Personally I don’t think Russian spies had anything to do with it. A our own Charles The Moderator recently explained in The CRUtape Letters™, an Alternative Explanation, it is looking more and more like a leak than a hack. I’ll have a much more detailed post on this soon.
From the Telegraph
Climategate: was Russian secret service behind email hacking plot?
There was growing speculation on Sunday that hackers working for the Russian secret service were responsible for the theft of controversial emails in the ‘Climategate’ scandal.
Thousands of emails, from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) were first published on a small server in the city of Tomsk in Siberia.
So-called ‘patriot hackers’ from Tomsk have been used in the past by the Russian secret service, the FSB, to attack websites disliked by the Kremlin, such as the “denial of service” campaign launched against the Kavkaz-Tsentr website, over its reports about the war in Chechnya, in 2002.
Russia, a major oil exporter, may be trying to undermine calls to reduce carbon emissions ahead of the Copenhagen summit on global warming. The CRU emails included remarks which some claim show scientists had manipulated the figures to make them fit the theory that humans are causing global warming.
Achim Steiner, the director of the United Nations Environment Programme, said the theft of emails from CRU, which is a world-renowned centre for climate research, had similarities with the Watergate scandal which brought down US President Richard Nixon.
But he said: “This is not climategate, it’s hackergate. Let’s not forget the word ‘gate’ refers to a place [the Watergate building] where data was stolen by people who were paid to do so.
“So the media should direct its investigations into that.”
Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, the vice-chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), said he believed the theft of the emails was not the work of amateur climate sceptics.
“It’s very common for hackers in Russia to be paid for their services,” he told The Times.
“If you look at that mass of emails a lot of work was done, not only to download the data but it’s a carefully made selection of emails and documents that’s not random at all.
“This is 13 years of data and it’s not a job of amateurs.”
Mr van Ypersele said the expose was making it more difficult to persuade the 192 countries going to Copenhagen of the need to cut carbon emissions.
“One effect of this is to make scientists lose lots of time checking things. We are spending a lot of useless time discussing this rather than spending time preparing information for the negotiators,” he said.
However he insisted the emails did not change the science. “It doesn’t change anything in the IPCC’s conclusions. It’s only one line of evidence out of dozens of lines of evidence,” he said.
A Russian hacking specialist told the Mail on Sunday: “There is no hard evidence that the hacking was done from Tomsk, though it might have been. There has been speculation the hackers were Russian.
“It appears to have been a sophisticated and well-run operation, that had a political motive given the timing in relation to Copenhagen.”
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APF (21:21:40) :
“sysadmins do tend to see themselves as masters of the universe”
Well, that’s because we ARE masters of the universe. Just ask us! Now, begone with you. 🙂
Wow. Accusing the Russians. Push this story out to the general populous of Russia, and you will loose the hearts of a large percentage of their patriots. The arrogance of the accusation falls right in line with the tone of the emails from CRU.
Why would Russia want AGW to go away? They have 1/3 of the world’s natural gas reserves, which will be in favor once those who worship GAIA succeed in their mission. Russia also wants to get Iranian natural gas to Europe – hence their interest in Georgia. Iran has 1/6 of the world’s natural gas reserves.
Europe, which backs AGW more than USA, and the East, must want to be an energy hostage of Russia. Anything passed to combat CO2 will make Russia very wealthy.
Gov Palin can see Russia from her house. Ask her.
It is possible that a Russian spy got the passwords when Briffa and Mann asked for directions to the TREE.
It does not matter who did it – it does not change the implication of the information revealed.
I miss Jay Ward, Al Capp, and Walt Kelly.What they would’ve done with this..
Were e-mails actually stolen, or were only copies stolen? It makes a difference.
We all know how the Alarmists like to parrot that similarities of the Skeptics and the tobacco industry. But one thing they do not seem to remeber is how the tobacco industry had a similar occurance when someone actually copied documents from Brown and Williamson, leaking them to Stanton Glantz’s office, a professor at UCSF and an anti-tobacco activist, Congressman Henry Waxman, and the New York Times. The courts found that having copies of stolen documents, even ones that are confidential, does not constitute a crime. ABC could even distribute as it saw fit. As long as the one recieving the information was not the one who did the “stealing”, there is no crime.
So, in the case of smoking it was just fine when one leaks documents for the greater good. But when the shoe is on the other foot, and documents get leaked for the greater good going against their stonewalling, it is bad.
http://www.library.ucsf.edu/sites/all/files/ucsf_assets/bw_ucregents.pdf
Anything to avoid dealing with the substance of the e-mails, data and code.
How shallow and reactionary of our AGW true believers.
Those seeking to suppress what the e-mails reveal are true denialist scum.
They deny that truth is vital to this issue.
They deny our children the benefits of reality based policies.
They deny that science needs to be honest.
Imagine if a corrupt invesment bank was operating, and someone leaked or stole files that uncovered the corruption.
Who would deny looking into the corruption, and instead chase around pretending the only issue was the means by which the evidence was gotten?
Only people benefitting from the corrupt practice.
