By charles the moderator
Rodin’s The Thinker at the Musée Rodin.
Author CJ. Licensed under Creative Commons.
I have a theory.
With the blogosphere all atwitter about the emails and data “stolen” from the Climatic Research Institute at the University of East Anglia, two theories have become dominant describing the origin of the incident.
- CRU was hacked and the data stolen by skilled hackers, perhaps an individual or more insidiously some sophisticated group, such as Russian agents.
- An insider leaked the information to the NSM (non-mainstream media)
Theory number one is the preferred explanation of the defenders of CRU. This allows them to portray CRU as victims of illegal acts. It allows them to scream bloody murder and call for an investigation of the crime. How can we take the fruits of hideous crime seriously? The end does not justify the means!
One of our favorite writers, Gavin Schmidt, has expanded on this theme with the report:
He [Gavin] said the breach at the University of East Anglia was discovered after hackers who had gained access to the correspondence sought Tuesday to hack into a different server supporting realclimate.org, a blog unrelated to NASA that he runs with several other scientists pressing the case that global warming is true.
The intruders sought to create a mock blog post there and to upload the full batch of files from Britain. That effort was thwarted, Dr. Schmidt said, and scientists immediately notified colleagues at the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/21/science/earth/21climate.html
I believe the above statement by Gavin to be a big bunch of hooey. I believe the “hack” was a posting of the same blog comment which was posted at The Air Vent
which was also submitted here at WUWT, but never was visible publicly, because all comments are moderated and publicly invisible until approved by an administrator or moderator. Many of you have already seen it:
We feel that climate science is, in the current situation, too important to be kept under wraps.
We hereby release a random selection of correspondence, code, and documents.
Hopefully it will give some insight into the science and the people behind it.
This is a limited time offer, download now:
http://ftp.tomcity.ru/incoming/free/FOI2009.zip
Sample:
0926010576.txt * Mann: working towards a common goal
1189722851.txt * Jones: “try and change the Received date!”
0924532891.txt * Mann vs. CRU
0847838200.txt * Briffa & Yamal 1996: “too much growth in recent years makes it difficult to derive a valid age/growth curve”
0926026654.txt * Jones: MBH dodgy ground
1225026120.txt * CRU’s truncated temperature curve
1059664704.txt * Mann: dirty laundry
1062189235.txt * Osborn: concerns with MBH uncertainty
0926947295.txt * IPCC scenarios not supposed to be realistic
0938018124.txt * Mann: “something else” causing discrepancies
0939154709.txt * Osborn: we usually stop the series in 1960
0933255789.txt * WWF report: beef up if possible
0998926751.txt * “Carefully constructed” model scenarios to get “distinguishable results”
0968705882.txt * CLA: “IPCC is not any more an assessment of published science but production of results”
1075403821.txt * Jones: Daly death “cheering news”
1029966978.txt * Briffa – last decades exceptional, or not?
1092167224.txt * Mann: “not necessarily wrong, but it makes a small difference” (factor 1.29)
1188557698.txt * Wigley: “Keenan has a valid point”
1118949061.txt * we’d like to do some experiments with different proxy combinations
1120593115.txt * I am reviewing a couple of papers on extremes, so that I can refer to them in the chapter for AR4
I was the first at WUWT to see the comment above and immediately embargoed it. After discussions and many phone calls, we finally began to refer to the information after, and only after, we saw that it was available elsewhere, such as The Air Vent, and also after we knew that CRU was aware that it was circulating on the web.
Gavin’s elaborate description of the hacking attempt at RC is, in my humble opinion, nothing more than an attempt to add meat to the hacking theory in order to increase the vilification of the theoretical hackers. Gavin has demonstrated this kind of misdirection in the past in the Mystery Man incident where he attempted to obfuscate his own involvement in a data correction to station files held by the British Antarctic Survey. In this new spirit of transparency Gavin, why don’t you send Anthony the log files that demonstrate this attempted break in at realclimate.org?
After all, this is a criminal act of vandalism and of harassment of a group of scientists that are only going about their business doing science. It represents a whole new escalation in the war on climate scientists who are only trying to get at the truth. Think — this was a very concerted and sophisticated hacker attack. …Or at the next level, since the forces of darkness have moved to illegal operations, will we all have to get bodyguards to do climate science?
Sigh…and sigh again.
Theory number two is the preferred explanation of, for want of a better term, the Skeptics Camp. It is a romantic thought. Some CRU employee, fed up with the machinations, deceit, and corruption of science witnessed around him or her, took the noble action of becoming whistle-blower to the world, bravely thrusting the concealed behavior and data into the light for all to see. This theory is attractive for all the right reasons. Personal risk, ethics, selflessness etc.
I would like to offer a third possibility based on a bit of circumstantial evidence I noticed on the Web Saturday afternoon.
There’s an old adage, never assume malice when stupidity or incompetence will explain it.
A short time ago there was a previous leak of CRU data by an insider. In this case, Steve McIntyre acquired station data which he had been requesting for years, but someone inside CRU unofficially made the data available.
In this case, many commentators had various guesses as to the motivation or identity of the disgruntled mole even proposing that perhaps a disgruntled William Connelly was the perpetrator.
Of course it turned out the Phil Jones, director of CRU, himself had inadvertently left the data on an open FTP server.
Many have begun to think that the zip archive FOI2009.zip was prepared internally by CRU in response to Steve McIntyre’s FOI requests, in parallel with attempts to deny the request in case the ability to refuse was lost. There are many reasons to think this is valid and it is consistent with either of the two theories at the beginning of this post. Steve McIntyre’s FOI appeal was denied on November 13th and the last of the emails in the archive is from November 12th.
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 a distinct possibility and does not require massive conspiracy. The same constraints of time and effort would apply to any internal whistle blower. However, an ongoing process of internally collating this information for an FOI response is entirely consistent with what we find in the file.
In the past I have worked at organizations where the computer network grew organically in a disorganized fashion over time. Security policies often fail as users take advantage of shortcuts to simplify their day to day activities. One of these shortcuts is to share files using an FTP server. Casual shortcuts in these instances may lead to gaping security holes. This is not necessarily intentional, but a consequence of human nature to take a shortcut here and there. This casual internal sharing can also lead to unintentional sharing of files with the rest of the Internet as noted in the Phil Jones, CRU mole, example above. Often the FTP server for an organization may also be the organization’s external web server as the two functions are often combined on the same CPU or hardware box. 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.
Since Friday November 20th a few users noticed this interesting notice on the CRU website.
This website is currently being served from the CRU Emergency Webserver.
Some pages may be out of date.
Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible.
Here is a screen grab for posterity.
So as part of the security crackdown at CRU they have taken down their external webserver? Network security professionals in the audience will be spitting up coffee all over their keyboards at this point.
So this is my theory is and this is only my theory:
A few people inside CRU possessed the archive of documents being held in reserve in case the FOI appeal decision was made in favor of Steve McIntyre. They shared it with others by putting it in an FTP directory which was on the same CPU as the external webserver, or even worse, was an on a shared drive somewhere to which the webserver had permissions to access. In other words, if you knew where to look, it was publicly available. Then, along comes our “hackers” who happened to find it, download it, and the rest is history unfolding before our eyes. So much for the cries of sophisticated hacking and victimization noted above.
If I had to bet money, I would guess that David Palmer, Information Policy & Compliance Manager, University of East Anglia, has an even chance of being the guilty party, but it would only be a guess.
To repeat the basic premise of this theory.
There’s an old adage, never assume malice when stupidity or incompetence will explain it.
™ CRUtape Letters, is a trademark of Moshpit Enterprises.
I had thought something similar. But I’m not a network security person (although I have worked with network security guys whose job was often to physically infiltrate systems, as well as the more mundane hacking). However, I think this has to be the best theory out there. The files are too specific to the FIA request to be anything but. Nice job!
This makes sense.
The CRU web server, after all this, still allows directory listing.
Keep it up. They are spinning and covering. I suspect this will cause a decrease in funding for pet research.
This also trashes the concept of “peer review”
All their peer review is done by friends and people that push the same dogma.
I blame Putin– OR– Big Oil — OR — the Pantaverates — OR– the Higgs Boson!!!
Dr. James Hansen
I would buy into Theory No.3 on that basis. It is indeed plausible. It also means that ICT people at CRU were fully aware of the content and sensitivity of this material because of the editing process. So it was either by accident (or design) that a prepared FOI file ended up on an insecure FTP server.
Interesting thinking. Having been the unofficial server manager and maintainer on more than one occasion at various places of employment, I can attest to the “quick-and-dirty” method of sharing data and managing systems. Sometimes you kludge things together to get a task done, without thinking things through. Not excusing it, but this is reality.
I think your theory has merit. I’m really curious who the leaker is. Wheels within wheels.
Makes sense.
I am tired of hearin g the expression “stolen data”
The data is still there. It was revealed. You also don’t “steal” football game scores. You announce them or publish them.
Temperatures are not private information. Not secrein any way.
Well my theory (no doubt already aired by others anyway) is that the file is labelled FOI, not because it was intended to be part of an FOI release of information but, on the contrary, were emails and texts meant for deletion so as to avoid being seen via FOI requests.
And definitely an inside job not a hack.
Now get a BBC journalist to report this 🙂
Great post, “There’s an old adage, never assume malice when stupidity or incopetence will explain it.” I suspect that you are right about the “incompetence”. No hacker at all.
“The CRUtape Letters”
Wonderful, Charles!
The ‘damage control’ on the other side is ludicrous.
This is so great. The river is flowing to the sea.
The Wall Street Journal had a page 3 story Monday, November 23, 2009.
Priceless.
An on-air discussion of the issue on Fox this morning: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qrkpp1Bf5zc&feature=channel . An Eco guy and a sceptic. Both calling for an investigation.
Curious. I wondered about the name of the file, FOI2009.zip, and this could explain that.
The Email selection is rather odd, it’s certainly not what the researchers would put together, what with very old Email from John Daly, but it might something culled by someone less coupled to the science but charged with collecting Emails.
I’m not convinced, but I think this is more likely than an outside breakin.
Haveing worked on this kind of stuff for a while I find this theory quite plausable
What have yet to see is any credible claim that the hacked documents are fake.
BTW: Would these documents be admissible in a court of law? I believe they would, given my understanding of the circumstances of how they were released. Would someone attempting to use these documents first have to prove they had no part in the hacking?
I’ll pick a minor nit with the headline’s use of “alternate”:
Alternate = By turns, back-and-forth;
Alternative = A choice among two or more things;
Interesting theory.
But why would the file contain such damning evidence?
If CRU had themselves prepared it for the FOI request, surely you don’t belive they would have handed over such files to SM, given what we now know?
Something doesn’t add up.
That hypothesis passes my razor.
I blame Sarah Palin!
Personally I could care less about where the stash came from. It’s there and its contents are explosive.
The public needs to be informed about it, and how its money is being wasted by the truckloads.
Beautiful.Forwarding it now…
It’s certainly plausible, though I still don’t discount the insider leak. The hacking thing is unlikely I think. The police investigation, if there is one, should reveal all.
Incidentally, I’ve now heard that AGW will lead to greater numbers of vampires, zombies, and Godzilla attacks.
The careless/stupid scenario makes more sense than the alternatives. Whoever got into the FTP server probably found the zip file already prepared for exploitation. It makes little sense that someone would break into the server, download the entire volume, and then sort/organize hundreds of megabytes for later publication.
Like you, I believe that the CRU boys are the unwitting architects of their own outing.
Deja vu, all over again – the gang that couldn’t shoot straight!
BBC Daily Politics had a discussion today about UEA/CRU and Andrew Neil – Presenter actually asked some skeptical questions.
Well Done that man!
Prof Singer and Watson on a head to head. Around 17 minutes into the show.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00p6sdy/b00p6scv/The_Daily_Politics_23_11_2009/
From what IP address was the attempt to post at WUWT made?
Senator Inhofe has stated that, if the revelations continue over the Thanksgiving break, he will bring up the issue when the Environment and Public Works committee gets back to work next week.
Check out the interview in which he made the statement at:
http://www.youtube.com/user/JimInhofePressOffice#p/u/1/zH6_hmEgfCs
One can follow the issue at:
http://epw.senate.gov/public/?CFID=14409666&CFTOKEN=37691713
NK 09:05:06:
“I blame…….the Higgs Boson.”
I reckon that’s about right, NK. It’s surely no coincidence that all this stuff broke loose last week just as those chaps in Switzerland were starting up their – what’s it called? – – the Large HADCRUT Collider?
