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“Climategate” cyber-attacker sighted!
On 18 Aug, the bullshit blog Climate Audit blog got a comment from “RC” with hyperlink “http://www.realclimate.org/FOIA.zip”:
This seems to be in response to speculations by McIntyre and others that the SwiftHacker struck a deal to stop releasing more data damaging to CRU, in exchange for legal immunity.
Thoughts?
http://ijish.livejournal.com/38158.html
– frank
Also, details of the web browser (the “user agent string”) apparently used on CRU system administrator Mike Salmon’s machine appeared on a site named “Bots vs Browsers”. Not sure what this really means yet.
http://ijish.livejournal.com/38760.html
– frank
What about the connection to the News of the World phone hacking scandal?
The New York Times learned that the former editor, Neil Wallis, was reporting back to News International while he was working for the police on the hacking case. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/17/world/europe/17police.htm?_r=1
When MurdochGate Met ClimateGate http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/07/20/996814/-When-MurdochGate-Met-ClimateGate
The attacks on CRU begun much earlier… back in 1996!
Frederick Seitz, in a June 12, 1996 editorial-page piece in the Wall Street Journal complained that alterations made to Chapter 8 of the 1995 IPCC report were made to “deceive policy makers and the public into believing that the scientific evidence shows human activities are causing global warming.” Similar charges were made by the Global Climate Coalition (GCC), a consortium of industry interests. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Santer
No evidence yet of a direct link between Murdoch and the SwiftHacker, I’m afraid. Maybe Neil Wallis crops up in both cases, but that’s about it.
– frank
Just continually amazed at NYtimes…I really can’t tell what this newspaper’s getting at when they print 2-year-old stories like this:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/12/business/energy-environment/a-cornucopia-of-help-for-renewable-energy.html?_r=1
Yes, there is such a thing as clean energy subsidies. I don’t know where you’ve been for the past 2 years NYtimes. This hack piece seems to suggest that we should be angry at Obama and clean energy companies for Wall Street firms trying to make money. Nowhere does it mention why it might actually be a good idea to subsidize clean energy projects….you know, the actual PURPOSE? But then I remembered, that “no one’s really talking about climate change anymore…”
why are you wasting your time and money reading NYT?frustration and suffering can come cheaper and faster by just bringing up the subject of global warming among family, friends, and neighbors. but it is the kind of pain we need to partake in, daily and sundays.
The English press is pretty dire at times, and none more so than the Daily Mail which continues its attempts to use Judith Curry to disinform over BEST:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2060710/The-Earths-temperature-risen-1C-1950s-claims-new-study.html
The worst, in my opinion, is ‘The Guardian’, which poses as a ‘liberal’ voice but is as Rightwing and propagandistic as the rest.
“We’re not talking about eternal truth or absolute truth or ultimate truth. We’re talking about impermanent, transient, human truth. I don’t expect you people to be capable of truth, but god-dammit at least you’re capable of self-preservation!”
– the voice that spoke to Howard Beale, as quoted by Howard Beale
The movie ‘Network’ — “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore!” — was released 35 years ago on November 27. (That is, it was released on November 27, 1976.)
On that day, roughly two weeks from now, we should remember it and its lessons, and commemorate it. It is strikingly relevant to today. Everyone should watch it.
Long live HB — for wanting to tell the truth and for trying, in the only way he could.
Be Well,
Jeff
P.S. — Are we capable of self-preservation as the voice suggested? Only time will tell.
“Are we capable of self-preservation as the voice suggested? Only time will tell.”
Of course we’re capable of self-preservation. Assuming, you know, that enough of us perceive there to be a short-term profit in it. Oh, wait…
Actually, the cartoon’s caption should read “He could be an idiot, or he could be a sociopath appealing to his base.”
UK press did some good coverage of the cryosphere this week
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/climate-change-melting-polar-regions-faster-than-ever-before-6259145.html
And the BBC series Frozen Planet is covering the same concerns
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/8884321/Sir-David-Attenborough-dispels-any-doubts-on-global-warming.html
We need only to look to Newt Gingrich’s attack on the media and OWS movement to understand that there are large portions of the population that will NEVER get the message. List here: http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011-11-10/politics/30381243_1_newt-gingrich-moderator-cnbc-debate
Check the applause he gets.
I have the same response to local paper OpEds that I write: http://www.morganhilltimes.com/opinion/280660-climate-change-genie-is-out-of-the-bottle
Comment #1:
Change your lives RADICALLY NOW! Fork over wads of money in all aspects of your life! Fork over shovel-loads of your Freedom. Sure, your standard of living will be radically reduced…and your children’s children’s…but hey… computer models don’t lie (except for the last decade–which they got wrong).
