Many readers have commented about their experiences at Real Climate with posts being deleted and being run over roughshod by hostile comments there. I was sent this YouTube link by a WUWT web affiliate, and as I was watching it, it occurred to me that the phrase “tightly controlled” really describes the Real Climate methodology.
Watch Helen Thomas at the end. For those of you who don’t know Helen Thomas, may I suggest reading up on her. She’s a fixture with the White House Press Corp and her statements to Robert Gibbs are simply stunning. Helen mentioned “openness and transparency”, from my view she could have just as easily been talking about Michael Mann and his famous “censored” FTP folder discovered by McIntyre.
Now if we can just get Andy Revkin to ask questions like Chip Reid and Helen Thomas, we might get somewhere.
Now every time I think of Chip Reid, I’ll think of Real Climate’s “tightly controlled” environment.
I should add that I’ve experienced the same thing at RC, valid questions I have posed have been wholesale deleted personally by Gavin Schmidt. I’ve kept a record and screencaps of such things, I would suggest that you all do the same.
Deleting rude comments or comments that are badly OT or inflaming is one thing, but when you start deleting valid scientific questions posed by people in your circle of interest, it doesn’t take long for all of those individually affected to start comparing notes.
RC seems to have a small following of the same people that make up a core group, but when you examine the web statistics, it seems obvious that such a strategy is failing their primary mission of reaching out to people:
My blue stats start in October of last year because that is when I started the full domain name. Prior to that they are in the olive green color plot. In both reach and traffic, WUWT grows and RC declines.
Here is the URL to see for yourself:
http://alexa.com/siteinfo/wattsupwiththat.com+realclimate.org+%20wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com
Of course, these are unadjusted numbers so any conclusion drawn from them may be premature. Best to wait for the adjusted data set.
UPDATE: Since there is some confusion in comments, I’m adding this. That first graph is a “top sites” graph, with sites like Google and iTunes and Amazon being at the very top. It shows where WUWT and RC exist in the “top sites” pecking order. WUWT is now somewhere around the top 30,000 web sites while RC has fallen below the top 100,000 mark. – Anthony
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
It is fascinating to watch how Gibbs tried to reply to the question that was not asked rather than the one that was. Create a straw man and argue against that. Klein and Thomas were questioning the closed nature of the process of arranging attendance at the town hall meeting…. Gibbs wanted to change that to an argument over whether tough questions were going to be asked. Gee, what do you suppose a town hall meeting in a Potemkin Village would be like?
He tried to aw shucks his way through it, and was nailed by a reporter who apprenticed during the MWP. Good for Helen, good for Chip and good for Major. Where are the rest of ’em?
Helen Thomas is 89 yrs old.She’s like an old Navy Chief’s saying:”I’ve seen’em come and I’ve seen’em go-but I’m still here.” Twerps like Gibbs will be long gone if her health holds…
Glibbs [sic] is funny sometimes.
It’s funny. Even Helen “Of course I’m a Liberal, what else would I be?” Thomas is most displeased with the, er, bubkes the administration is, er, feeding the media…
Um. There’s something wonky with that first graph. The numbers get bigger toward the bottom.
REPLY: That first graph is a “top sites” graph, with sites like Google and iTunes and Amazon being at the very top. It shows where WUWT and RC exist in the “top sites” pecking order. WUWT is now somewhere around the top 30,000 web sites while RC has fallen below the top 100,000 mark. – Anthony
RC stuck their necks out again. Here’s my own reply.
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2009/07/02/hubris/
This could be a discussion with an AGW true believer at the podium.
Just want to point out, Helen Thomas is a truly remarkable individual. She should be commended in every way. She is a great American and incredible lady! And amazing to me that she is still there at the age of 89. wow!
Stefan has a smoothing algorithm that puts the endpoint of RC well above WUWT. I hope it bodes well for the polar bears.
Gibbs’ behavior makes me doubly skeptical — not much different than some pro-AGW sites.
If the “powers that be” had the genuine answers for AGW (or any other topic), I think they would clearly state them, reasonable scholars would understand and agree, and the debate would end. I must conclude they do not have the answers. Or, they do not want us to know the genuine answers.
Frankly, for Helen Thomas to say this is the worst of it she has ever seen in from an administration in regards to control of information – is saying a LOT.
If someone gets the raw data, I’ll do a climatology grade trend significance plot and pound it into a hockey stick.
Anthony,
Your blog has reached a level in climate science where it doesn’t have any competition. It’s been through continual service to the science, avoidance of direct political ideology, huge amounts of work and quality presentations to both laymen and scientists that it has grown. I was honestly amazed by your ability to communicate some time before attempting blogging myself but IMO it’s more than that. In my opinion, the primary reason WUWT has grown beyond the limits of most blogs is the honesty in posting the counterpoints to consensus.