Charles–
in all seriousness, your explanation is very plausable, it certainly passes Occam’s Razor. Congratulations. Let me add one observation to Chainpin’s question of why would this file “…contain such damning evidence… Something doesn’t add up.”
It’s possible this file was put together as a potential response to the FOI request, and circulated around CRU for review and a decision as to whether to release per the FOI. When the CRU types reviewed, they opted to stonewall, and no way let this file see the light of FOI day. Someone disagreed, and posted the file. Who and why? those are the pertinent questions. My naive hope is someone who was unhappy with the CRU crew’s attempt to stonewall the public. Although it was probably a CRU crewmember with some kind of grudge.
Hmm, not sure about the cock-up theory, but one thing is for sure. Those files were gathered together by someone in the know about these things. There’s just too much of it that applies to the sort of things we are discussing for it to have been done by some random guy on the internet. Being very good at getting into servers doesn’t automatically mean that person would know what is useful, and what is not, unless of course, they’ve been following WUWT and CA since their inception. I think the extra material that was put in along with the controversial material, plus the notice that it is a random selection of a possibly bigger set, was put there to put people off the scent.
We’ve already seen an email from Jones telling people to delete emails, it’s very unlikely that he would leave that email about for a possible FOI request, along with an admission that he had already smoothed things with some FOI officers so that information could be withheld. This has to be a major embarassment for those FOI officers too.
Notice too that there are no emails to loved ones asking if they need milk, or something, collected on the way home, or speculation about a rugby match (Didn’t I see Briffa with a Wallabies shirt on in one of the photos of him?). This has all the fingerprints of someone on the inside, in the know. Hopefully, time will tell.
Charles
Your Theory III makes sense. If it was not password secured, that is it even “hacked” or just a free public download?
Recommend verifying whether CRUTape Letters is actually a “Registered” trademark, or if it is simply “Trademarked”.
Trademarks and Copyrights Frequently Asked Questions
Anyone has the right to add the TM symbol to put the public on notice that they consider the word a proprietary mark. However, it takes quite some time and expense to formally have a mark “registered”. There has hardly been time to file the paperwork, let alone have any trademark office respond. I highly doubt that it is “registered”. Thus recommend marking it as TM – a trademark, until you have official confirmation of formal registration.
James Inhofe comments
Blame President Bush. He triggered a global economic crisis.
This is classic defense playing out. They act all violated and feign outrage to distract from the content of the e-mails and guilt in manipulating both data and weights on different years by tweeking the programs.
Clinton helped a troubled intern. Jones and Mann just are protecting us from the evil sceptics. I can’t aborrt a 2 year old toddler and appeal to privacy.
They can’t manipulate data and manipulate peer review and evoke some privacy protection.
I have another theory.
The files included in this leak were extracted from the main servers in preparation for the possible successful FOI request. This was done following an internal review of likely contentious, material.
The internal review would have come up with an “Eeek, we’re screwed if this lot gets out!” response. This then triggered the purge of the main servers in preparation for a complete (apparently) opening up to external scrutiny.
My belief is that this purged material was on a back-up/DR server, and the main servers have already had this material removed. They just had not got around to purging the back-ups yet.
As to who did it/how it got out – how about either the IT support function, or…the person tasked with responding to FOI requests, the one pressurised by Jones and the VC, et al?
You don’t need an FTP server if you have a website.
Someone I work with and know wants our full client address list pronto, but they are halfway across the globe.
They email me with the request.
I upload the file via FTP to my website, conveniently named mywebsite.com, and email my colleague to type http://mywebsite.com/addresslist.zip into their browser, and to email me when they have obtained and verified the data.
I receive their email and via my ftp program, I delete addresslist.zip, or if I am devious, I upload a file of garbage with the name addresslist.zip in its place.
Job done, and unless there are active spies surveying the files on my website,
not easily hacked in the time it takes.
I can not imagine they would give out these sensitive data/code/emails, even if forced by FOIA. I can imagine they would give out some filtered information, treering data without metadata and so on. I think name “FOIA2009” was neat idea of the CRUmole.
In this case, never assume stupidity or incompetence, when malice will explain it.
Enough talk… some action at last.
http://www.taxpayersalliance.com/campaign/2009/11/cru-emails-reveal-inconvenient-truths-about-foi.html
Maybe it is my imagination but I recall someone making a comment about the irony that the data that McIntyre obtained earlier in the year was in a subdirectory named FOIA or something. The memory is vague but I do seem to recall someone making a comment about the irony of it.
I’m thinking this collection is more along the lines of “Stuff to be deleted in the event of an unfavorable ruling on the FOI request”.
Well, I have not heard anyone deny the validity of
any one email, so, it’s time to press forward with an
investigation. Don’t forget, there is 100Meg more to
come.
SJones (09:07:23) :
I agree with your theory that the file contained emails and other files intended for destruction. Why would such incriminating information be collect in anticipation of having to turn it over to your most ardent skeptics?
After all, they have spent more than the last decade hiding their activity!
I would like to offer a variant.
There is an internal, behind the scenes investigation going on. This file was created to help define the scope of the problem.
What I would like to see is the rest of the emails, the working documents, and all of the code as well as the change history for the documents and code.
In general I prefer the cock up theory of history to the conspiracy one: which does not mean conspiracy does not go on as can be seen here.
So I think this supposition quite plausible if someone in admin put the files together ready to meet an FOI request if it passed. Presumably the collection is most files and only those relevant to an FOI would have been selected for release.
How it then got into the electronic ether and to whom who knows? The possibilities are endless, from finger trouble upwards.
So pretty plausible CTM, a very useful insight indeed.
Kindest Regards
This seems like a reasonable alternate to the insider feeling outrage and posting it. Having worked with network security, users always want access to things and rarely understand the security implications of were things are stored.
And as pointed out CRU has already demonstrated once that they can’t keep proper track of where they are storing things when they put data they didn’t want released on a public FTP server.
Theory 3 is solid and I would say the most likely scenario. I might rate them something like this.
10% chance it was a hacker.
30% chance it was an insider.
60% chance that it was an open FTP server.
That is just ball park figures but gives a feel for how likely I think each scenario is. I’ll note that the hacker hasn’t felt right as an explanation from the beginning.
“We hereby release a random selection of correspondence, code, and documents.”
Has anyone discussed the phrase “Random Selection”? Doesn’t this imply a larger section of Data may have been liberated and this 61 megs was just a sample?
If so I wonder when the rest of the data will be released?
Theory 3 is the most logical presented so far. Data placed on a public ftp server is not stolen, it’s picked up like a quarter lying on the sidewalk. I would bet that CRU now knows what happened, thus they shut down the server.
The comment by Pierrehumbert is telling. He’s essentially proving Jerry Pournelle’s “Iron Law of Bureaucracy” case.
This isn’t THEIR data; it’s my data. And yours. I paid for it, as did you. It belongs to us, and we may do with it as we please. It’s not up to Pierrehumbert to dole it out to those possessing the magic key or otherwise demonstrating worthiness to his satisfaction.
Of all of the things in this case, this one is the part that’s ultimately the most damaging, this assumption that the public pays for these people to run a fiefdom as they jolly well please.
The emails and the code commentary are interesting but don’t seem to demonstrate a concerted conspiracy. Sure there’s turf wars with others and blockades to control the mechanism of peer review. This is all part of how the big boys do it everywhere, not just here. The contents of the data release will not likely yield a smoking gun so much as provide some of the data that was supposed to have been released years back via FOIA.
In sum, the travesty playing out is that this is the data that will affect the lives of billions if certain political aims are achieved. Certainly something of this level of importance ought to have been gone through with a fine tooth comb and universally agreed upon accordingly. And they have been witholding the data as if it’s part of their personal playground.
“Disgusting” doesn’t even begin to cover Pierrehumbert’s assertion.
I would not have included a bunch of emails talking about dodging FOIA if I were resigning myself to honouring the FOI requests.
How about the ignored subject lines DELETE AFTER READING? Why not just delete them?
My vote is Whistleblower. (translation for visitors from RC; 5th. column cyberterrorist)
Who and which organizations gave the “scientists” money for this “research?”
Any one of them has grounds to sue for fraud in a civil suit. Either the granting organizations or the donors ( individually or as a class) can do it.
The same goes for the donors who gave money to the granting organizations. If any board members can be shown to be in collusion with the researchers, then the board member or members become liable as well.
As for misuse of government money and property, that is a criminal matter.
If the CRU staff put it together as a response to the FOI request, why would they have included the HARRY_READ_ME file, since it’s neither an E-mail, data, or source code? The inclusion of that file makes it more likely that it was put together by an internal source.
While I was never in the network security branch at (nameless Government facility), I knew some of the network engineering people pretty well, and became aware of a number of permission screw-ups at our facility; i.e.:
While there is no way to know for sure at this point WRT the CRU saga, the ”third possibility” that Charles postulates is indeed quite plausible:
The multiple and complex layering of network permissions that can be applied by (likely) several people who have network admin capability, can quickly lead to a bunch of open ”back doors”; especially if both internally and externally accessible files reside on the same server (let alone the same disc spindle). Where I worked it was a firm rule that you did NOT mix any internal and external applications or data on the same platform, due to this ever-present risk and a couple unhappy experiences; where access permissions would become ”leaky”.
SIDEBAR: I believe the original of the ”old adage” Charles referred to is attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte; who is recorded to have said:
”Never automatically ascribe to deliberate malice, that which is easily explainable by ordinary, everyday incompetence.”
In any case: Whether climategate resulted from incompetence in network management, actions by an internal whistleblower, or a sophisticated external hack (all perhaps aided as mentioned by actions resulting from FOIA requests):
I’ll take it. When the history of the whole politically-correct AGW religion is finally written, this event just might make the book.
When I first saw this file, it looked to me to be a lot like the kind of file that gets put together for a lawyer. Typical an organization would get a discovery notice or a FOIA request and a lawyer will send out an email requesting all data, information and correspondance related to the issue at hand. A clerical person assembles all the responses into a file and the lawyer goes through it and issues an opinion. So labeling this kind of file with ‘FOI’ in the filename would make sense.
But this raises a troubling question, could independent officials at Met have looked at this file, with all the references to deleting data etc, and conclude that there was nothing afoul? It staggers the mind.
In some of the emails Jones’s smuggly talks about his success at corrupting the FOI people. It was very Obi Wan Kenobi-esk. “These are not the droids you are looking for”, Jones said in a hypnotic voice — kind of thing.
It would be interesting to see the organizational structure of CRU. Does Palmer report to Jones? Or is Palmer part of Met? Was Jones able to pull the wool over the eyes of the FOI people?
Maybe someone was smart enough to ‘get’ was going on, and when the decision was made, decided to go rogue. Or, maybe they just left the file in an insecure place.
Assumig this is the CRU’s own compilation of data intended for the FOIA, is this the “nicest” emails thay can cough up. Surly they must have deleted some files? Or do we assume full disclosure if they had lost the FOIA request.
this is why it’s always easier/better to just tell the truth. then you don’t have to worry about what gets hacked….uhm…er….”released.”
and admissible or not, it certainly gives much insight into exactly what to ask for in the NEXT FOI request…
which will almost certainly be approved.
This is the most plausible theory I have seen so far. Fits the facts and is beautifully simple.
So there are no nasty Russian hackers after all?
Just wondering then, who posted this to the Russian server and how did they find it in the first place.
Charles:
Excellent and thought provoking piece. As you put it, I am hoping for Theory II primarily because one way or the other another shoe will drop. If it is Theory III, then there is a good chance that they will simply stonewall and hide all incriminating stuff. It is a sad commentary on the state of our universities that such a tactic is likely to succeed. It would take but only one “deep throat” to end this painful episode.
Sounds very plausible, especially given the name of the file. However, if it was simply copied from the ftp site by someone, why do they remain anonymous? I would be proud to be associated with this historic download!
That’s like having a state of the art home security system — then leaving the doors and windows open and later discovering you’ve been burglarized.
Occam’s razor – or, why assume some nefarious plot when plain stupid will do.
DaveF (09:31:39) :
I was reaching for a glass of Coca-Cola when I read this. Fortunately I didn’t pause in my reading and finished before taking a sip – or else you’d owe me a new keyboard!
Roger Knights –
You’ve only given the verb ‘alternate’ – it is also a noun meaning one who substitutes for another (an alternate on a jury or sports team), and an adjective meaning ‘alternative’ (an alternate location).
I think the file contents could not have been collected for being sent to someone outside CRU requesting a FOI. Maybe someone tried to avoid a memory hole or the file itself WAS the memory hole.
NK (09:31:45) :
Charles–
…. It’s possible this file was put together as a potential response to the FOI request, and circulated around CRU for review and a decision as to whether to release per the FOI.
