UPDATE: 12/21/11 4PM -BBC covers Tallbloke, finally, Richard Black still silent- Norfolk constabulary to share hand-off Climategate investigation, and Greg Laden caves – see below
Dec 14th -The first blogger to break the Climategate2 story has had a visit from the police and has had his computers seized. Tallbloke’s Talkshop first reported on CG2 due to the timing of the release being overnight in the USA. Today he was raided by six UK police (Norfolk Constabulary and Metropolitan police) and several of his computers were seized as evidence. He writes:
After surveying my ancient stack of Sun Sparcstations and PII 400 pc’s, they ended up settling for two laptops and an adsl broadband router. I’m blogging this post via my mobile.
That means his cellphone. In his blog report are all the details. including actions in the US involving WordPress and the US Department of Justice. Jeff Id at The Air Vent also has a report here.
Strange and troubling that they’d seize his computers for comments dropped onto a US service (wordpress.com) from the cloud. There wouldn’t be any record on his PC’s of the event from FOIA’s placing comments, that would be in the wordpress.com server logs.
Either there’s more than meets the eye or they have no idea how the blog system works.
UPDATE: I’ve been in contact with Roger (Tallbloke) and he tells me that he is not a suspect, and that they’ll clone his hard drives and return the computers to him. – Anthony
UPDATE2: 12/15/9AM It seems that the story has gone viral on blogs. Four skeptic blogs are in the top ten of all WordPress blogs today. While I’ve seen 2 at a time on CG1 and CG2, four has never happened before. This is from my wordpress.com dashboard:
From top to bottom, WUWT, The Air Vent, Tallbloke’s Talkshop, Climate Audit.
UPDATE3: Delingpole in the Telegraph thinks its going to escalate
UPDATE4: Horner in The Washington Examiner weighs in
UPDATE5: The Guardian picks up on the story here
UPDATE6: Jo Nova suggests it is a form of intimidation
UPDATE7: Josh weighs in with two cartoons
UPDATE8: Greg Laden on Scienceblogs accuses Tallbloke of being a “criminal” – a claim really over the line and over the top. Clearly this is outside of the Code of Conduct for Scienceblogs.com (contact page here) Of course, after reading the rant of hate this man has for anyone not like him, especially Americans in some states, I suppose it’s just another day for him. Update: I sent off a complaint to the editors of Sb about this, and it appears that Laden has been asked to remove the libelous language, though the post remains as does his hateful attitude in comments.
UPDATE9: Lord Monckton to pursue fraud charges against Climategate scientists: Will present to police the case for ‘numerous specific instances of scientific or economic fraud’
Monckton: ‘I have begun drafting a memorandum for prosecuting authorities…to establish…the existence of numerous specific instances of scientific or economic fraud in relation to the official ‘global warming’ storyline…they will act, for that is what the law requires them to do’
Story at ClimateDepot here
UPDATE10: More than a couple of people have asked me about computer security in the last couple of days, especially after the Tallbloke raid incident.
I’m offering a simple security solution for those that want to protect their files: a USB flash drive with built in hardware security. See it here
UPDATE11: A copy of the search warrant can be seen at Climate Audit
UPDATE 12: The BBC’s Richard Black is silent, probably because he can’t “… find an angle that will allow the BBC to maintain the usual warmists good, sceptics bad holding pattern”.
UPDATE13: Tallbloke apparently is going to take legal action against ScienceBlogs and blogger Greg Laden over his libelous article (now modified to not be libelous) accusing Tallbloke of being involved in criminal activity, and is soliciting barristers. Laden says on his blog in comments:
“I think he’s a criminal for being a climate denialist. Sue me. “
Looks like Greg Laden will get his wish.
UPDATE14: Rep Markey has an “off with their heads” moment, Jeff Id explains how the connections being made are preposterous.
UPDATE15: Tallbloke has decided to take the libel issue with Laden to tort. A letter from his attorney is posted.
UPDATE16: Planetsave makes another libel with the headline: “Criminal Who Manufactured Climategate Caught?” The clueless writer, Zachary Shahan, is about as far away from understanding journalism as anyone I’ve seen. He’s in for a nasty surprise as Tallbloke has added him to the tort list.