I sound like everyone else here, please keep up the work. As a fellow business owner there are many things which could be done to return more money than blogging. I’m sure there are a dozen more entertaining things to do with your time as well. It’s a voluntarily self-giving service for all of us.
THX!!!
“Robert Gibbs gets owned…”
Absolutely correct.
It is a testament to Gibbs’ self control that he didn’t pull out a handkerchief and start patting his forehead. His performance should be the new standard for “winging it.”
I almost felt sorry for him.
Something seems to be wrong with the numbers on the daily traffic trend chart, or is it just me?
The adjusted numbers are 4.2, although they may be off by an order of magnitude.
Paul Revere (19:18:34) :
>Something seems to be wrong with the numbers on the daily traffic trend chart, or is it just me?
You’d better go to Dan Evens (18:54:50).
I left this comment at Mr Id’s place, following the link he provided at (18:59:51):
As a non-scientist I consider it my task to ask the sorts of questions an average simpleton like me considers relevant. So here’s today’s:
Whether a computer model predicts, woops, “projects” more or less of something than the amount that actually occurs, is it not the case that the model must be flawed?
I think I understand that any projection has an inherent margin of accuracy, it might be a bit low or a bit high without being wrong, and those who press its buttons will say what that margin is.
Yet the projection is their case. It contains an implicit statement: “if we have got it right, the actual result will be within the margin we have stated”. It no more supports their case for the reality to be “worse” than their projection than for it to be “better”. In either such event their model is wrong.
One cannot logically conclude that a model predicting something nasty contains correct methodology when the reality is even nastier. Maybe the methodology is correct but some other factor is in error, or the methodology is incorrect. Either way it is back to the drawing board.
Or am I missing something?
Helen Thomas is a national treasure !!!
Anthony and others,
I am a simple chemist by any means. I grew up in a good household in a southern Chicago suburb. By all accounts of my education and proficiencies, I should have been a writer or a lawyer. Of course, being one who wanted a career, I initially attended the University of Illinois with the intention of becoming a lawyer. School was pretty boring and I, like many others in their late teens wanted to do something meaningful. So I turned my eye to becoming a writer. This seemed to be something especially perfect for me as I missed only 1 question on the English portion of my ACT and scored a 10/10 on the entrance exams for the university in the writing portion. By all accounts, I had no business becoming a scientist.
So I read a book where it was comparing the number of people going into law and going into science. It was clear to me that we needed more scientists and less people who were willing to sell their soul to get a buck, so I chose to make a major decision in my life: I was going to be a scientist.
I graduated college and was off to find a good life of honesty, integrity, and simplicity in truth. You can’t argue with science, right? Well, I struggled with a 2 year search to find a permanent job. The local pharmaceutical company that I planned on working at was ravaged by the FDA. To be honest, the company had its problems, but the attack by a federal authority on them to such an extent as to basically ruin a whole city comprised of over 100k people was not warranted. The FDA, in this instance, decided the fate of the people there and aimed to make an example of them.
I finally got a job at a small company that made coolants. I was a qc chemist and worked on formulations for our products. I was hired through a temp company specializing in scientific personnel, so I spent 6 months working for 10 dollars an hour with the rationale that I could prove myself to them and be worthy of a reasonable salary. Well, I worked hard for my 6 months “trial period” and got my offer. While my friends who were finance majors had to work much less than myself had gotten offers and not had to struggle as I had were getting offers of 45k and up, I got my 27.5k per year offer. The irony of this is that, as a chemist, I think anyone would be hard pressed to say that the technical difficulty of such a major was less than that of a finance. Further, majors such as finance were most often on a 1 hour in class is 1 credit hour. Meanwhile, any chemistry major will tell you of countless lab hours plus outside work (lab time technically equalling 6 hours per week) as being worth 2 credit hours. Things just didn’t seem right to me.
So I got my job offer and figured I HAD to do something, so this was it, considering my other prospects. I made the best of it and in the time I was there, we went from 4 batches of product per week coming in out of spec to 1 every month. This, I believe, was from my philosophy that educating employees and relating to them the importance of what their actions were. I wanted my compounders (the guys who put the stuff in the tank) to understand that there was a very good reason for them to be as meticulous as I was in the lab. I made a point to walk around the plant at least once a day and see if I could identify any problems and, more importantly, I would stop and ask them how things were going and befriended them.
Unbeknownst to me, the compounders in our powder division were up to atrocious standards. They were leaving out key components to our products. This was not some inert filler type of component.. this was something that was important to the quality of our product. However unfortunately, we didn’t have the capacity to test for this in our lab.
to be continued if there is interest… could be a long story which I find relevant to the current climate debate.
REPLY: I can see a teachable moment coming…please proceed. – Anthony
I’ve started rereading Agatha Christie with her #1, “The Mysterious Affair at Styles”. Hercule Poirot was created in this story. About a third of the way through, he tells Hastings: “If the facts do not fit the theory, discard the theory”. This was written in 1920. Still just as relevant today, if the numbskulls in ‘Climate Science’* would pay attention.
