Today, Roger Pielke Jr. discusses his contributions to the Purdue Discussion, which included Judy Curry and Andy Revkin. Reading, I pondered whether Mann’s pre-election editorial might worsen the climate for climate scientists.
Roger’s observation about Mann’s op-ed includes:
In one interesting exchange, Revkin brought up as an example of the messy interface of science and politics Michael Mann’s Washington Post op-ed last month that sought to associate the climate science community with the fortunes of Democrats in the mid-term elections. I followed Revkin’s criticism of Mann’s op-ed by arguing that in the face of Republican-led attacks Mann made a decision (and it was a decision) to characterize this issue in politically partisan terms. He could have instead chosen to characterize the issue of his personal fortunes as one of academic freedom and integrity, which matters irrespective of one’s political stance.
The fairly obvious implication of Mann’s acceptance and amplification of the stark partisan terms of the debate offered by those Republicans is to make not only himself, but the broader climate science community, poster children for the Tea Party movement.
Beginning with, “As a scientist, I shouldn’t have a stake in the upcoming midterm elections, but unfortunately, it seems that I — and indeed all my fellow climate scientists — do. “, including references to “pseudo-science”, “cigarettes”, and “anti-science”, and naming specific Republican legislators Mann’s editorial is ideally suited to amplify partisan sentiments vis-a-vis climate change.
The loaded language evokes an emotional response rather than an intellectual one. It seems to me this is a rather unwise choice for climate scientists – activists who would prefer the narrative of scientists as intellectual rather than scientists as high strung divas dominated by right brain thinking. But maybe it’s understandable Mann wrote in this style “because we’re hardwired not to always think clearly when we’re scared”.
Now, let’s turn to some specific things that worried Mann when he wrote his October 8, 2010 editorial:
Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) has threatened that, if he becomes chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, he will launch what would be a hostile investigation of climate science. The focus would be on e-mails stolen from scientists at the University of East Anglia in Britain last fall that climate-change deniers have falsely claimed demonstrate wrongdoing by scientists, including me. Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.) may do the same if he takes over a committee on climate change and energy security.
The elections have now taken place. With Republicans assuming control of the House, Darrel_Issa, barring any personal catastrophes, Issa will control the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. We can’t know for sure whether he will initiate investigations into climategate, but he may.
What of Sensenbrenner? Such was the force of the Republican Tsunami, the wave made it to Wisconsin and AP called the race for him by 8:54pm on Election day. We can’t know for sure if he will initiate investigations, but he may.
Given some perception that the UK investigations were less thorough that might be desired by US taxpayers whose money funded some of the American scientists and even some work at CRU, I suspect one or the other will decide to hold investigations. When they are held, journalists will cover the story.
Politics being politics, I predict at least two more years of climate science news being dominated by discussions of Climategate. If that occurs, will Mann continue to publish emotionally laden editorials in major newspapers? We’ll have to wait and see.
Perhaps in only two years we can fainlly get a clear picture of what Mann, GISS, and other big promoters of AGW have been up to, but I doubt it. As Mann deomonstrates, they are going to work very hard to continue the sham pose that they are above critical outside review and audit.
Off topic, but just when we thought ‘Lunchgate’ was dead, Bishop Hill reports that Acton has issued a statement about it. The ‘team’ admits they did see Monckton AFTER lunch, but no mention is made of Delingpole’s ‘dis-invitation’ !
I predict estimates of climate sensitivity will be unchanged by whatever investigations take place.
Lucia, you work for an entirely government-funded operation (Argonne). How would you like to have your entire email and work record subject to court subpoena, drummed-up media charges, congressional investigations? You wouldn’t find that “chilling”? You wouldn’t have an “emotional” reaction?
No of course not, you’re a scientist. Riiiight.
But even as an unemotional robotic scientist, wouldn’t you find it much more advantageous, even logical, to do your work in a research area that wouldn’t be subject to such possible interruptions? That’s what “chilling” means.
Mann and every other scientist’s work is already subject to oversight and analysis, every day – the scientific system of peer review and published work, which either builds on and sustains previous work, or tears it apart if it’s wrong. There’s no mercy among scientists. And there’s no science in political investigations of this sort.
I find your cheering here reprehensible. But not surprising, unfortunately, it’s hardly the first time you’ve shown this side of yourself.
Mann’s been a busy boy. He recently had a rather similar article appear in New Scientist
I see in this article he adds lines of attack (probably not novel but not widely used before) that his critics were acid-rain denying, and ozone-hole denying – as well as the usual big-oil and pro-smoking claims.
In the New Scientist article, we also learn that Mann’s critics, or at least one of them, is allegedly homophobic.
Unfortunately I fail to see the relevance of any of these insults even if true. He might as well say that his critics are fat and ugly – and given long enough, I expect he will eventually.
P.S.
I posted a long comment in the story about Judith Curry which seems to have failed to appear. Probably a glitch? Or did I step out of line in some way?
Arthur, he works as a government employee, and even government employees are entitled to political views, but does anybody consider it dubious that he is essentially saying “because of my role as a government employee, I’m opposed to party/candidate X”?
I’m asking because I don’t know what the standards are in the US. In various other Western countries it would be considered extremely inappropriate at best.
I think Judy Curry-style approach will prevail. The Team will fight on with the likeminded on the opposite site to provide entertainment 😉
As for Mann, he is apparently unable to see the AGW debate (what debate? The science is settled!) in any other terms than a battle between good and evil.
Prof. Mann’s New Scientist Opinion piece of Nov. 2, 1010 is Professional climate change deniers’ crusade continues .
The themes are similar to those expressed in the WaPo Op-Ed, and in earlier articles and interviews.
Prof. Mann appears to believe that nearly all criticisms of his work or of his conduct are politically motivated by people of ill will. Critics are either shills or dupes of the Fossil Fuel Conspiracy. None have anything of substance to contribute.
It is unfortunate that certain individuals — some who hold political office and have names beginning with “C” — have stepped up to act out such roles in this passionate play.
It is unfortunate that certain thought leaders in climate science have signed on to Prof. Mann’s narrative, and adopted him as the discipline’s poster child.
Both are mistakes.
Anyone else doing government funded work is going to face exactly what Arthur Smith is holding out as a grave threat.
It is called the golden rule: he who has the gold sets the rule.
To the extent that govt. funded science has been exempt from common sense rules about transparency and disclosure, that rule has been less than effective.
But at least we are moving past the time when the AGW community climaed the e-mails were ‘private’.
“My fellow scientists and I must be ready to stand up to blatant abuse from politicians who seek to mislead and distract the public. They are hurting American science. And their failure to accept the reality of climate change will hurt our children and grandchildren, too.”
.
Not nearly so much as this stupid editorial will hurt you Micheal.
.
Michael Mann seems to me more than a bit disconnected from reality. Does he imagine that writing a hostile editorial about what specific congressmen might investigate (and suggesting at the same time those congressmen are bad people) makes the investigations less likely? Or makes it less likely that he will be a prime target of those investigations?
.
It is like he is trying to lean into an oncoming left hook. Crazy, just crazy.
Arthur, You are just as partisan as Mann. Face it, your bogus movement is toast and your goose is cooked.
Arthur Smith,
It seems you find it surprising that scientists who become involved in politics are subject to political attacks. This is naive.
Re: feabqtcqy (Nov 5 09:51),
Ack, Firefox’s auto-fill has exposed my lame joke from an earlier thread. In case anyone was wondering, the text in #58850 was not generated by that anomaly-guessin’ spambot.
“….you work for an entirely government-funded operation (Argonne). How would you like to have your entire email and work record subject to court subpoena…..”
Dude….under the above, email is REQUIRED by law to be part of the record, subject to FOI and subpoena. My public agency REQUIRES all email on a project to be both preserved electronically, but also printed for the hard copy file.
If you are using a public email account, EXPECT that it can be pulled on request. In some agencies, it is even ILLEGAL to use a private account for discussions of public projects.
I like how SteveF basically admits that the attacks on michale Mann are personal and will only get more intense because he complains about them.
Of course, the reason why so many skeptics want Mann investigated is because they have been unable to challenge his conclusions anywhere other than their own personal blogs. Of course, this is all due to a conspiracy perpetrated by Nature, Science, the lamestream media, Liberals, The National Academies of Science of all industrialized nations and thousands of scientists who do so to keep making the payments on their gold-plated Jaguars.
AMac=spambot!!!!!
🙂
Nobody has a problem with that. What people have a problem with is politicians with an agenda abusing their ability to get a hold of those emails and skim them for whatever perceived crookedness they can find. If you want to, you can send me all of your emails over the past year and I can show you how easy it is to build a false case against someone.
Borfis,
You are raging, please calm down. I do not care if Mann is investigated or not. His work is at best technically weak, but quite irrelevant to what really matters… the true climate sensitivity. But that does not mean that he is not acting in a fashion that is simply stupid. You do not publicly insult politicians who may investigate you and who control funding for your research if you have any sense at all.
Boris,
“SteveF basically admits that the attacks on michale Mann are personal”
Nope. They are purely political attacks. The congressmen involved do not even know Michael Mann. Scientists who become involved in politics (and calling for the electoral defeat of a party in a Washington Post editorial is politics!) will often suffer political attacks. What part of this surprises you?
The name typos today are humorous… first we have michale mann(michale is pronounced Michelle)… then we have borfis
Sorry, Boris (not Borfis)
So let me get this straight Dr Pielke Jr., Republicans, other conservatives, denier,s and skeptics of all persuasions can feel free to politicize the entire scientific question of climate change, spreading disinformation and characterizing climate science as “the greatest hoax” or a “scam,” threatening climate scientists, and linking a genuinely important scientific question with ideological fears of socialism and one-world government, but climate scientists are just to turn the other cheek, smile, and talk in measured tones about scientific integrity and academic freedom.
Mann is bececoming quite the Manniac.
He frankly acts like someone who knows he is going to get caught and is trying to prep the jury pool by getting his story out before he lawyers up.
His appeal to the children and grandkids is particularly pathetic. Is he going to write a book called ‘Storms of my Granchildren Too’ ?
I would suggest that the attacks he has experienced are so far political, but that that his problems will become legal before it is over.
Arthur–
Cheering? Weird verb choice.
FWIW: I don’t find the thought that someone might FOI my ANL emails “chilling”. I should think that if I felt “chilled” I would not blog. I notice Mann and Schmidtt blog and conclude they can’t feel all that chilled.
hunter,
You may be right, but I think it more likely information that damages his credibility will be found, and he will follow the Phil Jones path to a non-administrative position.
At some point (for his sake) I hope he sees that the in-your-face political attacks are unwise.
Owen
No one suggested Mann or climate scientist have to turn the other cheek &etc.
Climate scientists can and may do whatever they like. Those in the peanut gallery can and may observe what the Mann or the climate scientists do and comment on it. We may also observe whether the behavior of scientists is in their own self interest; if they wish the climate scientists can explain why they think their actions were wise, useful, munificent or whatever.
As for my diagnosis: I think it was not in Mann’s self interest to write that editorial. He is shooting himself in the foot.
To the extent that the scientist’s position is that they do stick to facts, make fact based conclusions, have scientific integrity and it is not in their interest to write emotion laden editorials advancing conspiracy theory linkakages (cigarrettes) while attacking a particular party as “anti-science”.
I think it’s perfectly fair to observe that Mann’s behavior is not in his self interest. I think what I am doing does not suggest that they are any less entitled to write emotion laden editorials as Mary the Psychic who lives over the pancake shop in Lisle. Both have equal rights to express themselves emotionally if they wish to do so.
Lucia,
“FWIW: I don’t find the thought that someone might FOI my ANL emails “chillingâ€.”
That suggests you have nothing to hide…. how is that possible, when Boris says he can show “how easy it is to build a false case against someone” based on email messages?
Looking at the Climategate e-mails, it looks like the “team” has been successful at suppressing debate by using ad-hominem attacks, threats, and vilification. If one has a technique that works it is natural to continue using it. Why is anyone surprised that as the CAGW debate enters a different arena that Mr. Mann would continue in the same vein?
SteveF– I work part time on a small project. The communications are pretty bland. Reporters would be very, very bored.
Now… if they got my *rankexploits* email….!!!! They’d discover stuff in the inbox coming from my blog. They would learn I get email from someone named “boris”. Now, that’s chilling!
SteveF, I’m quite confident that ten years of emails can be decontextualized to ‘demonstrate’ something that’s untrue, but I guess the way to find out *for sure* in this case is to submit an FOI request for lucia’s emails and give it a try.
As for Mann, reading this is like listening to a club whose members all have long-term memory disfunction. You’d think there was no history before ‘Climategate’.
Mike Mann’s free to comment on that history, just as Judy Curry is free to do interviews and public panels touting her view that the IPCC is corrupt and that Mike Mann was promoted too fast (at least, that’s what she seems to be saying, at this particular moment; this could change at the next particular moment, given that it’s Judy Curry).
Owen,
Climate scientists started this game in 1988 with the stage managed testimony of Hansen giving his big sci-fi movie denoument of the climate godzilla coming to crush us all.
AGW promoters have never been the demure quiet lab coated innocents. They have been rocking the public square, winning accolades, money, grants, prizes, tenure, etc. for decades selling fear. All golden ages come to an end, and the golden age of climate hysteria is not immune to that inevitability.
Does anyone know if Inspector Plod is still investigating the “stolen” emails? It’s been a year now. Hopefully the nefarious felon/brave truth disseminator* will be exposed soon.
*Delete as your prejudices deem appropriate.
Steve Sullivan,
If the CRU e-mails have been decontextualized, then perhaps there should be sufficient enough more e-mails released to recontextualize them?
No Lucia, what would be chilling would be getting an email from someone called borfis
Lucia you are right as usual. Climategate is not going to go away. The inquiries failed to adress the key questions. Every time Mann opens his mouth he makes a fool of himself and stirs up more skepticism. Your emails would be of no interest to anybody, and nor would mine.
By the way, how are people planning to celebrate the first climategat anniversary in a couple of weeks time?
And all along, right from the start, AGW underminers with deep-pocket industry support have been sowing disinformation in the classic tobacco mode. Fair fight?
Meanwhile, climate sensitivity to radiative forcings blithely goes on being somewhere between 2-4. ‘Golden age’ or no.
Arthur Smith (Comment#58843) November 5th, 2010 at 9:25 am | Reply w/ Link
Lucia, you work for an entirely government-funded operation (Argonne). How would you like to have your entire email and work record subject to court subpoena, drummed-up media charges, congressional investigations? You wouldn’t find that “chilling� You wouldn’t have an “emotional†reaction?
No of course not, you’re a scientist. Riiiight.
But even as an unemotional robotic scientist, wouldn’t you find it much more advantageous, even logical, to do your work in a research area that wouldn’t be subject to such possible interruptions? That’s what “chilling†means.
Mann and every other scientist’s work is already subject to oversight and analysis, every day – the scientific system of peer review and published work, which either builds on and sustains previous work, or tears it apart if it’s wrong. There’s no mercy among scientists. And there’s no science in political investigations of this sort.
I find your cheering here reprehensible. But not surprising, unfortunately, it’s hardly the first time you’ve shown this side of yourself.
###############
As I explained over at Judiths place, when climate science came under attack the scientists had only three options. These are options that we all face in any kind of conflict.
1. Ignore the attack
2. Delegitamize the attacker
3. Attack the argument.
Normally, scientist do either #1 or #3. In fact if you read through the mails you will see they every often argue about whether they should do #1 or #2.
Mann made a choice for option #2. For whatever reason. I do question his right to do that. I question his skill. It’s clear from the evidence that #2 has not worked. It is empirically true that it hasnt worked. Neither will Mann’s attempt to frame things politically work. It has not worked because of the following.
A. It backfires and climate scientists become the targets
B. There are more climate scientists than skeptics and generally speaking you’ll find bad motives, the apearence of bad motives on both sides. CLimate scientists are a target rich environment. Don’t start a fight on that battlefield
C. Scientists suck at #2.
Mann’s take on things his “politicizing” of the debate starts early. It starts BEFORE McIntyre even comes on the scene.
Read this exchange between Briffa and Mann in 2002.
http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=263&filename=1018045075.txt
Mann:
“In the meantime, there is a lot of
damage control that needs to be done and, in my opinion, you’ve done a disservice to the
honest discussions we had all had in the past, because you’ve misrepresented the
evidence. Many of us are very concerned with how Science dropped the ball as far as the
review process on this paper was concerned. This never should have been published in
Science, for the reason’s I outlined before (and have attached for those of you who
haven’t seen them). I have to wonder why the functioning of the review process broke
down so overtly here,
Mike”
Briffa:
“Finally, we have to say that we do not feel constrained in what we say to the media or
write in the scientific or popular press, by what the sceptics will say or do with our
results. We can only strive to do our best and address the issues honestly. Some
“sceptics” have their own dishonest agenda – we have no doubt of that. If you believe that
I, or Tim, have any other objective but to be open and honest about the uncertainties in
the climate change debate, then I am disappointed in you also.
Best regards
Keith (and Tim)”
Finally, I worked in an enviroment where every 15 minutes of my day was subject to audit. Where mishandling a document was a felony. Where we were under constant survellience from internal departments, the government, watchdogs, congress, and real live spies. Everything I did was subject to subpoena or searches. My mail, my phone, my life, my past. Not a problem. There was no emotion in it whatsoever.
I suggest everyone back up to 2002 and do some reading:
“I think that it is a bit harse to say that the paper should not have been
published. While I might wish to change some wording in the paper
and express things a bit differently knowing what I know now, I don’t
think that the paper is fatally flawed, like you do. I should also point out
that I have received a number of emails from respected scientists in
global change research who do not appear to share your opinion. On
the other hand, I have also received a couple of emails from certified
nuts, which is what you are obviously most concerned about. I am not
happy with such people, but I have also been savaged by similar nuts
like John Daly in the past. So, I guess I can’t win.
Finally, this whole global change debate totally sucks because it is so
politicized. It reminds me too much of the ugly acid rain/forest decline
debate that I was caught in the middle of years ago. I am quite happy
to leave global change to others in the future.
Ed”
Mann starts to get people in line. Attacked from both sides, some people just step out of the arena.
Hunter asks:
“If the CRU e-mails have been decontextualized, then perhaps there should be sufficient enough more e-mails released to recontextualize them?”
One wonders then why the hackers themselves didn’t drop the whole load on us?
Meanwhile, as Mann notes , the cynical, blatantly non-scientific fishing attempts goes on:
“Sadly, on 4 October, Cuccinelli returned to the fray with another civil subpoena going over similar ground. He targeted a single internal University of Virginia research grant. The grant in question had nothing to do with the “hockey stick” work, or even climate change; it was for the investigation of interactions between land, atmosphere and vegetation in the African savannah. That Cuccinelli would try to argue that the funding of this grant allows him to go on a fishing expedition to trawl through 10 years’ worth of email in an effort to discredit the hockey stick work speaks to the strength of his beliefs.”