“There’s a consensus!” (shout it from the rooftops) Its getting smaller..but the scientific method always holds “consensus” supreme…right?
Or, is it that: “politics always holds consensus supreme”?
We still have a lot of work to do.
where is morgan hill?
you are exemplifying the frustration and pain i encouraged jeff to suffer in place of reading the nyt. thank you for it, and keep up the good work.
could we cut and paste/plagarize some of your editorial and send it to our local papers?
Jeff, the Old Gray Lady has to be a whore. I can’t figure it any other way. Her biggest John must be Exxon. I read the same article and had the same response. Subsidies work! How can we do these more? How do we speed panels going up all over the desert?
Even when the paper prints an editorial supporting Obama’s decision they get it wrong. The paper opines for two paragraphs about energy security, and the one mention it makes about carbon emissions regards carbon intensity per barrel. Nowhere have I seen it written in NYT that development of unconventional fossil fuels is or may well be incompatible with civilization on a decades-time frame.
Honestly, I’m beginning to wonder if the Koch brothers have made some secret and very effective ad buys or deals.
It’s not the Koch brothers, in this case it’s Warren Buffet.
Artful, I love your comments over on Neven’s blog. Or should I say in respect to how much the comment threads are just about as valuable to me, Neven and friends.
Just found Dickenson’s piece in Rolling Stone ( well, really Joe’s January CP entry about it, the Rolling Stone link doesn’t seem to work) about Buffet. It’s on my reading list for tonight. Damn. Liked Buffet up til now.
Just goes to show you. Rolling Stone is the best journalism going right now. Just in front of the Daily How and The Onion.
There has got to be something really nefarious going on if that is the state of things in American journalism.
One redeeming point about Buffet: his company Berkshire Hathaway is the largest stakeholder in Munich Re, the reinsurance behemoth. Berkshire owns 10% of the company.
The management and people at Munich Re are absolutely terrified of climate change because they know they stand to lose a great deal of money from it. As such, Munich Re maintains an absolutely incredible database of climate-related catastrophes occurring over the years. Querying the entries in the database indicates that these environmentally-caused disasters really are beginning to snowball out of control.
JR’s talked about Munich Re and its database on this blog before, I think.
To repeat: We need some politicians who started their careers in the insurance industry.
Reality Based Politicians are close to statistics, mathematics, and science. They could be allies.
“Emergency” Arctic Mission Discovers Millions Of Tons Of Powerful Greenhouse Gas Methane Bubbling From Arctic Ocean
By Physicist-retired
http://drich13.newsvine.com/_news/2011/11/11/8760677-emergency-arctic-mission-discovers-millions-of-tons-of-powerful-greenhouse-gas-methane-bubbling-from-arctic-ocean?last=1321126070&threadId=3269888&commentId=59868505#c59868505
Uh-oh. Thanks Colorado Bob, ME
So where are teh Task Forces, The lame stream media, The politicans on this???
What are the short term impacts?
What can be done now to prevent worst case scenarios in the future?
Oh, i get it! Humans are too stupid to prevent dangerous climate change!
funnel with big end down over the vent then piped up to the ship- how long would it take to fill up their big container ship?
More coverage of rising Methane levels here with good links to NOAA:
http://www.alaskadispatch.com/article/methane-growing-threat-arctics-changing-climate
Bob & others,
Physicist-retired made a mistake, these news are from 2008.
(but of course we can’t rule out that the methane emissions are worse now)
PR didn’t make it clear about the background story in the The Independent .
This is 2011 reporting :
What would you do if you had a 100 billion empire based on fossil energy?
What would be the best way to transition to a clean empire?
Just gives us an idea of why getting anything done is so freakin hard. Eleven of the top twenty multinational corporations by revenue are oil or car companies (dependent on oil). When I think that, with the business model for these companies gone, global warming means these companies are probably not going to survive. Given that, I could understand how the billionaires sitting on top of the world see climate science as a global enviro-Marxist plot. Well tough. But that means it will be all that much tougher for us to make it.
This plot is part of their disinformation campaign. Where in fact Koch’s made business and a fortune when dealing with Stalin. And when oil companies bet on the thawing arctic, to roll out large scale oil and gas exploration.
Actually, I think the big-wigs, the Koch’s and the like, actually believe it. It reminds me of what Axelrod said after he had met with Roger Ailes. At some point in their discussions Ailes stated Obama planned a National Police Force to quash dissent from a national program for civilian volunteering, and it suddenly struck Axelrod that Ailes genuinely believed it.
