McIntyre accused by University of Queensland Prof of CRU break in

The prof claims,
“McIntyre organised the campaign which led to the creation of the file,”
THAT tidbit seems to reinforce the early assessment/speculation that the files were compiled to respond to a Freedom of Info Request! And someone at CRU did that compilation….
…all of which makes one wonder what else is still lurking in the archives….
By the way, has CRU EVER provided the files per the FOI request(s) and provided them to McI. etc.???
If not, they’re still on the hook to do so–and recent commentary from the UK says that’s the law. So, have they complied, or, are they still breaking the law?

Keep talking good doctor, you are helping your cause SO much.

Er – aren’t there laws about making these sorts of accusations? Libel laws?
Is it just recent that the page http://www.uq.edu.au/economics/johnquiggin/ is entirely blank?

Now would be an excellent time to file a libel suit (assuming there is no support for the allegations). There is nothing like getting a bunch of people under oath answering questions to a good trial attorney to find out the truth of the matter. This is particularly attractive approach in a jurisdiction with the English Rule where the loser pays the winner’s legal fees.

This sad soul is not a scientist. He doesn’t understand the word “evidence” If he is using wishfull thinking for data, what does he do research on? Wishfull data?

I hope that either Steven McIntyre has a very forgiving character; or John Quiggin has very deep pockets.

Quiggins personal web page is blank.

Note to Professor Quiggin:
When someone takes something that they legally have a right to, IT’S NOT THEFT!! In addition, the fact that McIntyre used information that should have been available through the FOIA process does not make him a thief.
Methinks he (Quiggin) doth protest too much!!

Hmm. It appears his University web page has been disabled. Here is the Google cached version:
http://74.125.93.132/search?hl=en&q=cache:http://www.uq.edu.au/economics/johnquiggin/&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=

The real question is – does his University allow this to stand, and thus put their imprimatur on the accusation?
McIntyre should look into getting some volunteer legal resources in Queensland and should immediately file suit for slander – not against Quiggin, but against the University and the University President for condoning this. (Silence implies consent, after all) And then offer to settle for court costs in exchange for Quiggin’s immediate termination.
And yes, that’s a serious recomendation.

The link to his page (at the bottom) isn’t working.

loutish, crude.

Wow! Steve is really under their skin. He’s made them irrational or should I say more irrational.

John Quiggin is trying so hard to cover his own incredibility, he’s spreading the wealth around.
He is not well regarded by inquiring minds in the land of Oz.

It’s comical … Yes, it would be if there were no consequences. Computer crime is punishable with hefty jail sentences in the US. So what what this guy does is accusing McIntyre in public of a fellony offense without any proof. If that’s not libelous, then what is?
Perhaps McIntyre is consulting his lawyers at this very moment, and good luck to him!

Anyway he is only an economist. Economists’ forecasts are about as good as those from climate models.

Seems that the Prof has being on a walkabout without his sun hat.

This fool should be sacked immediately

They’re never going to find the mole. That much is clear now.

Well,this is comic relief,but is it a good idea to even link to this creep?

If you read the blog, you’ll see Mr. Pete and several others made mincemeat of the Professor. The mole. Ha ha ha ha.
================

So asking for information makes one a thief of information. Quiggin prefers slander to truth.

That’s how it work today.
Lies, lies and nothing but lies to white wash their crooked science and motives.
John Quiggin is participating in a world wide organized counter propaganda offensive and you can expect similar publications popping up all over the media.
Here is another example:
John Houghton about ecofanatics.
http://motls.blogspot.com/2010/03/john-houghton-about-ecofanatics.html
We all know the science is broken.
What’s left is raw propaganda and political force.
And political force is the new strategy to overcome the onset of the failed science
Today the Federal State of North Rhein Westfalen, the former center of the German “Wirtschaftswunder” announced a 95% reduction of CO2 by 20250.
As a consequence NRW will be forced to shut down it’s coal plants, all car fuel stations, stop the distribution of oil to heat the offices and houses and probably close down all it’s airports and CO2 emitting industry and agriculture.
The country sides are already littered with useless wind parks responsible for a rise in the number of power blackouts.
At a political level there is no chance to introduce nuclear energy.
Besides that, it will take at least 20 years to build a network of nuclear power plants. Nobody knows where the money has to come from to make any significant investment because at this moment in time NRW hovers at the brink of bankruptcy.
The brainwashed population has no idea of the consequences of such a decision
and keeps quiet.
But this can change overnight!
Few people remember the time after WWI when France occupied NRW to loot the region for war compensation payments.
The coal and steel workers became fed up performing their slave labor for France and anarchy broke out. They simply bombed France out of the country.
No police and no army was able to control them.
With the EU already taking the shape of the former centralized Soviet Government structure we will see a process of top down centralization which will end democratic rule and turn NRW into a social and economic wasteland.
I predict NRW will become one of the most dangerous places in the world if this Government does not change it’s policies.

