Don Shelby in the Minnesota Post:
One of the world’s most famous climate scientists, Dr. Michael Mann at the University of Pennsylvania, communicated often with Dr. Jones at East Anglia. In the original reporting, Mann was often quoted, misquoted and taken out of context. Though the investigations have found he did nothing wrong, climategate has nevertheless hurt him.
Mann told me that the people who can’t abide the idea of global warming being true “have no legitimate scientific leg to stand on. So, they have turned to criminal acts in an attempt to distract the public and policymakers.” Dr. Mann is convinced that the criminal act shows the work of “industry-funded front groups and the individuals who do their bidding.”
Cyber-terrorism?
The question is whether this can be characterized as a simple cybercrime — or are there elements of cyber-terrorism involved? Bombing a building is an act of terrorism, but it is not the goal. The goal, according to experts, is to terrorize, immobilize and destroy one’s sense of security.So I turned to one of the most respected cyber-terrorism experts in the country, Bruce Schneier. Schneier has been called to testify before Congress. He is the author of eight books on the subjects of cryptography, warfare, crime and terrorism committed by cyber-criminals.
Schneier told me: “What I’ve been thinking about is whether the hack was intended to intimidate, threaten or bully. Then the crime becomes an effort to stop people from doing legitimate research. So, it is not just a data theft, but has a goal of creating a chilling effect, a threat, an intimidation.”
Schneier understands the cyber world, but also the law of unintended consequences. “We are moving into a world in which everything we do is persistent,” said Schneier. By persistent, Schneier means it just doesn’t go away. “A phone conversation is actually archaic,” he said. “Today the conversation is by email or social media and those conversations are persistent.”
If everything we say never goes away, it can be brought back and used to harm us. “Gotcha politics is a good example,” Schneier says. “Record everything a politician says and find the two sentences he or she uttered to destroy them.”
He quotes Cardinal Richelieu, “If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him.”
I asked Schneier if “persistence” makes us less willing to communicate. “As we move in a world of persistent conversations, the ephemera disappears,” he said.
Ephemeral conversations
The ephemera he is talking about is the way we used to communicate — talking with one another. The conversation is gone — it is ephemeral. “A lot of our privacy was incidental to the ephemeral nature of our conversations,” he told me. “Two million emails were subpoenaed in the Microsoft trial. Not long ago those conversations would have been ephemeral. They would have been a chat in someone’s office.”Dr. Mann has long believed that intimidation was one goal of the cyber criminals. “They want to intimidate, stymie, harass scientists who are out in front on the risks of climate change, and they want to serve notice to other scientists of what will be in store for them if they speak out.”
Schneier said: “How open would you be in conversation if you thought your words would be on the front page of the newspaper the next day?” It is a trend. We have moved, he said, into a new world where we are losing the natural privacy we once enjoyed.
Not only are our communications on the internet persistent, but so is memory. Dr. John Abraham, thermal scientist at the University of St. Thomas, told me: “Those crimes were used to fabricate lies about world-class scientists — lies that are still being repeated today.”
Mark Twain said, “A lie can travel half-way around the world while the truth is still getting its shoes on.”
I’m hoping the shoes Scotland Yard and the FBI are lacing up are track shoes.
Scotland Yard? Thermal scientist?
And you’ve written more than six lines in your life Peter (me too). Felt any intimidation yet?
The leak of incriminating emails and code by the anonymous Climategate whistle-blower was obviously to expose the shocking scientific malpractice by Jones, Mann, et al. The leaked emails and code show them and their confederates:
• Obstructing release of damaging data and information;
• Manipulating data to reach preconceived conclusions;
• Colluding to pressure journal editors who published work questioning the climate science “consensus”; and
• Assuming activist roles to influence the political process.
No matter how many coats of whitewash you apply, you can’t cover up the overpowering stench of corruption. It’s science subordinated to politics. The culprits’ contempt for open scientific inquiry and even for the law which is revealed in their emails speaks for itself to anyone who reads them without ideological blinders. (Those shocking revelations were what led me to begin my investigation of sea level data, BTW.)
“It’s no use pretending that this isn’t a major blow. The emails . . . could scarcely be more damaging. . . . I’m dismayed and deeply shaken by them. . . . I was too trusting of some of those who provided the evidence I championed. I would have been a better journalist if I had investigated their claims more closely.” — George Monbiot, columnist, The Guardian
Except that all your claims here are complete lies (although perhaps you are honestly repeating each believing them to be true). These claims require utterly misrepresenting what the emails actually say (as Greenman and potholder — among many others — have made abundantly clear). Your claims are entirely manufactured in the same manner as, say, accusing someone of literal attempted murder because they were heard to say “I am going to murder that guy the next time we play golf.” By the nature of the statement and its context it is obvious no actual murder was intended, but by misinterpreting the sentence in a wholly dishonest way one could try to get the person arrested for attempted murder — or, at least, slander his good name.