It’s tempting to think these people are heartless but rational, but I know a lot of accomplished people who are very irrational outside of their spheres of achievement. Burning witches was a past-time for mobs, but there were churchmen and civil magistrates coming up with the throw-her-in-the-pond exams. That witch burning spirit has to go somewhere, and somewhere inside the Deniers of all levels there is an honest distrust of all this “science” because, unvoiced to themselves but lurking in inchoate and primal strength below the surface, they all believe in the enviro-Marxist global conspiracy for world domination. My latest tack is to try to get people to say that out loud to themselves, to get them to face the irrationality and maybe break the spell. Hasn’t worked so far. Nothing does.
Except stopping the XL Pipeline!
Years ago, when studying American History through Am Lit and the witch burnings a story came about a fungus(?) growth in the wheat that caused mental issues with large populations. I never studied that happening, but it would show a why to the burnings.
Tonight during my periodic theoretical rambles through my mind about the mysteries of Gaia and the fact that Earth appears to be a life supporting planet, I had a thought (all jokes about the frequency of this ocurrence are welcome).
Will our destruction over the last 200 years affect the viability of the thermaphiles, those that live in the ecosystem of black smokers? The temp down there is over about 400 degrees C but what about the PH?
As our industrial, increasingly individualized, top down and mean-spirited, fossil fuelled culture winds down, will they, the thermophiles, make it through to provide the base for another evolutionary flowering of life on Earth? Will these forms of life survive our onslaught?
If they do, and unfortunately I won’t live to see the ultimate result of our little experiment with GHGs, despite the life prolonging qualities of curiosity, their survival should once and for all deflate our bubles of hubris and megalomania and give cause to a genuine celebration of life – in all its forms, regardless of how many legs it has.
I reckon we can’t extinguish life: therefore, we have to join it [if you can't beat it, join it].
We do know how to set up organizations to support life. Its not new in human history and its not even new in modern social science, ME
Some unusual changes in the ecosystems of the UK this autumn, reflecting the unusual warmth of the last 2 months
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/nov/13/warm-autumn-wildlife-oddities?INTCMP=SRCH
There was another piece a couple of weeks ago, an observer in Southern Scotland, 40 years of nature study as only the Britain’s can. Profound change underway .
Has anybody studied the effects of pulling energy out of the wind?
Say we put up a huge wind farm off the west coast of Africa. Would that lessen the number of hurricanes?
Yes. No.
A quietly poignant piece in the UK press about fossil fuel usage here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/nov/11/coal-mining-fossil-fuels-global-warming
“Build a bunker with a vegetable plot on some high but sheltered ground and leave it to your grandchildren: dangerous levels of climate change now look all but inevitable.”
You can bet that there is gong to be inevitable panic now as this realization settles in. Many of those who can afford it are going to be battening down their hatches. A lot of passive avoiders are going to be running for the hills. Mad Max is arriving.
I have sweet peas and iris blooming right now. Never saw this before.
Speaking of food prices .
Taipei Times :
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2011/11/14/2003518285
links help
Sorry , computer is full of sand, and not responding well today.
Here’s the link:
Bad corn crop means higher food prices
http://www.dailyherald.com/article/20111113/business/711139989/
Blooming dandelions, butterflies, grasshoopers, and wasps are all active here today this November 13. Strange days.
Grasshoppers!
FORT WORTH—
http://www.the33tv.com/news/kdaf-drought-devastates-horse-rescues-hay-supplies-20111110,0,1483214.story
Climate Portals shared a link.
A Small Town, Almost Waterless, Takes a Big Gamble
http://www.nytimes.com
Groesbeck, Texas, is almost out of water. The town has an agreement to draw from a local quarry, but the plan isn’t sure to work.
Today’s sea ice chart …..
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_stddev_timeseries.png
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/globalwarming/8877491/Arctic-sea-ice-to-melt-by-2015.html
Arctic sea ice ‘to melt by 2015′
Arctic sea ice could completely melt away by the summer of 2015, destroying the natural habitat of animals like polar bears, one of Britain’s leading ocean experts has claimed.
Prof Peter Wadhams, of Cambridge University, said the ice that forms over the Arctic sea is shrinking so rapidly that it could vanish altogether in as little as four years’ time.
This is a very confused piece. Wadhams is basing his claim on the work of Dr Wieslaw Maslowski, a researcher from the American Naval Postgraduate School. But I’ve interviewed Maslowski a bunch of times in the last year and he doesn’t believe the sea ice will be all gone by 2015. He initially said 2016 +/- 3 years, but subsequently modified that to 80% of the ice, since he expects some to linger into the 2020s.
