air Vent site. 'My first reaction was relief. I didn't want to be the only person who had those files.'" Nobody else seems to have noticed. But having certified the veracity of the file, Mosher got to work.He posted a comment to Lucia's blog, the Blackboard, pointing to the Air Vent site. Lucia then downloaded the files, and Mosher started posting emails on her site, one by one. Within minutes Gavin Schmidt was sending Lucia emails warming that this could be illegal. But by now Mosher was posting emails one by one onto McIntyre's ClimateAudit site, too. And half an hour later Watts, who was on his way back from Europe, gave Charles the administrator permission to release the material onto his site. Since WUWT gets much more traffic than the others, this "broke" the story.McIntyre says: "To the best of my knowledge, neither Mosh nor CTM [Charles the moderator] had (or has) the faintest idea of who assembled and released the dossier – other than speculations from their experience with computers. Nor do I. I talked to both Mosh and CTM on the late evening of 17th, when they were in the first throes of reading the emails. There is no doubt in my mind that they knew nothing of the source other than CTM knowing the Russian link."McIntyre insists he had no role in the hack. "Like many other readers of the various sites, I followed the pointers to Jeff id's site and downloaded the files on the afternoon of Nov 19. I was unprepared for what I encountered. Because I was intimately familiar with the context of so many of the emails, they were that much more shocking to me." After browsing, he says, he went off to play squash.Is it that simple? Some point to a previous pattern that is strikingly similar to what happened in November. On 24 July, McIntyre says he received a big FOI refusal from CRU. He announced it on his web site that day. The next day McIntyre announced that he had got a mass of data. In November, there was a big FOI refusal, and again within days the "FOIA2009.zip" files was all over the web.McIntyre was behind the first leak, though he initially was coy about it, talking about a "mole". But he emphatically denies being behind the second.McIntyre is generally meticulous, straightforward and consistent in what he says. But over the July incident, his description of events is opaque. He headlined his short article "A mole". And said: "Folks, guess what. I'm now in possession of a CRU version giving data for every station in their station list." But he said no more about a source in the item. The next day, the 28th, he announced the mole had been found. Well, not quite. He said that "Late yesterday I learned that the Met Office/CRU had identified the mole. They are now aware that there has in fact been a breach of security. They have confirmed that I am in fact in possession of CRU temperature data..." He did now say who his source of information was.Then he added "Thus far, the only actions by either the Met Office or CRU appear to have been a concerted and prompt effort to cover up the breach of security by attempting to eradicate all traces of the mole's activities. My guess is that they will not make the slightest effort to discipline the mole."This was a tease. There was no human "mole" in the sense of someone deliberately leaking material. Just a security breach. The "mole", he now says, was simply the person who "put the station on the CRU server." Some bloggers have mischievously claimed that the mole must have been Jones himself.McIntyre later said that "I downloaded from the public CRU ftp site... No hacking was involved." Nature magazine in August described what happened thus. "A couple of weeks ago it became clear that McIntyre had retrieved some of the HadCRU data from a server on the CRU website. On realizing this, CRU immediately removed the data... it transpired that these data were on an anonymous ftp server intended for the Met Office Hadley Centre project partners only, and were not for public use."A number of people claim to have stumbled on non-public files on the UEA server in the months before the hack. David Holland, a British engineer and amateur climate sceptic, in December 2008 notified the university that "the search engine on your home page is broken and falling through to a directory." The university thanked him for letting them know and said it was caused by a "misconfiguration of the webserver". Holland says he didn't download or alter anything since he knew it could be traced back to his computer.Others were not so fastidious. In November 2009, Charles the moderator blogged that "one day in late July I discovered they had left station data versions from 2003 and 1996 on their server — without web page links but accessible all the same. They were stale versions of the requested data... just sitting in cyberspace waiting for someone to download."After the July incident, CRU clearly tried to batten down the hatches. But perhaps they failed, either through technical failings or because someone inside was subverting the efforts.So what actually happened in November? Charles the moderator seems to have been closer to the perpetrator than anyone. Four days after the hack went public, he advanced his theory. "In the past I have worked at organizations where the computer network grew organically in a disorganized fashion. Security policies often fail as users take advantage of shortcuts... one of these is to share files using an ftp server.... This can lead to unintentional sharing with the rest of the Internet as noted in the [July] Phil Jones, CRU mole, example. Often the ftp server may also be the organization's external web server. When this occurs, if the organization does not lock down their network thoroughly, the security breaches which could happen by accident are far more likely to occur."So, he argues, "they shared [the file] with others by putting it in an ftp directory which was on the same CPU as the external webserver, or even worse, was on a shared driver somewhere to which the webserver had permissions to access. In other words, if you knew where to look, it was publicly available. Then along come our 'hackers' who happen to find it, download it, and the rest is history."Charles the moderator insists this is just a theory. But he is one of the few people who might be in a position to know if it is the truth of what happened. And if his theory is true, then the university will be left looking rather foolish. There will be no one to arrest.Climate changeClimate changeHacked climate science emailsUniversity of East AngliaHackingEmailInternetData and computer securityFred Pearceguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds   guardian.co.uk   2010-02-09 Part six: Emails reveal strenuous efforts by climate scientists to 'censor' their critics Peer review has been put under strain by conflicts of interest that would not be allowed in most professionsIn a unique experiment, The Guardian has published online the full manuscript of its major investigation into the climate science emails stolen from the University of East Anglia, which revealed apparent attempts to cover up flawed data; moves to prevent access to climate data; and to keep research from climate sceptics out of the scientific literature. As well as including new information about the emails, we will allow web users to annotate the manuscript to help us in our aim of creating the definitive account of the controversy. This is an attempt at a collaborative route to getting at the truth. We hope to approach that complete account by harnessing the expertise of people with a special knowledge of, or information about, the emails. We would like the protagonists on all sides of the debate to be involved, as well as people with expertise about the events and the science being described or more generally about the ethics of science. The only conditions are the comments abide by our community guidelines and add to the total knowledge or understanding of the events. The annotations - and the real name of the commenter - will be added to the manuscript, initially in private. The most insightful comments will then be added to a public version of the manuscript. We hope the process will be a form of peer review. If you have a contribution to make, please email climate.emails@guardian.co.uk. The anonymous commenting facility under each article will also be switched on so that anyone can contribute to the debate.Scientists sometimes like to portray what they do as divorced from the everyday jealousies, rivalries and tribalism of human relationships. What makes science special is that data and results that can be replicated are what matters and the scientific truth will out in the end.But a close reading of the emails hacked from the University of East Anglia in November exposes the real process of everyday science in lurid detail.Many of the emails reveal strenuous efforts by the mainstream climate scientists to do what outside observers would regard as censoring their critics. And the correspondence raises awkward questions about the effectiveness of peer-review - the supposed gold standard of scientific merit - and the operation of the UN's top climate body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).The scientists involved disagree. They say they were engaged not in suppressing dissent but in upholding scientific standards by keeping bad science out of peer-reviewed journals. Either way, when passing judgment on papers that directly attack their own work, they were mired in conflicts of interest that would not be allowed in most professions.The cornerstone of maintaining the quality of scientific papers is the peer review system. Under this, papers submitted to scientific journals are reviewed anonymously by experts in the