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Climate Change proponents emails and files hacked
#61
Yup, I also heard that on the News today Linda. My immediate take was that this was a story aimed at deflecting the probable Anglo-American-Vatican responsibility for the hacked and leaked material. The News report made a point of saying that the hacking job was sophisticated and beyond an individual and that it had, therefore, to be state sponsored.

That's my guess too. It's just that Russia doesn't fit the bill nearly as well as all the right-wing huffers and puffers we've seen around this story, imo...
The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real. This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge.
Carl Jung - Aion (1951). CW 9, Part II: P.14
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#62
So, according to one of Britain's stupidest and most supine-to-the-establishment newspapers, Russian intelligence did it, and allowed a trail so transparent that intrepid Daily Mail hacks were able to track it back to "a tiny internet server in a red brick building in a snow-clad street in Tomsk".

Don'tcha just luv the lyrical and descriptive prose finely honed by a Daily Mail staffer after a boozy lunch in one of London's finest gentleman's clubs....

Those Daily Mail reporters really are world class cyber sleuths, keeping us safe from Reds under the Bed, and other such dangers to Little Englander civilization..... :flybye:
"It means this War was never political at all, the politics was all theatre, all just to keep the people distracted...."
"Proverbs for Paranoids 4: You hide, They seek."
"They are in Love. Fuck the War."

Gravity's Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon

"Ccollanan Pachacamac ricuy auccacunac yahuarniy hichascancuta."
The last words of the last Inka, Tupac Amaru, led to the gallows by men of god & dogs of war
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#63
Regardless of who did the hacking, the emails are admittedly true, and the admitted purpose appears to be to create a long-term tax to fund the European Union Parliament.

http://www.examiner.com/x-11224-Baltimor...he-Decline

http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/...mmary.html
Fri, 02 Oct 2009
Gothenburg,Sweden - European Union officials meeting in Sweden Friday broached the idea of a carbon tax to reduce the bloc's greenhouse gas emissions as a way of showing the world that it is serious about fighting climate change. "There is not a single EU member state that would question the idea that climate change is a threatening global challenge (...) in which the EU should play a leading role," Laszlo Kovacs, the EU's tax commissioner, told the bloc's finance ministers.

And since the EU's existing emission trading scheme covers less than half of its carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, the European Commission and member states are eyeing another cost-effective and market-based instrument.

"That instrument could be CO2 taxation," Kovacs said.

The idea is to broaden the scope of the EU's existing energy taxation directive, which sets minimum tax levels on petrol, electricity and other energy products in all of the EU's 27 member states.

Minimum rates would be raised and a greater range of products would be included, with additional proceeds used "to compensate low- income households and build trust with the developing world by putting money on the table," Kovacs said.

The idea had been floating for some time in Brussels, but was discussed for the first time by EU finance ministers at their informal meeting in Gothenburg.

Kovacs stressed that a formal proposal would not be presented before next year and acknowledged that the issue remained tricky, since all tax-related matters require unanimity from national governments.

"This was a first attempt to discuss CO2 taxation. There were not many reactions, but those that I heard were all positive," Kovacs.

"There's a long way to go before we can reach an agreement," he added.

The meeting's host, Swedish Finance Minister Anders Borg, said his country's decision to introduce such a carbon tax back in the 1990s had proved "very successful", noting that people are generally less reluctant to pay if the purpose of the tax is clear.

Germany approved a similar tax in 1999.

The discussion on a carbon tax emerged during a debate on how to finance the global fight against climate change. The commission has estimated that the developed world will have to finance poorer countries to the tune of 100 billion euros (145 billion dollars) per year by 2020 to help them adapt to climate change. And the EU's executive believes part of this sum - up to 15 billion euros - should come from European taxpayers.

But the EU's most polluting and less well-off countries are unhappy with the idea that the bill should be divided according to emission levels and relative wealth.

"From our point of view, it is totally unacceptable that the poor countries of Europe should help the rich countries of Europe to help pay the poor countries of the rest of the world," said Polish Finance Minister Jan Rostowski ahead of the meeting.

Poland gets more than 90 per cent of its electricity from polluting and ageing coal plants. And its government argues that only ability to pay, not pollution levels, should be taken into account - a view shared by many former communist nations from Central and Eastern Europe.

Borg later said that "constructive talks" in Gothenburg had led to a good degree of "convergence", but declined to elaborate, saying only that pollution levels and ability to pay remained valid criteria.

"There will have to be more negotiations. We will need to find a compromise that satisfies everyone," Borg said.

