I loathe the tactic of hacking and publishing, whether in support of a side I am on or not. It seems to me that such Nixonian tactics–as I wrote here–destroy the comity necessary for democracy to function. (Yes, I am aware of the NYT’s hypocrisy on this matter, but what does one expect from them?) I have taken some heat for that stance among friends, but I am sticking to it. If it was a hack job, I want to see full prosecution. The ends most certainly do not justify the means. Indeed, the means corrode all our freedoms.
Alas, that doesn’t answer the next question: What to do with the information now out in the public? You can’t ignore it. The matter is of great import to the world. But if you follow it, you reward the wrongdoers by giving them precisely what they wanted.
I have struggled with this, but in the end I agree with Investor’s Business Daily that the matter must be fully aired. From its editorial “Junk Science:”
The Senate expects to take up global warming legislation by spring, but nothing more should happen in Congress on this issue until there’s been a thorough probe of the ClimateGate scandal. The scientists who have rung over and again the global warming alarm appear to be guilty of fraud. This we long suspected. Now, their own words, exposed by hackers who hijacked their e-mails, seem to confirm our suspicions. For decades they’ve told us that the Earth is warming because of a greenhouse effect caused by man’s carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere. But what they’ve been telling each other isn’t consistent with that story. The e-mails, more than a thousand of them, use phrases and terms such as “hide the decline,” “trick” and “contain” (as in to conceal the Medieval Warm Period, an era in which temperatures might have been higher than today’s).
There’s also at least one damning admission — “The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment” — sent by Kevin Trenberth of the National Center for Atmospheric Research. There are attempts to conspire. Phil Jones, head of Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in England, wrote that “If they ever hear there is a Freedom of Information Act now in the U.K., I think I’ll delete the file rather than send to anyone.” Jones later warned a trio of colleagues: “Don’t any of you three tell anybody that the U.K. has a Freedom of Information Act!” There are attempts to silence dissenters.
I didn’t need these e-mails to figure out the game being played by the global warming hysterics. The way Al Gore refuses to be questioned or deign to debate, the way “the scientists” have tried to close off all contrary presentations and destroy the careers of heterodox thinkers, I figured the old fix was in. Time now to find out for sure.
Here’s a clue: If the Democratic Congress refuses to investigate, they know it’s true. Ditto the UN and the UK Parliament. Alas, that is my prediction.
November 24th, 2009 | 11:23 pm
I realize that most of you are not programmers but I think most people understand
the meaning of the terms “ARTIFICIAL CORRECTION” and “fudge factor”.
This is from the source code that was in the leaked information. It is its own context, this is NOT from an email.
It is a unambiguous set of directions to a computer to perform some operations.
It can only be interpreted by the computer in one way, the way the author wrote it!
Computers do not tell the truth, they only say what they have been told to say.
From the program file FOI2009/FOIA/documents/harris-treebriffa_sep98_e.pro
———–
;
; PLOTS ‘ALL’ REGION MXD timeseries from age banded and from hugershoff
; standardised datasets.
; Reads Harry’s regional timeseries and outputs the 1600-1992 portion
; with missing values set appropriately. Uses mxd, and just the
; “all band” timeseries
;****** APPLIES A VERY ARTIFICIAL CORRECTION FOR DECLINE*********
;
yrloc=[1400,findgen(19)*5.+1904]
valadj=[0.,0.,0.,0.,0.,-0.1,-0.25,-0.3,0.,-0.1,0.3,0.8,1.2,1.7,2.5,2.6,2.6,$
2.6,2.6,2.6]*0.75 ; fudge factor
if n_elements(yrloc) ne n_elements(valadj) then message,’Oooops!’
Some code removed here for brevity.
;
; Now normalise w.r.t. 1881-1960
;
mknormal,densadj,x,refperiod=[1881,1960],refmean=refmean,refsd=refsd
mknormal,densall,x,refperiod=[1881,1960],refmean=refmean,refsd=refsd
;
; APPLY ARTIFICIAL CORRECTION
;
yearlyadj=interpol(valadj,yrloc,x)
densall=densall+yearlyadj
;
; Now plot them
;
Some code removed here for brevity.