What particularly amused me is that Prof. Quiggan’s link about halfway through his post, at ‘what is clear, as this report notes’, neatly contradicts his most egregious allegations. It’s as if the Professor didn’t read his own link, or didn’t think anyone else would.
Just desserts all around over there. Heh.
=================

Theft is a tricky term under English law anyway – if you ‘steal’ a car for ‘joy riding’ – it is not legally theft!!!
From here… http://www.sussex.police.uk/infocentre/text_version/content.asp?uid=449
“Theft – Definition of Theft
A person is guilty of theft if: he dishonestly appropriates property belonging to another with the intention of permanently depriving the other of it.
Reference: Section 1 of the Theft Act 1968.
Last Updated: 25/7/2008”

John Quiggins page is now here… http://www.uq.edu.au/economics/index.html?page=15898

I bet his University lawyers never approved that statement. If it can be funded, I also think going legal would be good. It’s a serious accusation and there is no evidence.
As for venue, this is the information age so would suggest the UK. We have a generous libel system and there seems to be precedence that being read in the UK means published in the UK to give jurisdiction. Might even prompt Norfolk constabulary to announce their findings. I know life in Norfolk is slow, but the investigation does appear to be dragging on.

We don’t know that anybody committed a crime in revealing the ClimateGate emails, or if they did commit a crime but are protected by whistle-blower laws.
We don’t know the emails were stolen or misappropriated. Certainly somebody at CRU had the compile the files. Were the files found at a publicly accessible location? That would hardly make downloading the files a crime, would it?

As I said, a world wide coordinated warmist counter propaganda campaign.
Gore is back and he’s got Global Warming with him the MSM too!
http://bigjournalism.com/acary/2010/03/13/albert-arnold-gore-jr-is-back-and-hes-got-global-warming-with-him-the-msm-too/
I really think their campaign will back fire.
This summer there will be a follow up meeting to the Copenhagen meeting in Berlin followed by a meeting in Mexico at the end of this year.
The suicidal commitment of North Rhein Westfalen to reduce CO2 95% CO2 emissions by 2050 is nothing more but a political signal making the impression
real commitments are undertaken but on a Global Level the AGW doctrine is a dead horse.
I think the time has come to do research where the money comes from to finance this campaign and start sacking the responsible politicians!
Fraud is fraud and lies are lies, it’s as simple as that.

This “scientist” obviously understands evidence in the same context as Michael Mann.

@ Jeroen (05:29:35) : From my point of view the real question is why John Quiggin is focussing on smearing critics?
Because it’s now a drag-’em-out, hang-’em-high street fight as per Ehrlich last week. Any sense of fair play–if it ever existed–is now out the window. And it’s going to get a lot worse before it gets better.

Our AGW promoter friends are whining about only receiving 85% soft ball questions instead of 100%.
I am sure that, as the tulip mania crested, those who had made fortunes selling tulip bulbs were angered that the skeptics said the tulips were over priced.
– After all, the tulips still bloom and everything, so nothing had really changed.
The reality is the AGW community is going through the stages of mourning.
Anger and denial, as represented in the essay this thread is based on, is typical of early stage mourning.

[snip]
I don’t have any doubt that Steve McIntyre’s revelations acted as a catalyst for someone. But to accuse Steve of criminal activity for speaking out is simply ludicrous.
The person(s) most responsible for the “break-in” are Jones, Mann, Briffa, Santer, et al, for their grossly unethical activity. It’s obvious that someone on the inside saw all this and decided enough was enough.

@INGSOC (05:49:48) :
————————-
“He turned me into a newt!”
————————-
“I got better” 😉

I nominate Steve McIntyre for a Nobel Prize (if he is reponsible for Cimategate).
As for who “benefitted” … please all you AGWers, give back the trillion dollars you conned people out of!

I reckon merminks done it.
and Quiggins a goose, always has been.

Wait i just looked at the Google cache of this twits web page he looks to be an economist. He also seems to have a distinct left ward tilt in his thinking. Wow climate science marches on seems they can’t attract real scientists, you know the kind that use empirical data rather than conjecture and supposition to base their world view on.

Whilst the page listed above has been taken down, his university unit webpage is here:
http://www.uq.edu.au/rsmg/director
Note potential hockey stick in his cumulative citation graph (uptick commences 1986/7)

The ruling was FOI breach, statute of limitiations over rode punishment.
But the ruling was FOI breach.
People all over the world can say what they say. That is the ruling.

April Fools….oh, wait….

It’s like a guy being angry with his wife for catching him having an affair.

This so called professor looks just like the Unabomber.

John Quiggin forgot to say that he is Steve McIntyre himself. Just add a beard and a wig to Steve and you will see that the debate is over. He’s revealed this top secret that as his alter ego, he hacked the CRU servers, in order for his brother Elvis Presley to get some extra attention.
It doesn’t really matter much whether Elvis Presley lives in Tora Bora or on the Moon – the effect is the same. 😉

Wow, How ‘1984’ of him.
Let’s see, his reasoning goes something like this ” A – McIntyre was among the first to question and criticize Mann and Jones, this led to B – other people criticizing Mann and Jones, which led to C – other people ‘breaking in’ to East Anglia to expose the truth, therefore McIntyre is ‘morally’ responsible because, if he had never started this questioning and criticizing thing, no one would have thought to ‘break in’.
What a wonderful piece of Soviet ‘Gulag’ style of reasoning.
Very similar to Dr Mann’s opening ‘conspiracy theory’ worthy reasoning in his recent ‘Discover Magazine’ interview. http://discovermagazine.com/2010/apr/10-it.s-gettin-hot-in-here-big-battle-over-climate-science/?searchterm=where%20does%20climate%20science%20go%20from%20here
“Ever since his “hockey stick” graph of rising temperatures figured prominently in Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, Mann has been at the center of the climate wars. His e-mail messages were among those stolen and widely published last November.
Let’s talk about the hacked e-mails and the ensuing climategate scandal. What happened?
My understanding—and I only know what I’ve read from other accounts—is that hackers broke into the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia and stole thousands of e-mail messages, which they then proceeded to distribute on the Internet. They even tried to hack into a Web site that I help run, called RealClimate.
Does anybody yet know where the attack came from?
No. There are many of us who would really like to know because obviously this is a serious criminal breach. And yet there’s been very little discussion, unfortunately, about the crime.
Who might have done the hacking?
“It appears to have been extremely well orchestrated, a very professional job. There also appears to have been a well-organized PR campaign that was all ready to go at the time these e-mails were released. And that campaign, involving all sorts of organizations that have lobbied against climate change legislation, has led some people to conclude that this is connected to a larger campaign by special interests to attack the science of climate change, to prevent policy action from being taken to deal with the problem.”

Quiggin down under . . .
Interesting that he didn’t suspect Ross McKitrick — a fellow economist.
Quiggin needs to read Maruice Strong’s early speeches and writings on why he wanted to create the IPCC. Then note the criticisms of the IPCC first and second technical reports, in particular, the mention of the MWP. He could then explain why the exposed email from CRU mentioned their concern about the MWP period being a “problem” for the movement and how — magically it seems — Briffa knocks out a paper saying the coldest year in the millennium occurred during the MWP, only to be followed by Mann’s hockey stick.
. . . a very public apology from Quiggin to McIntyre is in order. If not, calling someone a thief in such a manner is slanderous and libelous.
Defamation:
1. A false and defamatory statement concerning another;
2. The unprivileged publication of the statement to a third party;
3. If the defamatory matter is of public concern, fault amounting at least to negligence on the part of the publisher; and
4. Damage to the plaintiff.
If McIntyre can show damages, he’s got a winner! The Herald Sun, as publisher, can be held accountable as well. Perhaps they should quickly print a retraction to protect themselves.

Go to Quiggin’s cached page as by jondipietro {5:43:05}
http://74.125.95.132/search?q=cache:dTl_mHs2xjMJ:www.uq.edu.au/economics/johnquiggin/index.html
Click on some of the links.. you’ll see he is a “SOCIAL Scientist’ and a ‘statist’. For example he states that future employment hinges on the ‘service sector’. And only the state can provide enough employment in the service sector to make a dent.. especially for the academic graduate.
Which gets to the heart of the whole issue. Carbon being easy to tax and ubiquitous, the fraud having been discovered threatens society itself.
Not hard to understand, we all do understand, don’t we?
Here’s one of his books:
http://www.uq.edu.au/economics/johnquiggin/Books/WFA.html
Interestingly, he draws on a 1945 white paper as a preface.
Do we all recall the intervening post-war facts? Stunted economic growth in Oz, by low available labor force… which almost induced me to emigrate from the states.

ThomD (07:10:03) : “It’s like a guy being angry with his wife for catching him having an affair.”
How to you know?

