The Daily Mail is reporting that it might be, "Chinese hackers linked to 'Warmergate' climate change leaked emails controversy."
The Mail's revelation came about after they tracked a convoluted trail of IP (internet Protocols) addresses, through to a, " Chinese environmental institute, the Research Institute of Forest Ecology and Environment Protection, based near Beijing."
While it would be very cool if this was an actual break in the case of the stolen emails, the story in the Mail seems to be based on some pretty loose assumptions. The biggest hole in the Chinahack theory is pointed out in the Daily Mail story itself. A spokesperson for a Malaysian internet service company where the hackers were traced through said:
"‘Because this is an open relay mail server, the emails could have been sent through it from anywhere in the world. It is just as likely to be someone outside Malaysia as someone within the country."
What the spokesperson is pointing out is that in the global network of online web services it is very difficult to trace someone's activities. Especially if that person knows how to cover their footprints. A packet of online information can easily be made to bounce around the world before arriving at its final destination.
I can be sitting here in Vancouver and route my internet actions and email
through open proxy servers around the world. And it really doesn't take a master-hacker to do such things. For example, anyone can easily use an
internet cloaking service to navigate anonymously around the internet, and upload files to a Russian FTP server like the one used to publicly release the stolen East Anglia University emails.
While it is definitely a useful line of investigation for the Daily Mail to trace the internet pathways behind the stolen emails, it has led to some pretty strange hypotheses by the newspaper, like: "The evidence passed to The Mail on Sunday now raises questions about whether Chinese hackers, backed by the communist regime, are the source of the emails."
Plots by the Russians in league with the Chinese makes for great headlines, but they do run the risk of drawing attention away from much more plausible theories about who is behind these criminal acts.
We all know the Chinese Communists are athiests..
And sine "Climatology" is shorthand for “Climate Scientology”
Thus the Chinese want to stamp out this new religion before it causes them trouble.
One thing you can say about the Chinese, they look out for number 1. In this case their industrial development policy. No way were they going to agree to a deal that in any way inhibited their move up the World pecking order, even if it means opening one coal-fired power station every week.
They called the liberal West's bluff. If the "science" is "settled" then China faces ecological disaster. Funny they don't seem to agree.
Actually, China is enacting new laws boosting renewable energy:
http://climateprogress.org/2009/12/28/green-giant-beijing%e2%80%99s-crash-program-for-clean-energy/
when you have 1.3 billion people, you do everything including wind, solar, nukes and lots more coal.
I used to be somewhat afraid of china assuming the role of the US as the worlds superpower. Although seeing them in action over the past decade they seem to be very pragmatic, non-interventionist and steer the globe towards rational and reasonable objectives and actions.
No big grandstanding, no unreasonable target like cutting emissions by 50% is 3 weeks. Just rational reasonable objectives. With all the carbon fever that has infected the western world, we should be glad at the new found clout that china has on the international stage.
More "predictions" from the Met. Office.
Peter Stott, Climate "Scientist" (Climate Cretin more like) at the Met Office, said: “Despite the cold winter this year, the trend to milder and wetter winters is expected to continue, with snow and frost becoming less of a feature in the future."
Needless to say real-World data shows that he is speaking the usual EcoMENTAList codswallop.
Since 1979 we HAVEN’T seen hotter, drier summers and wetter winters! We’ve seen the REVERSE! It doesn’t matter how many times Stott says it, his own data shows he’s wrong.
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climatechange/science/monitoring/CR_data/Monthly/EWP_seasonal1.gif
This crock is making the rounds of the denier blogs today.
The Met Office forecast was for this year in the UK. You are confounding this with global predictions.
And yes, this is the wrong thread.
"Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past"
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/snowfalls-are-now-just-a-thing-of-the-past-724017.html
8 years later:
"Snow blankets London for Global Warming debate – first October Snow in over 70 years"
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/10/29/snow-blankets-london-for-global-warming-debate-first-october-snow-in-over-70-years/
Yep, real accurate forecasting.
Now now JR...
The scientists in the older article said that heavy snows will be rarer, not, as you *falsely* claim, that they will vanish.
"Heavy snow will return occasionally, says Dr Viner, but when it does we will be unprepared. "We're really going to get caught out. Snow will probably cause chaos in 20 years time," he said."
And...
Those damn scientists didn't predict London's 2009 October snowfall 8 years ago! Shocking!
So, if one weather event proves your side of the argument, JR -- oh, I forgot, you're a skeptic who doesn't believe in anything -- what does Toronto's first snowless October on record prove?
, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia,within a few years winter snowfall will become "a very rare and exciting event".
"Children just aren't going to know what snow is," he said.
----
You must have missed reading that. Interesting you state "as you *falsely* claim," when that was the article's title. Guess you missed that too. In typical True Believer fashon you attack the messenger in trying to score points. Go complain to the paper.
Add this:
The UK Meteorological Office: slightly less reliable than tea leaves or cock entrails
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100020868/the-uk-meterological-office-slightly-less-reliable-than-tea-leaves-or-cock-entrails/
I predict the Met office is going to overtake tea leaves someday. I believe in them. Tea leaves are just enjoying temporary success and once the Met catches tea leaves, can entrails be far behind? Possibly not.
Go Met Go!
You are arguing that the scientist wrote the story. He did not. A journalist did. The title of the story is irrelevant to the science.
You are attacking the science for a title written by a journalist.
The title was "Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past" Please try to find where the scientists in question said that in the story.
Hint: you won't.
Typical. You should complain to the paper that they mislead you with the title.
