There has just been a burst of speculation about whether a certain Paul Dennis leaked the Climategate files. In a comment on a posting at Bishop Hill, Dennis denies it. The police did talk to him. But that’s all, he says.
A few weeks ago, in among the comments on this posting at Watts Up With That?, I came across the following comment from Anthony Watts himself, following earlier comments speculating about who the leaker was:
You missed the joke, the “mole” was CRU’s own incompetence, they left the file out in the open. The mole was whoever left it there. Steve McIntyre can confirm this, as can Steve Mosher. We were all just having a bit of fun with CRU until they figured out their own blunder, and when they did, they started erasing all sorts of public data on the FTP server.
http://climateaudit.org/2009/07/31/the-cru-data-purge-continues/
I got half way through doing a posting about this at the time, but then I thought, what do I know? I am about as much of a journalist as I am an astronaut. I mean, if I had noticed something, how come nobody else had?
But did I perhaps stumble upon the simple truth of this, told to me by the people who actually know? Simply, the CRU people (Jones?) just left a lot of stuff lying around in a what they thought was a private place, but which was actually rather public, to anyone who knew their way around. Then CRU realised this, and scrubbed it. But by then the bird had flown, as speedily as such birds can nowadays, and, over the next few weeks, it was a skeptic or skeptics quite unattached to CRU who put together that Read Me file. He/They started out that editing process with a lot more stuff.
Dennis did send some emails asking about the leak, but he did not initiate process. That is what he says in his comment at Bishop Hill, and I do not think he would lie in a blog comment. Not now, or ever if he’s the kind of guy I now guess him to be. And not there. If he was the leaker, he’d now be working on a big splash admitting it (proclaiming it), and meanwhile telling no lies, or very many truths come to that.
Or have I got the completely the wrong end of completely the wrong stick? Apologies all round if I have totally misunderstood this situation. This is one of those postings that may find itself with an ADDENDUM, saying ignore all that, see comment number whatever from so-and-so. But, maybe not.
Occam’s Razor — the simplest explanation of that giant FOIA.zip file is that someone at Univ of East Anglia was tasked to organize all the material responsive to the Freedom of Information Request. When the good liberal academics at UEA finally rejected the FOIA request, the person who compiled the file (or someone else with a conscience) slipped it to the Russian server. The rest, as they say, is history.
But let’s not forget — anyone who had been paying attention knew about all the problems that the University of East Anglia was hiding. The IPCC’s hockey stick had long since been throughly discredited. The problems with the weather stations were known. The failure of the warmists to follow normal science & open their basic data to inspection was known.
The main thing that “Climatgate” did was provide a hook for discussion, spreading the word of those already known failures more widely. And making the “settled science” meme untenable in rational circles.
And while we are at it, and almost on topic since Obama’s budget kills space exploration except for global warming-related stuff — what insights can Dale Amon share on the future of US space-faring?
OT I know but in response to Alice.
The problem with the US space program is that it was killed off in the 60s (well mortally wounded) by the treaty the US, USSR, China, and everyone else signed that said we wouldn’t colonize space or build weapons in space. We (i.e. everyone) didn’t want the arms race going into space. We didn’t want nuke satellites hovering over DC/Moscow, etc.
So, we strangled NASA by telling them they had nowhere to go.
Oh, they could go to the Moon or Mars, but it was just going to be a Leif Erikson mission. Feel free to visit but you can’t stay.
Had we not signed that treaty … well, in all honesty there is a good chance we would have had WW3, as someone was likely to try a decapitation strike since the nuke would have only needed 5 minutes to hit DC/Moscow instead of 30 minutes (i.e., enough time to react) … of course, they could have done that with subs, too so … but ignoring that …
If we had had the same or similar colonization rules for space that we had for the New World, we would have many colonies out in space.
You are not making any mistake, it is one of possibilities.
Just remains one question, why the person that found it on server doesn’t appears? It tells me it wishes to remain hidden for some reason.
You are mixing two incidents. The earlier happened in July when Steve and Anthony decided to have a bit of fun by announcing that there was a mole at the CRU because unsecured data was left on the server. They had been trying for over a year (Longer?) to get the Met Office/CRU to release station data but had been stonewalled as they said there were confidentially agreements in place that prevented them from doing so. What the agreements were and with what countries they ‘declined’ to say. Station records, not emails and the Harry read me file were what was left on the server.
I want to hear more about Christian Dior Shoes please 😛
In all seriousness though. The beeb finally got their act together on their Flagship world service environmental program yesterday and had a look at the whole climate thing. with a variety of people.
Ther reactions of the various participants to the fairly timid questioning from the presenter said an awful lot more than the actual answers to the questions. I like the UEA guys responses the best, its like he doesn’t even know he’s in a hole and refuses to stop digging.
Worth a listen: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p0060ckj/One_Planet_04_02_2010/
I’m with Alice on this one. I reckon somebody leaked it out of frustration.
Look, an elephant! 🙂
It seems quite obvious to me that this was leaked by a young person with too many ideals!