I suppose this is what is meant by “scientists fight back”.
However, Professor John Quiggin’s statement is prima facie libelous, because he has accused McIntyre of having commited a crime, while at the same time admitting that he has no evidence.
Professor Quiggin, please note that where the subject of an accusation is a public figure, like a university professor, truth is a defense against the accusation of slander or libel.
By now Mr McIntyre is a public figure. So if you had produced some evidence to support your accusation, that would be your defence. But you have already stated that you have no evidence. Hence you have no defence at law. I would advise you to consult with legal staff of your university.
By contrast, in peer-reviewed papers published in reputable science journals, McIntyre has accused at least one researcher of malpractice while at the same time documenting in detail what the accused did and did not do that constituted the malpractice. The content of the released e-mails supports what McIntryre has argued for years and the content of the e-mails has not been disavowed by the authors. Mr McIntyre would argue that the truth of his accusations is his defence.
I once taught a graduate course in statistics and mathematical modeling, including principal components analysis, the object of Mr McIntyre’s criticism and his most valuable contribution to scientific auditing. I have also applied principal comonents analysis to satellite imagery. I can confirm from my own experience that McIntyre has identified true flaws in the Hockey Stick modeling.
What may never be proven is whether the malpractice results from incompetence on the part of the researcher or deliberate misuse of the technique.
I do not understand exactly what Professor Quiggin is objecting to. Does he think that malpractice by academics should not be exposed? Does he think that the exposure was not in the public interest?
Substantial public money is involved both in financing climate research and in implementing policies advocated by the recipients of the research. This means that the public is entitled to have the research audited.
Is this not obvious?
Unfortunately, the IPCC has shown itself to be biased by advocacy. McIntyre and McKittrick make a strong case for this too. They have urged that a “B-team” is needed to audit the work of the “A-team”. Their argument is that the IPCC member governments appoint delegates that are already compromised by their posts in national environmental agencies seeking to increase their budgets. Thus, governments cannot rely on their IPCC delegates to be unbiased.
Independent auditors are needed, as in the world of finance and business.
Member governments should be just as concerned about the direction of the ADB and World Bank and their own development cooperation agencies.
Consultants who work on projects financed by the ADB and World Bank can confirm that both organizations assume mitigation of climate change is both necessary and possible.
Their terms of reference for consultant’s go far beyond the science. These organizations are now paying for feasibility studies based on “climate science fiction”.
As an example, scientists do not claim that present models are good enough to make predicions on a regional or country basis. But the ADB and World Bank and bilateral agencies are gearing up to finance mitigation and adaptation projects based on these models.
Junk science spawns junk investment and the taxpayers of developing countries get to foot the bill. Moreover, even the poorest developing countries are being led to borrow money from international banks and to raise money by taxation to speculate on projects that have low probablilities of contributing anything at all to local economies.
The bottom line is that the quantum of money going into climate change demands better auditing of the science and better auditing of the institutions advocating policy and promoting public investments based on the science.
If it were not for McIntyre, most of us would still accept the Hockey Stick. Thanks to him we now realize that the graph is advocacy masquerading as science. Is that what Professor Quiggin objects to?

…………….Stef (05:32:34) :
I can never remember which one is slander and which one is libel???
————————————-
I can answer this Stef. Thankyou everyone. Stef: It’s very easy in this case…….
It’s the guy in the picture for both of them!!!!!

Good Mr. Quiggin says:

What is clear, as this report notes is that going after FOIA.zip indicates that someone in McIntyre’s circle of supporters was responsible. As the report says
An abbreviation often used for the US Freedom of Information Act, it suggests again that the leaker was familiar with the attempts by US bloggers and others to get release of tree ring and similar data.

So the evidence points to “McIntyre’s circle of supporters”, because the “leaker was familiar with attempts by US bloggers …”. Thus are exposed as double agents all those boffins in the AGW blogger family (realclimate, parties to the climategate emails) who were also “familiar with attempts …”.

Room: 551A Colin Clark Building, St Lucia
Phone: +61 7 3346 9646
Fax: +61 07 3365 7299
Email: j.quiggin@uq.edu.au
Personal Website
Qualifications
BA(Hons),BEc(Hons),MEc (ANU), PhD (UNE)
Profile
John Quiggin is an Australian Research Council Federation Fellow in Economics and Political Science at the University of Queensland. Professor Quiggin is prominent both as a research economist and as a commentator on Australian economic policy. He has published over 750 research articles, books and reports in fields including risk analysis, production economics, and environmental economics. He has also written on policy topics including unemployment policy, micro-economic reform, privatisation, competitive tendering, and sustainable management of the Murray–Darling system. He was awarded the Thomson ISI Australian Citation Laureate for Economics in 2004. He is a Fellow of the Australian Social Science Academy, the American Agricultural Economics Association, and the Australian Institute of Company Directors, and a Distinguished Fellow of the Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society.
Selected Publications
TOP 10 SELECTED RESEARCH PUBLICATIONS
Books:
Quiggin, J. & Chambers, R.G. (2000), Uncertainty, Production, Choice and Agency: The State-Contingent Approach, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Quiggin, J. (1996), Great Expectations: Microeconomic Reform and Australia, Allen & Unwin, St Leonards, NSW.
Quiggin, J. and Langmore, J. (1994), Work for All: Full Employment in the Nineties, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne.
Articles:
Quiggin, J. & Chambers, R.G. (2004), ‘Invariant risk attitudes’, Journal of Economic Theory, 117, 96–118.
Grant, S. and Quiggin, J. (2002), ‘The risk premium for equity: implications for the proposed diversification of the social security fund’, American Economic Review, 92(5), 1104–15.
Quiggin, J. (2001), ‘Environmental economics and the Murray–Darling river system’, Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics 45(1), 67–94.
Quiggin, J. and Chambers, R. G. (1998), ‘A state-contingent production approach to principal–agent problems with an application to point-source pollution control’, Journal of Public Economics 70, 441–72.
Dowrick, S. and Quiggin, J. (1997), ‘True measures of GDP and convergence’, American Economic Review 67(1), 41–64.
Quiggin, J. (1982), ‘A theory of anticipated utility’, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization 3(4), 323–43.
Quiggin, J. (1981), ‘Risk perception and risk aversion among Australian farmers’, Australian Journal of Agricultural Economics 25(2), 160–9.