After reading the post this was one of my thoughts. Whether in response to an FOI request or not, someone collected the most damaging material and started to circulate it in order to ensure a coordinated response if the material had to be released and possibly to provide a guide to what material should be purged to avoid disclosure. Receipents started to forward it to people they thought would be interested in a chain-reaction/chain-letter fashion that obscured the original intent of the compiler. Eventually it hit the inbox of someone who was ‘not reliable’ (in the CRU sense), maybe after someone on the fringe of the group skimmed the emails and saw a co-worker’s name.
Do not withdraw the FOI request. This data may have been inadvertently or deliberately corrupted.
I just watched a FoxNews interview between Chris Horner at the Competitive Enterprise Institute and Howard Gould of the Clean Economy network. See how has more invested in this “event”.
I would agree with #3, due to the fact that code files were included. Wasn’t that part of the FOI request in the first place? In preparing for a ruling, it would make sense that a download was done and scrubbed of emails not related to the exact nature of the request, (meaning that for the download only, emails were removed, not for the original archived email). In some cases, blanks can be located if emails have a number or date stamp. It is a simple matter of creating a find function looking for these gaps.
Regardless of which theory pans out, it is imperative that an independent team of forensic IT professionals secure what is on the computers at HadCRU.
This story is starting to pick up a little steam here in the US, but as of today, it’s still 2nd page material.
But the first theory was so beloved by the media: This could only have been the work of a criminal mastermind of the highest order. Now all we’re left with is simple human error. Still, it smells right. The problem with the first theory is why would all these emails be bundled together in a single file? They would have been scattered around quite a bit I would have thought.
How did you figure it Charles? It was elementary my dear Hansen, or Jones, or Wigley.
PS, Charles, don’t tell Santer or he’ll punch your lights out.
Good scenario. It would take too much work for a simple hacker to have sifted through the tens of thousands of e-mails that have been written over the last few years.
Regarding whether these e-mails can be used in legal proceedings:
to answer John Galt:
first, ignore the likelihood that as bad as these look, there will be *no* legal proceedings rising from these e-mails. No one’s going to charge them with anything, anymore than they’re going to charge Gordon Browne for the way he’s running the UK these days. (many things that should happen, don’t.)
Also, I’m not completely clear as to UK law in this area.
but in the US – in a criminal case, the Prosecution can use anything it gets its hands on as long is it wasn’t directly implicated in the illegal action. If someone steals a gun from a murderer and gives it to the police, they’re allowed to use that gun as evidence at the murderer’s trial. If the Prosecution or the police stole the gun, then they can’t use it.
in a civil trial, the complainant simply has to ask for disclosure of any relevant documents. If the defense fails to turn over documents for which complainant has good evidence of their existence, then the defense can be sanctioned for failure to comply with discovery and probably will lose on a motion for summary judgment.
Here’s how the New Zealand Herald has reported one aspect of the “hack” this morning:
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/technology/news/article.cfm?c_id=5&objectid=10611239
One spin doctor has been earning their Chritsmas bonus. The righteous indignation oozes from every pore.
I think it’s an insider who took the time to compile the worst of the worst– the most damning material he could find. Perhaps someone Dr. Phil treated shabbily at some point in his career.
<a href="Climate change champion and sceptic both call for inquiry into leaked emails Both sides of climate change debate urge investigation as Met Office dismisses ‘shallow attempt to discredit robust science’ The Guardian UK
Conversely those responsible for the data object:
Update on UEA
http://www.uea.ac.uk/mac/comm/media/press/2009/nov/homepagenews/CRU-update
“Climatic Research Unit update – 17.45 November 23
It is a matter of concern that data, including personal information about individuals, appears to have been illegally taken from the university and elements published selectively on a number of websites.
The volume of material published and its piecemeal nature makes it impossible to confirm what proportion is genuine. We took immediate action to remove the server in question from operation and have involved the police in what we consider to be a criminal investigation.
The material published relates to the work of our globally-respected Climatic Research Unit (CRU) and other scientists around the world. CRU’s published research is, and has always been, fully peer-reviewed by the relevant journals, and is one strand of research underpinning the strong consensus that human activity is affecting the world’s climate in ways that are potentially dangerous.
CRU is one of a number of independent centres working in this important area and reaching similar conclusions. It will continue to engage fully in reasoned debate on its findings with individuals and groups that are willing to have their research and theories subjected to scrutiny by the international scientific community. The selective publication of some stolen emails and other papers taken out of context is mischievous and cannot be considered a genuine attempt to engage with this issue in a responsible way.
The raw climate data which has been requested belongs to meteorological services around the globe and restrictions are in place which means that we are not in a position to release them. We are asking each service for their consent for their data to be published in future.
In addition to supporting the police in their enquiries, we will ourselves be conducting a review, with external support, into the circumstances surrounding the theft and publication of this information and any issues emerging from it. ”
The last sentence MAY indicate a REAL investigation in as they state “any issues emerging from it”.
I think it was a inside man.
PR GUY
[i]”But this raises a troubling question, could independent officials at Met have looked at this file, with all the references to deleting data etc, and conclude that there was nothing afoul? It staggers the mind.”[/i”
I’m wondering if this was the data excised from what was shown to the FOI officers at the University? Ie they pulled all of the questionable stuff into a side archive and tucked it out of the way. So when when the FOI officer checked things he didn’t see anything questionable.
Cheaters. All morning, Gavin Schmidt has been posting snarky comments into many posts on Real climate. He is a gubment worker and on the clock at NASA. He is cheating and moonlighting. this needs to be reported. We are his employer. It seems they forget who they work for. I fire workers for this and have the right to do so because our employee handbook calls for best work effort. He can sit there and run a gossip blog while the economy burns.
How do we report this abuse of employee time and responsibility?
# charles the moderator
What Gavin claims is difficult to assess. The “hack” posting at The Air Vent may have had a special twist, as the subject there was about “An open letter reply to a letter written to government by 18 different scientific organizations concerning climate change legislation” that criticizes the associations about climate terminology:
“Dear President or Executive Director,
How could it happen that more than a dozen of the most prestigious scientific associations signed and submitted this letter on ‘climate change’ without having ensured that the used terminology is sufficiently defined. Good science can and is required to work with reasonable terms and explanations…… Etc etc” http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2009/11/13/open-letter/ or: http://www.whatisclimate.com/
This posting went online together with three other subject on November 13, with the comments under: “Gone for Several Days”. Why did FOIA chose the OPEN LETTER and not one of the other posting. The posting came as Comment 10 on Tuesday, November 17, at 9:57 pm. That may raise several questions:
__When was CRU hacked ?
__Is a hack, as claimed, into a different server supporting realclimate.org on Tuesday realistic?
__Is it reasonable to assume that choosing The Air Vent and the OPEN LETTER was a cheer coincident, or was it intentionally? One option would speak more for hackers, the other more for an insider.
At least the author of the OPEN LETTER made not distinction but just thanked FOIA for his/her contribution, Comment21, at: http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2009/11/13/open-letter/ .
TO ALL–
BTW, a distinct lack of trolls on this thread. While the lack of trolls takes away some entertainment value, it leaves the comments to be all high quality thoughtful stuff. Back to the trolls, I think even they know this IS REALLY BAD for the Church of AGW.
chainpin (09:18:31) : “Something doesn’t add up.”
Perhaps an hourly employee or intern was assigned the task of selecting material for the FOI request, and not familiar with the history, was making the file available for members of ‘the Team’ for editing. Such would explain why the information contains all the e-mails as well as code, data, and whatever else. The comments about John Daley, the cartoon, and so on seem to be unrelated to the issues and data sought by SM at CA and others.
The actions (or inactions) of the CRU appear to be consistent with preventing further inquiries into their e-mail, etc. , as opposed to stopping, reversing, or even explaining what just happened. In other words, this was small potatoes. The real meat is still out there to be had. CRU would do anything to prevent further FOI releases, even if it meant giving up grant money, or losing key people. When one resorts to defending the indefensibile, the game is lost (just a matter of time).
I like to call us the BSM (Blog Stream Media).
There are a couple of posters who are on the right track here, I believe. The file was prepared in response to FOI requests, but was the repository for the items to be “lost”, an insider then decided that such subterfuge should not go unpunished and then followed Dr. Hansen’s advice and embarked on a little civil disobedience.
RealClimate has gone quiet for an hour or so. Perhaps Gavin is simply exhausted or perhaps nobody wants to get further tainted or perhaps there is some “big” news about to break. Or they could have all gone downstairs for lunch and a discussion about yesterday’s shellacking of the Jets by the Patriots!
Charles the moderator,
Some of your theory makes sense, but some does not. Why would Jones assemble a file containing emails that are at best embarrassing to him and his associates, and at worst indicative of criminal conduct because of FOI requests? If Jones recognized that he might have to ultimately respond to an FOI request for temperature data, then he would reasonably assemble that data in a single file, but not the damaging email messages and other files.
Whoever assembled the “random selection” of email messages, they had to have searched through quite a lot and eliminated all the personal stuff. “Hey, you want pizza tonight?”, or “Our grandson is sick, so I am staying ovenight to help.” is completely absent. They left only business related messages. Whoever this was, they clearly did not want to post other people’s personal lives on the internet. I think it odd for an outside ‘hacker” to show such sensibilities. Whoever this was, they focused on the real climate issues, not the chaff. (no pun intended :-))
Lucia has an interesting post that includes the above point.
So, it seems more likely to me that either:
1) Jones had assembled a series of damaging messages, raw data files, and documents in a single location so they could be quickly destroyed (for example, if an FOI request for raw data or emails was allowed). Then someone on the inside found the assembled files and thought they needed to be posted, or
2) Someone with network access (and maybe administrator authority) got hold of Jones’ password, poked around, copied a bunch of files that indicate unethical behavior, misconduct, and an overall bad attitude by Team members, and then posted the lot. Maybe the November 12 denial of the McIntyre’s FOI was the “last straw” for this person.
I lean heavily toward the later. Will we ever find out? I doubt it. The person who sent Steve McIntyre the raw temperature data does not appear to ever have been identified; I think it likely this recent posting was the same person.
I’ll bet the Team will be making more phone calls in place of email messages when the subject matter is (how shall we say) “sensitive” in nature.
DerHahn–
Agreed. Again congrats to Charles, his thoughts on this generated several comments along this line. Unfortunately, as a practicing lawyer I have encountered the bureaucratic mindset and protocols for 27 years, and Charles’ reasoning fits how agency staffs try to stonewall legitimate FOI requests. This will play out, the public will learn more. But it will take continuous push back against these professional bureaucrats and grant mongers.
This all hacking story appears to me much ado about noting. A lot of (blog)wind for a flatulation in a bottle. Nowhere, at any place can be read that the global warming AGW theory is set up by a bunch of conspiring senile or malicious would be scientist.
I have the impression the the e-mails reveal that the AGW scientist just are human beings. Sorry this is rather a negative story in the case of Antropogenic global waring critics. If these critics must build a case on theft and robbary…then they are no dime better than those who try to lie about some 10th of a centigrade more or less.
Brian Johnson uk (09:30:23) :
BBC Daily Politics had a discussion today about UEA/CRU and Andrew Neil – Presenter actually asked some skeptical questions.
Thanks Brian, we need more Andrew Neils- and another Robin Day.
“My belief is that this purged material was on a back-up/DR server, and the main servers have already had this material removed. ” Forgive my ignorance on such matters, but assume that your belief is true. Is it possible for an outsider both to download the file and then to delete it from the server? In other words, is it possible that briefly only the outsider had the file and that CRU had lost it completely?
Because, if so, CRU can’t really know whether the version that is now available to us all is complete and unaltered, can they?
Curiousgeorge (09:15:05) :
An on-air discussion of the issue on Fox this morning: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qrkpp1Bf5zc&feature=channel . An Eco guy and a sceptic. Both calling for an investigation.
A reasoned debate with Chris Horner of CEI utterly shaming the opponent into calling for a full investigation. Horner also alluded to “a total of 165Mb of data,” 65 released and another 100Mb to come.
More dynamite?? Does CRU really want another 100Mb of inside information released for the entire world to see? Have they no sense of self preservation? If I were the Chancellor of UEA I would be sitting down to hard nosed discussion of how to prevent the next release. That would in all probability require CRU turning State’s evidence. If they continue to stonewall the window of forgiveness will close and they’ll be just another culprit in the cover-up. The Nixon syndrome.
Dr. Phil et al are going to be sacrificed sooner or later. Question is, by sacrificing them early-on can Chancellor Gough stay the release of even more damaging revelations??
