Like many of my posts, I started to write this as a reply to a post on WUWT. It started as a list of comments. But as I found more and more, it grew into a more thorough review of what other people had said and more details of why I have reached the conclusions I have.
So where is FOIA from? First, of all let’s try to summarise the various suggestions by listing what others have said:
JanSmit: As a translator from Dutch to English, I can’t help sensing a Dutch mind at work.
normalnew: About the letter. There is something about it that make me think it’s a fellow Norwegian
Espen: I’m not a native English speaker myself, … possible native language to one of the slavic languages (except Bulgarian), the baltic languages or the Finno-Permic languages (Finnish, Saami, Estonian).
Enjoying the speculation (Climate Audit) “Climate protection” also translates nicely to Finnish (ilmastonsuojelu, ilmasto = climate, suojelu = protection). I believe there are no equally fitting ways of saying this in swedish, norwegian, danish or german. So that narrows it down a bit. Finnish and Hungarian have some similarities in grammar but I still feel this must be a Finn.
Coldish (Climate Audit) ‘Climate protection’ is a literal translation of the common German term ‘Klimaschutz’
hro001 (Climate Audit) “The quirks of grammar/sentence structure that some have noticed remind me of the those that one might encounter when talking/writing to a Quebecois and/or other francophone who has become fluently bilingual (but whose mother tongue is French, rather than English). “
Oscar Bajner. (I think jokingly) Rules how out England, Wales, Scotland, Americans, French, Portugal, Italy, Greece, Spain, Swiss, Scandinavians, & “the rest” (Irish, Antipodean/Canadian) and … by eliminating the impossible, what remains, however improbable, is that our boy is:
South African — Vat Hom, Fluffy! Skrik vir niks boet!
wws the phrase “It’s easy for many of us in the western world” to me rules out Russia,
Ryan says:But the writer does say he is a part of the Western world (so not Indian..
pottereatonCould be a Canadian but I don’t think so. Uses phrases like “game-changer” and “over and out” that while not exclusively American are probably used here more often than elsewhere.
Armagh Observatory: Eugene WR Gallun draws attention to the phrase used by FOIA – “Papal Plural” ie “we” meaning himself. It would be strange for a Brit to use this phrase …. We would use the phrase “the royal we” in this context.
Reed Coray: he/she has excellent command of the English language. … my gut feeling tells me he/she is from an English speaking environment.
Pat Frank: F writes English with a completely American idiom. His syntax also has none of the subtle errors that betray a foreign first language. All-in-all, he’s a native American speaker.
DubFOIA’s native language might be revealed in his expression, “hole-digging-and-filling-up endeavor.” This awkwardness of this expression in English indicates it is a literal translation from a different language.
SimonThe covering note has clearly been machine translated from some other language.
Chad WozniakThe omission of articles might also reflect practice in the Scandinavian languages and Romanian and Bulgarian,
Philip BradleyI find it difficult to believe the above wasn’t written by a native English speaker. I’ve read it carefully, and there are none of those small things that result from translating from a foreign language that don’t sound quite right to a native English speaker.
Eugene WR GallunIt seems to me –
The persona of FOIA is that of an Indian who has learned English as a second language.
So with all these desperate suggestions how on earth do we decide what to make them? The answer to me seems simple: what is the evidence? That is the fundamental problem of many of these suggestions. Very few seem to base their views on any evidence except a vague idea that they recognise something in the text as being foreign. Almost none (except perhaps those commenting on the definite article) are backing those assertions up by specific evidence.
This is where I think my approach is different. I am not saying “I think …”. I’ve used an unbiased approach which I think is impartial and statistically valid. It is … based on a highly sophisticated technique known as “googling it”. The rational is simple: google uses a highly sophisticated and well tested algorithm to ensure that it brings the sites which most closely fit the search. So, there’s no bias in the webpages that google highlights. The result should mean that the top sites will be those which most closely match and which have the highest usage of these phrases.
However, how I interpret this does involve a degree of judgement. Obviously any site referencing climategate has to be ignored. But then a judgement has to be made as to what category each site fits into. The approach I used was to look down the list produced by google and try to list the category or categories that best described those websites that had a common theme. This is subjective – but not nearly as subject as “I think it sounds foreign”. Finally, as the common theme began to emerge that a large number were “republican”, I went back to double check that that I hadn’t just ignored democrat sites. I didn’t find any sites that were “democrat”. This seemed to confirm the link with Republicans was real.
