In the high powered risky game of whistleblowing there are ways to make the the leaker a less attractive target.
Pointman analyzes the ClimateGate whistleblower’s tactics and explains why he, she or they probably released those other 200,000 emails but kept them hidden behind the 4000-8000 character almost unbreakable password. He points out there are no emails released yet between key scientists and people in power, hence the worst, most damaging emails may be kept under a ” dead man’s hand detonator”. If politicians are afraid of what might be in those released-but-hidden emails, they may not want to expose or attack the whistleblower for fear of unleashing the other emails. The hidden emails buy the whistleblower protection.
Jo
Some thoughts and some questions about the Climategate 2.0 release
Guestpost by Pointman
Two years ago, I did what can only be described as a highly speculative profile of the climategate leaker. You can find it here. I strongly suggest you read it now or you’ll have some difficulty following the rest of this piece. Reading it again in the light of what more can be deduced about them from the second release, it holds up surprisingly well. Where it falls down very badly is not so much in its broad conclusions, which I think are basically in the ballpark, but in the whistleblower’s intensity. Boy was I wrong on that.
They’ve sat on the new material for two years and apart from one possible communication, the ”no deal was done” comment on a blog, we’ve not heard a word from them. In that time, they’ve no doubt seen their motivations both lauded and slandered and have never came forward to either accept the plaudits or defend themselves from the attacks. That shows a level of patience and self-discipline only someone on a mission has. We’re very definitely looking at a person driven by integrity and conviction, someone who can’t be bought or sold, either by common coin or by popular recognition. People like that never give up and they’re nearly impossible to either spot or stop.
“People like that never give up and they’re nearly impossible to either spot or stop.”
Keeping a secret that you know you can’t share with anyone else is a constant background stress. Keeping a very big secret is like having a giant boulder on your shoulders that gets heavier and heavier, grinding you down on a daily basis. It takes a huge toll on your resources but they’ve kept their secret successfully for two years. Believe me, that takes a mental and emotional strength that few people possess.
Looking at the “Background and Context” section of the readme file that came with the latest release, their motivation is plain for all to see, as are a number of other things. They are quite prepared to burn climate science down to its very foundations to stop it being used to justify environmental policies that they believe are killing people in the developing world. It is a motivation and strategy I share with them. My admiration of them is only tempered by my awe at the escalated level of risk they’ve now decided to take on.
A question I’ve always asked myself about the original climategate release and the new one too, is one that as far as I can tell, surprisingly no one else appears to ever have speculated on. I’ve never raised it publically because I feared it might intensify the hunt for them by forces more powerful than anything UEA or Norwich constabulary can bring to bear but as I’m now sure that with their latest release, they’ve taken care of that problem, I’ll share it now.
“These missing emails are the real dynamite at the secret heart of this release of climategate.”
Yes, they’ve given us all the top-level conspiratorial correspondence between the likes of Jones, Trenberth, Hansen, Mann et al but these are the very people who simply must have been communicating upwards to senior political figures or at least their most trusted advisers. Think about it for a moment, do you seriously think the latter plough their way through huge turgid IPCC reports and then hammer out policy and approach from them? No, of course not. These missing emails are the real dynamite at the secret heart of this release of climategate. We do not have a single one of those high-level political emails but they must of course exist.
I strongly suspect we now have them in our possession.
From the viewpoint of the political establishment, the original climategate was probably viewed as a squabble about the details of a branch of science and it was strictly confined to the blogosphere, since it was never reported on by the mainstream media. It looked like a one-off, so there was no ongoing political liability to worry about. Release 2 changes things, both for the whistleblower and the parties involved in the political emails. I’ve no doubt that at the time of the first release, the “scientists” assured the politicians that no significant political emails had been compromised and after two years of complete silence, it looked to be so.
With release 2, all bets are off. The release of explicit emails between scientists and senior political figures conspiring to deceive the electorate would not only be politically terminal but would also have to be reported on in the mainstream media. There’d be no way of ignoring them. The whistleblower is not going away and this means a real attempt is now going to be made to find them before they release any more emails. The last time, finding them was the last thing anyone wanted. This time, they simply have to be found and fast. Given the greater will and a lot more resources, there’s a real danger they’ll locate the leaker this time.
I don’t do conspiracy theories but have few illusions about what powerful political interests are capable of when they’re threatened, so I’ve no doubt that having located them, a point solution can easily be implemented. It would have to be something suitably grubby to completely destroy the credibility of the leaker. For instance, frame them up for downloading child pornography, try them, jail them and throw away the key. Who’d believe a word from a disgraced scientist sitting in cell because of their disgusting paedophile tendencies? Safely locked away and with absolutely no access to a computer, they’d be nullified. They simply wouldn’t be able to release any more material.
The leaker’s solution to this problem, and I have to say it’s rather neat, is to release all the remaining material now. Release 2 contains the political emails and all it needs is the magic pass phrase to unmask them. It could be uttered at some phony trial on trumped-up charges, it could be uttered to a fellow prisoner, it could be disclosed to their lawyer. It could be left with a few trusted friends with instructions as to who to send it to if anything untoward should happen to them. Allowing for the very worst, it could even be in their last will and testament.
Not only will the pass phrase unlock all the encoded emails but it’ll confirm beyond any shadow of a doubt, that the person who knew it is the climategate leaker, even if they are sitting in a jail cell somewhere. In the parlance of cryptography, the pass phrase authenticates them.
What’s more, there may be more than one pass phrase. Climategate 2 is a bomb with a dead man’s hand detonator attached to it and it may very well be cluster munition as well.
Update:
CG2 landed as a complete surprise to us all and for a number of reasons, I felt it important to get a piece out on it as quickly as possible. Reading it again, there’s stuff I should have expanded on and there are a few more thoughts I’d have added, if I’d had the time. Some of them might be possible answers to the questions being raised. I’ll kick them into play now.
I said in the original profile that I thought FOIA started out being very innocent politically and I’d have to stick to that assessment. There’s simply no other credible explanation for trying to offer CG1 to a news organisation like the BBC that’s so chronically biased when it comes to anything to do with the environment. I think they’ve learnt a lot about Realpolitik in the two years since CG1 and it shows. There is a different flavour to the material in the second release and it echoes the transition most of us made on our own journeys into becoming climate skeptics.
“…there’s a good chance CG2 contains not only CG3 but CG4, CG5 etc etc. It’s a cluster bomb.”
The first phase was finally admitting to myself that the science was simply junk; there wasn’t any other word for it. The second phase was realising that even though the science was junk, that wouldn’t stop the madness because at heart, global warming was never about the science. It was always about politics. It doesn’t actually matter if the science is crap. CG1 was a selection of emails aimed at showing the science was crap because at the time, they innocently believed that would be enough to do the job. I feel CG2 is more about showing the dirty politics at work behind the scenes. As people dig into the mountain of emails, I think that’ll become more apparent.
The timing of the release is of course intended to give the coup de grace to the Durban clambake but everyone knew that it was always doomed to be a going down the pan, whatever happened. I have a feeling that they were spooked by something else, possibly a renewal of police investigations. I really don’t know what that might have been.
In response, I think they gave us everything they had to make sure it got out in the event they got nabbed. They hid the rest of the material behind a practically uncrackable wall of encryption and only they know the pass phrase. They’ve had two years to think about how to structure that. If I were in their position, I’d rig it all up with several pass phrases, each of which would release a new tranch of material. I reckon there’s a good chance CG2 contains not only CG3 but CG4, CG5 etc etc. It’s a cluster bomb.
FOIA have put themselves under the big blowtorch once again by releasing CG2 but that would be nothing compared to heat which would have been generated if CG2 contained a single one of the big political emails. eg correspondence between Jones/Blair, Hansen/Obama. Like I said, they’ve learnt a lot in the last two years, not just about politics but about survival, a part of which is knowing precisely how far you can push your luck while still having a bit of insurance.
Think about it and sleep well you climate masters of the universe.
©Pointman
Related articles by Pointman :
A profile of the climategate whistleblower.
Why climategate was not a computer hack
The README file that came with climategate 2.0
Bomb Image: User Firebug on en.wikipedia| Jigaw: Ganeshk
lets see HE is older than you, Oh bugger its briffa.
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Isn’t it fun to speculate ? I fancy my earlier comment on the search thread was just a little premature so please forgive me for bringing it here, where it seems to belong :-
Is Climategate 2.0 really Eternity III ?
“The rest, some 220.000, are encrypted for various reasons. We are not planning
to publicly release the passphrase.”
Wondering what kind of mind is behind it, could this encryption puzzle be a latest in the fascinating Eternity series of puzzles ? It would be out just in time for Christmas.
Or is it rather just some magnificent benefactor reminding the miscreants to mend their ways, as there is further retribution to be had ?
When the laws of civil society fail to be functioning as a deterrent, clearly something of a higher order is required. Could this be it.
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I enjoyed Pointman’s professional and perceptive analyses in 2009 and now. Good stuff.
The Guardian and its correspondent Leo Hickman, true to form, have started a public campaign to identify the person behind the releases.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2011/nov/25/clues-climate-email-hackers-message
The only certain thing to come out of this is that the person doing this is way smarter than Hickman….
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Can we now look forward to a series of witchhunts & persecutions, on the flimsiest of made up evidence ? (well it was good enough to condemn CO2).
Computer profiling (there’s the faith in models again) to produce a series of plausible iden-kit fit ups, that can then be matched to any particularly inconvenient skeptic.
Given the vindictiveness of the Gruandian & how often they’ve been made to look foolish , this comes as no surprise and they no doubt have a few favourite ‘suspects’ to pin their Mass-Media led Persecution on.
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Joe V. from what I hear of Conroy’s internet plans we will be prosecuted and withdrawn from use if we voice our opinion which is different to the consensus of the supreme beings in power in our government.
OK so 1984 is running a little late but pretty much on target !!
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It’s virtually impossible to pull off something like this without leaving any tracks at all. So I wonder if there isn’t at least a strong suspicion of who it might be but it’s untenable to take any action because of who’s behind it.
Just a thought…
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Yes, you can certainly leave tracks – but if they had half the ability they have shown, they would know how to ‘move between mediums & formats of data exchange’ to break the track up. Bit like running up a stream to put off the hounds; the internet & computing in general is positively overflowing with such streams…
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So we witness the demise of what used to be a great newspaper, which has given up journalism to organise a lynch mob for the the police to “catch” a whistleblower in the greatest scientific scandal in history. The Guardian no longer questions authority: it is cheering wildly while it fans the flames of 21st century fascism. What a shameful day for British democracy.
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From what I read the Guardian is going broke. The family (or family trusts) that owns it has had to sell other assets recently just to keep the paper afloat. Is that what you call “a dead man walking” ?
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The Guardian used to be owned by The Scott Trust, a discretionary trust set up by John Scott, son of CP Scott, in the 1936. It was dissolved in 2008 and the Guardian is now owned by a limited company called The Scott Trust Ltd. While they don’t hide this fact, they tend to omit the ‘Ltd’ part when mentioning the body that owns the newspaper.
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Well, I guess Hickman figured out, or was told, that it would be possible to profile the source by analysing the language used.
And that is true, as far as it goes. But forensic linguistics is an inexact science, and it requires more than one computer file as a source. Also, it does not occur to Hickman that most, if not all, of the words in the readme file could have been cut and pasted from elsewhere. Perhaps his problem is that the letters weren’t cut from a newspaper.
But no matter, his comments quickly descend into a diatribe against the sceptics, so that is all right then.
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“The only certain thing to come out of this is that the person doing this is way smarter than Hickman….”
A pet rock is smarter than Hickman
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Rick one of Hickman’s quotes;
(my italics in bold)
I thought that these people were working for a University from public funds. How is it that Hickman appears to see this as an infringement of people’s rights. One could argue the other side of this for a very long time.
Needless to say he wants to form a lynch squad to help try and expose the whistle-blowers or hackers which is very strange for a journalist. I suspect he’s trying to cover his own backside from any future repercussions but still an evil over tone
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[…] Pointman — A dead mans hand detonator on hidden emails may protect ClimateGate whistleblower http://joannenova.com.au/2011/11/pointman-a-dead-mans-hand-detonator-on-hidden-emails-may-protect-cl… […]
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It could be in a scheduled e-mail server(s) (of the type of Vertical Response), so that the passphrase(s) is e-mailed to selected people automatically on a given date unless the process is aborted.
At any rate, the e-mail writers already know what can be in the file. Or there’s nothing in it.
Interestingly, there aren’t any recent mails.
Well, speculating.
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I’m far more inclined to think this is a professional espionage operation – most likely by the Russians.
The encrypted files are most likely nothing more than a bluff (probably randomly generated text files). The purpose is to make one or more the suspects nervous enough to do something really stupid like confess to fraud.
*In publishing lorem ipsum is placeholder text (filler text). The lorem ipsum text is typically a section of a Latin text by Cicero with words altered, added and removed that make it nonsensical in meaning and not proper Latin.
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Edit: paragraph 2
…(probably randomly generated Lorem ipsum* text files).