field. Conducting reviews is seen as part of the job for academics, who are generally not paid for the work.The papers are normally sent back to the authors for improvement and only published when the reviewers give their approval. But the system relies on trust, especially if editors send papers to reviewers whose own work in being criticised in the paper. It also relies on anonymity, so reviewers can give candid opinions.Cracks in the system have been obvious for years. Yesterday it emerged that 14 leading researchers in a different field - stem cell research - have written an open letter to journal editors to highlight their dissatisfaction with the process. They allege that a small scientific clique is using peer review to block papers from other researchers. Many will see a similar pattern in the emails from UEA's Climatic Research Unit, which brutally expose what happens behind the scenes of peer review and how a chance meeting at a barbeque years earlier had led to one journal editor being suspected of being in the "greenhouse sceptics camp".The head of the CRU, Professor Phil Jones, as a top expert in his field, was regularly asked to review papers and he sometimes wrote critical reviews that might have had the effect of blackballed papers criticising his work. Here is how it worked in one case.A key component in the story of 20th century warming is data from sparse weather stations in Siberia. This huge area appears to have seen exceptional warming of up to 2C in the past century. But in such a remote region, actual data is sparse. So how reliable is that data, and do scientists interpret it correctly?In March 2004, Jones wrote to Professor Michael Mann, a leading climate scienitst at Pennsylvania State University saying that he had "recently rejected two papers [one for the Journal of Geophysical Research and one for Geophysical Research Letters] from people saying CRU has it wrong over Siberia. Went to town in both reviews, hopefully successfully. If either appears I will be very surprised." He did not specify which papers he had reviewed, nor what his grounds for rejecting them were. But the Guardian has established that one was probably from Lars Kamel a Swedish astrophysicist formerly of the University of Uppsala. It is the only paper published on the topic in the journal — or indeed anywhere else — that year.Kamel analysed the temperature records from weather stations in part of southern Siberia, around Lake Baikal. He claimed to find much less warming than Jones, despite analysing much the same data. Kamel told the Guardian: "Siberia is a test case, because it is supposed to be the land area with most warming in the 20th century." The finding sounded important, but his paper was rejected by Geophysical Research Letters (GRL) that year.Kamel was leaving academic science and never tried to publish it elsewhere. But the draft seen by the Guardian asserts that the difference between his findings on Siberia temperatures and that of Jones is "probably because the CRU compilation contains too little correction for urban warming." He does not, however, justify that conclusion with any detailed analysis.Kamel says he no longer has a copy of the anonymous referee judgments on the paper, so we don't know why it was rejected. The paper could be criticised for being slight and for not revealing details about its methods of analysis. A reviewer such as Jones would certainly have been aware of Kamel's views about mainstream climate research, which he had called "pseudo-science". He would also have known that its publication in a journal like GRL would have attracted the attention of professional climate sceptics. Nonetheless, the paper raised important questions about the quality of CRU's Siberian data, and was a rare example of someone trying to replicate the Jones's analysis On those grounds alone, some would have recommended its publication.Kamel's paper admits the discrepancy "does not necessarily mean the CRU surface record for the entire globe is in error." But it argues that the result suggests it "should be checked in more regions and even globally." Phil Jones was not able to comment on the incident.Critics of Jones such as the prominent scpetical Stephen McIntyre, who runs the Climate Audit blog have long accused him of preventing critical research from having an airing. McIntyre wrote on his web site in December: "CRU's policies of obstructing critical articles in the peer-reviewed literature and withholding data from critics have unfortunately placed issues into play that might otherwise have been settled long ago." He also says obstructing publication undermine claims that all is well in scientific peer review.Dr Myles Allen a climate modeller at the University of Oxford and Prof Hans von Storch, a climate scientist at the Institute for Coastal Research, in Geesthacht, Germany signed a joint column in Nature when the email hacking story broke, in which they said that "no grounds have arisen to doubt the validity of the thermometer-based temperature record since it began in about 1850." But that argument is harder to make if such evidence, flawed though it might be, is actively being kept out of the journals.In another email exchange CRU scientist Dr Keith Briffa initiates what looks like an attempt to have a paper rejected. In June 2003, as an editor of an unnamed journal, Briffa emailed fellow tree-ring researcher Edward Cook, a researcher at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in New York, saying "Confidentially I now need a hard and if required extensive case for rejecting [an unnamed paper] – to support Dave Stahle's and really as soon as you can. Please." Stahle is a tree-ring professor from the University of Arkansas. This request appears to subvert the convention that reviewers should be both independent and anonymous.Cook replied later that day: "OK, today. Promise. Now, something to ask from you." The favour was to provide some data to help Cook review a paper that attacked his own tree-ring work. "If published as is, this paper could really do some damage," he said. "It won't be easy to dismiss out of hand as the math appears to be correct theoretically, but it suffers from the classic problem of pointing out theoretical deficiencies, without showing that their improved [inverse regression] method is actually better in a practical sense."Briffa was unable to comment. Cook told the Guardian: "These emails are from a long time ago and the details are not terribly fresh in my mind."Jones did not restrict his harsh criticism of papers he saw as flawed to pre-publication reviews. He and Mann also had a reputation for harsh criticism of journals that published papers they disagreed with.In March 2003, Mann discussed encouraging colleagues to "no longer submit [papers] to, or cite papers in" Climate Research. He was angry about that journal's publication of a series of sceptical papers "that couldn't get published in a reputable journal", according to Mann. His anger at the journal had evidently been building for some time, but was focussed in 2003 on a paper published in January that year and written by Harvard astrophysicists Willie Soon and Sally Balunias. The pair claimed that Mann's famous hockey stick graph of global temperatures over the last thousand years was wrong. After analysing 240 studies of past temperatures from tree rings and other sources, they said "the 20th century is neither the warmest century over the last 1000 years, nor is it the most extreme". It could have been warmer a thousand years before, they suggested.Harvard press-released the paper under the headline "20th century climate not so hot", which would have pleased lobbyists against the climate change consensus from the American Petroleum Institute and George C Marshall Institute, both of which had helped pay for the research.Mann told me at the time the paper was "absurd, almost laughable". He said Soon and Balunias made no attempt in the paper to show whether the warmth they found at different places and times round the world in past eras were contemporaneous in the way current global warming is. If they were just one-off scattered warm events they did not demonstrate any kind of warm era at all. Soon did not respond to Guardian Requests to discuss the paper.The emails show Mann debating with others what he should do. In March 2003, he told Jones: "I believed our only choice was to ignore this paper. They've already achieved what they wanted - the claim of a peer-reviewed paper. There is nothing we can do about that now, but the last thing we want to do is bring attention to this paper."But Jones told Mann: "I think the skeptics will use this paper to their own ends and it will set [the field of paleoclimate research] back a number of years if it goes unchallenged." He was right. The Soon and Balunias paper was later read into the Senate record and taken up by the Bush administration, which attempted to get it cited in a report from the Environmental Protection Agency against the wishes of the report's authors.Persuaded that the paper could not be ignored, Mann assembled a group of colleagues to review it. The group included regular CRU emailers Jones, Dr Keith Briffa, Dr Tom Wigley and Dr Kevin Trenberth. They sent their findings to the journal's editorial board, arguing that Soon's study was little more than anecdote. It had cherry-picked data showing warm periods in different places over several centuries and had provided no evidence that they demonstrated any overall warming of the kind seen in the 20th century.The emails reveal that when the journal failed to disown the paper, the scientists figured a "coup" had taken place, and that one editor in particular, a New Zealander called Chris de Freitas, was fast-tracking sceptical papers onto its pages. Mann saw an irony in what had happened. "This was the danger of always criticising the sceptics for not publishing in the peer-reviewed literature. Obviously, they found a solution to that -- take over a journal!"But Mann had a solution. "I think we have to stop considering Climate Research as a legitimate peer-reviewed journal. Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues... to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal. We would also need to consider what we tell or request of our more reasonable colleagues who currently sit on the editorial board."Was this improper pressure? Bloggers responding to the leaking of these emails believe so. Mann denies wanting to "stifle legitimate sceptical views". He maintains that he merely wanted to uphold scientific standards. "Please understand the context of this," he told The Guardian after the scandal broke. "This was in response to a very specific, particularly egregious incident in which one editor of the journal was letting in a paper that clearly did not meet the standards of quality for the journal."De Freitas defends his actions during the incident. "I was never ever found to have done anything wrong, even in rumpus over the Soon and Balunias paper. All accusations against me were fully investigated and my performance as editor of this journal was shown to be flawless."But many on the ten-man editorial board agreed with Mann. They concluded that their colleague de Freitas had ignored the anonymous advice of four reviewers to reject the paper. There was a revolt. Their chief editor von Storch wrote an editorial saying the Soon paper shouldn't have appeared because of "severe methodological flaws". After their publisher Otto Kinne refused to publish the editorial, von Storch and four other board members resigned in protest. Subsequently Kinne himself admitted that publication had been an error and promised to strengthen the peer-review process. Mann had won his argument.Sceptical climatologist and Cato Institute fellow Pat Michaels alleged in the Wall Street Journal in December last year that the resignations by von Storch and his colleagues were a counter-coup initiated by Mann and Jones. This is vehemently denied by von Storch. While one of the editors who resigned was a colleague of Jones at CRU, von Storch had a track record of independence. If anything, he was regarded as a moderate sceptic. Certainly, he had annoyed both mainstream climate scientists and sceptics.Also writing in the Wall Street Journal in December, he said: "I am in the pocket of neither Exxon nor Greenpeace, and for this I come under fire from both sides – the sceptics and alarmists – who have fiercely opposing views but are otherwise siblings in their methods and contempt.... I left the post [as chief editor of Climate Research] with no outside pressure, because of insufficient quality control on a bad paper – a sceptic's paper, at that."The bad blood over this paper lingered. A year later in July 2004, Jones wrote an email to Mann about two papers recently published in Climate Research - the Soon and Balunias paper and another he identified as by "MM". This was almost certainly a paper from Canadian economist Ross McKitrick and Michaels that returned to an old sceptics' theme. It claimed to find urbanisation dominating global warming trends on land. Jones called it "garbage". More damagingly, he added in an email to Mann with the subject line "HIGHLY CONFIDENTIAL"."I can't see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin [TRENBERTH] and I will keep them out somehow - even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!"This has, rightly, become one of the most famous of the emails. And for once, it means what it seems to mean. Jones and Trenberth, of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, had recently become joint lead authors for a key chapter in the next IPCC assessment report, called AR4. They had considerable power over what went into those chapters, and to have ruled them out in such a manner would have been a clear abuse of the IPCC process.Today, neither man attempts to deny that Jones's promise to keep the papers out was a serious error of judgment. Trenberth told the Guardian: "I had no role in this whatsoever. I did not make and was not complicit in that statement of Phil's. I am a veteran of three other IPCC assessments. I am well aware that we do not keep any papers out, and none were kept out. We assessed everything [though] we cannot possibly refer to all literature... Both of the papers referred to were in fact cited and discussed in the IPCC."In an additional statement agreed with Jones, he said: "AR4 was the first time Jones was on the writing team of an IPCC assessment. The comment was naive and sent before he understood the process." Some will not be content with that. The AR4 was indeed the first in which Jones had been a lead author, responsible for the content of a whole chapter. But Jones had been a contributing author to IPCC assessment reports for more than a decade and should have been aware of the rules.Climate Research is a fairly minor journal. Not so Geophysical Research Letters, published by the august American Geophysical Union (AGU). But when it began publishing what Mann, Wigley, Jones and others regarded as poor-quality sceptical papers, they again responded angrily. GRL provided a home for one of a series of papers by McIntyre and McKitrick challenging the statistical methods used in the hockey stick analysis. When Mann's complaints to the journal were rebuffed, he wrote to colleagues in January 2005: "Apparently the contrarians now have an 'in' with GRL."Mann had checked out the editor responsible for overseeing the papers , a Yale chemical engineer called James Saiers, and noted his "prior connection" with the same department at the University of Virginia, where sceptic Pat Michaels worked. He added, "we now know" how various other sceptically tinged papers had got into GRL. Wigley appeared to agree. "This is truly awful," he said, adding that if Mann could find "If you think that Saiers is in the greenhouse skeptics camp, then, if we can find documentary evidence of this, we could go through official AGU channels to get him ousted."A year after the row erupted, in 2006, Saiers gave up the GRL post. Sceptics have claimed that this was due to pressure from Wigley, Mann and others. Saiers says his three-year term was up. "My departure had nothing to do with attempts by Wigley or anyone else to have me sacked," he told the Guardian. "Nor was I censured, as I have seen suggested on a blog posting written by McKitrick."As for Mann's allegation, Saiers does not remember ever talking to Michaels "though I did attend a barbecue at his home back in the early 1990s. Wigley and Mann were too keen to conclude that I was in league with the climate-change sceptics. This kerfuffle could have been avoided if the parties involved would have done more to control their imaginations."Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)Climate changeClimate changeClimate change scepticismHackingUniversity of East AngliaEmailInternetData and computer securityFred Pearceguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds   guardian.co.uk   2010-02-09 Part nine: Climate scientists withheld Yamal data despite warnings from senior colleagues Ancient trees dragged from frozen Siberian bogs do not undermine climate science, despite what the sceptics sayIn a unique experiment, The Guardian has published online the full manuscript of its major investigation into the climate science emails stolen from the University of East Anglia, which revealed apparent attempts to cover up flawed data; moves to prevent access to climate data; and to keep research from climate sceptics out of the scientific literature. As well as including new information about the emails, we will allow web users to annotate the manuscript to help us in our aim of creating the definitive account of the controversy. This is an attempt at a collaborative route to getting at the truth. We hope to approach that complete account by harnessing the expertise of people with a special knowledge of, or information about, the emails. We would like the protagonists on all sides of the debate to be involved, as well as people with expertise about the events and the science being described or more generally about the ethics of science. The only conditions are the comments abide by our community guidelines and add to the total knowledge or understanding of the events. The annotations - and the real name of the commenter - will be added to the manuscript, initially in private. The most insightful comments will then be added to a public version of the manuscript. We hope the process will be a form of peer review. If you have a contribution to make, please email climate.emails@guardian.co.uk. The anonymous commenting facility under each article will also be switched on so that anyone can contribute to the debate.It is hard to believe that tree trunks dragged from frozen bogs in Siberia could undermine the argument about man-made climate change. But that is the claim that has been made by sceptics in recent months.The claim is wide of the mark, but in the 1,073 emails stolen from the University of East Anglia last November the row over what the trees tell us about climate change is played out in detail. The scientists are shown clinging to their data to prevent it getting into the hands of sceptics even as at least one colleague advised openness to avoid the charge that "bogus science" was being hidden.Measuring the width of annual growth rings in trees is a sensitive measure of temperatures. And the secrets of those Siberian trees, some of them thousands of years old, have