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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patrioticduo says:
June 13, 2012 at 2:12 pm
@Nigel, “vile and hateful” – that’s a stretch. And surely you are aware that some nuts down in Australia National University did in fact exaggerate wildly when they made claims of having received death threats? So doesn’t it seem particularly odd timing that after the ANU death threats are finally completely and utterly debunked only maybe a week or two, now we get a new batch of evil, hateful, death threat emails? Rather odd coincidence, don’t you think.
————————————————————-
I am usually sceptical about conspiracy theories, but this thought crossed my mind also. Remember, the bogus ANU ‘death threats’ meme started at the same time as reports of intimidation of Team members surfaced in other countries. Coincidence? I don’t think so.
Having been trounced on the last round by inconvenient facts, and with Gergis et al’s paper shredded, it does seem that a new initiative has commenced courtesy of the Team’s master tacticians 🙂 It is indeed remarkable how quickly this fairly trivial FOI request was acceded to, in contrast to the way that substantive requests for data are opposed every inch of the way.
One of the emails from Nov 23, 2009 is headed “ARA Scalars”. Anyone know the meaning?
Also if you order the emails by date, there is one batch between Nov 22 and Nov 25 that have UK date sequence; the ,later ones have US date sequence – one batch around Nov 27-28 and the other batch from Feb 7, 2010 on. The
The writer of the first batch definitely seems to have watched Alex Jones. A Nov 23 email mentions climategate which was mentioned by ALex Jones that day:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yis2loKSLFY.
I ENJOYED THE ONE IN ALL CAPS…..CLEARLY NOT FROM THE USA….BUT NO SUBTITLES NEEDED…. WITH HOSTILITY TOWARD BRITISH RELIGIOUS MAJORITY….WONDER IF THE DUDE WHO WROTE IT IS STILL SHAKING
A couple others look non-USA due to grammar and spelling. I believe in every other nation, communications, such as these, are unlawful; yet I’ve heard nothing of attempts to investigate. I’m left to assume they look upon these as farcical.
Jones et al are white-coated wiseguys running a climate protection racket and are shaking down gutless governments for megagobs of cash. They got what they deserve.
Figured it out. ARA stands for Applied Research Associates. Scalars is something to do with “scalar wave weapons”. Something to do with 9/11 and directed energy weapons e.g. http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/haarp/esp_HAARP_33.htm
REPLY: Congratulations Steve, you are AFAIK, the only person successful at getting a HAARP comment posted here, they are normally filtered automatically. – Anthony
I assume the “scalar” reference is to scalar weaponry,
http://www.infowars.com/the-10-leading-theories-for-dead-birds-and-fish/
The use of the word is a dead giveaway of a fringe conspiracy theorist.
ARA might have been a bumbling of AR4.
These are rather ordinary real-life people’s e-mails; for example, this is how many internet discussion forums about pretty much any topic look like, too. They’re surely not a symbol of quality research and kindness; however, they’re not extraordinary, either. I have gotten such mails in the past from the alarmists, too. Phil Jones has at least some sensitivity; I am sure that Michael Mann has to get lots of these e-mails as well but he thrives when he swims in this material.
While there are many tough words in the list of e-mails to Jones, there are still e-mails I would peacefully endorse if I were asked. And quite generally, I don’t think that it’s not constructive to moralize in this way all the time. If a clear majority of the mankind will realize that the climate hysteria has been unsubstantiated, it inevitably implies that the list of skeptics will contain many ordinary, emotional, uneducated, excessively candid, and tough people, if I can use a few euphemisms. So we shouldn’t be surprised if we see that this is actually happening.
Many of these people feel that they need to (over)compensate some job that others should be doing but they are not. From a broader perspective, I disagree with the proposition that nobody should be enduring these e-mails. The climate regulation movement deserves them and it may deserve much more of a punishment than tough words.
Now having had the opportunity to read them, like others I am of the opinion this is a ‘team’ scam.
Having worked in IT most of my life, I cannot conceive of a mailserver so badly managed that any of them could have made it through the filters to the recipients inboxes.
So is this based on models or real-world measurements?
The “they’re meanies” claim, especially based on anonymous comments by unknown persons, does nothing to address the issue people claim to be arguing about.
Because they’re not really arguing about that, it’s power and control.
This is basically in the form of an generalized accusation against people the “team” have a disagreement with. I would also object to trying to tar the “team” with anonymous threats apparently from their sympathizers.
Unless they have someone specific to name, this really doesn’t do anything.
I’m still intrigued that the “over 200 threatening messages, according
to Nature.com” that were aimed at Phil Jones seem to have declined
to the roughly two dozen that came out of the UEA/CSU FOI sausage
factory.
Nut job worriers fighting in the only way they know how. By writing emails, so poorly constructed that if you where to take out any reference to climate and add in “Seal clubbing, dolphin killing, rain forrest clearing etc” you will see how pathetic they really are. Next week it will be GM Crops, the next week Contrails etc.
Usual fare of this ilk. Nothing to get too excited about.
I have no sympathy for Jones whatsoever. Empty threats, no matter how vile, will never trump the millions of bellies the CAGW bollocks will empty, is emptying through turning arable land over to biofuel production.
It makes you wonder just how many email personas people like Gleick and the team have?
Off course this was a team scam, the important information, the actual senders emails are not printed and it would have been simple for authorities to track down the senders and prosecute the actual death threat senders. That would ave been an own goal.
Simon Hopkinson, who initated the FOI request, has provided background information here:
http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2012/6/13/uea-death-threats-published.html?currentPage=2#comments
It was posted on June 14 at 3.10am.
