Jeff Id at the Air vent writes about the recent UEA/CRU announcement that the Climategate files were all left on a single server. Gathering them into one zip file and posting on a Russian FTP: “not so sophisticated”.
That and Sir David King – making up stuff.
Here is another what-if:
What if the whistleblower prepared the file and in order to hide his tracks then accessed it from outside (for that would be seen as an outside hack job) via a Russian server… it’s quick, clean and has his back covered since he would know very well that his wellbeing is at risk.
Independent of whether the files were just on a a single server or scattered across many servers, the data and e-mails that were posted had been selected and filtered to leave very little extraneous material.
Why would a random hacker go through the trouble of selecting data and e-mails?
I still haven’t seen a reasonable hypothesis as to why there would be a file of data and e-mails of just the types that were leaked, other than perhaps that they were the product of a search in regards to an FOIA request. But even that doesn’t really account for the big spread in dates and subject matter.
An inside leaker that purposefully searched and selected for incriminating material does fit the observed facts.
OT – I’m told that Channel 4 News (UK) tonight will have a discussion with Prof Watson of UEA and Lord Lawson. So UK viewers may wish to tune in, the programme starts in about 5 minutes. The News editor asked me to submit a question for Prof Watson – so I gave them a couple and said take your pick. See http://www.channel4.com/news/articles/science_technology/climate+email+row+scientists+speak+out/3524137 which will presumably be updated after the programme.
Phil Jones is apparently ‘worried’ in a defence of the latest allegation in The Guardian:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/02/phil-jones-climate-scientist-hacked-email?showallcomments=true#end-of-comments
Monbiot says more people should be sacked:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2010/feb/02/climate-change-hacked-emails
The Guardian really has got it’s teeth showing now. The penny has at last dropped. So tonight it’s official: AGW has died – now we can look forward the the wake.
Time for a beer.
TerryS, Is there an Admin. command to remove the headers etc.? Someone?
Talk of weather spies and foreign hackers is diversion, and helps smear the climate moderates / AGW opponents effectively at the same time. Simple, really. I’ve no IT knowledge whatsoever, but it seems to me that, using the principle of occam’s razor, that the simplest and most obvious way for the CRUtape letters (copyright Mosher?) to see the light of day would be for them to have been leaked, not hacked.
A re-post from ‘Tips & Notes To WUWT’
Sir David King, who for seven years was Tony B’liar’s science Panjandrum manages to blame Russian spies for ‘hacking’ the CRU e-mails and data and, somewhat startlingly, states “… the American lobby system was a “very likely source of finance” for the hack and that “the finger must point to them.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/7126586/Climategate-emails-stolen-by-foreign-spies.html
Amazing!!
Re: Tom (11:12:24) :
Interesting. A famous case in UK Law going back to 1861 appears to be Regina versus Leatham:
‘”It matters not how you get it; if you steal it even, it would be admissible in evidence” (per Justice Crompton in R v Leatham [1861]) Discuss
This is a much debated and analysed quote. Does it mean that the police and the Crown Prosecution Service in England and Wales can source information by any means necessary and in spite of the method it will be admissible in a court of law? Or does it mean that a message is being sent to criminals, that if they commit a crime they must not assume that all methods of obtaining evidence to prosecute them are limited? Does it condone the theft of evidence for the purpose of using it to convict a defendant? If it does surely this is at odds with criminal law and in particular s.1 of the Theft Act of 1968, s.7 of which prescribes a maximum of seven years prison on conviction on indictment. Regardless of the specific reason or meaning (which in any case presumably there are many), the impact of this statement by Justice Crompton is far reaching. The Criminal Justice Act of 2003 even extends the range of evidence that is admissible, so defendants definitely have little to hide behind.’
More recent cases involving the tax authorities are different in jurisdiction but the principle seems similar:
http://www.lynamtax.co.uk/news/bbc-panorama-and-the-liechtenstein-bank-accounts/2009/02/18/
Anyway, the Climategate files weren’t “stolen”. CRU still has them and enjoys the use of them. They were simply copied and made public!
The file is exactly what a FOIA (FOI) request generates. A set of filters are run against various document stores and email servers. The file is then reviewed by a committee and any material that must be withheld or isn’t relevant is removed. This is either the unredacted or partially redacted results of a suppressed FOIA response. Somebody wanted it out – and it made it’s way out.
After collection and during the editing, the file could certainly have been compressed and stored on a single machine. That isn’t a surprise. What surprises me is that 10y record of emails — it is hard to piece together the fragments left from email server upgrades and system changes without an enormous amount of long-term institutional IT discipline.
The fact that it was “stolen” does not make it inadmissible – but it challenges the provenance of the evidence. EAU has verified the contents of the file – so this may be less of a problem.
As reported at the Air Vent.
university of East Anglia to release this little tidbit of information.
In fact, as UEA confirmed today, all the files and emails were archived on a single backup server on the Norwich campus.
I don’t believe this explanation at all. The last email was dated 12 Nov 2009 and the earliest goes back to 1996. Since the last emails were not of much importance then archiving on a separate server at that rate would have resulted in a lot of more trivial mail.