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You should read Pointman’s 2009 analysis.
He noted then that professional hackers only work for profit — usually money, but perhaps technical information (which leads to money).
That motive is completely absent here, and the 2.0 README indicates a conscience at work.
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And your evidence is … ?
And their motivation would be … ?
That happens in Whodunnit novels, and in the movies, as a convenient way of tying all the threads together and making the hero look good. It rarely, if ever, happens in real life.
Yes, I know, that is what they tell you in Computing 101, but they are wrong.
Lorem ipsum is a block of semi-random letters that was used by typesetters, using hot type printing presses in the days before photo compositing (and computers), to layout their text to give balanced margin alignment. It is semi-random because it has the same proportion of consonants and vowels as the language being typeset. It also repeats.
Lorem ipsum is also subtly different for each language that the printer uses, not only to include embellished characters (accents etc), but because the vowel to consonant ratios can be different in each language. The one you are probably used to, is the English version. The Russian version would be totally different.
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@Rereke.
The Russians have more to lose than anyone. Their biggest exports are oil and gas. The introduction of carbon taxes and renewables in the EU are their worst nightmare.
Bluffing is actually a routine interrogation technique. It is has also been accepted by the courts as a legitimate technique. eg “we have DNA evidence connecting you with the murder”. It usually involves some sort of deal in exchange for further information.
Incorrect. Lorem ipsum has been in use in type setting since the 1500s. The text is derived from sections 1.10.32–3 of Cicero’s De finibus bonorum et malorum (On the Boundaries of Goods and Evils, or alternatively [About] The Purposes of Good and Evil).
Neque porro quisquam est qui dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet, consectetur, adipisci velit
(Translation: “Neither is there anyone who loves grief itself since it is grief and thus wants to obtain it”).
It typically has some alterations in spelling and word order.
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And they will do exactly the same thing that energy companies within the EU will do – put their prices up to cover the costs. Renewables are unreliable and uneconomic without subsides, the Russians will know that Europe must come to them eventually, they have little choice. They have been playing that game ever since the wall came down and have already used energy as an economic weapon against some of their former satellite states. And besides, a lot of Russian oil moves east into China, and China are making huge infrastructure investments in Mongolia to ensure that continues, and increases. At the moment a significant proportion of the oil imported by China comes by sea, and so makes China vulnerable to sanctions.
True, but before you can use it as an interrogation technique, you have to have apprehended a suspect, or captured your spy, and it relies on your subject not knowing how much you know. In this instance, the scientists will know exactly what was capable of being snitched, because they will have paid somebody to do an analysis to check. If it is benign, so what. If it is damaging, then they will be damaged anyway, so where is the motivation to confess – they are demonstrably all in this together.
I will bow to the superiority of your reference.
However, as you point out, the passage is used with modifications, and those modification were made to emulate the correct vowel/consonant for type setting. Since the hidden files are … hidden, there is little purpose in using something predictable and repeating such as lorem ipsum (which usually has a finite length) better to generate random bytes if you just want noise, then you don’t even need to encrypt it.
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The Russians don’t have the option of simply raising prices. Oil is sold on the spot market and everyone gets paid the same price. The EU-based oil and gas companies (Shell, BP, Total etc) will be given billions of dollars of tax credits. They have also invested in very very heavily subsidised renewable energy sources.They also have access to cheap Middle Eastern oil.
The Russians have extremely high production costs, no Middle Eastern oil, no EU taxpayer subsidised renewables and no tax credits.
Bluffing does work. Some of the climate scientists, businesses and political activists know they have incriminated themselves in emails. However they have no way of knowing what information the hacker has. One or more may be tempted to get in first with a mea culpa and to blame others for leading them astray.
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The spot market is only one way of trading. It is highly volatile, and is often the market of last resort. Most energy is traded through longer term contracts, hedging, and futures. For example, the Russian trade with China is arranged through long term supply contracts that have no bearing on the spot price.
There are also several spot markets. The Russians (and anybody else) can choose to enter a particular market or not, depending on the current price and the trends. Oil and gas is not the same as electricity. If all else fails, they can simply leave the oil and gas in the ground. It doesn’t loose value by sitting there.
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0673.txt
“A political hurricane blew through an international scientific meeting on
climate change held in Moscow last week, sparking a major row between top
advisers to the British and Russian governments. U.K. scientists complained
that the meeting had been “hijacked” by opponents of the Kyoto Protocol,
while Russian officials accused the British delegation, led by Chief
Scientific Adviser David King, of trying to suppress dissenting views.
“At a press conference after the meeting, Illarionov called the treaty (Kyoto) an
“undeclared war against Russia,” based on a “totalitarian ideology.” But he
denies having a hand in the agenda and says he was “shocked” by British
attempts at “censorship.”
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The Russians pay their agents extremely well. Just google Anna Chapman.
Russia is the biggest oil and gas exporters outside OPEC. They can potentially lose billions of dollars in revenue.
every year if the EU imposes carbon taxes or renewable energy targets.
They are hardly going to say they are FSB spies are they?
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I don’t see why not. Sometimes the best place to hide something is in plain sight. Besides, with the development of commercial intelligence organisations, you have no evidence that it is the FSB who are involved, other than your paranoia about Russia.
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Have to disagree with you about potential Russian motivations, BB. It suits them down to the ground if Western economies waste billions on wind and solar power and carbon taxes instead of exploiting their oil and gas reserves, leaving the field open to the Russians and the Arabs. As most of the renewable energy production promoted by the likes of Huhne and Gore is completely impractical, we will end up going cap in hand to the Russians and having to pay inflated prices to them. This happy scenario for the bear is threatened by anything that calls the consensus into question.
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Its obviously Santa Klaus, a benificent older gentleman who knows what you’ve been up to & has some nasty surprises in store unless you be good and mend your ways.
Who else would have the power to hold the Global Political Elite to ransome, on pain of just cleaning up their act ?
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Terrific job, Pointman
All kudos to you. The one thing Climategate 2 shows is that the sheer number of emails now released quite clearly demonstrates, IMO, that this could not possibly been an external hack. It seems to me to be impossible to have hacked this breadth of correspondence from seemingly disparate sources in such a number (220000) implicating seemingly all the major players comprehensively without exception.
Much more likely is that an insider, perhaps someone not directly involved in the science side of things, who may have stumbled across something quite explosive that convinced him that the
motives of those involved were so reprehensible that something had to be done to stop them. Perhaps, not being vindictive, this individual thought it safer to just highlight the corruption of scientific processes, naively believing the media would be all over it and he would be absolved from having to release the big bombshell, which he may have felt was too personally dangerous to divulge.
When, the first release was not able to gain traction in the MSM, he obviously took stock and decided it was important for him to protect himself somehow in case he was ever found and so to avoid being permanently silenced. Clearly, Climategate 2 gives wider context but withholds the lion’s share. Once again the MSM has dutifully closed ranks, with the exception of Andrew Bolt, and remained deafeningly silent, making an absolute travesty of their pretensions to investigative journalism.
Unfortunately, I think this means that said author has no intentions of divulging the password for the remaining emails, rather like the sword of Damocles, it must remain poised for it to remain effective as a deterrent to looking for this whistleblower. Ironically, it may only be if he is caught that the truth will come out.
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I think the thing that frightens me most about all this is the silence of the MSM. It seems they believe in ‘the cause’ so thoroughly that they are quite prepared to silence themselves. Totalitarian states always like to control the media, but what if the media are happy to do it themselves?
Why is it so widespread? Who decides this? Is it co-ordinated by anyone, or is ‘coolshame’ enough to keep them silent?
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Quite right, Ellen
It is very worrying indeed that the media generally, with few exceptions, have become such placid, toothless tigers and are so frightened to voice a contrary opinion on this matter. The Fairfax media in particular are relentless cheerleaders of the whole climate change dictum, without the slightest hint that anything questionable is occuring that requires a modicum of critical analysis. I always suffered under the misapprehnsion that we were protected form the Pravda style media control of the populace through propaganda by vigorous independent editors in various newspapers around the world competing to scoop each other with something just like the Climategate emails. It’s manna from heaven in the normal course of journalistic events, but clearly we are living in a “post- normal” situation where such a story isn’t even woth a half inch column in the society section.
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Winston,
My concern exactly. The papers may claim they don’t know the emails are genuine or some such. They kept quiet last time and those in a position to effect change did nothing and simply pretended it was not important enough to tell the folk. This time the folk are broke and facing , I believe, hard times and waste on climate science itself and the measures taken to “stop climate change” has made the folk more skeptical and more ready to accept the current emails. If this news really got out, and it will, there will be many trying to find rocks to hide under and scapegoats to BBQ. Imagine Julia having the Chief Scientist over for dinner, with a nice Chianti of course.
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I actually found something about Climate Gate 2.0 in the MSM. It was reported yesterday in the Sunday Herald Sun on Page 36 at the bottom of the page. It was a tiny little article which I very nearly missed. No surprise how hard such an article was to find and how late it was published. Luckily I found an opinion piece from Bolt about the issue but unfortunately he’s pissed off the the left that nobody will want to read his articles.
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“And now you’re most likely out here in the blogosphere because the mainstream media in the country you live in is either not mentioning them at all or have relegated it to a small-print footnote at the bottom of the page ninety-nine, with a blatant propaganda spin that would be an egregious insult to the intelligence of a retarded chimp with other things on its mind.”
http://thepointman.wordpress.com/2011/11/28/climategate-2-yes-theyve-been-lying-to-you/#comment-1203
And I though I was joking …
Pointman
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“Allowing for the very worst, it could even be in their last will and testament.”
I don’t think so. If you reckon the person may be in his late 20s or 30s and is a whistleblower wanting to stop this climate change insanity, the truth will come out much sooner. Remember, AR5 is due in 2014. If nothing happens before then that would surely be the time to release the code for the world to have access to the rest of the emails.
And surely then it would spell the death of man-made global warming.
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Damn, this is getting spooky. Pass the popcorn. Too bad last night I popped open my last bottle of Schadenfreude 2011. So I’ll have to go with Tooheys. Cheers.
That said, I can’t see how putting all the emails out there with a complex password protects The Whistleblower from a framed up or hit. It’s pretty obvious that the powers that be do NOT want to arrest him and have an honest trial, because he’d just get off with a slap on the wrist and be herald as a world class hero, showered with book contracts and talk show appearances and maybe a judgeship on Master Chef. No, simply exposing the bastard as a bad boy email hacker or whatever won’t do. Not in the age of Wikileaks.
The Whistleblower is going to release all the emails on his own schedule timed to best cripple the international Climate Fear industry. He’s probably planning to dribble the emails out over another couple years every time the climate change church throws a big hoopla party for the faithful. After all, nothing says self-righteous wowsers like 5,000 emails revealing the high priesthood as a cabal of nasty schmucks the night before the black tie reception. Al must be seething.
Therefore, since it likely he’s set it up so that his demise will trigger a release of all the emails, if I was advising the sinister Green ninja ops on Soros’ nuclear submarine headquarters I have to recommend we take the bastard out now. Even if all we can do is locate him within a city block, take out the whole block. Blame it on a Tea Party bomb lab error or Abbot’s Papist mates. That way at least we trigger the dump of all the emails at once, getting it over with fast rather than be global comedy gold every six months for the next decade. Naturally, Soros will have the boys on payroll over at the Journolist, the BBC and the ABC with prepared coverage ready to swamp the media with damage control photoshop images of polar bears suffering heat stroke under palm trees, etc.. Maybe he could arrange a DOS on Watts, McIntyre and Nova that weekend as well.
Expect The Whistleblower to get deep sixed on a Friday afternoon just before a long holiday, say, like Christmas.
Oh, btw, did you hear that the world’s financial system is scheduled to collapse for real next year just in time for Obama to declare martial law and suspend the U.S. election? Yup, that’s part of the master plan too.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/707568901000000-how-and-why-banks-increased-total-outstanding-derivatives-record-107-trillion-6
Think I’ll have another beer.
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Thanks for that link Wes. Oh not really. I’d rather the bus hit me when I’m looking the other way.
I don’t have enough of anything to worry about losing it. On the other hand I do know how to make really good beer. Maybe we can work something out in the up and coming dark times.
And I was sure you didn’t believe in conspiracies either.
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This is starting to sound a bit scary. If it were to be revealed that one of the “hockey team” has been in regular conversation with some “Humphrey” in the British civil service and that he’d been “spoon-feeding” a series of 3rd rate pollies, the ensuing train-wreck could be worse than the current mess. All those Renewable Energy Certificates, government subsidies and schemes would fall apart. Ordinary family blokes who have set up businesses, depending upon the warming religion’s inertia for their incomes could be stranded with their homes as collateral on bank loans. Windmills would replace the old brick chimneys of Britain as the iconic landscape eyesore and a number of power companies would disintegrate creating financial waves in an already unsteady European economy.
A CAGW train wreck might sound glorious but I hope that the train slows down enough to allow a few people to jump off before it crashes.
