The password has been released:
If someone is still wondering why anyone would take these risks, or sees only a breach of privacy here, a few words…
The first glimpses I got behind the scenes did little to garner my trust in the state of climate science — on the contrary. I found myself in front of a choice that just might have a global impact.
Briefly put, when I had to balance the interests of my own safety, privacy\career of a few scientists, and the well-being of billions of people living in the coming several decades, the first two weren’t the decisive concern.
It was me or nobody, now or never. Combination of several rather improbable prerequisites just wouldn’t occur again for anyone else in the foreseeable future. The circus was about to arrive in Copenhagen. Later on it could be too late.
Most would agree that climate science has already directed where humanity puts its capability, innovation, mental and material “might”. The scale will grow ever grander in the coming decades if things go according to script. We’re dealing with $trillions and potentially drastic influence on practically everyone.
Wealth of the surrounding society tends to draw the major brushstrokes of a newborn’s future life. It makes a huge difference whether humanity uses its assets to achieve progress, or whether it strives to stop and reverse it, essentially sacrificing the less fortunate to the climate gods.
We can’t pour trillions in this massive hole-digging-and-filling-up endeavor and pretend it’s not away from something and someone else.
If the economy of a region, a country, a city, etc. deteriorates, what happens among the poorest? Does that usually improve their prospects? No, they will take the hardest hit. No amount of magical climate thinking can turn this one upside-down.
It’s easy for many of us in the western world to accept a tiny green inconvenience and then wallow in that righteous feeling, surrounded by our “clean” technology and energy that is only slightly more expensive if adequately subsidized.
Those millions and billions already struggling with malnutrition, sickness, violence, illiteracy, etc. don’t have that luxury. The price of “climate protection” with its cumulative and collateral effects is bound to destroy and debilitate in great numbers, for decades and generations.
Conversely, a “game-changer” could have a beneficial effect encompassing a similar scope.
If I had a chance to accomplish even a fraction of that, I’d have to try. I couldn’t morally afford inaction. Even if I risked everything, would never get personal compensation, and could probably never talk about it with anyone.
Anthony has already found a couple amusing bashes of Mann by his colleagues:
No justification for regional reconstructions rather than what Mann et al did (I don’t think we can say we didn’t do Mann et al because we think it is crap!)
But we do, don’t we?
I hope that history will view this person as a world saver.
It’s bothered me for a long time that, even assuming that anthropogenic global warming is an immediate threat to human survival, most of the proposed “solutions” don’t have any real scientific basis. Instead, they’re just a form of putting on a hairshirt and beating our breast so that God/the Goddess/the gods can see that we’re really, really sorry. And of course the hairshirt is going to weigh heaviest upon those least able to bear it, the poor.
I might have taken the claims of Al Gore and other prominent global warming proponents more seriously if they had started by making major reductions in their own personal lifestyles, commeasurate with what they’re wanting the little people to make. But no, it’s just business as usual: restrictions for thee, but not for me. So the elites will feel a little pinch and wail like they’re getting brutalized, the middle class will get clobbered, and the poor will starve. And in the case of the global poor (as opposed to the First World poor), starve to death by the millions.
So if this persons is as they claim, these are the actions of a whistleblower and not a hacker. Considering our friends on the left love when people from the inside expose the corruption of a world wide organization with hundreds of billions in funding, I am sure we will see all kind of condemnation and outrage directed at the corrupt group…
FTA:
Think Mikey will sue Simon Tett? At the least, that little nugget should help in your case.
Years ago, a researcher asked me if there was any way I could tease out and confirm the ~60 year cycle in the temperature data. At the time, I said no, we will just have to wait and see if the turning point arrives on schedule. In the past couple of years, that turning point has become evident in the data. Right on time.
Global temperatures have followed a trend plus ~60 year cycle now for over a century, with no evident divergence of the pre-existing pattern even as CO2 levels have soared.
The greenhouse effect seems logically sound, and I do not doubt temperatures are warmer with greenhouse gases in the atmosphere than they otherwise would be. But, the local sensitivity is quite apparently insignificant, and rising CO2 levels are having virtually no impact at all.
Another 20-30 years of cooling are in the pipeline, and the AGW hypothesis is a dead conjecture walking. The only question remaining is how long its inertia will keep it going in the face of falling temperatures.
But we all know what the cooling will be blamed on…
Also, the Sun spots have been acting strangely. The predictions have been waaaay off even when adjusted monthly.
And, the solution will always be: more taxes, more regulation, more control. Tails they win, heads you lose.
Don’t know how much the quirky sunspots will affect the actual climate, but it sure does make things easier in LEO.
The “solutions” they recommend for “Global Warming” are the same as when they predicted a New Ice Age back in the 1970s. Now, they call it “Climate Change” to cover their bets but the solution remains the same: more government control, reductions in CO2 emissions, wealth transfer and carbon taxes.
It’s unfortunate that science doesn’t have a prize for people who put themselves at personal risk to buck fashionable pseudo-science to save science and hundreds of millions of lives. But he did leave a bitcoin address. 🙂
He?