In the wake of the illegal hacking of a leading climate scientist’s computers, to concoct a false scandal compared to which the birther absurdity is merely amusing, someone is criminally targeting another leading climate scientist.
Attempts have been made to break into the offices of one of Canada’s leading climate scientists, it was revealed yesterday. The victim was Andrew Weaver, a University of Victoria scientist and a key contributor to the work of the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). In one incident, an old computer was stolen and papers were disturbed.
In addition, individuals have attempted to impersonate technicians in a bid to access data from his office, said Weaver. The attempted breaches, on top of the hacking of files from British climate researcher Phil Jones, have heightened fears that climate-change deniers are mounting a campaign to discredit the work of leading meteorologists before the start of the Copenhagen climate summit tomorrow.
“The key thing is to try to find anybody who’s involved in any aspect of the IPCC and find something that you can … take out of context,” said Weaver. The prospect of more break-ins and hacking has forced researchers to step up computer security.
Someone is getting desperate. And it appears to be becoming a pattern. For more on Weaver, this is his homepage.
For those who don’t know about the literally criminal first false scandal, DarkSyde at Daily Kos made two superb posts: