Matt Prescott, the well-connected eco-activist behind such ventures as the BBC’s failed Planet Relief project (see Bishop Hill here and here for details on Prescott’s connections with various BBC luminaries and for links to articles he has written for the BBC), has donned his recycled tinfoil hat to offer these observations on Climategate in the comments at the Guardian website:
Without doubt, whoever orchestrated this combined computer hacking and smear campaign was extremely sophisticated and would make a world-class PR spin doctor look amateur.
It is hard to believe that the average hacker has the PR skills required to pull of something so devastating, in terms of timing and content, single-handedly.
A large pool of people and organisations, much larger than just the UEA, will almost certainly have had to be hacked in order to provide the most juicy morsels and divert attention in particular directions.
Surely, it would have taken a long time and thus substantial resources to read thousands of emails and to pick out the key conversational threads, scientists and issues?
Again this feels like a very large project which would have need to be funded by individuals or organisations with extremely deep pockets and the ability to maintain absolute secrecy.
Given the size, wealth and skills found within the intelligence community the idea that the CIA, NSA or some other shadowy organisation has been up to something naughty, which would suit their national interest, is not a bad guess, but it should probably have been labelled as a guess, if this is all it was.
After all that, he concludes without any sense of irony:
If there is one lesson from “climate gate” it is that scientists need to be crystal clear about when they are discussing a view backed up by hard, empirical evidence and when they are speculating or stretching the available facts.
“Again this feels like a very large project which would have need to be funded by individuals or organisations with extremely deep pockets and the ability to maintain absolute secrecy.”
Oh yes – all the resources and secrecy it took this guy http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jul/31/gary-mckinnon-loses-extradition-appeal to hack into the US Dept of Defense computers.
Which is the bigger conspiracy?
1. Hacking into the (sounds like) Univac at the CRU?
2. “Climate” (laugh laugh) “scientists” (joke, joke) DESTROYING all the original data fed into their Univac from which they continue to make wild, unsubstantiated and unknowable alarmist scares?
Why is the BBC so upset if the CRU was hacked? The BBC just loves getting hold of leaked documents that embarrass Cameron or George Bush. They can’t have it both ways.
These eco loons don’t get it. Real science is about the search for the truth, the fact that science is being poisoned by the leftist Guardian reading arts types shows it’s on the skids.
All of the data should be publicly available.
Two words: Inside job. No vast budget or PR plan necessary.
Well, eventually the Beeboids are going to realize they’ve been worshiping a false god. Historically, burned followers never blame themselves in this kind of situatiion, so the Warmist scientists are going to feel the wrath. It’s not Black’s or Harriban’s fault that they were basing their sober, rational judgment on faulty data provided by faulty scientists.
On last night’s Newsnight, IPCC minion Chris Field said that their highly flawed study is one of the most “ambitious, thorough, and successful” studies ever undertaken by scientists.
His choice of “ambitious” strikes me as very revealing. I know what he meant – that they were trying to achieve a very large-scale study, perhaps biting off more than they could chew – but that’s hardly a valid defense of errors from scientists, especially when we’re told to base the rest of our lives on their words. It’s almost as if they had a specific goal in mind before they began.
Field was on to defend the IPCC on the glacier error, as well as against accusations from environmental scientist Prof. Roger Pielke, Jr. who says that the IPCC has lied about his own work as well. He says flat out that what the IPCC says about his work isn’t true, and Field’s defense is that the IPCC’s report is a “nuanced, balanced view”.
I enjoyed hearing Warmist Field use that phrase, juxtaposed against Pielke’s use of “defend the indefensible”.
Here’s Prof. Pielke’s own statement about this on his blog. Note that he’s a Leftoid and member of a “progressive” thinktank.
All the “hacker” did was to patiently salt away the emails, choose an opportune moment to post them on the web, then let the blogosphere do the rest. This did not require vast resources as Prescott indicates.
All it takes is for someone to get careless with passwords, leaving machines running etc and you’re away. Those dickheads at IPCC/CRU deserve nothing less.
There’s one aspect of the hacker conspiracy theory which is always left out by people like Prescott. Let’s accept for the sake of argument that there was a deliberate attempt by someone to hack in and get these emails. Let’s also assume that the motive was to create a smear campaign and sabotage the CRU.
Once we accept this theory, there can be only two possibilities:
1. The nefarious forces behind the hacker had no idea they would find anything wrong, it was a total shot in the dark with the hopes of fabricating something out of the emails they found.
2. The nefarious forces behind the hacker knew something rotten was going on, and….oops.
Obviously we can’t think about #2, as we would then be forced to admit there was something rotten going on, and somebody knew about it. So the only way we can believe in this conspiracy theory of nefarious forces is if we also believe that some group of people went through all that trouble based on a blind guess, simply out of spite.
Will anyone at the BBC be honest enough to bring this up?
The ‘Guardian'(e.g. Monbiat), the BBC (e.g Harrabin), Labour (e.g. E.Miliband), the Lib Dems (e.g. Huhne), and the Tories are also all part of the problem:
“Cameron and his suicidal eco-rats clamber aboard sinking ship”
(James Delingpole 😉
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100024809/cameron-and-his-eco-rats-clamber-aboard-sinking-ship/
Even for the Grauniad this is crazy stuff:
Our licence fees pay for climate denial
Actually everyone has ignored what it is to my mind the biggest scandal….
The BBC had information about the emails from UEA TWO WEEKS before the ST got the story. What the hell were they doing with the story, apart from using their large arses to sit on it?
