In case you are just joining us, here is some background on the story below. I know the identity of the mole. The ball is now in CRU’s court. Steve McIntyre reports below and throws down the gauntlet.
More news on the Met Office/CRU molehunt.
Late yesterday (Eastern time), 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, data so sensitive that, according to the UK Met Office, my being in possession of this data would, “damage the trust that scientists have in those scientists who happen to be employed in the public sector”, interfere with the “effective conduct of international relations”, “hamper the ability to protect and promote United Kingdom interests through international relations” and “seriously affect the relationship between the United Kingdom and other Countries and Institutions.”
Although they have confirmed the breach of security, neither the Met Office nor CRU have issued a statement warning the public of the newCRU_tar leak. Nor, it seems, have they notified the various parties to the alleged confidentiality agreements that there has been a breach in those confidentiality agreements, so that the opposite parties can take appropriate counter-measures to cope with the breach of security by UK institutions. 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.
Nor have either the Met Office or CRU contacted me asking me not to further disseminate the sensitive data nor to destroy the data that I have in my possession.
By not doing so, they are surely opening themselves up to further charges of negligence for the following reasons. Their stated position is that, as a “non-academic”, my possession of the data would be wrongful (a position with which I do not agree, by the way). Now that they are aware that I am in possession of the data (and they are aware, don’t kid yourselves), any prudent lawyer would advise them to immediately to notify me that I am not entitled to be in possession of the data and to ask/instruct me to destroy the data that I have in my possession and not to further disseminate the sensitive data. You send out that sort of letter even if you think that the letter is going to fall on deaf ears.
Since I am always eager to help climate scientists with these conundrums, I’ll help them out a little here. If, prior to midnight Eastern time on Thursday, a senior executive of the Met Office or the University of East Anglia notifies me that I am in wrongful possession of the data and directly requests me to destroy my copies of the CRU station data in question and thereby do my part in the avoidance of newCRU_tar proliferation, I will do so.
I will, of course, continue my FOI requests since I do not believe, for a minute, that their excuses have any validity nor am I convinced that the alleged confidentiality agreements actually exist nor, if they exist, am I convinced that they prohibit the provision of the data to me.
Without a single legal leg to stand on, I make the following claim:
No legal action is forthcoming regardless of Steve’s gentlemanly offer to swallow his flash drive, because, as henrychance has so eloquently noted above, MET has no legal right to claim ownership of public information. I don’t believe there’s anything they can say about it. So you might as well keep it, analyze it and publish it. I find claims that it has a commercial value particularly ludicrous.
Now, as for that “outed” mole, the grim options seem all too – er, grim. Can he (grammatically speaking) disappear himself?
When the MET office issued their “barbeque summer” forecast, maybe they were right. I’m sure it’s hot in there right now.
Shoreliner11 (11:53:56) :
Not sure why Steve “accepted” the data in the first place. He knows that this is not public data, and having some “mole” steal the data and give it to him is illegal. What are you trying to accomplish by this anyhow? Do you think you are going to expose some vast scientific conspiracy with your limited ability to analyze this data?
Violating alleged confidentiality agreements isn’t illegal, just breach of contract type stuff. The data may actually be public, given that the sources aren’t divulged.
As far as our “limited ability” to analyze the data, WUWT has analytical minds on staff easily the equal of anyone on the government climate payroll. While running climate models takes mainframe power, analyzing temperature records doesn’t, and my own modest desktop has about 30 times the horsepower of the old Cray 2 supercomputer.
Now that we have the source data, I forecast that you will see the Hadley adjustment process reverse engineered and replicated, then the mistakes will be corrected and we’ll get a truer picture of the world climate, much as what happened with the Steig Antarctica model.
Reply: Except for Anthony, WUWT has no “staff”, just contributors and volunteers. ~ charles the underpaid, but most appreciated moderator.
[Reply #2: What? You get underpaid?? *Sheesh* I don’t get paid. In fact, it’s even worse than that! ~dbs, mod.]
[REPLY #3 – Step 1 would be just a matter of seeing how far upward the raw stuff is “adjusted”. One may only presume that the data is not cooled off or they surely would have released it in the first place. ~ Evan]
I dunno, I have the feeling that Steve and Anthony are having a laugh at us (and others) here. It’s going to turn out the data was posted on the Facebook page of the Director of the Met or somesuch.
But if not, then Steve call your usual pizza delivery place and insist on your regular delivery guy from now on! And don’t assume the answer “Landshark” given to “who is it?” at a knock at the door is necessarily someone joking. . . .
