Bishop Hill is reporting that some ugly emails have been published due to FOI requests. He writes:
In the wake of the death threats that weren’t at ANU, several people sent FOI requests to the University of East Anglia asking for copies of the death threats that they said Phil Jones had received. The relevant emails have now been released and can be seen here
Be warned, this is very, very ugly stuff, and there are several messages in there that seem to me to be criminal.
Colour me disgusted
I agree, they are vile and disgusting. Nobody should have to endure these. And, no credible climate skeptic would send them. These are the work of cowards.
From the perspective of these mild mannered scientists, I know these sorts of things come as a complete shock to them. I can see how Dr. Jones would have been driven to depression right after Climategate broke.
From my perspective, having been in television and radio newsrooms for 25 years, this is pretty run of the mill stuff. I’ve also gotten emails like this in my work on TV and radio, as well as during my publication of WUWT. I described my experience with this sort of stuff previously when I took the overly excitable David Appell to task for bringing my deceased mother into the argument in David Appell denies he has any class.
Note that all of the email sender addresses have been redacted. That probably wasn’t necessary, as it is highly unlikely any of these vile little cowards that wrote this stuff used a real email address. In my experience, people generally don’t write such things when they have their real name attached to such vile prose.
As I’ve always said about the Internet and electronic communications in general, anonymity breeds contempt.
This doesn’t change the ANU argument, which has been clearly and completely debunked. No death threats were sent there. I suppose that there will be another round of the story now that these have been published, because small minded people like Appell have a driven need to paint skeptics in the worst possible light, so I’m sure all sorts of associations will be made. He’s gone silent since he came out on the wronger than wrong side of the ANU argument, expect a fresh set of hateful prose from him now.
As for this thread. I’m not going to tolerate much in the way of off color commentary. Moderators – snip at will anything that doesn’t meet policy.
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Duster says:
sorry, duster, you haven’t got that right.
marginal competence is all that’s required to survive.
natural rejection is the alternative = extinction.
but go ahead and debate whether cannibalism is merely a dietary preference if you will.
suicide is a metaphysical preference, i suppose.
the taxpaying, voting, dignified schmucks who meekly debate the weather have not got the marginal competence to pass the test coming up.
i can’t tell you what to do, but i can tell you that first you have to have an objective standard of values that can distinguish between right and wrong.
that’s the marginal competence clause for homo sapiens qua sapiens.
survival as a slave is not the nature of man – but go ahead and call it a lifestyle preference if you will.
survival as a beast is not the nature of man – but go ahead and glorify squirrels if you will.
i know where that will take somebody. it’s not a matter of opinion – but go ahead and equate all ideas as equally worthless if you will.
that, after all, is the nature of political correctness.
it would improve the mind greatly to study what it takes for a liberal apostasy.
i highly recommend the daniel pearl beheading video. he was mr nice guy until it was too late. then, for a few minutes he was merely disgusting, pathetic and craven. then he was no more.
nature extinguishes stupidity in the absence of substitute victims.
taxpayers are merely goats. there is nothing they should expect but what they get.
heh- with a racist, communist homosexual as president, americans are on the fast track.
because you know no better, you quibble, whine, appease and suffer and die.
darwin named this natural rejection.
Steve T. says:
June 13, 2012 at 6:46 am
Indeed very tacky stuff, deserving of nothing but contempt.
But I agree with Steve, many of these emails are suspiciously similar in line of thought and mode of construction, possibly too similar to be coincidence.
Also, as Bob Tisdale points out, it appears that UEA doesn’t appear to have considered it necessary to fight tooth and nail to prevent FOI release?
Anthony:
November 19th, 2009 Climategate emails escape and go viral
Re: Jones and those 24 “threats”
http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/116404/response/288373/attach/4/Appendix%20A%20Data%20file%20072.pdf
This is part of the four weeks that was:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/7180154/Climategate-Professor-Phil-Jones-considered-suicide-over-email-scandal.html
http://doc-snow.hubpages.com/hub/Green-Fascism-Let-The-Facts-Speak
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/15/phil-jones-lost-weather-data
…and in the same week, Jones gave an interview in Nature: which
included His comments on the old 2007 allegations by amateur climate-data
analyst Doug Keenan who claimed Jones, et al., had used some wrong and
possibly made up temperture/station from China for a their Journal of
Geophysical Research report:
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2008/2008JD009916.shtml
The data Jones, et al., used from China was somehow “lost” and couldn’t
be brought back… but the “science was sound”
The first release of the Climategate emails gave Keenan’s, McIntyre’s.
etc. contentions of scientific misfeasance some international veracity
and traction. The good Dr. Jones tried a number of variations of his
message via the publicity circuit to tap dance around the sudden spate
of questions that surfaced.
