Feb
Exclusive: Q&A on Climategate with Britain’s Chief Police Officers
On February 3, 2010 I wrote to the UK’s Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) regarding the Climategate scandal. Below I shall reveal their startling response to my questions that prove the British Government is willfully avoiding treating Climategate as a major investigation.
Firstly, ACPO is the statutory consultee for the British Government coordinating national police operations and major investigations. My concern, shared by many others, is that despite the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) affirming that crimes had been committed, no charges were being brought under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) because the statutory time limit had expired.
But this was a disingenuous under-reporting of the facts because criminal charges could still be brought against Professor Phil Jones, chief climate scientist at the Climatic Research Unit (CRO) at the University of East Anglia (UEA), because he confessed to destroying crucial climate data and the leaked emails appear to suggest a conspiracy among a clique of climate scientists to commit data fraud.
As I have shown in an earlier article, criminal charges may still be brought against Jones and his alleged co-conspirators because under the Fraud Act (2006), conspiracy to commit fraud is not subject to such a statutory time limit.
Question: is it true or false that ACPO, a private limited company with no obligations under the Freedom of Information Act, has investments in carbon trading stocks and thus has a personal conflict of interest in investigating ‘Climategate’ thoroughly – a scandal involving alleged global climate data fraud that concomitantly would impact the value of such stocks?
Answer: Firstly, I can confirm that the Association of Chief Police Officers does not have any investment or financial interest of any kind in the trade of carbon stocks.
On a more general point, ACPO became a company limited by guarantee in 1997. This was a pragmatic step taken to maintain independence from Government while enabling the Association to fulfill its functions, including employ staff, enter into contracts for accommodation and allow for transparency in publishing accounts. All funds to ACPO are employed in the public interest.
As a company limited by guarantee, you correctly point out ACPO has no obligations under the Freedom of Information Act. However you may be interested to know that the Ministry of Justice has said it intends that ACPO will be added to the list of bodies subject to the Act, an intention which we welcome.
Question: Can you confirm or deny that officers under your sway are following up the recent Information Commissioner’s (ICO) admission that government officials working at the University of East Anglia did, indeed, unlawfully break the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), such offences not being subject to any statute of limitations (see below) so that you are now centering your investigations, not solely on ‘hacking’ of emails, but the illegal conduct and possible data fraud of international climate scientists involving many millions in taxpayer grants?
Answer: On your second request, Norfolk Constabulary has confirmed it is investigating a data breach at the UEA and how the circulation of private e-mails became public, with the assistance of the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) which is providing advice on Data Protection and FOI. This investigation is led by Norfolk Constabulary and the National Domestic Extremism Team has provided assistance. NDET’s role is to assist police forces: it does not have a remit to carry out investigations independently.
Question: Would you care to comment why the NDET, a non-specialist fraud unit are investigating what some legal commentators are saying is likely to be the greatest science racketeering fraud of all time, a matter more properly dealt with by the Serious Fraud Office?
Answer: NDET has provided assistance as a national police unit with relevant expertise and good background knowledge of the groups involved in climate change issues. Computer forensic expertise is one aspect of that assistance. The Serious Fraud Office has clear case criteria which are a matter for that body.
Question: Would you please relay to us your interpretation of the fraud laws so that our readership may be in no doubt that you recognise that while there may exist a continuum of fraudulent data manipulation, such crimes cannot yet be time barred under the rules of ‘compounded offences’ so that charges may still be lain under the Fraud Act (2006) and ‘conspiracy to corrupt,’ contrary to section 1 of the Criminal Law Act 1977.
Answer: It would be for Norfolk Constabulary to make any comment, if appropriate, on potential outcomes to this investigation. Under legislation, charging decisions are made by the Crown Prosecution Service.
To be frank, no one can reasonably accuse ACPO of foot dragging on this issue. It is simply the duty of ACPO to advise the government that the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) as per the recommendations of the Roskill Report (1988) ought to be conducting this case, not Norfolk Police nor NDET.
The SFO is under the sway of that political appointee, the Attorney-General who in turn is accountable to Prime Minister, Gordon Brown. The British Government knows only too well that since the Criminal Justice Act 1987, the Serious Fraud Office is mandated responsibility for the investigation and prosecution of suspected cases of serious or complex fraud where £1 million or more is involved or in cases of multi-national jurisdiction (i.e. the Climategate scandal).