*An oxymoron if there ever was one.
Story continued…
So I did my due dilligence. I went into the powders office after work and found the “cheat sheet” which showed that the powders compounders were not actually adding the correct amount of chemicals to each batch. This confirmed my suspicions which were founded on a conversation which I had with the liquids compounder who had let it slip in front of me that he knew what was going on. So the powder guys were basically adding 1/3 to 2/3 of one of the main active components in our products.
I brought this evidence to my boss. He was an honest man with great technical expertise and integrity. I admired him greatly for his insistence of excellence. He then instructed me that I make standards and pull retains of our past products to compare to those standards for analysis by an outside lab. I did this as instructed and sent the solutions out. The results came back as expected. The powder compounders were, generally, adding only 1/3 the amount of product required per batch. The accepted excuse was that “it smelled bad”, being a mercaptin (the same stuff they use to make your natural gas smell like rotten eggs). As any reader can tell, that is no excuse at all for neglecting to do your job.
Consequently, our plant manager must have picked up this discrepancy when we did our plant audits on raw material inventories, right? Well, we did, however that again was falsified. In a private conversation with a person from our plant, I found that our plant manager was falsifying our inventory reports. “Hey that’s Sodium Nitrite up there in that barrel, right? (wink wink while the independent auditor stood by) ” “Yeah, one drum of sodium nitrite!” would be the responsive answer from the person. You get the picture.
Soon after the lab results were in, I was called into the office of the owner. I was expecting a congratulation for finding flaws in his company and maintaining the integrity of our lab and our products. I thought “I’ve done great work above and beyond my duties. I’m surely going to be given accolades for this.” Not true at all. His words, and I will never forget them, were this “You have an uncanny ability to find things out.” He then further accused me of hacking into computer information concerning salaries and such. The information, while I admittedly DID see it, was left on a public drive under such a file name as “labexpense.doc” which I found while searching for the appropriate paperwork to file an expense report. This was explained to him and others.
A few days later I was told that I was going to be on suspension with pay for a week. The meeting that preceded that was filled with attacks by the plant manager who, most assuredly, falsified his inventory reports insinuatiing that I was a liar and MUST be dealth with.
My week went by and I was called in to hear my fate…
to be continued…
Politics? Oh no, don’t get me started down that road, not after reading how health care reform includes a proposal to fine people for not having some type of health insurance ($1,000 ?). No, how about Waxman-Markey – not the Enron II Act. Let’s try something that won’t send me off into a tirade. Gibbs? Isn’t it his job to deflect criticism of the Great Pretender? Say nothing of substance and it’ll all go away. Wonder how long it’ll be before his smile fades as the press starts acting up.
Speaking of saying nothing of substance, isn’t RC really about providing talking points to the media and keep the movement (and the faithful) on track? I doubt they’re really all that concerned about the low rankings. After all, science is about a quest, a search for answers. Looking to understand something is sometimes a messy affair; mistakes are made, theories made, tried out and tested. I checked out RC a few years ago – it struck me as a sterile environment, everything neat and orderly. Later I came upon WUWT – no wonders it made it as Best Science Blog for 2008 (and probably again this year). So the choice is – go to RC and get preached to or go to WUWT and get thrown into many discussions covering many facets of science and, if you’re lucky, learn something. It’s no wonder those Alexa rankings look as they do – people still like the process of discovery and learning; they’re not so hot about being preached to by a closed circle of sycophants.
Helen Thomas is, and has been for many decades, an iconoclast of stuffed shirts. Long may she live and prosper. Pity, though, that modern politicians can’t offer her any competition. The Prez won’t even speak to her.
Replay to chemist:
Stay in the Game!
My Wife of 12 years finally realize what I said about that statment.
Life is a game.
People Lose, People win!
Stay in the in game, and YOU will win BIG time one of these days!
Good Luck!
The achilles heal of the “scientific consensus” is that they have stopped doing science – what’s the point if the science is settled. This means that the only science that is going on is from the so called sceptical side. I actually don’t care for the term sceptical too much because it sounds like one who is against-for-against sake and it honours the “consensus” side too much. When something is so ascientific and political (I know it didn’t start out that way but there wasn’t enough real science going on to create a debate in this comparatively new field and without full debate they got full of themselves), why should it be accorded the status of being dealt with by sceptics? For example, I’m not sceptical of the geocentric theory (it came to the fore because there was no debate and then was destroyed when the debate got under way), I just rely on science to decide the real mechanics, quite unmotivated by such a theory. Clearly, things eventually fall in favour of the shooter and not the target. Maybe if they finally break up the consensus and a real debate breaks out, science will be the victor.
What AGWers did at least though, was to wake up the true scientist who had been left behind somewhat and now fresh and dusted off legitimate science is being pursued with vigour. Let’s be careful though and not get too full of ourselves.