He wasn’t a very good dancer.
Trolls are a dime a dozen.
Big deal. Everybody who expresses his opinion openly, gets nasty emails once in a while. Words are cheap (unless you get paid for writing them).
Phil Jones was depressed because he was afraid that uncovering of his lies would result in dire consequences. But he and his co-conspirators was thoroughly and unethically shielded by the establishment, and everything is honky-dory now in his neck of the Academia woods.
What would be interesting is to use the JGAAP linguistic software to compare the emails to the team’s published works. Me thinks we will be attributing the emails to a team member.
Several folks are questioning the authenticity of the emails. Similarities and all . . .
I don’t know. I would not be surprised if most (if not all) are legitimate. The tone of some people, unfortunately, isn’t much better at many blogs and news sites (try scrolling through the comments at Yahoo! News sometime on any controversial topic). There are lots of places on the Internet where the conversation floats at about the level of high school hallways and locker rooms. In addition, if the emails were produced under FOI it is unlikely that Jones/UEA would have released anything that wasn’t authentic. Yes, it is still possible that one or two single individuals were responsible for the whole lot of emails, and that would be interesting to know. But if there are a couple of kooks willing to send such emails, doesn’t stretch the imagination much to think there might be a few more kooks out there who are also willing.
I doubt the emails drove Jones to depression — these are so far out there that you just delete them and move on. Yet the emails are clearly reprehensible and if any of them are found to go beyond crude to actual criminal intent, they should be followed up on by authorities. My condolonces to Jones for having received such vile emails.
Relating global warming skepticism with holocaust denial is a lot worse then anything in these emails. The Climate Liars will call people like me a Denier at the drop of the hat, but I’m not supposed to be upset, (which I don’t because I expect vile stuff from these people ) but they get some childish, moronic emails and I’m supposed to feel sorry that their tender feelings got hurt. *Roll my eyes*
If I lied, distorted the truth, corrupted the science and called skeptics Nazis, like the Climate Liars do, then I would expect emails a heck of a lot worse then these !
Nigel Harris says:
June 13, 2012 at 12:55 pm
I found the emails distressing to read, but not nearly as distressing as vile, hateful opinions appearing here in the comments thread. I think the WUWT readership has really lost contact with reality. The very suggestion that these emails would be concocted to garner sympathy is beneath contempt. I would very much like to see Anthony weigh in and condemn these speculations.
=====================================================================
Should they have been sent whether real or fabricated? No. Do I think that just about anybody in the public eye get such … attention … from some nuts that disagree with them or just don’t like them? Sure. I imagine there are even some actors that get similar things from people who confuse them with a character they played. Vile? Yes. A big deal? No. If real and they upset Jones then I’d guess it’s because he wasn’t used to being in the public eye.
Regarding the speculation that they might be fabricated to garner sympathy or in some other way further “the cause”, the suggestion is not “beneath contempt”. We’ve seen similar things happen. Attempts were made to use kangaroo culling for that purpose.
OK, emails making threats are dead wrong. (No pun intended). But scientific misconduct, falsifying data, misleading public statements, refusing to release data so that it can be checked and replicated has lead to one of the greatest, most expensive frauds that has ever been perpetrated on the US taxpayer. And the people of the world.
I believe that Michael Mann, Phil Jones have lied to all of us. I can only hope that history will vilify these men because they will never have to answer for their crimes in this lifetime. And that is a travesty. But that is probably the end game for which they are playing.
And then I think of Anthony Watts and the rest who have dealt with their own email death threats, scientific and social isolation, MSM ridicule, complete lack of public funding or any funding (unlike Mann, Jones, Briffa, et al.) and my blood boils
I know two things: Mann, Jones, Briffa et al. will never answer for their crimes. In the end they will be but a footnote in history, linked in Wikipedia to the Piltdown Man. But history will show Anthony Watts to be a hero on the scale of Gallileo and Newton.