assumed an important place in the reconstruction of past temperatures for the whole planet.Steve McIntyre, a Canadian former minerals prospector and climate sceptic who has analysed the data, suggests that one tree, known as YAD06, could be "the most influential tree in the world".In the hacked emails from the Climatic Research Unit at UEA, one word looms large: Yamal. The first and last emails and more than a hundred in between include it. When I phoned Prof Phil Jones, the director of CRU, on the day the emails were published online, he said: "It's about Yamal, I think."On 6 March 1996, a Russian scientist, Stepan Shiyatov, contacted Dr Keith Briffa, CRU's top tree-ring researcher. Shiyatov wanted money to take a helicopter to measure tree rings in timber hauled from the permafrost of the Yamal peninsula on the Arctic ocean's shores.Briffa was keen, and he published papers on what those tree rings showed. But by late last year, in the final emails, he is mired in allegations of fraud, and the Yamal data had become a virus infecting past climate reconstructions.The Yamal data turned up in many studies of global temperature that were cited by the UN's top climate science body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, in a report published in 2007, where the relevant section was authored by Briffa. It supported the conclusion that temperatures followed a "hockey stick" shape, with stable temperatures for a thousand years, then sharp 20th-century warming.By then, McIntyre was on the trail. He claimed that Briffa had not used all the tree ring data available, only a subset. Briffa said there were technical reasons for that. But McIntyre complained Briffa hadn't spelled out those reasons clearly.In 2008, when Briffa published some data after a long delay, McIntyre charged that Briffa's analysis of the most recent warming was based on just 12 trees: the "Yamal-12". McIntyre said this was too small a sample to draw any conclusions, and claimed if the analysis was redone with other tree ring data from the region, the hockey stick shape disappeared.It looked like a stalemate. But last year the bloggers moved in. Ross Kaminsky, a columnist on American Spectator, claimed: "One implication, supported by Briffa's near decade-long refusal to share his data, is that he cherry-picked the dataset that supported the conclusion he wanted to find."Worse was the charge that other scientists had used the suspect Yamal data in their reconstructions of past climate. Ross McKitrick, a climate sceptic and environmental economist at Canada's University of Guelph, wrote that they are "the key ingredient in most of the studies that have been invoked to support the hockey stick". The Daily Telegraph blogger James Delingpole went even further in an article headlined: "How the global warming industry is based on one MASSIVE lie."Briffa denies any wrongdoing. He said "we would never select or manipulate data in order to arrive at some preconceived or unrepresentative result". And there is nothing in the emails or anywhere else to suggest that isn't true. In September last year Briffa put out a statement on the CRU website defending his research. "We do not select tree-core samples based on comparison with climate data. Chronologies are constructed independently and are subsequently compared with climate data to measure the association and quantify the reliability of using the tree-ring data as a proxy for temperature variations."One British colleague of Briffa wrote to me last month: "Why should Briffa – one of the world leaders in this field – have to explain himself to people … who are in fact amateurs?"But others believe Briffa has a duty to explain himself. In October last year, Briffa's old boss at CRU, Tom Wigley, said in an email to Briffa's current boss, Phil Jones: "Keith does seem to have got himself into a mess." Wigley felt Briffa had not answered McIntyre's charges fully. "How does Keith explain the McIntyre plot that compares Yamal-12 with Yamal-all? And how does he explain the apparent 'selection' of the less well-replicated chronology rather than the later (better replicated) chronology? …"The trouble is that withholding data looks like hiding something, and hiding something means (in some eyes) that it is bogus science that is being hidden."The Yamal data has become important for scientists trying to analyse past climates. But it is not true that the Yamal rings are omnipresent in climate reconstructions. They were not in the data that produced the "hockey stick" graphs. According to Jones, of the 12 reconstructions of temperatures over the past 1,000 years used in the last IPCC assessment, only three included Yamal data. Other reconstructions were based on retreating glaciers, or water temperatures in boreholes, or core sunk into ice sheets – but they too reproduce a hockey stick shape.Even McIntyre denounces the more vocal sceptics with their conspiracy theories. In an apparent response to a challenge from the climate scientists' website RealClimate, he wrote to the American Spectator last October: "While there is much to criticise in the handling of this [Yamal] data, the results do not in any way show that AGW [anthropogenic global warming] is a 'fraud', nor that this particular study was a 'fraud'. There are many serious scientists who are honestly concerned about AGW and your commentary … is unfair to them." Sadly, when checked last week, there was no sign of this comment on the magazine website, though the magazine had found room for another feature on "The great hoax" of climate change.Climate changeClimate changeClimate change scepticismUniversity of East AngliaHackingEmailInternetData and computer securityFred Pearceguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds   guardian.co.uk   2010-02-09 Part eight: Climate scientists contradicted spirit of openness by rejecting information requests Hacked emails reveal systematic attempts to block requests from sceptics — and deep frustration at anti-global warming agendaIn a unique experiment, The Guardian has published online the full manuscript of its major investigation into the climate science emails stolen from the University of East Anglia, which revealed apparent attempts to cover up flawed data; moves to prevent access to climate data; and to keep research from climate sceptics out of the scientific literature. As well as including new information about the emails, we will allow web users to annotate the manuscript to help us in our aim of creating the definitive account of the controversy. This is an attempt at a collaborative route to getting at the truth. We hope to approach that complete account by harnessing the expertise of people with a special knowledge of, or information about, the emails. We would like the protagonists on all sides of the debate to be involved, as well as people with expertise about the events and the science being described or more generally about the ethics of science. The only conditions are the comments abide by our community guidelines and add to the total knowledge or understanding of the events. The annotations - and the real name of the commenter - will be added to the manuscript, initially in private. The most insightful comments will then be added to a public version of the manuscript. We hope the process will be a form of peer review. If you have a contribution to make, please email climate.emails@guardian.co.uk. The anonymous commenting facility under each article will also be switched on so that anyone can contribute to the debate.Few scientists realised that freedom of ­information laws being introduced in ­Britain, the US and elsewhere would impinge strongly on their work. But one who did was Dr Phil Jones, the man at the centre of the fallout from the emails stolen from the ­University of East Anglia. Thanks to his brushes with climate ­sceptics, he knew that the laws would put new ­powers in their hands.The emails reveal repeated and ­systematic attempts by him and his ­colleagues to block FoI requests from climate sceptics who wanted access to emails, documents and data. These moves were not only contrary to the spirit of ­scientific openness, but according to the government body that administers the FoI legislation were "not dealt with as they should have been under the legislation".But the emails also reveal deep and understandable frustration among the scientists at the huge amount of time and energy they were being asked to give up to deal with the requests. This was particularly galling as the sceptics making the requests were, in the scientists' eyes, more interested in picking holes in their analyses to suit an anti-global warming agenda than advancing human knowledge.Jones foresaw that his arch-inquisitor, the Canadian former minerals ­prospector and editor of the sceptic blog Climate Audit, Steve McIntyre, would be a thorn in his side. As long ago as 2005, before the incoming legislation had been tested in Britain, Jones was laying out his uncompromising views on protecting "his" data. In a note to the prominent US climate scientist Michael Mann in February that year, he noted that "the two MMs", McIntyre and his co-author the Canadian environmental economist Ross McKitrick, "have been after the CRU station data for years. If they ever hear there is a Freedom of Information Act now in the UK, I think I'll delete the file rather than send to anyone."Later, in 2007, Jones told his Chinese-American colleague Wei-Chyung Wang and Thomas Karl, director of the US government's National Climate Data Centre: "Think I've managed to persuade UEA to ignore all further FoI requests if the people have anything to do with Climate Audit." In December 2008 he wrote in an email to Ben Santer at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California: "When the FoI requests began here, the FoI person said we had to abide by the requests. It took a couple of half-hour sessions – one at a screen – to convince them otherwise, showing them what CA [Climate Audit, McIntyre's website] was all about. Once they became aware of the type of people we were dealing with, everyone at UEA … became very supportive."By and large, the records show, these requests were turned down. Of 105 requests concerning the Climatic Research Unit up to December 2009, the university refused 77, accepted six in part, had 11 outstanding, and had only 10 released in full. One was withdrawn.In May 2008 CRU received an FoI request from David Holland, an electrical engineer from Northampton, for all emails sent and received by its tree-ring specialist, Keith Briffa, relating to the IPCC fourth assessment of climate science (AR4)published the year before. The IPCC archives its formal review exchanges and puts that material online but Holland wanted to see emails between scientists about IPCC text conducted ­outside that process. Subsequent CRU emails discussed ways of avoiding ­complying with the request.They decided some emails had not come via IPCC and could be ignored as ­outside the terms of the request, for instance. Jones noted: "If only Holland knew how the process really worked!!"By 2008 the scientists had become used to dealing with, and usually rebuffing, requests for data. But this demand for their emails heightened their alarm. Days after receiving the request, Jones sent one of the most damaging emails to emerge from the leak. He asked Mann: "Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith [Briffa] re AR4? Keith will do likewise. Can you also email Gene [Eugene Wahl, a paleoclimatologist at the National Centre for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado] and get him to do the same … we will be getting Caspar [Ammann also from NCAR] to do the same."This seems to have been the email that persuaded the UK's Information ­Commissioner's Office (ICO) – the body that administers the FoI act – its handling of requests was not correct. The deputy information commissioner, Graham Smith, put out a statement last week which said: "The emails which are now public reveal that Mr Holland's requests under the Freedom of Information Act were not dealt with as they should have been under the legislation. Section 77 of the Freedom of Information Act makes it an offence for public authorities to act so as to prevent intentionally the disclosure of requested information." He said the ICO could not take action over the apparent breach because it occurred more than six months ago.There was more in a similar vein. That month Jones also wrote to Bradley, saying: "You can delete this attachment [probably Holland's FoI request] if you want. Keep this quiet also but this is the person who is putting FoI requests for all emails Keith and Tim have written and received re Ch 6 of AR4. We think we've found a way around this."The emailers took the view that, ­whatever the status of data, personal emails were sacrosanct. As Briffa told Ammann a month later: "Our private inter-collegial discussion is just that – PRIVATE … submitting to these demands undermines the wider scientific ­expectation of personal confidentiality … none of us should submit to these requests."Holland says the emails reveal "a deliberate attempt to destroy info which has been properly requested".One device for withholding the IPCC emails, revealed in the leaked emails, was to say that IPCC documents were not covered by British law. The University of East Anglia now says that no emails were deleted after this exchange. But seven months later, in December 2008, Jones revealed in an email to Santer discussing McIntyre: "If he pays £10 (which he hasn't yet) I am supposed to go through my emails and he can get anything I've written about him. About two months ago I deleted loads of emails, so have very little – if anything at all."Mass deletionIt is not clear that this mass deletion (if indeed it happened) was done to avoid FoI requests. Jones has been quoted elsewhere as saying: "We haven't deleted any emails. I delete my own personal emails a year at a time regardless of subject as I have too many, but the university still has the emails." Indeed so, as it transpired.In any case, the ICO apparently advised UEA that some requests for information did not have to be granted. Jones wrote to the Nasa climatologist Gavin Schmidt in August 2008: "All our FoI officers have been in discussions and are now using the same exceptions not to respond – advice they got from the information commissioner."During 2008 the debate among the emailers grew about coping with the rising tide of FoI requests. Most saw them as a threat to their work – not because they would uncover fraud, but because they took up their time.Schmidt, one of the hosts of the RealClimate website, wrote consolingly to Santer in December 2008 about dealing with McIntyre: "There are two very different things going on here. One is technical and related to the actual science … the second is political. The second is the issue here … whatever you say, it will still be presented as you hiding data. The contrarians have found that there is actually no limit to what they can ask people for (raw data, intermediate steps, additional calculations, residuals, sensitivity calculations, all the code, a workable version of the code on any platform etc) and like Somali pirates they have found that once someone has paid up, they can always shake them down again."Others wanted to give some ground. The Stanford University climatologist Dr Stephen Schneider, who runs the journal Climate Change, wrote a round-robin to scientists in January 2009 in which he agreed that "this continuing pattern of harassment … in the name of due diligence is in my view an attempt to create a fishing expedition to find minor glitches or unexplained bits of code – which exist in nearly all our kinds of complex work – and then assert that the entire result is thus suspect."But Schneider argued that researchers should give enough data and information on their sources and methods so that those "who are scientifically capable can do their own brand of replication work, but that does not extend to personal computer codes with all their undocumented sub-routines etc."Even so, he felt "it would be odious requirement [sic] to have scientists document every line of [computer] code so outsiders could just apply them instantly. Not only is this an intellectual property issue, but it would dramatically reduce our productivity since we are not in the business of producing software products for general consumption and have no resources to do so." Presciently, he added: "Good luck with this, and expect more of it as we get closer to international climate policy actions. We are witnessing the 'contrarian battle of the bulge' now and expect that all weapons will be used."Nightmare prospectIn retrospect, it was clear that things were coming to a head by 2009. Freedom of information requests were piling up. The scientists were increasingly angered at how long it was taking to fend them off. Let alone what they regarded as the nightmare prospect of having to deliver the data being requested. And, no doubt, the further scientific questions that would arise once the sceptics dug their teeth into the data. As the scientists resisted, anger grew among their critics.At the end of August 2009, an amateur sceptic called Rupert Wyndham spotted that earlier in the year Jones had been made a fellow of the American Geophysical Union, which published many of his papers. He assembled an international group of sceptics from 10 countries and wrote to the AGU's top atmospheric scientist, Alan Robock, to complain. He accused Jones of a range of data crimes. "Honouring a man who consistently breaches the fundamental protocols of scientific method casts a stain on the reputation of the AGU," they wrote. Signatories included Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen, editor of Energy and Environment, Jones's least favourite journal, and Martin Durkin, the British TV producer notorious for his programme The Great Global Warming Swindle.Meanwhile stories began to circulate outside the university about how CRU was resisting legitimate requests from McIntyre. In early July 2009, when I asked Jones about this, he told me: "McIntyre has no interest in deriving his own global temperature series. He just wants to pick holes in those who do. He wants not only the original station data, but details of all the adjustments we have made over the years. It's just time-wasting." But Jones didn't know what was about to hit him.The day after the rejection of his demand for the station data, McIntyre announced that a "mole" had sent him a full set of the station data. He published some, from Lund in Sweden between 1753 and 1773 – "sensitive information indeed", he noted on his Climate Audit blog. The following day he claimed on the blog that the mole had been identified. Later McIntyre admitted there was no mole and he had simply found the material. According to a subsequent article in Nature, McIntyre had stumbled on "ftp" files containing station data that was intended to be shared only by CRU's partners at the Met Office. CRU immediately removed the data from its website, leading to charges from McIntyre that they were engaged in a "purge".Meanwhile, according to Nature's climate blogger Olive Heffernan, "between 24 and 29 July, CRU received 58 FoI requests from McIntyre and people affiliated with Climate Audit … the Met Office, which receives a cleaned-up version of the raw data from CRU, has received 10 requests of its own."With the threat of a "mole" in their