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David, UK says:
“Of course, the climate sceptic community would, in the main, give the appearance of welcoming the published data because it supports their view.
Hang on. I don’t think they’re really admitting that the emails support the sceptic view, although admittedly that would be the first obvious interpretation. However, if they really believed that then they’d be bound to investigate the real criminals (i.e. the anti-scientists at CRU) not the whistle blower. Therefore, I suspect it means something else and has just been clumsily worded. Read it again: “[sceptics would] give the appearance of welcoming-the-published-data-because-it-supports-their-view.”
So, it looks to me like they’re meaning to say that the actual “because-it-supports-their-view” reason is meant from the sceptics’ perspective, not the police’s. And as an aside: why couldn’t they simply say that we sceptics, in the main, welcomed the published data, instead of stating that we gave the appearance of welcoming the published data? No one else find that statement quite strange?
I’ve read several comments where people still believe that Climategate was done by a whistleblowe. If you want to be sceptic, you need to be sceptic about everything. Especially about your own beliefs.
After reading this news, it’s not likely that it was an internal leak. Before all this information I thought that an internal leak was probable. Pointman wrote in his blog good reasons for that. However, this police Q&A states a number of facts, that make is unlikely that it was an internal leak. So FOIA is probably a computer whiz who knows how to exploit vulnerablilities and crack systems without being caught. People like those are not climate scientists, who would do a lousy job like Peter Gleick did.
So who is FOIA? It’s certainly someone who dislikes the climate science shenanigans as much as any of us. I don’t think that it’s a company (like Big Oil) or a country (like China). FOIA is an individual or at most a small group of people. And if I would have to bet, I’d put my money on FOIA being a student at the UEA. One, who does not study climate science or arts or social sciences but real science. They do have a Faculty of Science there and also teach computer science, mathematics and engineering. They do have students with necessary skills and the students would have a better chance of knowing more about UEA’s computer network.
I don’t think it is wise to remain convinced, that it was a leak. We critisize climate scientists, that they discard unwanted information to remain convinced about AGW. How can we critisize them if we discard all this information and stubbornly claim that it was a leak? It makes no sense. It probably was a hack, but it doesn’t diminish the seriousness of the hacked material.