Guys… take a step back a moment….
I think pursuing Quiggin at this time would be the wrong reaction from McIntyre. To pursue Quiggin and win would require McIntyre to prove damages. Quiggin shot his mouth off, and we have good reason to believe he’s wrong, but winning a libel case requires you to prove resulting personal damages. That would require McIntyre to prove professional damage (far more difficult for a retiree) or loss of income (also difficult for a retiree).
Since the truth is that, as noted here often, Quiggin is a wild-haired Grizzly Adams with an even wilder claim, the case would also have to take into consideration the credibility of Quiggin.
I’m firmly of the belief that, right now, even if Steve were to pursue Quiggin legally, the criteria for proving his case would cause the case to fail – specifically the inability to prove damages and lack of Quiggin credibility – and so the case would collapse. This failure to make the case stick would be taken and run with, by the crazy people, to mean that Quiggin was right and Steve was guilty.
Right now, the correct response is passive ambivalence. I think he’s looking for a sceptic tirade directed at him, and I think his intent is in some way to prove that sceptics are the wild-eyed lunatics in this exchange. He’s posted his opinion and, though he says he has evidence to support it, he hasn’t presented it.
I believe in the philosophy of giving someone enough rope to hang themselves, and my gut says that allowing Quiggin to get it all out of his system and then let QU sort him out.

.. sorry.. last sentence.. my gut says *it’s better to allow* Quiggin…

Would someone please get this guy his medicine?? I mean, if this is his PUBLIC photo portrait….!
Really, Steve was doing very well before the email disclosures, skewering the lot with their own faulty statistical treatments. I don’t think he particularly needed the information released in Climategate emails, except as validation that this bunch were not very professional.
I’m sure curious to know who the ultimate Climategate leaker was! The original statement posted with the emails seemed to imply that there was more out there, I wonder when the next shoe drops?

“Over the next few months, CRU started preparing a response to McIntyre which resulted in the creation of a file called FOIA.zip. Over the weekend beginning Friday 13 November, someone located and copied this file from a back-up server at the university’s Climatic Research Unit, and distributed it widely among anti-science blog sites, including McIntyre’s.”
Was not one of the first “anti-science” blogs to receive this the BBC? 🙂
As for it being a collection for Steve McIntyre, the contents always gave me the impression that it was what they would want to hide from him and anyone else for that matter. It was hidden away on an obscure server that only a mole could find is another line of speculation that works for me?

A google search puts him in the School of Economics at the University.
Lets not push him over the edge. His green investments are doing poorly, carbon prices are falling, his life’s work down the crapper. Poor guy cant even afford to buy a razor.
If Steve sues him, he better do it soon.
Rich D.

Looking over the evidence that is now available, I think there is enough to point to Steven McIntyre as the person, along with the actual hacker or leaker, who bears primary moral responsibility for the crime.

Quiggle-word “moral”, meaning that even if McIntyre had nothing to do with the crime, Quiggin holds him morally responsible.
No slander, there. McIntyre bears “moral” responsibility in the same way that I bear “moral” responsibility for slavery, due to the fact that I am a Caucasian American. People spew pseudo-ethical garbage like this constantly, without fear of retribution, because there’s no real allegation of wrongdoing. Just guild by association.
Which is just utter, cowardly crap. Obviously.

Quiggin’s leap of faith on Steve may explain his belief in catastrophe; that and the teat of gov’t funding.
“Scientists have been constrained in fighting back by the fact that they are ethically constrained to be honest, whereas their opponents lie without any compunction.”
Should have cut to:
“Scientists have been constrained in fighting back by the facts”

s/guild/guilt
Monday, post-DST timechange. Double whammy.

His blog;
http://johnquiggin.com/

The higher up the Ivory tower these good professors go, the less oxygen is available for them to breath, the more delusional and paranoid their personalities become and the more we get to laugh at theses morons.
Ya ya ya . . I know it is not PC to laugh at mentally handicapped people, but these guys have a bad case of self-inflicted wound syndrome and it is funny to watch them come apart at the seems, to make fools of themselves.
Or maybe he is auditioning for the Comedy Network?

Duck Xing, thanks for the background on Dr Quiggin. Frankly. I am more dismayed than before now that I knowing how eminent he is in Australia.
In fact, your description of the man is a big shock. What shocks me is that he is so lacking in common sense. He apparently either does not know enough science to understand McIntyre’s criticisms or does not care enough to read what McIntyre has published.
If he publishes a written statement calling someone a criminal for his scientific research, he should at least study the published papers. I have. And I know enough about principal components analysis to believe what McIntryre claims. So did Prof Wegman. Resume here: http://www.galaxy.gmu.edu/stats/faculty/wegman.resume2.pdfl

Sounds to me as if he has a kangaroo loose in the upper paddock. He seems to think that what he’s saying makes sense when even a cursory analysis reveals it as contradictory dross. The idea that SMcI’s legitimate requests for the information could be construed as art and part of any subsequent crime is peurile. He ignores completely the right to access principle that was obstructed by the CRU, and that there is a reasonable case for categorising the hacking or leaking of the FOI covered material in such circumstances as highly moral and legal – regardless of the conclusion any establishment investigation might reach. His summing up in the 2nd paragraph of his earlier confused assertions is just as unclear. What is clear is that here we have one more University professor whose mind is a bit messy and whose conception of morality is decidely suspect. And any scientific, economic or political views or research published by this guy are probably worthless – if the above paragraphs are any guide.