I’m heading to WalMart for an air popper – getting too fat on the hot oil corn.
I just posted on this subject on my blog, here…
http://algorelied.com/?p=3222
An excerpt:
Charles
*** Andy Revkin is likely to post your 3rd proposal as soon as you submit it.*** See: Your Dot: On Science and ‘Cyber-Terrorism’: A climate scientist focuses on the cybercrime that divulged reams of emails on climate research.
If you computer searched files with a specific set of keywords you could well have generated the silly cartoon. It is the Harry file that is tough to figure out – unless it has the names of key players or proxies embedded in the comments.
News flash. OJ Simpson was out looking for the killer of Nicole and bumped into the Climate folks looking for the hackers. Big oil must have funded the hackers.
The hackers story is a bunny trail many are giving up on.
Regarding the provenance of the files in question: Trenbreth(sp?) admitted that the files contained only what was ‘helpful to skeptics’ and that only part of what was taken was actually released. I posted this is in Tips and Notes, and do not feel like retyping my thoughts on that.
Scenario #3 seems the most likely of them, and actually is pretty consistent with Trenbreth(sp?)’s public statement on ABC.
BBC radio 4 23/11/2009 short discussion with Lord Lawson and Dr. Robert Watson
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00nxd1v
Approximately 1hr 34min into the broadcast.
Lord Lawson –
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/globalwarming/6634282/Lord-Lawson-calls-for-public-inquiry-into-UEA-global-warming-data-manipulation.html
Dr. Robert Watson –
http://www.uea.ac.uk/env/people/facstaff/watsonr
! hour ago:
http://www.uea.ac.uk/mac/comm/media/press/2009/nov/homepagenews/CRU-update
It is a matter of concern that data, including personal information about individuals, appears to have been illegally taken from the university and elements published selectively on a number of websites.
The volume of material published and its piecemeal nature makes it impossible to confirm what proportion is genuine. We took immediate action to remove the server in question from operation and have involved the police in what we consider to be a criminal investigation.
The material published relates to the work of our globally-respected Climatic Research Unit (CRU) and other scientists around the world. CRU’s published research is, and has always been, fully peer-reviewed by the relevant journals, and is one strand of research underpinning the strong consensus that human activity is affecting the world’s climate in ways that are potentially dangerous.
CRU is one of a number of independent centres working in this important area and reaching similar conclusions. It will continue to engage fully in reasoned debate on its findings with individuals and groups that are willing to have their research and theories subjected to scrutiny by the international scientific community. The selective publication of some stolen emails and other papers taken out of context is mischievous and cannot be considered a genuine attempt to engage with this issue in a responsible way.
The raw climate data which has been requested belongs to meteorological services around the globe and restrictions are in place which means that we are not in a position to release them. We are asking each service for their consent for their data to be published in future.
In addition to supporting the police in their enquiries, we will ourselves be conducting a review, with external support, into the circumstances surrounding the theft and publication of this information and any issues emerging from it.
Given the high proportion of embarassing content in this selection of e-mails, it makes more sense to me that this is their archive of information extracted from their main mail record, which, having been cleaned, would then be made available for inspection under any FOI request.
I guess they might reason that any data provided under such a request, if supplied voluntarily, would be not be subject to the same intense scrutiny as would be the case if it was extracted under duress, thus a few omissions would not be spotted.
Since some of the e-mails actively encouraged FOIA avoidance, the attempt to hide them must be worth a try because their discovery would not increase the penaties any further.
“I’m thinking this collection is more along the lines of “Stuff to be deleted in the event of an unfavorable ruling on the FOI request”.”
Sorry – I am a skeptic and read through Bishop’s list of most damaging posts. There is not a whole lot of “damage” there. The emails clearly reveal a “them verses us” mentality and a somewhat disciplined effort to control the news flow. I see nothing that is obviously illegal or clearly dishonest.
I find the notion that HATCRU would engage in a systematic coverup of an approved FOI request not credible. So I go with option 2 or 3 as well.
“the Church of AGW”: I really object to that. Surely Phil Jones is Chief Druid of the Henge of Global Warming?
Having worked in IT and as a network security professional for my entire career of 25 years thus far, this sounds like the most plausible theory. I was just discussing the difficulty of implementing effective security policy with a colleague the other day. By far the biggest hurdle for the IT manager is human nature. So many managers, directors, etc. in other departments will undermine policy of a weak CIO just to make things easier.
And we have a saying in the biz, security is the reciprocal of convenience.
Not only are these people in the Alarmist camp poor at science and programming, they are poor with computer and network security as well. Consistency.
Chris,
Nail on head.
I wonder how many hard drives are being destroyed, illegally, as we discuss this at GISS, etc.?
This small sampling that we have seen is the tip of the iceberg.
The climate charlatans have been doing this for *years*.
I’d also submit that possibly we have a hybrid of Theories 2 and 3. Once everything is neatly contained in a ZIP file, it wouldn’t take much for a low level, but scrupulous employee at CRU to move that file, or to disperse it to an external site. Many IT professionals I know tend to be very objective, and operate with a very high level of integrity. It’s part of the job. So no surprise that someone who became aware of behavior like that illustrated in the emails, would make sure that it was exposed and/or reported.
I can just imagine the politician’s approach when they realized what the screwed up temperature plots looked like.
“- Wow did you see that! it seems like the world is going to catch on fire within the next 50 years!”
“- No No Harry! Don’t bother reporting the bad data to your superiors. Leave it like that! That’s perfect”
Bush to Cheney to Obama to Gore (and all other corrupted bastards):
“- How can we take advantage of this bullshit data? Oh I know!!! lets establish an another tax disguised as Cap And Trade and impoverish even more our stupid population!”
– ” Great idea. Great work Tim and Harry!”
On Theory..
A little bird told me.. (and one I have been inclined to listen to) that it was a smash job.. a brute force attack.. not a clever hack.. but a resource laden effort.
this was not a leak in the deliberate sense.
now.. what that means is up to our esteemed public, but I would add, the nature of such capabilities, are in only a few places.
but whether tongue and cheek or no, the notion that espionage from the ghost of the Kremlin be considered
in theory… well….
It was an ínternal hacker close related with gouvernmental institutions or politicians. Nobody believes the science behind the global warming hoax anymore and the western world feels the immense growing economic power of India and China while at the same time we have to kill our economy and society due to requirements of the Kyoto protocol. India and China already stated not to fullfill these requirements, not yet and also not after Kopenhagen. So probably the Britisch play a nice and traditional game to give theirselves and others opportunities from escaping the rope we put around our neck. Also the chosen time is remarkable; very close to the start of Kopenhagen. It’s a version of the “legal” attack on Mantsjoerije by the Japanese at the beginning of WW2 in Asia (China).
Just read that press release posted above @Cold Lynx (10:14:21) — it’s a toss-up between nauseous and rushing to take a long, hot shower. I expect that they are trusting that people are either too lazy to have read what’s been uncovered, can’t hold a thought of their own in their own heads for more than five minutes, or are so into the AGW belief system that they’ll believe any pronouncement from ‘church’ officialdom.
Wonder what operating system was being used by the server containing the file? If it is some version of Windows, leaving a file open to all is very easy to do by accident.
Henry chance (09:04:51) :
“All their peer review is done by friends and people that push the same dogma.”
That’s kind of unavoidable, because in any field there aren’t that many “experts” to whom to send papers, so they will often be reviewed by a small cadre of scientists who know each other. That makes the system vulnerable to not only lapses in integrity, but also to the inertia of “group think.”
But the most serious flaw is that it can be so easily hijacked by a group of conspirators whose “integrity” is merely a carefully crafted perception as opposed to a reality.
OT but Checkout the Australian climatesceptics party website
http://www.climatesceptics.com.au/
“The server is temporarily unable to service your request due to the site owner reaching his/her bandwidth limit. Please try again later.”
Very popular today
what’s it called? – – the Large HADCRUT Collider?
How about, “the Large HADCRUT Colluder?”
=========
Jamie (10:06:28) :
Roger Knights –
“You’ve only given the verb ‘alternate’ – it is also a noun meaning one who substitutes for another (an alternate on a jury or sports team), and an adjective meaning ‘alternative’ (an alternate location).”
Modern dictionaries are more latitudinarian about their definitions than they used (and ought) to be. It’s possible that some or many of them now allow the adjectival “alternate” to mean “alternative.”
But why should we go along with them, just because they want to be descriptive of the language as the majority uses it? The cost is clarity. If I have an alternate pair of shoes, that means they are ones I wear by turns with my regular pair of shoes (presumably in order to give each pair a rest or allow them to get un-stinked on alternate days). An alternative pair of shoes would be one (probably in a much different style or form or color) that I wore to a different occasion, or with a different colored pair of pants, not one that I automatically us in a to-and-fro fashion. (There’s probably a better example, but I can’t think of it offhand.)
Here’s what R.H. Fiske’s Dictionary of Disagreeable English says on this matter. (The book is too much of a “stickler” for my taste, and is sometimes too heated, but it’s basically right IMO):
“The adjectival alternate does not mean, as alternative does, providing a choice between two or more things, nor does it mean, as alternative does, relating to an undertaking or institution that appeals to nontraditional interests. … If some people insist on maintaining the distinctions, it is because they prefer clarity to confusion ….”
And how do the press react?
The journal with the the widest circulation (Het Laatste Nieuws) in Belgium writes on its website:” The hackers themselves fiddled around with the CRU-emails! Most emails are changed and much passages are divorced from its context in such a way that they receive an other meaning. (…) It’s a pity for the fans of conspiracy theories, but their opinion has been superseded by facts meanwhile.”
(Dutch website: http://www.hln.be/hln/nl/5096/Kopenhagen-2009/article/detail/1032448/2009/11/23/Hackers-knoeiden-zelf-met-klimaatmails.dhtml )
Can someone tell me what’s the source of the coverage of this journal?
How can I counter this information?
If anyone is interested, I have looked at some important data that became public from CRU which seems to be to close the case global warming (man-made or otherwise). And it shows off that lovely 1940’s blip:
http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/11420
Cheers, AJStrata
Monckton Speaks Out on CRU: “They are Criminals”
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/viscount-monckton-on-global-warminggate-they-are-criminals-pjm-exclusive/
What about a government wanting to slow down discussions at Copenhagen or have I been watching too much spooks ?
Good explanation.
It is clear that the file was created internally at CRU. If it was and judging its content, the files were not gathered to be released in the eventual FOI request. Either it was put together to be destroyed or hidden for some sick reason. In any case, they then would also be guilty of hiding information.
Professor John Brignell http://users.ecs.soton.ac.uk/jeb/cv.htm has this to say.
“CRU was created by the Thatcher Government as an arm in its war against the coal miners and the oil sheiks. This was a case (unfortunately not isolated) in which the smart tactical manoeuvre became a grand strategic error, for it bequeathed a powerful tool to the new authoritarian left when they reins of power changed hands.
A quasi-scientific institute that is founded for political purposes is a misbegotten creature. It is conceived in cynicism and born to corruption. When the remit of such an institution is to manufacture evidence to support one particular hypothesis it is condemned not to produce just bad science but anti-science.
The basis of modern scientific method is the principle of falsification. We do not call upon it directly for every scientific investigation, just as we do not rush to the courts of law every time we sign a contract, but it is always there to provide the rigorous framework essential to progress. To pay someone to collect data that support one hypothesis is like, to adapt the classical analogy, paying someone to count white swans to “prove” the hypothesis that all swans are white. Furthermore, once that someone’s living depends upon that payment, he will be sorely tempted to cover up any evidence of black swans and, being human, he will try to salve his own conscience by creating a justification for ignoring inconvenient observations.”
http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/2009%20November.htm#warmergate
Well it has definitely gone big time viral.
Results 1 – 100 of about 676,000 for climategate. (1.19 seconds)
http://www.climatesciencewatch.org/index.php/csw/details/phil-jones-and-ben-santer-comment-on-cei/
Prof. Phil Jones, Director of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in the UK and Ben Santer at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory comment in response to a petition to EPA by the Competitive Enterprise Institute and Pat Michaels, which misleadingly seeks to obstruct EPA’s process in making an “endangerment” finding on greenhouse gases. This new CEI tactic is to call into question the integrity of the global temperature data record and, by implication, the integrity of leading climate scientists.
No one, it seems, cares to read what we put up on the CRU web page, http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/. These people just make up motives for what we might or might not have done.
Almost all the data we have in the CRU archive is exactly the same as in the Global Historical Climatology Network (GHCN) archive used by the NOAA National Climatic Data Center [see here and here].