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J Knowles IMO if anyone with the slightest intelligence or morals went into business on top of weak scientific base like CAGW then they deserve exactly what they get. The trouble with this scheme is that the taxpayer will be held accountable in the terms of bailouts and the restructuring, does Solyndra sound familiar? How could it have possibly come to this ??
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rjm385,
I’m with you on this one. Let the scammers and rent seekers drown in the debt of their own choosing. It’s business after all and quite often businesses fail because conditions change. A bit like buying shares in Cobb and Co the day the first train ran to Parramatta. Don’t forget an awful lot of fixed income and mostly old folk have been stung by higher electricity charges brought on by renewable energy certificates. That 60 cent feed in tariff is being paid by pensioners who can’t afford to heat their house, or cool it.
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Q. Whodunnit?
A. Definitely not a hacker. Too dangerous!
Q. So who could it be?
A. The person(s) responsible definitely would have had genuine access to the UAE’s file server(s).
Q. Who had access?
A. Well, let’s start with UAE’s systems administrator who would have been responsible for controlling access profiles for every user, depending on what each user would have been permitted to access.
Q. But who had genuine access to the UAE file server(s)?
A. Certainly employees and IT consultants. But let’s not forget the thousands of students… narrow that down to those enrolled in computer science courses… particularly the really smart ones!
Q. Now who has an interest in the climate science as well as having the expertise in computers and IT?
A. Hmmmmmm! Not too difficult to answer this one. Think about it. It’s a user who is in the field of climate science who also has a trusted friend who is a real IT genius and is in a position to help gather all the relevant information off the file server(s) and download it to a simple device like a Lacie 500GB external hard disk.
Q. How do we know this?
A. Computer nerds are not interested in boring stuff like climate science. And climate change buffs are not intelligent enough to know how to get highly confidential information across the net to the BBC or to a Russian file server without the risk of detection.
Q. So who are they?
A. To answer this you must go back to the systems administrator, and by a process of elimination, you’ll get the answer. UAE would know exactly who has had access to all this information. In fact, UAE would know exactly its chief suspects. But UAE and investigating authorities simply cannot find the evidence to confirm their suspicions.
Q. Will the rest of the stuff eventual be revealed?
A. You bet… and logic says that if nothing is done to stop the global warming insanity, like in the near future, access to the rest of the emails will be released next year.
Q. Could it be father/son team work?
A. Shooshhhhhh! I didn’t say that!!!!!!
So there you have it. UAE knows the scientist. UAE even knows the computer whizz. It’s just that nobody is in a position to nail them. The ‘culprits’ know that UAE knows its them. UAE knows that the ‘culprits’ know it knows its them. Importantly, UAE prefers it that way, for fear of what has not yet been revealed to the public.
It definitely is an inside job!
Time will tell whether my psychic powers are right!
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All very plausible Merv., but rather too obvious. There’s no way someone with that level of access would be stupid enough.
A foreign power on the other hand…
The Russians for example. Couldn’t possibly just let their vast gas reserves be devalued, by a witchunt against carbon.
They’d have the means and the motive, and if the state of Phil’s record keeping is any indication of how disorganised they are at UEA, then plenty of opportunity.
Has anyone checked if there is any one single individual or address included or copied or bcc’d in all the e-mails?
A carelessly discarded backup disk or a carelessly disposed of personal computer could be all it would take.
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Mervyn,
I’ve favored the inside job all along. But might it be that UEA knows quite well who it is but can’t stand the embarrassment of divulging that it was an inside job?
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You have not eliminated the possibility of access to off-site backups.
just sayin’
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Correct
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Unlikely, remember these are the guys who can’t even properly archive text files of temperature measurements… Offsite requires a high degree of data archiving organization as you need to know ‘what’ to archive ‘when’ and keep a log of it – you can’t go to the archiver and ask for a file by approximate filename or grep it.. Offsite archiving is a serious business.
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ecoGuy
I agree. The scientists themselves are naive when it comes to real ICT management issues.
And for exactly the same reasons, many of our clients have contracted a company to access their file servers once a week, and do a full backup of all the files on that server. In the interim, they use mirroring and all that good stuff that comes in the box, but the real backup is off site, on a regular basis.
Other clients of ours have outsourced their entire computer operations to a supply and operate service provider (often a telco), who presumably provides for off-site backup.
We, on the other hand have our own backup arrangements, using our own equipment, under our control, across two different sites, with two authentications required for any access to the backup files.
The question I raise is, which level of offsite backup do you suppose UEA uses for its email servers? And following from that question, how are the backups secured?
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Fail. One of the largest areas of skepticism is amongst IT people. It’s very hard to find someone in IT who isn’t broadly suspicious of global warming. This is for multiple reasons – a good programmer or sysadmin is by nature curious and inquisitive, and they possess a strong logical mind. A curious and logical mind is just the sort of thing that gets interested in the snow job of climate politics. The major reason is that much of the scare is predicated on computer models, and anyone who has ever been at the coalface of software development knows that they are wrong much more often than they are right, and that any system is wholly dependent on the quality of assumptions and the quality of the inputs.
Having said all that – it’s really not that difficult to get a hold of such information if you are determined. You can be sure that pre-climategate 1 the university sys admin staff would have been as hapless as the university climate staff. We know this because they routinely left important downloads on public FTP servers, as Steve McIntyre found on at least one occasion.
Universities don’t pay particularly well, and as such they tend not to attract capable IT people. Of course, there will be exceptions to this, but one sloppy admin who leaves a default password, unnecessary task running or port unlocked and the whole thing is as easy to open as a tent flap.
It’s really not that difficult to break into poorly-secured networks, and it’s extremely easy to cover your tracks if you do so. This is why the plod have struggled to find anything useful at all.
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Great read thanks pointman.
I have no clue who it may be, but after reading many of the emails, (but still just a drop in the ocean), I’m guessing it wasn’t the UEA travel agents. They must be making a fortune from booking all that travel and conference attendances. I’m also amazed at how many of the scientists know all the good restaurants in all the top conference venues and know which parties will be covered by the hosts and which have to be ‘self funded’, no doubt from their generous per diems or expense accounts.
Actually maybe it’s someone at UEA who never gets to go on the junkets and simply became jealous?
I actually believe the few lines of justification about the starving children, while valid, are simply a smokescreen to put people off the scent. I also believe the whistle-blower is too smart to actually leave a clue as to their identity by using a decimal place instead of a comma in the numbers (which would imply non UK, US, Australian, NZ individual – or anywhere else where a comma is used to identify the 1000’s point in a 4 digit or greater number). So I think that was a deliberate misdirection too.
I think the point you make about there not being any politicians implicated may well be a good one.
I am disappointed, but not surprised that the Guardian was ready to explain away a selection of email content so easily and in some cases so unconvincingly once the full email text is revealed in context. I expect that the various parties will continue with that strategy. Pretend there is nothing in the comments, provide the occasional plausible explanation (as they did with ‘hide the decline’ and ‘trick’) so that the believers, who wont bother looking at the emails will happily believe there is nothing in them. Of course we can’t expect the average journalist to do any real investigation. Besides, by now 98% of journalists are protecting their vested interests in not having properly reported on climate science in the past.
I do think that it is likely private (personal) content of the emails have been deliberately redacted and perhaps the reason 200,000 more emails have not been released is that it just takes so long to work through the emails taking out that type of information while also ensuring you do that work on a computer which will not lead any government or police trace back to the Whistle Blower.
Your theory of a dead man’s trigger is as good as any I can think of.
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I think sceptics are getting too excited. You can’t kill this idea so quickly and if you could it would have been dead at climategate 1. The toning down of the rhetoric from IPCC is something to get excited about but not too much as Will Steffen has said they need at least a 30 year trend. The fact that the alarmists move the goal posts often does not mean much either as they have done it before and will do it again. If it was so easy to kill off stupidity then there would never be any sovereign debt problems because everyone knows that there is no way out but pain. So let me know when Keynsian economics is dead and we can talk about climate change being dead. In the Australian context historically very low unemployment, very high incomes for government from resources and we are running a deficit basically at a time of boom. Other sectors may be subdued but that is as a result in part of the Governments management.
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Kelly, I believe Keynesian economics is a great part of the problem. The solution to the global economic downturn by virtually every economist these days is for governments to keep on spending MORE money. If the government doesn’t have the money, no problem just print some more (quantitative easing).
We have our climate conspiracy (i.e.; climategate emails) then I also believe there is a problem with peer review of economic theory.
Keynesian theory worked in World War II but it has failed ever since because governments are inheritently inefficient. In fact governments are more likely to destroy net economic value rather than create it through unchecked growth in bureaucracy that provides no economic benefits other than to the extra bureaucrats employed in the process shuffling more paper and creating new rules and regulations for the proles.
I suggest our economists re examine the workings of Hayek or Friedman. A dollar spent by government does not always create a net economic gain. This is becoming obvious in the US where government continues to grow but it has little no effect on economic growth. That these same economists continue to argue for more government spending is frightening. America has lost its confidence to innovate which was the basis of its success in the period of 1945 to 1999. The global warming scare fits nicely as the remedy is for government to further increase their size and control over private citizens.
[edited as per author] ED
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Sorry typo, “movements are inheritently inefficient” should state “governments are inheritently inefficient”
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Cookster
I do think that using a scare to introduce a tax has worked somewhat because is the first time in history at least that I know about that there have actually been protestors asking for a tax.
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Rent-a-crowd:
Will protest for falafel and chardonnay.
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Cookster, part of what you say was “America has lost its confidence to innovate which was the basis of its success in the period of 1945 to 1999” was actually not ‘good ol’ American know-how’. Much of the post WWII “inventions” by the US were actually patents acquired from the UK to pay for WWII. Still, there is a vibrancy that the US had that it does seem to have lost over recent times.
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Truthseeker,
.
Could you provide some reference material for this?
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Try Radar, try sonar (cheating a bit because they are the same thing but at different frequencies), try hovercraft, try ABS, try aircraft deicing systems. Ant they are just the ones that I know about from aviation.
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Early patents for RADAR were German. http://www.radarworld.org/index.html
I am familiar with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tizard_Mission but there seems to be no mention of “pay for WWII” as Truthseeker suggests. I suppose an alliance that has been beneficial for the health of both countries could be construed as “pay”.
Being “paid” as an inducement to join in a war has nasty connotations. If there is more to know I’d like to hear it.
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well stated Cookster, except I would state that Keynesian economics had died by the mid-1970s. This is when its failure became obvious.
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The reason Keynes doesn’t work is that the current bastardised borrow and spend policies actually aren’t what Keynes proscribed.
The idea is to amass a surplus during buoyant times, and to shrink the size of the government while there is strong private demand. Then, in times of low public demand, to spend the amassed surplus on value-creating public works projects. Value creating as in hydro-electric dams, major transport infrastructure and the like.
Somehow this has ended up as ‘borrow in the good times, and borrow some more in the bad times’. So instead of careful saving of a surplus, now we have reckless squandering of borrowed money on school halls of all things, and never-to-be-repaid subsidies on ‘green’ initiatives.
Dont’ make me out as a Keynes apologist, nothing could be further from the truth as Keynes erronously conflates economic activity with productivity. How do we know this? He suggested burying bottles of money in disused mines and then getting people to work digging them back up again. It matters not that this was a theoretical suggestion – the insanity shows someone who just wants people to be busy doing anything, rather than busy doing something useful.
You’re right though – the Keynesian death spiral most economies find themselves in will not stop until a countries flames out badly, and the politicians it was all the fault of their faulty borrow and spend thinking.
Good luck with that happening.
As for the climate scare, I think we can be more optimistic – the prevoius environmental scares have all flamed out because they rely on a flow of taxes, politician attention and media ratings. As those disappear, the climate alarmists phones will stop ringing and the likes of Flannerys books will go stale on the shelves. That’s what will kill this particular beast – a collective public ‘meh’.
In short, there is always an incentive for politicians to borrow and spend, because it means they can do stuff while leaving future politicians and voters with the bill. However, soon there will be no incentive for politicians to push green scares because the voters will soon tire of it. No votes, no comments, no oxygen, climate alarmism death.
Sure, there will always be groups of people being shrill about it, but that’s fine. As long as they aren’t diverting tax dollars, I don’t particularly care what they say.
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If there is nothing worthwhile for them to do, then paying people to dig holes and fill them in again is perfectly sensible. As opposed to the alternative of simply accepting that they will live in idle poverty. Indeed, in the Keynesian view of the world, the poor are the ideal people to give money to – because they spend it. The last thing the government wants to do is give tax cuts to people who can afford not to spend them. These people, quite sensibly, decide that troubled economic times are more suited to saving than spending. While this is a good strategy for them, it is a bad strategy for the economy as a whole. So in bad times, the government should spend to make up for the people who aren’t.
Unless, of course, you belong to the “I’m all right Jack” school of economics.
The current government budgetary problems are nothing to
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John, you don’t pay attention in class.
Have you ever heard: “give a man a fish and he’ll eat for a day, teach him how to fish and he’ll never starve”?
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Keynesian economics died by the mid-1970s. The problem is that the neo-Keynesians keep trying to revive it and then make the same mistakes.
