Tuesday
Nov222011
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill The Heretic wins Evening Standard award
Nov 22, 2011 Climate: Sceptics 
Congratulations to Richard Bean, whose climate sceptic play The Heretic has won an Evening Standard best play award. The award was given jointly to The Heretic and one of Bean's other plays, One Man Two Guv'nors.
I understand the show will transfer to the US and Australia in due course.
Reader Comments (124)
Now, all those who sat before the multiple independent enquiries and rationalised what had been exposed in the first set of emails are now wondering how their testimony stands up in light of this lot.
I really, really wish I'd bought those shares in that popcorn factory.
..."and don’t want to be made to look foolish."...
How about corrupt?
Mac:
It seems we do. Our gratitude, once again, FOIA.
30 min download...Hmm.....
doesn't leave much time to get everything else I was going to do this week done :¬)
Richard Drake
Seems like overkill to me. As I understand it, there's exactly no chance of anything substantive coming out of Durban anyway.
Still, these old emails have a kind of sell-by date, so best they are used now, before moth and mildew do their worst.
TS:
The first thing I did was a series of regex (regular expression) searches to ascertain this. By now I'm >95% confident that the last date of any email is 13 Nov 09. Climategate 1 was released on 17 Nov 09 so the answer to your question seems to be no. It's a further selection, using keywords, from the same, very large email archive obtained some time between 13 and 17 Nov 09.
(I haven't been able to check the documents folder in the same way but I assume the same kind of thing applies.)
Your opinion I'm sure holds enormous weight with many. But the motive of FOIA is obviously broader than any summary of mine can do justice to. Best to read the README.txt itself without distraction and simply be thankful for someone who truly cares.
Thanks Richard
What about the one million dollars Mike Mann spent to keep his emails private? Do these new revelations have any impact on the case?
Richard Drake
Oh, I think we all truly care.
Richard,
There is information on that 'document.doc' that it was date-marked today...
Marvellous stuff if true.
The drip-drip-drip is not the sound of ice melting.
Imagine waiting 2 years and wondering if any more of your incriminating emails are going to come out - and then they do.
The propaganda line to take can be found in BBD's post above.
I expect Jo Abbess will be along soon too. Move along. Nothing to see here. Don't think that, think this.
Shub
I think it's been noted that many of the documents are using the 'date' field that just puts in the current date on the machine their being read on.
I cannot believe the BBD response above.
We know that RF from CO2 is heating the system but is that why the climate scientists' pants are on fire?
Hiding, deleting, not using email,.... why are climate scientists resorting to these measures? Who told them they have to play along with the cause?
Actually, given that sceptics make better predictions than climate psyentists do, can we collectively make any reasonably specific predictions about how the Cult will react to this?
Mine would be:
- they're not genuine so we don't have to comment
- they were stolen, so let's foam about so we can evade discussing what's in them
- this changes nothing
- it's just a lot of sceptics getting het up about not very much
- we never said there was any climate change at all
- there's nothing in them we haven't already said
- poor widdw Phil Jones
- keep giving us the money
I will also predict there will be no disciplinary or criminal action taken against anyone involved.
Now posted up on the BBC
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-15840562
Shub - BBD's approach is essentially a confession to noble cause corruption: "we meant well when we lied".
If you took Germans' word for in 1946, there were no Nazis in Germany in 1933. One day, and for the same reason, there will never have been any CAGW alarmists chez BBD.
That's my prediction for BBD. CAGW? Didn't happen. Wasn't me. Wasn't there.
A further Cult prediction I'll offer - even though CAGW is balls, we must continue with the same measures because wrecking the West is a good idea anyway regardless of the pretext.
No mention of this on the BBC news or from any of their environment correspondents. They are usually on the ball wrt any breaking environmental stories.
<ZedsDeadBed mode>
Call yourselves sceptics? You make me laugh. You should be sceptical of the provenance of these emails. and of what's in them. Just because scientists admit they're lying, hiding and embellishing doesn;t mean they are. Loom at all the peer reviewed science that says they're right. Who have you got, you Tories? Ner ner ner ner ner. </ZedsDeadBed mode>
CAGW, like the new economy in the 1990s and unilateralism in the 1980s, mark the believer unerringly out as a buffoon.
It's 5292 more emails to explain away, J4R. I'm sure they'll try and say that it no longer matters but it will be hard to take them seriously. (Interesting though that it's safe to take BBD's words on BH as indicative of which way the PR spin will now be applied.)
J4R - "sceptics make better predictions than climate psyentists do"
Sorry, I predited that they are "old" but not in danger from moths and mould.
Not sure if that would change their provenance in Court or a Tribunal and I tend to agree that this will never be tested.
Richard Black reports on the story by referring to the "clearing" of the scientists from the previous batch - thus neatly saying "this lot is just like last time, move along, nothing to see here". Believers with their heads in the sand would do well to take this advice if they don't want their world rocked.
And why is 'New Release' in quotation marks?
Black's comment at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-15840562 is astounding in its ineptness. I can understand wanting to wait for confirmation that the emails are legitimate, but to pontificate about the inquiries that may prove to be the whitewashes that many believe them to be shows a clear lack of judgement.