The original raw data are not “lost.” I could reconstruct what we had from U.S. Department of Energy reports we published in the mid-1980s. I would start with the GHCN data. I know that the effort would be a complete waste of time, though. I may get around to it some time. The documentation of what we’ve done is all in the literature.
The event known as CLIMATEGATE:
WIKIPEDIA: The Climatic Research Unit e-mail hacking incident refers to a November 2009 incident involving the hacking and leaking of e-mails and documents on climate change research from the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia U.K.[1][2]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climategate
I had a similar thought as the original poster
My question is, is it possible that they had several files on thier server(s)?
One file of FOI that there were willing to release, other file(s) of “hide this stuff till the cops leave” The Devil (to alliterate to Screwtape Letters) who sent the files out grabbed several file sets, then reorged (some of?) them into the current release.
There really is no other explanation of how one (1) hacker had gotten files and (archived?) emails, unless thier security really really sucked. (Global Warming started to deteriorate the electric cables?). I am no computer geek, but for how long do servers maintain a copy of deleted emails? What is the average lifespan of a server, and if one goes bad, do they move all the old data over?
I agree that this thesis has the highest probability of being correct. Of course, somebody would have had to take advantage of being able to poke around and discover it, but for some folks that is a casual hobby. Seeing a large blob of data available on the ftp server would almost guarantee that somebody would download it just out of curiosity.
The Brits have been notorious for their data screwups. NHS laptops left on trams full of unencrypted data and so on. We in the states have done some whoppers too. If all this stuff had been encrypted it would have taken either an insider to provide the key or a dedicated “black hat” to crack it. As it is, neither of these seems to have been the case.
“In addition to supporting the police in their enquiries, we will ourselves be conducting a review, with external support, into the circumstances surrounding the theft and publication of this information and any issues emerging from it. ”
This last statement emanating from the UEA head office, will be interesting to follow. CRU confirms that the “theft” was reported to them on Tuesday Nov. 17, yet they apparently only called in the police on Thursday or Friday. Why the delay?? Standard procedure for dealing with a theft is to immediately report the crime.
CRU took at least two whole days to report their “theft.” What were they doing in the interim?? The Norwich Police, Scotland Yard, MP Clarke, members of Parliament, U.S. Congress, Special Prosecutors and 2 billion people online will be very interested to hear their reasoning. Holy Chappaquidick!!
Very interesting analysis Charles… That would even be sweeter!
Trick or Cheat
Dear Moderator slightly of post but it is response to the use of the word Tribalism at CA to describe the behaviour of the Not so Real Climate Scientists. They pass all tests for group think. Our Gavs a lovely boy but he just wont let me post see?
I dislike the word Tribalism it to me represents an unthinking loyalty I would think cohorts in cahoots or better still Groupthink.
I think the broken Hockey Stick boys pass all the following tests with flying colours and should not hide their light under a bushel?
To make groupthink testable, Irving Janis devised eight symptoms indicative of groupthink (1977).
1.Illusions of invulnerability creating excessive optimism and encouraging risk taking.
2.Rationalizing warnings that might challenge the group’s assumptions.
3.Unquestioned belief in the morality of the group, causing members to ignore the consequences of their actions.
4.Stereotyping those who are opposed to the group as weak, evil, biased, spiteful, disfigured, impotent, or stupid.
5.Direct pressure to conform placed on any member who questions the group, couched in terms of “disloyalty”.
6.Self censorship of ideas that deviate from the apparent group consensus.
7.Illusions of unanimity among group members, silence is viewed as agreement.
8.Mind guards — self-appointed members who shield the group from dissenting information.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groupthink
CRU has an interesting problem. Their ineffective security has resulted in the release of personal and private information of several leading skeptics. Those skeptics now have a cause of action against CRU. Surely this must be the definition of karma.
I can buy the idea that the files were assembled into a convenient package in response to a FOI request. But the timing after that, and the knowledge of where to forward the these documents conveniently within hours of the FOI request denial, does not sound like run of the mill hackers.
Charles,
Your insights as to the creation of the ZIP archive FOI2009.zip are absolutely correct. The file FOI2009.zip was created by the CRU itself. No self-respecting computer hacker would be that neat. If you open FOI2009.zip with a GUI tool such as StuffIt all of the date/time stamps and directory structures are absolutely consistent with a ZIP archive which was created in place from data organized for the possibility of external export.
After FOI2009.zip was created by the CRU, it found its way to the Internet. I had the privilege of working with John Daly on several investigations. In one case John documented just how incredible sloppy the CRU really was. From the grave read John’s indictment of CRU quality control
Two Coolings Make One Warming
http://www.john-daly.com/press/press-01b.htm#cru
Quality Control, CRU Style
http://www.john-daly.com/cru/index.htm
Quality Control – CRU Style – Update
http://www.john-daly.com/cru/emails.htm
If I might be allowed the honor of having John Daly’s proxy, I cast two votes for stupidity.
John Daly’s ghost is still haunting Phil Jones. Way to go John; up the rebels!
Michael Ronayne
Nutley, New Jersey
I would say that some files in the archive (for example the image marooned.jpg) don’t look like it was put into the archive for a FOI request. Or the other way round: if these are the files and mails they are willing to give out, its almost unthinkable what might still be hidden there.
Apologies if someone has already said this but surely the next step is a new FOI request.
If Anthony is right (and I think he is), what we have got has been cherry picked. The real smoking guns are still to be found. A new FOI could be filed on those very grounds.
But this raises a troubling question, could independent officials at Met have looked at this file, with all the references to deleting data etc, and conclude that there was nothing afoul? It staggers the mind.
Was not Jones informed by an IT person to not delete emails in response to FOI, but only if it is a standard practice? Pure speculation, but could he have been caught deleting material and therefore had put IT people in jeopardy of covering or covering up crimes?
Anonymous is legion. They do not forgive, they do not forget.
All your CRU moles are belong to Anonymous.
I think someone in IT was given list of files and told to erase them after the ‘lost data affair’. Any IT employee would know that is an illegal request, so for his/her own protection ‘zipped’ whole lot on 12th November. Either same person or someone with a grudge came across unprotected file and released it.
Definitely an inside job.
Someone had posted this on another site I frequent and found it poignant:
Problem foreseen 48 years ago:
“Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity…The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present – and is gravely to be regarded.”
~Dwight Eisenhower (from his Farewell Address, 17 January 1961, better known as his Military Industrial Complex Speech)
It is certainly unlikely a hacker had the time to find all those documents/emails and package them all together so neatly.
But all I really care about is their authenticity. Since CRU says these documents are taken out of context, will they now release everything so we can put them into context? Or have they already lost or destroyed the rest?
To follow on, Gavin’s defense has in many ways been remarkably slick. If the ‘hacked’ file had been carefully cherry picked (just enough to look authentic, but also open to plausible counter-arguments) the surely a counter defense would have been prepared in parallel? They may be without ethics but dumb they ain’t. Do we know who the chess player is on the team?
Oh, I admit my ignorance in these matters, but speculating about an IT insider angry at being put in a precarious position– could the CRU scientist realize that attacking an angry insider would not be a wise course of action because said person perhaps has evidence of file purge attempts?
I agree that this probably isn’t a “hacking” and someone probably had free access to a file they shouldn’t have and made some hay while the sun was shining. That seems to me to be the most likely scenario.
If the file was created for release as the result of an FOI request, One wonders if the file was edited for content BEFORE it was “published”. There are many gems in this file that demonstrate what was going on, but it looks to me like this is not every single email and attachment. I’m wondering if Dr. Phil and Co. removed the worst offending email and files and hoped that the remnants would satisfy the deniers among us. Or perhaps the more incriminating information was removed by the lady or gentleman that performed the operation. One wonders if s/he has more info that will be released. (sits back, reaches for the popcorn)
So Gavin now claims that “trick” means “a good way to deal with a problem.” That’s odd. Back in a November 9, 2006 post entitled “Cuckoo Science” criticizing Christopher Moncton, “trick” meant “absurdities that occasionally pass for serious ’science’ on the web and in the media” and “concepts are being mangled, logic is being thrown to the winds, and completetly unjustified conclusions are being drawn.”
Gavin said in November 2006 that:
See http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/11/cuckoo-science/
OK, I’ll ask:
Was the reason that ‘incompetence’ was spelled incorrectly in BOTH of the quotes in the post a clever (perhaps too clever) device? If so, many of your readers and I suspect all of your detractors will not get it, or worse, use it to diminish your argument.
Reply: Just an ironic mistake, enhanced by a cut and paste. But I like your theory. Maybe I’ll leave it as is. ~ charles the contrite moderator
Reply 2: Naw. I’ve decided to fix it.
While I have no idea who provided the files and could care less , I really like the notion that this stuff was labeled FOI as a precursor to its being deleted – just in case . It would fit in perfectly with the apparent incompetence at CRU . Maybe the gang just couldn’t shoot straight .
Someone may have commented on this already…a typo…
It’s incompetence, not “incopetence”….
It seems that at least some of the files was “out” already oct 12th
And this from a BBC site!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/paulhudson/2009/11/climategate-cru-hacked-into-an.shtml#comments
“I was forwarded the chain of e-mails on the 12th October, which are comments from some of the worlds leading climate scientists written as a direct result of my article ‘whatever happened to global warming’. The e-mails released on the internet as a result of CRU being hacked into are identical to the ones I was forwarded and read at the time and so, as far as l can see, they are authentic.”
I belive there will be more files available soon.
Either of UEA “investigation” Or by this whistleblower.
I belive “our” Man will give UEA a chance to settle things. If not will more files be released.
Charles,
I have to disagree with you on this one. I’m more in agreement with this line of thought:
“chainpin (09:18:31) :
Interesting theory.
But why would the file contain such damning evidence?
If CRU had themselves prepared it for the FOI request, surely you don’t belive they would have handed over such files to SM, given what we now know?
Something doesn’t add up.”
I highly doubt that someone would have captured those specific emails as part of anticipating an FOI fullfillment request. I also doubt that someone was “browsing” through CRUs FTP server and just happened to see the zip file there so grabbed it, opened it, analyzed it, and then decided to release it with the accompanied statement.
There are just way too many things “off” with that scenario.
I put my money on the inside person who’s been witnessing this for some time, who knows the history, and who also found out the request was denied.
I think they had possibly been accumulating files for sometime, or maybe not, but knew where to look to get the more damning emails and data sources, and as an extra poke in the eye to The Team, named the zip file FOI.zip, as if to say “You’re all guilty, and the way the process is supposed to work, THIS is part of the information that SHOULD have been released, based on the request. I’ve just shortened the timeline.”
No hackers, no schizophrenic Dr. Jones…just plain and simple someone inside CRU wanting to do what they felt was the right thing.
JimB
Said an Italian political experience (Giulio Andreotti): think ill of someone or something is a sin, but many times you guess.
New info.
Paul Hudson of the BBC posts on his blog this afternoon that someone forwarded the chain of emails to him on October 12th.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/paulhudson/2009/11/climategate-cru-hacked-into-an.shtml
So, this has been in the works for awhile now. There are emails post-Oct 12th so someone might have had access to the email record for some time now.
It just keeps on giving:
This email:
939154709.txt (from Oct 1999) gives, at the end, a data series for temps from 1402 – 1994
– plot it & you will see no hockey-stick, and 1994 temps lower than the 1940s…
– I can only assume that the perpetrators of such a travesty were sacked!
Dr Tim Balls says CRU has acknowledged the authenticity of the files:
http://www.climatechangefraud.com/climate-reports/5641-the-death-blow-to-climate-science
Your CRUtape title is excellent since it points to the true source of all this, the Prince of Darkness himself Lord (Voldemort) Mandelson. UK Govt. finances are in a terrible state so rapid funding cuts are needed all round but nobody (except LVM) has the guts to drown the polar bear cubs.
Sorry, it appears Paul Hudson was probably just talking about the email chain which references his story on the BBC about “whatever happened to global warming”, not the whole chain.
Somewhat OT, but I have also formulated a new theory which is mine and belongs to me.
It’s all just a terrible misunderstanding. UEA-CRU has spent the past ten years trying to replicate Mann’s hockey stick, but have repeatedly missed an important cultural datum which could (at least in part) explain the pseudo-statistical gymnastics seen in the leaked documents…
http://imgur.com/6dSR9.gif
I suggest the original file was named NOT_FOI2009.zip
Then r&r (renamed& released).
How about we take up a collection and donate it to the CRU, then we can sue them for fraud for misusing our funds! As noted donors they would have to be answerable to us in a court of law, and it would be mighty interesting to have them open their books (financial and otherwise).
as this appears to be a compilation done for a by the FOI office, the immediate question arises, why the FOI officers involved did not stop or sanction the deletion of files and the outspoken intent to breach FOI regulations.