Even Pielke Jr. thinks Cooch is way on the wrong side of this, and IIRC so does lucia – making their concern for tone and ‘how it looks’ admirably bipartisan if so. How ’bout you, hunter? Or is the *hunt* really the point?
Steven Sullivan,
“AGW underminers with deep-pocket industry support have been sowing disinformation in the classic tobacco mode. Fair fight?”
Don’t know about fair, but do you know where one can sign up for that deep-pocket support? I have obviously been missing out.
Hey, Mosh, how ’bout some context. Here it some for that ‘damage control’ quote:
//
Keith and Tim,
Sadly, your piece on the Esper et al paper is more flawed than even the paper itself.
Ed, the AP release that appeared in the papers was even worse. Apparently you allowed
yourself to be quoted saying things that are inconsistent with what you told me you had
said.
You three all should have known better. Keith and Tim: Arguing you can scale the
relationship between full Northern Hemisphere and extratropical Northern Hemisphere is
*much* more problematic than even any of the seasonal issues you discuss, and this isn’t
even touched on in your piece. The evidence of course continues to mount (e.g., Hendy et
al, Science, a couple weeks ago) that the tropical SST in the past centuries varied far
more less in past centuries. Hendy et al specifically point out that there is little
evidence of an LIA in the tropics in the data. The internal inconsistency here is
remarkably ironic. The tropics play a very important part in our reconstruction, with half
of the surface temperature estimate coming from latitudes below 30N. You know this, and in
my opinion you have knowingly misrepresented our work in your piece.
This will be all be straightened out in due course. In the meantime, there is a lot of
damage control that needs to be done and, in my opinion, you’ve done a disservice to the
honest discussions we had all had in the past, because you’ve misrepresented the evidence.
Many of us are very concerned with how Science dropped the ball as far as the review
process on this paper was concerned. This never should have been published in Science, for
the reason’s I outlined before (and have attached for those of you who haven’t seen them).
I have to wonder why the functioning of the review process broke down so overtly here,
Mann
//
IMO what we have here is a failure to communicate.. and possibly a clash of personalities.
SteveF,
Didn’t say that every member of the ‘skepticalist’ commentariat rabble is getting black ops funding. Though if you really want some, I suggest you up your game and get a higher profile…best is to get yourself a credential somehow related to climate…maybe become a TV meteorologist or something…or a job at a ‘think tank’. And then a blog of course, and some op-eds. With the GOP feeling its oats right now, there’s sure to be openings for ‘entrepreneurs’ in this area.
Arthur Smith,
You are a clown. Of course nobody would want their personal emails investigated. However, WHEN YOU CHEAT AND MAKE A FAKE GRAPH (HINT HINT HINT) that’s what happens. WHAT DON’T YOU GET! EVEN PEOPLE WHO BELIEVE IN GLOBAL WARMING KNOW THAT WHAT HE DID IS WRONG!
Please continue to defend a hack scientist who makes fake graphs. And you wonder why global goring is a dead issue.
Steve Sullivan
Cooch is definitely on the wrong side. Plus, I don’t think he’s going to find anything.
One potential difficulty with congressional investigation and hearings: I’m suspect they are less narrowly restricted, both by law, and by what motives are permissible, than are criminal investigations. So, if Congress starts poking around, things can drag out a lot. They will also get a lot of press covarage– more than one VA DA digging around in VA. (That said, maybe legal eagle can tell me what restrictions bind Congress in these investigations. But my impression is they can inform themselves on an awful lot for various purposes. A hearing or investigation isn’t limited to criminal violations.)
Guardian in Britain published an interesting story From Penn State website:
“Is climate science disinformation a crime against humanity?”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/cif-green/2010/nov/01/climate-science-disinformation-crime
After reading about the “rules” of peer review in Climategate e-mails and the alarmist press stories about climate change, the following statement from the story seems comical:
“This might be understood as a new type of crime against humanity. Scepticism in science is not bad, but sceptics must play by the rules of science including publishing their conclusions in peer-reviewed scientific journals and not make claims that are not substantiated by the peer-reviewed literature. The need for responsible scepticism is particularly urgent if misinformation from sceptics could lead to great harm.
We may not have a word for this type of crime yet, but the international community should find a way of classifying extraordinarily irresponsible scientific claims that could lead to mass suffering as some type of crime against humanity.”
Lucia,
Do you swear (or affirm) that you have never worked on climate blogging using “deep-pocket industry support” while “sowing disinformation”?
If not, how much do you get paid by those folks? Do they pay you with lavish travel to exotic locations, or do they just slip you bags of cash?
Paul M,
In honor of the first climategate anniversary, I plan on making a hockey stick graph. It is going to be a graph about global warming skepticism. The line starts out very straight, but by the year 2008, there is a massive, hockey curved blade, indicating a rise in skepticism.
Also, I will drink a fine glass of mint julep and toast Lord Monckton for a job well done.
Steven Sullivan–
How do people get jobs at think tanks? I’ve always wondered about that.
But…anyway… I don’t think I’m reliably enough on any “side”. Which think tank would pay be to blog and occasionally make fun of Monckton?
Lucia,
“But my impression is they can inform themselves on an awful lot for various purposes.” That is right, the supreme court has held that Congress has the right to compel testimony, under oath, from representatives of organizations and from individuals, on virtually any subject matter. You can plead the 5th, but if they grant you blanket criminal immunity for your testimony, even that defense may not be available. Mike Mann is behaving very unwisely by throwing down the gauntlet.
Re: Jarmo ,
Good thing the Penn State professor of environmental ethics, science and law wrote “international” community. ‘Cuz I suspect that’s going to have some 1st amendment issues in the US. Not that US legislatures ought to let a little thing like the constitution get in the way of banning speech if Penn State Prof don’t like the speech.
Shoosh
Monckton? What did he have to do with climategate?
Did the link to the files appear at in comments at his blog? No.
Was he first to blog above the fold? no.
Did he write the script to make the comments searchable for the world? No. (That site seems to eventually have been taken down.)
Did he write a book on climategate? No.
Did he host places for conversation to thrive after climategate? No.
Basically: Of all people, why toast Monckton on climategate. Unless he hacked the emails and kept his role utterly secret, he pretty much had nothing to do with it!
Re: Steven Sullivan (Nov 5 12:51),
Here is more on the Mann email concerning the Esper and Cook paper. At John Costello’s compendium, search for “December 17, 2001” and read the following few entries.
In most of the instances that I have chased down, “further context” does not mitigate the negative impression left by the emails that were supposedly quoted “out of context”. As here, it supports the idea that the attitudes and tactics under discussion were indeed representative.
Jarmo (Comment#58904),
Your comment was meant to be humorous, right?
SteveF–
But I don’t think the Penn State Prof. meant to be humorous. I think his intention is to chill conversation. 🙂
lucia
“How do people get jobs at think tanks? I’ve always wondered about that.”
I agree ,it’s a stumper. Given the quality of work that comes out of some of them, it can’t be a meritocracy of intellect. Surely it involved being noticed and recommended by someone already ‘in’, though. And then they tap you on the shuolder one day while you’re walking down M Street, and teach you the secret handshake. Yeah.
“But…anyway… I don’t think I’m reliably enough on any “sideâ€. Which think tank would pay be to blog and occasionally make fun of Monckton?”
That testifies to a constitutional inability to stick to strict party-line behavior. Thus I advise applying to think tanks of a Democratic persuasion.
Let’s see… the new Governor of PA is a Republican. The State legislature is now controlled by .. Republicans. Maybe a touch of self control by raging leftist professors at Penn State would be prudent.
Steve Sullivan
I don’t think that’s going to work either. . .
Amac, in every instance where i have read the Climategate selections in context (or at least, in whatever context was made avaialble to us) ,including the emails Mosher posted, I see scientists behaving like scientists I know have in private conversations and emails and meetings over the years — e.g., some of them hating on each other’s work (or more personally, on each other), some of them acting as conciliators, some being more politically (or ‘politically’) engaged, some wanting to walk away from the whole ruckus.
So when readers are shocked, SHOCKED to see professionals behaving this way ‘in private’ my bullsh*t meter starts trending towards the red.
Meanwhile, there’s that pesky climate sensitivity….
And btw Amac, Costello’s ‘commentary’ is so laughably biased and intrusive (wow, how surprising for site called ‘assassinationscience’) , that I don’t tend to use his compendium — the one Mosh linked to is better.
SteveF:
Let’s see… the new Governor of PA is a Republican. The State legislature is now controlled by .. Republicans. Maybe a touch of self control by raging leftist professors at Penn State would be prudent.”
So I guess *chilling* is OK when it’s applied by…Republicans.
Speaking of which, that long-term memory starts kicking in again, and I seem to recall Republicans sweeping in ’06…and then something else happens in ’08….might have to look it up on wikipedia.
Steve sullivan,
You make the assumption that the e-mails were hacked out, when that has been demonstrated as a false assumption. They were clearly leaked, in any reasonable review of this.
So yo uare just dodging my point: if the e-mails have a context that shows the hiding, suppressing, cherry picking, glossing over and requests to destroy docs are all innocent, then those implicated should do the right thing and release them all. to the public. Now.
As to the AG of Virgnia looking to see where Virginia tax payer money went, he is on a fishing expedition in very well chummed waters.
For Mann to decide what is or is not relevant and how outsiders should review his work is an act of hubris only matched by his thinking that using shoddy stats, dubious data and junk algorithms are the way to determine global temperatures.
I looked it up…silly me, it was *”96* and *’98* . Whew, thanks wikipedia.
Maybe this means Mann will finally be asked in a forum where he has to answer whether or not he notified “Gene ASAP” when Phil Jones asked him to request he delete his e-mails regarding IPCC reviewer comments.
Or rather, ’94 and ’96. It was a crazy time.
and btw, speaking of cliamte sensitivity: where is it? Positive, negative? So far, it is a big load of nada.
Historical sensitivity to CO2 increases? CO2 follows the warmth.
Tipping points? Good for SF movies.
Hockey sticks? get rid of those pesky past warming periods.
I think the snarky ominous references to climate sensitivity are something Edward Gorey would love to sketch out.
http://www.planetvideo.com.au/blog/2008/10/06/edward-gorey.jpg
I sometimes wonder if Mann isn’t being coached by a PR firm or advocacy group who views him as a convenient idiot.
These days, a lot of political theater is created for the sole purpose of fund raising. Many of the so-called advocacy groups are not really all that interested in influencing public policy. Rather they use divisive issues as vectors for fund raising. They exist because they can make a lot of money exploiting the public’s intensity of feelings about a particular issue. In other words, fund raising is the primary mission of the group.
The best recipe for driving contributions is to promote a pitched, polarized, very public, nuclear war of words on a particular issue — this is what drives people to donate. Mann might be getting some very bad PR advice from someone he mistakenly believes is working in his interest and the interest of “climate science”. Here’s a hint: never accept PR advice from an advocacy group who are working “for you” pro bono.
“WHEN YOU CHEAT AND MAKE A FAKE GRAPH (HINT HINT HINT)”
I think Anna Hayes is going to be sending you some questions.
hunter, I’m afraid I don’t accept your argument from assertion that the emails were ‘clearly leaked’, though I am aware that some regions of the skeptisphere have fixed upon Briffa as a leaker. AFAIK, the issue is still quite unresolved.
Nor is my view of the context the same as yours, nor, from my own reading and from reading the many hermeneutic analyses of them,
is my view of what they demonstrate.
As for Cooch’s fishing, he is the one doing the chumming too. Throwing meat to ‘the base’ is a time-worn tactic on what used to be the right-wing fringe, but is now the ‘center’.
Mann is quite free and entitled to give his opinion on what is relevant, and what his work means. You’d never know it from the years of day-in-day-out panting on the skeptiblogs, but AGW doesn’t stand or fall on the ‘Hockey Stick’ (not that he claims it does); it’s the physics, sir.
Re: Steven Sullivan (Nov 5 13:31),
My experience in various areas in biology does not track with what you recount. As a group, I would say scientists are difficult people, often without top-notch social skills. But some of the things bandied about in the hacked emails would have shocked me and my peers. Of course, it’s always possible that things were much worse than they seemed. But I don’t think so.
That’s nonsense, not to mention hypocritical in the extreme. Have you read your own blog lately? Psuedoskeptics attack science with loaded and emotional language, but scientists are supposed to respond only with dry and unemotional language? You write about the politics of the climate debate, but Mann is not allowed to, because it might make psuedoskeptics “emotional”?
First, using clear and simple words that reflect what you think about the world is not “loaded language.” And referring to the reality of the political debate is not un-intellectual, it’s practical. Ignoring anti-science Republicans is not going to make them go away.
While I’m sure you would like it if your friends from the Heartland Conference and their Tea party fellow travellers could go on slandering Mann and other climate scientists with allegations of fraud and corruption, elitism and stupidity, while the scientists held a one-sided “intellectual” conversation, as though the editorial page were a journal article, and avoided describing what was going on in simple declarative sentences, and avoiding naming names, it’s not gonna happen. It shouldn’t happen.
While it’s true that, in contrast to the leading “skeptics,” people like Mann and Hansen have reputations for integrity and honesty that should be protected with measured words, nothing about Mann’s account of the political realities of the day in any way compromises that.
Steve Sullivan
Yep. You mean Gingrich, right? Anyway, whichever two years, these swings are why prediction is for the next two years. After that, who knows?
You must be left to think only this time-worn tactic was only right-wing. Both sides have always thrown red meat to their base; both sides will continue.
Robert-
What’s nonsense? Mann did start his editorial with that sentence. He did use loaded langauge.
Of course?
You must have missed my answer to Owen when he asked a very similar question. Mann is allowed to do whatever it pleases him to do. But rather than repeating what I told Owen, let me requote myself:
He used, clear, descriptive language. Calling the language “loaded” is itself an example of loaded language. In contrast, “cigarettes†is not an example of loaded language. Naming specific Republicans, also, is not an example of loaded language.
Just as it is fair for me to observe that your observations factually bogus, hysterical, hypocritical nonsense. The difference being I can back up my observations with facts.
Your post is a much better example of throwing away credibility with emotionally laden declarations, then it is an indictment of it.
Steven,
Sigh.
I am not making an argument by assertion. You are.
There have been numerous cerdible IT analysis eforts to determine how the e-mails got out. They all point to an insider leaking them.
Mann and pals in the e-mails, and in their actions leading up to the e-mails and in their actions since have chummed the waters. You need to get your metaphors under better control.
As for red meat tossing, that you cannot even think that maybe Mann was tossing a bit of tartare out there and hoping for some sympathetic saliva reactions is humorous.
By the way your bizarre rationalization that you have seen other scientists behaving as those inthe e-mails as a defense seems to be highly contested by many scientists who I know and trust much better than you.
The Hockey stick is completely vital to selling the climate apocalypse and you know it.
And when you can show the physics that proves we are facing a global climate catastrophe caused by CO2, you will be the first, sir.
. . . he asserted.
Robert,
You are blowing a thermobobble or something and much less sense than typical. Take care.
. . . he asserted.
robert,
Yes, I seem to be catching it from you. ;^)
Robert–
Of course naming individual Republican’s is not loaded language. I didn’t say it was. I wrote “…naming specific Republican legislators Mann’s editorial is ideally suited to amplify partisan sentiments vis-a-vis climate change. “.
Naming Republican legislators is suited to amplify partisan sentiments. Get it?
Using “cigarettes” in a discussion of “cigarettes” is clear descriptive language. Introducing cigarettes and lung cancer into a discussion of investigations of possible mis-deeds by Mann as discussed in the CRU letters is a red herring diversion involving loaded language.
Well, I’m happy to admit it is a fact that naming Republican senators is not using loaded language. Still, I’m not sure this particular “fact” backs up any observation you have made. It seems to me that fact that you threw it out there suggests your anger is getting in the way of your ability to think.
Steven Sullivan,
It’s a year now and the police investigation appears to have come up with nothing. That is they can’t find any evidence that the emails were hacked/stolen.
Weird that in so many other situations the computer experts can rapidly come to reasonable conclusions of what occurred.
Hunter is likely correct in stating that climategate was a leak.
Dave Andrews (Comment#58958) November 5th, 2010 at 3:29 pm
Hunter is likely incorrect. The nature of hacking is to evade and counter the security systems of a computer OS. It is possible to hack into a computer and ensure that no trail is left, if you know what you are doing, and if the computer being hacked is not a high security environment, such as an academic one. The fact that the files that were taken from the UEA were then hacked onto the Realclimate site from somewhere around Russia indicates hackers. A person who was leaking files that were readily accessible to them would not have the skills to then hack into a completely different system on the other side of the world.
Out of curiosity, in his editorial, Mann refers to “a 20-year assault on climate research”. Does anyone know of the event in 1990 that would constitute the start of this 20 year assault? That’s the year the first assessment came out. But publication of the IPCC first assessment can’t be “an assault” on climate research. So.. what is?
Yes, you did. You cited it as example of loaded example, and defended your criticism of it by saying loaded language was bad. Set and match, sorry.
Your use of emotional, loaded language (Get it?) is really undermining your credibility here . . . but not as much as the fact your argument is complete nonsense. Addressing particular people amplifies partisan sentiments? Why? Why should Mann speak in generalities?
The idea is absurd: Mann and other scientists have been repeatedly attacked by people who made the war on climate science a focus of their campaigns. The have threatened investigations and hearings — so how does not saying their names calm the situation? As if they would forget they’re engaged in a partisan war of their own devising if they don’t hear their names for a while.
Precisely wrong. This is another example of your grasp on rhetoric being a good deal weaker than you think it is. “Cigarettes” is a loaded word, or not. It is not. You think (or rather, wish) that the subject of the editorial is “possible mis-deeds [sic] by Mann.” But that tired and thoroughly discredited propaganda line is not the subject. Attacks on science for political gain are the subject, and the similar attacks by tobacco-funded interests are completely on point. The language is not “loaded” because you wish the conversation was about something else.
bugs
Though I lean toward leaked, I’m pretty agnostic on whether the files were leaked or hacked. But I think you are jumping pretty far when you write:
If they were leaked, you have no idea who leaked them. It could be an IT guy or a person with good computer skills. Also, the fact that the connection to RealClimate had a Russian IP doesn’t mean anyone hacked into a machine in Russia. It may be that sympathetic friend or contact in Russia. Or someone bought space on a machine from a shady contact in Russia. (There are lots of spammers in Russia. LOTS!)
Someone did figure out how to hack into Real Climate’s account. We don’t really know if this was easy or difficult. It might be that the account holders are sloppy sending around passwords– maybe some appeared in emails that weren’t leaked. Or, it might be that someone with honest to goodness hacking skills cracked in. We don’t know.
lucia (Comment#58871) November 5th, 2010 at 11:04 am
Appropriate verb choice, perhaps enjoying would be more appropriate. You are using the ‘if you are not guilty, you have nothing to fear’ logic. Scientists are being hunted down, and attacked, in courts. All in the pursuit of the one the biggest, wacky, conspiracy theories in history. If you think that sounds alarmist, you aren’t reading the comments on your own blog.