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Norfolk Constabulary is more interested in finding the leaker of the emails than investigating the massive fraud and abuse of public funds that has been perpetrated at the UEA.
I bet the Common Purpose crooks controlling the AGW fraud at the UEA are in a bit of a tizz.
PS There is no longer a ‘Norwich constabulary’. That was merged with Norfolk Constabulary in the 1960s.
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I’m not sure the Norwich police are being ordered to work too hard on this — their budget was $8000 this year on it, according to Revkin. If they could find a hacker, o- yessity yes, but no one high up really wants to find a whistleblower who is technically protected by law in the UK.
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Another good reason to believe it was an inside job.
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I wonder when they wrote this policy on it.
UEA Public Interest Policy
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The must have filed all copies of it in various University restrooms. 🙂
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Has a Norfolk Constabulary been handed a common purpose.
Phil
and
the s.p.
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Breitbart! You magnificent bastard!
I am not saying he had anything to do with this but the way this is being played out seems like the way a pro like him would do it.
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So the emails we can read appear to reveal nothing new but just add perhaps more condemning information about what we already had. This of course is worthwhile. But…
The emails we can’t read are dangled in front of us like the bait hung out by a bait-and-switch sales pitch. They could be anything. We’re supposed to believe they would crash the whole climate change scam in one fell swoop. But as bananabender points out at post 6, they could also be just a bluff.
Don’t you just love it? Reminds me of the Windows error message when a program crashes. “Program so-and-so has encountered a problem and needs to close.” How helpful! The implicit message is, “Ha-ha-ha, we know what’s wrong but we’re not going to tell you.”
Both are a black hole into which you cannot see. The encrypted stuff may protect the leaker but it sure doesn’t help those who want to get to the bottom of this global warming fraud.
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1st leak post Obama’s inauguration. If Pointman right, look for correspondence not only with politicos/their representatives, but also with academics who would later work for BHO – Chu, Lubchenko, etc.
Also look for correspondence with Optimum Population Trust types (too many people), NHS (kill the oldsters), etc. All this stuff hangs together.
Pares cum paribus …
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Well, always assuming that he has any such evidence hidden in his encrypted safety-deposit box, if I were the one, I would simply pick the juiciest e-mail I have that implicates a Gruadaiom green god in a scandal (someone in the upper echelons of the IPCC perhaps), and send it, anonymously, to the Griadiuma, along with a note that they have one week to publish the damning evidence before I send it to Delingpole at the Telegraph – along with proof that I’d sent it to the Grimidiom, of course. What could they do? Publish and be damned; not publish and be damned. Go for it, FOIA… the world awaits your next move.
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The passphrase protected 7z file contains 200,000+ files including another readme file of 211 bytes.
I know nothing about hacking and passphrases, but I would assume one can’t rely on memory to remember a long passphrase.
So the phrase is probably a sentence or paragraph from somewhere, readily available to cut n paste?
The “Readme” file contains some quotes. For instance the quote “Over 2.5 billion people live on less than $2 a day.” reads like it’s straight out of the handbook of an NGO organization such as…
Givewell.org
At that link we find the following…
The thing that irks me about FOIA2011 is that if he/she/they were so concerned about the wasted resources due to AGW, why bother with playing games and sending the blogosphere into a frenzy trying to find a “eureka” email?
Why not locate that email yourself and make sure it was among the first batch of releases? Why play games? why not put a stop to this madness and SAVE LIVES if that is what’s truly motivating you.
I think FOIA2011 is an a$$hole who is allowing billions of dollars to be flushed down the toilet whilst so many are suffering especially in Africa.
I think FOIA2011 should do the right thing and release the passphrase instead of playing games.
As far as I’m concerned FOIA2011 is just as culpable as any of the “hockey team” and the environmentalists and politicians who have perpetuated this AGW scam on the world.
SHAME ON YOU WHO EVER YOU ARE. YOU ARE NO HERO. YOU ARE NO DIFFERENT TO THOSE ‘OCCUPIERS’ WHO ARE JUST PRETEND ACTIVISTS AGAINST POVERTY.
In your README.TXT file you quote “One dollar can save a life” — the opposite must also be true.
Well, literally millions of dollars is being flushed down the toilet due to the AGW Scam every single day. So long as you sit on the rest of the files YOU ARE PARTLY RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY DEATHS AND SUFFERING caused by those flushed dollars.
STOP PLAYING GAMES, release the rest of the mails and whatever other knowledge you might have about this scam. DO THE RIGHT THING.
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And before anybody tries to defend FOIA with “but foia might be worried about losing his/her job” “foia might have a mortgage” etc etc I remind you that we expect the likes of P Jones K Briffa and any others involved to do the right thing regardless of their personal circumstances be it related to finances or career prospects.
FOIA is not exempt from that standard.
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Most of the political elite lost contact with the idea of “do the right thing” quite some time ago. Most of the rest of us are simply trying to stay on the deck of a rapidly sinking ship. A ship that is being sunk because hardly anyone remembers that there is a right thing to do nor why to do it let alone doing it.
Oh, some are doing the right thing the best they can but is it enough soon enough to make a difference. We will soon see.
To plagiarize from myself posted elsewhere:
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TANSTAFL – Robert Heinlein
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TANSTAAFL!
I grew up reading Heinlein, and as you noted that particular phrase isn’t Sci-Fi.
Starship Troopers (the original book, not the horrid movies) and the concept of a citizen was pretty good as well.
He was a classic and in his wake we get crap like Avatar… 🙁
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Yup Heinlein, Asimov & Bester were my favourites. Every read any Roger Zelazny?
Pointman
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Martian Chronicles; made me hate Heinlein. I spent an hour in the first chapter learning all the characters and their life stories. Then a few pages later they all die! Damn Heinlein……
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Amen!
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Jack Vance is a notable sci-fi author; he crosses the gap between the fantasists and the hard- sci-fi authors who grounded their stories in plausible ideas with at least a modicum of relation to reality; Larry Niven, who has been mentioned was a very good exponent of that with his Ringworld series drawing on Kardashev’s social and technological stages and the concept of a Dyson sphere.
Kim Stanley Robinson is another hard sci-fi author whose series on Mars is nothing short of a blueprint for terraforming that planet.
Of course today the greens would object to terraforming as a form of hegomony against any existing Martian microbes or future Martian life.
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Hey Pointman, Zelazny is an author I may have read but not to the extent that his name shouts to me the way Asimov, Heinlein, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Michael Moorcock and many others do.
90% of my library is still packed away in boxes from the last big move so I couldn’t even look through my titles and tell you if I have any of his work. I’m pretty sure I do but I have over 300 paperbacks and hardcovers dating from the 1940’s to the present so which books by which authors I still possess would require a day of cataloging. Keep planning to put them all in a database but never get to it.
I was born in 1964 and discovered Heinlein when The Number of the Beast was released in a large, illustrated paperback. Late 70’s I think it was, grabbed anything of his I could find after that. Our local library also had such goodies as The Adventures of Tom Swift and prior to my falling in love with Sci-Fi novels I was an avid reader of Alistair MacLean. I consider C.J. Cherryh one of the “modern” heavy weights in the genre, she has some wonderful books that remind me of the “old timers.”
In many ways those days were more entertaining and educational than what came with the internet. I wonder how many of today’s kids will never while away an afternoon immersed in the world contained within the pages of a novel (without being forced to by an assignment for school) instead expecting to see it in the theater or have it read to them through an audio book.
It does go a long way to explaining why many native speakers of English don’t know the difference between “loose” and “lose.”
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Oh, by the way Mark, Martian Chronicles is Ray Bradbury, not Heinlein.
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Hiya Robert. Try “Lord of Light” by Roger Zelazny, if you can find a copy. Personally, I’m hoping for a Kindle this Christmas. Already making that list of books I want on it …
P
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Mark D. @ 21.1.1.2.2
Ray Bradbury wrote Martian Chronicles. It’s not worth the effort reading. Bradbury is no where near the same class writer as Heinlein.
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Er,
Hari Seldon
Tony.
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Lionell,
Indeed, Heinlein spoiled me as far as enjoying a number of other writers because they just couldn’t come close to his standard. He isn’t called the Dean of Science Fiction Writers for no good reason.
Jo’s “off topic police” are going to come after us but the only one since Heinlein who meets His standard is Larry Niven.
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OOps! Thank you for the correction. Too many years go by.
Now I just have to remember which Heinlein I read….
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In a comment in reply above, I mentioned Hari Seldon, and left it at that, and it may seem cryptic to just say that and leave it without adding further comment, so I just dumped that in as that short comment, to get people thinking.
Who is Hari Seldon?
For those who do know think about it, and then think laterally in respect of
(a) Climate Change/Global Warming,
(b) Groupthink associated with (a),
(c) The release of Climategate 2 when it ‘seems’ it ‘may’ have all been covered in Climategate 1, and ‘possibly’ thought of along the lines of just being done to ‘harm’ Durban.
(d) The fact that there is more hidden behind the ‘password’.
(e) The Post from Pointman,
and (f) Now go back and think about what happened after Hari Seldon was long gone.
Science Fiction sometimes turns out to be not quite Science Fiction.
Tony.
PS. Good luck finding that 3 book original Foundation Series. Thank God I saved mine all these years.
Having read so much Science Fiction, I really only liked Asimov, Heinlein, and EE (Doc) Smith, but with Smith, only his Masterpiece, that 7 book ‘Lensman’ Series.
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Tony,
We would have responded to your Hari Seldon comment, honest we would, but you were on the dreaded fifth level, so could not be referred to, as neither can I.
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Rereke,
I did this intentionally.
The first ‘Hari Seldon’ comment was at the comment level where it could not be replied to, meant mainly so people might think why that name sounded vaguely familiar.
For that second comment, I then had to go ‘back up the tree’ to find where to reply so that my comment would then be able to be replied to.
Note how I have only directed that second comment to people who have actually read Foundation and know of the situation of Hari Seldon, and then how this whole saga, right down to Pointman’s analysis rings remarkably close to the situation surrounding Hari Seldon, first published in 1942 as a series of short stories and then compiled into that original Foundation Trilogy.
That second comment was also then directed only to people who are actually aware of Hari Seldon, and not explaining either him, or the situation, as for those who don’t know, it’s too involved to explain, any reference material is somewhat obscure, and the only real way to find out is to actually read it if you do wish to find out.
Oddly, as I read Pointman’s Post above, that name Hari Seldon was the first thing I thought about, and any mention earlier than when I did comment would have raised more questions than answers. It’s sometimes odd how other comments can provide a ‘lead in’ so context can be seen to be somewhat clearer.
Oddly, I’m surprised a reply was that long to be forthcoming.
Hari Seldon can be checked at Wikipedia, although the reference there is quite sparse, and leaves the reader with more questions than answers.
Incidentally, if he were alive today, I feel sure Isaac Asimov would view Wikipedia as perhaps the forerunner of another of the many things he was the first to bring to us all, that of the Encyclopædia Galactica.
Tony.
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I won’t defend FOIA. But Baa, have you considered that you can’t take ALL the truth? The 200,000 files may have content that even you can’t deal with.
Just a crazy notion here……
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Did you watch an old DVD movie last night? Perhaps a Tom Cruise Jack Nicholson classis?
“You can’t handle the truth.”
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Old? Yes it was a VHS tape…
Wasn’t a Betamax though …… 🙂
Seriously though 200,000 messages might have things none of us can handle. Outside the box a bit but FOIA may not have the same motives as the rest of us and in fact AGW may not be the biggest thing in those e-mails.
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I suspect its rather the unstated threat that one might infer, that it relies on.
The offenders know who they are & what they’ve done and might wonder if it’s in these remaining E-mails.
A lot more offenders might be encouraged to jump ship and declare for the other side, as it were, than if the true extent of the E-mails is ever known.
What use is it exposing one bunch of corrupt politicians to be replaced by another bunch of much the same.
Is it better perhaps to just frighten them into line and using the influence they have to better ends, than let a bunch of unknown newbies take over ?
Revealing the remaining e-mails will make not one jot of difference to those starving.
.
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Speculate away as much as you like Joe.
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I’m with BH. There is plenty of SHAME polluting climate and Green technologies.
And there’s more to be ashamed about. Solar isn’t that Green anyway.
No wonder China Solar Makers Face ‘Suicidal’ Prices on Excess Output.
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You got that right.
You also got that right.
You got that wrong.
They key is probably one of two things:
– a string of text taken from a well known public work. It could be anything from a bible passage to a section of the US constution to the first paragraph of Wuthering Heights.
– a randomly generated string of characters created by a key generator.
In either case, it would be foolish to embed the key into any of the contents of the package, because that would make brute-forcing the password that much easier.
Anyone who goes to the lengths of using that level of encryption to close something up isn’t going to be sloppy with the key. Take it as unbreakable, and you can bet some NSA supercomputers are churning away at it right now, even if the project is nothing more than a couple of people with intellectual curiosity moonlighting doing it unauthorised.