The details
I found twelve different phrases that struck me as being unusual. I’m not listing them because one suggested a specific individual. It would be wrong to even suggest they are involved because whilst I’m confident that people like this individual tend to use the phrase, I’ve nothing to suggest this particular individual was involved in any way.
The results were that four of the phrases had been used by a high number of sites which had Republican content (not Demoncrat). I have a high degree of confidence in this result because I was expecting computer/games/hacking sites and/or foreign language or perhaps climate. There were another three phrases which were typically used in specific policy contexts like economics & healthcare. This suggests an academic, personal or professional involvement in these fields.
Quite noticeably and quite contrary to my expectations, I found almost no technical/computing sites and nothing that would suggest the speaker was anything other than a native English speaker.
However, reading the many posts, there was a strong conviction by many that the author was foreign. So, I decided I should do an additional check and I chose to look at the use of prepositions. From experience, different languages often use these in very different ways so it is notoriously difficult to get them right in foreign languages. I found this so at school with French, German & Latin. I find the same in Greek (see this). I recall similar problem in Danish. And English really has a lot of subjective use of prepositions. For example: “I’m going to town” vs. “I’m going into town” or even “I’m going in the town”. However, none that I checked appeared to be used inappropriately.
As mentioned in a previous post, I also tried to discern a bias for Latin-based or Germanic based root words and couldn’t spot any except that the author used a high number of “educated” words which tend to be Latin based. So, whilst I have to accept many appear to recognise a foreign “aspect” … I cannot find specific evidence for that beyond their subjective statements.
There was however several very clumsy sentences such as “whom I haven’t decided yet on”. However, if these were commonly introduced by foreign speakers I would expect to have found them using a google search (I did not) and I would have expected that at least one of the comments on the various forums covering this text would be able to explain these examples in terms of commonly made mistakes made by foreign speakers. I therefore conclude that these are purposely introduced mistakes intended to falsely suggest a foreign speaker. This leads me to believe that other “mistakes” have also been intentionally introduced. The obvious examples are the use of “.” in 200.000 and the lack of the definite article. So, that is why I am not persuaded the lack of a definite article points to a none native English speaker.
So I have found no evidence which leads me to doubt the conclusion, based on the phrases being used, that the author is a native English speaker. Moreover, I am reassured that several other people also explicitly agree with me that the speaker is a native English speaker and several explicitly state that phrases are typical for the US.
It is therefore my opinion, that the speaker is a well educated US based English speaker. The phrases strongly suggest the author spends a lot of time conversing with republicans. In terms of occupation, they are likely to have a job dealing with economics, green issues or healthcare. It is unlikely they have a job where they spend much time with people in IT or engineering.
Just as a final (subjective) point, I think we can also say something about the character of the author. Firstly given the length of the text and its assured language, the author appears to have a confident character . Their writing is fluid, intelligent, underpinned by morality and articulate. So, they are likely to have job involving written and/or verbal communication with a moral slant. Perhaps this indicates involvement in politics or e.g. a lay-preacher.
ADDENDUM
After reading SalvadorD’s comment, I feel that it is worth listing his points as they are a superb list of points which do throw light on the origin.
In particularly appreciate you listing the points that you think are important because I was really struggling to think of ways of testing or otherwise the foreign origin of the text.
- Frequent use of simpler verbs (can, use, do, get)
- It/this/that … without specifying the noun to which it refers.