Robert–
You know, in tennis, you don’t get to play and be ref. There is a reason for that. And, you’re are wrong, I did not cite naming republicans as an example of loaded language.
And you are wrong that either a word is loaded in all contexts or it is not.
“Loaded words and phrases have strong emotional overtones or connotations, and evoke strongly positive or negative reactions beyond their literal meaning.”
The string of phrases involving “anti-science”, “pseudo-science”, “dragged through a show trial “, “attacks” all introduce emotional overtones and connotations, beyond their literal meaning. Moreover, whether you like it or not, the fact that you subscribe to a conspiracy theory about tobacco doesn’t make the insinuation that people criticizing Mann for problems in climate science are somehow in anyway related to the scary disease of “lung cancer”- another word that is introduced because it involves a negative reaction beyond the literal meaning. That the word is snuck in by introducing this bizarro, irrelevant connection doesn’t negate the fact that “lung cancer” and “cigarettes” are discussed precisely for their emotive qualities of being “bad things”.
Robert–Rational Wiki’s page on loaded language. (Not that you need to believe wikis…) The example of word that can be loaded or not depending on use is “liberal”.
For an explanation of “dogwhistle politics” and loaded language, you might wish to refer to
They have a list of “snarl” words. “Denier” (used by Mann) would fit on this list.
“There have been numerous cerdible IT analysis eforts to determine how the e-mails got out.”
[citation needed]
bugs,
I don’t think I’ve used that. Where do you think I did so?
As for the issue here: I am basically agreeing with Mann that the Congressmen are likely to pursue him. Did you agree with him in October when he wrote that? If you did, why does it bother you that I’m now saying that yes, it’s going to happen.
I’m also saying the method of expression Mann chose to say they were going to go after him might have made things worse for him now that the Republican’s have been elected. Do you disagree?
Is the problem that you just don’t like people saying: “Yep.You’re right, Mann. These guys probably are going to go after you. But, ‘cha know… making this personal, using language to make it sound like it’s not just only you but all of climate science, using ‘snarl words’ like denier, anti-science, pseudo-science, connecting it to a particular political party might not have been the wisest thing to do.”
(I’m liking this “snarl word” term. It’s just the right phrase I think.)
Re: the assertion that controversy over the AGW Consensus stance is analogous to Big Tobacco’s suppression of evidence about the harm of smoking (originally at C-a-s).
Suppose person X is concerned about an issue; let’s pick seemingly excessive and arbitrary checking-account fees. Xavier writes about this topic, say as a comment at an investment-themed blog.
In response, other commenters note that Credit Unions have long contended that commercial banks gouge their customers, and many of their charges have been shown to be inaccurate. Connecting the dots, these commenters imply that Xavier is a shill for the Credit Union Combine — or, at best, a dupe.
Not knowing much about Credit Unions, Xavier is taken aback. On reflection, he agrees with one of his critics’ insights: the people who work at Credit Unions will tend to confuse their narrow interests with those of their institutions. Worse, they’ll think, “what’s good for Credit Unions is good for everybody.â€
Of course, a similar tendency holds true for commercial bankers and most everybody else. Very few people see themselves as evildoers.*
Anyway, Xavier’s had written in with his own observations about seemingly-excessive bank fees. “This shill/dupe sideshow isn’t a very compelling rejoinder to my concerns,†he can’t help but observe.
.
(* It’s only fair to add that, unlike credit unions — an illustration pulled out of a hat — oil companies did hire flacks, who did misrepresent the state of scientific knowledge on AGW. H/t grypo.)
steven sullivan:
“Steven Sullivan (Comment#58920) November 5th, 2010 at 1:31 pm
Amac, in every instance where i have read the Climategate selections in context (or at least, in whatever context was made avaialble to us) ,including the emails Mosher posted, I see scientists behaving like scientists I know have in private conversations and emails and meetings over the years — e.g., some of them hating on each other’s work (or more personally, on each other), some of them acting as conciliators, some being more politically (or ‘politically’) engaged, some wanting to walk away from the whole ruckus.
So when readers are shocked, SHOCKED to see professionals behaving this way ‘in private’ my bullsh*t meter starts trending towards the red.
Meanwhile, there’s that pesky climate sensitivity….”
You miss the point. I guess I will have to write a piece about this.
As someone who knows scientists as well I agree. But that is not the point. It’s about the people who DONT KNOW scientists.
WRT Mann. you missed the point there as well. The point is about mann’s approach. more on that I suppose as well
Loaded or not loaded , when I read
Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) has threatened that, if he becomes chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, he will launch what would be a hostile investigation of climate science.
I have thought that this guy had lost it .
Like a Kamikaze taking his sake and yelling “Banzai !”
Incredibly stupid for a scientist .
Unless … he really wants to fight a political fight what is of course his right provided he has the guts for it .
Well in this case he’ll get all the fight he wants because even if I have not followed the US elections , I believe that Darrel Issa WILL become Chairman .
D. Issa is democratically legitimate , Mann is not .
And then he will probably want to show to this nobody that calling “threat” a legitimate action of an elected representative is not a wise choice of words .
I don’t know if D.Issa had something special against Mann in the beginning , but after this stupid piece he will surely consider him as a looser and a political adversary .
We’ll see how well Mann takes the real heat .
To Arthur Smith (Comment#58843) I say: “bull.”
As a government scientist I say having my e-mail and work subject to subpoena, foi, etc. a total pain (name me one person who has a painless job), but I don’t find it chilling.
I like what I do, I have nothing to hide, and the people I work for know I’m truthful and support me. If all of the former weren’t the case, I’d be looking for another job.
gcapologist – the “chilling” effect is if the subpoena’s and attacks affect one field, but not others. If you have no reason to suspect your research will be (fairly or unfairly) subject to microscopic oversight, you obviously won’t worry about it. But if your research might lead you in a direction that would have such oversight, that level of scrutiny is a definite force pushing you elsewhere, for reasons of simple self-interest.
Lucia’s thesis here seems to be that Mann is stupid because his action (his accusations against Republicans in such a public fashion) was against his own self-interest (likely to bring on even heavier scrutiny).
The argument appears to be that Mann should not have written something he felt compelled to write, because it will go badly for him.
That sounds like the thinking of a Mafia boss. Chilling to the core.
To me, the assumption that Mann is stupid in such a way seems rather lacking in evidence. People do things for reasons quite opposed to their own apparent self-interest. Because they believe in them whole-heartedly. Because they are the right thing to do. Because they are moral, compassionate, and yes, emotionally engaged in reality.
I am profoundly grateful Mann wrote his piece. Perhaps it made a difference in a couple of places where it mattered. Colorado’s senate race, perhaps. Who knows what butterfly moves what storms in the minds of people.
David Roberts was absolutely right when he wrote the following recently:
I find Lucia’s and others’ calls for silence from the scientists involved absolutely despicable.
“they are the right thing to do…they are moral, compassionate, and yes, emotionally engaged in reality”
Oh brother …
I opined awhile ago that when hoaxes are exposed, people will say some really odd stuff… and I haven’t been disappointed.
Andrew
Arthur–
Of course speaking the truth is a political act. I am speaking it and I recognize my speaking the truth to be a political act.
I’d also like to correct an untruth on your part: I haven’t called for silence on anyone’s part. I think Mann might have been wiser to write a different piece, but if that’s the one he wanted to write, that’s certainly his perogative.
I think it would have been better for climate science if he had not widened the target from himself to all of climate science, including advice to young scientists and so on. But once again– his perogative. If he want to do that– so be it.
Whether you are grateful to him for writing this or not, it is the truth that it was not in self interest to write this. Of course, you may well admire him for possibly sacrificing himself and putting other climate scientists at risk because you think the letter may have made a difference in Colorado. Ok… maybe. But I doubt that letter made one iota of difference in Colorado.
Yes. Who knows. I doubt this letter “mattered” in Colorado’s senate race.
If you think these sorts of things are in yourself interests, Manns or anyone elses– fine. We can agree to disagree. But I don’t think a blogger at with modest traffic observing that the behavior seems much more likely to thwart goals you think you would like to achieve is chilling anyone’s speech or in anyway Mafia like. (Talk about hyperbole on your part!)
You, Mann, or anyone can read my opinion, decide if you agree and go ahead and do as you wish– just as I can laugh at your sidelong insinuation to the possibility that my emails could be FOId resulting in some sort of consequences I would not like.
Arthur (Comment#59000):
My research has already been subject to public scrutiny (including media attacks). It wasn’t national, but it was public. I persevered for at least the reasons I stated above, and I still hold the same job. (Btw, I have more high level responsibilities now than I did then).
While it is not in any signed contract prohibiting me to do so, and no matter how much I’d like to, I’d never submit a letter to the editor with the kind of partisan politics that Dr. Mann did. I just don’t think it’s professional, and I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t have helped me to retain my reputation.
Btw – I wrote many pages of rants on legal pads. Sure did help me vent. I kept them for a while, then trashed them when my emotions were much calmer and I realized that had I tried to publish them I would have seemed quite a fool, and even lose respect for myself.
Arthur–
I’m not sure why you think this is my thesis. I didn’t say Mann was stupid. And here’s the specific thing I said was unwise:
That is: I think his choice of language is likely unwise– or at least it’s unwise if he want to simultaneously advance the narrative that he and fellow climate scientists are thoughtful rational beings who advance evidence based arguments.
And the reason I think it is unwise is not so much that it will make the Republican’s go after him. After all– he suggests they are going to even before I wrote any comment on his editorial. I think it’s unwise because this sort of behavior is designed to make the public at large to view him and climate scientist as emotional divas.
This is hardly a suggesting he can’t write something he feels compelled to write or thinking like a Mafia boss.
I think we should nominate “Arthur Smith” for the next Nobel Prize In Literature.
His comment left me “chilled to the core” (like sixer of Sam Adams iced down in my golf cooler) and “profoundly grateful” (like when I find lost change in the dryer) that I had the privilege to read it.
Andrew
I try not to read minds. For one thing, I’m not very good at it. All those people on all sides of AGW who believe they have advanced qualifications in mindreadingology: are they actually better at it than me?
Well, maybe. Maybe not.
I can say that Prof. Mann seems to be acting in a way that others have acted in the past. Typical reasoning goes like this.
1. My stance is justified and ethical.
2. Bad people are after me.
3. Allies would be really helpful.
4. The way to get lots of allies is to make this case crystal clear. Make the fence-sitters decide: “With me or against me?” Most good people will cast their lot with me.
5. My enemies will see that my position is strong and attacking me will be costly. They’ll turn away, and my just cause will achieve a victory.
6. And if I am defeated, I’ll be celebrated, and my cause will be strengthened by my sacrifice.
If this is indeed Prof. Mann’s strategy, I think it serves his interests well. It seems like a lot of Pro-AGW Consensus advocates and scientists are agreeable to Prof. Mann’s nomination of himself as the representative of their just cause.
Whether this will serve broader collective interests of the AGW Consensus and of science would depend on how one defines “broader interests.” Of course.
Amac–
Well, while others might disagree, I can see where he might think 1-4. However, (5) doesn’t seem to be happening. Maybe Arthur thinks (5) resulted in salvaging one Senate race seat in Colorado (presumably contributing to the loss of seats in other states.) But, it least short term, it doesn’t look like step (5) is panning out.
So, it appears there is a high risk to moving on to (6).
But will his caused be strengthened by his sacrifice? That’s pretty rare in politics. Not unprecedented, but rare.
Most of the sacrifice is likely to be aggravation and wasted time reporting to congressional committee meetings. It’s not like they are going to shoot the guy. But it will be an aggravation.
I think if Mann had calmed down before he wrote that editorial, he might have focused on better arguments for why Congress should avoid these time wasting committee meetings. Shouting tobacco and lung cancer might indulge the emotions of his allies, but it doesn’t amount to a reasoned argument for Congress to skip investigations into climategate.
I’ll just make one more observation and then call it a night.
“Arthur Smith” and some others may still think that somewhere segments of the American public still think that climate scientists (and especially Mann) have some credibility left.
FYI… They don’t. And playing the predictable victim card only serves to confirm a widely-held view that climate scientists are hoaxers.
Just keepin’ y’all up to date.
Andrew
I heard Roger Jr on NPR tonight… such a boring kid
As for the topic heading about ‘two more years of climategate’, that’s all they have, so there won’t be any arguments about the science.
If it was about reasoned arguments, the debate from the start would have been about climate sensitivity. Instead we have wasted years about whether or not there is even a greenhouse effect, and similar absurdities. If it was about reasoned arguments, Congress would not have asked Monckton to testify as the single representative of the ‘skeptic’ point of view.
Do you seriously think they can change the laws of physics to create their own reality.
Arthur Smith – “I find your cheering here reprehensible”. I don’t think that Lucia is cheering about anything. However, this person certainly was –
“In an odd way this is cheering news!”
I’m not sure what that was about or who said it. Someone in the UK I think.
“Do you seriously think they can change the laws of physics to create their own reality.”
A rock can change “the physics” for a ball rolling down a hill.
Climate scientists and those that worship them; are missing a whole bunch of rocks and need to get off the fricken computer and out into the real world.
no liza, they’re missing the rocks cuz they smoked em up
Robert, what year is it, and who is the President?
lucia, though I believe the liberator of the emails was inspired by Steve McIntyre, it is certainly possible the motivator was Monckton.
ClimateGate will reverberate until the liberator is liberated, and celebrated publicly as the saviour of science that he or she is.
======================
liza (Comment#59062) November 6th, 2010 at 6:41 am
They do that too, and they read data from the real world. You need to use your computer to find out what they really do in the real world rather than just making unsubstantiated claims.
The AGW believers need to believe that the CRU e-mails were hacked.
So an outsider got in, wandered around undetected, collected selections of years of e-mails, accumulated them, along with snippets of code, compiled a file and posted them.
Or,
the CRU in foot dragging its response to FOIA requests had an insider gather e-mails and data into a file ready for FOIA compliance. The lords of CRU took a look at the compilation and went, ‘oops. This looks a wee bit rough. Let’s really check and see if we really need to release this.’ And found a rubber stamp to OK not releasing them. Meanwhile other CRU folks read them and realized how much a con Jones et al were up to. Someone got a pang of conscience and either arranged to get the compilation out by leaving them around easy to pickup or sent them out.
This was internally prepared file leaked out or made available by an insider of CRU to someone the the leaker/enabler knew, I bet.
If a hacker got in, he/she would have likely just dumped the entire e-mails out in bulk, and probably crashed the CRU system to freeze it for awhile. And the believers would have found out what their claims about context actually means.
But the AGW movement has always, from 1988, needed enemies. So a wonder hacker is just the thing for the faithful.
This reed of faith that the physics makes AGW true is worth discussing more. It is very likely different people mean different things when discussing AGW.
You have no idea what you are talking about. The best hackers leave no traces. That is what the smart criminals do, they don’t leave clues.
MikeC (Comment#59066) November 6th, 2010 at 7:00 am
Yes. Or something like that!
Speaking of smoke; as these mo mos who worry about a fraction of one degree of “global” temperature constructed in their sacred models…. I was just reading that the volcano in Indonesia that’s been erupting for days “released (approximately because they don’t really know!) 1,765 million cubic feet (50 million cubic meters) of volcanic material, making it “the biggest in at least a century” /plumes of smoke continue to shoot up more than 30,000 feet (10,000 meters)” at the moment. And about 200,000 people there are displaced and heading to and in emergency shelters. We had a small earthquake here in So Cal yesterday; no biggie but could you imagine how screwed we’d be in this messed up bankrupt crazy state if a major quake would hit us right now? That’s reality.
The first release of the emails was when the RC web site was hacked and it’s own content removed and replaced with the emails. A leaker could not do that. It takes, once again, smart criminals who know what they are doing.
I think The Great Carnac is being a might conservative and that we are very likely to see Climategate continue for sometime in excess of two more years.
The Game called “Climate Science” has been selling off the shelves since Climategate and I’m reliably informed, by a number of sources who have actually seen AirForce NumeroUno flying over NYC, that manufacturing has moved to India.
There is nothing more mundane and exhausting than climatology without ones very own SuperComputer. The Game has added so much to the science, the biggest players are the actual scientists who claim to be Climatologists. While one need not be a certified, graduate level climatologist to play, it does add to one’s credibility at the all important OpEd block on the board. (And you’re entitled to have one of the BIG two inch high game pieces, too.)
PS: This thing is nearly as popular as the YooYoo and Hulla-Hoop when they came out a few years ago. Gotta last more than two more years, simply must. Too many big investors are involved for it to fade and fail.
It wasn’t a hacker. It was a CRU employee who was a bit disgruntled and released a file that he was told to keep under wraps.
We don’t know the motive of the liberator, but we can guess, and gruntling ain’t even in it.
==============
MikeC (Comment#59075) November 6th, 2010 at 7:18 am
How does a disgruntled employee have the skills to hack the RC website?
Liza, hey, at least if a big one hits ya get some sidewalk surfing out of it
The RC website wasn’t hacked, they just tried to post a link
Liza–
The article on the Mount Merapi Volcano I’m reading says:
http://www.examiner.com/weather-in-dallas/mount-merapi-worst-eruption-since-1872
hunter;
“This reed of faith that the physics makes AGW true is worth discussing more.”
Yeah and this faith; just for am example needs the Sun. I can’t believe they actually think they’ve got the sun figured out perfectly. I know they don’t and reliable “experts” even say so and also admit the models don’t have it right yet. Then there’s clouds. The ocean too. I can find these statements on NASA web pages. And I cannot stress enough that they are still talking about a fraction of one degree of temperature; a number that is constructed; over just a very small period of time on Earth.
bugs,
Re: skills to hack RC
It was Divine Intervention. Don’t you remember? “A miracle just happened.”
Andrew
Mike C,
Gavin wrote this:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/11/the-cru-hack/
I interpret “upload it to RealClimate” to mean upload the archive itself, not “post a link to an archive hosted on another computer.
I guess I could hunt around for more quotes or ask Gavin if my interpretation is correct. But my impression is they broke into RC’s blog in some way (either at the domain level or the WordPress blog level). They tried to upload the archive to the RC server.
lucia (Comment#59080) November 6th, 2010 at 7:22 am
I never said anything about “cooling”. I was talking about threats to people happening right now compared to fear mongering about the future that doesn’t even exist yet. If anything I was making note that there is no possible way to know how much GHG is coming out of that thing either. THE REALITY is that we have no clue; just more guesses approximation about things like that; and this includes 1,000s volcanoes on land and under the sea.
Yeah, Lucia, I believe everything Gavin says… but I’ll pick up on this after fishing… a good day to all
MikeC–
Look, I don’t always agree with Gavin. But come on!
