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Saturday
Jan092010

Parsing the police

Here's my reading of the situation.

I first contacted Norfolk constabulary a week ago and was told by a very helpful press officer that there was no further statement at that time, but that I should keep getting in touch for further information. When I asked yesterday if they had at least ascertained if there was a leak or a hacking of the UEA servers, I was sent the statement which has caused so much interest. In the comments that thread, Jeff Id states that he has heard from Norfolk police too.

My reading of this is that the investigation has barely got off the ground, and some action was perhaps prompted by my questions. Six weeks on from the breaking of Climategate, it might be seen as slightly embarrassing for the police that they had yet to determine what it is they are investigating, so they have now leapt into action. Jeff appears to be the only prominent climate blogger contacted directly. As the person who first received the link to the leaked information, he is an obvious first port of call for the police to get some evidence to point them to the answer to the leak/hack question.

The involvement of the Domestic Extremism Police is probably actually predictable. As watchers of the deteriorating civil liberties situation in the UK all know, powers granted to the police in the wake of 9/11 in order to fight terrorism are routinely used in the UK for minor crimes. By bringing in these specialists, Norfolk Police will be able to monitor emails, demand passwords and cryptographic keys and so on. That these powers are out of all proportion to the alleged crime is of course of no concern to law enforcement officers.

Meanwhile, the involvement  of the Information Commissioner is interesting too. The ICO's inquiry probably has two distinct focuses. Firstly they will  be investigating if UEA staff were involved in withholding information subject to requests under the Freedom of Information Act and the Data Protection Act. For the benefit of overseas readers, the latter relates to the maintenance of personal information.

But while there are obvious concerns over the conduct of UEA staff, it is likely that the ICO will also be looking at whether the hack/leak itself also breached the DPA. While the vast majority of the emails are not personal in nature, there are odd snippets of personal information among all the talk of hiding declines and nobbling journals. It is likely that these would concern the ICO.

I wonder how long it will be before we get a determination on the hack/leak question? Perhaps some of my IT-savvy readers can suggest how difficult it is to determine if one's server has been hacked?

 

Friday
Jan082010

++++Statement from Norfolk Police++++

This morning I contacted Norfolk Constabulary with a view to finding out if they had yet ascertained whether the breach at the Climatic Research Unit was a leak or a hack. I have just received a response which is frankly amazing:

Norfolk Constabulary continues its investigations into criminal offences in relation to a data breach at the University of East Anglia.  During the enquiry officers have been working in liaison with the Office of the Information Commissioner and with officers from the National Domestic Extremism Team. The UEA continues to co-operate with the enquiry however major investigations of this nature are of necessity very detailed and as a consequence can take time to reach a conclusion. It would be inappropriate to comment further at this stage.

The National Domestic Extremism Team? Words fail me.

 

Friday
Jan082010

Something's up

The Hockey Stick Illusion currently has an Amazon sales rank of around 200, its highest to date. Yesterday it was at something like 17,000.

What happened?

 

Thursday
Jan072010

An interesting take on a climate poll

The Von Storch & Bray annual poll of opinion among climatologists is always interesting. Here's an new and interesting take on it by Joseph Bast:

Thirty-five percent [of climatologists] responded “very much” when asked the following question: “How convinced are you that most of recent or near future climate change is, or will be, a result of anthropogenic causes?” On a scale from 1 to 7, with 1 being “not at all” and 7 being “very much,” 83 percent answered 5, 6, or 7. Only 1 percent said “not at all” and only 11 percent answered 1, 2, or 3. Answers to the question “How convinced are you that climate change poses a very serious and dangerous threat to humanity?” were similar.

However, the Bray and von Storch survey also reveals that very few of these scientists trust climate models — which form the basis of claims that human activity could have a dangerous effect on the global climate. Fewer than 3 or 4 percent said they “strongly agree” that computer models produce reliable predictions of future temperatures, precipitation, or other weather events. More scientists rated climate models “very poor” than “very good” on a long list of important matters, including the ability to model temperatures, precipitation, sea level, and extreme weather events.

Given that the reliability of the predictions from climate models is the chief evidence for the global warming hypothesis, this is, as Bast notes, a very surprising set of opinions for climatologists to hold.

