What is the proof showing "Climategate" e-mails were stolen by hackers OR are the result of a whistleblower?

The authenticity of the emails has been admitted so the question is moot.

This Canadian journalist puts it in the proper perspective including in terms of the importance of East Anglia in the big picture:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgIEQqLokL8

To quote his closing statement/advice to viewers ".... read the emails .... you will never think about climate science the same way again."

The stolen e-mails were released by cracking the security of realclimate, a whistle-blower with access privileges to the e-mail server the e-mails were stolen from would be very unlikely to have released them that way (since it would go from privacy violation into breaking and entering) while a script kiddie would probably just think it's one more computer to break into and since they've already broken into one.

Many people who claim it had to be an inside job are ignorant of how long many people keep old e-mails around for or of the possibility that a cracker just downloaded the whole lot and looked through them offline for something that could be mis-interpreted to look bad.

Hacking isn't a possibility though because hackers don't go around doing things like this, the correct term is cracking.

The hacks were real, as were the emails. I don't think we know who did them.

The meaning ... to quote Nature, the world's leading scientific journal (editorial December 3)

Nature 462, 545 (3 December 2009) | doi:10.1038/462545a; Published online 2 December 2009

"This [denialist conspiracy theory] paranoid interpretation would be laughable were it not for the fact that obstructionist politicians in the US Senate will probably use it next year as an excuse to stiffen their opposition to the country's much needed climate bill. Nothing in the e-mails undermines the scientific case that global warming is real — or that human activities are almost certainly the cause. That case is supported by multiple, robust lines of evidence, including several that are completely independent of the climate reconstructions debated in the e-mails."

"A fair reading of the e-mails reveals nothing to support the denialists' conspiracy theories. In one of the more controversial exchanges, UEA scientists sharply criticized the quality of two papers that question the uniqueness of recent global warming (S. McIntyre and R. McKitrick Energy Environ. 14, 751–771; 2003 and W. Soon and S. Baliunas Clim. Res. 23, 89–110; 2003) and vowed to keep at least the first paper out of the upcoming Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Whatever the e-mail authors may have said to one another in (supposed) privacy, however, what matters is how they acted. And the fact is that, in the end, neither they nor the IPCC suppressed anything: when the assessment report was published in 2007 it referenced and discussed both papers."

Firstly, the emails and data files weren't just on one server but several, so if it was a hack then it was one that went on over several days/weeks completely un-noticed! Not very likely.

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Dana wrote [quote] "1) The emails were stolen and released right before the Copenhagen conference. The convenient timing is not likely coincidental. Nobody working at CRU would want to undermine the climate talks."

This is factually incorrect. As this article details, the emails were sent to the BBC more than a month beforehand, but the BBC didn't do anything with them: http://beforeitsnews.com/story/0000000000000631

Now, I live in the UK, so this suggests to me they were leaked. Why?

Because in the UK the BBC has a reputation for impartiality and for publishing anything without fear or favour (as they're not commercial, they don't have to worry about losing advertisers). So, if you were working in CRU and wanted to leak the info you would send it there (it would be the first news organisation to come to mind).

Also, google "harry read me" and have a look at that. The file is the log of one of the computer programmers who had to update the databases and models that they used. You can tell the guy doing it is hugely:

1) hacked off with CRU

2) being over-worked and under-paid

3) hassled by those above him for 'results' all the time whatever the actual evidence says

4) contemptuous of the 'science' there (at one point he says of some coding: "What the hell is supposed to happen here? Oh yeah -- there is no 'supposed,' I can make it up. So I have : - ")

This, i think, would strongly suggest that one of the programmers there got treated like s**t one too many times and decided to 'blow the whistle' to get his own back. Bet you ten to one that if the truth ever comes out it will be a programmer at CRU - who better to know what was there and be in a position to leak it?

This theft looks to be the work of hackers; however, a criminal investigation is ongoing, so not all the evidence has been released to the public.

It looks to be the work of hackers because (A) personal information of those working for UEA has also been compromised. What would a whistle-blower want with personal information?

(B) "The selective publication of some stolen emails and other papers taken out of context is mischievous and cannot be considered a genuine attempt to engage with this issue in a responsible way."[1] A whistle-blower simply would not selectively publish a few out-of-context emails; A whistle-blower would have published all of the emails, or none at all.

(C) As Dana noted above, UEA was not the only organization that was attacked.

It doesn't matter where the information came from, the conspiracy that it's a concerted effort to discredit CO2 warmist doesn't negate the fact that the emails show at a minimum a clear deficiency in ethics and the ability to think clearly and come to logical conclusions.

""trick" in one message, which has been cited as evidence that a conspiracy is afoot, is actually being used to describe a mathematical approach to reconciling observed temperatures with stand-in data inferred from tree ring measurements."

The stand in data they refer to is used to determine past temperature records and still is, the trick here is they don't know why they can't get the tree ring temperature to match up with the actual temperatures. We know what all the parameters are during the time period the tree ring data doesn't match up, we don't know why the process we've always used to determine temperature using tree rings doesn't work, but we are sure the tree ring data we use to disprove the medieval warming period was warmer than the present is good science.

Another very funny interpretation.

"Frankly, the sending of that e-mail demonstrated unfortunate judgment on the part of the scientist who sent it," Mann said. "To my knowledge, no one acted on that request. I did not delete any e-mails." The continuing existence of the e-mail itself would seem to support Mann's contention, although his response at the time was to agree to contact a fellow scientist "Gene," as requested by Jones.

The continued existence of this email, emails about smearing scientific journals, cheering about the death of other scientist that don't agree with their theory is just a demonstration of unfortunate judgments. No it's not a demonstration of unfortunate judgment, it's a clear sign of a group of narcissist bent on proving that man is the cause of global warming no matter what it takes to convince everyone else.

The investigation is ongoing and we don't have evidence either way yet.

Common sense would tell is that it was a hacker for several reasons.

1) The emails were stolen and released right before the Copenhagen conference. The convenient timing is not likely coincidental. Nobody working at CRU would want to undermine the climate talks.

2) CRU was not the only climate institution which was attacked. The website RealClimate was also hacked, and there was also an attempted break-in at a Canadian climate science institution. Again, very unlikely to be a coincidence.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/dec/06/brea...

I don't think it makes difference. The important thing to understand is that the emails do not indicated that climate data was falsified, as the self-proclaimed skeptics allege. See the Scientific American article linked below.