Unless you know the people who hacked or leaked the emails, and they told you that all they did was try to post a comment, I would think Gavin is a more reliable source on whether RC was hacked into than you are.
re: Gavin as reliable source
More faith. You warmers just can’t operate without it, evidently. 😉
Andrew
MikeC (Comment#59078) November 6th, 2010 at 7:21 am
“Liza, hey, at least if a big one hits ya get some sidewalk surfing out of it”
Or maybe my house will become beach front property! 😉
I was going to write about something interesting, but I’m too wound up by people who know nothing about computers and hacking speculating about the release into the wild of the emails. Let’s try introducing a few facts:
1) Hacking is almost vanishingly rare. Hacking in the popular sense is an invention of Hollywood, and does not exist in reality. There are a few hackers out there, but it’s almost unheard-of for there to exist unpatched security flaws in software like that used to run a university’s email system.
2) What is relatively common is exploiting configuration mistakes that have left doors open, but that’s not hacking. In this case, it’s a possible vector of attack, but for it to be useful would require leaving extensive evidence behind you – not of your identity, but of the method used, because you’d have to create or subvert an administrator account.
3) The most common methods of attack are social engineering techniques – phishing, and similar, where someone is tricked into giving access to a system. This is overwhelmingly the most likely to be the case here.
4) The ‘Russian IP’ is an anonymising proxy server. Anyone can connect to it, and it will relay their traffic. It suggests a very slight amount of computer knowledge on the part of the releaser, but it’s a trivially easy thing to do if you know it can be done.
5) The RC account is likely to have been compromised in some of the accessible emails – if the perp was a social engineer, he may even have been clever enough to make sure of it.
In toto, there is no evidence, and no reason to think, that there was any hacking. It’s either an inside job – a leak – or a phishing-type attack. Personally, I’m pretty sure it’s a leak by a member of the IT staff or similar because they have no more reason to be on-board with the science than a cleaner at CRU, and because they’d have every reason to try and cover themselves against future proceedings by the ICO.
I find it extremely notable that if there were sanctions from the ICO over FOIA breaches, there were various admin and IT staff who were not climate scientists who would be liable to sanction. They had every incentive to try and cover themselves – and having released the emails would be a good thing in that situation. I suspect someone could have owned-up and proven it if it had become necessary.
Dave,
Thanks for your insights.
I have wondered for a while how anyone could have had enough time to search through many years of Phil Jones’ email files (and non-email files!) and come up with so many messages/files that were both relevant to the FOI requests and also potentially damaging to Jones and his associates.
So I wonder: Might the UEA system automatically back up all files deleted by specific users (eg. Phil Jones?) in a dedicated server archive designed to ‘protect’ users from accidentally losing files? I mean, if I were Phil Jones, and I was being pressed via FOI requests to release email messages that might be damaging, deleting them would be a reasonable way to avoid having to produce the requested information. Could it have been Phil himself that assembled the damaging messages and files? Some IT administrator with the right permissions then took a look at the archive, made a copy, and that was that. Possible?
One thing which has made me doubtful of the claim that “a hacker did it” is that the emails have been redacted in a manner which resembles other FOI releases. In particular, email addresses don’t say “joesmith@stateuniversity.edu”, but are in the form of “joesmith@xxxxxxxx.xxx”. I suppose that it’s possible that the released files had the full email address, and that subsequent republishers have to edit out the addresses in order to comply with a legal restriction, but being unaware of any such, I’d guess that the original file posted had the addresses redacted. In which case, the file was likely compiled internally by UEA, and as the filename implies, as a response to an FOI request. All that seems likely, albeit not proven.
Let’s say there is such a file. If UEA intended to release it, wouldn’t they have released it to the FOI requester after the file had been made public anyway? So we’re left with the possibility that UEA compiled the file while deciding whether to release it, but eventually decided not to release it. Now the file’s sitting somewhere on a server. Either a hacker chooses at that moment to break into the server and download the file, or someone at UEA, disagreeing with the no-release decision, chose to leak the file. The former hypothesis requires an additional assumption of fortuitous timing, so I prefer the latter hypothesis (internal leak).
In the Sherlock Holmes books, all such lengthy inferential reasoning is correct. But this is not fiction; I don’t believe that the inferences are airtight. But they’re plausible. The idea that a hacker broke into the system and stole a compiled set of emails seems more likely, but I view that as only #2 on the most-probable list. The idea that a hacker got the emails directly, and then politely redacted email addresses in order to spare the people involved from spam and hate-mail, just doesn’t hang together well. [Perhaps the only way to search the archives was to use a program which implements FOI redaction? That would explain the filename as well. But surely there are other tools for searching.]
bugs:
Google “privilege escalation vulnerability”. WordPress is leakier than a sieve when it comes to security.
Arthur Smith:
I’d had some of my emails published (in a book). I think you are more than a bit overwrought on this.
Bloomberg on Climate Change: “Most People Unfortunately Don’t Care”
http://ecocentric.blogs.time.com/2010/11/05/bloomberg-on-climate-change-most-people-unfortunately-dont-care/
Huh. I suspect you Warmers will be building climate-controlled underground biospheres and leaving the rest of us up here on the surface. Since, you know, Global Warming is true and all of that.
Where are you going to build the first one to escape the catastrophes? We’ll send Christmas cards. We promise. 😉
Andrew
Certain version of WordPress have been very leaky. Ask Zeke whether I am paranoid about authors access to the admin side of wordpress… just ask.
HaroldW,
The original files did not have the “@xxxxxxxx.xxx”. There were full email addresses. Persons that post the emails on the web “x” the addresses.
Also, further clarification, the IPs that hit RC (According to Gavin) we from Saudi Arabia and Turkey. After the failure to upload onto RC, they were uploaded to a Russian file server.
IP-spoofing is not difficult. A small drunken 5 year old would have an easier time IP-spoofing than operating iTunes. It is not a real skill.
LOL! The “we” is a typo.
One aspect of the common use of the term “hacked” in reference to the released emails is that it reveals that the users of the term (Mann, Joe Romm) are careless with factual statements. No one knows whether the emails were grabbed from a public place in cyberspace, were released by a whistleblower or were hacked. Seehttp://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/04/climate-change-email-hacker-police-investigation
Also, this post from Revkin’s blog may be interesting:
“Scott W. Somerville
Maryland
December 7th, 2009
2:29 pm
There’s a GOOD analysis of the internal evidence of the .zip file that was released that strongly suggests it was responsive to a Freedom of Information Act was request. (I was a programmer before I went to Harvard Law School and I’m persuaded by the evidence from both a legal and software standpoint.)
In my opinion, there’s a world of difference between a “grab bag” of hacked personal emails and a .zip file prepared in response to an FOIA request–especially if that request was subsequently denied by CRU attorneys. One is stolen intellectual property–the other is genuine “smoking gun evidence” of official corruption.
As a lawyer who now assumes these emails were gathered in response to a valid FOIA request, I want to know who decided to reject the FOIA request and why. I’d love to see the legal reasoning behind denying the request. From where I sit, it LOOKS like some policy-maker at CRU decided to defy the law because the consequences of releasing the files were unacceptable.”
JD
JD Ohio (Comment#59120)
“As a lawyer who now assumes these emails were gathered in response to a valid FOIA request, I want to know who decided to reject the FOIA request and why. I’d love to see the legal reasoning behind denying the request. From where I sit, it LOOKS like some policy-maker at CRU decided to defy the law because the consequences of releasing the files were unacceptable.â€
Agreed….the file being compiled by staff for a FOI request makes the most sense. You have to assume some really strange situations to make the facts all fit otherwise.
I very much doubt that the upload to RC proves hacking. If they’d sent an email to someone at CRU giving them author privileges – which certainly seems a possibility – and the password and sign-on were therefore available to the person in possession of the dossier, then the dossier could have been uploaded to RC. There are a few people who could do that at Climate Audit. I could eventually override them – as Gavin did in this case.
While the timing of the dossier seems very related to my FOI request – the date of release coincide with the date of my FOI appeal rejection – the dossier itself contains material that is not responsive to a particular FOI request. This was much discussed at the time, but my view is that it is extremely unlikely that it was compiled by staff in relation to an FOI request.
SteveMcIntyre
Very few people ca do it at The Blackboard either.
Most of the time, I have my wp-admin folder blocked by htaccess. The htaccess file includes IPs for me and IPs for Zeke. Periodically, Zeke can’t get in and we have to sort out his current IP (because they change). I add that one to the list. (Every now and then the htaccess file is taken down because I am having difficulty sorting out which IP Zeke is actually connecting from.)
For someone to hack in to wp-admin, they need to know our passwords *and* try to log in from an appropriate IP. Mind you, this could happen. But it’s more difficult.
Of course, there is also the possibility they could get in by figuring out how to break into my Dreamhost account– but Dreamhost *also* does htaccess blocking now. (This is pretty new though.)
So, getting in is possible, but not very easy.
(Gavin should probably htaccess block his wp-admin area too. I suspect by now he’s consulted someone and has measure in place. Possibly better ones than I have in place– in which case, if he shared, I’d try to figure out how to implement them too. 🙂 )
Steve M.,
Is it possible that the .zip file is material that someone might have been assigned to assemble that might include “all” the pertinent emails etc., such that this file could be sent to anyone making an FOI request? It might have been thought more efficient to encompass the whole “enchilada” and let the requester find the parts he/she were interested in.
I suspect a requester would not be happy to receive such an encyclopedic response, but on the other hand this might have been a time saver for the responders – who might, at first, assumed they had nothing to hide.
I remember that you don’t speculate about motivations but maybe this is more a question of mechanics.
Bugs
“That is what the smart criminals do, they don’t leave clues.”
Now why would someone with criminal intent spend a great deal of time hacking into CRU computers and compiling a very specific list of emails all related to AGW and certain main players? What was in it for them?
Unless of course you think that it was all down to state actors such as (wild speculation here) the Russians or the Chinese who are somewhat sceptical of the whole western approach to AGW.
Steve McIntyre,
“This was much discussed at the time, but my view is that it is extremely unlikely that it was compiled by staff in relation to an FOI request.”
I agree. More likely a deleted file folder from Phil Jones. We know he had in fact suggested deleting sensitive files before, and people seldom change their MO.
j ferguson,
Hard to imagine a file containing a sarcastic cartoon of Phil Jones’ ‘denialists enemies’ would even be included as part of a response to an FIO request.
SteveF,
Suppose the guy/gay who did it wasn’t enchanted with the assignment especially after getting a look at the contents. I guess you’d have to know how the scope was defined. I wonder if anyone has submitted an FOI identifying the contents of *.zip as a file on their system and requesting copies of the paperwork authorizing its creation.
Such a new submittal and its pursuit might be a method for getting a new start date for a possible prosecution to make hay within the 6 month stature of limitations.
What a nasty mind I must have.
Oh damn, make that guy/gal.
Regarding hacking into a system…
this gives an example.
Basically the trick is to use an exploit to discover the hashed version of an administrator’s password, then use a password hash crack lookup program (there are online sites like this one), and voila! you are in.
Using htaccess (if you can put up with it) does help, but it isn’t an impenetrable barrier either, of course.
Steve Mc 59136
I didn’t mention it, but I am also a lawyer, and the released emails also appear to me to be the result of an FOIA request because they were focused on climate issues and did not include completely personal matters. If the emails were not gathered pursuant to an FOIA request, what is your theory as to how they were accumulated? Also, why were the email addresses anonimized (sp) and protected, if not due to a FOIA request.
Best wishes,
JD
Steve McIntyre (Comment#59136) November 6th, 2010 at 2:30 pm
Once again, McIntyre’s guesses are as good as evidence.
bugs (Comment#59073) November 6th, 2010 at 7:15 am
“The first release of the emails was when the RC web site was hacked and it’s own content removed and replaced with the emails. A leaker could not do that. It takes, once again, smart criminals who know what they are doing.”
Once again bugs’ opinions are as good as guesses.
JD Ohio (Comment#59155) November 6th, 2010 at 4:10 pm
Steve Mc 59136
I didn’t mention it, but I am also a lawyer, and the released emails also appear to me to be the result of an FOIA request because they were focused on climate issues and did not include completely personal matters. If the emails were not gathered pursuant to an FOIA request, what is your theory as to how they were accumulated? Also, why were the email addresses anonimized (sp) and protected, if not due to a FOIA request.
Best wishes,
JD
####
it is not likely that they were collected to answer an FOIA. Initially this is what Steve and I thought the evening of Nov 17th. As the next couple of days wore on it became clear that this explanation had some holes.
1. There was only one FOIA being reviwed at the time by the appeal office. It concerned the confidentiality agreements and temperature data.
2. There were far too many housekeeping mails, out of office mails.
3. The issues covered in the mails seemed to match with many items at CA which were not the subject of FOIA: Yamal, SRES, etc.
The mails could have been collected using a script that looked for key words, key authors, etc. a glossary of climate audit would be a good place to start to build such a search engine.
Ah, “stature of limitations”, a new term of art? I must get a new prescription for these coke-bottle bottoms.
Carrick (Comment#59103) November 6th, 2010 at 10:45 am
You are talking about hacking again. Most employees are not hackers. If they were whistle blowers, they are most likely not hackers. The message at CA was something about a miracle. A whistle blower is not going to claim it was a miracle.
The probablities of hacking indicate that its far more likely that this was an “inside” hack as opposed to outsiders intruding.
The upload to RC could be accomplished as I noted early on (in nov of 2009) by somebody sending a password to CRU in the days leading up to event. If you read the mails you will see that during this time RC was pushing to get somebody from CRU to respond to the YAMAL controversy. providing access to them would seem only natural.
hacking two systems from the outside? remote possibility and one any real hacker would be boasting about.
On the other hand, CRU did have an open ftp in july of 2009. Employees had open pages. one of those pages, if I recall, had a password on it. [searching to see if I made a contemporaneous comment about this or just noted the existence of the password.]
Professional criminals don’t boast. They take the money, then hide their tracks the best that they can.
Carrick–
Make no mistake. I’m never thought .htaccess is an impenetrable barrier. It just more protection than no-.htaccess.
intrepid_wanders (Comment#59110)
Thanks for the correction; I had only seen email content reprint on blogs and had assumed that they were direct copies without removing email addresses. The additional information changed my perspective.
bugs: You are talking about hacking again. Most employees are not hackers. If they were whistle blowers, they are most likely not hackers. The message at CA was something about a miracle. A whistle blower is not going to claim it was a miracle.
At your mind reading job again, Carnac? Keep the day job.
If we’re talking IT people or even “plain” scientists like me, they could be anything in terms of internet security skill level.
curious:
They’re not even very good guesses. Bugs is an expert at what people think and what their motives are without ever having met them.
Please, exploiting privilege-escalation vulnerabilities is *not* hacking.
I’ve never bothered doing a Steve McIntyre and getting to the bottom of this – although I’m sure it’s very possible – because I simply can’t see that it matters. However the emails were released, the content remains the same.
steven mosher (Comment#59163) November 6th, 2010 at 4:33 pm
So you have no evidence. The simplest explanation for a criminal act is criminals. If it was an inside lead, they would have gone to one of the available sympathetic press outlets. Instead we had the release done using the web, using hacking.
Bugs, as the article I cited in my original post shows, no one knows what happened. It is inaccurate to state as fact that the emails were hacked, but Mann and others shamelessly do so. It seems likely that the releaser was very sophisticated (otherwise tracks would have been left). If so, it would be most logical for that sophisticated person to grab the information from open cyberspace, which the CRU admits was one location of the emails. However, neither I nor anyone else knows that as a fact.
Those people concerned with factual accuracy will simply state that the emails were released. Those with an axe to grind and who do not care about factual accuracy will refer to hacked emails.
JD
Quote Bugs: “So you have no evidence. The simplest explanation for a criminal act is criminals. If it was an inside lead, they would have gone to one of the available sympathetic press outlets. Instead we had the release done using the web, using hacking.”
Yes exactly! Surely it must be those criminals from Russia or China as you suggested earlier Bugs (evidence??). They probably hacked and then released the UEA emails purely for the purpose of misdirection. To distract us from the rapidly rising global temps that are overwhelming natural variability due to CAGW:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:2001/offset:-0.15/to:2010/trend/plot/rss/from:2001/to:2010/trend/plot/uah/from:2001/to:2010/trend
…Or Not.
bugs:
It’s not the simplest explanation, nor is it one that is fully consistent with the facts as we know them/
I think a much likely scenario is: Person or Persons A creates an archive of FOIA documents as part of UEA FOI investigation, Person B releases/leaks it. Other persons (who probably know Person B) act on released information in an uncoordinated fashion.
There is no reason for example to suspect that the person who attempted to upload the file to RC had anything to do with the original aggregation of the data, nor necessarily with its initial leak/release/
As much as bugs would like to see otherwise, people aren’t going to start ignoring the released information over some crazy Russian/Chinese conspiracy story. It’s out there now, you can’t unrelease it.
I bet every one of you were terrible with Leggo Logs
… one conspiracy theory I haven’t heard yet was that some one close to a competing temperature set did this to bring down the competition…
I have no idea who did it, or exactly why they did it, other then they thought is was a ‘miracle’, and were skilled hackers.
Despite taking sides in his WaPo op-ed, Michael Mann calls for end of partisanship in climate change:
“It’s unfortunate that climate change seems to have become a partisan political issue. There was a time when leading politicians from both parties were advocating serious policy action to deal with climate change. The melting ice sheets, after all, have no political agenda. Climate change doesn’t affect Democrats and Republicans differently. It’s time we put the politics behind us, and confront this as a non-partisan issue.”
http://bos.sagepub.com/content/66/6/1.full
Apparently he does not see any controversy in his own actions.
JD – as a lawyer could you advise whether there is any mechanism for obtaining information on the results/progress of the police inquiry into the matter? I am guessing that this would be difficult but by now they must surely have assembled some material facts which could illuminate the discussion.
There has been a UEA report that has provided information which refutes the compiled for FOIA theory. I have always thought the emails released to be both to wide in scope and too incomplete in selection to have been compiled officially for FOIA purposes. It is also quite clear the FOIA file names were chosen by the person who released the emails.
It appears that that the leaked/hacked emails relate to archived inboxes of 3 researchers who (if I understand correctly) elected to host their accounts on the University Unix email service with backups retained on the CRUBACK3 server. For these reasearchers there was a combined total of 7.95GB storeage. The researchers are labelled as A, B and C but appear likely to be Briffa, Jones and one other. 2 of these researchers created thematic inboxes. Researcher A had 46 such inboxes and researcher C had around 300. The thematic approach which stores emails on a by project basis would provide a straightforward method for Mr/Ms FOIA to identify potential content of interest.
So far we have not been provided with any details of the mechanism of release. Did Mr/Ms FOIA extract and read the emails directly on the CRUBACK3 server in order to compile the release or did they do a much larger extraction and transport the data elsewhere to read at leisure before reading and subsequently releasing?
Carrick: “I think a much likely scenario is: Person or Persons A creates an archive of FOIA documents as part of UEA FOI investigation, Person B releases/leaks it.”