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Isn’t that what I said? Or maybe the bible or Wuthering heights can’t be cut n pasted.
yes I’m aware of random string generators, but if FOIA was to be taken into custody, how would he get that string out to the public?
Perhaps when he is in the dock he could yell out “It’s in the top draw of my dresser under the sox n jocks” lol
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Pointman has already made a very good case for a dead-mans-hand arrangement, whereby the key gets released automatically after a time period if a “don’t release it yet” message is not periodically received.
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re brc
Although the NSA has a lot of computers, I doubt anyone would be moonlighting to try and brute this file. If the US were at all concerned, they could just ask the UEA politely for a copy of all the emails from the backup server to see if they’re exposed. If the UEA refused, they could ask less politely, point out how much US funding CRU’s had and whether they want any more. If the NSA were feeling really impolite, they’d just acquire the backup server from wherever it is and leave a rubber duck in it’s place.
The file’s encrypted with AES, which is assumed strong enough to protect a lot of sensitive data. Brute force or dictionary attacks aren’t likely to work unless the passphrase is very weak, or obvious.
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Either Bulldust’s version, or it’s a prick who wants to do all he/she can to stall action to tackle climate change and the big bluff is the last chance. Either way I agree with Bulldust I don’t see the point – what is a practical value in delay. Pointman’s analysis is lovely, but it is just made up stuff massaged to fit the preferred interpretation. Just let’s see the hidden emails what’s the drama?
Unless, of course, there’s nothing there… That would be a very good and obvious reason for keeping them hidden behind an uncrackable encryption. What’s that law about the most obvious and simple answer probably being correct?
Let’s imagine that some powerful types KNOW they’ve sent incriminating emails that could end careers, but that actually have nothing to do with climate science… are people being framed to abandon the climate or photos of them with goats will be released?
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Step away from the climate…..or the goat gets it!!
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I said what now?
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Sorry – going insane – my reference to Bulldust is to Bah Humbug, Apologies to all concerned.
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Seriously, though MattB.
I really find it interesting that you refer to the whistleblower as “a prick” when exactly the same actions, if directed toward a corrupt conservative politician on the take, or a drug company falsifying results to gain a commercial advantage, or the like and you would be hailing him a hero. Strange dichotomy of belief you must have to have 2 mutually exclusive attitudes to the same actions. I think this parochialism of belief is what separates those of the leftist persuasion from those of the right/conservative ethos.
If for example, a whistleblower released damning emails about John Howard or Newt Gingrich, I’d hail him as a hero. If this same person released emails damning Obama or Julia Gillard or even Craig Thomson, I wonder whether you’d be so gracious, or so open to what those damning pieces of evidence might reveal.
I well remember it being commonly known that George Bernard Shaw steadfastly defended Stalin and continued upholding USSR as a paragon society even after
reports filtered through for years of millions dying in purges, widespread suppression
of freedoms, food shortages, etc, etc. Such a blinkered world view and such unfettered parochialism seems inherent in the leftist mindset, IMO.
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Don’t do that. I have already made that mistake once myself, and I do not want people to think we are related.
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well bah humbug called him an asshole, I just agreed. Personally I think leaks are great and don’t have a problem really, other than to agree just get it out there. If you guys are right then any delay just kills more poor people after all.
Wikileaks would have published this… maybe they would have done and that explains the trumped up charges against Assange?
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Fair enough Matt, but your tone in the comment above suggested otherwise.
I agree that charges against Assange are trumped up and the disgraceful behavior of the Swedish president in compromising a fair trial even before charges were laid were very telling. I personally have no problem with Assange’s Wikileaks except he should have vetted some of them to prevent potential danger to innocents. The world however would be a better place with greater transparency, and hence accountability.
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Oh, chill out, Baa Humbug. And enjoy 😉
It’s climate science, for Gawd’s sake. It unfolds in a sub-geological timescale, as it should.
It’s not as simple as dumping the lot. Remember it’s not about the science, it never was, but about how to play a biased media in an incredibly corrupt system. Dump all 200,000 emails in one fell swoop and it won’t get sorted out until 2030 by a lame historian living in a library archive! As far as the media is concerned, here today, gone tomorrow. You get 750 words at most, 5-minutes of fame. The media has no institutional memory, so why not come back every 6 months and repeat the show. Lest we forget. Dribble the emails out over the next decade slowly drowning the climate beast.
The Whistleblower is waterboarding the Warmist fraud masters.
What could be more just? How long can the fraud hold out?… drip, drip, drip. A cabal of greedy fools conspire to hold the planet ransom to an imaginary apocalypse, but their database of deceit is hacked and then drip back on them, exposed to the world sloooowly, on a climatological timescale so that every relevant fact is considered fully in good time…. James Hansen says that the minimum chunk of time that can be considered a measure of climate is 30 years. The Whistleblower has at least a third of that already “modelled” for The Team.
There is a kind of happy and fair dinkum vindictiveness going on here. Al Gore, Hansen and others loudly called for “civil disobedience” in very public statements just before the first Climategate in 2008 and 2009…. Their plea was for anonymous and spontaneous black ops to rise up and disable normal society–Sabotage coal-fire energy plants, herbicide GM farms, blockade ports, hack websites and servers….. Did I say hack servers?
Well, Al Gore and James Hanson got what they very publicly wished for, only the activism came from the skeptical side. The Whistleblower of Climategate is wise, fair and steely committed beyond our wildest dreams (or nightmares, depending on your religion.)
If only I had another bottle of schadenfreude 2011 to pop open!
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Have read the intros by Jo and the start of Pointmans comment.
Will now go and read the “profile” of the benefactor and then come back here.
Money money money.
Did anyone say the politics and money were mixed up together.
Or was it money and politics.
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@Pointman
Its an interesing theory indeed, possibly holds some truth!
K.R. Frank
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Last night was the annual Walkley Awards for Excellence in Journalism. I noted with interest this particular award;
So, Wikileaks now gets awarded for leaking private information, but Climategate is illegal, out of context and largely ignored my the MSM.
Gross hypocrisy at the very least.
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That’s a very good point, Heywood.
The ego-maniacal Julian Assange is a hero for buying stolen correspondence then like a dope dealer brokering mega-buck contracts with global media giants to fence the information on with no regard to exposing innocent people’s identities in war zones and that deserves a Journalism award??… but the Climategate Whistleblower liberating what should be publicly available information owned by tax-payers and doing so not for profit or fame but on the principle that a great fraud needs to be exposed, is at best ignored, or worst reviled by the Leftist media. Even though as Pointman points out, the Whistleblower eschews fame and fortune for a dangerous life lived underground carrying unassisted a heavy burden. I wonder who history will remember…. Assange’s leaks of titillating western embassy gossip or Climategate’s busting of a 30-year, multi-billion dollar science and sociopolitical boondoogle?
The Climategate Whistleblower deserves a Nobel Peace Prize.
The media hypocrisy has been the great unexpected second insight due to Climategate. Not only does Climategate expose climate science as corrupted by zealotry, conspiracy and fraud. It has also revealed most of the mainstream media as equally corrupt and conspiratorial.
Climategate reveals the science was only at best an excuse for the politics, which is why the science was done so poorly. It was never really about the science at all!
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Wise move!
Seems like the whole AGW scare is more collective stupidity and the problems of individuals combining into a big ugly monster.
I think our wistleblower may be proud of the job done and could have identified and documented his/her method in the pass phrase protected section. That way the stupidity of the torch and pitchfork brigades who are out to get “the hacker” will be exposed also. Showing that they picked on an innocent victim.
The victim would then become a martyr and their works and opinions would become very public knowledge.
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The whistleblower is no fool. If there really are 4000-8000 characters in the password then it is probably a one-time pad. Unbreakable.
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Steve Hilton, the UK’s Prime Minister’s director of strategy and ‘green guru’, has dropped a bombshell and admitted to doubts about climate change.
‘I’m not sure I believe in it,’ he announced at a meeting of the Energy Department, prompting one aide to blurt out: ‘Did I just hear that correctly?’
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2066720/David-Camerons-green-guru-Steve-Hilton-reveals-doubts-global-warming.html?ITO=1490
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It doesn’t require a computer genius to hack into a computer. In fact it is can be incredibly simple.
All you need is physical access to the computer and a bootable Linux USB thumbdrive. You don’t even need a logon name or password. You can easily read or copy the files and clone the hard drive without making any changes to the original data. If the data is unencrypted it is unsafe. This method is used by Customs to examine suspicious laptops.
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I believe the context is not FOIA’s context but is actually the context of the CAGW proponents, otherwise both FOIA and CAGW has the same context for the so called redistributing of western wealth and deindustrialization of the west to the boon of the poorer countries.
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Pointman
What could Fat Albert, Julia or Kevin possibly say in an email that they have not already made blindingly obvious in public discourse. That is the advantage of a virtuous bandwagon over a conspiracy.
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Hello ghl. It could be a lot of things but they’d all have the same common denominator; money.
P
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Pointman may be right about it being a deadmans switch, however, at the risk of incoherent ramblings, consider what we know;
1. The MSM ignored CG 1 emails
2. The MSM ignores (more so?) CG 2 emails
3. Those named in the emails acknowledge the correctness of the content, “out of context” is the only rebuttal they offer.
4. Since CG 2.0 some political figures have started to distance themselves from the CAGW cabal.
5. It is clear that the leaker has unfettered access to UEA email storage, he has done it twice.
6. The thing that strikes me the most from the emails, is how unbelievably stupid the CAGW cabal appear to be. a) thinking that email is a private communcation. b) the content of their emails. c) being excel challenged.
Observations
To a CAGW zealot the emails are a mere hiccup, it is simply denier driven muckraking. Let’s ignore it.
If I was a prosecutor, the only thing the emails give me is evidence of collusion to avoid FOI (not a hanging offence). Abuse of scientific method is not illegal in any jurisdiction (to my knowledge). The science community has previously had ample opportunity to publicly expose and discredit the charlatans, they have not. They are unlikely to do it now.
High profile defections from the CAGW cause are an indicator of more goodies to come.
Hypothesis
Could it be that the leaker was simply rustling the bushes, to see what communications this release generated amongst the cabal?
We know the central players are not that bright (cunning, but not clever), we have tabs on their communications, all that is needed is the political linkage.
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Avoiding FOI requests or destroying requested data is a criminal offence in the UK.
Making a false statement or publishing information the author knows to be untrue is an offence in virtually every jurisdiction including Australia. It is a requirement for an author of a scientific paper or study to sign a statement that the work is original and factual.
It is a criminal offence in the US to falsify data if the project is federally funded. So Michael Mann could theoretically be imprisoned for publishing the hockey stick.
James Hansen has committed criminal offences including failure to declare income and receiving payments for advocacy whilst being a Federal employee.
I’m quite sure that criminal prosecutions will occur once the Republicans are in power.
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I’m sure someone with more IT savvy than me who can cross-check with the released email numbers will let me know if I’m wrong, but in my understanding of the README file which you can access at Pointmans “recent articles” link in his main post, I believe the selections listed come from those 220,000 encrypted emails. I mean, what would be the point of the whistleblower quoting from the 5,000 released which anyone can read for themselves?
With grateful acknowledgment to Pointman:
Readme of FOI2011
/// FOIA 2011 — Background and Context ///
This archive contains some 5.000 emails picked from keyword searches. A few
remarks and redactions are marked with triple brackets.
The rest, some 220.000, are encrypted for various reasons. We are not planning
to publicly release the passphrase. We could not read every one, but tried to cover the most relevant topics such as…
/// The IPCC Process ///
/// Communicating Climate Change ///
/// The Medieval Warm Period ///
/// The Settled Science ///
/// Temperature Reconstructions ///
/// The Urban Heat Effect ///
/// Temperature Reconstructions ///
/// Science and Religion ///
/// Climate Models ///
/// The Cause ///
/// Freedom of Information ///
On the subject of opportunity and motivation, it certainly appears to me that it was an inside job and I think the above list the perpetrator/s consider ‘most relevant’ clearly indicate that they were deeply concerned at the machinations of those involved in the IPCC and like most sceptics, deplored the shocking waste of money which could have been used to alleviate world poverty, other economic and environmental problems and/or prepare for future catastrophies we know will continue to occur no matter what the cause.
There could be many “suspects” who would have had access and I refer to Phil Jones August 2001 email exchange with John Daly in which he wrote “there aren’t 40 people in CRU – there are just 15 on the research staff. All the others are students or support staff. At the moment because it is August there are only 7 of the 15 here and the web manager is away”.
Many students would have passed through over the years and events have made it obvious Phil Jones was very slack in running CRU, so opportunity to access info would not have been hard.
As to the CAGW scam collapsing I recently posted the following comment at Pointmans site.
I fear that with the trillions of dollars now wrapped up in renewable investments there is no stopping this juggernaut until fuel poverty really hits the majority of poorer people, the world economies hit bottom and the extravagant wasteful “renewable” subsidies run out. The carpet-baggers will have made their money and the gullible generations that swallowed the AGW scam and were conned into believing they were “saving the planet” will be left with their shattered illusions to try and rebuild faith in science and pick up the pieces of ruined economies.