This is definitly a leak.
Paul Hudson of the BBC who wrote the article “Whatever happened to Global Warming” confirms in his blog that he received the E-Mails on 12 October 2009 already and confirms its authenticity (this is probably an eatlier version, since the neweset date is 12 November 2009). He will comment later on these.
His blog can be found at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/paulhudson/atom.xml
Notice also that just prior to this package being released that Phil had finished what he thought was a successful schmoozing job with the University FOIA compliance folks to squash the FOIA request. I wouldn’t be surprised if the IT guy tasked with compiling this file didn’t release it out of spite.
It would make sense, since the fact that Phil Jones asked everyone to delete their emails and then failed to delete his own is a puzzler… but it isn’t so puzzling if some data security person had already been tasked with retrieving the data from an archive of whose existence Phil was unaware.
The name of the file is consistent with the theory. Citing Phil Jones
“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.”
it wouldn’t be strange that he changed his mind, knowing that a FOIA would eventually be sent to McIntyre, to stage this up, so it could be a hacker’s fault.
Anyway, any good forensic investigator should know this by now…
Ecotretas
I, too, object to the term of “Church of AGW” on the grounds that it connotes an organized, hierarchical, catholic institution. I think of dogmatically religious AGW proponents more as independent imams, sermonizing before the ovine faithful, enforcing literalism, issuing their fatwas against heretics and blasphemers, and enjoying the advantages of having compliant media mutaween willing to apply beatings.
UK Chanel 4, 7:00 News, just had an interwiw with a rather subdued prof Watson about the CRU leaks
I’m still trying to figure out why someone on the inside would gather the data into a ZIP file if it wasn’t to get it “out” in a convenient package. If I were Prof Jones and wanted to avoid having inconvenient information come out, I’d be using “rm -f” and not “zip”. If I *were* boxing things up to respond to a FOIA request, why would I pick the 60 most damaging megabytes I could find and tie them up with a bow like that?
If I were a IT type gathering up stuff for a FOIA request, there’d be a lot more “kitchen sink” items in the archive and you’d probably need DVDs to store it all.
I’m still thinking “knowledgeable insider”, someone with both sufficient access and knowledge of the AGW debate and its particulars. Knowledge without access would probably leave all sorts of audit trails which would be made public by CRU by now. Access without knowledge wouldn’t result in such a compact form of the end product.
You are as good as correct Charles. Try doing it by a process of elimination I think it always works better.
It is not a hack. Hacks tend to collect random data, ie a whole directory not selected data.
Whistle-Blower, Probably not .. The tribal nature of acces rights would lead an insider to be very wary of doing this. Not enough freedom of movement.
An accident by someone stupid possible.
My view is that it would take someone a lot of time and effort to put together this leaked data… years of data had to be recovered from archive, visually reviewed and selected for release based upon their content… this is not a five minute job… it is a far more calculated action….
The “powers that be” that have invested so heavily in getting this “data” originated will have wanted an insurance policy so that they do not get caught in the “blow back” should a) the operation becomes exposed or compromised… or b) they wish to change their minds and stop the operation.
Therefore, this looks very much like someone has decided to use their “insurance policy” that has been collected over the years… the AGW cabal have been effectively “thrown under a bus”…. we are now “picking over the bones” of this rather messy road kill… and they will probably be allowed to retire quietly provided they keep their mouths shut… I have got the impression that the cabal is deeply shocked by this leak… stunned silence… they thought they had protection… they thought they were immune… just read the emails…
This story played on Channel 4 news tonight (still on air, so no clip available). They interviewed someone from UEA who put up a not very plausible defence. The questioner (Krishnan Guru-Murphy) asked him about “hiding the decline” several times and all the interviewee (I forgot his name already!) could do was give a character reference!
Google Trends reports that Google searches for global warming emails have leapt to a hotness of “Volcanic”. And the Timeline graph for all Google News sources covering the topic shows increasing coverage, with this morning’s number of sources at 50% more than the “Jennifer Lopez falls” coverage and about 50% of the number covering U.S. health care.
Might the amount of interest be related between two stories, as the emails story involves hiding information, and the Lopez fall story involves her falling on live TV being edited out of the two-hour-later rerun?
[ Alvin (10:10:23) :I just watched a FoxNews interview between Chris Horner at the Competitive Enterprise Institute and Howard Gould of the Clean Economy network. See how has more invested in this “event”. ]
In this interview, did anyone else hear Chris Horner say “there’s 62mb released and 100 to come”. Did he mix his words up or does he have privileged information?
In ‘Climategate’ – CRU hacked into and its implications BBC’s Paul Hudson states:
(80.Has there been any explanation given for charge that there was a request for emails to be deleted to avoid an FOI request? All I’ve heard is that no emails were deleted, but the request itself is completely unethical and most likely illegal. Everything else I’ve seen seems to due to poor word choice and/or lack of context. The FOI avoidance would be a big blow to CRU, even if it doesn’t affect climate science.
[Response: In my opinion that email was very ill-advised. – gavin])
Another admission.
Hell hath no fury like a female scorned?
PS. RTE ,the Irish broadcaster has not responded to my reasonable query as to why they have totally ignored this news.
Ed Reid (09:10:32) :
I knew there was a nagging little tug on my memory.
The term CRUtape rhymes with Screwtape.
There is delicious irony in all this, with temptations resisted and temptations indulged in.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Screwtape_Letters
There was no ‘hacking’ and I don’t care what Gavin Schmidt says. Being in the computer industry for 18 years, I can safely say that hackers won’t waste their time with anything that doesn’t have some sort of return value; it takes months and sometimes even years to hack a server. Assuming that a hacker did break in, would they really know what they had in their possession?
Either someone deliberately leaked them or someone made a massive network security mistake. I tend to think the former.
The first thing an incompetent person will do, when dealing with digital data that has been lost or leaked, is to blame hackers.
I usually have nothing but disdain for Faux News, but the pretty talking head in the middle there actually asked some pertinent questions. Well done! Glad to see this is starting to get out into the networks. The commentator who said this is not a revelation, but an affirmation hit it squarely on the head.
A BBC reporter is claiming to have been provided at least some of the email as of October 12th. How does this fit in?
The matter was out on national TV in the UK (ch4)tonight and professor Watson was asked what “hide the decline”meant. He answered that he couldn’t believe that Phil Jones, whose reputation was beyond reproach, and whose approach is transparent, wouldn’t manipulate data in such a manner, although he didn’t answer the questions of the interviewer as to what “hide the decline” meant
Charles’ theory makes sense for one simple reason: if this were a criminal act wouldn’t there be some evidence of police activity? Has WUWT, tAV or anyone associated with these sites been approached by law enforcement? Has there been a single email asking what did you know and when did you know it? Perhaps folks have been contacted and have been keeping it quiet, but it would be interesting to know just how seriously this is being pursued by the police.
On the other hand, if no crime were committed, I’m sure the folks at CRU are smart enough not to claim one had been commited to law enforcement. Filing a false police report is a serious crime in the US, I’m sure it is in the UK also.
In that same line of thinking, are police reports public record in the UK? Does anyone know exactly what, if anything, CRU reported to they police?
If the emails were leaked on the 12th–I think that is what Hudson is implying–then that would help explain the 20x normal volume in the green ETF.
David L. Hagen (11:57:48)
12 October is probably a typo for 12 November?
There has been a lot of talk about ‘erased’ files and how these may have been ‘lost’ forever.
It is possible to recover files that have been erased, even on disks reformatted after the deletion.
There are always stray magnetic ghosts remaining on the disks and there are forensic techniques available to enhance these ghosts.
It is also true there are techniques available to really scramble over the ghosts of files past, greatly complicating the forensic recovery of those files. However, it looks as if the CRU folks lack the technical skills or knowledge to even be aware of these techniques.
If one really wanted to do a thorough examination, a third party (perhaps law enforcement?) needs to physically secure the disk drives of CRU.
The oops theory makes sense but I can’t get past such a file being prepared with such devastating data. Is it possible that the person tasked with compiling the data in case the FOI was granted, eventually realized what they were finding and became concerned the FOI would be denied and this data “lost” and then decided to “oops” the file out into the wild? Perhaps they delegated that task to someone who was not predictable enough.
I am not in the least a lawyer (thankfully), but I have observed numerous criminal trials in my lifetime.
So if there is a “mob” operation, and a person from another “mob”, (Operation A and Person B, let’s call them) steals a whole lot of various materials and goodies from Operation A, including various documents and objects which would prove that Operation A was involved in criminal operations, and Person B gets nabbed by law enforcement, is what Person B stole acceptable in a court of law as evidence that Operation A was involved in criminal operations? Can what Person B stole be used as evidence against Operation A? Even if Person B never got convicted of any crime? (Might even call Person B a “confidential informer”, which is often used by law enforcement).
Of course the materials stolen by Person B could be used by law enforcement and the courts to convict Operation A, and the “players” of Operation A of any crimes that could be proved by the evidence stolen by Person B.
High crimes and felonies have been committed by these yahoos who have been masquerading as “scientists”, and it is long since past the time when they should have to answer for their criminal activities. Let the search warrants be issued, as there is probable cause, let the evidence be gathered by law enforcement officials not in the pay of those who would profit or have profited as a result these crimes, and let the trials begin.
I have to wonder, about this time, which of the “players” in this game are going to selected to be thrown on their swords, to save whoever is left who can be saved from disgrace and ignominy.
Were I one of the researchers who went along with this huge and costly to all fiasco for the purposes of getting government grants, I would really be worried about now.
Not sure where the rumour of another 100mb of information has come from? I think there may be a little confusion. 65mb was released in a zipped up format, unzipped, this came to 160mb of data. Are people sure this isn’t where the missing 100mb is?
De Rode Willem says:
November 23, 2009 at 10:34 am
If these critics must build a case on theft and robbary…then they are no dime better than those who try to lie about some 10th of a centigrade more or less.
—————————-
I would class this as theft as the files/info are in the public interest. Also, who says the files were stolen? Only those who have something to hide at this stage. In time, maybe we will know either way…
Everybody click into the CNN news to make it the most popular. Lets also do our little fraud 😉
http://edition.cnn.com/2009/TECH/11/23/hacker.climate/index.html
CRUTape, Screwtape is the allusion I presume.
For those not familiar with the writings of C S Lewis, Screwtape was a senior devil writing letters to a junior devil, and the tone of these wasn’t that much different from the CRU letters. A brilliant allusion.
Even more apt is N.I.C.E from Lewis’s That Hideous Strength. The National Institute of Co-ordinated Experiments was a devilish Scientific body in a small English University town which was able to overrule the laws of England, and whose purpose was to introduce a totalitarianism beyond imagination. A hero in the story (well eventually a hero) was a social scientist corrupted by the attraction of the “inner circle” where things “really happened”, and who assisted in manipulating the populace by writing media articles crafted to deceive.
G.L. Alston (09:50:08) : “The comment by Pierrehumbert is telling. He’s essentially proving Jerry Pournelle’s “Iron Law of Bureaucracy” case.”
I was reminded of a speech from the 1956 film “Forbidden Planet.” Referring to the remnants of an advanced civilization he’s found on Altair IV, Dr. Morbius says,
“Such portions then of the Krell science as I may from time to time deem suitable and safe I shall dispense to Earth. Other portions I shall withhold. And in this I shall be answerable exclusively to my own conscience and judgment.”
As it turned out, a little “peer review” might have saved his life and many others. 🙂
JimB in Canada (09:48:51) :
“We hereby release a random selection of correspondence, code, and documents.”
Has anyone discussed the phrase “Random Selection”? Doesn’t this imply a larger section of Data may have been liberated and this 61 megs was just a sample?
I’ve been thinking the same thing, and why would the source call it “random” if there weren’t more of the exact same kind of stuff in its possession – or did the source think it just got lucky? If there is more to come, where is it such that its release can’t be stopped? We’ll just have to wait and see.
And I’m still a little flummoxed by the idea that Jones advises people to delete emails in the face of an FOI request, then doesn’t delete this very email itself. Does he think he’s invisible, but the others not? Well, by now I wouldn’t put that past any of these effete, “I speak it, therefore it is true”, Climate Scientists.
http://edition.cnn.com/2009/TECH/11/23/hacker.climate/index.html
Someone who received the e-mails on the subject “BBC U-turn on climate” forwarded them to Paul Hudson. These particular e-mails pertained directly to him. There is no way he received the contents of the leaked folder on October 12 as there is material dated later. Even the discussion of his BBC story continues until Oct. 14. Mr. Hudson did not word what he posted very carefully. I think he simply means that he can confirm the content of a few e-mails contained in the archive.