His Polish colleague sounded upbeat after the talks, saying Poland's views were now "much better understood."

The discussion will be picked up at the next meeting of EU finance minister, on October 19, and at an EU summit of heads of state and government at the end of the month.

Copyright DPA
"History records that the Money Changers have used every form of abuse, intrigue, deceit and violent means possible to maintain their control over governments by controlling money and its issuance." --James Madison
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#64
Linda Minor Wrote:Regardless of who did the hacking, the emails are admittedly true, and the admitted purpose appears to be to create a long-term tax to fund the European Union Parliament.

Hi Linda - whose opinion is this?
"It means this War was never political at all, the politics was all theatre, all just to keep the people distracted...."
"Proverbs for Paranoids 4: You hide, They seek."
"They are in Love. Fuck the War."

Gravity's Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon

"Ccollanan Pachacamac ricuy auccacunac yahuarniy hichascancuta."
The last words of the last Inka, Tupac Amaru, led to the gallows by men of god & dogs of war
Reply
#65
http://erratasec.blogspot.com/2009/11/ha...rming.html

Friday, November 20, 2009
Hacker exposes global warming researcher (Climategate)
Posted by Robert Graham at 4:47 PM

Hackers broke in and revealed the private e-mails of Phil Jones (NYTimes, BBC ), a famous climatologist. This is going to be one of the most politically relevant hacks of the last few years. When hackers broke into Sarah Palin's e-mails during the presidential campaign, they failed to find any interesting dirt. Phil Jones' e-mails, though, are full of dirt. There's no proof of a "conspiracy" or "cover-up", but a lot of the e-mails look bad for Jones and some of his fellow researchers.

As a cybersecurity expert and a climate skeptic, I thought I'd give some background on what happened.

THE CLIMATE DEBATE

Climate skeptics accept the fact that CO2 is a major greenhouse gas and that mankind has produced a lot more of it. However, the effect is logarithmic, suffering decreasing marginal returns, which means that even when we double CO2 in the atmosphere around the year 2100, by itself, CO2 will only increase temperatures by 1 degree. Global warming alarmism is based on the idea that the atmosphere is unstable, with reinforcing feedbacks, and "sensitive" to changes. Warmer air holds more water vapor which holds in more heat, which in turn warms the air further. Ice reflects heat, and when some melts do to slight warming, it exposed rock which absorbs heat, causing even more warming.

That's the debate in a nutshell. Alarmists think climate sensitivity is large, skeptics think it's small.

There are two major proofs for alarmism: computer models and historic reconstructions.

Computer models attempt to reproduce the entire climate. They are hugely complex, trying to incorporate everything we know about the climate. Models show warmer air holding more water vapor causing a positive feedback. Models require supercomputers to run. It is experimentation with computer models that "proves" climate sensitivity is large. Climate skeptics think computer models are bogus, that they do not replace experimental evidence, and that the billions of dollars spent experimenting with models would be better spent experimenting with the atmosphere. I'm a skeptic because I understand computer models, how they can be deceptive, and that the IPCC's reliance on them is unwarranted.

Historic reconstructions try to figure out what the temperature has been in the past compared to the present. They try to answer the question whether the current warming is normal or unprecedented. During the "Medieval Warming Period" a thousand years ago, Greenland was green, and Europe was warmer than it is now. Was that a localized climate phenomenon, or was it global? Skeptics think it was global, alarmists think it was local, and therefore the planet is warmer now than any time in the last several thousand years.

Historic temperatures are constructed from a wide variety of sources, such as ratios of isotopes, widths of tree rings, contents of sediments, and so on. Climatologists rely upon statistics to reconstruct useful information from what is otherwise a chaotic jumble of data.

The problem with these reconstructions is that the authors do not release their data to the public. Skeptics can't review the raw data or methodology and challenge the results. This is not unique to climate science, other scientific disciplines have similar data sharing problems. Collecting the data, such as measuring the rings of thousands of trees, takes a lot of work, and a scientist can make many discoveries from the data set. They only want to release the data after they've spent a few years writing papers based on it. Another problem is that it takes a lot of work to archive and maintain the data for critics who want to challenge it years later.

So, the lack of reproducibility doesn't mean there's a conspiracy or malfeasance, but it does mean that the science isn't "settled" (as Al Gore claims). It cannot be settled until critics have had a chance to rebut the claims. The lack of reproducibility gives the skeptics too much credibility (if they are wrong), or not enough credibility (if they are right).