@ Ben (07:49:00) : Because Mann worked at the U of Virginia from 1999-2005, the ongoing Penn State review by a committee of scientists, is not likely to cover Mann’s “Hockey Stick” related problems, the ethics of Mann’s editorial actions with the UN IPCC’s 2001 report or the breach of scientific method procedures, due to Mann’s multi-year refusal to release his data for standard scientific review.”
Yes, but could they (or would they) contact UVa or UMass?

The face of Reason
Environmental organizations joining the new propaganda effort:
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2010/03/face-of-reason.html

I’m confused.
UEA were putting a file together as pe FOIA to be handed over in response to Steve McIntyre’s request and before they had chance to just hand it over, perhaps Steve stole it? Why wouldn’t he have just waited for them to hand it over – he seems to have waited a saintly long time for it in the first place.
I do hope this guy is axed for trying to defend the indefensible.
Evo1

John Quiggin and the Smoking Gun
http://johnquiggin.com/index.php/archives/2010/03/12/climategatethe-smoking-gun/
John Quiggen has published a simply shocking whirlwind
of facts and revelations.
However, having read both his timeline for Climategate
and the released CRU emails/data set/program there
are logical fallacies in his exposition.
Last July the CRU/Met reasoned that raw reports of
station data/temps from outside Great Britain they’ve
used as CRUTEM data were subject to non-disclosure
or restrictive use agreements between Met Office/CRU
and some of the various 170-plus reporting weather
organizations.
Although the data sought might be covered by such
agreements, the agreements themselves must be
government documents, and as such it is fitting and
proper for them to be published upon FIOA requests
if they aren’t already available to the public.
To obtain copies of these simple agreements, some
participants in Climate Audit and other blogs sent in
a grand total of 62 FOIA requests

“I hereby make a EIR/FOI request in respect to any confidentiality agreements restricting transmission of CRUTEM data to non-academics involing(sic) the following countries: [insert 5 or so countries that are different from ones already requested]”

Symbols of fallacy::
Not one of the thousand plus emails
released, not a single set of data included, and no
purloined program, in whole or in part can be
considered responsive in the legal sense
to the Climate Audit readerships’ cut and paste
“spam” FOI campaign.
Also, despite these very specific FOIA requests, the
CRU/Met has failed to produce a single restrictive
use agreement with the numerous data supplying
organizations dated prior to November, 2009.
The leading CRU/Met actors have failed to proffer
such publically cited agreements at various investigative
sessions while they were under oath and even when
entering such agreements would have been of
considerable benefit and assistance to the investigators.
Thus John Quiggin’s conclusion:

“McIntyre organised the campaign which led to the creation of the [foia.zip] file…”

is demonstrably false.
Dr. John may have found something smoking.
It appears he inhaled, deeply.
edit
Anthony, ctm, other:
Could you please add a note beneath my above
R.S.Brown (08:33:37) :
indicating that Mr. Quiggin has revised his “Smoking
Gun” article, and eliminated the logical link between
the FOI campaign and the creation of the foia.zip file.
He made a lot of modifications to the article after
slipping in some snide remarks about the quality of
Mr. McIntyre’s supporters, and sealing the thread from
additional comments.
See above: jaymam (21:42:40) :
/edit

JQ’s comment as he shut down comments on this story says a lot:
March 13th, 2010 at 09:06 | #35 Reply | Quote
I think we’ve seen enough to demonstrate the intellectual and moral quality of McIntyre’s supporters. I’m calling a halt here. Comments on this thread are closed.
It is pretty amazing and grossly inaccurate summary of 137 comments. We all know Mr. Pete, who is invariably polite and temperate, and his inclusion is sufficient to give lie to the comment.

Professors like Quiggin lose all their credibility with posts like that one.
Is he a liar or a fool — no matter which, I can’t trust anything he says scientifically, either.
Proclaimed intellectuals should, at a minimum, try to sound intellectually honest and objective in their public statements.
Of course his blog does say “Commentary on Australian & world events from a social-democratic perspective”. I guess that absolves him.

One of Quiggen’s comments at the link I provided;
“Since various commenters seem to have missed a basic point, let me restate. Gaining unauthorised access to someone else’s emails and publishing them is a crime.”