It is Thanksgiving Week here. My wife is going to be so mad at me...
Richard Black doesn't seem to realise that Oxburgh, who "cleared scientists of fraud and malpractice" is amongst those mentioned in the new batch of emails.
Mac @ Nov 22, 2011 at 1:47 PM
I wonder where Richard saw the link? It's not on RC yet.
Looking forwards to his fully informed comments once he has read and understood the contents.
Richard Black today on the new release;
"Reviews of "ClimateGate" in the UK, of the IPCC, and of Michael Mann's work by Penn State authorities, have all cleared scientists of fraud and malpractice, although recommendations were made on increasing openness."
Defensive position as usual from Black. Doesn't see the irony in 'increasing openness'.
Some information about the new FOIA archive.
It has an encrypted archive in it called all.7z that has 220247 files.
264 of these files share the same file name as those in the original FOIA archive.
Of these 264 files, 244 are 1 byte smaller in the encrypted all.7z than the corresponding file in the original archive. The other 20 files are more than 1 byte different. The files, with the size difference, are listed below:
1042941949 -247
1047503776 453
1062189235 35
1068239573 -5
1074609944 -272
1104855751 142
1124994521 -85
1135197791 -993
1139331621 336
1140130198 -218
1140453339 209
1141164645 156
1141250377 281
1143227779 166
1153163328 628
1153772456 520
1200076878 -1
1206628118 -440
1212009215 8
1223915581 -228
Assuming the files in all.7z have their name as the number of seconds elapsed since 1/1/1970 then breakdown for the number of emails in each year is as follows:
1990 1
1996 1653
1997 2324
1998 5296
1999 10111
2000 21172
2001 19891
2002 19655
2003 17364
2004 18958
2005 14090
2006 12050
2007 21158
2008 29984
2009 26539
E&OE
Richard Black won't read the emails. He'll be relying on his friends at RC to tell him what to write.
Maybe Black is just annoyed he's not mentioned in any of the new ones? Anyone searched for him yet?
I wonder if RB knows that Penn State reviews can be less than a gold standard?
TBYJ, yes Richard Black gets mentioned in several, though some we've seen before.
3969.txt says:
"I've pointed everyone to the press release, and have chatted with only one person, a guy from the BBC. He seemed very informed and clever. The only point I didn't like was that he kept trying to get me to say what I think the skeptics will think - I kept telling him I don't know, but he obviously wanted more. Anyway, I hope you don't mind that I suggested he could chat with you if needed. His name and email are: Richard Black,"
"He seemed very informed and clever."
Hides it well.
I wonder when the BOINC project to crack the password will start?
TerryS
.7z is 7-Zip format. Can't help you with the encryption, though.. :-)
Link
7-Zip uses AES-256 (which used to be called Rijndael when I first used it in .Net) and would take longer than the age of the universe to break, so don't hold your breath.
So, are we to understand that (a major) part of the download includes an additional 220,000 encrypted emails that could be released at any time if the original source (FOIA.org) decided to publicise the password?
Sounds like a sensible precaution to me ...
And i thought today was going to be another boring day of the usual commenter’s running round the usual houses.
Then I went to the Air Vent and it's just got interesting. Black’s quick of the mark though seems he hangs around the same blogs I do.
Be interesting to see the picture both set's of e-mails make.
Oh sorry and Congrates to Richard Bean.
It didn't take Delingpole to get on the case. http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100119087/uh-oh-global-warming-loons-here-comes-climategate-ii/
The quotes I've seen so far, anything with MetO on it sounds like the voice of reason by comparison with the rest. A clue, perhaps....
I notice that Black points darkly to a 'Russian server'. Never mind the content...
matthu:
I haven't counted the 220,000 but that's the idea. This time (s)he's letting the powers know that the emails are all there, just waiting for one password - and we all have the full result. Three strikes and FOIA is out. Love it.
Russian server.. and Jo Abbess' reference to the 'cold war' in another thread... perhaps we've been promoted from holocause deniers to Stalinist oppressors
Talk about threads being derailed!
Perhaps the Bishop will change the thread to match the comments?
I think the Bishop is away about his business, as usually happens at this sort of time. I remember being at a rather good lunch with a customer (3hrs and most convivial) on 11th Sept 2001 and coming out to find the rest of the world had changed over lunch.
Either this stuff has been deleted from UEA servers or it's in the hands of Norfolk police.
Does anyone know which?
Re the 220,000 encrypted emails, 7zip tells me there are 220,247 files in all.7z including one encrypted README.
Yes
Re: TheBigYinJames
It would take that long if the password was entirely random.
However, if the password is a dictionary word or a couple of steps different from a dictionary word then it might be possible to crack the password using brute force.
I intend to have a look at "John the Ripper", 7-Zips implementation of AES and the fact that there appear to be 244 files that we already have decrypted copies of to see if I can develop something to crack the password. It doesn't matter if it takes me a week, a year or the lifetime of the Universe to crack it, its only going to cost me processor cycles (and a little development time) to make the attempt.
I'd fogotten that we have some of the content already decrypted, that may reduce the brute force search tree into a double figure exponent (so it may only take a billion years instead of a trillion :)