At the center of the reproducibility debate is Stephen McIntyre and his website ClimateAudit. McIntyre documents his struggles to obtain the raw data and reproduce the results of famous temperature reconstructions. When he finally gets his hands on the data, often years later, he's often successful at finding important flaws.

The targets of McIntyre's campaign have their own website, RealClimate. They stress that their website is by "climate researchers", and important point because a lot of critics are not (McIntyre is a statistician).

Phil Jones, the guy whose e-mails were hacked, is part of the RealClimate crowd, and the target of McIntyre's attempts to reproduce results. Phil Jones runs that UK's University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit (CRU). CRU maintains global temperature records from the present going back to the 1800s. It also holds the data for a lot of reconstructions, especially the reconstructions used by the UN's IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change). McIntyre wants to challenge the IPCC's conclusions, but he can't, because Phil Jones refuses to release the data.

THE HACK

Somebody(s), we don't know who, stole a thousand confidential e-mails of Phil Jones, head the CRU. They also stole some important raw data used in many climate research papers. They put it in a 61-megabyte ZIP file and posted it to an anonymous FTP server in Russia. The posting was accompanied with the note:

We feel that climate science is, in the current situation, too important to be kept under wraps.
We hereby release a random selection of correspondence, code, and documents

All evidence points to this as being genuine. Phil Jones has admitted that one of pieces of dirt, about "hiding" a warming trend, is indeed genuine, although misinterpreted and out of context.

CRU has canceled everyone's passwords, forcing everyone to choose new passwords. This hints they have logs showing a specific account accessing the data (possibly Jones' own account).

Nobody knows how it happened. We are unlikely to figure out how the hack occurred unless we discover who did it.

It's a roughly 80% chance it was done by some sort of "insider", by somebody who has at least partial access to one of the internal computers. There is only a 20% chance it was done by an outside hacker breaking in. (This is my gut feel as a security researcher, there is no robustness in this estimate). Universities are more easily hacked by outsiders than most networks, ironically because Universities have a culture of sharing data.

UPDATE: A wag suggested this: Phil Jones and crew were likely logging onto their accounts using an open wifi at a climate conference. If you wanted to break into climatologist's e-mail, that'd be the easiest way to do it.

UPDATE: The hacker used open proxies to post the content, hiding his/her IP address.

UPDATE: Phil Jones is quoted as saying "It was a hacker. We were aware of this about three or four days ago". He's referring to the first attempt by the hacker to post the data to RealClimate.

The data is oddly specific. Only Phil Jones e-mails were copied, and a lot of the data that was hacked is specific to certain climate controversies. If it wasn't an insider, it was certainly somebody familiar with the central debate about reproducibility of climate reconstructions.

The fact that they posted the data to an anonymous FTP site in Russia also points to somebody who is active in the hacking community. This narrows things down. I suspect that at the end of the data, they'll find some sort of computer administrator working for CRU.

This hack is not simply about global warming, but the ethics of hacking.

This is similar to the Palin hack. If you'll remember, Alaska had rules that all e-mails must be archived, for the purposes of making government transparent. Palin conducted official business through her Yahoo account, evading these rules. It wasn't done maliciously, the hack actually proved there was nothing being covered up. Yet, it was still a violation of the rules.

In much the same way, Phil Jones is hiding data. It's bad science, it's bad politics. Again, there is no conspiracy or cover up here. Jones passionately hates McIntyre, he doesn't like skeptics, and he doesn't want to go through a lot of work to help skeptics. (Actually, I feel for Jones: we often come across virus samples, we send them around to people we like who ask, but we are too lazy to make them more widely available).

I think hackers do the world a favor by making things publicly available that should have been available in the first place. I believe "transparency" is fundamental to our political system, and if they politicians fail to be transparent, hackers should force the issue.

On the other hand, I'd like to see the hacker come forward publicly and admit the deed. It's a bad principle for hackers to decide for themselves when it's right or wrong to hack. This because hackers always have a justification for their hacks, only rarely are they going to find that others agree with them. It's like the question whether you'd kill Hitler before he could cause WW II and the Holocaust. My answer is that I would - but I'd expect to be convicted of murder and sent to jail. It's like how Henry David Thoreau practiced civil disobedience: he refused to pay taxes, and expected to go to jail (and was annoyed when his friends released him from jail by paying his taxes). People who hide from the government in order to avoid taxes are douchebags, people who stand up for principles are heroes.
"History records that the Money Changers have used every form of abuse, intrigue, deceit and violent means possible to maintain their control over governments by controlling money and its issuance." --James Madison
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#66
In the lead up to the Copenhagen climate change talks,
the Center for Public Integrity has published the first-ever series
on the Global Climate Change Lobby. Our reporting in eight countries,
led by the Center’s International Consortium of Investigative Journalists,
provides an inside look at the influence of fossil fuel industries and other heavy carbon emitters.