Pay more in taxes to the government, so the government scientists can pretend to control the weather.
I assume this all goes to the ‘pretend’ part.
How do we know that the data supplied by the so-called ‘Mole’ is THE data used by Jones? Because the mole says so?
Is there any way to confirm that this is the good stuff, and all of it?
I’ve figured it out.
Steve and Anthony abandoned Google and started using ….. BING.
So it was Professor Bing, in the library with the (new) search tool.
40 Coats
I don’t quite understand Steve’s offer to destroy the data if requested. If this were a state secret truly placing the UK at great risk, e.g. a new kind of weapon, that would be justified. But this is data collected by a public agency for entirely public purposes, and the agency is withholding it on dubious legal and ethical grounds, employee confidentiality agreements (if they exist) notwithstanding.
I think the thing to do is to immediately disseminate the data to the general public, maintaining an archival copy in a secure location to guard against any corruption by third parties (intentional or not). Once the dataset(s) are widely available, say on public FTP servers, then what can the Met Office do? Discipline the ‘mole’, perhaps, or fire him for breach of contract. The horse will have left the barn.
Would making the data public put Steve in any legal jeopardy? I assume he is an American citizen, so is outside the jurisdiction of the UK authorities. Could they seek to have him extradited, to face a charge like ‘complicity to steal state secrets’? Conceivably, but with adequate publicity I’d guess it would be laughed out of court.
No, I’m not an attorney, but could be induced to play one on the blogs.
/Mr Lynn
[Reply: Steve McIntyre is Canadian. ~dbs, mod.]
The obfuscation and deliberate hiding of the data involved was what, 2 years ago, led me to question what had been up until then, unquestioned life long obedience to my (former) political masters on the left. This particular instance has all the elements needed to educate multitudes of others, who, like me, are/were unaware of this deception. It would be a terrible mistake to let up on this. Some things need no marketing, especially when the truth is on your side. Marketing has supplanted science, and unless stuff like this is plastered everywhere, all the time, just like the other side, (fight fire with fire and truth!) the marketing campaign will continue unabated.
I wish there was more I could do to assist Mr. Watts and Mr. McIntyre.
Wonderful stuff!
I expect to see the whole story serialised in “Spooks” in the coming months with Harry’s team from MI5 laying down their lives to maintain Britain’s security whilst jousting with the shadowy figures from the CIA in the saga of “the Mole in the Met Office.”
Wow, nice spy story. Now we all need cool spy-story monikers when we post here. I think mine will be “Dances with Moles” or maybe “Moleraker”. If the mole is who I think it is, the Met Office doesn’t have the authority to punish this individual.
This is SOOO fun. Here is what Iposted at Steve’s site:
Steve is having wonderful fun with a riddle.
What can provide files upon request that the owner does not want to provide, yet all is legal? The file provider cannot be charged under the official secrets act, perhaps because it has no conscience; the receiver of the files has not stolen them (not even scraped); others have the files as well, but they were not provded by the original receiver of the files. No legal lines have been crossed; no confidentialities broken. There is even a picture of the provider of files.
Well, the file provider is inaminate. The files were requested and delivered. The picture is a screen shot of the web, or FTP, request page.
I suspect the HCRU has cocked up big time, and will be right royally embarrassed once Christopher Booker writes a piece in the Daily Telegraph, and a certain Lord Branchly asks questions in the house.
Tim S. (12:24:50)
You raise an interesting question.
As temperatures are experienced by everyone, how can they be subject to copyright? We all experienced the temperatures, but we did not know if it was 12.1C or 22.1C, unless we had our own thermometer.
This law suite would be tied up in legal knots for ever!
Episode n+1: Siberian climate scientist gets secret password to access Hadley climate historical records. Objective is to modify the algorithm to decrease long term average and therefore increase recent anomalies, and to do that from a site not traceable by CA and WUWT. Unknown to Hadley, Siberian climate scientist has employment conditions which increase vodka ration as Siberian temperature falls below global average. Siberian climate scientist uses secret password to increase historical average,inducing an apparent decade of cooling and therefore increased vodka ration. Hadley leaks data to CA in the expectation that forensic audit exposes Siberian fraud and restores warming.
How does SMac find his way throught this web of lies and deceit to save the planet and get his hands on the excess vodka ration, which he distributes to the poor? See episode n+2.
The data were sourced from CRU, not the Met Office.