 

Thursday
Jan072010

Is this a clue?

Among the recent spate of Freedom of Information requests rejected by CRU is this one, by a gentleman called John Walker, asking for correspondence between Phil Jones and the University of East Anglia FoI officer, Dave Palmer. In the light of the climategate emails hinting that CRU staff conspired with UEA FoI staff to withhold information, this seems eminently sensible.

The reasons for rejecting the request were threefold, but the one that I find interesting is this:

It is our belief that [the FoI exemption for information pertaining to a criminal investigation] applies because pursuant to an investigation carried out by the Norfolk Constabulary, this information is relevant to a current investigation by police forces into a possible criminal offence. Disclosure of any information relevant to that investigation at this point could or would prejudice the ongoing investigation of this matter.

At the moment, we don't know if the police are investigating a hacking of the CRU servers or if it is a case of a leaking of information by someone internal to UEA. But wait! If, as CRU seem to suggest, the information was hacked, what possible relevance could correspondence between Jones and Palmer be to the inquiry? If on the other hand the information was compiled for an FoI request that was subsequently rejected, then it makes perfect sense that the Jones/Palmer correspondence is relevant.

 

Wednesday
Jan062010

No more democracy

Ecofascism is a word that is bandied about with gay abandon by many on the sceptic side, but it may well be a term that finds greater currency in the near future. Why do I say that? Read Hans von Storch and Nico Stehr on the impatience of climatologists with the democratic process and the admiration some of them express for authoritarian forms of government.

...the times are changing. Within the broad field of climatology and climate policy one is able to discern growing concerns about the virtues of democracy... it is an inconvenient democracy, which is identified as the culprit holding back action on climate change. As Mike Hulme has noted , it can be frustrating to learn that citizens have minds of their own.

Leading climate scientists insist that humanity is at a crossroads. A continuation of present economic and political trends leads to disaster if not collapse. To create a globally sustainable way of life, we immediately need in the words of German climate scientist Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, a "great transformation." What exactly is meant by the statement is vague. Part, if not the heart of this great transformation is in the eyes of some climate scientists as well as other scientists part of the great debate about climate change a new political regime and forms of governance: "We need an authoritarian form of government in order to implement the scientific consensus on greenhouse gas emissions" according to the Australian scholars David Shearman and Joseph Wayne Smith their book The Climate Change Challenge and the Failure of Democracy. The well-known climate researcher James Hansen adds resignedly and frustrated as well as vaguely, "the democratic process does not work". In The Vanishing Face of Gaia, James Lovelock emphasizes that we need to abandon democracy in order to meet the challenges of climate change head on. We are in a state of war. In order to pull the world out of its state of lethargy, the equivalent of a global warming "nothing but blood, toil, tears and sweat" speech is urgently needed.

 

Wednesday
Jan062010

BBC to review climate coverage - so what?

According to the Daily Mail, the BBC Trust is to review the corporation's coverage of, among other issues, climate change.

The BBC Trust today announced it would carry out the probe into the 'accuracy and impartiality' of its output in this increasingly controversial area.

The review comes after repeated criticism of the broadcaster's handling of green issues. It has been accused of acting like a cheerleader for the theory that climate change is a man-made phenomenon.

This is, frankly, a sideshow. Complaints about the BBC's handling of climate change have been brushed aside by the BBC Trust time after time. They are simply going through the motions in order to fend off complaints. No heads will roll, no changes will be made. Richard Black will continue to shut down his blog comments whenever there is a sceptic story in the air.

The only possible resolution to this problem is to close the BBC down.

 

Wednesday
Jan062010

Are the Japanese being too gentle with the greens?

From the comments to the previous thread, this video of the anti-whaling vessel, the Sea Shepherd, in action.

Crazy people. I'm no maritime expert, but I think it fair to say that people could have died in these circumstances. I would have thought the Japanese would be quite justified in taking much stronger action than the use of a water cannon.

 

Wednesday
Jan062010

Did anti-whalers trash their own boat?