UPDATE18: UK cartoonist “Fenbeagle” has done up a Star Wars parody in the vein of The Empire Strikes Back. Mike Mann, Phil Jones, Jawas, and a Wookie are featured.
UPDATE19: Tom Nelson points out that Laden seems to have caved to impending legal action: Warmist Greg Laden: Did I say that tallbloke is a criminal? I meant he’s not a criminal. Details here
UPDATE20: Tallbloke reflects on the solstice and says that questions are starting to be asked in the UK.
UPDATE21: Tallbloke reports that:
In a sudden new development, your correspondent has learned that Norfolk Constabulary have decided that climategate is too big for them to handle. According to an un-named source, they intend to hand over the inquiry to another force.
This follows on the heels of a ‘request for a contact’ at Norfolk Constabulary by Lord Christopher Monckton in connection with his intention to have the police investigate revelations in the ‘climategate’ emails placed in the public domain.
UPDATE22: Donna LeFramboise writes in the Financial Post:
This is all rather chilling. It appears that being the proprietor of a blog in which strangers leave links pointing to material on third-party websites now exposes one to being raided by the police.
UPDATE23: The BBC finally gets around to covering the seizure episode almost a week later, unsurprisingly, the very biased Richard Black isn’t the reporter.
Off topic.
I don’t know about the rest of you, but a common bit of fun some friends of mine have is playing Bait The Warmist. The game is played every time it’s cold and you say: “So, how about that global warming, huh?” while pulling your coat tighter.
Warmists present will immediately shriek: “Climate isn’t weather!” or somesuch.
Well, I happened to notice in the latest email leaks that 0248.txt contains some interesting debate between the warmists. During the course of the debate
Kevin Trenberth wrote:
Hi all
Well I have my own article on where the heck is global warming? We are asking that here
in Boulder where we have broken records the past two days for the coldest days on
record. We had 4 inches of snow. The high the last 2 days was below 30F and the normal
is 69F, and it smashed the previous records for these days by 10F. The low was about
18F and also a record low, well below the previous record low. This is January weather
(see the Rockies baseball playoff game was canceled on saturday and then played last
night in below freezing weather).
Which seems to be exactly the same sort of comment. Straight from their mouths. And in the responses nobody seemed to shriek that weather and climate aren’t the same.
@Tucci78 says:That figure is from a page in Finland which was mentioned time ago here in WUWT. It was an official site.
At 5:37 PM on 16 December (when we celebrate the Boston Tea Party [1773] and contribute funds to Ron Paul’s presidential campaign in yet another one of those “money bombs” that shock and dismay the Republican establishment) Jean Parisot writes about how:
So the Norfolk puds – or is it “prods”? – et alia simply aren’t smart “Liberal” fascist goons, then?
Well, it seems Tallbloke needs to get busy with the lawsuits because it looks like he is going to need the money.
Climate Audit [ http://climateaudit.org/2011/12/16/the-tallbloke-search-warrant/#comment-316788 ] has a photo of Tallbloke’s search warrant.
In the comments there is mention that because the Guardian has printed in it’s article tallbloke’s line of work at the University of Leeds his job is now on the line. http://climateaudit.org/2011/12/16/the-tallbloke-search-warrant/#comment-316598
Perhaps THAT was the reason for the search, to allow pressure to be placed on a heretic blogger and get him fired.
If Scientists and Journal editors have come under this kind of attack why not bloggers?
Gail,
Although I agree with you about being concerned about much of what you have commented upon, I must bring to your attention the factual mistake you are making in regard to the Constitutional powers to detain a U.S. citizen without trial.
The U.S. Constitution and the international law of armed conflict has always limited the protection of the writ of habeus corpus and trial by jury with respect to combatants engaged in hostilities. The laws regarding the indefinite detention of a a person who is a foreign citizen owing allegiance to a foreign sovereign or a domestic citizen volunteering allegiance to a foreign sovereign or a domestic insurgent exist for a good and humane purpose designed to protect the health and safety of the public and the detainees during the period of hostilities.