I note that China is starting to look a bit shaky growth-wise. If they go down, the Australian economy is history big-time!
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Probably a good time to remind all the warmbots of the signs of teh fast approaching apocolypse:
http://iceagenow.info/2011/11/uk-warned-prepare-record-snow-cold/
http://iceagenow.info/2011/11/carbon-dioxide-increases-warming-effect/
http://iceagenow.info/2011/11/record-cold-russia-areas-coldest-1889/
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For Pointman and others:
The thing that struck me about the readme file in this release is the use of the . as a thousands separator, viz:
Now, the use of a . to separate thousands goes with the use of a comma as a decimal place.
Broadly speaking, anyone from an English background (ie commonwealth countries) uses a , as a thousand separator, and continental Europeans use a . So someone from the UK, Australia, India might say 20,000 and someone from France, Germany or Russia would say 20.000.
Thus it would seem that the FOIA is not English in origin.
The problem with this thesis is the use of the . to say ‘2.4 Billion people’, and we would expect consistency to say 2,4 billion people. But, as already noted in this thread, that looks like a quote lifted from somewhere else, which would explain the discrepancy.
Going further on the readme – the headers are marked with /// header /// – which looks like the pattern of someone writing computer code – the // is used as a comment block marker in many computer languages, and it’s common for people to pad this out to mark an important comment block.
Further, the redaction of parts using brackets also points to someone very proficient at using keyword search/replace tools to batch strip out particular parts.
In short, whoever did this is very proficient with computers. Given that Phil Jones can’t even draw a trendline in Excel, it’s unlikely to be someone on his team.
So my summary is this : the person is either from Western or Eastern Europe, and not from the UK, or the USA. The person is skilled at reasonably esoteric computer skills, or has access to someone trusted who is. Which kind of restricts the idea that it is a CRU insider to me.
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Hello brc.
As I said, there are “a number of other things” in the “Background and Context” section of the readme file. Not many of them give us anything concrete unfortunately. For that, you usually need a few discrete examples of their fist. I don’t think we’ve enough to do much with. It’s usually a mix of details, insight and psychology. For a look at the technique in action, have a peek at
http://thepointman.wordpress.com/2011/02/11/moderating-trolls-soup-ladles-and-ethics/
P
20
Good points BRC – There are also other pointers in the readme file (if it is not just cut and pasted directly from the emails) that suggest someone very proficient in English as a second language, (looking through the readme file I saw instances if ‘un’ as as prefix when it should have been ‘in’).
THOUGHT:
I agree with Pointmans ‘gemini’ theory – so look for a schizophrenic IT Major that is climate affected (ie. smells damp, or is sunburned) – or a Climate Scientist with a smart, IT savvy and very pissed off wife :))
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A tip. If there have been any E-mail communications between IPCC people and politicians, which have had Swedish politicians in the loop, there might be a possibility to go to the Swedish government and make FOIA requests there. The Swedish FOIA legislation is much stronger than the US or UK equivalent, with openness as default principle (it is also eg constitutional law). Finland also has similar, strong FOIA laws.
Sweden was EU president in 2001 and interestingly enough also in 2009, the half year during the Copenhagen summit. And Swedish politicians also talk religiously about AGW (just as the rest of the politruks).
–Ahrvid
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Thank you Ahrvid! Good for you that the Swedes take FOI seriously. That would be best everywhere.
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So I decided to poke around a bit in the foia2011.org database and see what I found.
In relation to Pointmans’ hypothesis that the second batch contains correspondance between Politicians and Scientists, I stumbled upon this exchange:
http://foia2011.org/index.php?id=189
Which I believe is email 0239.
Basically, I’ll paraphrase.
The email is a forward from Michael Mann to the usual suspects. What it forwards is a conversation between Nick Shulkz (formerly of TCS) asking John P Holdren (formerly of Harvard, now Obama’s science advisor) to clarify the latters statement in the Harvard Crimson regarding the Soon and Baulinaus study that:
I’m not going to go into the respective Merits of Soon & Baulinus vs Mann et al, but the response is a long winded thing to say ‘skeptics bad, warmies good’, peppered with the usual references to ‘big oil’ etc.
Of course the first thing Holdren decided to do is send it to Mann, who then forwarded it around to his buddies.
My point here is that Mann obviously has access to the highest levels on a first name basis. This goes back to 2003, I can’t see how that would have changed in the ensuing years.
In other words, a distinct lack of emails between the scientists and the political operatives is telling, when we know they have emailed in the past prior to coming to power.
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Agreed. Somewhere, I’ve seen this correspondence before (cgate 1?), and it was rattling around in my mind when I commented previously. But I couldn’t remember the particulars.
10
Yes I realise that now- the foia2011 org site has blended both CG1 and CG2 emails, which is fine, but they should be marked somehow as to which archive they come from.
But, the point stands- these guys have been in constant contact in the past, now that all have risen to a much higher level of influence, it’s very hard to believe there aren’t more emails going backwards and forwards.
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I’m going to speculate that Holdren is the political connection as both sets of emails contain the same references to Holdren. The connection between Holdren and the cabal is Mike MacCracken (who at one time posted on this site) which is demonstrated by an email from MacCracken to Phil Jones and cc’d to Holdren and Rosina Bierbaum (World Bank/IPCC connection) in 4671.txt. This shows the connection between MacCracken and Holdren is a shared interest in geoengineering solutions.
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remember when the Coalition allegedly received 400,000 emails from the public denouncing the carbon tax when turnbull was in charge.
why can’t all the aussie sceptic sites organise a similar mass emailing to the Coalition, demanding they acknowledge Climategate I and II and that they discard all policies relating to carbon dioxide.
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Pointman, a great article thanks.
10
Delingpole in WSJ:
28 Nov: WSJ: by James Delingpole: Climategate 2.0
A new batch of leaked emails again shows some leading scientists trying to smear opponents..
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204452104577059830626002226.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
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by Russell S, Collaroy Plateau with Jo getting a mention:
28 Nov: Manly Daily: Opposite to skeptical is gullible
You don’t have to be a scientist to see we have been conned. Last week 5000 emails by prominent scientists pushing the AGW theory were released by an IPCC insider exposing climate change as “The Worst Scientific Scandal Known To Man”….
To find out more on Climategate 2, sites like WUWT and Jo nova will give a balanced view unlike the propaganda peddled by the likes of RealClimate.org as shown in this email written by Michael Mann ‘‘The important thing is to make sure they’re loosing the PR battle. That’s what the site [Real Climate] is about’‘
http://manly-daily.whereilive.com.au/your-news/story/opposite-to-skeptical-is-gullible/
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Archant (UEA-connected Board) press weighs in:
27 Nov: Norfolk Eastern Daily Press: Tom Bristow: UEA’s Tyndall Centre rejects Mail on Sunday claims over influencing BBC policy
And a spokesman for the Tyndall Centre said: “We infrequently provide advice to media programmes for effective science communication when requested.
“We promote accurate information on climate change research, and will speak up against attempts to confuse the public with obscure, unsupported, or unbalanced reporting of the available evidence on climate change.
“The Tyndall Centre supports and encourages society to debate its options to manage our future climate. There is overwhelming evidence that the world is warming because of greenhouse gases.”
http://www.edp24.co.uk/news/environment/uea_s_tyndall_centre_rejects_mail_on_sunday_claims_over_influencing_bbc_policy_1_1138178
see comments: readers are not buying it…
am trying to find out if this is the Tom Bristow writing the above, or if it’s a related or non-related individual:
Tom Bristow, Climate Change University of Edinburgh
http://www.hss.ed.ac.uk/climatechange/people/tom_bristow.htm
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click on pic and compare with the Edinburgh Uni Climate Change pic…
Tom Bristow, EDP and Evening News reporter
http://twitter.com/#!/tomsbristow
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It occurs to me that 5,000 emails must have taken a long time to go through and decide what to release and then organize it all. Someone was certainly well motivated.
The same goes for the encrypted stuff. And with such a long key it could take a lot of time to get the encryption job done.
We’re the beneficiary of someone with a lot of dedication — his/her faults notwithstanding.
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Pointman I love your posts and have read the three you have linked to this post (including the one in your comment)
The only thing which has disappointed me is that unlike the profiler in my favourite crime novels is that you haven’t come with marital status, background parental status, and reasonable address location
Just kidding
In my view we should leave it to FOIA to come out in his or her own time
WUWT has an article http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/11/22/cracking-the-remaining-foia2011-all-7z-file/#comments
and Geoff Sherrington has some wonderful advice – I’ll paste it in full
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sorry I was interrupted but for laymen like me Geoff has some great points on how I can be useful
10
O/T but I thought it would be of interest. I receive the “Mining News” daily email at work and one of the regular commentators in his column “strictly Boardroom” gave Prof Plimer’s latest book a massive thumbs up. This was discussed previously here at:
http://joannenova.com.au/2011/09/how-to-get-expelled-from-school-ian-plimers-new-book/
This is the web site for Mining News: http://www.miningnews.net/
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Bulldust,
It’s an excellent review – pity it can’t be reproduced elsewhere – Mininingnews tends to be sensitive about copying their articles, cited or otherwise.
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We (well most except a naive few) know that its nothing about whether CO2 had any climate effect right from word GO in the seventies. (ref Mead et al, Strong and other eco fascists at the time who INVENTED this crap). Therefore its the grand chess game that is now so obvious that its related to the games of Goldmann Sachs and the bankers that control the EU and the Street that want to destroy the economy of the third world and the EU and US with total political control with help of the cooperate owned media and that of co-operating Gov like Australia’s ABC and UK’s BBC. Now they are trying to start a war with Syria..not related to climate..haha think again same bankers and dark shadow Gov. SO Pointmans right, the leaker and yes he is a leaker not a hacker, must have some pretty big damming stuff id agree with Pointman.
So if they cant get us with criminal CO2 taxes theyll start a nuclear war!
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Well, 5000 more emails from the set stolen a couple of years ago. These excised out of context pieces are, quite frankly, boring. It appears that the hacker who stole these emails posted the ‘meatiest’ bits in Climategate 1.0, and is bringing out the second-tier quote mining now.
Boring. Irrelevant. And, I’ll note, a clear indication of a political agenda quite separate from any scientific relevance. If the hacker has/had any scientific objections whatsoever, they certainly have not presented them. Which seems to indicate that they have none. If the hacker had anything worth presenting, they would have done so to derail the Durban conference…
Sheer politics. Can we please get back to the science, the facts, now?
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Yes KR can we get back to the fact that there is no warming and that these climate scientists have shown that they are pigs in their slop?
Sorry that you find real exposure to truth in how these people behave, boring. Frankly I’m not impressed with that reaction.
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Mark D,
Have you ever tried to convice a priest that his God does not exist?
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That’s the 2nd time I’ve read that dismissive in respect of the emails. Rather than generalise KR, and given you are a superior troll who will make an effort to stay on point and not prevaricate let’s look at them one by one: take this one, email 3234; it’s from Richard Alley:
That is an admission that the hockeystick has serious problems as shown by the divergence; how is that “boring”?
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The 1998 Mann reconstruction used tree ring data to extend the length of the proxy reconstruction, with uncertainties as per Briffa’s reported issues with those records.
Alley (from this email) appears to have disagreed with the use of the tree-ring data – great! That’s science, where people in the field critique each other. Not lock-step political moves, but spirited arguments regarding what data to use, how supportable it is, and the relevance of results.
Mann 1998 was, quite frankly, a first-pass attempt at temperature reconstruction – with issues. Later work (von Storch and Zorita 2004; Cook et al. 2004; Moberg et al. 2005, etc.) show roughly similar results without the tree-ring issue. And Mann 2008 used 1,200 different proxies, multiple analysis methods – producing another ‘hockey-stick’.
Mann 1998 showed too flat a MWP, limited by the data available. Better reconstructions including Moberg 2005 and Mann 2008 show a higher MWP temperature, although not as high as current global conditions.
—
I find the emphasis on Mann 1998 (first pass at this technique), and the lack of discussion of Moberg, Cook, von Storch, Oerlemans, etc. (which came to about the same conclusions) an indication that folks have a strong interest in
the scienceideology, and are arguing from that standpoint alone.10
Agreed.
Unfortunatly everybody who did this in Public was (and is) labeled as “denier”
The “other” Hockey Sticks wher made using the same proxies over and over again. They suffer the same Problem which is: are tree rings (or upside down Tiljander)reliable proxies at all ?
(see for example here):
and:
There is no emphasis on Mann 1998. There is emphasis on the reliability of the proxies used. That is why Briffa had to hide the decline.
10
sorrry, links:
http://climateaudit.org/2011/06/21/amac-upside-down-mann-lives-onin-kemp-et-al-2011/http://climateaudit.org/2011/06/21/amac-upside-down-mann-lives-onin-kemp-et-al-2011/
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Briffa is the person who indicated to Mann that there were difficulties with his data – and the “hide the decline” quote has been put into proper context (i.e., not as a deception) many times.
Mann 2008 goes back 1300 years with no tree ring data whatsoever. This objection to the tree proxies is outdated and silly.