[edited to lend clarity on whose report was being posted]
"Where is the intersection between the world's deep hunger and your deep gladness?"
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#67
It wasn't a hack, it was a leak.

If it were a hack, it had to take place over several months: the BBC meterologist (Paul Hudson who wrote the article"What Ever Happenbed to Global Warming," I believe) was funneled emails concerning him in October. FOI2009.zip contains emails from November 12, 2009. The BBC reporter/meteorlogist claimed he got the exact same set of emails in October, which can't be true. The dates don't match.

If they're looking for wi-fi breaches, they missed the whole point, these weren't purloined letters from when Phil Jones used the public wifi at Copenhagen airport or anything like that. They were comprehensively selected for content from a set of email accounts and directories. It's perfectly possible someone could do that remotely, but it doesn't add up, because the last email was November 12 and the emails came out in the zip too quickly, it takes time to work through a scad of raw material and narrow it down to 200 MB uncompressed data. Assume the people doing that are Russians in remote Tomsk, and add a lot more time.

They're not really serious about thinking someone hacked them through their wifi. They're looking for a way out. If they can show persuasively the emails and documents were hacked rather than leaked, they can probably have them excluded from evidence.

Here's what logically happened: someone at UEA had access to Hadley CRU's directories. Chances are that was someone in the climate research unit. Hadley CRU was so lax about securing files internally, at UEA, that there was plenty of plausible deniability for the leaker to make a move. The move probably came after trying to work within the system, to get these guys to reform. No luck. Then the data are linked to from a pro-AGW site. Removed. What's left but to go full bore public? The emails themselves talk about leaving stuff out on insecure FTP servers, about unreliable colleagues and about global cooling after 1998.

That the data were stored on a university server in Tomsk is really meaningless. I don't believe Tomsk is a closed city anymore either, although I could be wrong.
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#68
Quote:Copenhagen climate summit in disarray after 'Danish text' leak

Developing countries react furiously to leaked draft agreement that would hand more power to rich nations, sideline the UN's negotiating role and abandon the Kyoto protocol

John Vidal in Copenhagen guardian.co.uk,
Tuesday 8 December 2009 14.09 GMT Article history

The UN Copenhagen climate talks are in disarray today after developing countries reacted furiously to leaked documents that show world leaders will next week be asked to sign an agreement that hands more power to rich countries and sidelines the UN's role in all future climate change negotiations.


The document is also being interpreted by developing countries as setting unequal limits on per capita carbon emissions for developed and developing countries in 2050; meaning that people in rich countries would be permitted to emit nearly twice as much under the proposals.


The so-called Danish text, a secret draft agreement worked on by a group of individuals known as "the circle of commitment" – but understood to include the UK, US and Denmark – has only been shown to a handful of countries since it was finalised this week.


The agreement, leaked to the Guardian, is a departure from the Kyoto protocol's principle that rich nations, which have emitted the bulk of the CO2, should take on firm and binding commitments to reduce greenhouse gases, while poorer nations were not compelled to act. The draft hands effective control of climate change finance to the World Bank; would abandon the Kyoto protocol – the only legally binding treaty that the world has on emissions reductions; and would make any money to help poor countries adapt to climate change dependent on them taking a range of actions.


The document was described last night by one senior diplomat as "a very dangerous document for developing countries. It is a fundamental reworking of the UN balance of obligations. It is to be superimposed without discussion on the talks".


A confidential analysis of the text by developing countries also seen by the Guardian shows deep unease over details of the text. In particular, it is understood to:


• Force developing countries to agree to specific emission cuts and measures that were not part of the original UN agreement;

• Divide poor countries further by creating a new category of developing countries called "the most vulnerable";

• Weaken the UN's role in handling climate finance;

• Not allow poor countries to emit more than 1.44 tonnes of carbon per person by 2050, while allowing rich countries to emit 2.67 tonnes.


Developing countries that have seen the text are understood to be furious that it is being promoted by rich countries without their knowledge and without discussion in the negotiations.