That is what climategate is — taking statements out of context and applying bogus interpretations where they supposedly mean things they in fact manifestly do not. This twisting is so blatant and intellectually dishonest that only enforced personal ignorance could lead someone to believe otherwise. So, giving you the benefit of the doubt I suggest you go watch some of Greeman’s and/or potholder’s videos, read more posts here, visit any number of good sites on the Internet, et al. to get the actual truth.
Failure to do so, IMHO, would mean you are promoting a known lie, an act that I and many others would consider morally and intellectually abhorrent. So, what will it be — accept the truth even if it conflicts with perhaps cherished preconceptions or continue offering material you know to be false?
Alan Niedrig: “That is what climategate is — taking statements out of context ”
Please share your tips on fast-reading. Also I wonder how you managed to get access to the “context”, in order to be able to claim the “statements” were “out” of it.
BTW there are many “statements” about Mann’s work in Climategate 2.0 and they don’t appear to point to it being very popular among fellow CAGW scientists, let alone having “held up scientifically”. But then, since you know the “context” just share it and all will be clarified. Thanks!
What’s really amusing about the “climategate-2.0” statement made about Mann that deniers have been touting is that it was made by Ray Bradley, who later went on to co-author additional “hockey-stick” related research with Mann!
daveburton Says:
‘the anonymous Climategate whistle-blower was obviously’ a big lie.
Why are you trying to derail the thread?
Why are you repeating lies?
Sound like trolling to me.
OK daveburton,
Can you give us a specific example where the CRU was involved in “manipulating data to reach preconceived conclusions”?
Can you tell us about the data the CRU folks supposedly manipulated and how they manipulated it?
Can you tell us what results you think would have been produced if the CRU folks had not manipulated that data?
Hmmmm…. do I hear crickets chirping???
What’s insidious about cyber-terrorism like this is how it feeds prejudice. Among Climate Deniers it is now taken as gospel that individuals like Mann cannot be trusted. Why? Because, the answer comes back, he is forever “twisting” his words and offering us “tainted” information. Yet, if you ask these Deniers for actual evidence they will hem and haw without ever coming up with any definitive example (or, if they try, it’s usually by quoting something like “Climategate” that can be easily disproven).
In the end it becomes clear that the basis for their assumed mistrust and automatic dismissal of anything Mann and others like him say is based on the fact that since he’s been hounded for years by deniers and fought back THE MERE FACT THAT HE FIGHTS BACK “proves” that he can’t be trusted. That is, denier tactics become self-fulfilling prophecies — Why can’t Mann be trusted? Because he is forever “fighting” with Deniers and is “unwilling” to met them “halfway”, “clearly” the behavior of someone who cannot be trusted. Where there is “smoke” there must be fire.
It’s wrong, twisted, illogical, and morally bankrupt, but it works. Bring up people like Mann to a Denier and they dismiss anything he has to say out-of-hand. And, their reasons for doing so always reduce down to = since there has been so much “controversy” with him then SOMEHOW there must be some truth to it all. At the very least he cannot be “trusted”. Of course, all the “controversy” is completely because of the Deniers in the first place. The fact that Mann’s work has held up scientifically doesn’t matter. After all, if you find some “bad” scientists can you trust any of them?
What’s scary is how often I’ve seen such tactics work on those that are merely uninformed or open to being drawn into the Denier camp. After all, people naturally tend to be “conservative” when it comes to making such judgments (not conservative as in politics, but in “hedging your bets”) and the conservative deduction is that with so much apparent suspicion surrounding Mann and similar scientists it’s “safer” to assume there must be some fact to it and that they can’t thus be (wholly or otherwise) trusted — and thus the Denier wins just by making endless accusations regardless of their truth (or, in this case, lack of it).
It’s a smear campaign and despite the fact you sit there and watch it happen, pointing out again and again how it’s in fact based on nothing, it still works depressingly well. It does so even with Deniers who are being “honest” in their denial (e.g. they are theoretically trying to be open minded) because they can’t bring themselves to believe that with “so many” people condemning Mann and others like him so much it can’t all be mere make-believe smear.
