The second batch of emails released exposing the behind-the-scenes machinations of climate scientists have had the desired effect, and a journalist for one of the UK’s major newspapers has begun serious efforts to dig into the released files for hard evidence of wrongdoing.
That is, wrongdoing by the ‘hacker’. Not the scientists embarrassed by the emails:
What does this file really tell us, if anything, about the identity of the hacker? I have annotated all the places in the file which I think are of potential interest - and explained why.
…
For example, there are the stylistic writing quirks. And what about the quotes at the beginning that help to underscore the “motivation” behind releasing the emails? Where do they come from? The motivation is obvious enough, but do these clues help to paint a profile - nationality, cultural heritage, competence with computers etc - of the perpetrator?
That’s at least three questions Hickman is investigating. Which is three more questions than he’s asked of climate scientists openly discussing deletion of emails, subverting the FOIA process and bullying peers into submission.
It’s hacktastic. Richard Nixon would have given his right left arm to have lived with what we call journalism today.
Geez that Guardian article comments are a hoot. ‘Exonerated in enquiries’, ‘has made the science stronger’ - where do they find these lines?
One thing for sure - we can say all we like about the warmies, but one thing we know for certain - by gosh darn they are a serious bunch. Doesn’t any of them ever try and be funny? I guess when you’re saving Gaia from the evil humans there’s not time for any of that satire nonsense.
I love how they all seem to think it’s the work of some ‘denialist PR firm’. Yes, because the one thing that most people love to do is pay a PR firm to do some hacking and then make sure absolutely none of them ever says a peep. There’s a well known principle in any type of secret - the chances of it staying secret are inversely proportional to the number of people involved. Ergo, the leaker must be one, or perhaps two, people at most.
But who really cares who leaked it? They discuss all this to prevent themselves from, you know, actually having to read the contents and realise their heroes knew all along their theories and data were riddled with holes. But anything for ‘the cause’, right?
It is important to foward the FOIA.org link and other relevant URLs to all the major blogs, journos and sites that are reputable opponents of the Green Church and Gaia grovelers.
Hickman is a joke, even in graun circles.
The entire trove of 5000+ emails is online at http://foia2011.org in a searchable format. Some fascinating reading for anyone interested in what this latest debacle is about, and in forming their own opinion about what’s going on here.
If this journalist were seeing leaked emails from his stock brokers bragging about how they were keeping information from him so that he would keep investing, would he be so angry that the emails were leaked?
The worst part of ‘journalism’ like Hickman’s is that is further encourages CRU to not change how they operate. They didn’t learn anything in 2009, and demonstrated their deaf ear to public opinion when Phil Jones was restored to his role.
Hickman is more concerned about who caused embarrassment to his friends than whether or not those friends are behaving badly. His column is red meat for green fellow-travelers, but does nothing to shore up the holes in climate science’s credibility with the wider public.
Sorry that should say “rank hypocrisy” not role.
Its an absolute disgrace.
I had most of my comments removed by a moderator earlier. Now most of them (bar two) are now mysteriously back. I don’t know if this is a bug in their comment software (they appear to have returned after the comments went past 1 page) or there is disagreement between the mods.
At least out of the surviving comments there are still plenty that are pointing out the Guardian’s rank - not to mention disturbing - role in all this.
There’s also the fact that many of the commenters jumping on the bandwagon i) don’t have a clue about IT (especially IT security) issues, ii) are leaping to ridiculous assumptions and iii) are stating misrepresentations and misunderstandings that could easily have been dealt with by a quick google query. It’s no wonder they are so quick to defend the “scientists” at the heart of this - they’re just like them!