Feb
Has the climategate email leaker been found?
If he's the guy, we nominate Dr. Paul Dennis Time magazine's Person of the Year.
The Guardian UK today broke the huge news that it believes Climategate can now put a name to its heroic whistleblower. They say our man on the inside appears to be top scientist, Paul Dennis, Head of Stable Isotope and Noble Gas Geochemistry Laboratories of the University of East Anglia (UEA).
The Guardian reminds of some facts about Dennis:
Dennis refused to sign a petition in support of Jones when the scandal broke. He told friends he was one of several staff unwilling to put their names to the Met Office-inspired statement in support of the global warming camp, because “science isn’t done by consensus”.
University sources say the head of department, Professor Jacquie Burgess, received a letter from Dennis at the height of the email uproar, calling for more open release of data. He appears to have disapproved of the way Jones resisted FoI requests.
Dennis’s own research, which dates fluctuating temperatures in ice cores stretching back thousands of years, does not support the more catastrophic current predictions of runaway global warming.
He has a history of contact with the American bloggers who bombarded Jones’s unit with FoI requests, and were the first to receive the leaks. The ensuing global row led to Jones standing aside from his post. Last week he was rebuked by the Information Commissioner’s office for apparent breaches of FoI rules.
If he is the whistleblower, Mr. Dennis has our utter admiration. But we doubt Norfolk Police will be giving him plaudits and bouquets right now. The police will have taken at least one signed statement from Dennis so that they will have in both black and white and full audio-recorded detail the how and why of why this scientist felt compelled to nobly sacrifice his prestigious career.
But hold on just a second.
Now that we have heard from the Guardian, What does Mr. Dennis have to say? Well, he went public and made a comment today, after the article hit the internet, on the Bishop Hill blog. He denies it:
It’s very amusing to read the many conspiracy theories being put forward by readers on the many blogs and newspaper comment sites. So before we get too carried away let me set the facts straight:
1) I did not leak any files, data, emails or any other material. I have no idea how the files were released or who was behind it.
2) My first knowledge of anything untoward was a departmental email circular saying that emails and files were hacked from ENV (environmental sciences) and CRU (climatic research unit). My interest was piqued so I emailed Steve McIntyre to ask if he was aware of anything. Steve replied that he wasn’t and that if he did find out anything he’d let me know. It was apparently this email that I sent that confirmed to both Steves (McIntyre and Mosher) that the leaked files were authentic.
3) The following day Steve emailed me a single url. It was to Jeff Id’s site. I clicked the link but couldn’t find anything and forgot about it.
4) Next day all hell breaks loose as the files have gone wild.
5) Now stepping back a few days. Prior to the leak, about a week or so, I had sent Jeff a paper I recently published in Geophysical Research Letters on a new study of the Gomez Glacier in Antarctica that had a 150 year isotope record that could be backed out as temperature. I thought Jeff might be interested in it as I knew he was working, along with others, on a new Antarctic paper in response to the Steig et al article in Nature that was published 12 months before.
6) In December the police saw me twice. I described the interview here under the blog ‘Parsing the Police’ on January 9th. The police were perfectly civil and we talked about many things including my research. I showed them round my labs and they came to coffee with me and my research group.
The police had copies of my email correspondence with Steve McIntyre and Jeff Id and a copy of my paper which kind of amused me. They said it was because I had sent the emails that they were interviewing me. I have absolutely no problems with that.
7) Two weeks ago David Leigh of the Guardian interviewed Andrew and Andrew mentioned my name and my contribution to the blog. Fred Pearce emailed me and I directed him to the university press office. Leigh followed Pearce’s email with one of his own and I ignored it. He then emailed saying he was running the story and out of courtesy he wanted to chat about it. Our conversation was about palaoeclimate science, ice cores, speleothems, mass spectrometers and the hockey stick. I told Leigh about the email I had sent Steve McIntyre and the papaer I had sent to Jeff. There’s no mysterious police leak here. I gave Leigh a copy of papaers I had written on ice core, speleothems and a nice little article on a freshwater snail, Lymnaea peregra.
That really is the end of the story. I reiterate that I have absolutely no knowledge as to who did what and their modus operandi. I’m as amused by all the theories, suggestions etc. and I am grateful that many have suggested that I deserve the nobel prize, or at the very least a knighthood but in all honesty I’ve done nothing to deserve either.
So, which is it? He Paul Dennis the whistleblower or not? The way breaking climategate news now comes out hourly it seems, we’re sure we’ll know very shortly.
Whether or not it was Paul Dennis, it seems the police think it was a whistleblower. If this is the case, it is a huge public relations win for skeptics. There’s no way a jury would convict a whistleblower, since the information released were the actual files requested under the FOI, so on this basis it would not fulfill the public interest requirement to bring a prosecution – it would be deemed frivolous. Besides, a shrewd defense attorney would cite mitigation such as the whistleblower was actually complying with the law that the ICO prosecutor officially conceded was broken by the employer. However, feasibly they could prosecute under the UK Data Protection act–this is because, as Dr. Costella tells us, the leak included personal data so that constitutes breaches of data protection law.
Source: Guardian, Bishop HIll
Possibly related posts:
- Climategate: McIntyre and the ‘Divergence Problem’
- The Tip of the Climategate Iceberg
- Acclaimed Climategate Analyst points to whistleblower rather than hacker
- BREAKING! Penn State finds Michael Mann innocent of suppressing or falsifying data
- Attention Penn State: Top fraud attorney seeks climategate whistleblowers
If he is the one who leaked the emails, I am willing to do a small donation for paying his legal fees.
Nope, he’s not the one. Mr. Dennis’ own words on the Bishop Hill blog:
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2010/2/5/paul-dennis-in-the-comments.html
Oops, I should have read the whole thing…
Still, how important is the way these e-mails came to light in respect to their contents?
If he is the whiselblover he shall be nominated for Nobel prize!
DR.Paul Dennis:
If you exposed the crooks and the fraudsters and the sinisters and their machinations you saved the world from falling into the hands of the DEVIL.
As a scientist you started the movement towards restoration of our faith in scientists and their science.It is good to know all of them have not corrupted themselves.
A petition to transfer the Nobel from Gore to Dennis?What a noble act that would be to help restore semblance of respectability to the awards made in the name of NOBEL.
Hopefully the whistler blower will never be found. This person is a hero to us but will get crucified as a heretic by the system.
If so, he should get aalgores nobelprice…
If so, he’s a hero!
He’s a hero just for publishing a paper that doesn’t line up with so many of his mindless marching peers. He’s a hero just for writting a letter calling for more disclosure at UEA/CRU. He’s Superman if he leaked the emails.
Good for you!
Who has the money to start a prosecution against these people?
In the US a grand jury can surely be persauded to return a true bill and send the matter on for trial? I don’t doubt the jurors will convict.
In the UK all we can do is embarass them by starting a private prosecution (which may be taken over and discontinued by the CPS) but that may start the bal rolling.
I cannot do it – haven’t got the money and am being taxed to death to pay for all this nonsense – we need someone!!