Wednesday, March 13, 2013

Climate Gate 3.0 Lands


It seems the hacker/inside leaker responsible for the two previous leaks of Emails from the CRU (Climate Research Unit in East Anglia England), which revealed a certain casualness with the truth and ethics on the part of prominent climate researchers around the globe, has made what may be his/her final release.  A cryptographic key to a file containing all 220,000 emails has been sent to a number of prominent climate skeptic, including Anthony Watts, along with a letter that provides a bit of the leaker's perspectives and motives.

If the letter is to be believed, the "culprit" (who calls himself Mr. FOIA) would indeed appear to be an insider at CRU, and was dismayed and disillusioned by the conduct of the climate community and their impact on the future:
The first glimpses I got behind the scenes did little to garner my trust in the state of climate science — on the contrary. I found myself in front of a choice that just might have a global impact.

Briefly put, when I had to balance the interests of my own safety, privacy\career of a few scientists, and the well-being of billions of people living in the coming several decades, the first two weren’t the decisive concern.
He is releasing the key to selected people that he hope can deal fairly with the 220,000 emails, which he has not been able to sort through by himself:
To get the remaining scientifically (or otherwise) relevant emails out, I ask you to pass this on to any motivated and responsible individuals who could volunteer some time to sift through the material for eventual release.

Filtering\redacting personally sensitive emails doesn’t require special expertise.

I’m not entirely comfortable sending the password around unsolicited, but haven’t got better ideas at the moment. If you feel this makes you seemingly “complicit” in a way you don’t like, don’t take action.
Since the "cream" of the material was probably already released in Climate Gates 1 and 2, the material may be a lot of work to sort through for very little gain.
I don’t expect these remaining emails to hold big surprises. Yet it’s possible that the most important pieces are among them. Nobody on the planet has held the archive in plaintext since CG2.

That’s right; no conspiracy, no paid hackers, no Big Oil. The Republicans didn’t plot this. USA politics is alien to me, neither am I from the UK. There is life outside the Anglo-American sphere.
Finally, he highlights one chain of emails from the heap concerning the reviews of a paper which tends to contradict Dr. Michael Mann's Medieval Warm Period-free hockey stick with a few interesting tid bits:
1) Didn’t see a justification for use of tree-rings and not using ice cores — the obvious one is that ice cores are no good — see Jones et al, 1998.

2) No justification for regional reconstructions rather than what Mann et al did (I don’t think we can say we didn’t do Mann et al because we think it is crap!).
Grab the popcorn!  It's going to be amusing.

1 comment:

  1. Hockey sticks do not lie, my friends, just ask Sarah Palin

    When Elvis Presley died in 1977, there were an estimated 37 Elvis impersonators in the world. By 2013, there were 48,000 Elvis impersonators, an exponential increase. Extrapolating from this, by 2020 there will be 2.5 billion Elvis impersonators. The population of the world will be 7.5 billion by 2020. Every 3rd person will be an Elvis impersonator by 2020.

    That’s right, people. 1 in 3. We don’t have a lot of time to act.

    Now, there will be skeptics and I recognize that. There will always be skeptics and I am usually first in line. I can understand why there is some skepticism on the causes of global warming but this Elvis impersonator business is serious stuff.

    The Elvis impersonator crisis is real, humans are causing the problem, and the solutions are available to us now. It is not too late to avoid the worst. All that is needed is the political will to act. If someone at the UN tells me I have to be an Elvis impersonator you can bet I am writing letters to my Congressman!

    ReplyDelete