One effect of this is to make scientists lose lots of time checking things.
Heaven forbid that scientists should spend lots of time checking things. (Or, worse yet, let “outsiders” spend lots of time checking things.)
As Steven Milloy over at JunkScience.com states on the home page,
“It has become fairly obvious this archive was not “hacked” or “stolen” but rather is a file assembled by CRU staff in preparation for complying with a freedom of information request. Whether it was carelessly left in a publicly accessible portion of the CRU computer system or was “leaked” by staff believing the FOIA request was improperly rejected may never be known but is not really that important.”
See it at http://www.junkscience.com
I presume that Mr van Ypersele is not a scientist from his comment about “scientists having to check things”.
If not, is he a political hack who knows nothing about anything?
I’m so sorry, I’ve discovered that his is a professor of climate science. Also he is belgian.
SuperDBA,
“Well, that’s because we ARE masters of the universe. Just ask us! Now, begone with you.”
Ok I will. How come my web pages no longer retain the data I add to them (eg my name and e-mail address in leave-a-comment)? Is it because IE8 is a pile of C**P?
Al Queda hacked CRU!!!
No No No! You guys have it all wrong. Here is how the files got on the web.
Many predicted that if CERN tried to restart the Super Hadron Collider, either the world was either going to be swallowed up by micro black holes (hasn’t happened so far), or because of the quantum nature of the higgs-boson particle, that it can travel through time, it doesn’t want to be discovered. It is often called the “God Particle” after all. Thus the very act of trying to discover the particle would stop the LHC from ever firing – note how the actions of one bird caused a severe delay the reboot process. That was one-heck-of-a-strategically-placed bread crumb! But there is a third possibility. Maybe the effects of the higgs boson do travel through time, but they don’t prevent its discovery…. but, however, they do strange things to the world in a quantum way. Obviously, the LHC has succeeded sometime in the near future of creating the “God Particle”, and since the effects of such are quantum and not anchored in time, well, the effects are being felt now! And one of the effect is… drum roll please…. to cause the CRU e-mails and code to go all quantum on us and shift from a secured server at the University of East Anglia to one in Vlad’s house that is quite open to the web! It’s so easy to see…. And it’s quantum to boot!
Who can argue with that!
On further reflection, there are other strange things going on in the world today that can now be explained. Many liberals are fuming over the lack of “liberalness” in Obama’s recent policy decisions, such as the delay in closing Gitmo, renewal of the hated Patriot act, and the lack of effort to repeal Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, along with his refusal to side with proponents of gay marriage. And then there is his recent decision to extend the war in Afghanistan. His popularity should still be in the sixties! None of this should be happening! It isn’t right.
I am not the leaker. Also, these are not the droids you are looking for.
It was a leak, and the motive was ice-cold revenge.
You know what they say about paybacks.
Jedi mind trick don’t work on me boy!!! 🙂
Keith G (00:24:03) :
“The Germans got nothing to do with it!” (Sheriff Buford T. Justice in “Smokey and the Bandit”, 1980-something).
Sorry, couldn’t resist.
“Hey Phil! Watch me pull warming out of my hat! Oops- looks like I used the wrong rings!”
As another Rocky and Bullwinkle lover I nominate this as Quote of the week.
The AGW’s are now desperate and will stoop to anything to throw us off the scent.
It’s not how we came to know….it is what we have found out.
Takes a crook to catch…..
Jones et al evidentely represent 12 of the 26 people on the IPCC panel who give us the extreme AGW view.
This means if they are all proved to be crooks then 46% of the AGW argument is now down the pan as it is 46% incorrect.
Whats more Jones has form as the audit of the U.S. weather stations by Anthony proved.
For the 90 or so stations they claimed to have vetted Anthony commented they were a “complete disaster” and this subsequently inflated temps for the 1990’s by 1.5C.
A scientific review of the situation said there was no way the IPCC scientists could have checked the weather stations….their statements were “fabricated”.
In other words fraudulant science.
The co-authors were a Prof Wang and…..Prof Philip Jones of CRU!!!!!!!!
Why the Russians do not want to subvert Copenhagen.
“Russia’s Carbon Credits Seen as Barrier to Warming Curb” By James Kanter on page A18 of the New York Times on December 8, 2009:
… Russia, as a result of the collapse of much of its heavy industry in the 1990s, owns one of the largest stocks of credits to offset carbon emissions. The unearned windfall, a legacy of the Kyoto agreement that tried to deal with the threat of climate change, is worth several billion dollars. …
Carbon trading is mainly based on permits that are issued or sold by governments to companies that emit carbon dioxide and other gases that are believed to affect the climate. The companies are required to buy permits, or seek credits elsewhere, if they emit more than a specified amount of carbon.
* * *
The prospect of Russia dumping its credits is just the latest challenge facing emissions trading, the expected financial backbone to any global agreement that may emerge from the talks taking place in Copenhagen over the next two weeks. The hoard of Russian credits is a “gorilla sitting in the background” that “nobody dares to touch,” said Peter Zapfel, a senior official who helps to oversee the European Union’s four-year-old emissions trading system.