by Brendan DeMelle, via DeSmogBlog

“Our Priority is You,” reads the tagline of the Norfolk Constabulary. The rest of the sentence ought to read, “unless you are a climate scientist.”

The Norfolk Constabulary announced yesterday that it has called off its investigation into the criminal hacking of the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit. The November 2009 breach of servers at the University led to the publication of private emails between climate scientists, an event that climate change deniers whipped up into a phony controversy they called “Climategate.”

As DeSmogBlog has previously reported, the UK police appear to have spent an astonishingly inadequate amount of money and resources on their investigation into the criminal hacking. Now that they’ve given up entirely on finding the perpetrators, there will be many more questions about who should be held accountable for the failed effort.

The Norfolk Constabulary confirmed in its announcement that there is no evidence to support the claims made by climate deniers that the stolen information was released from within the university, noting in the statement that the crime was the “result of a sophisticated and carefully orchestrated attack on the CRU’s data files, carried out remotely via the internet.”

But apparently the UK police have no intention of following through to mete out justice for the crime. We will have a lot more to say about this in the coming days, but for now you can read the full statement released by the Norfolk Constabulary below:

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Police officers investigating the theft of thousands of private emails between climate scientists from a University of East Anglia server in 2009 have seized computer equipment belonging to a web content editor based at the University of Leeds.

The glacial investigation into the stolen emails has experienced rapid, unprecedented warming that very much appears to be caused by humans, in this case the Norfolk police.

The UK Guardian reports today:

On Wednesday, detectives from Norfolk Constabulary entered the home of Roger Tattersall, who writes a climate sceptic blog under the pseudonym TallBloke, and took away two laptops and a broadband router. A police spokeswoman confirmed on Thursday that Norfolk Constabulary had “executed a search warrant in West Yorkshire and seized computers”. She added: “No one was arrested. Investigations into the [UEA] data breach and publication [online of emails] continues. This is one line of enquiry in a Norfolk constabulary investigation which started in 2009″….

Both Tattersall and a US-based climate sceptic blogger known as Jeff Id said they had received a “formal request” via the blogging platform WordPress from the US Department of Justice’s criminal division, dated 9 December, to preserve “all stored communications, records, and other evidence in your possession” related to their own blogs as well as to Climate Audit, a climate sceptic blog run by a Canadian mining consultant called Steve McIntyre. All three blogs had received messages from “FOIA” last month pointing to the link hosting a second tranche of emails first taken from the UEA in 2009.

It’s funny to see the hyperventilating at the denier websites.  As you know, the deniers routinely assume any scientist being independently investigated is almost certainly guilty, that any scientist exonerated by an independent investigation is definitely guilty, and that thousands of actual evidence-based studies are part of a grand conspiracy to deceive humanity.

Unlike the deniers, however, we stay evidence-based, so the fact that the police have seized TallBloke’s computers and told a U.S. denier not to delete or destroy any evidence is not proof in the least bit of their involvement in any crime.

Here’s more of the story:

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by Jill Fitzsimmons, cross-posted from Media Matters

The December 12 print edition of The Weekly Standard features a cover story by Steven Hayward titled “Climategate (Part II): A sequel as ugly as the original,” which discusses the recent release of more hacked emails from the climate research center at the University of East Anglia in the UK.

Hayward acknowledges from the outset that he did not do “an extended review” of the emails — and this is evident in his analysis — but he still asserts that “longtime critics of the climate cabal are going to be vindicated.” Hayward claims the emails constitute more than “a ‘smoking gun’ of scientific bias” and reveal “the rank politicization of climate science.”

Throughout the 3,500-word story, Hayward quotes from 10 of the email exchanges, but not one of them actually supports his thesis that mainstream climate science is driven by politics. Let’s take them one at a time:

1. Hayward Cites Email About Page Limits To Claim That “Politics Drives The Process.” A 2004 email from Jonathan Overpeck advises a colleague to “decide on the main message and use that to guid[e] what’s included and what is left out.” Hayward claims that this email “reinforce[s] the impression that politics drives the process”. But a closer look at the full email reveals that Overpeck is simply asking Villalba to condense a document into “0.5 pages of HIGHLY focused and relevant stuff” in order to meet page limits.

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“Police officers investigating the theft of thousands of private emails between climate scientists from a University of East Anglia server in 2009″ — the source of the Climategate smear campaign timed to disrupt the Copenhagen climate summit — “have seized computer equipment” belonging to Roger Tattersall, who writes a climate denier blog under the pseudonym TallBloke.

In the United States, the Department of Justice sent a “formal request for preservation” to Tattersall and climate denier Patrick Condon, who runs the No Consensus blog under the pseudonym Jeff Id. The DOJ letter tells the conspiracy theorists to preserve “all stored communications, records, and other evidence in your possession” for their blogs and for Climate Audit, a denier blog run by Steve McIntyre, a Canadian mining consultant.

All three bloggers promoted the file dump from the “FOIA” hacker that contained the climate scientists’ emails, as well as one released this November. The hacking is part of a broader campaign of illegal intimidation against climate scientists.

Top Republicans, including presidential candidates Rick Perry and Jon Huntsman, continue to cite the smears against climate scientists as justification for their opposition to climate action.

(HT Climate Crocks)

At an event at the Heritage Foundation, presidential candidate Jon Huntsman reversed his prior defense of climate science. Huntsman spoke to bloggers after a presentation by the fossil-industry front group Institute for Energy Research. Huntsman, who famously mocked his fellow candidates for questioning global warming in August, was asked by Heritage blogger Lachlan Markey if humans contribute to climate change. Huntsman said that the “scientific community owes us more“:

I don’t know, I’m not a scientist, nor am I a physicist, but I would defer to science . . . The scientific community owes us more in terms of a better description of explanation about what might lie beneath all of this. But there’s not information right now to formulate policies in terms of addressing it over all, primarily because it’s a global issue.