I chanced upon this video of the anti-whaling powerboat Adi Gil being chopped in half by a Japanese security vessel. This was a bit unfortunate for a vessel which apparently cost $1.5 million.

But something intrigued me about the video. Just watch the back of the powerboat. Did they accelerate just as the Japanese crossed their bow? Could  they really have staged this incident to provoke a reaction? Could be.

 

Wednesday
Jan062010

What I want for Christmas...

...and it will probably take that long for it to be available in the UK, but doesn't the Skiff e-reader look sexy?

 

Wednesday
Jan062010

How to live life, by RK Pachauri

Interviewed on the BBC, lifestyle guru RK Pachauri had this to say:

I think my vision of a good life is one where you spend enough time on friendship, on time with family, on exercising a certain level of restraint, by which you don't consume for the sake of consuming. Before the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007, I was interviewed by Kevin Spacey and he asked me a whole lot of questions about whether I had done my holiday shopping and I said, well, I have no plans because I only buy what I need. But that's exactly what I do - I never buy something unless I feel I need it.

Like the house in India's millionaires row for example.

(Audio here - segment on lifestyles starts at 19:45)

 

Tuesday
Jan052010

Times withdraws green adverts

New Scientist reports that The Times has withdrawn adverts claiming that climate change had caused the opening of the North-east passage. They also cancelled a second advert that claimed that the world's oceans would be denuded of fish by 2048.

The mainstream media may well be the first climate change casualties.

 

Tuesday
Jan052010

Curlers thumb noses at bureaucracy

Round these 'ere parts there is much excitement over the possibility of a Grand Match, when Scottish lochs freeze over to a sufficient extent to allow for a curling tournament. There have only been three of these since the war, but the ice on some of the likely lochs are now within a whisker of the seven inches required to mount the tournament. Unfortunately, it looks like there may be too much snow sitting on the ice here at Loch Leven, but the Lake of Menteith is apparently looking good.

Meanwhile, culled from this curling blog is a rather wonderful snippet about curling in Lochmaben that tells us so much about modern Britain without even trying:

Apparently it was quite a day in Lochmaben. The ice had been checked by the local council and was 7-8 inches, and solid. However, someone phoned the police to say there were lots of people on the ice and they didn't think it was safe. Anne tells the story, "Six police officers arrived but they couldn't go on ice to warn people because of health and safety so they passed the buck to the Nith rescue who came with a rescue boat but because of heath and safety they couldn't go on ice either. So the Coast Guard arrived, lights flashing! But guess what? Because of health and safety he couldn't go on the ice either! A great day was had by all.

 

 

Tuesday
Jan052010

The IPCC Climategate investigation

There has been some interest expressed in the comments to the last posting as to when and where the IPCC will get around to completing their investigation into Climategate. A correspondent had sent me an interesting link that seemed to suggest that in fact there was to be no investigation - at least not into the actions of the Hockey Team:

Today Pachauri reversed course and instead launched a defense of the climate scientists that have been accused of collusion, modification and deletion of data and a host of other offenses. He said that he felt the scientists “are being unfairly targeted.” Pachauri said, “The persons who have worked on this report, and those who unfortunately have been victims of this terrible and illegal act, are outstanding scientists, and have contributed enormously over the 20, 21 years of the existence of the IPCC.”

Pachauri stated that his only concern was finding out who was behind it, not if there are any problems with the science behind the manmade climate change theory or the scientists that formulated it. "I think this is an illegal act. The only issue that has to be dealt with as far as this occurrence is concerned is to find out who is behind it," he said.

In regards to a potential investigation, the climate chief said the agency would look at the event, “just to see if there are any lessons for us that we might want to take onboard. We are determining how best to do that. But I want to clarify that this is not an investigation.”

On the face of it this does seem to suggest that the IPCC is not going to look at what its advisors have been getting up to, but I don't rule out someone having got the wrong end of the stick here.

 

Monday
Jan042010

Pachauri protests his innocence

Over at Comment is Free.  I think that critical comments may may be severely curtailed. I've posted a simple link to EUReferendum's Pachauri category. It will be interesting to see if it gets through.

[Update: Currently no comments seem to be getting through at all. This is turning into a habit on global warming threads at CiF]