http://climateaudit.org/2010/01/12/the-mosher-timeline/


January 12, 2010, 20:35:37 | Steve McIntyre


Patrick Courrielche has done an interesting timeline on the outing of the Climategate emails here,
here, here in which Mosher's busy November 17-19 has been publicized for the first time.

I thought that it would be useful to collect my own memory of the events while it is still
relatively fresh, which I'll do today. In doing so, I reviewed contemporary blog comments,
reconciling the various blog times to a common time zone, and reviewed the timeline with Mosh,
Lucia, Anthony and Jeff Id, in order that it would be as accurate as possible.

Mosh has a forthcoming book on Climategate that I haven't seen and which will amplify the story. In
addition, Bishop Hill has an excellent book that I have seen that was finished before Climategate,
written in his usual lucid style that should be published this month as well.


The Public Record So Far


Here's what is publicly known so far about the release of the Climategate dossier.

On Nov 17, according to NASA blogger Gavin Schmidt, the dossier was uploaded to realclimate in the
very early morning (Eastern). At 7.24 am Eastern (5.24 blog time), a comment by "RC" was placed at
Climate Audit saying that "A miracle has happened" with a hyperlink under RC linking back to the
zipfile temporarily ensconced at realclimate. The link was so subtle that no Climate Audit readers
appear to have downloaded the zipfile. No one mentioned it at the time and the first person to
publicly refer to this hyperlink was . Gavin Schmidt.

The zipfile wasn't up for very long at realclimate as Schmidt appears to have quickly learned of
its presence at realclimate and quickly quarantined it. Later that day, a RealClimate author
(presumably, the pervasive Schmidt) notified CRU, a unit of the University of East Anglia, of the
existence of the dossier.

The next evidence of the dossier is in the evening of November 17 just before 11 p.m. Eastern, when
links to a Russian FTP site with a short covering commentary were posted as comments at Warren
Meyer's blog ( (8.47 pm blog time - 10.47 eastern?) and Jeff Id's blog (10.57 Eastern; 9.57 pm blog
time). The comments appear to have been unnoticed at the time. JEff Id was away deer hunting on Nov
17 and didn't notice the link on his return, with the first two posts on his return (here, here) on
totally unrelated topics.

Presumably reacting to Schmidt's information, the University of East Anglia began to take security
precautions, that affected both CRU and puzzled third parties at the university, including a
Climate Audit reader who contacted me.

The record that is public to date picks up again on November 19 at Lucia's blog with Mosh front and
center. At 2.55 pm Eastern (1.55 Lucia blog time) , Mosh posted the first comment recognizing the
contents of the emails, pointing in turn to the Jeff Id's where the hyperlink was located. Mosher:

It contains over 1000 mails. IF TRUE . 1 mail from you and the correspondence that follows.

And, you get to see somebody with the name of phil jones say that he would rather destroy the CRU
data than release it to McIntyre.

And lots lots more. including how to obstruct or evade FOIA requests. and guess who funded the
collection of cores at Yamal.. and transferred money into a personal account in Russia

And you get to see what they really say behind the curtain.. you get to see how they "shape" the
news, how they struggled between telling the truth and making policy makers happy.

you get to see what they say about Idso and pat micheals, you get to read how they want to take
us out into a dark alley, it's stunning all very stunning. You get to watch somebody named phil
jones say that John daly's death is good news.. or words to that effect.
I don't know that its real..

A few minutes later (2.58 pm Eastern; 1.58 pm blog time), Lucia Comment#23723) says: "if true".

Lucia downloaded the files and at 3:09 Eastern (14:09 blog time), Lucia made the first blog post on
the topic entitledReal files or fake? Lucia:

Steve Mosher alerted us to an interesting development: Some one dropped a link to a zipped
directory of files that contain what appear to be emails between various bloggers and climate
science illuminati Of course this may be some sort of scam. If so, someone spent a lot of time
putting together fake email/code etc.