They had been tasked with collecting the FOI info, put it all in a bundle, and, having done that a few times, and always being told not to release it, got a bit peeved!
They decided that they would release it themselves, firstly by trying to post it to the outside world. Unfortunately, not only didn’t the person who hacked it realise that you can’t upload a mega Mb file to a forum as its too big, but they posted it on a warmist site with strong connections to the CRU. The end result is that they not only delete it, but know that someone is trying to upload it!
The next step is that our super hacker uploads it to a free Russian file server – one of those where you have to wait an age for a free download or get it quickly by paying a premium. Not really the signs of someone with a plan!! Why not Wikileaks if it was a political move or maybe Cryptome if it was a geek?
Next step was to post a link to another climate change site – The fact it was a skeptic site is a councidence. I don’t think this person was that tuned into the sides. After a few people read the content, it takes about a week before the story is hitting the headlines but our hacker is never seen again.
This all seems to point to someone with no technical skills. No marketing skills, no real understanding of the politics, the fan boys or the religious element and they had no ego. But, very idealistic and maybe scared to loose their job. With my CSI hat on, I would suggest maybe elements of Autistic! 😉
I would be looking at the FOI team or maybe a recent greenie graduate with dogsbody skills!
It certainly was not a proper hacker, l33t or otherwise!
I dont give a bugger how the emails got released, let’s just thank our lucky stars they were, just in the nick of time.
Oh and please nobody fire Pachauri just yet. The petulent arrogant little fuckwit is doing a splendid job discrediting the IPCC almost single handedly.
India is pulling out of the IPCC altogether saying they no longer trust it, mainly over their anger over his voodoo science jibe over glaciergate. You cant get blunter than that can you?
And now the gloves are well and truly coming off.
Booker would not have been allowed to get this published 6 months ago.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/5907383/Global-cooling-hits-Al-Gores-home.html
Woops! Check the date on articles before you post them RAB you prat! That was 6 months ago!I thought it was current.
But the sentiment still stands.
My own opinion which serves no purpose other than to wind up the Science Thought Police on Comment Is Free was that it was the sudden overuse of the made up word “Anthropogenic” that really gave the game away.
To focus on what was causing climate change suggested someone was trying to push a particular set of solutions all of which were expensive for taxpayers and very lucrative for associates of Rajendra Pachauri. Anyone who has read Lovelock will know the problems are too complex for a quick fix and our best bet is to get ready for a rough few decaes and try to ride out the storm. The ecosystem will adapt.
So “Anthropogenic made the naturally sceptical among us grab their spades and start digging.
The notion that the ‘liberated’ emails and data were collected for response to an FOI request doesn’t work for me.
If that were the case, there would be a pattern which indicates what the FOI request actually requested. I don’t see such a pattern, and I don’t think anyone else has, either.
With that in mind, it’s time to begin wondering when the actual FOI responses will begin arriving.
“If that were the case, there would be a pattern which indicates what the FOI request actually requested.”
Existence of a detectable pattern assumes a level of competence which is not today associated with the words ‘University of East Anglia’ or ‘Anthropogenic Global Warming’!
However, someone took a huge mass of raw e-mails covering many years and deleted all the ones saying ‘Angelica & her partner had their second little boy at 3.30 this morning’, and ‘Birthday cake for Angelica in the south conference room at 4.00 pm today Happy 19!’ Then the person organized all the rest by sequence in which sent/received. Certainly sounds like the preparation of a batch of e-mails for a Freedom of Information Request.
Ian R Thorpe wrote:
Multiple sources date the origin of “anthropogenic” to the late 1880s, so it’s not a made up word.
The national media’s continued silence on ClimateGate and increasing revelations of outright fraud and wrongdoing at all levels of government, academia and the media itself, tells the truth of the tail. That truth is there’s a lot more to this ClimateGate story than what little is being reported. The small (2 to 3 dozen) international cabal of climate scientists could not have possibly gotten to this point without extraordinary funding, political support at virtually all levels of government, especially at the national level and unparalleled cooperation from the national and world media. This wide-spread networked support continues even as we-the-people puzzle over what this is all about. I ask you, “What are you seeing and hearing from our national media on the subject?” Anything? What are you seeing and hearing from all levels of our government, local and regional newspapers and media outlets? Anything of substance? At all of these levels the chatter has remained remarkably quite on the subject, wouldn’t you say? Why? What points and positions are you beginning to hear on the radio and see on the television? This cabal of scientists has an unprecedented level of support given the revelations contained in the emails, documented in the computer software code and elaborated in the associated programmer remarks (REM) within the code. And —- this has gone on for years, AND continues even in the presence of the most damning evidence one could imagine, or even hope for. Watergate pales in comparison, given the trillions of dollars in carbon offset taxes, cap & trade fees hanging in the balance and the unimaginable political control over people’s lives this all implies. The mainstream media’s conspiracy of silence proves the point. Their continued cover-up is as much a part of this crime as the actual scientific fraud. ABC, CBS and NBC are simply co-conspirators exercising their 5th Amendment rights.