midst, climate scientists outside CRU grew wary that their correspondence was not as secure as they might like. In September 2009 Jonathan Overpeck of Arizona University warned colleagues in an email: "Please write all emails as though they will be made public."In early July McIntyre appealed against being refused the station data, but was turned down by the university's director of information services, Jonathan Colam-French, in a letter dated 13 November, that McIntyre says he received on the 18th.McIntyre says the timing may be ­significant here. The first attempt to put online the file containing the CRU emails happened on the morning of Tuesday the 17th. It contained emails up to the 12th. McIntyre says he believes this shows the leak was probably an "inside job" by an aggrieved employee or student angry about the secrecy over CRU's data.Whoever carried out the hack, there is an irony for Jones and UEA buried in Jones's 2005 correspondence with Mann over the potential for a FoI Act in which he flagged up what a useful tool it would be for the sceptics. Advising Mann on how to avoid a security breach involving sensitive data that was left unprotected on an ftp (file transfer protocol) server, Jones wrote: "Don't leave stuff lying around on ftp sites – you never know who is trawling them."Climate changeClimate changeClimate change scepticismHacked climate science emailsUniversity of East AngliaHackingEmailInternetData and computer securityFred Pearceguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds   guardian.co.uk   2010-02-09 When a slap on the wrist is better than a slap on the bonnet | Peter Walker Getting into a shouting match with an abusive or dangerous driver may make you feel better but not actually achieve anything. A formal complaint may be a better way of making the streets a little saferIt's a shameful thing to admit but there can occasionally be something quite cathartic, even soothing, about shouting at a driver who's just cut you up dangerously. In extreme circumstances a loud but non-damaging slap to a car bonnet or door can do the same trick.But an email I received this morning reminded me that however tempting such a response might be, retribution is, as the cliche goes, so much more satisfying when served up, weeks later, with a cool temper.This particular story began on a very early December morning in south-east London. As I waited at the head of a small queue to enter a roundabout a black cab squeezed past – I was, deliberately, in the middle of my lane – and placed itself in front of me.It wasn't really dangerous given the low speed but it was, at best, pretty discourteous. Mildly irritated, I made a sort of palms up, shrugging gesture intended to say, "What's that all about then?"The response was unexpected. The cabbie, a grumpy-looking middle-aged man, leaned as far as he could out of his open window and began yelling abuse. As we both negotiated the roundabout this torrent of swearwords – some in highly imaginative combinations – continued. It was bizarre and utterly excessive.I didn't react in kind but instead made a mental note of the cab's registration number. Later that day I emailed a formal complaint to the Public Carriage Office (PCO), which licenses both black cabs and minicabs in the capital. The PCO, I'd learned a couple of years before, has no power over allegations of dangerous driving among cabbies – that's a police matter – but can look into discourtesy or abuse.After a slightly awkward exchange of emails a couple of days later where the PCO asked for me details of the precise abuse ("Dear PCO, as far as I recall, it began, 'You stupid f****** t***' ...etc") I forgot all about the incident.Until this morning. After looking into the matter, a very efficient PCO administrator told me, they had decided to issue a formal written warning to the driver which will remain on his file. Repeated offences could conceivably see his licence suspended.Now I've got two reactions to this. The first, I'm afraid to say, is pure glee at the thought of this hugely angry man opening the letter informing him about the warning. I imagine cups of tea swept off a table, doors kicked, curses audible from the next street. I only hope he hasn't got a dog.But I also like to think that perhaps I have, in a tiny way, made London's roads a better place to be. Shouting abuse back would have achieved nothing in the long term. It's possible – and I stress just possible – that a written warning might make the cabbie think twice before doing the same thing to another cyclist, pedestrian or driver.It reminds me of another incident a few years back when I was very nearly taken out at high speed by a young delivery driver attempting an absurd overtaking manoeuvre at traffic lights. I telephoned the company he worked for, calmly explaining what had happened, what the driver looked like and my strong belief that if he carried on driving that way he'd eventually kill someone. I might have been kidding myself, but the manager who answered the call sounded sincere when they said they'd have some stern words with the driver.Satisfying, yes. But when faced with a private car, or unmarked van, sometimes only a slap on the bonnet will do.CyclingEthical and green livingPeter Walkerguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds   guardian.co.uk   2010-02-09 Part two: How the 'climategate' scandal is bogus and based on climate sceptics' lies Claims based on email soundbites are demonstrably false – there is manifestly no evidence of clandestine data manipulationIn a unique experiment, The Guardian has published online the full manuscript of its major investigation into the climate science emails stolen from the University of East Anglia, which revealed apparent attempts to cover up flawed data; moves to prevent access to climate data; and to keep research from climate sceptics out of the scientific literature. As well as including new information about the emails, we will allow web users to annotate the manuscript to help us in our aim of creating the definitive account of the controversy. This is an attempt at a collaborative route to getting at the truth. We hope to approach that complete account by harnessing the expertise of people with a special knowledge of, or information about, the emails. We would like the protagonists on all sides of the debate to be involved, as well as people with expertise about the events and the science being described or more generally about the ethics of science. The only conditions are the comments abide by our community guidelines and add to the total knowledge or understanding of the events. The annotations - and the real name of the commenter - will be added to the manuscript, initially in private. The most insightful comments will then be added to a public version of the manuscript. We hope the process will be a form of peer review. If you have a contribution to make, please email climate.emails@guardian.co.uk. The anonymous commenting facility under each article will also be switched on so that anyone can contribute to the debate.Almost all the media and political discussion about the hacked climate emails has been based on soundbites publicised by professional sceptics and their blogs. In many cases, these have been taken out of ­context and twisted to mean something they were never intended to.Elizabeth May, veteran head of the Canadian Green party, claims to have read all the emails and declared: "How dare the world's media fall into the trap set by ­contrarian propagandists without reading the whole set?"If those journalists had read even a few words beyond the soundbites, they would have realised that they were often being fed lies. Here are a few examples.The most quoted soundbite in the affair comes from an email from Prof Phil Jones, director of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, to Prof Mike Mann of the University of Virginia in 1999, in which he discussed using "Mike's Nature trick" to "hide the decline". The phrase has been widely spun as an effort to prevent the truth getting out that global temperatures had stopped rising.The Alaska governor Sarah Palin, in the Washington Post on 9 December, attacked the emailers as a "highly politicised scientific circle" who "manipulated data to 'hide the decline' in global temperatures". She was joined by the Republican senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma – who has for years used his chairmanship of the Environment and Public Works Committee to campaign against climate scientists and to dismiss anthropogenic global warming as "the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people". During the Copenhagen climate conference, which he attended on a Senate delegation, he referred to Jones's "hide the decline" quote and said: "Of course, he means hide the decline in temperatures."This is nonsense. Given the year the email was written, 1999, it cannot be anything of the sort. At that time there was no suggestion of a decline in temperatures. The previous year was the warmest on record. The full email from Jones says: "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 [Briffa]'s, to hide the decline."The decline being referred to was an apparent decline in temperatures shown in analysis of tree rings, which have historically correlated well with changes in temperature. That relationship has broken down in the past half century. The reasons are still debated.The "trick" was a graphic device used by Mann in a 1998 paper in Nature to merge tree ring data from earlier times with thermometer data for recent decades. He explained it in the paper. Jones was repeating it in another paper. "This is a trick only in the sense of being a good way to deal with a vexing problem," Mann told the