Did you take Moshers info into consideration when you assessed the likelihood of that scenario? I think it is far more likely to be an inside job than a hackers but probably not an official collection of FOIA-answers.
Mosher: “it is not likely that they were collected to answer an FOIA. Initially this is what Steve and I thought the evening of Nov 17th. As the next couple of days wore on it became clear that this explanation had some holes.
1. There was only one FOIA being reviwed at the time by the appeal office. It concerned the confidentiality agreements and temperature data.
2. There were far too many housekeeping mails, out of office mails.
3. The issues covered in the mails seemed to match with many items at CA which were not the subject of FOIA: Yamal, SRES, etc.
The mails could have been collected using a script that looked for key words, key authors, etc. a glossary of climate audit would be a good place to start to build such a search engine.”
It might have been in the emails. If you use the “lost password” function, WordPress sends users passwords by email.
Heck, an IT guy at CRU could use the “lost password” function, generate an email, click and send a new password when he wanted one!
Haven’t read all comments yet, but thought I’d note that Mann has been firing off blistering slanders for a long time. His slanderous letter to the editor re: Lawrence Solomon was of the same ilk as these editorials and interviews.
The guy needs help desperately. His credibility is already in tatters and he keeps putting it through the shredder.
Niels:
Except had I been responding to one or more FOIAs, this is exactly the first thing an IT person would have done… written a script to generate an archive that could be used as a first cut for the source material to be used for further investigation by the FOAI officer.
It would search for keywords such as “names of interest”. This of course would get Yamal, etc. And would explain the existence of the “housekeeping” emails…
The existence of the “housekeeping” emails argues towards generation by an automatic script, which doesn’t preclude “prescreeening” for an FOIA investigation. The temporal range of the emails suggests to me an IT person at UAE because likely some of the older emails were in archived format…not immediately searchable with a simple “find” like content-searching script.
It’s possible it was done by a disgruntled IT person, or somebody doing it in response to a request by the FOIA officer.
bugs:
You don’t even know the person who thought was a miracle was responsible for the release, and you certainly don’t know that they were “skilled” hackers.
As I’ve already pointed out, there are google instructions (video form) that tell you how to hack into wordpress.
So no, you don’t “know’ anything.
Skilled hacking is writing your own “backdoor” version of the Windows disk drivers that resides in a root kit, so that your own disk accesses can’t be logged (file access dates don’t get changed that way for example).
Using simple exploits to break into a leaky sieve with pages and pages of exploits like Word Press is not “skilled hacking”
Bugs has no idea what “skilled hacking” even looks like.
Does this *.zip file exist on the UAE server? Is it’s presence, or not an appropriate subject of an FOIA request?
If not present now, assuming that add/deletes are system logged, is it possible today to ascertain whether it was on their system in mid November a year ago?
Or is this a matter which would be shrouded in the mysteries of the “continuing police investigation?
clivere –
Presumably you’re referring to http://www.cce-review.org/evidence/Report%20on%20email%20extraction.pdf
This doesn’t say that the released emails were from scientists A,B&C. A,B&C’s entire email archives were provided to the author of that report (Prof. Peter Sommer), with the intent that he should compare those archives to the released emails, and see if there were any actionable emails not released.
Apparently, Prof. Sommer never got around to actually comparing the released emails to those persons’ archives, so it remains unclear whether the released files were just a sweep of certain named mailbox folders.
HaroldW – yes that is one of the three UEA reports I have seen and which I use for my own speculation.
My reading of para 3 and para 6 is that the released emails were extracted from the backups for 3 just CRU researchers.
Whoops – Unfortunate bit of typing dyslexia – should say “just 3 CRU researchers”
clivere, “My reading of para 3 and para 6 is that the released emails were extracted from the backups for 3 just CRU researchers”
Doesn’t this make it more likely, rather than less, that an IT person at UEA ran the aggregation software?
No Carrick, That is not possible… It has to be a hack because bugs and the eco-druggies need a diversion from the content
Carrick – I have always speculated it is more likely to be someone with local access on the UEA campus but so far have not been able to rule out an external hack though consider it unlikely. I personally rule out the file created for FOIA theory.
I still do not have a view of the mechanism of transport of the released data off the server.
Apparently the server was in a “secure” location with limited access mainly to IT staff. How was the data transported? What facilities existed on the server to enable viewing and transporting.
If it was over the UEA network then why have the police not investigated other servers or we not heard more about interogation of logs in the UEA reports? If data was transported directly from the server then what facilities were available and how constrained was access eg USB, floppy disc, CDR?
clivere:
The secure location (and position behind a security wall) makes external access unlikely (hence either insider or we have a watergate styled break in).
Data gets viewed using a common terminal connection. Most good IT people are used to that.
You can use a USB drive for example to walk the data out after it’s been aggregated. If I didn’t want to leave tracks, that’s how I would do it.
Carrick–
Yep. Notwithstanding bug’s theory of crack hackers, everything about this would be so much easier from inside.
To some extent, bugs theory is circular. Because he assumes the data was obtained by someone from the outside, the people getting the data had to have *some* level of sophistication. But, the fact is, very little is required on the part of a “leaker”.
Plus, even with my super-mega htacess block to the wp-admin part of my blog, if I included argonne‘s IP range in those that are permitted access to WP-admin (which I don’t) then anyone from argonne who discovered my password user name could get in. Likewise, if my husband, mother, brother-in-law or other people who periodically sit in “my” chair and use “my” computer, “discovered” my password and user name they could just log in. (It would require absolutely ZERO skill for any of these people to access. None. Zip.)
Oh… and you know what? The most common username for logging into wordpress is….. ‘admin’. Most people don’t change it! That has, in the past, often made it easy for teenagers to just play games breaking in.
Back to the Mann op-ed, if I may:
It’s logical for Mann to not direct his editorials solely to scientists. His presentation is emotional and illogical precisely because he is appealing for support from anyone and everyone. No sympathy points yet for becoming unhinged.
Since the future of the planet is at stake, we ought to play it safe. Let’s completely remove all doubts as to whether or not there are deeper reasons for which Mann might be especially nervous about an investigation. Let’s have a full, fair and open witch hunt and be done with it. Exonerate Mann, or not.
And if serious malfeasance is discovered, consider the question put by the Guardian: “Is climate science disinformation a crime against humanity?†And if so, what should be the penalty?
BlueIce… so whatcha sayin? Mann was really the undercover hacker???
MikeC –
If I were to bet on a well-known insider, then my money is on Briffa, not Mann.
Why would Briffa want to leak the CRU emails?
Personally, I’m thinking someone over at the NASA GISS office… means, motive, opportunity, and oddly enough, the only blog of zillions of climate blogs to support the hacking claim…”Yeah, it must have been a hacker, they tried to hack us”
… not to mention that the release excluded any emails that could be considered damaging to the players at GISS
Anyone have any idea about what has happenned to Briffa? His UEA site hasn’t been updated since Oct 2009, around which time he commented on CA indicating serious illness with kidney problems.
Mike Hulme is also another UEA Prof in the climate field. He seems to have more of a ‘moral’ approach than others in the Climategate saga.
Anybody know if he and Briffa are friends?
Dave Andrews–
I haven’t read anything about Briffa’s health recently. He’s fairly young isn’t he? Hopefully, he’ll be doing better. Let’s hope he’s ok.
curious (Comment#59243) “JD – as a lawyer could you advise whether there is any mechanism for obtaining information on the results/progress of the police inquiry into the matter?”
Am not a criminal lawyer or a British lawyer, but generally in the U.S. it is difficult to obtain Grand Jury testimony for instance. The idea partially being that reducing information when the matter is not complete could improperly harm people who may initially be suspected and later cleared. Also, releasing information when full inquiry has not been completed could actually compromise the investigation by giving targets an idea of what is suspected and what has been found.
JD
JD, thanks – that’s about what I expected but I was curious along the lines of ascertaining whether the investigation is still being pursued and if any prosecutions are envisaged. Is there any time limit for release (or even any possibility of such release) into the public domain on information from an investigation that has been closed?
Curious 59343
Have no direct knowledge of whether the investigation is still being pursued. However, in light of the great public interest in the matter, I would expect that it is. Until someone says that they reached a dead end, I would strongly assume that the matter is going forward, no matter how difficult the investigation may be.
Would add that no doubt the investigators and the prosecutors have had the same thoughts that I have (that there seems to be a legal footprint with the way that the emails were organized), and I am sure that they have vigorously looked at those with legal knowledge or access. The fact that there does not appear to be answers a year after the release indicates to me that someone fairly sophisticated and probably with inside access did it.
JD
Dave Andrews (Comment#59333)
“Anyone have any idea about what has happenned to Briffa? His UEA site hasn’t been updated since Oct 2009, around which time he commented on CA indicating serious illness with kidney problems.”
.
Nothing I could find beyond his statements to UK investigating committees; I think not a publication of any kind. I do hope he is not ill. He remains the deputy director of CRU, directly under Phil Jones.
.
Perhaps he thinks this is a good time to let things calm down a bit.
j ferg.
files were cleaned before the zip was made.
files were cleaned to remove timestamp information.
timestamp info on when the files were copied.
building entry logs or computer log on times would narrow down suspects… IF the modify times were left on the files.
so, the files were cleaned. to remove that clue. inside job.
“so, the files were cleaned. to remove that clue. inside job.”
Yes, almost certainly and inside job; someone who knows at bit about the local network, and got/had admin privileges.
Via the comments in Judy Curry’s latest post, the LA Times article Climate scientists plan campaign against global-warming skeptics.
Prof. Abraham we know as Lord Monckton’s favorite pen pal ( <- joke ).
Prof Mandia is a frequent commenter over at RealClimate.
It'll be interesting to see which other names surface in this effort to squish the denialists.
Stephen Mosher:
I’m not sure why you call that “cleaning”. It’s just a matter of resetting the utimes on the files.
Although you do need administrator privilege to do this, though there isn’t anything that says that the files could have been removed from the server before the utimes were reset and final zip archive was created.
Arthur Smith #59000
“That sounds like the thinking of a Mafia boss. Chilling to the core.”
Did this same deeply troublesome concern arise in your core in 2008 and beyond when the Democrats were threatening to bring criminal charges against John Yoo, who, as a government employee was performing his job?
lucia (Comment#59296) November 7th, 2010 at 12:20 pm
Of course it would be easier from the inside. That doesn’t mean it’s been done from the inside. That’s why you have hackers, to get to the computer systems that are not easy to get to. (unless you are a script kiddie, then you just use someone else’s hard work).
bugs–
Of course that fact that the job is almost trivially easy from the inside doesn’t mean it has to be done from the inside.
But you seem to have been saying that the job must be done by outside crack hackers because, if done from the outside, it requires crack hackers. But, the task requires almost no skill if done from the inside.
The fact is: We don’t know. It may have been done by insiders with extremely limited hacking skills or it may have been done from outside by people with sophisticated hacking skills.
It took you long enough to reach this conclusion, after much misinformation from a wide variety of people who think that their own limited understanding of computer systems actually bounds what is and is not possible in computer hacking. Hint: If you think your own system is secure, be it wordpress or your laptop, you are kidding yourself. Its main security lies in the fact that no one cares enough to hack into it.
Yes, we don’t know, and anyone with a firm belief one way or the other is exposing their emotional investment in a preferred outcome, rather than an actual understanding of the truth.
I would point out one small detail. If this was an inside job by someone who is not very, very skilled with computers, then they would have been exposed very, very quickly. Covering one’s tracks for accessing the file is not as easy as it seems. Any reasonably thorough investigation by competent computer forensics specialists would have found the trail and identified the culprit fairly quickly, unless they had already gone to elaborate and technically savvy lengths to hide their actions.
The fact that no such culprit has been found after all this time tells volumes about whether or not it was an inside job, or a skilled hack (even if it was a skilled hack using an insider for support).
I also find the magical theory behind an inside job to be rather contrived. “It was created to respond to an FOI request, coincidentally chock full of things that could be used in a propaganda campaign against climate science, and then foolishly left lying around for a disgruntled employee, who somehow knew that the contents could be leveraged to embarrass his employers, and who at the same time went to all of the trouble to figure out exactly how to hide his tracks, post it on foreign servers, try to upload it to RC, etc.”
The entire thing has far too many intricate, “yeah, but what if…” details necessary to support it.
As a side note, for all involved: It’s so easy to rationalize anything when you’ve made your mind up ahead of time about what you want to believe.
Bob–
I don’t think it was an insider with limited computer skills. What I think is it doesn’t have to be someone who has spent lots of time specifically using their skills to break into systems. That’s the sort of person bugs seems to insist must have been involved, and I don’t think that’s necessarily true.
Here’s an example of the level of skill I might envision: On a project at work, one of the computer support people has a CS degree. During college, he was required to take a course in computer security, and as extra credit, students were given the challenge to break into the professors computer and do something. (I don’t remember quite what. Change their grade? Something.)
The faculty member had set this challenge every semester. Most semesters, no one broke in.
But the guy on my project managed to do so. He had a student from another class arrive during office hours. That student was following a script of what to ask. While that student was asking certaint things, he arrived. The other student asked questions, with one designed to require the faculty member to log into his computers. Meanwhile, the guy on my work project positioned himself to watch the faculty member type his password. Since he had his notepad right there with him, he wrote down what he thought he saw. (You have to have good eyes for this!)
After obtaining that password, the student had sufficient skills to break into the faculty members computer and “do stuff”.
So, what we have is a senior in CS student who is not specifically expert at breaking into computers but who does know a lot about computers generally. He knows how computers are broken into– but that doesn’t mean he is expert at actually doing it. (There is theory… there is application.)
There are lots and lots and lots of guys out there with these skills. They do not regularly crack into machines; they don’t write scripts to break in etc.
Those “inside” would know most successful break ins involve social engineering– getting access to the person. Getting them to reveal their password or other information somehow. (A surprising number of people still write down passwords and tack to a screen. So….)
BTW: I also don’t buy the “It was created in response to an FOI request …” story. That’s remotely possible. If it was an insider, I think it’s more likely that someone with specific IT and computer skills was positioned in a way that permitted them to exploit security holes. They knew enough about tracks to hide them. They may have been very patient about accumulating passwords, and they may have been positioned to read CRU email either as part of their job or through an affiliate. (Some people still have their secretaries screen email….).
bugs:
It’s not just that it’s easier to do from the inside, the pattern of how it was done, and the forensic evidence available to us, is it is far more consistent with an inside job.
Getting onto a system behind a firewall like this isn’t impossible,for example, but it does involves cracking the firewall first to gain access to the server which is behind the firewall. Pretty unlikely that you could do this without leaving a mess akin to breaking and entering with a sledgehammer.
In the mean times bugs 100% of the time describes the emails as hacked or stolen. Why? Mostly because it fits his political needs….not because there is even a shred of evidence or reasoning to support his view, because there isn’t.
Bob:
.
Whoever did it had to be reasonably skilled, this demonstrates nothing.
Oh, BS. Unless the server is set up to log every file access, it is easy as pie. You obviously don’t know what you’re even talking about.
Magical theory? LOL. Way to not be taken very seriously.
Lucia:
I had somebody try to break into my account that way too (just by standing over my shoulder while I was logging in). Unfortunately for him, my password use a combination of control and shift keys (yes this was unix system pre-moronic guis that don’t let you use control keys), he got the letters right but not all of the other contortions right.
I had my system set up to track failed password attempts so I knew what had happened and who had attempted it. He got off with a warning (which turned out to be a mistake, I guess, because he was eventually caught stealing physical property from the facility).
Yep. And I’m sure the next semester the faculty member had better security on people watching over his shoulder. Part of the instructors motivation was to encourage students to think up ways to get in. The students knew they weren’t going to get in trouble for *trying* since it was an assignment.
Computer security guys often learn by monitoring how people get in and then protecting against ways that have actually been used. So, they share information. Universities often have relatively poor security though. They also have a large number of students who are computer savvy.
I’m a bit mystified by bugs seeming to think that a department full of ph.d.s in climate science who use computer models routinesly wouldn’t be filled with students, post docs and support personnel who know a fair amount about computers and who would be unable to learn additional stuff if motivated. The UEA has to also have a computer science department, right?
No one is suggesting that the files were compiled by roving janitors and secretaries who know nothing about computers.
Lucia:
Ironically, the person who attempted to crack my computer and who successfully cracked a number of other computers was a janitor (he was a flunk out from the EE department).
Carrick,
I have 30+ years programming computers, and I’ve been paid several times to hack into systems by clients who foolishly lost their passwords. I’ve also purposely built my own plethora of back doors. I myself have never been attracted to “the dark arts,” but I understand it and have a healthy respect for it.
As far as your specific comment about logging the file access… you don’t know what sort of logging they had turned on, by how many apps (not just the OS, as well as the network), and at what level. While people are very often sloppy with this sort of thing, that’s not a foregone conclusion. More importantly, there are other trails, not the least of which is uncorrupted but deleted blocks in the file system (residue left behind from the transfer or other forms of access).
In addition, any employee, unless he was already a very skilled hacker, almost certainly used one or more internal desktop computers for some or all of the job (unless he smuggled in a personal laptop, then disposed of it before anyone could check). There will also be records of the file transfer on that computer (most likely fragments of the file, even if deleted, still resident on sectors of the hard drive).
In addition to all this, the alleged activity also implies knowledge of the contents of the archive file, which means the user had to open it and read parts of it (using even more programs, and leaving behind more potential trails).
There are so many ways to back into this and find out what happened. I’ll say it again… if it was an inside job, unless the person was so skilled and careful so as to basically fall into the category of professional hacker, they would have been caught very quickly.
And if the person did have those sort of skills, tell me that wouldn’t by itself be a red flag, the discovery that some “secretary” had extensive computer training… and we’re not talking about “how to use MS Word”. Even the hopeful argument that it was a disgruntled IT person, with admin access, will not give that person the sort of skills needed to completely and properly cover his tracks.
No, sorry, the inside job story becomes very unlikely, simply because such a person would have been caught, unless they were supported by an outside driving force (as in Lucia’s case)… which still falls into the category of both professional hack and conspiracy (i.e. two or more culprits).
Lucia,
Real world subterfuge is certainly a useful part of hacking (no rule says it has to be computers-only), although as I pointed out in my previous comment to ClarkC, once you enlist a co-conspirator, it becomes a conspiracy, not just a “simple” inside job. That’s a big step beyond “disgruntled employee giving them what they deserve” (the “what they deserve” part, by the way, is the unspoken emotional sentiment behind the “whistle-blower hero” analogy that is inherent in the whole scenario, and what makes it acceptable to those that want to see climate scientists exposed as charlatans).
But lets take a simpler example… someone in the office takes their laptop to the campus coffee shop, with wi-fi, and types in their password to check their mail, or to do even more involved work involving more passwords, relaxing over a latte but without realizing that the culprit has been staking the place out for weeks, waiting for the chance to watch him type it… repeatedly, if that’s what it took to get the password.
Or how about just plain looking through the windows with binoculars?