Or, to use the old joke: How many of the BBC’s 7865457975 Arts graduate-hacks does it take to miss the biggest climate story of the century?
Yes, they really are that crap.
This is not new. The BBC had the story about Lee Jasper long before the Standard did. The BBC just sat on it as they didn’t want to rock the Boat with Red Ken’s election coming up.
Wonder what would have happened if it had been a cum of Boris?
Is this dingbat seriously suggesting that the CIA or whoever went rogue under the Obama administration – a fully signed up Ecofag – and somehow forced the scientists at this polytechnic to act like fraudulent, data-cooking, agenda-forging jerks?
No wonder nobody reads the Guardian.
Matt Prescott eh?
I hope MI5 have a file on this fella
Or a hit.
It’s a religion. There are so many similarities it’s ridiculous. One of these days I’m going to make a list of them.
Is Matt Prescott related to John ?
Guest @17:22
You’re not wrong! That Hundal piece in the Guardian is off the scale!!
Katabasis 18:47
I just read it and it is totally bonkers. He must be taking the mickey, surely ?
I notice the Guardian have closed the comments section for the article now. What a shock, have you read them? The Guardian only likes free speech if the people agree with them.
My own pet theory is that the contents of the leaked file was gathered from the various CRU servers by CRU admin staff in response to an FOI request. When they discovered what was in it the some senior member of the CRU academic staff nearly blew a fuse and demanded the file be “lost”. At this point someone else on the staff tired of what had been going on (and who had probably been treat like cr*p) decided to leak it.
So no hacking and nothing complex just a sick and tired member of staff out for revenge,
Yes, that sounds like the most reasonable answer. Especially since some of the later emails talk about deleting stuff.
Occam’s Razor would suggest that an insider who was fed up with being marginalized and/or having their data distorted to the point of Warmist fraud got wind of the cover-up, and collected the emails for release to that Russian website. The only thing which in my opinion might point to a UK source is the fact that somebody sent the BBC’s Paul Hudson the emails because the last ones were in response to one of his articles. I thought about a Russian or Chinese source, but I don’t see someone from either of those countries caring about or respecting the BBC so much as to do that. Maybe a disgruntled Russian or Chinese scientist sent it to a UK colleague who then forwarded the file to Hudson.
Still, if it was some political or industrial espionage, I doubt one of those types would simply put it up on some obscure website and send the file to Paul Hudson, then sit back, hoping something earth-shattering happens. Not exactly a cunning master plan worth all that supposed effort, as we all know what Hudson did with it. A proper industrial espionage hack with the nefarious goals claimed by Prescott and others would have just sent it to those nasty deniers at Fox News from the start.
Only someone who thought the BBC was unbiased would give them an exclusive on the CRU activities. Therefore it must have been a Guardian reader.
Don’t know if anyone has spotted this?
“BBC asks WUWT for help”
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/02/03/bbc-asks-wuwt-for-help/
“I’m struggling to find anyone…” Heh.
“David Preiser (USA)
“I’m struggling to find anyone…” Heh.”
Self-damning. After decades as a supposed ‘analyst’ in the field, he is basically admitting he was only open to input from those in whose circle he was comfortable moving, and only broadcast what they fed him.
That’s retyping press releases.Or issuing propaganda.
It’s notable that a common theme amongst the comments there is “Don’t trust the BBC” and “Harrabin’s trying to set a trap”.
Harriban is actually taunting Watts there. He’s saying that agnostic or atheist (non-Warmist) scientists are extremely rare. The vast majority of the world’s scientists accept Warmist dogma, don’t you know. But he’s really, really interested in hearing the skeptics’ side, yeah.
Now why could Harribin be struggling to find a sceptical scientist in the UK ?
A very pertinent point made in the WUWT comments: Harrabin has been corresponding on climate for how long and he doesn’t know any sceptical scientists?
What sort of journalism is that?
I hear the L’Osservatore Romano is doing a piece on atheism. They’re talking to all the cardinals and bishops about it, but are struggling to find one who’s an atheist.
‘Struggling to find’ seems to sum up the reporting of the BBC’s market rate talents pretty ell.
If it is not on a plate from a cosy PR source it really doesn’t compute as news.
Actually researching a story with an open mind… £800B on buys you so much ‘news’ gathering.
The sad part is that ‘they’ will seduce someone with the lure of a pulpit to a hefty audience and a claim of balance.
Even if not a carefully-selected god given loon from some other extreme, if credible and reasoned, as Susan Watts has shown, if you can get the President of the USA to say, or not say what the needs of the many require, it will happen in the edit suite.
Few trust the BBC. Especially in the science community. IMHO.
They and their political masters, and some licence fee payers with half a brain, might wish to ponder that.
It’s not a great basis upon wish to run a national broadcaster.
Michael “Hockey Stick” Mann has been the subject of an internal by his own university – Penn St., a top school – regarding his professional conduct. Apparently, they found something.
Inquiry into climate scientist moves to next phase
In looking at four possible allegations of research misconduct, the committee determined that further investigation is warranted for one of those allegations. The recommended investigation will focus on determining if Mann “engaged in, directly or indirectly, any actions that seriously deviated from accepted practices within the academic community for proposing, conducting or reporting research or other scholarly activities.”
The BBC hasn’t told you about this, of course.
Sorry, link is here.
Maybe Horriblebin is struggling to find a sceptical scientist in the UK because all academic jobs here are pretty much barred to them. I mean imagine a sceptic applying to a UK University for a research post .
I wonder if Horriblebin knows that. If not , he is stupid, if so he is dishonest.