- 220.00 vs. 220,000
- Lack of definite article (Majority of the emails)
- Mixed metaphor ( (The) wealth, draw & brushstrokes)
- Not using the common metaphor (‘turn this one upside-down’ vs. on it’s head)
- Not using the common phrase (don’t take action ‘ vs. don’t do anything)
But he suggests reason for US:
‘garner my trust’, complicit, ‘a way you don’t like’, ‘on the planet’, ‘dealing with $’, endeavor, debilitate, defensible, safest bet, ‘decisive concern’, ‘hardest hit’
Reasons for European:
‘mere practicality’ (Sherlock Holmes?), ‘Anglo-American sphere’, ‘briefly put’, ‘papal plural’, ‘whom I haven’t decided yet on’, ‘practically everyone’ and the subdued, rather than bombastic tone (claims placed in the conditional, rather than stated outright)
COMMENT
I feel that with so much rich information about FOIA, they will either be … recognising that we now have a very close profile of them and wondering why everyone doesn’t just shout out their name as we must know it by now…. or is laughing their head off because the method by which they obfuscated their origins is hiding their identity so well that we’ve all got it very wrong.
After my comment you quote above, I read more of the WUWT comments and added 2 additional pieces of information, one rather obvious but no one at WUWT stated it, the other not many people would know, but it happens I do. This narrowed down the possibilities sufficiently that I think I have identified FOIA. This person was thrust into an English language environment at age 11. This person is involved in the political aspects of climate. Although the organization appears warmist and left of centre. They are also very active in helping third world poor.
I like your googling phrases approach. I’ll give it a try and see if throws up any kind of confirmation.
Having a mixed-around background, I had the following impression of FOIA:
(1) Hungarian, son of Hungarian refugees (1956) in West Germany, who futher moved to California in 1960’s.
(2) high school & college education in Califirnia, followed by work in silicon valley.
(3) Was briefly at EAU as system engineer / marketing at time of the FOIA, opportunistically uplifted the files.
Just my guess, throw it into the pot…
FOIA will not have a better time to “come out”. In 2009 the atmosphere was so poisonous that academics were fearful to admit even to close colleagues that they doubted the global warming claims. Today even prominent alarmists have more or less admitted we were right about their inability to predict the climate. Unfortunately, in another 4 years I suspect everyone will have forgotten just how dramatic the change has been and FOIA will find themselves denied the right to RIGHTLY claim their actions were justified by the greater good to humanity.
We should all be grateful for what they did, we should all support them … but part of that support must be brining a resolution to their predicament and helping them to face the music in the best possible environment. If they come out now, they will get huge support. If they come out in 4 years or even a decade … some of us might be interested enough to read about their trial … in other words they will be largely on their own.
Personally, I’ve often wondered if I could “pretend” to be FOIA, and bring this whole thing to a head, but the practicalities defeat me (plus I’m no good at lying). So, I would have no hesitation recommending FOIA to come out … there are very few careers where the kind of publicity they would get would be harmful!
I can’t help think you have someone in mind?
Nah. Having spent a lot of time proofreading and revising text by non-native English speakers, this seems more like something written by someone with English as a second language. There are British English elements, but it’s more US-English, so possibly a European who has worked in a US company or studied in the US. Why? Firstly and in particular the verb use (to be, can, use, do, get, pass on), There are other verbs, but native English-speakers with a good educational background tend to use these simpler verbs sparingly in writing. For non-native speakers they are among the first verbs learnt, so used more. Secondly use of it/this/that without specifying or rewriting the specific noun which is a habit picked up when learning to reduce noun-based mistakes.
English as a second language also because of some oddities ‘220.000’, ‘decided yet on’, lack of article (The Majority or A majority of), ‘in front of a choice’, ‘the coming several decades’, ‘me or nobody’, (The/A) Combination, ‘has already directed where’, ‘the scale will grow ever grander’ (greater), (The) wealth, draw & brushstrokes (mixed metaphor), ‘turn this one upside-down’ (on it’s head), ‘don’t take action ‘ (don’t do anything), I ask you.
Obviously there are other verbs in the text and good English that goes beyond Google translate (it’s been spell-checked at least, so I don’t think you can see spelling as other than someone using a US spellcheck) so it is someone who has been in daily contact with English. The reason for US would be ‘garner my trust’, complicit, ‘a way you don’t like’, ‘on the planet’, ‘dealing with $’, endeavor, debilitate, defensible, safest bet, ‘decisive concern’, ‘hardest hit’
The phrasing doesn’t seem right to be anglo-indian so the reason European: ‘mere practicality’ (Sherlock Holmes?), ‘Anglo-American sphere’, ‘briefly put’, ‘papal plural’, ‘whom I haven’t decided yet on’, ‘practically everyone’ and the subdued, rather than bombastic tone (claims placed in the conditional, rather than stated outright).