Guardian. Clearly, this problem with modern tree data raises questions about older data – at least until the reason for the divergence is nailed down. But it is not clandestine data ­manipulation, or, as claimed by Palin and Inhofe, a trick to hide global cooling. That charge is a lie.While he was in Copenhagen, Inhofe made a link between the "trick" to "hide the decline" and the second most popular soundbite. He said that "of course [Jones] meant hide the decline in temperatures, which caused another scientist, Kevin Trenberth of the National Centre for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, to write: 'The fact is we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't.'"The link is bogus. The two emails were 10 years apart. Unlike Jones, Trenberth's remark from October 2009 was indeed about the slackening of the warming trend that some like to interpret as cooling. That much is agreed. But Inhofe and other sceptics latched on to Trenberth's "travesty" phrase as a revelation that scientists were trying to keep cooling secret because it undermined their arguments about global warming.Again this is demonstrably false. Nothing was hidden. For months, Trenberth had been discussing publicly his concerns about the inability of scientists to pin down the precise reason for the "absence of warming" since 1998. He had argued in the journal Current Opinion in Environmental Stability in early 2009 that "it is not a sufficient explanation to say that a cool year [he had 2008 in mind] is due to natural variability (pdf)". Such explanations "do not provide the physical mechanisms involved". This was the "travesty" he was referring to in his email. He wanted scientists to do better.He said the best way to improve the explanation and make it more specific was to make better measurements of the planet's energy budget. This would allow scientists to distinguish between any changes in the greenhouse effect, which would result in more or less heat overall in the atmosphere and oceans, and short-term natural cycles of variability, which merely redistribute heat. He was debating this with the former head of the Climatic Research Unit Tom Wigley, who took a different view. But their genuine scientific discussion has, since the publication of the emails online, been hijacked by ignorant or malicious invective.Several other soundbites were subject to perverse or dishonest interpretations by commentators. Patrick Michaels, the climatologist and polemicist for the rightwing Cato Institute, published a long op-ed piece in the DC Examiner, slamming Mann for an email quote about keeping sceptics' papers out of the IPCC report "even if we have to redefine what the peer-reviewed literature is".Michaels is an old foe of Mann's, but this genuinely damaging statement was actually made by Jones.In another case George Will, celebrated in some circles as an intellectual, told ABC's This Week programme that Mann had said in an email that he wished to "delete, get rid of, the medieval warming period". No such words appear anywhere in the emails. What Mann said was that "it would be nice to try to 'contain' the putative 'MWP'". And an intellectual like Will should have known that, in this context, "contain" means to understand its dimensions – how warm it was and how long it was. Mann explained as much to anyone who asked. Verdict: not guilty.Climate change scepticismClimate changeClimate changeHacked climate science emailsHackingUniversity of East AngliaFred Pearceguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds   guardian.co.uk   2010-02-09 Senior Chinese climatologist calls for reform of IPCC Lü Xuedu says Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is a young institution that needs to strengthen its credibilityThe Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) should be reformed to prevent political interference, improve research and reduce western bias, a senior Chinese climatologist has told the Guardian.Lü Xuedu, the deputy director general of the National Climate Centre and a Chinese delegate to the Copenhagen conference, said the use of flawed projections about the speed of melting of Himalayan glaciers and recent allegations that scientists blocked criticism proved there are problems with the way some IPCC documents are assessed and checked.Although he stressed support for the IPCC, of which China is an active participant, Lü said the young institution needed to strengthen its credibility."The IPCC is still in a developing stage. It cannot be perfect or complete. It needs reform, especially after problems were exposed," he said. "Some scientists take a political stance and wear coloured glasses, which means they do not look at issues in a comprehensive and objective way. The managing institute, authors and contributors of the assessment reports should be more objective in order to be more convincing."However, he rejected calls for the resignation of the IPCC chair, Rajendra Pachauri, who has admitted it was wrong to include a prediction that Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035."I have full confidence that he can lead the IPCC," said Lü. "The assessment reports involved so many materials and people that it is impossible for them to be perfect. As long as the IPCC officially admits problems, it is positive."Chinese scientists have long been critical of the now-rejected claim that all Himalayan glaciers could melt by 2035, though there is wide acceptance that the glaciers in Urumqi in north-east China and elsewhere are shrinking, albeit at a slower pace.The National Climate Centre is a state body that has a strong influence on China's position on the science of climate change.The government accepts that global warming is taking place, that China is affected and that, despite uncertainties about the degree of human responsibility, the country should take action to mitigate the impact as a responsible member of the international community.Lü suggested confidence in the IPCC could be improved if the organisation drew on a wider range of sources, invested in research institutions in developing nations and more-carefully cross-checked "grey literature" that is not peer-reviewed."The majority of the IPCC's references came from Europe and North America. Developing countries also want their voices to be heard in the drafting stage," he said.Many Chinese scientists, all funded by the government, remain wary of global efforts to reduce carbon emissions and question whether even a 2C rise in the world's temperature will be as calamitous as the IPCC has predicted."The equivalent of climate sceptics in the west are the climate conspiracy theorists in China, who believe this is all part of a western plot against China," said Yang Ailun of Greenpeace.Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)Climate changeClimate change scepticismRajendra PachauriClimate changeChinaJonathan Wattsguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds   guardian.co.uk   2010-02-09 Help write the full story on the hacked emails controversy In a unique experiment, The Guardian has published online the full manuscript of its major investigation into the climate science emails stolen from the University of East Anglia, which revealed apparent attempts to cover up flawed data; moves to prevent access to climate data; and to keep research from climate sceptics out of the scientific literature.As well as including new information about the emails, we will allow web users to annotate the manuscript to help us in our aim of creating the definitive account of the controversy. This is an attempt at a collaborative route to getting at the truth.We hope to approach that complete account by harnessing the expertise of people with a special knowledge of, or information about, the emails. We would like the protagonists on all sides of the debate to be involved, as well as people with expertise about the events and the science being described or more generally about the ethics of science. The only conditions are the comments abide by our community guidelines and add to the total knowledge or understanding of the events.The annotations - and the real name of the commenter - will be added to the manuscript, initially in private. The most insightful comments will then be added to a public version of the manuscript. We hope the process will be a form of peer review. If you have a contribution to make, please email climate.emails@guardian.co.uk.The anonymous commenting facility under each article will also be switched on so that anyone can contribute to the debate.Climate changeClimate changeClimate change scepticismHacked climate science emailsguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds   guardian.co.uk   2010-02-09 Couple earn $17 for first tonne of CO2 saved Solar panels worth $58,000 bring couple modest return as home-owners look to DIY system of emissions tradingAs investments go, it does not look like a money-spinner. Invest $58,000 to line the roof of your suburban home with solar panels, and pick up a $17.20 cheque in exchange for the reduction in your household carbon emissions. But the Pennsylvania couple who have earned the world's first carbon credit for reducing personal emissions think it has been worth it.Randy and Tami Wilson, of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, earned the single credit through a transaction brokered by the My Emissions Exchange website. It aims to certify emissions reductions by home owners or tenants and then sell those credits to companies looking to up their green quotient.The website's existence suggests that while Congress may have given up on creating a national scheme for trading carbon emissions, there are ordinary Americans willing to play the voluntary market. The company says it has