Phishing programs and trojan horses are other simple methods, equivalent to what you describe. The ways in are countless, if you are heavily invested in accomplishing the task.
An insider would not have needed to be computer savvy to steal the files. Hacking skills would, however, have been necessary to avoid getting caught, and simply having those sorts of skills, or a history which would lead to those sorts of skills, would put them high on the suspect list.
I’m sorry, but the idea that an insider did it, didn’t get caught, and did it on their own without rather elaborate computer hacking skills, just diminishes the probability to close to zero. It just requires too many “yeah, but what if they also…” responses to questions.
Bob
Why would they need to dispose of the laptop? In the US, wouldn’t people need a warrant to check a person’s personal laptop? Wouldn’t the police need probable cause to check that specific laptop? (Lawyers, please pipe in what would be required- and if you know in England let us know.)
And even aside from the law, don’t they have to know that someone owned a personal lap top (many candidates), brought it in, and connected it somehow? Then check that particular machine? How are they going to learn of the existence of every laptop on campus, or owned by relatives of every person on campus and get warrants to check them all?
Also, why do you use the verb “smuggled in” for the laptop? universities, students often have personal laptops. Postdocs and visiting scientists also often have personal lap tops and sometimes even regular staff have personal laptops, bring them to work and blend personal stuff with work stuff.
If this were a national lab, bank, business etc, I could see where you might use the word “smuggling”. But at universities, it’s pretty easy for people to be carrying laptops, plopping them on their desks, connecting and doing all sorts of stuff. Happens.
Why does it imply knowledge of the contents of the archive file? After they have “smuggled in” whatever you think they need to “smuggle”, can’t they just copy and then do most of the track-leaving activities on the “smuggled in” laptop?
Bob —
A very simple scenario would be for an authorized user (IT guy) to log in at the server console, and copy a bunch of files to a thumb drive. How many breadcrumbs would be left by this sort of activity?
The main bread crumb would be file access times, but you could run a script that goes back and updates the access times later (or resets them to their original values using the utime kernel call if you have system administrator privileges)… Again this isn’t very, very sophisticated, unless Bob is going to call that “very, very sophisticated”.
If not yet caught, then they are very unlikely to ever be. Arm waving about the details of how it took place seems unimportant to me. Maybe someone hacked in, maybe it was an inside job, maybe someone ‘borrowed’ a flash drive for a few minutes from Phil Jones’ desk. Who knows? It doesn’t change the content of the email messages.
Bob:
I’ll bite then. Like Lucia said, what bread crumbs get left if a system operator does this, and why does it take very, very special skills to do what you claim?
Either you don’t know what you’re talking about, or you are heavily exaggerating the difficulty of the covering ones tracks here.
As to recovering passwords, bfd. If you have access to their computer, that takes two minutes.
In general, “records” of transfers aren’t recorded, though they can be.
If you are worried about leaving traces (technically not the same thing thing as “records”), it is really easy to write a program to scrub the files (you write all zeros to the file before unlinking it). You might regard that as “very, very” sophisticated, I regard it as mundane..
You seem to find some sort of nefarious organization spying through people’s windows, intricate software etc, all with zero evidence to support it, more likely than what is really the most obvious means by which the data were garnered. That reminds me of something that was said above:
There’s also the possibility that the parties/institutions involved wanted the emails released, and no “culprit” as such, will ever be found.
Why would they do that, you ask? Dunno. But it is a possibility.
Andrtew
Bob
It would probably help your argument more if you didn’t suggest very, very difficult things are easy. How is this to be done?
The target’s keyboard has to be viewable from the window with nothing block it and someone has to be able to stand in a location where they can monitor the keyboard without anyone wondering why they are perpetually milling around aiming their binoculars at say, Phil Jone’s window.
My home office has a nice huge window– bigger than in most offices. It’s also on the first floor making it possible for a peeper to stand on the ground rather than hover 2 stories above the ground. I would think my office presents one of the easier possible locations where one might peep in using binoculars.
But can they see the keyboard.
I sit facing the window. If someone stood for any periods of time where they could even view me with binoculars, I would see them. But even if I didn’t notice them peeping in, the monitor blocks any view of my keyboard from the window. With or without binoculars, no one could view me typing in a password.
Now, suppose instead, I turned my desk so my back was to the window. During much of the day, the sun would hit my monitor screen– so I would draw the shades. But even if I didn’t do that, I sit in a chair when typing at the keyboard. So, the non-transparent chair and my nontransparent body would block the view of my key board.
So, now, to make the keyboard visible, I would need to have conveniently rotated by desk sideways, with the keyboard perfectly aligned to make viewing from the window remotely possible. Then, the person who wants to see me type in the password, needs to sit patiently in a concealed location where they can sit with binoculars to eyes as they monitor my finger tapping and somehow know when I am entering a password (as opposed to just playing online sudoku or something.)
Where would the “concealed location” be? Building across the way? With a perfectly situated window in an unused empty room?
Now, I’m not saying it’s impossible for someone to get a password by using binoculars. If someone was doing national security work you’d want to consider the possibility.
But relative to the theory that an insider walks in, notices “Dr. X” keeps his passwords on a post it note stuck to the screen? My money is on the “read it off the post it note theory”. My next theory is “IT guy has access to email”. The binoculars theory is way down on the list.
This is great: the true believers need a devil of near supernatural powers. the reality is that some disgruntled insider dumped the FOI file to the public. It is unacceptable for the believer community to consider this as an insider job. Only wicked denialist scum can be responsible for things like CRU.
I am certain that the Koch family will get dragged into the ever expanding cosmological challenge for AGW’ers avoiding the obvious before this is over.
What a hoot.
Lucia:
And for that matter suggest that things that are very, very easy are really very,very difficult.
More on the binoculars theory. I took 3 photos. This is the best view of my desk.
I’m loving that theory more and more…:)
Lucia,
Based on that picture, the password thief would have to request that you clean your window to reduce glare… or maybe offer free window cleaning service! 😉
Nah, the post-it note theory looks better than the binoculars theory, and both look better than the Russian (or Chinese) spy theory. The insider IT-person theory looks best of all.
Steve– Yep! The shade from the locust tree branches and bug screens don’t help either.
I’m going to have to carry my camera around and see what sorts of photos I can take through coffee shop windows. I know I can’t see much through my neighbors window. What I see is the reflection of a pine tree, the sides of another neighbor’s house, and a lot of glare. I can tell their drapes are open, but … well.. not much I can really see inside the room.
It’s true that when I was an undergrad, a boyfriend and I could see into the bedroom of exactly 1 apartment below and across from his apartment. You could see the ceiling of some rooms one floor above. Similar things happened in the dorms.
But really… the binoculars idea? As an actual plan?
People are arguing in circles, and trying to focus on details and individual arguments to help contrive a way in which the “disgruntled employee does it and gets away with it” would work. That’s my whole point.
People who are saying that tracks wouldn’t be left, and then tell me that I don’t know what I’m talking about… well, that’s a convenient way to argue… “I’m right, and you’re ignorant.”
On a smuggled laptop: My point is not that this could be easily traced, but rather the opposite, and that to take this step to hide their trail would have required not only considerable conscious, premeditated thought, but also knowledge as to how the intrusion could be forensically traced.
On IT guys: And don’t you think those guys were then placed under extreme scrutiny as soon as an official investigation was started?
Everyone wants to blame this on “some IT guy” because then they have access and ability, letting them just dismiss inconvenient issues. But once again, this is coloring the story in just the right way to make it possible. It had to be this, what if it was that, he could have just… it’s a fishing expedition, trying to conjure just the right story with so many believable details that it works. It’s picking the outcome you want, and then searching desperately for the evidence that you want to support it.
I stand by my claim, and those that want to conjure excuses to ignore it are going to do so one way or the other; if anyone other than a well prepared and skillful hacker did the job from the inside, they would have been caught some time ago. Since they were not, then inside job or not, it was a skilled hacker. The confluence of a skilled hacker being a disgruntled employee is the beginning of combining improbabilities to make the outcome match your preconceived desires, and also making it less and less probable as you go.
Because no one on the inside was caught, it is much more likely that this was the result of a coordinated attempt to steal the files, orchestrated from the outside.
“Because no one on the inside was caught”
Bob,
You keep saying this, but logically speaking, it may have absolutely no relevance to what kind of job it was, inside, outside, or in your nightgown. 😉
Andrew
Wee Willie Warmer
Runs through the town,
Upstairs and downstairs
In his nightgown.
Looking though through the windows(with binoculars),
Crying through the lock,
“Are are you emitting carbon?
For it’s now 10:10 o’clock.
(Self-rated: Awful)
Andrew
Ok Folks, Here’s another chicken bone for you to choke on… everyone please go to http://www.tomsc.ru... and what do you get? The web site at Tomsk University in Russia where the allegedly hacked emails were linked to named foia2009 or something like that… is it possible that some doof, made a typo and sent his foia file to the wrong place? toms.cru tomsc.ru ya see what I’m sayin?
MikeC (Comment#59496)-“is it possible that some doof, made a typo and sent his foia file to the wrong place? toms.cru tomsc.ru ya see what I’m sayin?”
Except, what evidence do you have that toms.cru has any meaning? I’ll grant you it’s clever. But what would toms.cru be? Not an email address, presumably, since if the “typo” were to be interpreted that way, as the website that the address is @, then the typo must have been put AFTER the @. So then, was it supposed to be a web address? There is no .cru top level domain, and I’m not even sure there is a Tom S at CRU. Moreover, presumably it was sent by email so how would the intended address be @ a non existent domain?
Your idea sounds plausible at first, but I think it doesn’t add up in the final analysis.
Andrew_KY,
You didn’t read what I wrote, and if you did, you either didn’t understand it or simply chose not to.
Simple fact… an inside person is very likely to have been caught, or at least implicated, unless they had professional help. Period.
But you go on believing what you want to believe… that’s what a lot of people are doing with all of this. Not thinking, not reasoning… just believing.
Bob
I’m not saying you are ignorant. I’m saying you haven’t made a convincing case that computer skilled but not hacking-expert people wouldn’t be able to hide detectable tracks in the CRU hack.
But you are wrong. It would not take considerable thought. It would not take any knowledge as to how intrusion would be forensically traced because tons of people have personal lap tops on them, and, for all you know, might very well be the way some people routinely logs on at CRU.
It would need to be premedidated– sure. But no one has suggested an insider was sitting in their chair when “poof” a zip file dropped down from the ceiling tiles saying “read me”.
Of course. But so what? This is after the files were disseminated. They aren’t leaving traces after.
So, bring up the inconvenient issues. Explain why the methods people suggest can’t work. You haven’t been.
Seem to me that this part after the semi colon is you conjuring up excuses and trying to ignore that the fact no one is caught is not evidence the hackers were skillful. It could merely be that CRU operates in a way that makes it very easy to conceal tracks or leave none.
If you want to insist your theory is “the one”…well ok. But as far as I can tell, other than insisting you know this is what it has to be, you have provided zero evidence to support the claim that the fact the police didn’t catch someone is evidence it’s not an insider.
What you are providing is non evidence. The job could be insiders. It could be outsiders. We don’t know.
Bob,
Your simple “fact” is not a fact. It’s a conclusion based on minimal information. Not enough to draw a conclusion, but you seem to have anyway.
I don’t believe in any particular inside/outside or magical scenario. You stating that I have a particular belief about it is you just making stuff up.
Andrew
MikeC
That’s about one in a billion, starting with the fact that a URL ending in .cru would not be valid. It needs to end in a valid generic top level domain (like .org, .edu, .com, or a country abbreviation like .uk).
CRU’s general URL is, for example, http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk
So getting from tomsc.some.thing.complicated to tomsc.ru isn’t going to happen, and that’s discounting the fact that one almost certainly needs a valid user ID and password at tomsc.ru to upload anything. And that further discounts the fact that it must explicitly be an ftp server, and probably has a subdomain, and possibly a directory path, attached for valid uploads (e.g. ftp://subserver.tomsc.ru/uploads/here).
Why do you keep looking as hard as you can for this to be “accidental?” It shows a serious predisposition to having things come out the way you’ve decided they need to be. Do you recognize this in your behavior?
Who knows? Who cares? The reality is that CAGW was (and is) politically contentious enough to give a host of people motive to release damaging emails from UEA. My personal guess is that an insider could do it much more easily than an outsider, so that makes an inside job more likely. But once again, what does it matter? Nothing changes the content of the email messages. “Well known climate scientists were acting badly over many years” is the general message, and that is not going to change, no matter the details of how the email messages were taken from UEA, and no matter how the process is spun.
Most of your responses up to that point demonstrate a complete lack of understanding of what I’m saying. Most of your basic assumptions as to how things work are invalid.
I don’t have the space to educate you on how computers work in this realm (beyond the poor, amateur level of understanding demonstrated by most posters on this thread), so I can’t provide you with the evidence that you want. But the fact that anyone but an experienced hacker would have been caught by now is a fact.
People who actually do understand this will recognize the truth in it. People who don’t will do as they always do, and believe what they want to believe.
Funny how the climate debate always seems to come down to people being able to nestle into the happy, comfortable confines of their own ignorance, close their eyes and cover their ears, and shout that everyone else is wrong.
Bob–
That you don’t have time to educate is fine. That you do not actually explain why any method someone suggest would not work makes it impossible for anyone take your argument to amount to more than “I’m an expert and I say the answer is X”. Well..maybe you are right. But that doesn’t mean you supported your claim.
This appear to be your claim which repeat over and over but you have not supported. In many instances, when you provide “support” it is with facts that are clearly mistaken. Or by mistaking evidence of premeditation as evidence that the job was done by outsiders. Insiders can premeditate. In fact, whether this was done by an insider or outsider, it was almost certainly premeditated.
Erhmm….
“anyone but an experienced hacker would have been caught by now”
This is an assertion.
assertion [əˈsÉœËʃən]
n
1. a positive statement, usually made without an attempt at furnishing evidence
Andrew
Lucia:
I’m saying Bob is ignorant, and the case has been made.
He claims you can read passwords with binoculars through a window. That’s totally ignorant and demonstrably so.
He claims you can’t copy files without leaving a footprint, or that it takes some special hacker kung fu to do so. That’s ignorant, it’s simple as pie, and demonstrably so.
He makes a big deal about recovering people’s lost passwords. That’s not ignorant, but it’s highly exaggeratory.
He claims that he is in some special place of not letting his own presuppositions guide his conclusions, but can some how tell whether we are doing the same. That’s just delusional.
So yeah, I’m saying Bob is ignorant of what he’s trying to bloviate about, and that it’s easy to show this.
lucia (Comment#59485) November 8th, 2010 at 11:12 am
But really… the binoculars idea? As an actual plan?
Maybe a video camera?
My experience when travelling to Germany in 93 was the following:
Just prior to leaving from Newark airport I called home from a public phone at the airport. In those days I carried a phone card with a security code on it. A few days later in Germany I was told that AT&T had detected unusual activity on my card number and shut it down. After my return I checked the documentation and found that 2mins after my call a short call was made to NY using my number (checking it out?). A couple of days later calls were being made everywhere, in the US , Mexico, Jamaica etc. from different phones sometimes simultaneously! My thought at the time was that someone had video-taped me and then read off the number.
“anyone but an experienced hacker”
Sorry, this part is nonsensical too.
Anyone but an experienced hacker could include anyone who may have planned the job well enough so as not to get caught…
It also could include some who won’t get “caught” because they acted on behalf of the parties involved.
Andrew
Lucia,
Because this becomes just like replying to the silly (not all, I mean the myriad down right silly ones) denial arguments against AGW. You can’t tell the difference between a good argument and bad yourself (on the file theft), so I’m here having to reply for eternity to every silly idea (see “is it possible that some doof,..” for a good example), and the moment I don’t, it’s “Ah ha! Got him! He didn’t have a reply to that one!”
The fact is that the level of understanding of computer networks demonstrated here mirrors a child’s understanding of calculus. You can’t explain calculus to a child, not matter how hard you try. Years of foundation knowledge are required, first.
I did not say this. You excluded the remaining (key) part of my statement:
On the window and the binoculars, I’d expect better from you. Obviously when it is darker inside than out there will be a reflection. Choosing the time of day, angle, etc. would matter.
But that wasn’t the point, anyway, and going on about this is just a tactical distraction. The point was that there are numerous ways to steal passwords, but all of them involve considerable effort, far more than a “disgruntled employee” would invest.
Carrick,
This is a ridiculous misrepresentation of what I said, and keying on one little “for instance” in a discussion. It’s a childish approach to argument.
Pretty hard, yes, actually, especially when those files were undoubtedly not left simply lying around in a public directory somewhere. Hope and belief that they were is more magical thinking. By default, there are very few public directories in most systems (because otherwise they’d be too insecure). Someone would have had to go out of their way to put the files in an unprotected directory.
You’re thinking about your little PC world (as most people do) and do not understand what you are talking about.
What are you talking about?
Okay, the level of ignorance, verbal assault, and inanity here has officially gone over my limit. Once again, the denial crowd “wins” by being willfully ignorant of the facts, stomping their feet in denial at what they don’t want to hear, and growing progressively more and more obnoxious until it is so unpleasant that the discussion isn’t one.
Done here.
Bob is short for Robert…. hummm. The style of argument (“I am right and you are an idiot” + general insults whenever questioned) is identical. Might there be a connection?
Lucia, can you tell from the IP address if ‘Bob’ and ‘Robert’ are one-in-the-same, or at least in the same general local? Just askin’.
Bob:
No, it was bringing up your supposed 30-year resume and password cracking that is childish.
In terms of the “content” of your arguments, it’s clear you don’t know much of anything, have a good life.
“The fact is that the level of understanding of computer networks demonstrated here”
Bob,
I’ve been a network admin for almost 15 years, and I can tell you that network security is mostly designed to keep outsiders out and that anyone with inside understanding/access has an advantage. Yours is a “just so” story.
Ah, but Global Warmerism makes people say odd things… so it goes.
Andrew
Phil–
It’s the “through a window” and “of a specific target” that make Bob’s suggestion a stretch. I bet a criminal in an airport with a camera can often film unsuspecting people sitting in chairs with their lap tops open. They probably just stroll behind you.
As Julio said back in August:
“There is something scary, almost bipolar, about the guy. For the space of one whole long post, he manages to make himself sound sensible, articulate, and, well, basically normal… and then, somebody dares to disagree with him and it’s like you can almost watch the facade fall apart, brick by brick, in slow motion, until you can practically see the spittle on his posts, and imagine him smiling an awful grin, a manic gleam in his eye…”
.
Sounds apropos.
Bob
I can tell you have provided many bad ones, including the one about reading passwords through windows using binoculars.
Well, your arguments might work better if they didn’t rely on false facts. I did not exlude this “key” bit. Scroll back and you’ll find I quoted this:
Not only did I include the “key bit”, but I addressed it in my response:
Now, you might want to explain why you think I am wrong and why you think a student or post doc using the lap top they always use to do things in the way they always do things would demonstrate knowledge of how to intrusion would be forensically traced.
