While few have noticed, since hardly anyone but the handful of extreme faithful visit there anymore, it seems that the website run by the climate alarmist cabal of Dr. Gavin Schmidt, Dr. Michael Mann, Dr. Stephan Rahmstorf, and others has gone dark this week. According to the “wayback machine” the last time the realclimate.org website was live was November 17th:
Now, it shows this, what appears to be a default page for a “parked domain”.
The domain is still registered, according to WHOIS:
‘Tis a puzzle, did Gavin or EMS forget to pay the hosting bill, have they given up, or is something else going on?
There’s no hint of why on Gavin’s Twitter feed: https://twitter.com/ClimateOfGavin
Note to Gavin, this really doesn’t prevent me from reading your Twitter feed:
Hopefully we’ll find out the reason soon.
UPDATE: Russell Cook writes via email…
From what I’ve seen, the ultra-handy Internet Wayback Machine site is sometimes a bit slow on archiving current web sites.
Google Cache seems to have caught RealClimate up an running on Thursday the 19th: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:eItUrDSLUIgJ:www.realclimate.org/
Wikipedia User JzG has deleted the RealClimate Alexa rating completely from Wikipedia:
15:18, 8 September 2015 JzG (talk | contribs) . . (6,750 bytes) (-274) . . (→top: Alexa rank long out of date and not really relevant these days.)
I yahooed realclimate and then clicked on the realclimate.org link and was sent to a website that said I was hit by a virus that infected my windows defender. Shut my computer down and am running my anti-virus and malware software to see if there was really anything there. WTF! Anyone else experience this?
Ran Malware Bytes and it found a malicious item and had it removed (Trojan.injector.VB) . I don’t know for sure if this was from the search engine link or not, but user beware.
The website has improved from yesterday. Now, in Google Chrome, it’s reported as Malware. And when I ignore the Malware warning, it redirects me to a random target page that would be linked to ads – like some discount servers in Czechia etc.
I forgot to mention that the malware warning comes from an AVIRA extension of my antivirus, however.
All the CAGW alarmist sites have served their purpose leading up to the PARIS COP21 LEFTFEST.
I wouldn’t be surprised if many other Leftist Warmageddon websites go dark after Paris; they’ve served their propaganda purposes.
Shelptical Science will definitely continue spewing out rubbish, but certainly many other sites may soon run out of funding following Paris; #Mission Accomplished….
“Warmageddon”
That’s ambiguous. Could mean warm-ageddon or war-mageddon. Or maybe both.
I went to realclimate.org – pure VIRUS site…. What is up with THAT?
It means you’re too lazy to read the post and comments.
Mr. Werme – are you always this rude? You are also completely incorrect. I read ALL of the post (it was pretty new) and ALL of the comments and then surfed to the infected site, oblivious, saw that it was infected, went back to this page and commented…
I should have reloaded the page, is all…
There is nothing real about climate. Climate is the average of 30 years of weather, ie, it’s made up.
Very easy to get a domain parked – typically if the email from the registrar ends up in the spam folder, or you simply miss it..
Sadly I doubt this is sinister. Its probably a human cockup.
Ric Werme
Wow, you just scored a big hit against your credibility in my book.
I’m not totally naïve. I have 3 hard drives on my PC, with 3 separate XP-pro windows and 4th drive is for data and science research work.
One drive’s XP is used exclusively for banking, bill payments etc, whenever credit or debit cards are used.
Second XP is used for general work, email private email (family, banking & bills), 2 auxiliary emails (various registrations etc) , WUWT and other blogging etc.
The last XP is used for various stuff, searching web and anything else that might have some risky stuff attached (as in this case).
All three XPs are individually Norton protected.
boot loader has three entries, one for each copy of XP, with default on the second drive emails, WUWT blogging etc.
Why I do this, learned hard way about a decade ago that there is no full proof protection.
Is there a safer method without using separate PC’s ?
I use Linux, but with Unix experience going back to PDP-11 days, I find it user friendly. (Unix is picky about who it befriends.) Windows has gotten better, but it is time to move beyond XP, though at this point it’s so old that virus writers may not be targeting it. I have Windows 7 on my laptop, which pretty much doesn’t get used much except for Income Tax season.
I use an old version Moneydance for financial stuff, checks, download credit card info, stock prices, etc. My website is done by editing raw HTML. (And it shows – a coworker looked at my site one day and exclaimed “How retro!” Sigh.)
If I get interested in some really dodgy web site I might download webpages, look at it with a text based browser like lynx, or use another Linux account that doesn’t have access to my files.
I run apache, though my databases are probably vulnerable to some trivial SQL attacks in some dumb CGI scripts. I run sshd for remote logins, but have it listening to a non-standard port, too many systems knock at the standard port. The router doesn’t let much of anything else through.