———–
November 25th, 2009 | 12:22 am
Wesley,
It may be true of you that “I didn’t need these e-mails to figure out the game being played by the global warming hysterics,” but what about the rest of the world?
These hysterics have been drawing down the credibility of science to promote these hysterics, and the measure of their success is that the world has been brought to the eve of Copenhagen. Even the breaking of this news has not been enough to shake the faith of the devout, as we have seen in Australia as our own Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme returns to the parliament.
The media are starting to allow a little more scepticism through the filters, but are fighting a rearguard action. Without the timely release of this information, this would have been a stroll in the park for the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition (who is a true believer ).
The emails themselves are important. I have followed for a couple of years the story of the attempts to get data and program code out of CRU, primarily on Steve McIntyre’s Climate Audit (the CA in the emails.) Now we can compare the public record with the internal shenanigans. For those with a strong stomach Willis Eschenbach’s guest article on Watts Up With That is enlightening.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/24/the-people-vs-the-cru-freedom-of-information-my-okole…/
FOI legislation is critical to a civil and just society, if only because of the gravitational pull of corruption on human organisations. When the best legitimate efforts to obtain this information have been repeatedly thwarted, what choices remain?
Is your personal “figuring out” sufficient to guarantee the probity of organisations whose output has been used to drive the western world towards a radical economic and political re-alignment? How do such gut feelings and personal perceptions translate into a just polity?
It’s not just the emails though. What will be really fascinating is the still to be done analyses of the data and the programs that have been used to build the hockey stick in all its manifestations. I suspect that the story to gradually emerge from those analyses will be even more shattering to the credibility of western science. That ain’t good.
I think that, as an ethicist, you need to take a long hard look at this one.
November 25th, 2009 | 1:34 pm
I’m becoming more and more convinced it was not a hack– unless the hacker used social engineering to get in.
That said, you don’t fail to prosecute a crime just because you found out about the crime via another crime, even if it gives the second criminal what they wanted when they committed their crime.
(Amusingly, if we *did* disregard the fraud and conspiracy to violate FOIA laws because it came to light via another crime, we’d be giving THEM what they wanted. So let’s go with giving society what it wants– punish ‘em both!)
November 25th, 2009 | 3:23 pm
“… you don’t fail to prosecute a crime just because you found out about the crime via another crime, even if it gives the second criminal what they wanted when they committed their crime.” Maybe not, but the evidence does lose credibility when it’s produced by a criminal. The whistle-blower is going to be in for a very, very rough time.
November 25th, 2009 | 5:16 pm
Maybe not, but the evidence does lose credibility when it’s produced by a criminal.
Generally, only if the “victim” will argue, convincingly, that it’s faked. (assuming a neutral audience)
The “victims” are notably not claiming the info is fake, just that it’s illegally obtained.
November 25th, 2009 | 11:04 pm
Foxfier can be relied on to make a lot of sense. I’ve noticed. I say “amen” to her last comment.
I’m glad to see you say this, Wesley, about following up on this rather than deep-sixing it.
November 29th, 2009 | 3:25 pm
I’m not one to condone computer hacking either. But if hacking a computer is the only way to expose massive fraud that will cost the economies of the world untold billions of dollars unless it’s stopped, then I firmly believe that, without question, the greater good is served by the hacking. After all, had the Climate Research Unit at East Anglia been willing to voluntarily make its work available for review by the same public that’s paid for it, the hacking wouldn’t have been necessary in the first place.
November 30th, 2009 | 3:51 pm
Hey!
IF any of the OT be a crime in the sense of evil, in the sense of transgressing the _Logos_, or the _Wisdom_, in the sense of obscuring intra-Trinititarian Love, in the sense of diminishing the inertia of “_Kairos tou poiesai to Kyrio_”, then the betrayal of Judas completes an algorithm in the same sense as an Al Gore “rhythm”.
Which means that (approx syntax)…
begin
{if perfidy + betrayal := truth}
then
{deceit + hack := truth}
end
or, two wrongs can be a right. No?
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