On the window and the binoculars, I’d expect better from you. Obviously when it is darker inside than out there will be a reflection. Choosing the time of day, angle, etc. would matter.
Of course, the view varies by time of day. But people work mostly during the day. So, you are now suggesting a method of obtain passwords that involves spies carefully stationing themselves during parts of the day when people generally don’t work taking pictures using binoculars. Plus, one has to imagine that the computers were positioned so as to even permit someone to see the keyboard. That seems rather unlikely. But you didn’t address that issue either.
Here’s the picture now, at 3:25 with the lamp on. I’ll take another after sunset.
So what was your point in bringing up the possibility that an outsider might peer into the room using binoculars?
No one has suggested there aren’t. But the fact that someone might steal it by tailing Phil Jones to coffee shops waiting for him to type in passwords doesn’t mean an insider might not get it by finding it on a post it note in Phil Jones office.
You seem to be trying to suggest that the latter method– a known tried and true method btw–is somehow impossible or unlikely because you can dream up some very difficult time intensive method involving huge teams of outsiders investing lots of times might also work.
And who is that (smallish) woman reflected in the window?
Lucia:
LOL. That’s what I was wondering.
Why bring up things like his mastery at reseting passwords or the use of binoculars to crack passwords, if they are unrelated to the discussion? Or to continue to claim that it would be difficult to not leave traces when you copy files, when several obvious means have been proposed (copying to a thumb or external drive are two, “wiping’ a file is something I know about—issues with proprietary information—and I’d expect any good IT person to know how to do. None of this stuff is James Bond level spy work.
This guy’s ramblings looks more and more like word salad the longer you stare at it.
Me. Wearing a very baggy men’s t-shirt. I love those. The thing on the level surface is the ice cream maker. I’d put it in the office because it’s loud when it runs. I haven’t used it in three weeks (and won’t until summer) so I’d better put it in the basement!
Bob, re: your “fact”- “But the fact that anyone but an experienced hacker would have been caught by now is a fact”…
A related avenue of crime perhaps?:
“At least 80 per cent of burglaries are committed by amateur opportunists who take advantage of open or vulnerable doors and windows, keys left in insecure ‘hiding places’, and unlocked side gates, for example.”
http://www.thurrock-community.org.uk/lsp/safer/content.php?page=crime
“• Clear-up rates for most property crimes are much lower than for crimes against the person with less than 15% of recorded domestic burglary offences detected in 1999/2000.”
http://www.secureone.co.uk/domesticalarms/burglaryfacts.html
So it looks as if even casual opportunists have a pretty good chance of evading capture. Given the (lack of) data management and (lack of) respect for FOI that CRU/UEA have shown I doubt that they had adequate, let alone leading edge protection, on their IT systems.
Carrick,
I think it is Robert…. identical MO. Just as much nonsense.
As far as I can tell, Bot has not explained where the “traces” would be left in any proposed method of getting the files. I’m scrolling back. I don’t see any discussion of why copying onto a thumbdrive would leave a trace that let them identify the insider who copied. I don’t see how someone with a personal lap top would be caught. (He just thinks it proves they would be knowledgeable of how to hack without being caught. Well… that’s not true. But even if it were, how is that inconsistent with it being the inside IT guy? Lots of computer science majors take classes in network security. They don’t make their living cracking, but they know a lot about what traces to look for. )
Lucia,
O.T.
Your house looks like it has “texture 1-11” siding; something I have not seen in many years. It was really popular back in the 1970’s. When was your house built?
“Bot has not explained where the “traces†would be left”
I think bots try to not discuss traces.
Re: Comment#59528
SteveF–
Please don’t quote me on that again. It is not the sort of thing I want to be remembered by. 🙁
My two cents on Bob’s arguments, not questioning his IT experience:
(1) Security at universities is typically pretty lax. These are not top secret government installations. Here in my department, for example, any other faculty member’s key can unlock my office. Yes, my computer is password protected, but how long would that stop somebody who had access to the physical machine and wanted to read the contents of the hard drive? I also have a backup disk that is not password protected or encrypted in any way. Anybody with half a brain could get anything they wanted out of it. Of course anybody operating that way would bring his own laptop.
(2) I would not be at all surprised if the same thing were true at the IT department, that is, every authorized employee’s key can probably open every door there too.
(3) As far as doing it through the network, if I wanted to gain unauthorized access to a server elsewhere on campus, of course I would not do it from the computer in my office! More likely I would use a general access lab. Most of those computers require you to log in with your university ID and password, but I know at least one computer that does not. At least twenty other people have a key to the room where that computer sits.
In short: the fact that they have not found the source of the leak *could* be due to his being an extremely skillful hacker *or* to the computer situation at CRU being a security nightmare in the first place, and my personal experience suggests the latter as a much more likely scenario.
Julio,
“Please don’t quote me on that again. It is not the sort of thing I want to be remembered by.”
Sorry. I will not reference that comment again. It was just too well written…. and so hard to resist. Almost like the Gettysburg address of blog flame wars. Anyway, I won’t bring it up again. I remember more your thoughtful and reasoned comments.
As posted by Steve McIntyre, the Montford Report shows there is yet another way in which an insider could have done the deed. It has Colam-French claiming:
“Keith Briffa took home emails that were subject to FOI to ensure their safekeeping.”
BTW, this has nothing at all to do with my reasons for betting on Briffa and I am not trying to add to his troubles. In fact, if Briffa turns out to be the insider, I pledge $1000 to to either his defense for this “crime” or to his witch-hunt defense fund, if he prefers. The only caveat being that he reveal whether or not he has made any deals to protect others from prosecution.
Thanks, Steve! 🙂
One observation I will make is that there were some early reports that there was at least 3 “accesses” of the server up to the final release. This would suggest that there was some logging performed by the CRU IT guys but so far we dont know anything else about what it revealed.
I do find it entertaining that one side of the AGW debate is so enthusiastic for it to be a hack and the other side are cheer leading for a leak.
Unless we get more details then there is still plenty for people to speculate on. My favorite is did Mr/Ms FOIA run off with all 7.95GB of emails from the 3 researchers or did they give us all they could get in their window of opportunity?
clivere:
Arguing towards a logical conclusion isn’t the same thing as “cheer leading”.
It doesn’t make a lick of a difference how the files were recovered. In a way, it would be much more dramatic if the files were hacked. What a movie, eh?
Leaking is actually the more mundane, and in my money, much more likely scenario. No cheer leading necessary. (Just derisive laughter at people who propose really stupid scenarios like stealing the password using binoculars.)
Under “who benefits” from the leak/hack, I would probably include the Russian, Chinese, and Indian governments. Or, arguably, some actors within those governments. So, could one of them have orchestrated such a hack? Seems to me that it’s quite possible.
But the problem with this theory is that I have no evidence.
It seems to me that the best answer to “Was it an inside job, or an outside attack by Russian/Chinese/Indians, or an outside attack orchestrated by some other forces?”, is We don’t know.
We may never know.
My recollection is that, initially, both sides were pretty much parroting the assertion that it was a hack. It took a bit of effort to get recognition for the idea that “hack” was not the only reasonable explanation.
Am I mis-remembering?
Bob, what do you mean I keep saying it was an accident… that was the first time I asked about it being an accident… dude, put the crack pipe down, you’re suffering paranoid delusions
Blue, It would make sense that if one side wanted to cover their mole’s butt… and the other side needed to have an issue to distract from the content of the leaked material
MikeC#59562
Yes. Unfortunately, public clarity will be thwarted if the mole is making deals with both sides.
Blue:
Not all of us (not me at least, I never thought it was a hack, I assumed a retaliatory whistleblower from the start). But it’s odd how its turned into such a “partisan” issue, given as I said, the indifference of the implications of the emails to their source.
I think part of what makes it “partisan” is how the warming zealots react to the notion that a “whistleblower” could even exist. It’s almost a heretical notion.
Also, to me, the use of proxy servers really speaks against hackers (they would have uploaded it to file severs from a jacked computer).
Bob,
Your assertion that it must be a high level hacker because this person has not yet been caught assumes that the investigators are even looking very hard.
I see no reason to believe that there is anything more than a pro-forma investigation being made.
Thank you Hunter. You are correct. There are two things that must be in place to determine the methods (not even the person).
1) The creation and retention of logs (from whatever source) must be in place when the event happened. Log files get more expensive to retain the more you log (due to management, not disk space).
2) Some who really cares enough to look and look as deep as the logs allow.
Money raises the care level. Government secrets raise it higher. University emails?
All this speculation must have some rich parents given how idle it is. How else could it get by?
All silliness aside, I’d bet that if it were an insider… then they opened the doors and invited folks inside rather than do the work themselves
hunter,
Another convenient assumption (once again, someone is guilty of assuming what they’d like to believe). It was a crime with far reaching, global implications, and you think no one cares to investigate it?
From the wikipedia page on the issue:
MikeC (and Lucia),
This is uncalled for and obnoxious.
Kan,
This is wrong. If your experience and paradigm is personal computers, or even a typical IT shop, you are completely out of your realm. There are far more clues than just logs.
And the person who really cares would be the people who were hacked, the fact that it was a crime, and the four law enforcement agencies that are investigating.
julio,
But that’s not my point, and I don’t dispute this. Quite to the contrary, performing the hack was probably far too easy.
But doing so without getting caught is not nearly as easy as people want to believe, if it was an insider. An outsider is very unlikely to be caught, but there are myriad “fingerprints” that would throw suspicion onto anyone internally that did this, unless they had far more experience than most people on all of the various parts of all applications and OS software that would have been used in the course of the theft.
Carrick (Comment#59569)-“Not all of us (not me at least, I never thought it was a hack, I assumed a retaliatory whistleblower from the start). But it’s odd how its turned into such a “partisan†issue, given as I said, the indifference of the implications of the emails to their source.”
For my part, I never cared one way or the other about what the cause of the, um, release or whatever, was. The content was much more important…
“I think part of what makes it “partisan†is how the warming zealots react to the notion that a “whistleblower†could even exist. It’s almost a heretical notion.”
Carrick, I submit that another source of the “partisanification” is that early on, people on one particular side of the issue started using a very ugly loaded word: “Theft”. And it was a “crime” they seemed determined to indict an entire group on. Presumably so as to avoid discussing the “property” which was “stolen”…A bit like complaining that the police found the murder weapon in your house but didn’t get a search warrant first, even though you idiotically waived that right by letting them in…
lucia,
That’s because I didn’t even respond to the thumbdrive comment, because it’s overly simplistic. This isn’t just a personal computer, where you walk up, copy a single file, and you’re done.
clivere,
One basic fact here is that much of the logging (OS kernal, apache server, FTP programs, etc.) is turned on to a certain level by default, and almost nobody bothers to alter those settings unless they are explicitly trying to increase security.
So yes, there were undoubtedly logs, and more than one.
Carrick,
First, it wasn’t reset, it was recover. There’s a huge difference. Second, I didn’t claim “mastery,” quite the opposite, I said that it’s not my line, but I had been paid a few times to do so (note “few” does not equal “mastery”).
You and others also keep harping on the binoculars thing. Go back and actually read what I wrote! That comment was pointing out a detail of Lucia’s own experience, which is that part of hacking doesn’t involve computers, but instead getting access in “real world” ways. The binoculars comments was just a tangential, off the cuff example supporting another more likely example (coffee shop).
Why you all are going on and on about the binoculars I have no idea (although it does demonstrate the fact that you aren’t reading and understanding what I’m saying, that quite honestly it makes me question your critical thinking skills).
Bob–
But the point is, your tendency to not answer makes you look uninformed. You may think examples don’t need to be answered, but they do. Otherwise, your argument is merer assertion. You may be sure you are right, but certainly no one else can tell.
But now that we see the answer you consider a slamdunk: how do you know Jones or others didn’t keep archives on his personal computer? Many people do keep their archives on personal computers. I do. My husband does. So, why do you assume this is not the way it was done?
The fact is: We don’t know how this was done. There are many hypothetical ways one could get passwords. Many places where archives might be stored– and some might be stored in multiple locations. We don’t know the level of security (other than that in universities it tends to be low.) We don’t know how universities logging.
But you conveniently seem to assume you know the type of logging, you know where things were stored and stolen from, you think certain things that are likely routine would be difficult (like pluging in a personal laptop!) and then conclude the files must be obtained from the outside.
Well… duh. If you’d read my previous example, my friend got extra credit in his cyber security class by going to a faculty member office and watching him type the password. This can be done fairly easily by an insider. The task is infinitely more difficult for an outsider using binoculars! But you are somehow seem to use the fact that there are many ways to get passwords to “prove” the job wasn’t done by an insider. All these methods are easier for an insider. All.
And… so what? If a person went to a large common areas with computers available to many (as often exist at universities and even community colleges) and accessed from there using Phil Jones password, how do would investigators know who accessed?
You don’t seem to be reading information about how universities operate, and don’t even seem to have any personal information about how universities operate.
Carrick,
Name calling is unnecessary and uncivil, no matter how justified you feel it is.
It most certainly can be done, but I never said it was in this case, or was necessary, or anything of the sort. Go back and read my words (and it is ignorant to re-paint my own words out of context).
First, the hack had to involve far more than mere copying. Secondly, actually, yes, there are footprints when you copy files, especially over a network. We’re not talking about a single desktop PC, and if you think we are, that’s one more contrived simplification necessary for the no-special-skills-disgruntled-employee theory to work.
No I didn’t. Go back and re-read what I said.
What I said was that I admit to not knowing if it was an inside or outside job, but that logic suggests that the idea of a lone, disgruntled employee doing so at random without intricate hacking skills and avoiding being caught is very unlikely.
So in my opinion you haven’t shown it, however the mere idea that you’d dedicate a post to trying to denigrate someone… not my arguments, but me as a person… says a lot about you.
Lucia,
I don’t have the time or patience to explain every little thing about computer science and technology to you. At some point you have to educate yourself to better understand this before the discussion can continue at an intelligent level.
Because the archive contained e-mails from many different people, and no one person was on all of them. How did he get other people’s e-mails? Oh, right, the “they must have put it together themselves for an FOI request” fantasy, combined with the “he decided to keep a copy on his own computer” fantasy, combined with the “he left his office unlocked, and someone who wanted to embarrass him knew he had that file on his PC, and where it was, and used a thumbdrive, and then tried three times to hack into RC even though they weren’t a hacker, and then knew how to use multiple anonymous proxy servers to cover their trail while posting the file to a server in Russia” fantasy.
Yeah, that all makes sense. Occam’s Razor and all, you know.
Yes, just like you conveniently assume that you understand the chemistry and physics behind GHG theory. College degrees, lifetime of experience, actual real world work on operating systems, e-mail servers, web servers, and all that.
You are arguing in circles. Let me help you distill things.
1) You made your example of real world intrusion.
2) I added to that (coffee shop, off the cuff example of binoculars)
3) You and others went crazy on the tangential binoculars comment as if it was the linchpin argument (strawman!) in everything I was saying.
This is not even remotely that simple. You’re trying to fabricate scenarios which fit your own predisposition to a conclusion, from a limited understanding (much the way someone that doesn’t understand climate science might argue that CO2 can’t affect the earth’s temperature because it’s only a trace gas).
This is most certainly a false assumption on your part. That I didn’t respond to the “how universities operate” comment, or the thumbdrive comment, or the myriad other silly comments is merely that they are silly, and I don’t have time to write a twenty seven page essay on how this all works.
It’s awfully convenient to say “oh, their security must have been sloppy, so it was easy.” It’s convenient to have them put the archive together for an FOI request. It’s convenient that there were no logs, not even the default logs that take a lot of time and effort to explicitly turn off. It’s convenient that Jones copied the file to his PC. It’s convenient that his password was easy to steal. It’s convenient that the network is such that any roomful of computers might have served the purpose. It’s convenient that…
Again, don’t you recognize this behavior? Can’t you see that you and others have decided what you want to believe, so for every difficult general argument you see, you fabricate a highly unlikely, specific scenario to counter it?
Bob
No one is forcing you to be here. But if you are going to present an argument, you are the one who has to support it. This is true for everyone.
Well. That’s a hasty conclusion. At Iowa State the IT guy for my department had a key to every office and could have copied entire hard drives from every computer he wanted to. You have no reason to believe other schools operate differently. In fact, if you’ve been reading the thread, you will see that Julio told you that at his university, all faculty offices share a common key.
I always knew when he’d been in my office to do something (generally network related). Jim was about 6’4″, I was 5’4″ and he adjusted the chair. When we’d moved to a new building, Jim was in and out of that office about every two weeks for a semester.
As I previously said: I don’t think the FOI request compilation is very likely.
Occam’s razor cuts against your theory that this was done using some elaborate time consuming methods, and which ignores the way Universities really operate.
Well…. I believe GHG physics. My PHD is in mechanical engineering in thermal fluids– just like John Abraham. I took heat transfer (including radiative physics), thermo, fluid dynamics at the post graduate level. My husband actually worked in global climate change after graduatin in Mechanical engineering (I worked in nuclear waste). So, what’s your point exactly?
I didn’t say the binoculars are a “linchpin” argument. But may be you should go back and review what seems to be the point about there being many ways to get the password. Read: Bob (Sphaerica) (Comment#59461).
Your “point” seems to be that finding examples where a outsider could — with great difficulty and/or hacker skills– get a password supports the notion that the break in has to be by an outsider with hacking skills.
Sorry, but the fact that an outsider might be able to get the password too does not exclude the possibility that insiders can do it, and more easily. I don’t care how much you know about computers, this is a logical fail.
To show that the break in can’t be done by an insider, you have to show that the break in can’t be done by an insider. You can’t just show it could have been done by an outsider. Yes. It could have been done by an outsider– I’ve said so all along. It could also have been done by an insider.
Ok.. so first: How would you figure out who got the files in this scenario?
That the scenario is common enough at universities is well know. Just go visit one. I’m not fabricating this.
Uhmm… do you think making an analogy somehow advances your case? Out of curiosity, are you unaware that Carrick, SteveF, and I– all of whom are discussing this with you– believe in AGW? ‘Cuz it sounds suspiciously like you are assuming this. (If you are, some will infer you tend to jump to conclusions.)
And yet… you have time to be here? Very odd.
Well.. it is a fact that university security tends to be lax. UEA/Cru might be an exception– but to support your conclusion that you “conveniently” seem to assume it must have been one.
No one has assumed “no logs” — but some point out logging may have been less than you expect– because this is a university. Logging might be light. It might be erased periodically — as in weekly. If it’s the IP guy, he would know and could wait for logs to be erased before releasing the file.But to support your conclusion that you know the job was an outsider, you “conveniently” assume logs were taken and not erased.
Sure. It is convenient that many people have easy to steal passwords, and it’s particularly easy for insiders to steal them. This is a well known fact. But you want to use the fact that passwords can be stolen many ways to support your conclusion the job has to be an inside job. This fact doesn’t support your conclusion.