Not all of these files would need to have been released as part of the FOI request.
I think Jones performed a clean up of embarrassing material which was lifted from his recycle bin. Home goal.
This theory reminds me of panicked teenagers grabbing up all their drug/booze/sex stuff and throwing it out the window before their parents walk in. Only it wasn’t their parents they heard driving up, it was the police, walking around the house, doing an innocent neighborhood security check. Giggle.
So the FOI2009 files were extracted to be HIDDEN from FOI requests, and later retrieved from their safe hiding place. Sounds plausible. No “hacker” would know what to drag out unless it was precompiled for hiding.
What a terrible nightmare for the participants, if true. I actually said a prayer for those guys, in spite of what they are trying to do to every person in the world.
I doubt they ever dreamed all the power would end up in their hands and that they wold be called to such high accountability, eventually. Otherwise they would have had much tidier work and careful language from the start.
Thanks Charles for the 3rd theory.
Although I waver between theory #2 and #3, I found the following link in the files:
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/people/briffa/yamal2009/
The problem I have with this is, CRU states an Emergency Server is running at the moment.
You can easily go to the
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/people/briffa/
directory, but not to
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/people/briffa/yamal2009/
(Page temporarily unavailable)
Now tell me, does it make an sense to have access to Briffa’s cushion face, but not to the disputed Yamal data?
If this is an Emergency Server running, I (personally) would have reduced the informations to the lowest limits.
But why can I see Briffa’s page, but not the Yamal data?
Let me guess:
The Yamal data is actually there, but stealthed with another file name.
But this would mean, this is no emergency server!
The link to the Yamal directory might be obviously a kind of tripwire.
This makes your theory #3 much plausible.
There is enough intrigue here for another John Le Carre novel. Bring back George Smiley – he’ll sort it out.
The more I think about this, the more I think a civil suit must be filed. A good attorney will be able to make a name and money off this case.
This will put all the documents in the public realm via a discovery process and will also set a precedent for future potential actions like this.
It is then up to US and State Attorney Generals to determine what crimes were committed and which can be procecuted.
“(80.Has there been any explanation given for charge that there was a request for emails to be deleted to avoid an FOI request? All I’ve heard is that no emails were deleted, but the request itself is completely unethical and most likely illegal. Everything else I’ve seen seems to due to poor word choice and/or lack of context. The FOI avoidance would be a big blow to CRU, even if it doesn’t affect climate science.
[Response: In my opinion that email was very ill-advised. – gavin])”
Looks like Gavin is running for cover. Could be he’s starting to have concerns about some of the things he’s reading. I spent the weekend reading the emails that Gavin was a part of, and there really wasn’t much there except for working on RC during NASA business hours. If more disclosures are on the way, now is the time for Gavin to break ranks if he want to survive this.
Here’s another clue.
When you are trying to deliberately take someone down, the normal procedure it to release the damning information in parts — the way James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles exposed ACORN.
This had to exist as a single file to begin with.
I think the idea that this was an accidental compilation is more likely. A lot of this stuff is not what would be prepared for a FOIA request if someone was looking to keep their job. But we do know that there was an email suggesting that people delete some of their emails that referred to particular topics. What I am thinking is that someone deleted their email, but did not empty the recycle bin. The files were out of sight, but not out of mind, so to speak.
It goes along with the incompetency thought. I’ve known many people who thought once they deleted the email from their inbox it was gone forever. You can guess their chagrin when I pulled emails back from the trash bin. If CRU uses a mail server program like Lotus Notes or some thing similar, it is like a three step process to permanently delete an email or group of emails from the database system it uses. Someone with basic access, such as a student at UEA, might have sufficient access to check the deleted mail folders from the database and pull out the files to make the zip file.
UPDATE:
I just noticed, that other directories at the same directory level ARE available, i.e.
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/people/briffa/jgr2001/
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/people/briffa/qsr1999/
but explicitely NOT
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/people/briffa/yamal2009/
I have the faint suspicion this is the MAIN server running, only labelled as EMERGENCY server.
Evil to him who evil thinks. 🙂
Except for the conspiracy aspects of the contents of FOIA2009.zip, exactly why was all this stuff secret in the first place ?
Likewise, if the part of the theory that says this was put together as part of the review to Steve McIntyre’s FOIA request, exactly what contained with FOIA2009.zip, aside from the embarrassing conspiracy perpetrated by CRU employees, were the CRU officials trying to protect by denying the request.
Finally, the legal department of CRU found nothing strange reading this material that obviously reveals many unethical, if not illegal, acts by CRU employees ?
Frankly, the best course for the CRU and the University of East Anglia is to announce that a ongoing probe had been started on Nov. 12, 2009 into the actions of various employees of the CRU, from material that came to light because of a FOIA request.
John Galt (09:17:40) :
Probably not. Too easy for the defense to say the documents had been tampered with. BUT,I would think the originals could be subpoenaed and brought into evidence (in my humble non-legal opinion)
PR Guy (09:52:58) :
I like this idea. Some of the e-mails would probably never have been included in an FOI request. After all, the request for information was for data and code, not e-mails. I think some third party clerk at CRU was pulling data together for the FOI in case it was approved..and found more than he/she was looking for and included it. This insider either leaked the file, or like theory number 3…it was left intentionally or unintentionally on an unprotected server.
The BBC is claiming that it had the emails a month earlier:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/paulhudson/2009/11/climategate-cru-hacked-into-an.shtml
How would that affect the theory under discussion here?
I should point out that I’m skeptical of the BBC’s claim, as many of the emails continue on into this month! So they may have seen something, but who knows what?
@Jeff C
You are correct. The police would be investigating this “breach” and it would be all over the news. as of yet, I haven’t read, heard or seen anything on any of the network and cable news of any investigation.
This is nothing more than a ruse to shift blame and attention to a non existent entity. I would be watching for anyone being sacked from Hadley in the next few days or weeks.
P WIlson (12:05:02) :
The Channel 4 news item
http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid1529573111?bclid=51602931001&bctid=52281154001
Part 3 : CBI – Thatcher
time approx – 18:20
It’s way past time for someone to come up with a legal request/response based on information in the file at this point.
Some government entity should be opening an investigation…oh …wait…the government NEEDS that boogey man! Almost forgot.
Seriously…this needs to be officially investigated by someone with the ability to subpoena those involved to get the rest of the information they’ve been hiding and threatening to delete.
As has been pointed out countless times, there are backup tapes of all this stuff out there somewhere, and someone needs to file suit to get access to them.
Also, even without any malfeasance…there is open admission that in fact they have no idea what’s in the databases. The data has been “adjusted” without being documented, and noone knows where/where/why/how, so based on that alone, everything they’re doing with models and series and tree rings is all a giant waste of time, as far as I can tell.
If the “pure” data no longer exists…sorry guys and gals…time to start over, and try and do a better job this time?
JimB
I think it’s an insider, probably in IT department, maybe a sys admin.
The insider had been periodically ‘peaking’ at email boxes and documents on the servers and just casually copied items of interest. He was simply collecting bits and pieces over time.
briefly, on provenance……from Paul Hudson’s BBC Blog.
But I will in the meantime answer the question regarding the chain of e-mails which you have been commenting about on my blog, which can be seen here, and whether they are genuine or part of an elaborate hoax.
I was forwarded the chain of e-mails on the 12th October, which are comments from some of the worlds leading climate scientists written as a direct result of my article ‘whatever happened to global warming’. The e-mails released on the internet as a result of CRU being hacked into are identical to the ones I was forwarded and read at the time and so, as far as l can see, they are authentic.
NMice graphic on the CRU front page.
Still lying, I see.
The other theory that I’m starting to like more and more is that Jones directed some lower level IT guys to delete files from the server and backup tapes. We have an email where Jones is directing people to delete emails from their email accounts. He’s probably smart enough to know that there would be files on the servers and tapes as well. So he tries to get a low level IT guy to do the deed. But he picks the wrong guy, he picks a guy who has some integrity. Since he’s a low level guy, he feels trapped — he doesn’t know where to go or who to complain to and he worries (a lot) about retribution (gee, I don’t know why, they seem like such nice guys). So he leaks it.
Basil (12:49:07) :
The BBC is claiming that it had the emails a month earlier:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/paulhudson/2009/11/climategate-cru-hacked-into-an.shtml
How would that affect the theory under discussion here?
I should point out that I’m skeptical of the BBC’s claim, as many of the emails continue on into this month! So they may have seen something, but who knows what
http://flashforward.net/
Basil (12:49:07) :
The BBC is claiming that it had the emails a month earlier:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/paulhudson/2009/11/climategate-cru-hacked-into-an.shtml
How would that affect the theory under discussion here?
I should point out that I’m skeptical of the BBC’s claim, as many of the emails continue on into this month! So they may have seen something, but who knows what?
If that’s true, then there is little question that these emails were leaked.
Sorry if this a repeat, but 175 preceding comments is a lot to search
Fourth theory:
The “leak” was a quite deliberate camouflage job, to hide the equally deliberate destruction of seriously indictable material that was perceived to be vulnerable to FOI exposure
The released material is embarassing, but falls far short of evidence that could support criminal prosecutions. The story is being suppressed in the main stream media, being presented as a spat between science camps.
For this to work, it is vital that the hacker is never found, or the hacking methodology.
If this is right, we will see claims that the hacking caused extensive deletion of files.
Better to be embarrassed than go to prison.
Mike G
@alleagra
I heard it too and have been looking to spot another source of that claim all day.
OT , but since I’m here , I’ll post it here . Obama was just on the tube – he’s still talking about green jobs and the climate “crisis” . It will take a lot to dissuade the current crowd in DC , I’m afraid . Crimony , if nothing else this should prove that the science is not now , nor has it ever been “settled” . Fools , the lot of them .
It appears that the leak was internal. On November 17th the zip file was sent to multiple recipients. Notice how the opening is worded, and how the selected emails are summarized to get the recipients interested:
How is it that the emails are presented as text (,txt) files?
Whilst not an expert on email servers, the ones I have used (and the clients such as Microsoft Outlook) do not store in this format. All emails are stored in one large file (eg, ,pst), not individual text files. So, how did the released files get into this format? Could someone with full access to other’s email accounts (an insider?) have been looking for incriminating marerial and copied/pasted the offending emails into text files?
Also, the recipients and the original senders of the emails should have copies on their own mail servers/email clients/etc so it is useless to gather these together on any one server for deletion to escape detection.
Any investigation should look into whether there has been deletion of the same files from the many disparate email servers/accounts involved. If so, would this could prove collusion to ‘hide’ the actions of the people concerned?
Perusing some of these emails, I think it’s nothing short of academic fraud. Particularly since these so-called scientists and their data has created or changed legislation in several countries.
I wonder if this would change the minds of our politician’s minds in regards to the cap and tax legislation?
Someone needs to take charge and bring this to a world audience.
In some comments it is said that the files were placed in an “insecure” place. While this may be technically true, I think “unsecure” was meant.
ATD (12:56:30) :
So Hudson was forwarded a chain of emails, on October 12, than run through a month later? Neat trick.
Theory no 3 doesn’t account for the nature of the content nor the sheer volume of the file.
My theory; theory no 4 = theory no 3 + theory no 1 OR theory no 3 + theory no 2.
That is, stuff have been added to a smaller, more benign file.
Isn’t the “I” an extract/summary from 1120593115.txt?
[Yes, it was edited out.]
BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT?
Why is it we are always expected to extend kindness to those who never do so to us? To them, we are “climate criminals,” even though it is they who manufacture and manipulate data to falsify the record. Yet we are to believe they just made a stupid mistake resulting in “out of context” material to be “misinterpreted?”
No. I’m going with conspiracy on this one, just because the evidence is so overwhelming. Honest people don’t write the things they worte, even “in context.”
Besides, as posted in a previous article of yours, “You can claim an email you wrote years ago isn’t accurate saying it was ‘taken out of context’, but a programmer making notes in the code does so that he/she can document what the code is actually doing at that stage, so that anyone who looks at it later can figure out why this function doesn’t plot past 1960. In this case, it is not allowing all of the temperature data to be plotted.”
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/22/cru-emails-may-be-open-to-interpretation-but-commented-code-by-the-programmer-tells-the-real-story/
They knew what they were doing, and deserve to be cut no slack. They may have also been stupid, which is why they got caught, but the are and remain primarily dishonest hacks.