Francisedwardwhite (At 7:28:33): Great comment. Really incisive and correct on all points, IMHO. No system can pretend to stability (i.e. integrity) over any length of time without an error-correction (reality) function. If there is no accountability, no auditing, it is inevitable that the system will be consumed by its own BS at an accelerating rate. This happens in business. It happens with governments. It happens with any human institution. When we begin to ask “Why can’t these people understand this simple point?” it’s a sign that the rot is widespread; that these people can and do understand the point, but they desperately don’t want to.

Mcintyre shpuld sue.
Subsequent discovery might uncover more.
“the mole” should come forward.
Organizations such as UEA should be reminded heavy handedly that
their publicly funded research belongs to the public.
This type of malfeasance should be publicly reprimanded and this Quiggin
should suffer some consequences.
Government bodies around the world should be publicly
and definitively informed of the meaning of the documents in question and the questionable nature of the science and methods involved and all legislation
or international or intranational financial agreements created to punish the public should be promptly canceled.

Quiggins is being rather foolish. By making allegations about what occurred in East Anglia (located in Britain) he has laid himself open to a libel suit in the UK. That is very silly of him as the libel laws in the UK are notorious. It is the world’s absolutely worst jurisdiction to be sued for libel in.

Quiggin (from his comments):

I haven’t made any insinuations. I’ve stated directly that McIntyre encouraged an anti-science harassment campaign, received stolen emails and lied about their contents.

Oh, that’s a bit more specific. And possibly litigable. I’m not sure that McIntyre ever received anything other than a link.
If someone posting a link to comments constitutes receipt of stolen property, I think a great many people are in trouble.

Agree with other on this site. Golden opportunity for libel suit. Good trial atty could legally mine much information.

@R. de Haan (08:15:08) :
The face of Reason
Environmental organizations joining the new propaganda effort:
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2010/03/face-of-reason.html
—————————————————————-
Face of Reason??? – “Look at those snappers!”
(Romancing the Hockey stick (1984))

If you follow Quiggens’ dubious logic back, you will see that it was not Steve McIntyre who was responsible, but the people who caused Steve to take the action he did, so in Quiggins book, the finger should point firmly at Mann et al.

Wade (07:57:44)
To continue the Monty Python parade:
He’s a lumberjack, and he’s okay.
He sleeps all night and he works all day.
😛
Mods no harm no foul if you want to snip

What a load of hockey pucks!

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that McIntyre fans have a double standard.
Allegations of wrongdoing based on suspicions are OK if directed at Jones and man.
Mere suspicion of wrongdoing is outrageous if directed at McIntyre.
Why can’t people just be honest?

“Scientists have been constrained in fighting back by the fact that they are ethically constrained to be honest, whereas their opponents lie without any compunction.”
——–
You can say that again!

…………all roads lead to a hut in…………..
Do we know whether WUWT is deemed a ‘ANTI-SCIENCE’ website by the AGW proponents?

Who doesn’t like a good lawsuit now and then?

Typical academic demigod. Living in the Ivory Tower gives these people a huge disconnect from reality.

Timothy (07:37:28) :
John Quiggens blog – comment away.

Ew.
Really, Ick. Yuck. I’ve always tried to avoid aging, nasty hippy types. You just pointed me to a flock. A gaggle? A swarm. A toxic, festering pile.
Those type will never, EVER understand reality. And Quiggen has a fan club. Oh well, ONE of them had to leave the commune to make money, right?

ML (06:34:53) :
Every day we have more and more evidence confirming that IQ of some of the “climate scientist” is within the range of max and min temperatures on the equator.
__________________________________________________________________
More likely between the max and min temperatures on Pluto.

Smokey (10:52:14) :
Wren (10:46:50),
That is one of the most perfect examples of psychological projection I’ve seen here.
—————-
Reply:
We shouldn’t be surprised. As the emails indicated, the “climate scientists” were wondering where their projected global warming went, so they used subterfuge to project a fantasy. What they’re doing here to McIntyre is just more of the same.
Phil Jones needs to open everything he’s done so far for examination.

Meanwhile, as this little side show Peyton Place distraction is going on, everyday in March has been above the 20 year record for tropospheric temperatures. See:
http://discover.itsc.uah.edu/amsutemps/
This follows on the heals of the 6th warmest February ever globally, and the warmest February on instrument record for the Southern hemisphere. So far, January-February have been the 5th warmest on record for the planet, and we are running ahead of both 1998 or 2003 as the warmest year (depending on which data you want to use).
Also, if the arctic sea ice is going to make a run to get into some positive anomaly state this winter, it better hurry, as the spring melt is about to begin and, and with arctic temps generally running well above average, it promises to be one heck of a melt season. If the arctic sea ice does not make it into the positive anomaly range, it will mark the 6th year in a row that it has failed to do so, meaning the arctic sea ice will have been below average for 6 years, despite the longest and deepest soloar minimum in a century…
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.anomaly.arctic.png
The data continue to suggest the high probability that the AGWT is correct…

Quiggin’s evidently chickened out on the comments thing at his site. Readers may be interested to know that he’s a regular poster at Crooked Timber (a sort of virtual senior common-room, for those who don’t know it, a marvellous little coterie of smugly superior leftist ivory-tower tenured academics, remarkable for their insular viciousness towards intruding hoi-polloi). Here’s his latest:
http://crookedtimber.org/2010/03/03/lindzen-and-no-statistically-significant-warming-since-1995/
Quiggin doesn’t control commenting at CT. You know what to do.