I did have a couple breaches more than 10 years ago. One from a guest account I temporarily had a guessable password on but forgot, one from a NFS-related attack that I had heard about at work where I was responsible for NFS development. That was on one of my first home Linuxes, the default configuration had NFS partially setup, and had the vulnerability running.
@Richard Dupuis Werme:
Nothing wrong with having an old copy of XP laying around… provided you don’t use it for web surfing or anything requiring encryption.
I started on PDP-11 machines also, moved to Unix about 1982? and Linux when it got good enough. Oh, and 7 years at Apple gave a good collection of Mac machines (and some Apple IIs). Yes, I’ve gotten into the Unix that is under the skins of the Mac. I like it better there… Real Machines have a Command Line Terminal 😉
Yet over in the corner is an XP machine. Almost always turned off, but with an assortment of various MS programs and files that only MS seems to understand. A few at a time I convert things off, or let them age into the dust bin. I still use it some times for “retro stuff” that’s become current again. I.e. digging in the archives. It also lets me download things that “only run on a PC” and use them (For example, I used it to make my first Raspberry Pi images. Since then I’ve used the R.Pi to make further copies of NOOBS and Berryboot install chips).
I also have an HP Laptop with Windows 7 on it, but the fan has died, so running longer than about 10 minutes is rolling the dice on the heat shutdown process 😉 “Maybe Someday” I’ll get the fan fixed. And the dead battery replaced. And the worn out keyboard replaced. And… Yet that XP desktop keeps on running…
Do I use it for banking? NO! The encryption is quite inadequate these days and the “security” was never up to the task. Do I use if for browsing “random sites”? NO! Even with AV on it, you will be hacked bagged and tagged eventually.
I have ‘custom built’ systems for that. (“Disposible Systems on a Chip” are very easy with the Raspberry Pi Model 2 – https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2015/11/03/building-a-nearly-tails-raspbian-pi/ ) For about $60 all up ( https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2015/07/18/raspberry-pi-m2-unboxing-and-setup/ )you can get a ‘reasonable’ system for low weight browsing ( https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2015/08/19/what-is-enough-arm-cpu-speed/ ) that’s pretty darned secure ( https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2015/10/25/encrypted-berryboot-way-too-easy/ )and not hard to learn. Each new ‘system image’ is the cost of a micro-SD card, or about $8 for the Class 10 16GB one I just bought. Not bad at all. Other parts of the R.Pi story are near the top page or two of the “tech” category: https://chiefio.wordpress.com/category/tech-bits/page/6/ and cover hardware, software, encrypting files, running TOR, and more. So I’m not exactly a “light weight” when it comes to computing or *Nix…
Yet over in that corner sits the XP box… Used about once a month for “something” that comes up… (It is set up to dual boot with CentOS – Red Hat for the Enterprise basically – as the alternative OS, so it isn’t like the space is wasted…) I suspect it is the LAST MS Monstrosity I’ll ever buy as anything newer than Windows 7 has been a gross mistake in interface design and with ever increasing “back door” probability for the NSA. So you can expect me to be using XP in 2020 and more… just not for much and not very often…
EMS
Thanks for the info. I regularly do ordinary scans as well as the Norton Power Eraser, on the ‘junk’ XP drive I occasionally find some high risk stuff, on the ‘blogging XP’ usually tracking cookies, but the ‘money’ XP drive so far so good. .
Just generally speaking, people running modern AV (Anti Virus) protection are always subject to a detection lag caused by the malware getting in before the AV is aware of it.
I have personally seen whole corporations brought down to their knees in minutes over crypto ransom ware infections.
Your only defense are daily backups which are stored offline as well as a quarantine of all incoming .ZIP email attachments and subsequent checkout at virustotal.com (which now is a Google subsidiary).
Driveby web infections on clueless users with admin privileges are your own unfortunate problem…
Unfortunately it sounds like Realclimate.org may be back on line shortly to annoy us, yet again, with wall to wall nonsense.
Good riddance to bad rubbish.
Looks like someone (or something – bizarre) has taken over the RC website as from this morning.
Scary, creepy, sinister ! Much worse than we thought. 🙂
It looks the same to me as it did yesterday, i.e. like the OP above. Oh wait, I went to reload the one frame it displays and the line items changed. Same general appearance though.
Thanks for the info further above. I went there with my ‘dodgy’ drive, there was a video about making mone, so let it run for a 4-5 seconds, then did a scan. Norton found ‘Sape.installCore.249a’ virus which is meant to take remote control of the pc.
Merely coincidental, of course, that ClimateScience goes dark within a day or two of the 6th anniversary of Climategate 1.
