Wednesday 21 December 2011

Man Overboard - Tallbloke and AGW

The police have been dragged in to the Climate Debacle and have begun to confiscate computers at the behest of the US much to the delight of the University of East Anglia, who can't win their faulty argument any more than the Vatican could when it huffily excommunicated Galileo. The disgraced academics want to know who leaked/acquired the emails which showed them massaging data, suppressing dissent and obstructing FoI compliance.
A spokesman for the University of East Anglia said: "We are pleased to hear that the police are continuing to actively pursue the case following the release last month of a second tranche of hacked emails from the Climatic Research Unit. We hope this will result in the arrest of those responsible for the theft of the emails and for distorting the debate on the globally important issue of climate change." (Guardian 15 Dec 2011)
So no sense, then, that disagreeing with a deceitful propaganda exercise is not a criminal offence, despite the availability of the School of Law on campus to explain the niceties.

What matters is that it is in the public interest that the emails emerged purporting to show that the academics at UEA and other places had been cheating to shore up their preferred theory. But it was possible the CRU had a good explanation or that the emails had been misrepresented.  They have always maintained those are their emails which were supposed to be private, not that is is a set of hoax documents. It was possible the CRU had a good explanation for what they appeared to suggest. I settled down to wait for a way to tell whether these emails were private or, more sinisterly, secret.

The intimidation of Tallbloke by the state apparatus decides it for me: the whole AGW must be a fairy story and there may very well be a nasty plot afoot to protect somebody's financial interests in continuing that lie.

Tallbloke himself has been remarkably kind to the police and told the Guardian:

"I am happy to assist the police with their inquiries because I haven't been hiding anything important like some people have. I assisted them with their inquiries, which involved voluntarily answering some questions regarding computer use etc."
He generously over-looked the fact that they turned up with a warrant and didn't need to ask for his cooperation or permission, although they could have had either. He has stuck to the point: what have UEA been hiding?

If getting the science right was what mattered, UEA would have sacked half of its climatocracy pretending to be academics in order to protect the reputation of the university and to avoid all UEA degrees, even the law, medical and humanities ones - becoming a global laughing stock.  The Climate Research Unit is not the only outfit in that very large campus where, let us not forget, it is shortly going to cost over £50k all-in to get a student through a basic degree in geography or what ever. For that, parents will expect a brand which doesn't cause potential employers to fall over laughing.

Let's be clear: this is not for being wrong - scientists are allowed to be wrong if they say 'Hang on, that doesn't look right, are you getting the same results we did'?  It's for refusing to hand over the base data which, apparently, did exist but was left in Phil Jones' jeans and his mum put them in the washing machine. They should be sacked for the cover-up, not the incompetence.

Lord Monckton thinks that if you want to play the criminal law card, the thing to do is to follow the money and ask if there is fraud involved in perpetuating an AGW lie in order to receive money and influence. He wants the police to investigate not just what UEA might have done - which is an issue for robust academic debate - but why, because if it was to enrich themselves by deception, that is definitely within the scope of the criminal law.

UEA issued a load of reports last year, claiming they were independent and they ain't dun nuffink. Here is the index. 
 
I know what I think and decided it the moment the Inquisition rang Tallbloke's doorbell.

8 comments:

Barnacle Bill said...

First they came for the laptops and the router and I did nothing ...
From what I have read on t'internet it would appear that UEA and their sloppy computer security maybe more to blame than any wrong doing.
Time to take off the kid gloves I fear.

Joe Public said...

"What matters is that ...... the academics at UEA and other places had been cheating to shore up their preferred theory."

I disagree.

I believe the academics had been cheating to continue to receive the grants. Monetary greed, pure & simple.

Woman on a Raft said...

Absolutely, Bill, but it is important for UEA to scream "hacker" since that brings it within the Computer Misuse Act and the criminal law. The alternative is "inside job" and that means civil law and breach of confidence, employment law, not a police matter.

The Norfolk police spent very little so far on the investigation, just for once correctly identifying it as an academic and political issue in which the spilling of data is only a very small part. They seem to have been leaned on as of last week and Tallbloke reports that they are handing the data over to "another force". I'm reckoning Darth Huhne or similar.

Woman on a Raft said...

It probably became simple, Joe, after they had become handcuffed to their own monster for a while, but most of the scientists and academics I've met don't have that kind of greed as a motivator - not initially.

They are much more easily corrupted by feeling important or basking in the warm glow of peer-group approval, and they are prone to wanting to save the world the same as any other priesthood and may sincerely believe that they are facing a particular foe.

Sanity goes out of the window and they end up clapping like seals at Marks and Spencer refusing to supply plastic bags for free, as if this was going to make any difference to a biscuit which is sold wrapped in four layers (foil, plastic tray, cardboard box, cellophane wrapper) and was delivered to the shelves in palletized wrappings of separation boards, corner protectors and cling film.

The placcy bag is not really the issue; it's symbolic and by its absence they hope to demonstrate their spiritual purity.

I'm using the word 'scientists' very losely. I've noticed that engineers and physicists don't seem nearly as swayed by AGW theories.

JuliaM said...

"I've noticed that engineers and physicists don't seem nearly as swayed by AGW theories."

Paeleontologists aren't fooled either!

banned said...

Within a week of Climategate (1) I was talking to some real live Met Office Climate Change Scientists who proudly told me that 'they' had located the exact Met Office PC from which the harry_read_me files had been sent, ie they were not hacked externally at all.

That was a few days after the same Met Offices Chief Press Officer found out that bloggers knew about it and before they had informed the then Prime Ministers Office.

I know because I told her.

Electro-Kevin said...

Scientists are happy to be wrong. Clergy aren't. Hence we still celebrate Christmas.

Happy Christmas.

E-K
xx

Woman on a Raft said...

After consideration, I think E-K has nailed it in his customarily pithy fashion.