Feeding prejudice is how right wing bigots have held power for centuries. It worked for Lester Maddox – it works for Rick Perry – it worked for the people that hacked into UEA.
In this case, the prejudice is against intellectuals. But the principle is always the same.
On one hand we are to be persuaded to think that emails between individuals were revealed by “Robin Hood whistle blowers” and on the other hand by “evil hackers”.
Is there a difference?
Regardless of the motive for the act neither is ethical regardless of the content of the mail.
If the Royal Mail van was hijacked and the mail stolen and opened who would be called in to investigate…the Constabulary.
Who has the right to decide the righteousness of the act?
Hopefully a court of law and not a lynch mob.
Science is robust unlike Politics.
Even if they could prove that Michael Mann was somehow misleading people (which he is not) then that still would not disprove climate change. It’s no longer a hockey stick, it’s a hockey of league of studies that support the theory.
There is and has been definite intimidation of activists, scientists and policy makers by those who don’t want to switch away from fossil fuels. This is well-documented going all the way back to the early years of the debate.
The so called “ClimateGate” emails did exactly what they were intended to do. A terroristic element may have incidentally been in there, but they really only had one intended consequence. To distract, confuse, and delay support for action to address anthropogenic global warming. And it worked.
There was a growing wave of support for action to address climate change in the months leading up to COP 15 in Copenhagen. Those who had interest in stalling or derailing the talks were starting to feel desperate. Given the huge number of “hackers for hire” available in the eastern block this would have been a simple thing to hire out. The instructions would have been something like “find me some dirt on these eggheads and I’ll pay well”.
Just another tactic in use by the same group that handled the “tobacco is safe” campaign for so long. The big stall, holding off the inevitable, cast doubt, stall. The timing wasn’t suspicious, it was strategic. Make the politicians think it’s dangerous to support the UN efforts and you derail the whole purpose of the talks.
The echo chamber, both in Rupert’s League of Dupes and out here in the Blogosphere are the ones that turned this into an opportunity to chill scientific dialogue and discredit climate scientists. They carefully quoted out of context, and then conflated huge, global conspiracies with climate science. It worked so well that COP 16 at Cancun was a totally wasted effort.
Well, now reality is starting to set in. Climate disruption is happening all over the planet, as predicted, but ahead of schedule. There might have been some danger of a conclusion in Durban for COP 17, so trot out those emails again, maybe they’ll work one more time. Nope, that whole “Fool me once” thing is taking hold.
I read through the first round of emails when they came out. Even the worst of the messages didn’t amount to much. It became quite clear that the cherry picked emails were intended to raise suspicions in the non-scientific community, which fortunately for the ‘fraudsters’ is the majority of people. Regardless of who wants to punch who, or has a disagreement with another, this is a bunch of people talking shop, not a nefarious, shadowy, global conspiracy of elite scientists and UN overlords.
Which tends to lead you to the conclusion that these guys are pretty up front, if those emails were the most damning evidence that could find.
I do Cyberthreat and Internet Security for a living. I’ve been faced off with hackers for most of the last 30 years. If the hacker(s) in question had managed to get into the UEA mail servers, I guarantee they had access to much more sensitive information than those emails. If the goal had been to “out” the global conspiracy, they would have found real documentable evidence and put it out two years ago. They don’t have it, probably can’t figure out how to make it up, so they tossed out the second set and hoped it would do something. The result was a dog whistle for the “deniers” and another reason to doubt for the honest skeptics. Well, this dog don’t hunt.
The primary purpose was to delay and confuse, try to stall just a little longer. Step up the pressure in the Legislatures around the world. Funny how this Climategate thing is an English language only thing, eh?
The funny thing is that I am accused of being conspiratorial, and yet there are people capable of fantastic rants like tweetingdonal (who’s never heard of BRIC, I presume).
Wow! Anything about 9/11?
I don’t think you are conspiratorial. Just a putz.
No need to get agitated about hockey sticks. Just see how the graph evolved between TAR and 4AR. So much for Mann being vindicated. And an honest AR5 would show even less.
Well, that is just plain silly.
Most of the reconstructions shown in 4AR had not yet been published when TAR was being put together!
In the years between TAR and 4AR, Mann’s 1998/99 work went from “one of a kind” to “one of many”. That’s the whole idea of scientific advancement — promising pioneering research gets built on and improved by subsequent research. So of course Mann’s 1998/1999 work would be shown less prominently in 4AR than in TAR.
Only in the mind of a deluded tinfoil-hatter would any of this be considered an indictment of Mann’s original work!