Ice cores, coral, stalagmites, bore-hole temperatures, marine sediments, glacial length records, etc – these all figure into the various reconstructions. In 1998 there weren’t a lot of proxies available, but if you want to complain about the 2008 work you need to show (not just complain about) why 1,200 different proxies are unreliable.
Oh, and you should also discuss Jones 2001, Briffa 2001, Oerlemans 2005 (glacial records only), Moberg 2005 (trees and ocean sediment), D’Arrigio 2006, Wahl 2006, Jansen 2007, Wilson 2007, Juckes 2007, Huang 2008 (boreholes), Ljungqvist 2010, and even Jouzel 2007 (800,000 years reconstruction) – all showing hockey sticks. In other words, the science.
—
Back on topic: This set of emails doesn’t show any issues with the science, just that scientists are people like anyone else. RealClimate puts these into context, which shows (a) that context is important, and (b) that these aren’t all that interesting – which I believe is why the hacker(s) didn’t supply that context.
Personally, I suspect that the hacker(s) dumped the most quotable excerpts in ClimateGate 1.0, and that the other 220,000 emails just aren’t that exciting – the older this news gets, the less impact it will have, and there just may not be anything else worth (mis)quoting.
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@KR
Well don´t tell me, tell Gavin:
Gavin:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2010/07/the-montford-delusion/comment-page-11/#comment-183210
http://climateaudit.org/2010/08/01/the-no-dendro-illusion/
I don´t have to show why they are unreliable, they have to show they are. Plus, you forgot this:
http://climateaudit.org/2011/06/09/mcshane-and-wyner-weights/
have a look at Figure 2.
http://climateaudit.org/2006/02/04/the-wikipedia-spaghetti-graph-and-the-hockey-team/
Why are People labled as “deniers” who asked the same Questions as seen in these Mails ?
10
The Tiljander data has very little effect on the overall reconstruction – in particular they are pretty flat before 1800, and hence didn’t have much influence on the earlier parts. Stoat discusses those sediments here, and it sounds like a fair bit of noise about nothing.
I’ll also note that Mann himself made his 2008 uncertainties (including Tiljander) in these proxies quite clear in the associated Supplemental Information. He certainly didn’t hide it.
Well, are you talking about people who ask about levels of uncertainty, proxy calibration, and regression techniques used, expecting an answer (scientists)? Or are you talking about people who point at anything with an uncertainty range whatsoever and cry out Liar, liar, pants on fire!, which more accurately describes the approach used by “deniers”?
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UL, I’ll also have to note that your most common reference source, to ClimateAudit and McIntyre, is perhaps not the best resource available. McIntyre has been repeatedly shown to have done flawed analyses, in particular regarding the Mann papers.
10
Hi again,
You said:
and:
which is not true. Without tree rings or Tiljander no Hockey Stick. The si as well as Stoat show a Graph with tree rings. With the tree rings, you don´t need the Tiljander data to get the stick. But your claim was that there are 1200 proxies showing the same result. So why not take out two ?
Maybe because in Gavins words it seems to be the case that:
More Tiljander here: http://amac1.blogspot.com/2011/06/voldemorts-question.html
If there are 1200 proxies showing the same result why are the same few used over and over again ?
//
Yes.
//
maybe the PR site of the authors in question is not the best reference for flaws in their own work either. A debate requires two, right ?
Do you know a better reference ?
What are your thoughts ? in witch way is McIntires work i linked to flawed ?
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Reasonable enough to object to RealClimate. However, there have been multiple papers disagreeing with McIntyre’s work on the reconstruction:
Wahl 2007: “According to our assessment, however, this result (MM03, MM05) does not have climatological meaning because the reconstructions clearly fail validation tests”
Rutherford, Mann et al 2003 (partial reply): “It should be noted that some reported putative “errors” in the Mann et al. (1998) proxy data claimed by McIntyre and McKitrick (2003) are an artifact of (a) the use by these latter authors of an incorrect version of the Mann et al. (1998) proxy indicator dataset and (b) their apparent misunderstanding of the methodology used by Mann et al. (1998) to calculate PC series of proxy networks over progressively longer time intervals.”
I would also point to Juckes et al 2007, section 4, where they examine MM03 and MM05 criticisms and conclude that they are not valid.
—
That’s the results of about 5 minutes on Google Scholar. You’ve also really skipped over the 7-8 papers I pointed to WRT other reconstructions with different data – all in reasonable agreement (your linked blog post by McIntyre really amounts to just namecalling). And the fact that the inclusion/exclusion of the Tiljander sediments and tree ring data barely changes reconstructions at all.
UL – I’m sure we could go around on the ‘hockey stick’ a while, but if you take a look at the published works on the topic, McIntyre’s criticisms just do not hold up.
—
Back to the emails – and for me the end of this side discussion on the topic of the ‘hockey stick’.
The emails dumped by the hacker(s) this time around don’t demonstrate anything wrong with the science, particularly when you see them in context. Personal opinion: I don’t think the hacker has anything more up his/her sleeve on this – the older news gets, the less important it is.
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namecalling ?
you didn´t read any of it, right ?
And Mann shows Mann is right means Mann is right. Got that. Thanks for your “Thoughts”
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UL, I did read your link. The McIntyre link you supplied regarding other temperature reconstructions primarily consists of claiming anyone who disagrees with him is part of the “Team”, including some just because of the conclusions of their papers – a clear Guilt by Association logical fallacy. It’s certainly not a real discussion of proxy uncertainties, and definitely not science.
As to clear refutations of McIntyre’s papers:
MM03: Juckes et al. (2007), and Wahl & Ammann (2007).
MM05: von Storch & Zorita (2005), Mann et al. (2007), and Wahl & Ammann (2007).
McIntyre has a clear ax to grind re: Mann and temperature reconstructions, has multiple refutations of his work, and is really (IMO) not a good resource. You’re welcome to disagree – but please note that his work has not held up in the literature.
—
Again with the original topic – the post by R. Alley cohenite introduced shows a serious discussion of data, evidence, uncertainty, and support. Not deception by any means, but rather the interactions at the heart of good science.
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Thanks for “your” “answer” Nevermind.
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what the heck.
is there still a
when you excluse Tiljander AND tree rings ?
you showed a Graph of the SI of Mann 2008. It was made using tree rings.
Agreed ?
Is there a Graph you can show which shows:
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and don´t call me ul. Call me TAG MASTER !
🙂
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Sigh – off to the reconstructions again.
I suggest you look at Mann et al 2008, supplemental data, figure S7, showing the differences between reconstructions with/without dendro data. Mann shows 1700 years of statistically supported reconstruction with dendro data, or 1300 years without it – very little difference for those 1300 years.
As to the Tiljander sediments, Mann et al 2008, supplemental data, figure S8 displays their results with/without the seven proxies (including Tiljander) which are clearly discussed/disclosed in the supplemental Potential data quality problems section.
In both cases – not much impact. The no-dendro NH land set looks marginally warmer (~0.15C from the graph?) around 1000, 1650, and about as much cooler in 1200. The no-dendro NH land/ocean set looks a bit warmer from 1600-1800 – in both cases the numeric support falls off before 700 without the dendro data. The no-sediment set appears slightly cooler between 700-900, otherwise nothing big.
Note that none of these reconstructions show MWP, or in fact any point in the last 1700 years, with temperatures close to or above current temperatures. Specific enough?
I pointed you directly to this supplemental data before, these considerations of data integrity and support in this work… apparently you did not read it.
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Yes, the SI
Here´s a hint from Gavin, at RC:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2010/07/the-montford-delusion/comment-page-11/#comment-183182
no-dendro = Tijl. = 1000 AD
no-dendro/no-Tijl. = 1500 AD
But of corse, I didn´t read it. Right.
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The .7z file contains raw mail files and documents/code that were retrieved from CRU, so the thought of having one file wrapped inside another is wrong.
The tactic is more akin to the wikileaks “insurance” file.
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I guess the authorities called Julian Assange’s bluff on the “insurance” file. He was obviously holding a pair of deuces rather than a royal flush,
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I feel Pointman is correct about two issues.
1) The encrypted files are a deadman trigger or doomsday device for personal protection. Their existence discourages some of the more foolish actions that the authorities may attempt.
2) The encrypted files are likely to contain far more information about the politics and “higher ups”.
On the second issue it is very likely that there are emails exposing the political and financial interests behind the hoax. Some may remember an email in climategate 1.0 from Dr. Mann on 31/10/03 which included the line –
“Let’s let our supporters in higher places use our scientific response to push the broader case against M&M;.”
Who was higher than Dr. Mann and Dr. Jones? We will find out.
The leaker used keyword searches to filter the second batch of emails. Interestingly this filter accidentally caught a number of significant emails revealing the extent of BBC bias, collusion and even activism on climate issues. Also accidentally included were around 30 emails relating to the World Bank. Because these topics were not intentionally included in the filter, it is almost certain that far more damaging material exists in the further 200,000 emails.
This 200,000 megatonne doomsday device is going to go off. The only question is when. The casualties will of course include unelected UN powerbrokers, politicians, scientists, NGOs and many journalists. I am guessing blast will also destroy some of our popular lexicon, including such words and phrases as;
“post normal science”
“precautionary principle”
“consensus”
“bio-crisis”
“bio-debt”
and the ever popular
“redistributed under a framework of UN global governance”
In the meantime Mr. Robert Watson and others should probably stop worrying and learn to love the bomb.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmCKJi3CKGE
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Check this 27/11/2011 article by David Rose at Mail Online re the AGW/BBC link as revealed from the latest email release. It’s no surprise to me as the BBC has for some time had most or all of their Pension Fund locked in renewable energy investments through IIGCC.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-206676/BBC-sought-advice-global-warming-scientists-economy-drama-music-game-shows.html
I had previously seen the 2007 BBC document mentioned concerning restricting air time to sceptics. Unfortunately I lost it in a computer malfunction. Does anyone have a link?
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Sorry, that link in 51 now goes to a different article. Google ‘BBC and giving sceptics air time’ and go to “BBC sought advice from global warming scientists on economy”.
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Wow! That BBC document is going viral. Google “the weight of evidence no longer justifies equal space being given to opponents of the consensus”. It’s bringing up 56,700 hits to now!
6-10pm EST
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Maybe the WUWT article is a good place to start?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/11/27/climategate-2-impartiality-at-the-bbc/
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The ABC is running another non-scientist piece supporting action at Durban:
http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/3699540.html
No mention yet of ClimateGate 2.0, so I took the opportunity to comment on that, assuming it gets through:
It seems oddly misanthropic that this chap wouldn’t rather see the money spent on helping the world’s poor right now. No accounting for how some people irrationally rationalise things, I guess…
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Hey Bulldust,
I heard on ABC NewsRadio this arvo, direct from Durban, driving home, a cracker!!
ABC Global Warminista Journo Interviewing some stupid bimbo from OXFAM, she raved on about the dangers of Global Warming and then said “It`s meant to be summer now and it`s 16 degrees”, Oh MY God! It`s so dangerous….
HAHAHA, It is meant to be about Global Warming and they are complaining about how cold it is!!!
Is that not ironic?
Did not Copenhagen have record cold snaps and Cancun have record cold snaps as well?
Did the almighty ones in power , pick Durban, because the weather was bound to be mild to hot?
Is this Karma coming back to haunt the IPCC?
Pass the popcorn, beer and tv remote, it`s gonna be a long fortnight….
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Bulldust. I’ve just sent the ABC the following News tip.
Several days ago 5000 more emails were released by the University of East Anglia whistleblower or hacker. A Google search on Climategate 2 currently brings up 6,950,000 results. A search on “our ABC” site does not bring up even 1 mention.
Your bias is really showing this time but if you hurry and write or broadcast something you may just avoid being the last news organisation in the world to report on it. A good place to start would be on the emails showing the collusion and financial inducements between AGW proponents and the BBC to promote the scam and prevent sceptic views being aired which is currently going viral on the Internet!
Hopefully the next media inquiry proposed (but I bet it won’t be by Bob Brown) will be into the reasons the ABC has carried out the same one-sided heavily biased approach in Australia.
The ABC has become a truly disgusting organisation with zero credibility and like most Australians I weep for what you once were in a time when you had journalists instead of brainwashed or brain-dead opinion-pushers of their own agendas!
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Judging the comments the leaker left behind, he seems to be pretty much off the Lomborg songsheet, and it always looked to me that Lomborg was lobbying for someone/something. How could he be so dispassionate and logical on one hand and yet be a believer?
We have concieved of the climate war all along as us versus them – but what about another player?
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Gosh!
Could FOiR-CG2 be a near relative of The TEAM.
My first profiling came to an elder with a personnel sensitivity issue-(gay-inferiority complex-ethic driven,to some extent-a main team player who plays the fool well.
I realise it may be someone who has knowledge of the science fraud. This person also adds in the emails preface that “Nations must invest $37 trillion in energy technologies by 2030 to stabilize
greenhouse gas emissions at sustainable levels.”
So humanity needs to cut down on GHG emissions. IS FOiR a relative-‘s of a one or more of the Team.