I’ve said I don’t know if it’s an inside job or an outside job. You insist it’s an outside job and the only way you seem to support that is
a) a pretty bald assumption that insiders would be caught.
b) showing evidence that outsiders could do it.
Well…. (b) is not proof an insider could not do it. So, it’s hardly evidence against what SteveF, Carrick, or I are saying– since none of us have said an outsider could not. An outsider might have done it. And when pressed to support (a) your response is you don’t have time to do it.
Well… fine. And we observe you haven’t done supported your very strong claims. We also observe that you return again and again to comments, where you wear off your finger prints typing, but you don’t have time to support your claim with arguments or evidence.
But even odder, while you seem to think the fact that there are many ways an outsider might break in, and see that as evidence that an outsider must have done it one of these ways, you seem to think the fact that there are many possible ways for an insider to do it to be evidence they could not have done it!
Well.. no one is suggesting that if there were 5 possible hypothetical ways to do it, then the insider did it all 5 ways! Just like an outsider, the insider would have done it one of the possible ways.
There seem to be many different ways an intelligent, properly positioned insider might have done it. The insider doesn’t have to use all the ways. For example, an insider using a common room might not have to be the “IT” guy etc.
More than one insider can act together. Or maybe it was only one. Who knows?
The “copied for FOI” theory seems implausible to me, but that doesn’t somehow make it impossible for a disgruntled IT person to get passwords by reading the email.
Or maybe it wasn’t the IT guy, but rather UEA has the similar issue of common keys for all faculty offices reported by one of julio above.
So, basically, what I and others are telling you is that you haven’t shown an insider couldn’t do it. Your basic argument sounds fragmented and illogical. Worse, when asked to provide counter evidence to any way an insider might do it, you simply say you are too busy and above it all.
Well.. you aren’t very convincing.
Lucia,
Okay, so now you’re saying this disgruntled employee went around sneaking into numerous offices, stealing e-mails from a wide variety of people in order to compile an archive like the one released?
Simply wrong. Again, without sophisticated methods, they would have been quickly caught. They haven’t been. So sophisticated methods were used one way or the other. The scenario for a mere disgruntled employee to have and use sophisticated methods is highly unlikely.
All arguments that involve simple methods also involve a confluence of extremely unlikely hypothetical scenarios that fit together perfectly (and in some cases aren’t even all that simple, like the idea that the e-mails were stolen from multiple computers using simple file copy methods).
Disgruntled employee, simple methods = caught. Fail.
Disgruntled employee, sophisticated methods = unlikely. Fail.
Outside hack, with or without inside help, using sophisticated methods = possible, and all that remains.
My point is that you understand the science, and so you also recognize how little is understood by people that do not have your level of scientific education… but in this arena you are unable to extrapolate this into how complex computer systems are, and how minimal your own understanding of the issues is, based purely on your own experience with personal computers and the Internet.
No, it’s not my point, and I’ve said so explicitly multiple times. To repeat, yes the hack is much more easily done by someone from the inside, and outside hackers would have been well served to use someone on the inside.
My point is, for the umpteenth time, that for any hack not to be traced back to the culprit would almost certainly entail either a ridiculously unlikely combination of “what ifs,” or else a very sophisticated knowledge of computer forensics which far, far exceeds the understanding of probably everyone reading this thread.
Yes, you are. Why don’t you try it. Try to go steal 1,000 e-mails, 2,000 documents, and computer source code from a wide variety of people and locations in a university or any office. See how long it takes, and how much effort. And do it without being caught by police forces with trained computer forensic teams.
Not really, and I greatly regret the time I’ve wasted here. I’d thought this could be an intelligent discussion, but looking back… it’s a lot like a climate threads at WUWT, so full of gross misunderstandings of the topic that it’s really impossible to get anywhere.
Again, I never made any such claim. I claimed that an unsophisticated insider, or one without sophisticated support, would have been caught. Once again, now your contrived scenario requires that the disgruntled employee be “an IT guy,” and one who is willing to risk his job by engaging in an activity which would not only cost him his job, but get him prison time if he were caught. And he’s angry at a prestigious researcher in the university that he is paid to support. Is this really a likely scenario?
It’s also not that easy. Even “IT guys” don’t know all the ins and outs, where all the logs are, where temporary files may have been stored, and so on. You’re talking about an admin level person with experience (i.e. a lot less likely to be crossing that line of job responsibility). Are there smart grad students around? Yes. So now a brilliant computer science grad student, with a bent for hacking and a chip on his shoulder about a climate scientist in the same university… another magical scenario.
And no matter how good they are, they can’t reset all of the access dates/times, wait for all of the various logs to roll (assuming they are rolled in a short enough time frame, and aren’t backed up), randomize the blocks used for temporary storage during file transfers (which generally involves overwriting the sectors with noise many, many times over), delete all of the shell histories, repeat this on any intermediate servers which may have invisibly been involved in the process, etc., etc., etc. This is all way more complicated than you are willing to admit.
Multiple passwords, from multiple people, on multiple computers, probably on multiple sub-networks.
You keep trying to make this simple, so that it fits into your own simple world of experience with “my computer, my three accounts, my three passwords, copy a file to a thumbdrive, bam, all done, that was easy.” Your personal paradigm is not appropriate to this situation.
Again, no, I insist that whoever did it had elaborate computer skills, and if not, then they would have been caught if they were on the inside. Not so if they were on the outside, because once you leave the network the trail gets cold and hard to follow.
But for an insider to have done this and not get caught without sophisticated knowledge of exactly how networks and file systems work, in detail, is very, very unlikely.
Note: The world of distributed computing that we live in also means that just about everything that doesn’t happen right on your desktop goes through multiple, sometimes dozens, of machines, with (default) logging in many places all along the way.
It’s not as simple as you want it to be!!!
You say this repeatedly, and I think it’s because you aren’t paying close attention to what I’m actually saying. Or maybe the problem is in our underlying frames of reference, so when I say X and I mean X, you read X and interpret it to mean Y, because you don’t have the nuanced understanding that I presume when I say X.
In any event, enough is enough. Anyone who wants to believe that a disgruntled employee could grab a thumb drive, steal multiple passwords, copy multiple files, wait until all traces of the transfer vanished, and do all this without four investigating police forces finding where they slipped up in what is probably the highest profile computer hack in history… well, good luck to you and your “skeptical” reasoning skills.
Mann’s essay was not “illogical” nor unduly “emotional.”* It’s seriously ignorant to assert, as lucia did, that an argument either appeals to intellect or to our feelings. In reality, of course, good writing appeals to both.
*Bizarrely, lucia’s examples of “emotional” or “loaded” language include referring to specific people and comparing the situation to previous political attacks on science. In other words, it’s inflammatory because it is clear and specific.
Bob:
It is not “convenient” to assume that, if something leaks out of a place, the place was leaky to begin with. It is only common sense.
To some extent the fact that the investigation is still going on (*if* it’s still going on) works against the twin assumptions of a break in by an external, extremely skilled, sophisticated hacker, and of an IT department that has its act so together that they know exactly who logged when and where. Such an investigation would have been over months ago, with the conclusion that the files were stolen by somebody who logged on to the server at such and such a time from an internet cafe in Belgrade. End of story, unless you really want to involve the police in Belgrade.
Rather, the ongoing and still inconclusive investigation suggests the kind of haphazard security nightmare I would expect at any university: nobody can rule out an insider, nobody knows how many copies of the e-mails there were, nobody knows who may have walked out with a copy or where he may have kept it or how many dozen people may have had access to it. Under these circumstances, the investigation will also fail to produce any results, but it will drag on much longer.
Consider also this: If the authorities were in a position to assert categorically that the job was done by an outsider, they should have said that as soon as possible, to clear all insiders from any suspicion of wrongdoing (or even mere carelessness). That they have not (to my knowledge) done that is significant in itself.
Except police don’t think that way. Quite the opposite; they would want to avoid letting their suspect know they were closing in on them, so they would not rule anyone out publicly.
Bob
No. I’m saying that the way universities are run, this is one possible way a particular suitably situated person who wanted to do this might have done this. There are also other ways some other person might have done it.
You haven’t even explained how an IT guy who might have keys to all the offices would have been caught. Or how, if UEA is like julio’s university, they would catch a faculty member who used his key to get into all offices. Or, how a janitor who used to be an EE student might have done it. Or how a person who used a common area might have done it!
Of course they are hypothetical. Your theories are also hypothetical. But your claim that the “insider” hypotheticals are unlikely appears to be simply wrong. Most are based on the way University systems are typically run, and you don’t provide any evidence to suggest that common areas that exist at every university I have ever visited don’t exist at UEA, or that IT support doesn’t have keys to offices etc.
So? I also understand that people who do understand things commonly can, and do, explain things. I notice you don’t, and merely make bald unsupported claims, many involving “facts” that are clearly not facts. (Like the hypotheticals for insiders involve details unlikely to be true — when infact, those details are as commonplace as water in lake michigan!)
This point appears to be precisely wrong. Or, failing that, you are not providing one scrap of evidence other than bald claims to suggest it is true.
My experience tells me: If someone has knowledge to support their claims, they provide at least some. You are providing none other than a claim to be an expert.
The scenario of common rooms at universities is common enough. Do you deny this?
The fact that I might fail (even if I tried) proves nothing.
I am not conveniently situated, am I? I don’t have keys to offices. I’m not the IT guy. I’m not a student in their classes. Moreover, I don’t have any incentive. I’m not an insider, soo.. uhnmm…
Well… then you are writing a whole bunch of pointless stuff. Few (possibly) no one suggests the insider is unsophisticated and have said so over and over.
Moreover, what I think many people would interpret things like this as you suggesting the job was not done by an insider:
So, define “professional hack”? Is that someone employed as a hacker? Or who makes their livign that way? And it must involve both a professional hacker and a conspiracy? Or did you mean something else.
Because you have not shown this requires the skill level beyond “disgruntled IT guys”, or n “reasonably skilled faculty member using a common area”, or “disgruntled post doc with girlfriend secretary” etc.
And… uhmmm… Once again, you discount the full range of possible methods because you find one unlikely, and you require an individual to have accomplished more than required even under the “thumbdrive” scenario.
It’s ignorant to notice it appeals to our emotions because you think it appeals to both our emotions and our intellect? Uhh… it is not ignorant to notice a fact that is true.
You stated it as an either/or proposition:
Emphasis mine. Would you care to revise your statement?
None of which applies to your claim, which is neither factual nor based in fact. In point of reality, Mann’s editorial does invoke an intellectual response, and while it also invokes emotions, it is calm and measured. So both your assertion about the nature of rhetoric and about the content of Mann’s essay are false.
Robert–
His writing evokes an emotional response– yes. That doesn’t mean his writing doesn’t contain intellectual elements. Lots of writing where persuasion is mostly through emotion also includes intellectual elements. In fact, including some often makes the piece work better because those whose emotions are swayed don’t notice the bits that pull at emotions.
This is not “either or”.
You do this a lot. The key word in the sentence isn’t “hypothetical,” it’s “unlikely.” “Extremely unlikely.” You constantly choose strawmen to argue against.
Quite honestly, there’s no point to replying to anything you post because of that behavior. You don’t understand, you don’t even try to understand, and you argue your case by picking random, irrelevant points (binoculars, hypothetical, professional, thumbdrive) and then getting uppity and self righteous about them.
To date (meaning since I discovered your blog), I’ve given your posts perhaps more credit than they deserve, because you speak knowledgeably and confidently about the things that you do know. Watching you argue so vehemently and confidently on things about which you have demonstrated a very, very weak understanding makes everything else you say suspect.
I’ll still drop by once in a while to see who wins how many quatloos (this will be a particularly interesting month, I think), but otherwise… not so much.
Micheal Mann’s editorial is a purely political statement. It rests 100% on the “science is settled” meme that he has used many times before. The comparison of global warming to cigarettes and lung disease is simply bizarre, but informative to the extent that it shows Mann’s thought processes have not changed since writing many of the UEA emails. He was and is first and foremost a political advocate, and has long said that climate scientists must never give “ammunition” to the “deniers” by being explicit about uncertainty. He clearly pissed of Keith Briffa and Tom Wigley when he suggested one of Briffa and Wigley’s papers was going to help the opposition, and so should never have been published. Always Mann focuses on the political implications.
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No surprise then that he includes in his editorial yet another explicit call for immediate drastic reductions in CO2 emissions. Very few (or no) other climate scientists are subjected to the kinds of political attacks directed at Micheal Mann. I think it most strange that Mann seems unable to connect the political attacks he suffers to obvious political actions like efforts to suppress publications that cast doubt on projections of catastrophic warming, consistent use of climate science to further a specific policy agenda, and writing inflammatory editorials attacking politicians he disagrees with politically.
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Carnac predicts: Michael Mann is not going to like what happens in climate science over the next several years, nor what happens to Micheal Mann.
Bob,
“I’ll still drop by once in a while to see who wins how many quatloos (this will be a particularly interesting month, I think), but otherwise… not so much.”
.
Thanks.
Once again, it would help your argument if your facts were correct. You complain I don’t address your key word, which is “unlikely”, but I did address it. Let me quote my response to you, italicizing the bit that response to your keyword “unlikely” which you edited out of my response to “prove” I didn’t respond to your “key point”:
Well.. twice you have accused me of not responding to your key point, and twice I simply re-quoted and showed that I did respond to the “key point”. If you don’t want to reply because you think I don’t respond to your key points, I really don’t know what other evidence would counter your obvious mistaken impression.
Lucia,
Maybe you could ask him to make his comment 59664 a promise.
I think “professional hacker” is an oxymoron.
Someone with no formal IT training IS a “hack” and so discovers novel ways to bypass security, not imagined by the professionals. The curious, above-average/brilliant sorts that frequent the universities are what makes these places such a hot-bed of amateur hacking.
BlueIce2HotSea (Comment#59673)-“I think “professional hacker†is an oxymoron. Someone with no formal IT training IS a “hack†and so discovers novel ways to bypass security, not imagined by the professionals. The curious, above-average/brilliant sorts that frequent the universities are what makes these places such a hot-bed of amateur hacking.”
Well, the term “hacker” is actually not so clear cut anyway:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_(computing)#Hacker_definition_controversy
Yes, “cracker”, as in safe-cracker seems a better descripton of a professional email thief.
Bob,
As I said before, someone has to really, really care – it is painstaking work to re-create an event like this – especially if no one is talking (and your clues wont convict).
The more logs you have the better (big money involved). The less you have, the worse (think university network). If they are not the right logs, you will come up empty handed – which is where my money is.
I can see that you really care, and claim some expertise. Why don’t you offer to help them out?
I think “hacker” is a dude or dudette who attempts to exploit flaws in code.
Exploiting flaws in other parts of security (stealing info, etc) isn’t “hacking”, IMO.
Andrew
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I can sympathize with that, Bob. I’ve been there.
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Lucia blows her cover on the key issues. Lukewarmer in some respects, very Wattsy in others.
Neven,
“Lukewarmer in some respects, very Wattsy in others.”
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Please. By this measure I guess we should call Neven ‘Tamino-like in most respects.’ Do us all a favor and follow Bob’s lead as described in his last paragraph of Comment #59664.
Neven:
Oh look! Two silly geese flocking together.
Many say geese are one of the most intelligent of all birds. (Despite the saying, ‘Silly Goose’).
.
By this measure I guess we should call Neven ‘Tamino-like in most respects.’
.
Please, do not insult Tamino. 🙂
BTW, GISS has updated: 0,62. Third spot in the record.
Make it three; it’s also been my experience. You can always tell a subject lucia knows well, not only by her competence but by her comparative moderation and lack of stridency. Which makes it all the more disorienting when she plunges into things she doesn’t understand with sweeping and dogmatic assertions, and that is precisely when you can’t tell her anything, marshal all the facts you will. As the poet says, “It ain’t the things you don’t know that hurt you . . .”
Lucia is a great person, except for the Wattsy aspects (nobody’s perfect). But enough concern trolling, though I mean every word of it.
Neven and Robert,
I think you guys should be thanking Lucia for letting you comment on her blog.
Andrew
Robert:
Let me translate this for you… What you experience as disorienting is when she undermines your religious dogma. Disorientation is good sometimes. That’s what the warmer nuts find so troublesome about Judith Curry too… she’s willing to question her own strongly held beliefs. You guys aren’t.
Off-topic, perhaps, but our hostess seems to grow laxer on this point, as threads grow longer and older.
I’ve been trading views with Pro-AGW-Consensus climatologist (and RealClimate guest blogger) Chris Colose, in the comments to this post of his. He has contributed to some recent threads at Judy Curry’s blog, and comes away quite critical of her.
At any rate, the exchange helped me to succinctly state my major “lukewarmer” concern, which is not that “AGW is wrong.” It is:
“Mainstream climatologists are prone to accepting weak arguments and faulty arguments, if and only if they support the Pro-AGW Consensus.â€
Chris Colose rejects this view, countering that
A difference of opinion on an AGW-related topic. Who knew?
she’s willing to question her own strongly held beliefs.
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There’s a big gap between questioning and changing. For instance, the Wegman Report is the ultimate proof of how the Denial machine served up a tailored report for Big Oil congressmen to undermine AGW theory with PR instead of science and maintain the status quo (huge profits for the fossil fuel industry), but for most skeptics it’s “nope, not happening”. That’s where the pseudo- comes in.
Neven, Take that paranoid bs back to uncle Tamino and wipe your nose on his shirt tail
“There’s no example of a non-climate scientist who has raised any valid point concerning deficiencies in the science of AGW”
Jerry, just remember…
It’s not a lie, if you believe it.
George
Neven, most of us agree the Wegman report was crap. Lucia even says herself that the social engineering part was heavily plagiarized.
I don’t agree that the plagiarism of Bradley was significant or for that matter that much different than the “standard practice” exhibited by Bradley himself. I view Mashey’s report as pig swill, and DC’s efforts as petty assassination attempts.
Both of these boggle the mind because there was enough wrong (or unoriginal) with Wegman to fill volumes. Instead of dealing with substance, you guys deal with personal attacks, justifying it with crazy petroleum conspiracy theories and flawed tu quoque arguments.
As to your fevered notions of “big oil conspiracy”… no doubt you are a truther too. And don’t think man landed on the moon. It’s that dubious of a position.
MikeC:
Pretty sure Grant wears rib tanks. So no shirt tails to wipe snot on.
Andrew_KY (Comment#59722) November 10th, 2010 at 8:03 am
I think “hacker†is a dude or dudette who attempts to exploit flaws in code.
Exploiting flaws in other parts of security (stealing info, etc) isn’t “hackingâ€, IMO.
I’m fairly sure Ed Felten would disagree with you. Check out his analysis of Diebold voting machines.
http://citp.princeton.edu/voting/
Thanks, Phil. I don’t see where the link explores the def. of the word “hacker”, but it is a very interesting article.
I’m suprised more voting fraud stories haven’t been flashing around the media. But I wouldn’t be surprised if more pop up.
Andrew