It must have been deliberately collected together or Phil Jones may have thought he deleted them but only moved them into the trash.
I’ll bet someone had direct access to his computer.
Still a mystery. A miracle, as the CA post from RC said. What impresses me is the sense of quiet orderliness, even courtesy, about the whole operation. As if the miracle_worker knew all the writers well and picked out what was relevant and included nothing that was not relevant; not only that, but they chose the best blogs where the best science is done and the sense of human balance and courtesy is best upheld: Warren Meyer, the Air Vent, CA and here.
I don’t just believe in miracles. I have seen miracles. And researched them. They can happen.
Andrew P (11:01:01) :
OT – I’m told that Channel 4 News (UK) tonight will have a discussion with Prof Watson of UEA and Lord Lawson. So UK viewers may wish to tune in, the programme starts in about 5 minutes.
They ran it as the lead item. A long interview with Peter Liss and Lord Lawson. The Channel 4 website also has a piece on Peter Liss’s defence of Phil Jones.
http://www.channel4.com/news/articles/science_technology/climate+email+row+scientists+speak+out/3524137
TerryS, Thanks for the info. My view is PJ is just a nice guy. As he read the emails he erased the headers or whatever seemed private and just x’d. When he was done reading he was freaked out at how he was framed by his own words. So he added bits and pieces to distract from a now much wider picture. He knew it was going down so he just blew the thing up hoping to keep his job in the long run. I am pretty sure that in all the emails in the FOIA files it is only the Nov. Friday 13th 2009, that PJ says anything like he is leaving the office early…? Time will tell.
Sir David King has form for alarmist science. Several years ago, he and his buddy Prof. Roy Anderson convinced Tony Blair to engage in a massive contiguous cull of cattle following the outbreak of foot and mouth disease in the UK. Based on Anderson’s computer models for disease transmission many millions of cattle were killed needlessly.
Later it transpired that the inputs to the models were flawed since they did not take into account that the disease had been in the cattle for longer than it was thought. They also played politics – adjusting the output of the model to suit Tony Blair’s election schedule.
David King was closely involved in all this as a main proponent of the contiguous cull. His judgement is flawed.
For a full expose of the matter check out this link
http://www.warmwell.com/footmoutheye.html
it is interesting that Phil Jones and the CRU are self evidently not very good when it comes to understanding how to work with computers.
However the IPCC rely totally on the computer derived research of these people.
Well, the BBC has come to the aid of Professor Phil Jones by allowing him to defend himself here http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/norfolk/8494497.stm
Extract: “Professor Phil Jones, former director of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia (UEA), said his results “stand up to scrutiny”.”
What if the noble Source of the leaks has more files?
Well, on that note, I just want to wish everyone at CRU and Penn State luck on their internal investigations, and wish them very sweet dreams.
Not according to Desmog
http://www.desmogblog.com/cru-hack-was-highly-sophisticated-spy-job-prominent-british-scientist-says
“Sir David King, the UK’s former chief scientist, strongly believes that the theft of hundreds of emails from the Climatic Research Unit in East Anglia was carried out by highly-paid professionals, perhaps a foreign intelligence agency, and was deliberately designed to destabilize the Copenhagen climate talks last December.
The highly sophisticated hacking operation involved stealing more than 1,000 emails and some 2,000 documents from a backup server at the University which would have been difficult to access remotely.
According to The Independent newspaper, King believes the hack “was carried out by a team of skilled professionals, either on behalf of a foreign government or at the behest of anti-climate change lobbyists in the United States.” “
I’d like to hear less theory and conjecture and more facts. Follow the evidence.
Hmmm… I think that applies to lots of things, doesn’t it?
The odds of finding the hacker/leaker have greatly diminished with this revelation. I give it a 5% chance tops.
From the context of the stuff in the Climategate zip file, it had to be someone with a wide inside knowledge who pulled it together.
My guess would be an inside job, careless placement of the file on an open UEA server, or as an outside bet, GCHQ. If it was the least likely option is true, the the CRU is toast!
A notoriously left wing MSM, the Guardian, and their most alarmist writer, Fred Pearce, author of the stunningly apocalyptic book “The Last Generation” are starting to get indignant about CRU, and talking about doubts over the hockey stick curve. We are beyond being right-wing oil-funded deniers now.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/02/hockey-stick-graph-climate-change
They will turn really vindictive against the AGW academics when the full cover-up story comes out at the Select Committee in March.
I seem to recall a precedent seemingly cited in the film “The Rainmaker,” staring Matt Damon and Danny DeVito, stating that stolen work-papers were admissible as evidence as long as the plaintiffs were not responsible for the stealing them.
I still think there would be a great reluctance to prosecute men whom many still consider to be heroes of the Green Earth movement.
OMG, and the writer formerly known as Moonbat, too, although he adds a caveat as usual to the end of his article. Welcome to reality, George.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2010/feb/02/climate-change-hacked-emails
I’m just going to check the BBC website for signs of a miracle.