John
Reposting my immediately above comment. New version has ‘RealClimate’ instead of ‘ClimateScience’.
– – – – – – –
Merely coincidental, of course, that RealClimate goes dark within a day or two of the 6th anniversary of Climategate 1.
John
The Climategate is now closed. 🙂
See also http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/11/21/realclimate-org-goes-dark-is-it-permanent/#comment-2076840
I’m curious as to when RealClimate returns from its current zombie state, so I created a crontab entry and shell script to log its whois data every hour. It will be easy to see when things change, the file name is the date/time of the query:
The first column is a checksum, it will change with nearly any change to its DNS record.
I’m not expecting them to get things straightened out until mid morning Monday at the earliest.
showing just whitepage now indicative of php/chmod issues.
I bet they got some wordpress base64 ,malware and someone messed with them
In trying to figure out your comment, I clicked on your name, which took me to a broken website, http://www.theconservativevoices.com/ . Looks like it could use some help too.
server decomissioned and forgot to unlink username.
so no, no help needed.
“WUWT is drivel, as any fule kno. For the present, see https://twitter.com/ericsteig/status/668450513252253696?lang=en-gb William M. Connolley (talk) 18:30, 22 November 2015 (UTC)” and “Wot rot! Eric Steig helpfully advises; “RealClimate is down! Will be fixed. But meanwhile, please refer to http://realclimate-backup.org ” . . dave souza, talk 18:57, 22 November 2015 (UTC)” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:RealClimate#Realclimate.org_goes_dark_.E2.80.93_is_it_permanent.3F
http://realclimate-backup.org – Every link I click goes to some weird site or complains the server is unavailable.
A real backup site would never do something that weird, it’s almost enough to make me think Steig et al set it up to see how people would look at it. Scratch that, I have no evidence. Take a look, but don’t do it with an old version of Windows or browser.
No, I see what may be going on. Realclimate-backup.org’s web pages is still referencing realclimate.org for some Javascript and CSS files. I think the expired web site host is providing either malicious replies or random pages it’s collected (some which may be malicious) and that’s telling my web browser to do some weird stuff. That may be what’s causing other people to see malware popping up on old PCs.
I have a plugin I can used to disable things like CSS and Javascript, doing that lets me navigate around that site. There’s a good chance this is also happening with attempts to navigate around realclimate.org. Unfortunately, I need those to be able to post there, or perhaps no one can post there.
I recommend you not go to realclimate or realclimate-backup with CSS and Javascript enabled. Install and enable Flashblock too!
Better – don’t go there at all until they get their domain screwup under control.
For what it’s worth, on 11/22/15, entering RealClimate.org in my browser yields wildly random results, from Home Depot to Celebhush.com.
Can you tell me exactly what the URL was that you used? When I use simply http://realclimate.org I get something like the image in the OP. However, when I use http://realclimate.org/foo.html, I got redirected to http://www.directexpose.com/11-celebrities-that-lost-all-their-money/?…
I haven’t tried pages like index.html, but given that the stand-in web server doesn’t have a copy of RealClimate’s site, I bet they’re seeing a reference deeper into the site and turn that into the weird references we’re seeing. That’s distinctly unfriendly behavior, but I bet they do it to try to get people to put pressure on the site owner to get off their butt and pay the renewal fee.
I simply typed realclimate.org, no www or http. Today that takes me to YAHOO!.
I haven’t been near Real Climate for a couple of years now. It’s a pretty sordid place and I always felt a bit queasy every time I visited it. My favourite Real Climate nutter has to be “Mad Dhog” Dhogaza. Whatever happened to him?
I actually enjoyed popping in on RealClimate.org once in a while, especially when there was a significant news story regarding climate etc. It was fun to see all of the supplicant poodles, yapping for their master!
Error. Page cannot be displayed. Please contact your service provider for more details.
Just now…
The domain name realclimate.org has expired – Click here to renew it
I don’t think I will…
This is cool, from my work system, realclimate.org appears to have ceased to exist:
$ host realclimate.org
Host realclimate.org not found: 3(NXDOMAIN)
This does not imply that they will never come back, but suggests to me that they’re having at least as much trouble renewing the domain as I thought they might.
It may also be merely part of the process of updating a domain. I still see it via https://www.whois.net/ .
Oh wait a minute, they have a really stale entry from before the recent unpleasantness. Let me save it here!