signed up 1,800 households since going into business last autumn.A company in Middlefield, Ohio, Molten Metal Equipment, bought the Wilsons' carbon credit, representing a tonne of carbon dioxide, for $21.50. The website earned $4.30 in commission, and the Wilsons took home $17.20.But this modest cash reward was not the only reason for the Wilsons's solar conversion. Outraged by a threatened 30% price hike by their local electricity provider, they hired a contractor to install 36 solar panels on their roof."When my husband and I heard six or eight months ago from PPL Electric Utilities that our energy costs were going up 30 to 40%, we said to ourselves, what can we do?" said Tami Wilson.In addition to the solar panels, the Wilsons also switched to energy-savings light bulbs, replaced their windows, and made a habit of turning off computers, DVDs and other appliances not in use. They adopted a "hybrid" system for doing laundry, putting wet clothes in a dryer for 10 minutes before hanging them on a line. They got rid of their son's heated waterbed.The couple told reporters they were counting on federal and state tax credits to recoup $36,000 of their investment, but it will still take six years to get back the rest of their investment through energy savings and the sale of carbon credits. At that point, though, the solar panels will be turning a profit. "Then we basically have no electric [bill] for life," Tami said.Prospective domestic carbon traders begin by handing over a year's worth of electricity and heating bills. American households - with the stereotypical television in every teenagers' bedroom - are notorious energy hogs. The average family produces about 30 tonnes of carbon dioxide a year.If the family then goes on to reduce emissions, the website will calculate how much carbon they have saved. The savings then translate into credits for every tonne of carbon avoided. The company certifies the credits, and then arranges the sale.The company says customers gain twice, in carbon credits and in lower electricity bills - although it will obviously take time before major investments, like the Wilsons' solar panels, pay for themselves.But it says even replacing a few old lightbulbs with compact fluorescent bulbs or putting in a programmable thermostat would be enough for most homes to offset about a tonne of carbon a year - or about $17.20 after commission.Emissions tradingCarbon emissionsSolar powerGreen buildingUnited StatesEnergyRenewable energySuzanne Goldenbergguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds   guardian.co.uk   2010-02-09 How to green your Valentine's Day Cut down on your environmental impact this February 14 with our green gift ideasChristine Oliver   guardian.co.uk   2010-02-09 Help write the full story Just weeks before the Guardian publishes its major investigation into the hacked climate science emails, we give you exclusive access to the book that gives the most comprehensive account of the scandal   guardian.co.uk   2010-02-09 US snow pics Your pictures of snowstorms across the eastern US   news.bbc.co.uk   2010-02-09 Toyota recall 'The brakes gave way - it was truly terrifying'   news.bbc.co.uk   2010-02-09 Revolution day Iranians for and against regime discuss demos   news.bbc.co.uk   2010-02-09 'I braked... ' ...the Prius didn't' Toyota drivers share their stories   news.bbc.co.uk   2010-02-09 Later pregnancies 'I thought I was safe and too old to conceive'   news.bbc.co.uk   2010-02-09 Economic recession How has the recession affected your family?   news.bbc.co.uk   2010-02-09 Should India approve GM food crops? India has put on hold cultivation of its first GM food crop on safety grounds. Is this the right decision?   newsforums.bbc.co.uk   2010-02-09 Gomp/arts Some reasons for hating art and culture   bbc.co.uk   2010-02-09 Family guy Cleveland Show enlists music stars   news.bbc.co.uk   2010-02-09 Barking at the moon Benicio Del Toro's werewolf film goes back to basics   news.bbc.co.uk   2010-02-09 Midsomer replacement revealed Midsomer Murders long-serving actor John Nettles announces he is quitting the popular ITV1 show after 13 years playing Detective Tom Barnaby.   news.bbc.co.uk   2010-02-09 Minogue privacy complaint upheld The press watchdog upholds two complaints by Dannii Minogue against a newspaper which revealed her pregnancy.   news.bbc.co.uk   2010-02-09 Duff and Serkis scoop film awards Anne-Marie Duff and Andy Serkis among the winners at the Evening Standard British Film Awards.   news.bbc.co.uk   2010-02-09 Up wins top prize at Annies Family film Up scooped the award for best animated feature at the 37th annual Annie Awards.   news.bbc.co.uk   2010-02-09 Te Kanawa to get Brit honour Opera star Dame Kiri Te Kanawa is to be presented with a lifetime achievement award at the Classical Brits, it is announced.   news.bbc.co.uk   2010-02-09

radio news Cyrus arranges Haiti star auction US pop star Miley Cyrus calls on some of her famous friends to donate memorabilia for an online auction to benefit the relief effort in Haiti.   news.bbc.co.uk   2010-02-09 Gig crews give U2 tour thumbs up U2's latest tour is voted the year's best stage show by crews who work on gigs around the world.   news.bbc.co.uk   2010-02-09 TV presenter breaks kayak record Blue Peter presenter Helen Skelton triples the Guinness World Record for the longest solo journey by kayak.   news.bbc.co.uk   2010-02-09 TV product placement is approved Product placement will be allowed on British TV programmes under new legislation agreed by the Government.   news.bbc.co.uk   2010-02-09 Jackson media appears in court Michael Jackson's doctor, Conrad Murray, denies a charge of involuntary manslaughter over the singer's death.   news.bbc.co.uk   2010-02-09 Sheen charged with assault Actor Charlie Sheen is charged with assaulting and threatening his wife Brooke Mueller during an argument on Christmas Day.   news.bbc.co.uk   2010-02-09 W+K tells Super story Four Wieden+Kennedy ads will air during this year’s Super Bowl, the most ever for Portland’s powerhouse advertising agency.   bizjournals.com   2010-02-08 Social media can amplify impact of traditional marketing Too many marketers treat social media as a magic elixir for the lagging economy. While social media, and its older cousin, search engine marketing, offer meaningful and measurable return-on-investment, they do not operate in a vacuum.   bizjournals.com   2010-02-08 Retiring CPS exec. taking on new adventure Nice guys do finish first.   bizjournals.com   2010-02-08 Downtown San Jose set to loosen sign rules There are signs of change downtown.   bizjournals.com   2010-02-08 MediaNews: Bankruptcy plan to have little impact on NM pubs It seems like a huge amount of debt – $179 million. But it’s a lot less than $930 million, and it’s quite manageable for a large company.   bizjournals.com   2010-02-08 Laid-off PR pros find plenty of work to keep their startups going More than a half-dozen public relations companies have launched in the Sacramento region during the past year.   bizjournals.com   2010-02-08 Anheuser-Busch InBev Big Apple bound A short ride uptown from Wall Street and a mere three blocks from Rockefeller Center, more than 100 Anheuser-Busch InBev employees filter in to work each day at a building at 250 Park Ave. in New York City.   bizjournals.com   2010-02-08 Despite troubled economy, Cincinnati Ballet stays ‘en pointe’ Call it guerilla marketing, tutu style.   bizjournals.com   2010-02-08 Michael Krienik closes shop, heads for beach It’s easier to ride into the sunset when the sun is Caribbean and the setting is your villa on a high peak in St. John.   bizjournals.com   2010-02-08 Effective social media requires restraint and good judgment Social media is inexpensive, open to everyone and can offer high visibility. But businesses using blogs, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube and other social media must strike a balance between entertaining and selling and between too many and too few posts.   bizjournals.com   2010-02-08 Regent, Clear Channel stations take top three spots in Arbitron survey Long lunches, Christmas tunes and basketball helped area radio stations capture the attention of listeners this fall.   bizjournals.com   2010-02-08 Genuine article: Agency doubles in size, boosts sales Genuine Interactive specializes in creating digital media campaigns for recognized brands like Necco Sweethearts, French’s mustard and Children’s Hospital Boston.   bizjournals.com   2010-02-08 Feds pick up the tab for Galvin’s TV election spots Secretary of State William F. Galvin’s latest round of television commercials that aired just prior to the U.S. Senate special election on Jan. 19 were not a first for the politician.   bizjournals.com   2010-02-08 Advertising & Marketing: The Price Chopper AdvantEdge Courtney Andrews often went to a Price Chopper supermarket when she lived in suburban Albany.   bizjournals.com   2010-02-08 Anheuser-Busch Super Bowl spots in top 5 of USA Today Ad Meter Two of Anheuser-Busch’s Super Bowl ads finished in the top five of <em>USA Today</em>’s <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/money/advertising/admeter/2010admeter.htm ">Ad Meter.</a>   bizjournals.com   2010-02-08 'Dear John' knocks off 'Avatar' at box office "Avatar" might have passed the last major box-office milestone during the week, taking the all-time record for domestic gross, but during the weekend, it was knocked out of the top spot of weekend takes by the romantic drama "Dear John," according to figures from Box Office Mojo, a Web site that tracks box-office revenues.   bizjournals.com   2010-02-08 Peritus opens Columbus office Peritus Public Relations has opened a regional office in Columbus, Ohio.   bizjournals.com   2010-02-08