Yes, it is possible and even likely that a bad domestic or foreign government may abuse the laws and use them contrary to their intended humane purposes. Nonetheless, the laws exist and exist for good purposes. People who complain about the effects upon habeus corpus and trial by jury are only greatly harming the very people they meant to help with their complaints. While you may not understand and see why this is so at present, I can only urge you to learn why it is so and why it is necessary to respect the need to give effect to the original purpose of such laws while finding better ways of helping the innocent. The objections which you and other people have towards the indefinite detention and insistence for having a prosecution and trial of a combatant can result in the foreign and domestic trial, imprisonment, torture, and capital punishment of U.S. civilians and members of the armed forces by enemy governments and by a hypothetical outlaw domestic government using false prosecutions.
Before you renew your complaint about the writ of habeus corpus and trial by jury, I must urge you to at the very least make yourself acquainted with the laws of armed conflict and the reasons why they make the criminal trial of belligerents illegal except for prosecutions of violations of the laws of armed conflict. These laws exist to protect you and me from the very types of governments and governmental crimes you fear. You should note for example that the Constitution has always granted the President and Commander-in-Chief the power to indefinitely detain a belligerent during the course of hostilities. The current bill only tinkers with that original Constitutional power, perhaps for ill purpose as you fear. In any event, please don’t make the mistake of wrongly assuming there never was such a Constitutional power to detain a belligerent without trial, or the mistake of wrongly assuming the original purpose was improper and must be contrary to the best interests of the falsely accused innocents. If you wish, I’ll explain further.
Tucci78 says:
December 16, 2011 at 6:21 pm
You are making the assumption that the encrypted files are only ‘more of the same’ – the ‘nothing of interest move along’ meme being repeat chanted — that may be a flawed assumption.
Yup. When you get your crap back from the police, put it on ebay. Let them end up tracking some gamer in Liverpool.
Maybe Patchy Morals is FOIA and has shorted every thing the numpty of Nashville has got his fingers in!!!
I’m not a conspiracy theorist…In fact I find most, if not all of it bunk. However, if I were one I might pose some of these questions.
Why is Obama’s inept DOJ (i.e. the Fast and Furious, “stealth pardons” of two Weather Underground terrorists, Voter ID BS) involved?
What is the administration trying to cover up?
Why was the Keystone XL pipeline delayed until after the November 2012 election?
A conspiracy theorist might figure that there are e-mails that show the White House complicit with “The Cause” and Obama wants to consolidate his green vote (and his average guy who has never heard of Climategate vote) hoping another email dump doesn’t happen before November 2012.
But what do I know, I don’t believe in conspiracy theories. It’s just a lark, but an interesting one.
eanagram;
% of national consumption
vs.
% of nameplate wind capacity.
Totally different numbers and issues.
Doh.
Encrypt your entire hard drive. Use a passphrase not a password. Passphrases are very easy to remember and much more difficult than passwords to crack (due to far greater length). Any passphrase combination of at least eight words (eg a book title or some lines from a poem) is effectively impossible to crack (billions of years with a supercomputer).
Kwik:
Then the political leadership would have to admit that they let themselves be misled.
Has that ever happened in the past?
Look up George Romney and ‘brainwashed.’ Honesty may be the best policy but it does not guarantee political success. Unfortunately.
crazy old men who want everybody off their lawn
I resemble that remark!
D. Patterson on December 16, 2011 at 7:15 pm said:….
So you are claiming that the President has always had the power to detain, indefinitely, US citizens on US soil when there is no current armed conflict occurring on US soil? Forgive my ignorance, but I don’t believe that is true yet I believe that is exactly what this new law allows. For example, maybe you are an outspoken critic of the president and have a widely read political blog. Under this new law, perhaps it would be politically expediant for the sitting President to declare you a belligerent or “terrorist” and detain you indefinitely. You can’t tell me that this has always been possible and legal.
I wish you all the best, Tallbloke, and a merry Christmas to you, to Anthony, the moderators, and all the countless sceptics out there.
If FOIA ‘Deep Climate’, has a sense of humour, he would send the encryption key to Mann, Travesty, Hansen, Voodoo, Santer. And to the Norfolk constabulary.
I must admit I am having difficulty understanding what is going on here. Definitley no criticism intended of Tallbloke (it was not me who answered to door to six plod) but the whole episode has a strange gentlemanly, pip pip cheerio atmosphere. I think some of our academic brethren need to be a bit more hard. It might be because I am Australian but if six Jacks turned up at mine they wouldn’t be crossing the threshold without resistance (and I would inform them so very bluntly) until my lawyer was present and all the documents, and relevant law, had been scrutinised with forensic detail. Even then I may still refuse permission just so they must use force and justify it later.
