Climategate A Leak, Not A Hack

This is something that many have suspected, although Russian hackers seems to be the preferred explanation for the "leaked" emails in the MSM. Many people have tried to say that they have been obtained illegally, and therefore should not be viewed. That is an easy (and pathetic, if you ask me) way to dismiss any of the allegations the emails raise.

A Canadian network engineer, Lance Levsen, has analysed the University of East Anglia's files, and found that it is most likely that the emails and documents were leaked from an internal source.

WUWT have covered this story here. It is quite technical if you are not a software engineer, but worth a look if you are interested to learn.

Here is also another article which describes it a little easier.

Climategate a leak, not a hack

Here are some excerpts from the article

The Saskatoon, Saskatchewan-based Levsen re-created the e-mail distribution system at UAE over the last ten years, capturing system changes by the university’s e-mail administrators during that time. Using information contained within the files that constitute the e-mails, as well as the filenames themselves, his modeling concludes and identifies the source for the leaked documents as an internal source within the University of East Anglia. The alleged “hacker”, Levson conludes, must have been someone with administrative, or “root” privileges, to UEA’s secure computer systems.

Levsen writes that the email files were stored on a single server, as indicated by their respective filenames. The sequential, but not consecutive, numbering is actually not random, as first appears, and has been reported. The filenames are actually UNIX epoch timestamps, which create a filename based on the number of seconds since midnight, 1 January, 1970. What this means is that the files were originally saved on an archiving UNIX e-mail server, at East Anglia.
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This being the case, Levsen concludes:

“For the hacker to have collected all of this information s/he would have required extraordinary capabilities. The hacker would have to crack an Administrative file server to get to the emails and crack numerous workstations, desktops, and servers to get the documents. The hacker would have to map the complete UEA network to find out who was at what station and what services that station offered. S/he would have had to develop or implement exploits for each machine and operating system without knowing beforehand whether there was anything good on the machine worth collecting.”

In short, Levsen’s conclusion is that the e-mail and data leaks were not the result of an intrusion, they were an internal leak. Climategate was not precipitated by a hacker, but by a whistle-blower.

For more information, check out the links.

Does this change anything that was in the emails? No. There was no reason to suspect that they were fake or altered to begin with, as most had been confirmed as real.
But it does illustrate the foolishness of trying to dismiss them entirely because they were "hacked" or “illegally obtained”.

I have said this before and will say it again.

If global warming and the agenda pushing it was true, then we would NOT be going through all of this crap.

When the information is so boggled and combined with events such as Climategate, I feel sorry for those who do not see a veil of BS.

I try my best not to be negative, but there are a lot of stupid people in this world that are fooled by statistics and well written speeches.

Originally posted by FritosBBQTwist
If global warming and the agenda pushing it was true, then we would NOT be going through all of this crap.

Too right, if it where true they would just do all the stuff they want.

There is no such thing as agw, and never has been.

But i think harrp may be able to effect teh atmosphere, and that is intentional, and is not co2, rubbish.

Yeah I saw this the other day. The alleged hackers have been to blame for many things. The chairman of the IPCC even blames them for the conflict of interest allegations brought against him. Not to mention they're also the reason the Russian scientists cannot be trusted.
Maybe the scientists in Saskatchewan are former Russian Hackers!!!

reply to post by andy1033


I do not deny that we are polluting our environment. Hell, even in some VERY heavy polluted areas, temperature might raise a bit.

No where near the level of what "they" are saying.

I have been from mountains to deserts to L.A. There is no doubt that we can smog stuff up. So in those regards, we should look at ways of reducing pollution.

To bad the GW movement is more concerned with taxes and not the actual problem at hand.

reply to post by FritosBBQTwist


Completely agree. We are polluting our planet in more ways than one. It's just a shame that these days people want to focus solely on CO2, an essential gas to all life on Earth, as the only pollutant worth doing anything about.

Never mind the pesticides and herbicides in our food and water supplies,or the various other chemicals poisoning our waterways. Or the actual particulates which cause smog and lead to respitory illnesses. Or over fertilisation wreaking havoc with natural eco-systems.

That last one might not seem so important to most. But I have seen first hand the devestating consequences of exccessive nitrates entering water systems. This has caused a boom in algae in the lakes around where I live, with toxic algal blooms creating poisonous water witch has been known to kill dogs, among other animals such as fish and birds. Thankfully no humans yet.

Don't get me wrong, I know we harm our planet, but CO2 is not the most imprortant pollutant that we need to combat. Too bad it's not as profitable to combat the real issues which face humanity.

reply to post by Curious and Concerned


A shame indeed.

And while I do not like speaking for others, I feel everyone is on the same page as us.

Are we hurting our environment? No doubt.

But you must be crazy if you think the current movement is actually for bettering the world. Capping CO2 emissions will do barely anything (my own opinion from all of the reading/video watching I have done on the subject).

I just can not be bothered with this joke called global warming. All it was based on was fear. Fear that we are going to burn this planet to the ground.

Whether THAT is true or not, it will not be from what they claim to be the cause.

reply to post by Curious and Concerned


And the disinfo campeign goes on:

Climate emails hacked by spies claims British advisor



Hey, you linked your thread to mine, I figured turnabout is fair play.