Bill @ur momisugly 13.01.39
Go to Piers Corbyn’s web site and you will realize that the Met Office’s forecasts have ZERO value. Their information is worthless.
…but the distraught Penny Wong, anguishing her lost love of singer Peter, refuses to commit Hari-Kari in order to save the planet. Meanwhile, Peter is having a liaison with …
@Robert A Cook PE (16:04:06) :
“Roger Sowell (15:09:31) :
pete m (15:43:06) :
—
Interesting attitude. Is withholding public data, paid for by public funds and being used (misused and distorted!!) to manipulate public policy to the detriment of billions of private citizens worldwide ethical?
Does a lawyer have ethics? Respect ethics?”
Mr. Cook, PE, I believe you are the gentleman who got a bit sideways with me over a recent discussion on nuclear power on WUWT. I would like to put your snide comments above in perspective for those who are just now following along.
As to your statements above, do you have any proof or admissible evidence that any data at the Met was, first of all, public; second, misused; third, distorted; fourth, that public policy is being manipulated; and fifth, that any detriment occurred to any single person, let alone billions worldwide? If so, please present such proof.
It may be that you, as a non-lawyer, do not fully grasp the legal definition of data and all that that term implies, what information is protectible (and thus not in the public domain) even though it may appear to be, or contain, data. Based on the limited information before us (at least that I have read and seen) at this time, it is premature to make any conclusions about who has what rights to, and obligations for, any set of figures, be they data or not.
Now, to your question on lawyers having ethics, yes, we actually do. You may read the California ethics codes governing attorneys here:
http://calbar.ca.gov/calbar/pdfs/rules/Rules_Professional-Conduct.pdf
Other states have similar rules, as do other countries.
In addition, the American Bar Association has other ethics rules with which attorneys in the U.S. must comply.
I am not at liberty to discuss (or write) any further on the topic of the Mole at the Met and the Data he Did Get, as it would violate various ethics rules.
Is that ethical enough for you?
Fck a Dck, Scr. Thm fr hr t etrnty
Dnt wrry abt bsns ts ah dnt undst thslvs.
For translation, just ask!
Wth knd rgds
RdH, nck nm, the mle.
Bill, @whenever, the weather is not conmmercial data. OK. Let me repeat. The Weather Is Not Commercial Data.
Everyone in the world knows what the weather was, and is likely to be in their locale. They do not need secret “weather data” to confirm themselves of that.
They also do not need UK Met Office forecasts that are totally out to lunch, all the time. Better buy the forecasts of Weather Action, Piers Corbyn.
Roger Harrabin is doing a bit of back-tracking at the moment for the BeeB. This is a rare occasion when a committed Greenie is forced to grit his teeth and say that the world is not following the IPCC or Hadley plans. Read and enjoy…http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8173533.stm
The mole is an ftp, isn’t it? It was out on the web for all to see, if one knew where to look. Perhaps a cached site?
Mike Lorrey, a mole of substance would go by “Avogadro” and drink watermolen martinis shaken, not stirred.
This turned up during a search for “Metmole alias.” It is shocking and apparently a good reason for the Met to be concerned:
Real Name
Ororo Munroe
Aliases
“Beauty,” Wind-Rider, “Stormy,” Mutate #20, White King, “Goddess of the Plains”, ‘Ro
Identity
Publicly unknown
Occupation
Queen of Wakanda,
Citizenship
Dual U.K./Wakandan citizenship
Place of Birth
Bournemouth
Known Relatives
Ashake (ancestor, deceased), unidentified paternal grandfather,
Group Affiliation
X-Treme Tokyo Arena, Twelve, Brides of Set,
Education
College-level courses at Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters, Westchester, New York
Height
5’11”
Weight
127 lbs.
Eyes
Blue, glowing white when using powers
Hair
White
Powers
Storm is a mutant who possesses the psionic ability to manipulate weather patterns over limited areas. She can stimulate the creation of any form of precipitation such as rain or fog, generate winds in varying degrees of intensity up to and including hurricane force, raise or lower the humidity and temperature in her immediate vicinity, induce lightning and other electrical atmospheric phenomena, and disperse natural storms so as to create clear change. Storm can direct the path of certain atmospheric effects, such as bolts of lightning, with her hands. She has also demonstrated the ability to manipulate ocean currents, though the extent of this ability is still unclear.
I think geo (16:50:22) has figured it out. This affair smacks of the most ethereal of all commodities, that of Canadian humor, of tooques, backbacon, and cold ones, eh?