Unless you are seeking immediate help, never, ever, voluntarily speak to a policeman without legal representation present. Ever.
And this business of receiving a letter from the US Department of Justice!? As much as I think the US one of the greatest countries on earth my response would be I am not a US citizen and into the rubbish bin it would go.
This war, and it is a war even if cold, against the UN and IPCC will take many years. History shows having taken root fascist ideas can take decades to destroy.
@ur momisugly BrianH.. and a bit OT, sorry
In 2004 two major German studies investigated the size of contribution that wind farms make towards guaranteed capacity. Both studies separately came to virtually identical conclusions, that wind energy currently contributes to the secure production capacity of the system, by providing 8% of its installed capacity.
As wind power capacity rises, the lower availability of the wind farms determines the reliability of the system as a whole to an ever increasing extent. Consequently the greater reliability of traditional power stations becomes increasingly eclipsed. As a result, the relative contribution of wind power to the guaranteed capacity of our supply system up to the year 2020 will fall continuously to around 4%
In concrete terms, this means that in 2020, with a forecast wind power capacity of over 48,000MW (Source: dena grid study), 2,000MW of traditional power production can be replaced by these wind farms.
From here…http://www.timhunkin.com/a125_arch-windpower.htm
All the time it has been a matter of “agnosis” and “gnosis”: “We know, you don´t….we are clever, you are not, so we rule upon you…if we say “global warming” it is so…then give me your sinful computers!
http://www.green-agenda.com/globalrevolution.html
http://www.clubofrome.org/?p=326
Eternal Optimist~
Voodoo and Travesty? Are these people Trying to be ironic?
Pete in Cumbria UK says:
December 17, 2011 at 3:37 am
Now that I will go along with! Even though average output of the stock in the UK is around 24% of plated capacity, I’ve seen it drop to 2%. You have to account for the minimum output from total stock with backup.
DaveE.
Tucci78 says @ur momisugly December 16, 2011 at 6:21 pm
……I mean, we know that los warmistas are stupid.
Cunning, sure. All criminals are cunning in direct proportion to how successful they are in their thefts and scams and serial murders. But smart?….
________________________________________
The guys pulling the strings of the rent-a-scientists and politicos like Al Gore are not dumb. We also know they are long term thinkers. This scam was set up back in 1972 with Maurice Strong and the First Earth Summit giving marching orders (and funding) to Greenpeace and brethren and
There is a heck of a lot of fire power funding the CRU.
On this side of the big pond we have old money bags himself, David Rockefeller and family squarely behind CAGW.
The other big money bags in the USA – JP Morgan had a lot of the news media sewn up starting in 1917.
http://www.examiner.com/la-county-nonpartisan-in-los-angeles/congressional-record-jp-morgan-co-purchased-all-major-media-for-propaganda-1917-and-now
http://www.foreclosurehamlet.org/forum/topics/jp-morganour-next-big-media
http://www.newsandtech.com/dougs_page/article_f3a45be0-4717-11df-aace-001cc4c03286.html
Most recently:
JPMorgan Chase & Co. is raising a $500 million to $750 million fund to invest in ventures being spun out of social media….
Das reports:
It isn’t clear whether JPMorgan plans to invest directly in target companies or buy and sell shares on behalf of clients. But the investment fund will target “late-stage” private companies, or those with an up-and-running business model, steady revenue, and cash flow, according to people familiar with the situation.
http://www.portfolio.com/views/blogs/pressed/2011/02/14/jpmorgan-new-media-fund-targets-convergence/
Later ENRON got into the act: http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/commentaries/seriously_inconvenient_truth.pdf
Do not forget our good friend Al Gore: “The Money and Connections Behind Al Gore’s Carbon Crusade” http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=22663
Tucci78 says:
December 16, 2011 at 6:21 pm
….So how… come these government-connected bastids are only now moved sufficiently to desperation that they’re starting to send their uniformed thugs to harass Tallbloke….
