More details are emerging about the "Climategate" hack. It appears that the hacker used an "open proxy" in order to hide the origin of the attack. However, the hacker may have made a mistake, and a review of the logs at RealClimate and ClimateAudit may reveal his/her identity.
Showing posts with label global warming. Show all posts
Showing posts with label global warming. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Friday, November 20, 2009
Hacker exposes global warming researcher (Climategate)
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.
Monday, March 05, 2007
Convenient Half-Truths
I finally saw Al Gore's movie last night. He definitely deserved that Oscar. I haven't seen a propaganda film that good since Leni Riefenstahl's Triump des Willens of 1934. I watched the movie with a notebook computer in my lap and Googled every bit of data Gore presented, but unfortunately, I couldn't actually find any of the "truths" that the movie promised.
We should now come up with the Inconvenient Truth Drinking Game. You drink every time he distorts scientific data. Specifically, drink whenever he:
...distorts the X axis of data by choosing a convenient start time, such as hurricanes getting more intense in the last 30 years, instead of showing that they were just as intense 40 years ago, and that they've been going in intense/quiet cycles for centuries.
...distorts the Y axis of a graph by changing the baseline, such as showing fuel economy standards between 20mpg and 50mpg, instead of 0mpg and 50mpg.
...distorts data by showing the part of a study that agrees with him, rather than the parts that don't, such as one ice core of six in a study showing the past millennium being colder than today, rather than four other cores in that study showing periods warmer than today (such as the Medieval Warming Period that he mocks for not being visible in his cherry-picked ice core).
...shows a smokestack belching water vapor that he implies is pollution.
...confuses "computer modeling" with "scientific experiment".
...shows a glacier that has been steadily disappearing since long before CO2 built up in the atmosphere, and implies that it only started melting recently (or melting faster recently).
...shows a picture of the earth from space that has been photoshopped to make the planet prettier.
...says that the relationship of temperature and CO2 over the last million years is "complicated", thus hiding the inconvenient truth that temperature rises BEFORE CO2 does, and not the way that he implies.
...presents a scenario that even pro-global-warming scientists think is wack, such as Greenland melting and flooding major cities.
...tells us to disbelieve the scientific consensus. Drink the entire glass when he shows Katrina, which pro-warming scientists overwhelmingly believe had nothing to do with global warming (and everything to do with building a city below sea level in a hurricane zone).
...claims it's a moral issue not a political issue, then distorts it with politics. Drink the whole glass when he bravely stops trying to recount the election until he gets the results he wants.
...when a room of fawning sycophants break into applause.
...when a red shirt bites it.
Seriously, though, every piece of scientific data I googled didn't stand up to scrutiny (other than the fact that humans are indeed dumping a lot of CO2 into the atmosphere, and that CO2 has at least some greenhouse effect). I might have missed something though, so if anybody knows of a piece of scientific data that wasn't a distorted half-truth, I'd like to know about it.
Before seeing the movie, I assumed that global warming was likely, although distorted by leftists. The lack of truths in Gore's movie now makes me question this. Did Gore distort the truth because the actual facts are too complicated for a mainstream movie? Or did he distort it because global warming, like space aliens, doesn't exactly exist?
(And what does this have to do with hacking? I think we need a yearly award for Best Social Engineering Attack. He wins for 2006).
We should now come up with the Inconvenient Truth Drinking Game. You drink every time he distorts scientific data. Specifically, drink whenever he:
...distorts the X axis of data by choosing a convenient start time, such as hurricanes getting more intense in the last 30 years, instead of showing that they were just as intense 40 years ago, and that they've been going in intense/quiet cycles for centuries.
...distorts the Y axis of a graph by changing the baseline, such as showing fuel economy standards between 20mpg and 50mpg, instead of 0mpg and 50mpg.
...distorts data by showing the part of a study that agrees with him, rather than the parts that don't, such as one ice core of six in a study showing the past millennium being colder than today, rather than four other cores in that study showing periods warmer than today (such as the Medieval Warming Period that he mocks for not being visible in his cherry-picked ice core).
...shows a smokestack belching water vapor that he implies is pollution.
...confuses "computer modeling" with "scientific experiment".
...shows a glacier that has been steadily disappearing since long before CO2 built up in the atmosphere, and implies that it only started melting recently (or melting faster recently).
...shows a picture of the earth from space that has been photoshopped to make the planet prettier.
...says that the relationship of temperature and CO2 over the last million years is "complicated", thus hiding the inconvenient truth that temperature rises BEFORE CO2 does, and not the way that he implies.
...presents a scenario that even pro-global-warming scientists think is wack, such as Greenland melting and flooding major cities.
...tells us to disbelieve the scientific consensus. Drink the entire glass when he shows Katrina, which pro-warming scientists overwhelmingly believe had nothing to do with global warming (and everything to do with building a city below sea level in a hurricane zone).
...claims it's a moral issue not a political issue, then distorts it with politics. Drink the whole glass when he bravely stops trying to recount the election until he gets the results he wants.
...when a room of fawning sycophants break into applause.
...when a red shirt bites it.
Seriously, though, every piece of scientific data I googled didn't stand up to scrutiny (other than the fact that humans are indeed dumping a lot of CO2 into the atmosphere, and that CO2 has at least some greenhouse effect). I might have missed something though, so if anybody knows of a piece of scientific data that wasn't a distorted half-truth, I'd like to know about it.
Before seeing the movie, I assumed that global warming was likely, although distorted by leftists. The lack of truths in Gore's movie now makes me question this. Did Gore distort the truth because the actual facts are too complicated for a mainstream movie? Or did he distort it because global warming, like space aliens, doesn't exactly exist?
(And what does this have to do with hacking? I think we need a yearly award for Best Social Engineering Attack. He wins for 2006).
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