"It is being done in secret. Clearly the intention is to get [Barack] Obama and the leaders of other rich countries to muscle it through when they arrive next week. It effectively is the end of the UN process," said one diplomat, who asked to remain nameless.


Antonio Hill, climate policy adviser for Oxfam International, said: "This is only a draft but it highlights the risk that when the big countries come together, the small ones get hurting. On every count the emission cuts need to be scaled up. It allows too many loopholes and does not suggest anything like the 40% cuts that science is saying is needed."

Hill continued: "It proposes a green fund to be run by a board but the big risk is that it will run by the World Bank and the Global Environment Facility [a partnership of 10 agencies including the World Bank and the UN Environment Programme] and not the UN. That would be a step backwards, and it tries to put constraints on developing countries when none were negotiated in earlier UN climate talks."


The text was intended by Denmark and rich countries to be a working framework, which would be adapted by countries over the next week. It is particularly inflammatory because it sidelines the UN negotiating process and suggests that rich countries are desperate for world leaders to have a text to work from when they arrive next week.


Few numbers or figures are included in the text because these would be filled in later by world leaders. However, it seeks to hold temperature rises to 2C and mentions the sum of $10bn a year to help poor countries adapt to climate change from 2012-15.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/20...anish-text

The "Danish text" can be read here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/20...ate-change
"It means this War was never political at all, the politics was all theatre, all just to keep the people distracted...."
"Proverbs for Paranoids 4: You hide, They seek."
"They are in Love. Fuck the War."

Gravity's Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon

"Ccollanan Pachacamac ricuy auccacunac yahuarniy hichascancuta."
The last words of the last Inka, Tupac Amaru, led to the gallows by men of god & dogs of war
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#69
Monckton is at the Copenhagen summit prying draft treaties and whatnot loose. He gave a report on the Alex Jones show a few hours ago. Jones asked about the oil companies being in bed with global warming for decades. Monckton shied away from the question and basically said he tried to warn the oil companies but they were making a mistake. He also revealed he's "good friends" with astrophysicist Dr. Willie Soon (see http://www.deeppoliticsforum.com/forums/...stcount=23 and/or http://www.itsrainmakingtime.com/_recent...part2.html ).

That said, he's not hiding his affiliations and he's making sense economically and scientifically. And yes they spoke about the Danish papers, as old news. Hear the interview here: http://rss.infowars.com/20091208_Tue_Alex.mp3
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#70
Helen Reyes Wrote:Monckton is at the Copenhagen summit prying draft treaties and whatnot loose. He gave a report on the Alex Jones show a few hours ago. Jones asked about the oil companies being in bed with global warming for decades. Monckton shied away from the question and basically said he tried to warn the oil companies but they were making a mistake. He also revealed he's "good friends" with astrophysicist Dr. Willie Soon (see http://www.deeppoliticsforum.com/forums/...stcount=23 and/or http://www.itsrainmakingtime.com/_recent...part2.html ).

That said, he's not hiding his affiliations and he's making sense economically and scientifically. And yes they spoke about the Danish papers, as old news. Hear the interview here: http://rss.infowars.com/20091208_Tue_Alex.mp3

However, the "Danish text" is genuine documented policy, albeit leaked presumably for political purposes.

Monckton's claims have little evidential basis.

Indeed, one of Monckton's sillier, "New World Order"-type, claims is that global warming is a UN conspiracy:

Quote:Monckton said that the United Nations should be “closed down,” adding that he talked to a senior UN ambassador in Canada who told him that he no longer saw any purpose in the UN and it exists “only to enrich itself at the expense of the nations it claims to serve, it’s time it was brought to an end.”

“We would all save billions if we shut down the UN and just about all of its hideous bureaucracy,” said Monckton.

Whereas the leak of the apparently genuine "Danish papers" suggests that the plan would:

Quote:Weaken the UN's role in handling climate finance;

and

Quote:The draft hands effective control of climate change finance to the World Bank

This is contrary to Monckton's claims.

I still see the Lord, with his family's MI6 connections bizarrely combined with endorsement by the LaRouche cult, as a prime piece of diversionary theatre.

Worth observing. But only for what the cards Monckton plays reveals about Their true agenda.
"It means this War was never political at all, the politics was all theatre, all just to keep the people distracted...."
"Proverbs for Paranoids 4: You hide, They seek."
"They are in Love. Fuck the War."

Gravity's Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon

"Ccollanan Pachacamac ricuy auccacunac yahuarniy hichascancuta."
The last words of the last Inka, Tupac Amaru, led to the gallows by men of god & dogs of war
Reply


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