When TalkingPointsMemo reporter Evan McMorris-Santoro asked if Huntsman had changed his postion, he replied that there is “debate” in the scientific community, including “questions” raised “by a university in Scotland”:

I’m not a physicist, I’m not a scientist. I tend to defer to those who do it for a living. I’d be prepared to take it out of the political milieu and put it into the scientific milieu. There are questions about the validity of the science — evidence by one university over in Scotland recently.

“If there’s some interruption or disconnect in terms of what other scientists have to say, then let the debate play out within the scientific community,” he said. “I think that’s where we are. There’s probably more debate yet to play out.”

It is not clear what “university over in Scotland” Huntsman meant. The universities and colleges of Scotland have signed the Universities and Colleges Climate Commitment of Scotland, which states:

We recognise the scale and speed of climate change, and the likely effect on Scotland’s people and places, impacting adversely on our economy, society and environment. . . . We acknowledge the Scottish Government objective – to reduce emissions by 80% by 2050 – to avert the worst impacts of climate change; and realise we have a role to play in this.

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This is kind of big, so the cartoon is after the jump.

The headline, from Firstdog at Crikey, reads:

Bitter Climate Science Tryst Shock Scandal Rift Emails Exposed

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So there were these hacked emails.  Made a big ruckus back in the day.  You remember, that time long, long ago when people were still excited about things like international climate change negotiations and Tiger Woods and President Obama, for that matter.

You must have heard of those emails.  At least if you watch Fox News.

Anyway, somebody got the idea that the three remaining conservatives who understand climate science needed stomping on.  So the cherry-picking perpetrators released a few more emails that apparently weren’t even considered sexy enough for prime time the first time around.  You know, like those midseason replacement TV shows that get canceled almost immediately or movies that are so lame they go straight to DVD.

Since they have nothing better to do, the people who wrote those emails and actually know what they mean thought somebody, anybody might be interested in that, as opposed to the umpteenth story on how “scientists are human beings, therefore they are no different from, say, journalists, and who really believes anything those folks say?”

So here forthwith are two pieces, one from the University of East Anglia and the other from the UK Guardian.  Warning:  It ain’t The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, though it does have a higher body count, at least in the long term….

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE OR COMMENT

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Frankly, it warms my heart to read about scientists critiquing their colleagues’ work ruthlessly. I like my scientists second-guessing themselves. I also like them doing what they can to stamp out any interference in their research by the militantly ignorant.

– Matt Bush in a repost

Did you hear about this Climategate 2.0 bullshit? Why are journalists not getting fired for all this ridiculously irresponsible misreporting?

Over the last couple of days, we’ve been graced with the news that 5,000 personal emails exchanged by climate scientists have been leaked to the public. These aren’t recent emails, mind you, these emails cover the same time span as those released in the last ‘shattering’ leak. So hack journalists and parties with vested interests are forcing us to discuss yesterday’s news today.

The mass media is once again doing the public a gross disservice through an unbridled flexing of staggering incompetence. Many reporters are defiantly refusing to even look beyond the now infamous text file (itself consisting almost entirely of shamelessly mined quotes) when writing their stories. What makes this myopia so damning is that in most cases, a fucking glance at the actual email the mined soundbite came from will lay the context bare – effectively refuting the entire article.

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This year has already witnessed multiple events that break climate records: the drought in East Africa, the worst drought in Texas’ recorded history, and record breaking storms and floods in the US south. Those events, anticipated by climatologists decades ago, should remind us that those who persecute and harass scientists, or mendaciously misrepresent their actions and findings, have no sense of decency.

by Stephan Lewandowsky, in a Conversation cross-post

Emails from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit have once again been hacked and released on the internet. The timing is similar to the “climategate” scandal of 2009, with emails published just before an important UN climate conference. Does this mean the science is in doubt? Quite the opposite, says Stephan Lewandowsky.

An ambulance pulls up behind you. You know it’s an ambulance because you can read AMBULANCE in your rear view mirror. But you can also read it when you look at the vehicle directly; because the human visual system has the ability to quickly correct complete inversions or left-right reversals of letters. In fact, a complete inversion is easier to read than letters that are rotated only partially.

This human ability to process complete inversions more quickly than just partial distortions, alas, lends itself to exploitation by ruthless propagandists who seek to create a chimerical world in which up is down, left is right, and good is smeared as evil.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in the netherworld of attacks on climate scientists.

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Our guest blogger is Stephan Lewandowsky, Australian Professorial Fellow, Cognitive Science Laboratories at the University of Western Australia. This post was originally published at The Conversation.

An ambulance pulls up behind you. You know it’s an ambulance because you can read AMBULANCE in your rear view mirror. But you can also read it when you look at the vehicle directly; because the human visual system has the ability to quickly correct complete inversions or left-right reversals of letters. In fact, a complete inversion is easier to read than letters that are rotated only partially.

This human ability to process complete inversions more quickly than just partial distortions, alas, lends itself to exploitation by ruthless propagandists who seek to create a chimerical world in which up is down, left is right, and good is smeared as evil.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in the netherworld of attacks on climate scientists.

Remember “climategate”? The illegal hack of personal emails released just before the Copenhagen climate conference in 2009 that some columnists pronounced to be the (approximately 132nd) “final nail in the coffin” of global warming?

Remember the “errors” in the IPCC’s 2007 report? “Amazongate”, “Himalayagate”, and so on?
What has happened to “climategate”?

What’s happened is this.

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