Prime Minister Brown knows the buck stops with him on this but he is so far having an easy ride and not being exposed for his own complicity in this scam. While the mainstream media is yet to pick up on this it is left to the blogosphere to pursue the matter. I will now be writing to the Attorney General, the Director of the SFO and the Chief Constable of Norfolk Police and I urge other British taxpayers who also feel ripped off to help keep the pressure up.
We must ensure that self-serving politicians like Gordon Brown cannot bury Climategate by, as I suspect, unjustly under-employing the powers of the police merely because we are in the run up to a general election this Spring.
—————————————–
Acknowledgment: Gareth Bowden of ACPO
Phil Jones wasn’t even at CRU at the time the data was “destroyed”, and the “destroyed” data was actually just copies of data mined from other sources, not originals.
You ignore one very important point Dominic.
Scientific research without data is as much use as a chocolate teapot. If a scientist doesn’t maintain records he’s just wasting his time and the money of those funding him.
His theories are baseless, invalid and worthless. The Climategate e-mails evidence this to have been a conscious decision to hide data, but he wasn’t smart enough to work out that in doing this, he effectively trashed his theories too.
One face you won’t see at Cancun is Prof. Phil Jones, and I doubt Dr Pachauri will show up either – and who’s foolish enough to allow Al Gore to open his mouth in public. He’s to climate science what Elmer Fudd is to nuclear physics.
Where is that wrascilly wabbit?
The data’s right here:
http://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/ghcn/
Here’s the daily file:
ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/ghcn/daily/ghcnd_all.tar.gz
its 1.8 gigabytes large. Not very big now, but in 1980 a 1 gigabyte hard drive would have run you about $40,000. Hardly worth the cost considering the data is already stored at the NOAA.
“His theories are baseless, invalid and worthless.”
I doubt you’ve read a single paper of his, so I’m just going to go ahead and not take your word for it.
That may well be where the original data is stored, but now that Phil has dumped his stuff can you guarantee that this is what he worked with? Given the results, it’s quite likely that the data he worked with was a tad tricked up. It’s also not possible now for him to prove it wasn’t.
A) “Phil” as you call him did not delete the data in question. That deletion was made in the 80′s before he was even at the CRU. Are you sure you know what’s going on here?
B) I can’t guarantee the sun will rise tomorrow.
‘Given the results, it’s quite likely that the data he worked with was a tad tricked up’
Justify the above statement.
‘It’s also not possible now for him to prove it wasn’t.’
You can’t prove you aren’t a child molester, does that mean we should assume you are?
A) “Phil” as you call him
It IS his name. What do you think I should call him? “George”?
did not delete the data in question. That deletion was made in the 80’s before he was even at the CRU.
If it was deleted before he got there, then what data did he use? Non-existent data? Did he make up his own figures because the real ones had been deleted? (rhetorical question)
Are you sure you know what’s going on here?
Me??!!! YOU’RE the one who just claimed that a scientist was using data that you claim didn’t exist!
‘It’s also not possible now for him to prove it wasn’t.’
You can’t prove you aren’t a child molester, does that mean we should assume you are?
Different scenarios. Even though it’s not possible to prove a negative, there is nothing to suggest that I am a child molester. However there is plenty to suggest that Phil is did “fiddle the books”.
Don’t worry climate scientists,we all know you were all suffering from “STRESS”,and any police officer will tell you ,that will get you off the hook.
After all,whats a few billion here and there,rumour says Obama will pay for a second go! so thermometers and chain saws at the ready,hand me that copy of Grimms faery tales will you.
Here, you can have the raw data:
ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/ghcn/daily/ghcnd_all.tar.gz
I thought all the anti-sciencers were eager to get the raw data so they could independently verify the CRU’s results? Am I wrong?
Sorry, but i cant help but notice its on a government domain dominic, so i think i may just class the info as potentially bias, as they wouldnt let anything that goes against the governments “ideals” go public.
Be sure to put your tin foil hat on, they are out to get you.
Here you go Dom, ChiefIO took GHCN apart for you.
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/category/ncdc-ghcn-issues/
Enjoy!
Sorry but I don’t consider blogs to be scientific sources. Do you have anything published in an appropriate peer reviewed journal?
You mean “peer review” as in the CRU scenario, right ?
(kinda like where your mother vouches for you)