Simon also has this FOI respnse from Norfolk police.
————————————————
By way of a quick follow-up, in my FOI to the UEA I had also requested some detail about consequent actions by UEA as a result of each of the threats they received. As Bish and others noted, some of these threats do appear to be criminal in nature. UEA did not respond with this particular detail.
In anticipation of this, I had also put in a FOI to Norfolk Constabulary:
Please provide a breakdown per month, the number of:
a) threats to life
b) threats of bodily harm
which were reported to Norfolk Constabulary by members of the
University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit in the period 1st
November 2009 to 30th April 2012, inclusive.
They responded this morning:
Response to your Request
Norfolk Constabulary were made aware of emails that had been received by a member of the staff at the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit. No specific complaint or report was made to the Constabulary and no crimes were recorded detailing threats to life or threats of bodily harm.
——————————————–
my thoughts – probably because many (most?) seem to have originated in the USA, UEA thought the threats were unlikley to be carried out (ie keyboard warriors thousands of miles away?)
additionally unlikely to be able to (or difficulties) pursue any action against non UK residents.
These are just disgusting, and a couple of them could well be construed as death threats. I know Jones is a scoundrel, but this sort of behaviour is unacceptable in any context, and only serves to concede the moral high ground. I’m ashamed to share an opinion with the authors of such deranged filth.
One wonders why it took an FOI to get these out of UAE. Surely the effect of releasing these at the time would have been to Jones’ advantage – it turns out at least one of his complaints was true.
One of Eli’s commentators described what is happening here
1: Abuse.
2: Contemptuous denial that any abuse has occurred.
3: Grudging acknowledgement that abuse has occurred, but it’s the abusee’s own fault, combined with nit-picking about what constitutes a threat that would never be applied to verbal thrusts directed at the ‘skeptic’s own precious carcass.
4: Revisionist claims that any grudgingly acknowledged abuse is actually all a ploy anyway because we all know the abusees are actually the abusers.
Sometimes being quiet is the best policy.
REPLY: Speaking of abuse, Eli knows all about abuse, as he dishes it out regularly in comments elsewhere about the owner of this blog. As I promised, all commentary from “Mr. Rabett” shall now include his full name, since it has been well known for a long time, yet he still has not the courage to put his own name to his own words when abusing others he disagrees with, sort of like the letter writers to Phil Jones.
He is: professor Joshua Halpern of Howard University
Aidan Donnelly says:
June 13, 2012 at 11:47 pm
“Now having had the opportunity to read them, like others I am of the opinion this is a ‘team’ scam.
Having worked in IT most of my life, I cannot conceive of a mailserver so badly managed that any of them could have made it through the filters to the recipients inboxes.”
I’m not so sure. Thye are really bad at running computers. Some of them can’t even put a line on an excel graph. And they have a record of poor email security.
And the clincher is… if they were going to fake the 200 emails they would have faked 200 not 2 dozen.
To me the funny thing is that such a high profile figure in such a controversial area has had so few nutjobs hassling him. They should still be hunted out and shamed though.
I didn’t see anything in there that Phil didn’t deserve. People get annoyed when they are freezing to death. Phil didn’t think of that?
Phew. After confirming none was from me, I read the lot and put them down as kids’ play. Guessed maybe 3 different authors. Provenance uncertain, possible inside job.
Not as bad as “No worries”.
I’ve had far worse incoming experiences, but you get hardened.
But nobody should try to do any more. It’s undignified, no matter whom the recipient is.
Eli Rabett says:
June 14, 2012 at 4:36 am
One of Eli’s commentators described what is happening here…
Oh, real nice, just humiliate the poor guy in front of the entire internet. You know, if he really wanted a lot of people to see that he would have posted it here himself.
Sheesh!
Eli Rabett says:
June 14, 2012 at 4:36 am
Sometimes being quiet is the best policy.
– – – – – – – –
Eli Rabett,
Silence thyself. : )
Let me repeat my position wrt to the emails just released by UEA FOI request.
John
I agree with commenters, these emails are everyday stuff compared with many fora and U-tube commentaries. Two hundred claimed when it was 24! And yes they could have been “ordered” by warmists, to drum up emotional support.
There’s apparently good evidence that both Pearl Harbor and the sinking of the Lusitania were deliberately engineered, to get the US into the second World War. So – “Let Phil suffer a little for “the Cause” – such a “nice” guy and he won’t see these aren’t real death threats that would be a police matter and could be traced back to us – it will help”. There are those with vested financial interests in AGW, quite able to hire a couple of thugs.
But what Phil has had to suffer pales vilely in comparison with the damage he’s inflicted on others, still happening, as we know. And I have heard of loosened wing-nuts from a skeptic’s car.
Always, always, I see Phil Jones as a classic Stanley Milgram type. Needs desperately to be liked, by those in authority – so he obeys commands even when it means abandoning his own commonsense and inflicting hurt on others who are “beyond the pale” of his reality.
Phil Jones, Mile Mann and the others left their ivory towers and entered the world of Politics. Lies, back stabbing, cheating stealing and threats are all a part of politics so they should not be surprised that with political power come hate for those seen as powerful especially when those in power are revealed to have lied to the public.
CNN: Death Threats Against Obama Increase By 400 Percent ~ The Public Record Aug 28th, 2009
However this is NOT something I condone. We, at least in the USA, have other recourses besides nasty cowardly notes. Josh’s Lampoons and Anthony’s WUWT come first to mind.