Probably unfamiliar with the direct personnel involved (sending it to realclimate), but it is someone good with computers – .7z is not a common format, neither is finding space on a Russian server nor understanding the potential crackability of a password, nor knowing how to grab the whole email file, sort it and distribute it. Also in the writing is the use of ‘Dumping’, scope, prerequisites.
My guess would be someone working on IT systems for a company that was asked to do work for UEA. So say an East European IT specialist (cheaper than Scandinavia) working for a US multinational IT services company which itself was working on some sort of systems project at UEA (eg off-site email/systems backup).
That is a superb critique and the first I’ve seen from someone who really knows what they are talking about. Thinking about it, I can see that if you are a foreign speaker having to constantly check yourself, you will be a lot more sensitive to areas where there are mistakes than someone like me. The problem was that no one else who “saw” this could be specific as to what they meant.
Indeed, I think I will list your points at the end of the article.
My WUWT comment was made jokingly, but in the spirit of “many a true word spoken in jest”
More than one commentator has ‘detected’ a Dutch or German origin/influence, and of course, there are millions of South Africans with Dutch/German ancestry, many are fluent in English, A great many work and live outside the country or have emigrated. Most of the stock over the age of forty consider(ed) themselves men of the West.
I hope “Mr FOIA” runs footloose and anonymous for menhir a year. I confess I am disquieted by the situation whereby the archive is now in the hands of gatekeepers, He certainly faced a dilemma, it is impossible for one or two or three people to filter so many emails manually.
It is easy to programmatically redact email addresses and so on, but to determine if the content might be “socially damaging” or irrelevantly private, that requires a human touch, integrity, and moral clarity. That Mr FOIA thought of this at all is greatly to his credit, and probably means he has had sight of such content already.
Oscar, the law is a kind of agreement between everyone as to how to behave and it is either accepted by everyone or it is worthless.
My feeling is that setting up an alternative FOI law will just undermine the law even more and discredit those individuals involved.
They have been given time to put their house in order. They singularly refused to do that and there is little choice but to release most of the rest. But Sceptics should not take it upon themselves to redact this lot …. they will make mistakes and when they do it will be the sceptics who get the bad press.
What should happen is that those in the email get a chance to comment on what is released. But that’s why we have the legal framework we do. It’s not our fault that the law is broken. So to my mind, there is only one course of action, which is to release the complete bundle … which is what will happen sooner or later anyway because passwords like this have legs.
SS, if I am right about FOIA’s identity s/he won’t out her/himself any time soon. I’m not going to drop clues, but will say 2 things. One is that, s/he has a powerful personal moral motivation to do what s/he did. The second is s/he grew up in an IT household. Hence the IT skills.
SalvadorD is close.
“…. or is laughing their head off because the method by which they obfuscated their origins is hiding their identity so well that we’ve all got it very wrong.”
You got there in the end. 🙂
No disrespect to you or to any of the others but I’m surprised at the number of people who have bothered to speculate seriously on this.
Philip, I’ve been impressed by what I’ve seen on junkscience.com. I grew up in an IT household … my first foreign language was Fortran … basic, pascal, algol, forth, C, C++, z80, 6502, 68000, unix, … not that I learnt much Unix … I went on a week long course in Eindhoven, came back to the factory … and had to phone them up to ask where the on/off button was.
I know what you mean about dropping clues. I had someone in mind and … well I can see how the police get information … people are just dying to tell someone.
John, the real interest is working out what you can learn from the text. It’s like trying to pick a lock – there is a process that will identify the key signature – the key, which will unlock the secret. You may not be surprised to learn but I’ve also spent time trying to decode ancient languages like Ogham … who knows, I might get some insight from this particular puzzle which allows me to understand how to tranlaste ogham.
No, I understand all that. I just think you’re wasting your time — ok, having fun, but still wasting your time. I do a lot of both these days myself, so no moral judgements there. Whatever floats your dutch barge!
I just think it’s so easy for someone to cast red herrings to posterity. Tee hee! 🙂
Good luck anyway.