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Etc.
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I need to stop speculation and look towards a formal address to the person/s involved.
I think they are impervious to the Co2 akka GHG drives the warming.
Why?
Idealism.
Are there more persons with private access to the inner lives and emails of the team?
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The whole CAGW team (politicians, journalists, IPCC, and their supporters) deserve to be treated as treacherous criminals.
‘Climate science’ as practiced by the likes of Mann, Jones and the rest of ‘the hockey team’ bears no resemblance to real science. Pal-review, gate-keeping, bullying of authors, editors and reviewers who do not support ‘the consensus’ has exacerbated publication bias (which normally refers to the preference of editors to favour publication of positive studies rather than negative studies). IMOP the nonsense will not stop until it is defunded (preferably before irretrievable damage is done to the Australian economy).
We can only hope that FOIA2011 chooses to pull the plug on the miscreants sooner rather than later.
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My guess is that he (not she) is someone like Daniel Ellsberg, all those years ago.
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Not really, Ellsberg was manipulated into releasing a CIA version hostile to the Pentagon. It was as much of a fantasy as the government’s version of the “truth” and included definitely faked documents.
Climategate is an example of a genuine leak which is why the coopted media avoids it like the plague. The Mockingbird media ran with the Ellsberg material like good little Wurlitzer operatives.
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It’s been said before, but follow the money!
19 October 2011. World’s largest investors, worth $20 trillion, step up call for urgent policy action on climate change.
http://www.iigcc.org/_data/assets/pdf_file/0019/15283/2011-Global-Investor-Statement-Press-Release.pdf
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The emails of one and two release show one glaringly obvious fact, these people are not doing any scientific research. The billions of dollars spent on these people and they are playing fudge the figures and please the politicians. Real scientists would be proposing and actuating experiments to prove or disprove the CO2 calamity they push. The technology has been around since the space age began. The USAF did high altitude measurements of all the parameters needed in the 1950’s and 60’s do them again with modern measuring systems and compare.
These people in the emails are not scientists they are pretend scientists doing the bidding of the politicians.
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Can I do an offtopic? A certain non-skeptical skeptical science site has released a new book, “The Debunking Handbook, a guide to debunking myths by John Cook and Stephan Lewandowsky”. Lets hope all their worst myths receive a thorough bebunking!
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It is very quiet over at that non-skeptical site.
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Alphanumeric passwords such as YnM8%2a (28.9 bits of entropy) are very hard to remember and very easy to crack.
Long plain text passphrases such as MaryhadalittlelambitsfleecewasawhiteassnowandeverywherethatMarywentthelambwassuretogo (403.7 bits of entropy) are very easy to remember and virtually impossible to crack.
http://rumkin.com/tools/password/passchk.php
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http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevezwick/2011/11/28/climategate-2-0-more-like-climatefluff-3-12/4/
Steve Zwick, self proclaimed conservative debunks
Climategate 2.0.
Just regular good ol fashion science folks, nothing to see here.
And shame on the denial machine!
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“So, what do we have? On one side, we have scientists kicking around ideas, criticizing each other, disagreeing, getting angry, and changing their views as new information comes to light – all in a valiant effort to create a massive document summarizing complex scientific issues on which there is broad consensus but disagreement on minor issues. The areas of disagreement, by the way, are on the degree to which man is causing the climate to change – not on whether it’s happening or whether man is the cause.”
You heard that right… The areas of disagreement are on the degree to which man is causing the climate to change.
It matters not whether men account for 0.001% of climate change or 99.99% of climate change, the consensus exists and necessitates immediate global action costing billions upon billions of dollars.
And what about the emails that were left out of this fluff debunking… Like this one…
What if climate change appears to be just mainly a multi-decadal natural fluctuation? They’ll kill us probably.
Observations do not show rising temperatures throughout the tropical troposphere unless you accept one single study and approach and discount a wealth of others. This is just downright dangerous. We need to communicate the uncertainty and be honest. Phil, hopefully we can find time to discuss these further if necessary […]
I also think the science is being manipulated to put a political spin on it which for all our sakes might not be too clever in the long run.
It seems that a few people have a very strong say, and no matter how much talking goes on beforehand, the big decisions are made at the eleventh hour by a select core group.
I can’t overstate the HUGE amount of political interest in the project as a message that the Government can give on climate change to help them tell their story. They want the story to be a very strong one and don’t want to be made to look foolish.
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Actually, a real “dead man’s trigger” would be for the passcode to automagically appear within a certain time frame of the owner NOT doing something.
For example, an albeit clumsy but reasonably reliable way to create a “dead man’s trigger” would be to already “publish” the passcode in a number of forward dated blogs that the owner must change the forward publish date/time on every day, with a day missed causing the blog post to appear, thereby automagically revealing the key.
Sure, might not be noticed if it was an obscure blog, but if it was a popular read by many, numerous times a day blog …
Ain’t a “dead man’s trigger” if it requires a live man to press it.
regarDS
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A simple will sitting sealed up in some lawyer’s office is a ‘dead man’s trigger’ if it contains information that incriminates someone no?
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Wouldn’t it be a hoot if the leaker is a member of the community of antivirus software publishers?
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If that is the strategy, I would respectfully offer that it is a strategy that will not help much and could hurt the leaker badly.
The climategate players know full well what they did.
If there are truly dam*ing e-mails available in the code-protected horde, they are likely to lose value daily.
Releasing them early and loudly offers the best chance to protect the leaker(s) from retribution. If they are opened up (and they eventually will be), too late, those exposed will likely get the lapdogs in mediia and law enforcement to look away as unpleasantries are dont to the brave leaker(s).
Media is well practiced at ignoring news and events that do not fit their increasingly arrogant prejudices.
Time is not on the side of the leakers if there is anything of interest to skeptics in them.
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Releasing all the information at once is a strategy guaranteed to fail. The press and blogosphere will lose all interest in a few weeks. Julian Assange has learned this the hard way. The most effective strategy is a continuous slow leak over a few years.
The likelihood of the encrypted files being cracked within a the next few years is effectively zero. Even a moderately secure passphrase takes billions of years to crack with a supercomputer. It is very unlikely that the authorities will even bother to make a token effort.
The hacker was presumably using an anonymous proxy server from outside the EU. They have no likelihood of being caught and punished.
You will notice that no politician has been implicated. The politicians are already walking away from Kyoto II. Many will be openly sceptical by the start of the new year.
This means that only the scientists are being targeted. The scientists will simply be abandoned by the politicians as a liability.
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I am in need of assistance.
I am unable to read the ClimateGate 2.0 e-mails, until I hear from Tristan that I have Dunning-Kruger (and s/he doesn’t).
Could someone locate Tristan and get me clearance to study the subject? My tin-foil hat is ready (and I can’t wait to try it out, since I have improved the design to a tri-corn, similar to what was in vogue during the Colonial times; that would be the times of the Colonies on THIS side of the Big Pond … … ). I’ve found that the tri-corn reflects incoming radiation, not only at multiple wavelenghts, but is more effective against dispersive signals, as opposed to the directed signals, like the Black Helicopters used to use.
Thanks in advance for all your help,
Mark H.
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Dear Mark,
If you feel unqualified to read the emails, then you definitely don’t have Dunning-Kruger. If, however, you feel that reading and understanding them is child’s play, then maybe you shouldn’t read them….
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I’ve said it before, the BIG oil companies have a motivation to collude to limit supply. The price goes up and they make more money without having to lift a finger – and so does the government…
I think they’re both in this together.
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[…] comes into struggle with the principles to which he himself owes his existence as a man." Pointman — A dead mans hand detonator on hidden emails may protect ClimateGate whistleblower J… […]
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It just keeps getting better
http://iceagenow.info/2011/11/canada-set-leave-kyoto-protocol/#comment-8951
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Just a few links ifound:
http://junkscience.com/2011/11/27/climategate-2-0-wigley-quantifying-climate-sensitivity-cannot-be-done/
http://junkscience.com/2011/11/27/climategate-2-0-mann-did-pad-his-data-a-little-says-jones/
http://junkscience.com/2011/11/25/climategate-2-0-briffa-gets-to-review-his-own-work/
http://junkscience.com/2011/11/25/climategate-2-0-mann-to-revkin-use-me-but-dont-quote-me/
For more than ten years we have watched for “Carbonazis” try to do to Earth with CO2 what ENRON did to California with electricity; make themselves very rich with lies and deceptions about a non-existent crisis. Along the way we have seen data manipulation, siting of temperature sensors near sources of heat (in one notorious case right next to a trash incinerator), collusion with the corporate media to keep opposing data from the public, even as the former head of Greenpeace admits making up claims about Greenland losing its ice cover, Phil Jones admits warming stopped 15 years ago (which anyone living through the last four hard winters already knew) and Al Gore insisting that the temperature of the Earth’s core is “millions of degrees” while he uses computer generated images of collapsing arctic ice for his “documentary” (which has already been denounced by the British courts for containing numerous lies and misrepresentations.)
The global warming cult is not interested in saving the Earth, and shamelessly exploits the public’s desire to save the Earth to enrich and empower themselves, living like royalty as they tell the rest of the people they must live more poorly.
“We need to get some broad based support, to capture the public’s imagination… So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements and make little mention of any doubts… Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest.” – Prof. Stephen Schneider, Stanford Professor of Climatology, lead author of many IPCC reports
“We’ve got to ride this global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing in terms of economic and environmental policy.” – Timothy Wirth, President of the UN Foundation
“No matter if the science of global warming is all phony… climate change provides the greatest opportunity to bring about justice and equality in the world.” – Christine Stewart, former Canadian Minister of the Environment
“I believe it is appropriate to have an ‘over-representation’ of the facts on how dangerous it is, as a predicate for opening up the audience.” – Al Gore, Climate Change activist
“It doesn’t matter what is true, it only matters what people believe is true.” – Paul Watson, co-founder of Greenpeace
“We are on the verge of a global transformation. All we need is the right major crisis…” – David Rockefeller, Club of Rome executive member
“The concept of national sovereignty has been immutable, indeed a sacred principle of international relations. It is a principle which will yield only slowly and reluctantly to the new imperatives of global environmental cooperation.” – UN Commission on Global Governance report
“Effective execution of Agenda 21 will require a profound reorientation of all human society, unlike anything the world has ever experienced a major shift in the priorities of both governments and individuals and an unprecedented redeployment of human and financial resources. This shift will demand that a concern for the environmental consequences of every human action be integrated into individual and collective decision-making at every level.” – UN Agenda 21
“The goal now is a socialist, redistributionist society, which is nature’s proper steward and society’s only hope.” – David Brower, founder of Friends of the Earth
“If we don’t overthrow capitalism, we don’t have a chance of saving the world ecologically. I think it is possible to have an ecologically sound society under socialism. I don’t think it is possible under capitalism” – Judi Bari, principal organiser of Earth First!
“Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsiblity to bring that about?” – Maurice Strong, founder of the UN Environment Programme
“A massive campaign must be launched to de-develop the United States. De-development means bringing our economic system into line with the realities of ecology and the world resource situation.” – Paul Ehrlich, Professor of Population Studies
“The only hope for the world is to make sure there is not another United States. We can’t let other countries have the same number of cars, the amount of industrialization, we have in the US. We have to stop these Third World countries right where they are.” – Michael Oppenheimer, Environmental Defense Fund
“Global Sustainability requires the deliberate quest of poverty, reduced resource consumption and set levels of mortality control.” – Professor Maurice King
“Human beings, as a species, have no more value than slugs.” – John Davis, editor of Earth First! Journal
“Humans on the Earth behave in some ways like a pathogenic micro-organism, or like the cells of a tumor.” – Sir James Lovelock, Healing Gaia
“The Earth has cancer and the cancer is Man.” – Club of Rome, Mankind at the Turning Point
And finally:
“Neither snow nor ice nor frostbite (let alone Climategate 2.0) will deter us from building a socialist global New World Order on the myth of global warming!” — Official White Horse Souse
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com
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An interesting theory Mr Pointman
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Mod: This is quite O/T, so if it goes bye-bye, no hard feelings.
Tristan: Did you see that Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (at Oregon State University) canceled a debate on CAGW, because the panel would have included skeptics?
I’m sure their motives were to protect those poor skeptics from being smackdowned by the “believers” … … …
John B: sorry you missed the point of the previous message.
Regards,
Mark H.
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Came to this article late, but well worth the read! Not only to gain an insight into Unus, but to see how others seek to gain insights into Unus (pointman). Well written and very good!
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The political connection is here: Rosina Bierbaum , Mike MacCracken and John Holdren. See email 4671.txt showing a shared interest in geoengineering that connects them.
MacCracken is a participant in many climategate threads and has even posted on this site in the past. One of his email addresses is usgcrp.gov. Google usgcrp to what this is.
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[…] JO NOVA BLOG Some thoughts and some questions about the Climategate 2.0 release Guestpost by Pointman http://joannenova.com.au/2011/11/pointman-a-dead-mans-hand-detonator-on-hidden-emails-may-protect-cl… […]
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