Joe, the actual and perceived dates are minor points and of no rel consequence. Big oil will soon have enough open water to set their platforms.
I’ve seen this somewhere but can’t provide a link. Ice doesn’t all have to be gone. Just the multiyear ice in the region where they’re drilling. If they complete the wells in summer/ fall, they may plan to extract year-round, beneath whatever thickness of sea ice forms.
The telegraph seems to have relented… here again is more reasonable coverage of GW….
Climate Portals shared a link.
Sir David Attenborough dispels any doubts on global warming – Telegraph
http://www.telegraph.co.uk
The Frozen Planet’s hurrying water carries with it the series’ ultimate message on climate change.
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Climate-Portals/139434822741700
Deconstructing GOP’s climate contradictions
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1111/68251.html
http://gulftoday.ae/portal/ec1dd249-ff42-49cd-a193-c25941835cf4.aspx
SE Asia floods have left 1,000 dead
Climate Portals shared a link.
A New Era of Gunboat Diplomacy
http://www.nytimes.com
Recently discovered offshore energy reserves are spurring efforts to dominate the sea.
Like · · Share · a few seconds ago
Climate Portals It may seem strange in an era of cyberwarfare and drone attacks, but the newest front in the rivalry between the United States and China is a tropical sea, where the drive to tap rich offshore oil and gas reserves has set off a conflict akin to the gunboat diplomacy of the 19th century.
The Obama administration first waded into the treacherous waters of the South China Sea last year when Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton declared, at a tense meeting of Asian countries in Hanoi, that the United States would join Vietnam, the Philippines and other countries in resisting Beijing’s efforts to dominate the sea. China, predictably, was enraged by what it viewed as American meddling.
For all its echoes of the 1800s, not to mention the cold war, the showdown in the South China Sea augurs a new type of maritime conflict — one that is playing out from the Mediterranean Sea to the Arctic Ocean, where fuel-hungry economic powers, newly accessible undersea energy riches and even changes in the earth’s climate are conspiring to create a 21st-century contest for the seas.
a few seconds ago · Like
Climate Portals were heading over the edge! http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-11-10/oil-riches-languish-on-china-doorstep-as-clashes-delay-drilling.html
Oil Riches Languish on China Doorstep
http://www.bloomberg.com
To China, the world’s biggest energy consumer, another Saudi Arabia of oil may lie beneath the ocean to its south. Escalating regional tensions mean large-scale drilling may be slipping further into the future.
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Climate-Portals/139434822741700
Re: What should the climate movement (350.org et al) do next?
Two things, in my opinion: join with OWS in a full-court press to reduce the influence of money in politics. Amending the U.S. constitution to make clear that corporations aren’t people is central. It’s the corporate “personhood” established by various Supreme Court rulings that has opened the floodgates. An amendment would enable public financing of campaigns and reduce the ability of people/corps. like the Koch brothers to flood the media with waves of misleading ads.
Second, work hard to get OWS to amplify the bad news on climate, which has been so eloquently underlined by CP commenters on this weekend’s thread.
https://apps.facebook.com/theguardian/science/2011/nov/11/scienceofclimatechange-agriculture
Autumn could be warmest on record
This autumn could be the warmest on record after the mildest start to November in more than 350 years, forecasters said.
” The weather since the start of September has been so unseasonably warm that even average November temperatures for the rest of the month would still make this autumn the second warmest ever recorded.
If the pleasant conditions can hold out for just a little longer, 2011 could even eclipse 2006 and become the hottest since records began 353 years ago.
Temperatures of 18C this weekend were some of the highest measured six weeks before Christmas, and the average this month has so far matched the usual figure for May. ”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/topics/weather/8887166/Autumn-could-be-warmest-on-record.html
Rising Air Pollution Worsens Drought, Flooding, New Study Finds
“Using a 10-year dataset of extensive atmosphere measurements from the U.S. Southern Great Plains research facility in Oklahoma [run by the Department of Energy's Atmospheric Radiation Measurement program] — we have uncovered, for the first time, the long-term, net impact of aerosols on cloud height and thickness, and the resultant changes in precipitation frequency and intensity,” says Zhanqing Li, a professor of atmospheric and oceanic science at Maryland and lead author of the study.
The study found that under very dirty conditions, the mean cloud height of deep convective clouds is more than twice the mean height under crystal clean air conditions. “The probability of heavy rain is virtually doubled from clean to dirty conditions, while the chance of light rain is reduced by 50 percent,” says Maryland’s Li, who is also affiliated with Beijing Normal University.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/11/111113141304.htm