Mann, Jones, Briffa will be remembered, if at all, as frauds and hucksters.
Linguistic and typographical analysis anyone?
Much of this looks to be carefully constructed. Too many “hard” words correctly spelt. (Ok spell-checker – you want “spelled”? I had a classical education. I can spell hard words, can’t spell easy ones …)
Anger and rapid typing would tned (sic) to throw up letter juxtapositions, but I didn’t notice any.
Wow, nasty stuff. You’d think the guy had published cartoons of Mohammed or something…
I’ve handled Exchange administration for our company for over six years now. No way these emails would have made it through our message filtering software (Microsoft Forefront cloud app). They would have never even made it to our mail server, let alone an end user.
The only way these emails could have been delivered to Jones’ mailbox would be if the UEA is not using any type of mail filtering software, which is simply impossible to believe, given the size and funding of the organization.
As others have said, they sure responded to this FOI request quickly. But that being said, we should never condone this kind of treatment. Only through actual getting the truth out and winning the people to the idea that they are crooks and getting them justice through the system will we win.
That is the only way, and I do kind of wonder if this isn’t some sort of scam where some warmist sent the emails…..
But either way, never underestimate the power of stupid either.
gnomish says:
June 13, 2012 at 4:48 pm
….. gnomish, you seem down my friend. Here, this should cheer you up! http://suyts.wordpress.com/2012/06/13/nature-workign/ It’s a riot!
I’ve had too many people in my own life attempt suicide, including a brother (I’m the one who saved him). When I read about Jones in this article, I was quite alarmed: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/7180154/Climategate-Professor-Phil-Jones-considered-suicide-over-email-scandal.html
In response, I sent an email to the health service at the CRU (Feb 9, 2010) that said, in part:
I may be a skeptic and disapprove mightily of the Hockey Team shenanigans, but I’m not heartless…..nothing is accomplished if Jones “snuffs it.” Someone else would take his place. And, the emails are mostly sophomoric and infantile, I really doubt if he read any of them.
BTW, I’m trained in a mental first aid technique that was developed in Australia, if interested, please see: http://www.mentalhealthfirstaid.org/cs/first_aid_strategies
Considering that Jones, Mann, Hansen etc are engaing in the largest fraud of all time, that’s costing tax payers gazillions of dollars, then it should be expected that they will receive lots of hate mail. I`m not justifying it, I`m just saying that there are enough people out there who understand the scale of Mann/Jones/Hansen’s fraud, there it`s a 100.00% certainty that there will be some who take it too far. This should not even be news. When “skeptics” are threatenened, it doesnt make the news. Andrew should not even be covering this, other than to state “we dont care one bit”.
Nigel Harris says:
June 13, 2012 at 12:55 pm
“I found the emails distressing to read, but not nearly as distressing as vile, hateful opinions appearing here in the comments thread. I think the WUWT readership has really lost contact with reality. The very suggestion that these emails would be concocted to garner sympathy is beneath contempt.”
Warmists would never do that, right, with their iron clad commission to scientific honesty (or efficiency… take your pick [Schneider]).
Theory: Alex Jones fans.
It was pretty tame comapred to some of the vitriol you get on forums.
Quite the stunning display of the lack of control in today’s anonymous electrified world all the way around, and simply unacceptable behavior. Step up people, and use the facts as a tool for your disagreement, not threats !
There is certainly a better, more effective, way to influence opinion ………
The ALL CAPS threat on page 6.
That may have been one of my ex-girlfriends. The last time she ‘talked’ to me she sound very similar. But she was ‘talking’ much faster and louder than I can read. 😉
I’m commenting without seeing the emails (link down?) but surely these would be referred to security at the university, for at least some investigation to identify the source/individuals/groups involved, a pretty normal precautionary measure. ? If any concerns or perceived risk was identified to either the University or individuals working at the university should automatically trigger a report to police.
Has anyone asked the question? IF a report was made, there should be both a risk assessment and evidence of an investigation relevant to identification of the source of the email. That is the minimum level for intelligence/risk reporting, just in case a more overt threat is made ?
Just asking?
Based on the poor writing and vulgarity, I would say the E-mails came from ultra disappointed Greenies, Tree Huggers, and AGW Scam supporters.
/sarc
KenB @ur momisugly 8:46 p.m.
Excellent point.