But are these warmarxist whackjobs better’n two years slow on the uptake?
________________________
If my last comment did not get through see :http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/about/history/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/02/25/judith-i-love-ya-but-youre-way-wrong/
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=22663
OK so why, if there is this much fire power behind the scam (and the brains that go with it) are they leaning on Tallbloke??
LOOK AT THE TIMING!
The knock on the door came AFTER Durbin torpedoed but there was at least the agreement to talk next year. If World Wide Carbon Trading (And the UN’s wet dream of direct taxation) is to get off the ground they have until next year to do it. Otherwise the change in the PDO, ENSO and possible change in the AMO coupled with a lethargic sun are going to kill their dreams DEAD. Therefore they have got to muzzle the sceptics starting NOW
Letting “Deniers” into the IPCC review process is a publicist’s very well calculated move IMHO. I am sure they will allow/encourage as many as they can because they WANT THOSE NAMES ON THE NEXT REPORT!
Most people are to lazy to do more than skim the leading news articles so it does not matter if Anthony or others see the sausage making this time around because they are now bound by a secrecy agreement and after the tame propaganda outlets get done using their names it will be WAY TOO LATE.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/12/15/register-to-become-an-expert-reviewer-for-ipcc-wg1/
I think what we are seeing is the final battle for the minds and freedom of the populous. The targeting of Tallbloke was part of the strategy to scare the blogosphere into either shutting up or at least smearing them with “Police Involvement”
How this is handled will be closely watched. Laden and Mann, loose cannons that they are, may have messed things up if Tallbloke sues. For that reason that lawsuit is an absolute MUST.
Because if Leeds University can now be pressured into terminating Tallboke’s employment They will have “won” this round at least in their minds and go forward to target the next blogger.
Friends:
It is not known why the police raided the home of Tallbloke. This may be revealed when the reasons presented for the Search Warrant are made public. Until then all suggestions for the purpose of the raid can only be speculation.
It seems to be generally assumed that the search was aimed at determining – or appearing to attempt to be determining – the identity of ‘FOIA’ who released the Climategate 2 emails. This is plausible.
But another possible reason seems to be being ignored. The police may have been seeking evidence of nefarious activity by the Team which is in the public domain.
The AGW-scare met the beginning of its end two years ago in Copenhagen. The scare was always about taxation in countries and resource transfer between countries. But at the IPCC Meeting in Copenhagen most countries who are ‘major players’ withdrew from the game. At that point it was clear to all involved that the writing was on the wall;
Mene mene tekel u-pharsin.
The IPCC meeting in Cancun last year was a farce and no leaders of major nations attended.
The IPCC Meting in Durban this month reduced the issue to complete farce. It discussed a document which is so insane that no politician could sign it without committing political suicide. Discussion of that document would not have happened if anybody thought there were any real possibility of ‘progress’: the discussion would have been about methods to adopt the next realistic ‘step’. So, at Durban it was decided that talks (in nice places) should continue with a view to getting something adopted by 2020 (i.e. in the far distant future after most existing politician have left office).
Canada has recently gained a new generation of politicians who do not have a record of being tied to the AGW-scare, so Canada has announced that it is withdrawing from the Kyoto Protocol process.
The AGW-scare is dead but – like a headless chicken – it continues to ‘run around the farmyard’.
A scapegoat is needed if the movement of the dead issue is to be stopped. The Team make a very useful scapegoat (and would deserve all they would get as a scapegoat).
Scapegoating the Team by use of information already in the public domain minimises risk of the scapegoating causing damage to politicians with whom the Team has been associated. And the information on Tallbloke’s computer is a good , collated summary of the pertinent information of Team activity which is already in the public domain.
Richard
PS The OT subject of windfarms needs to be stopped before it destroys this thread. One way to stop it is for everybody to click on the link provided by ‘Pete in Cumbria’ to support his assertions and to judge the worth of the assertions for themseves if that is the best available evidence he chooses to provide.
I, as many of the posters above have had a very nasty experience with the Norfolk Police, ( they lost ) Tallbloke, take care, if they can do you ill they will, they will lie under oath and distort evidence to there advantage. When they lost there bicycles they lost touch with humanity, all the very best to you Sir, and thank you Sir Anthony, you are more than appreciated,
Fred