Domain Name:REALCLIMATE.ORG
Domain ID: D105219760-LROR
Creation Date: 2004-11-19T16:39:03Z
Updated Date: 2014-11-18T11:13:02Z
Registry Expiry Date: 2015-11-19T16:39:03Z
Sponsoring Registrar:Active Registrar, Inc. (R1709-LROR)
Sponsoring Registrar IANA ID: 1090
WHOIS Server:
Referral URL:
Domain Status: ok — http://www.icann.org/epp#ok
Registrant ID:AR_40232047
Registrant Name:Betsy Ensley
Registrant Organization:Environmental Media Services
Registrant Street: 1320 18th St, NW
Registrant City:Washington
Registrant State/Province:DC
Registrant Postal Code:20036
Registrant Country:US
Registrant Phone:+1.2024636670
Registrant Phone Ext:
Registrant Fax:
Registrant Fax Ext:
Registrant Email:betsy@ems.org
Admin ID:AR_40232047
Admin Name:Betsy Ensley
Admin Organization:Environmental Media Services
Admin Street: 1320 18th St, NW
Admin City:Washington
Admin State/Province:DC
Admin Postal Code:20036
Admin Country:US
Admin Phone:+1.2024636670
Admin Phone Ext:
Admin Fax:
Admin Fax Ext:
Admin Email:betsy@ems.org
Tech ID:AR_40232047
Tech Name:Betsy Ensley
Tech Organization:Environmental Media Services
Tech Street: 1320 18th St, NW
Tech City:Washington
Tech State/Province:DC
Tech Postal Code:20036
Tech Country:US
Tech Phone:+1.2024636670
Tech Phone Ext:
Tech Fax:
Tech Fax Ext:
Tech Email:betsy@ems.org
Name Server:NS1.WEBFACTION.COM
Name Server:NS2.WEBFACTION.COM
Name Server:NS3.WEBFACTION.COM
Name Server:NS4.WEBFACTION.COM
Name Server:
Name Server:
Name Server:
Name Server:
Name Server:
Name Server:
Name Server:
Name Server:
Name Server:
DNSSEC:Unsigned
Ric,
Buy it if you can! I’ll contribute…
“whois realclimate.org” has been reporting the same parked status here all day. I wonder the IT folks at work have done something to not accept anything that involves realclimate.org’s current DNS server. That’s beyond my skills, and it’s not worth it to me to learn about it.
This could end up in a recursion issue… Unless “SK Creations” is itself an indirection to the actual actors behind the scenes…
http://whois.icann.org/en/lookup?name=realclimate.org
as noted above, points to betsy@ems.org:
In Wash. D.C. But… when one looks up ems.org, one finds it IS presently registered:
To someone in Gainesville Florida.
Now it looks to have been in place for about 20 years, but maybe that’s just the “GoDaddy” registrar
In any case, it has about a year to run, so it looks to me like maybe someone picked it up (or at least renewed it) in October 2015. If they don’t have a ‘betsy’, this could take a while to unwind 😉
Not very informative as to what they do… so maybe they are a domain parking agency, or maybe they are the lawyer for ems.org or maybe… well, who knows what. But they don’t look like “Environmental Media Services”…
Hmm, yesterday, I thought ems.org was expired. Perhaps it is still valid, but the actual ems.org server has been shutdown. Or something like that. At any rate, like I said yesterday, I think they can find Betsy, but if she doesn’t remember the account name and password, someone may have to recreate ems.org with a mail box so that Realclimate’s registrar can send password reminder Email there.
Gavin must be pulling his hair out by now. Oh wait….
Of course, given he’s the director of NASA-GISS, he may spend most of his workdays in meetings, so perhaps one of the other RealClimate folk there is taking the day off from GISS work to try to straighten out this mess.
Couldn’t happen to a nicer group. 🙂
Hmmm…..
http://skdomains.com/ kicks up a bland and nearly useless top page that says:
Welcome
Welcome to SK Creations, Inc.
We specialize in website development, domain names, search engine optimization, and internet marketing.
Same folks? Different folks? Their site does not seem to show a top ‘about’ button to see if they are the same SK Creations, Inc in the same place or not. but:
http://whois.icann.org/en/lookup?name=skdomains.com is more enlightening:
Looks like the same folks. So someone who does “website development” now has the ems.org domain name… but it isn’t presently in use (since clicking on it gets you to a name broker trying to sell it to you, er, me).
FWIW, I’ve put in a request for more info from the broker. IFF it sells for $24.99 or less, I might buy it just since it matches my initials 😉 but they were going on about 3 letter domains being ‘scarce’ and often in the ‘5 figures’ range … so I mostly don’t expect anything to come of it.
BUT…
IFF Env.Media let their name lapse, they could be looking at a ‘5 figures’ cost to get it back, and then put betsy’s email back in place, and then get the re-reg email to work, and…
Couldn’t happen to nicer folks… 😉
Mike Smith,
Please, buy it. If you need a donation, just ask…
Well, I’m still waiting for a “price quote”.
I’ll let folks know if it is a matter of funding. As of now, I don’t even know how many quarters she wants….