The smell of Napalm in the morning

The science is settled.

You won't hear that much anymore, and when you do you'll know that the speaker is a Radical Environmentalist. The Hadley/CRU data leak has well and truly ended any fiction of a "consensus".

What's clear from this episode is that the emails have essentially ended the scientific careers of Michael Mann, Keith Biffra, Phil Jones, and the other core members who seemingly conspired to thwart Freedom Of Information Act requests. The taint from these email exchanges - the conspiracy to delete data, the working to freeze out competing views from the peer reviewed journals, and (last but absolutely not least) the suggestion that they knew that their data were dodgy - this will pretty much end their time as scientific "movers and shakers". Here's why:

1. They're scientifically radioactive. Steve McIntyre has been saying for years that their work as been filled with mistakes. Two days of investigation has shown that this is very likely to be true. The prestige scientific press - Science, Nature, Geophysical Research Letters, etc - will have to be very, very careful with anything that they publish from any of these people. The narrative that Mann et al. have skated too close to (or over) the line means that these publications have to be like Caesar's Wife (above reproach) with any articles from them, or lose their prestige status.

2. Funding will drop like a rock. Almost all climate research funding comes from governmental sources. These guys are politically radioactive. When you start thinking about the questions that someone can legitimately ask about the FOIA requests - and ask not to Jones and company, but to the Hadley executive management team - there's no upside here for the "Hockey Team". Expect budgets for these guys to drop by 50% in 3 years.

3. The Hadley documents give us the long term implication of falling budgets:

Research contract income is very important to the School, representing approximately half our total income. It supports the contract researchers in the School and generates the overheads that support many of the technical and administrative staff. This research activity also generates the publications that form the basis of the RAE assessment which controls the level of the other main component of the School’s income from the government.

Jones will be the first to go, because CRU will have to throw him under the bus to preserve their budget.

It will take a while for people to analyze the data and source code from the leak, but while that's important scientifically, the damage is already done in the emails. This is very, very damaging - career ending, really - material.

It almost certainly was not "Russian Hackers". While they certainly have the capability, they do not have the knowledge of where the damaging material is to be found. This means that they would have to spend quite some time searching, which increases the cost of the hack being discovered, and more importantly increases the cost to whoever is hypothetically funding the project. Is it possible that someone was willing to fund a $100,000 hack (almost certainly a felony)? I guess. Doesn't seem likely, though.

This leaves an inside job. Mann and Jones are clearly abrasive personalities, and have without question made many enemies. An insider has lots of time to "cherry pick" the most damaging information, over the course of 4 or 5 years. An insider would have access to data, and would know where the most interesting data is. The FOIA request was the time when the iron was hot, and he struck. Boy, howdy, was that good timing.

There has been talk for months about a "mole" in Hadley. If this is the case, then there's likely more data to come.

There is a great summary of the data at Bishop Hill, and good analyses at Pajamas Media and Powerline.