You have been *falsely* claiming that snow in London 8 years after that piece was written means that scientists can't predict, when the scientist in question claimed in the very story you cited that there would still be snowfall 12 years from *now* in that region. So the presence of some snowfall this year has no bearing on the prediction. You stated otherwise.
You can't get around that, JR.
===
James Delingpole... is a proven, well-known propagandist. Dealt with that the other week in a thread around here somewhere. In the article you linked to, he's simply doing the same old trick of falsely claiming that since weather can't be *fully* predicted, climate could never be. World of difference between the two.
What does it mean when David Viner a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia, said within a few years winter snowfall will become "a very rare and exciting event" and "Children just aren't going to know what snow is,"?
The graph you pointed to shows a downtrend in the level of precipitation for summers since 1880, and an uptrend in the level of precipitation in the winters since 1880.
Since around 1970 (est from graph) there's been more years of winter precipitation above the base line than any other time on the graph.
Since around 1970 (est from graph) there's been more years of summer precipitation below the base line than any other time on the graph.
That's more than 30 years of weather, which makes that weather climate.
As for the change of direction of the past decade (declining in winter, increasing in summer) that's weather, not climate, variability, and such variability is replicated often in the graph itself in prior years. You need a pattern of about 30 years to start to define climate.
It's not clear that that graph even holds all the data discussed. That's the EWP data you have there. There's also data for Scotland and Northern Ireland to perhaps consider. Not clear from your quote what's under discussion.
It all depends. If you are a Climate Alarmist, you only need a single event like Katrina to "prove" your point. However when it comes to, say, no Global temperature increase, then it starts at five years, extends to ten, yet further to 15. Any advance on 20?
I was wondering about the Daily Mail article.
What I would love to know, is how much the international "net police" are tracking down the hackers. They should be able to get a clue, particularly if records are kept of hack failures. I do not believe that just one climate research center was targeted, and even less so since hearing of the Victoria burglaries/attempted penetration.
I'm guessing that, unfortunately, most of the information from the cracks isn't available to the public since they're part of police investigations.
-- bi
I agree with Kevin. There's nothing concrete to demonstrate where the hacking took place from. Indeed, anyone smart enough to hack email, is smart enough to leave a false trail. There are widely available tools to hide in an IP cloud, and to spoof what IP you are.
Irrelevant if this came from an inside job. That has not been ruled out. Though the warmers wish it not the case.
Nothing's ruled out or in because the evidence is unreliable. That's the point behind the post.
Inside/outside job seems irrelevant to me. What damage there is has never been from the emails, but from the false defamation campaign constructed around them.
Isn't it true that because of the gravity of what the science is suggesting, that sooner rather than later these emails were going to be open to examination anyway?
The principle of freedom of information demands it.
The climate scientists are recommending that we make vast changes to the world and how we live. It's necessary to look under the hood before we buy this vehicle.
Evidence of variability of atmospheric CO2 concentration during the 20th century
http://www.biomind.de/realCO2/literature/evidence-var-corrRSCb.pdf
"A recent review of historical literature of gas analysis of air near ground has provided a different view of the evolution of concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere. In contrast to the published literature, the review indicates that atmospheric CO2 (chemically measured since 1812) has not monotonically risen since preindustrial times but has fluctuated. The fluctuations show maxima in the order of 350 to 400 ppm that peak around 1825, 1857 and 1942 [Beck 2007]. Discussion of this variability raised the question of causes of such decadal carbon dioxide enrichment. This study gives a closer look at the data, the locations and the methods, and it considers possible causes for the observed atmospheric CO2 variation in the northern hemisphere especially for the period 1920 to 1950."
See also:
http://www.biomind.de/realCO2/realCO2-1.htm
If there is such a thing as natural CO2 spikes and drops beyond what is generally accepted, then lets hope for a drop. Any spike above average would be unalterably attributed to human activity.
If we were top off at 400 and start to drop, it would be about the only thing that would cause science to reevaluate this whole thing.
Wow, so www.biomind.de must be a balanced science authority, right? Maybe we should click on Kilma (Climate) on their website menu. It goes straight to this rubbish:
http://www.biokurs.de/treibhaus/
and provides the same laughable sources and claims that we've seen before:
"Now, through the discovery of internal documents and emails of the English CRU Institute, blah, blah IPCC, blah blah lead scientists have forged the climate data. This is the biggest science scandal of modern times. see Dr. Tim Ball about this, and here are the data for browsing."
[no actual data]
"Nun ist durch das Bekanntwerden von internen Dokumenten und Mails des englischen CRU-Instituts, auf dem fast die gesamte Klimapolitik des IPCC beruht, klar, daß federführende Wissenschaftler die Klimadaten gefälscht haben. Dies ist der größte Wissenschaftsskandal der Neuzeit. siehe z.B. Dr. Tim Ball dazu; und hier die Daten zum Durchsuchen."
www.biomind.de just redistributes Friends of Science armchair grumbling
Click the "Klima", etc.
pointing out is that in the global network of online web services it is very difficult to trace someone's activities. Especially if that person knows how to cover their footprints.
Dog Glucosamine
Well, the Daily Mail's leaps of logic aside, there are a few things we do know about the CRU crack:
(1) the time zones recorded in the .zip file are all -0400/-0500
(2) the e-mails were processed using a non-standard method to arrive in their current form
(3) there are 5 Microsoft Word files (.doc) which have 13 extra bytes added at the end
(More details at http://ijish.livejournal.com/ , a sub-blog which I created for discussion and analysis of the crack. Consider this to be a shameless plug. (-: )
-- bi