” R. de Haan (06:14:37) :
[…]
Today the Federal State of North Rhein Westfalen, the former center of the German “Wirtschaftswunder” announced a 95% reduction of CO2 by 20250.”
No need to panic yet for the inhabitants of Düsseldorf, home town of Kraftwerk (or re-arranging The Robots to be played on goatskin drums):
it is only a suggestion of a Climate protection law coming from “several environment protection groups”; a report in german:
http://www.derwesten.de/nachrichten/politik/Umweltverbaende-wollen-neue-Kohlekraftwerke-verhindern-id2741803.html

It appears to be an excellent example of “Inspector Clouseau” reasoning. “And I suspect you because I have no reason to suspect you!”

Where does one begin the reading lesson for this man:
“By July 2009, CRU had advised McIntyre that climate data used in their work was available from the original sources, and that he should seek it from them.”
Really? Does this man not read the dates on things and the contents:
http://climateaudit.org/2009/07/24/cru-refuses-data-once-again/
McIntyre requested data that had been sent to Webster. This request was
mad June 26th. CRU responded within their mandated 20 day window.
On July 24th Mcintyre wrote the blog post and explains CRUs Claim:
the data CANNOT be shared because of confidentiality agreements.
Our good professor must have read this blog, because he notes what followed:
“24 July 2009: McIntyre organizes a spam FOI campaign against CRU, asking his supporters to send requests nominating five countries whose data they wanted of the form:
I hereby make a EIR/FOI request in respect to any confidentiality agreements)restricting transmission of CRUTEM data to non-academics involing(sic) the following countries: [insert 5 or so countries that are different from ones already requested]
(unsurprisingly, his supporters ignored the request to stick to new countries, and sent multiples of the same request)”
Now, read that. In front of him he has the request. It’s a request for confidentiality AGREEMENTS, not data. AGREEMENTS. And why agreements?
because the data was supposedly “confidential”
Reading Comprehension: F.
hey he is in Australia, Why dont you guys down under go write his bosses.
Check the employee guidelines. When did he blog? personal time or work time? Have fun

Crooked timber has closed comments.
Hey, this is gunna be fun.

Re: Simon H (07:42:16) :
…winning a libel case requires you to prove resulting personal damages. That would require McIntyre to prove professional damage (far more difficult for a retiree) or loss of income (also difficult for a retiree).
—
Not in the UK. First prove defamation, which should be straightforward given Quiggin’s stated he has no evidence. Damages are then assessed once defamation is proven, and in the UK can be considerable, especially if Justice Eady is a sceptic. As for loss of income, Steve mentioned he’s doing some consultancy here:
http://climateaudit.org/2010/03/08/pdac/
mining data can be extremely valuable and people working with that data need to be trustworthy and credible. Accusing someone of hacking or releasing data without authority could be very damaging. Read Climate Audit or the Hockey Stick Illusion and I think it’s easy to see Steve’s behaved with integrity and ethically throughout this long saga. The poor ethical standards are very much in the public doman post CRUTape, and are on the side of the self righteous.
Litigating this in the UK would seem a slam-dunk, especially with our current libel laws. Not litigating keeps the moral high ground, but these kinds of baseless personal attacks are damaging to careers and reputations. Litigation may not help move the CRU investigation along and may not discover much. Quiggins would need to prove his statements correct and he couldn’t necessarily rely on evidence from CRU or Norfolk Police.

re: Hu Duck Xing’s posting of Quiggin’s dossier:
I was rather shocked to realise that this is the Quiggin associated with anticipated utility; this is a very well-known contribution.
I think we’re seeing an example here of eminent (or at least prominent) insularity. It is fascinating to see the way he digs his heels in and doesn’t give an inch. No interest at all in looking at the situation in any way other than thru a received narrative. From the thrust of his remarks, he must still believe in the hockey stick.

W. Richards (12:06:11) : Hey, you are most probably right!, he is desperate, and by acussing McIntyre he attracts the attention of the police. He makes a good candidate for a whistleblower. 🙂

Notice Quiggin’s well-poisoning in the matter of Lindzen. Has he yet pointed out that Roy Spencer is an advocate of Intelligent Design?
No doubt he will, when he has a bone to pick with Spencer.

Simon H (07:42:16) :
Guys… take a step back a moment….
I think pursuing Quiggin at this time would be the wrong reaction from McIntyre. To pursue Quiggin and win would require McIntyre to prove damages. Quiggin shot his mouth off, and we have good reason to believe he’s wrong, but winning a libel case requires you to prove resulting personal damages.
Being attacked by a rabid economist in this manner can only *enhance* Mr. McIntyre’s reputation.
That is, if further enhancement of 24-carat gold were possible.