Listen: Inhofe Says He Will Call for Investigation on “Climategate” on Wash Times Americas Morning
Optics Are Important
This is turning into a hyperpartisan tabloid feeding frenzy – and this will be many peoples’ first impression of WUWT.
What’s happening with El Nino? Record November snowfall in Whistler, BC where the Winter Olympics will be held in a few months. Floods in other parts of coastal BC. Heavy rains in northeast England. Fires in Australia…
Paul Vaughan:
Yes, your explanation fits well.
Odd leetle story from one of my own clients (names omitted to protect the terminally innocent).
Requirement: to scan in source documents to an accounting system, using an early-generation mopier/scanner with a document feeder, to generate the images.
Unfortunately: said mopier cannot see anything else on the network except itself. So cannot do the preferred option, which is to write scans to a network resource.
Fortunately: the mopier can be set up as an FTP server, so it can write to itself, and be seen by the rest of the network.
Unfortunately: so can the rest of the world.
Fortunately: my scans happened just fine. I’m outta there and in the clear.
Unfortunately: over the following weekend, some enterprising types downloaded a mirror of their entire East European pron site onto the mopier, as revealed by the next Monday’s logs, which had their Internet pipe red-lined the whole time.
Fortunately, they realised what was up and shut down the FTP server on the mopier.
Unfortunately, they then could not easily delete the files downloaded, as the downloads included some tricky tricks to stop such maintenance.
Fortunately, the boys could read the files.
Unfortunately, there was a way round the hack, and the files were deleted.
Fortunately, that took about two weeks.
Moral of the story: open FTP is an accident waiting to happen.
I just fired off an email to Peter G. Neumann asking if he was following this. If you don’t know who he is check his web site. http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/25.83.html and his bio @ http://www.csl.sri.com/users/neumann/neumann.html
“I have been a member of the SRI International Computer Science Laboratory since September 1971. I spent eight years at Harvard (1950-58, with my A.B. in Math in 1954, S.M. in Applied Math in 1955, and PhD in 1961 after returning from my two-year Fulbright in Germany (1958-60), where I also received the German Dr rerum naturarum in 1960. “
I don’t see where he “ends with ‘I'”…?
THe I is part of an example grabbed from an email?
JimB
@JimB (12:52:59)
UK DECC Press Release today:
http://www.decc.gov.uk/en/content/cms/news/pn135/pn135.aspx
I think Nigel Lawson (former British chancellor of the exchequer 1983-89) sums the story to date rather nicely here:
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/copenhagen-deserves-to-fail/story-e6frg6zo-1225802514603
Quite a balanced review of the case for the negative in an appropriately reasonable tone.
Interesting choice of photos for this post! The Thinker is actually a small piece of a much larger work of Rodin’s. The Thinker sits atop the center of The Gates of Hell. Quite interesting indeed.
Re: My previous post
– that email/data from Tim Osbourn (939154709) is the one to which Phil Jones boasts about adding the real temp-data to (942777075), to create the nice hockey-stick effect….
– good work boys!
austin (12:36:28) :
Class action lawsuit. Class consists of the taxpayers of the U.S.
Would there be merit to this?
A ) On November 20, why did Phil Jones state “It was a hacker. We were aware of this about three or four days ago that someone had hacked into our system and taken and copied loads of data files and emails”?
B) If they knew the system was hacked 3 or 4 days before November 20, why did they wait until after FOI2009.zip hit the blogosphere before the system access/password lockdown?
Phil must have at least one other person to corroborate A, since he states “we were aware”. Item B could be explained by an upper management reaction to the press – they tend to freak out more about matters they don’t really understand, like network security. The IT department may have considered the leak plugged, but upper management has to be able to put some CYA language into their reports.
Still, very fishy. I do agree that it is unlikely this network was genuinely “hacked”. I think it’s more likely that someone either already had or was able to obtain access information. Of course you would use a proxy server for the access and download, but anyone can google how to do that. That may appear like a “hack”, but if you’re just typing in user names and passwords that you’re reading off of a piece of paper, not really.
Another conclusion could be that scientists like Mike Mann, Phil Jones and others should no longer participate in the peer-review process or in assessment activities like IPCC. — Dr. Hans von Storch
Wall Street Journal Poll:
Do you believe humans are responsible for climate change?
Poll subject 1/4 of the way down the left side of the article.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125883405294859215.html
Direct link;
http://online.wsj.com/community/groups/science-journal-242/topics/do-you-believe-humans-responsible
So far as I can see, CRU is more concerned about how or who this got out than the contents.
Sounds like they want to punish somebody for letting the cat out of the bag and the bad science and attempts to manipulate what gets published is no matter.
Anything happening politically there? Are there calls for an investigation of how CRU conducts business?
Well, what ever comes of this, I’m sure they’ll blame Bush
Obama is going to announce a US carbon reduction plan in Denmark, ignoring all this new evidence that has come to light. Yet, he says we must investigate all options and come up with a plan first before making a rash decision in afganistan. How long has he been sitting on his hands making a decision on that one? two months+ all the while things get worse and more people die. But we must rush to action on climate change….
That guy is the mother of all hypocrites.
BBC 2 Newsnight on tonight 23/11/09
“Susan Watts looks into the University of East Anglia row. Thousands of emails and documents stolen and posted online suggest to some that researchers colluded to make the case for climate change. Can we trust the scientists?”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00p6bn0
On at 22:30hrs GMT, about an hours time. Don’t know if it’s visible outside the UK but
http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbctwo/
Click on Watch Live
Pat Micheals is currently on FoxNews about this!
Just think about it. These so-called scientists have used their false data to cause politicians in many countries to create or change legislation.
I thought Prof. Andrew Watson looked very nervous on that!
http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid1529573111?bclid=51602931001&bctid=52281154001
He wouldn’t last 10 seconds with Paxman on Newsnight. Anyway, I’m confused why UEA rolled out this rather odd spokeman (for the day) who did lots of Errrms and R’sss, and seemed not to know alot.
Very mysterious.
I know it’s a bit of a side issue but I have real problems with this business of a mid October leaking of the data (presumably shorter data and pre- Steve McIntyre’s last communication) to Hudson at the BBC. Why would anyone with any insight into these matters post to anyone at the BBC? It just does not seem credible. Most English people would not trust the BBC to tell you the time of day so why go there?
If we are to unravel just what has happened these past few day (? weeks), that will somehow have to be included. It just jars with the other quite logical line of argument developed here.
Viscount Monckton on Climategate: ‘They Are Criminals’
The man who challenged Al Gore to a debate is furious about the content of the leaked CRU emails — and says why you should be, too.
November 23, 2009 – by Christopher Monckton
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/viscount-monckton-on-global-warminggate-they-are-criminals-pjm-exclusive/
Gavin’s elaborate description of the hacking attempt at RC is, in my humble opinion, nothing more than an attempt to add meat to the hacking theory in order to increase the vilification of the theoretical hackers.
Well, Dr Schmidt has provided some more [presuably in your world, fabricated] details, and also offered to share IP addresses with Steve M and Jeff Id.
At around 6.20am (EST) Nov 17th, somebody hacked into the RC server from an IP address associated with a computer somewhere in Turkey, disabled access from the legitimate users, and uploaded a file FOIA.zip to our server. They then created a draft post that would have been posted announcing the data to the world that was identical in content of the comment posted on The Air Vent later that day. They were intercepted before this could be posted on the blog
Gavin
I certainly remember getting a ‘Server not configured’ (or something) message trying to access RC at about that time ….
According to regional news (BBC East) yesterday, the Police have been called in. I don’t expect Inspector Knacker will find anything though but he’ll probably smash down a few front doors for dramatic effect.
@ Steve M.
Steve, just a cautious proposal…
Why not asking Phil Jones directly and politely but firmely about the truth content of theory #3?
I think, he is actually very stressed and ready to avert any damage that may result of this theory if it reveals as true.
In his mood, he may be eventually willing to give an answer.
With this, he has 2 choices:
a) ignoring you
b) confirming that #3 is wrong.
With a) you’ve nothing lost.
With b) you can nail him, if it turns out to be a voluntary misstatement later.
From the Wall Street article posted earlier, this is exactly the kind of thing I was expecting. Other scientists who are actually believers in AGW shocked at the fact they didn’t imagine other scientists would be treated by a “Mafia” – These are the kind of level headed scientists in the Mainstream (of which I believe there are many) that will be crucial to the fall of the alarmists.
“Mojib Latif, a climate researcher at Germany’s Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences, said he found it hard to believe that climate scientists were trying to squelch dissent. Mr. Latif, who believes in man-made global warming but who has co-authored a paper ascribing current cooling to temporary natural trends, said, “I simply can’t believe that there is a kind of mafia that is trying to inhibit critical papers from being published.””
The FOIA guy’s reaction was interesting. At first he was going to require disclosure. Then he was given a talking to, and he reversed his decision.
Wouldn’t the right thing to do be to hear from both sides in the dispute before making a decision? Or at least check with his superiors for guidance?
From the UK DECC Press Release mentioned above:
http://www.decc.gov.uk/en/content/cms/news/pn135/pn135.aspx
The folks at DECC are certifiable. Their recent poll revealed that:
Over 50% of people questioned don’t believe climate change will affect them
Only 1 in 5 (18%) think that climate change will take effect during their children’s lifetime.
74% of people would take immediate action to change their lifestyle now if they knew that climate change would affect their children’s lives
52% of people believe that their actions as an individual can help stop the effects of climate change
Only a quarter (26%) believe that climate change is already impacting on the UK
Respondents cited flooding as one of the most common effects of climate change that will happen in the UK (69%)
Two conclusions spring to mind. First, the existing efforts to brainwash the British public have failed. Apparently they believe their senses not the HADCRU guys and the AGW fanatics. Second, they do not have a clue as to why people do not believe them.
To solve this “problem” they are going to put their message on 900 bilboards across the country. A Jon Lovitz moment methinks: “Yeah! That’s the ticket!”
Gavin offers an explanation
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/11/the-cru-hack-context/comment-page-2/#comment-143886
I think the intention in the BBC is to keep the discussion as discrete as possible and it speaks volumes. They have made comment for the first time about the CRU files contents hidden well away from climate discussions on a very lame blog called open secrets
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/opensecrets/2009/11/hacked_climate_emails_and_foi.html#comments
Look forward to Newsnight though, I suspect it will be hard not to comment on Nigel Lawsons articlehttp://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article6927598.ece
Oh, I love how he suggests the simple use of a proxy server suggests ‘sophisticated knowledge’, lol.
Squidly (13:32:25) :
Pat Micheals is currently on FoxNews about this!
nice!!! Stuart Varney kept alarmist Dan Weiss on the ropes.
I feel bad about feeling good about that!!:
Pass the popcorn.
This gets even more strange.
At RC Gavin wrote ( I dont know it is ok to quote his entire post but in these days ….)
“There seems to be some doubt about the timeline of events that led to the emails hack. For clarification and to save me going through this again, this is a summary of my knowledge of the topic. At around 6.20am (EST) Nov 17th, somebody hacked into the RC server from an IP address associated with a computer somewhere in Turkey, disabled access from the legitimate users, and uploaded a file FOIA.zip to our server. They then created a draft post that would have been posted announcing the data to the world that was identical in content of the comment posted on The Air Vent later that day. They were intercepted before this could be posted on the blog. This archive appears to be identical to the one posted on the Russian server except for the name change. Curiously, and unnoticed by anyone else so far, the first comment posted on this subject was not at the Air Vent, but actually at ClimateAudit (comment 49 on a thread related to stripbark trees, dated Nov 17 5.24am (Central Time I think)). The username of the commenter was linked to the FOIA.zip file at realclimate.org. Four downloads occurred from that link while the file was still there (it no longer is).
The use of a turkish computer would seem to imply that this upload and hack was not solely a whistleblower act, but one that involved more sophisticated knowledge. If SM or JeffID want to share the IPs associated with the comments on their sites, I’ll be happy to post the IP address that was used to compromise RC.”
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/11/the-cru-hack-context/comment-page-2/#comment-143886
They should know by now what happened. The fact they are “mum” about it suggests that it was a simple human error (files placed in an unprotected public server).
Server traffic records would show 61 Mb of data being moved around. Knowing the files and the sizes it should have been easy to find out.
Hackers do not go in and go out and leave no trace….
Smokey (13:43:43)
Agreed – and completely contrary to the UK EIR/FOI “public interest” criteria.
Thank you. I’m just one of the small-town observers, yet a denier, of this whole evil hoax. Now I can provide my antagonists with a reasoned explanation for why the science is NOT “settled”. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation will interview Al Gore on Thursday morning, 26th Nov. I wonder if they have the “guts” to challenge him on this whole issue.