John Archer;
If FOIA acted from moral considerations, as I believe s/he did, the email is simply a statement of those motivations. Why would they obfuscate? I know, I wouldn’t in the same situation.
I can explain all aspects of the email, except one, and that’s because I simply don’t have information about that aspect.
As to, why speculate? We all like a puzzle.
Mike, I do want to tell what I know (or think I know), but I have real respect and admiration for what FOIA did and why s/he did it. The issue it revolves around is a major failing of the modern world, as I have highlighted in the past.
Philip, my experience is that it is much easier to spot “who may be it” than to spot “who it is” and almost without exception we over-estimate the likelihood of a connection … because we’ve got brains hard-wired to see connections in patterns.
So, e.g. when people look at the climate signal, they “see” a massive rise. There’s also the way many sceptics see cycles in the same patterns. These aren’t real … they are instead a manifestation of our brain’s pattern matching ability … we are literally superimposing the patterns onto the signal.
Likewise, … once we start focussing on an individual as “possible”, we start the same kind of confirmation bias which tends to look for things confirming our prejudice.
So, e.g. everyone who looked at the email tended to see “someone like me”. Finns saw fins, Americans, saw Americans, etc.
The other problem is that likes attract. So, where you may know one person in a profession, you might find if you look deeper that there are hundreds with very similar backgrounds and personalities. In other words, I would be reasonably confident that you will not be telling the name of FOIA.
Philip,
“As to, why speculate? We all like a puzzle.”
True.
“If FOIA acted from moral considerations, as I believe s/he did, the email is simply a statement of those motivations. Why would they obfuscate? I know, I wouldn’t in the same situation.”
Yes, it certainly looks that way. But you then oughta hear me in the fucking pulpit! 🙂
“I can explain all aspects of the email, except one, and that’s because I simply don’t have information about that aspect.”
Sounds good.
Good luck too. And I do mean that. Honest!
Maybe.
If I am right, CRU and the Team will know who FOIA is, but can’t expose him/her, because doing so would open up a much bigger Pandora’s Box than the CG emails.
Could get interesting the next few days.
Why speculate? I don’t think we should give actions we agree with any less scrutiny than those we don’t … and that lesson was reinforced by the way I failed to scrutinise the renewable energy campaigns because I (thought) I agreed with then.
Indeed, it would be the utmost hypocrisy to tell alarmists that they should scrutinise the actions of their fellow alarmists and “CHECK THE EVIDENCE” and then take what FOIA says without scrutiny and without checking as far as we are able to verify the credibility of what we are being told.
Even after all that has been said, I’m still of the view that this person is most likely a political insider in the republicans. They may be a European immigrant, but the presence of so many US republican phrases cannot be easily explained without a close link.
I thought that might be explained by some form of procedure which replaced the original text with new …. which for whatever reason had come from a predominance of US republican sites. However, no one has suggested any form of “mish mash” of phrases stitched together and instead, the predominant view is that the text is largely as it was written by the original non-native speaker.
And to be honest, I don’t care what the motivation of FOIA was. The fact remains that what they did was morally right. It was the right thing to do … even if it wasn’t done for the right reasons.
And let’s get another thing straight. This year in the UK 26,000 people died of cold. Some 1million have died since Hansen invented this scam. If his actions contributed to even a faction of a percent increase because politicians expected warming rather than cold, then 1000s have died and 100s continue to died each year because of fuel poverty because this scam continues. Weighed against the deaths of 100s of people in the UK perhaps 10s of thousands worldwide because of the increased costs of living on the poor and perhaps millions of deaths which could have been saved if researchers had put their effort into monthly-seasonal weather predictions which do save lives rather than this global warming non-science. What happens to one individual, however noble their actions, is relatively unimportant.
So, I’m sorry FOIA, my view is that for the good of humanity … whatever the personal cost to you … you should make yourself known because by that action I believe you will bring this scam to an end.
Mike,
Erm…?
I’m not sure why you’re addressing that to me. Perhaps you pressed the wrong reply button?
For what it’s worth, I approve of what FOIA did too, and for similar reasons to the ones you give.
BTW, I once had plans to acquire a high moral horse for leisure pursuits. But nothing ever came of them. I think the closest I’ve ever got was a recent packet of Tesco’s beefburgers.