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
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Very true! I have followed RC for a few years now, and eventually got banned. I never made a rude or unpleasant remark. It seems my questions and comments were just too uncomfortable. I suppose I should be flattered.
There’s a clear pattern. When a ‘new’ sceptic appears on the blog, they first receive very patronising replies from one of a number of regulars. If they don’t ‘shut up’, they are then accused of asking ‘the same old denier’s questions’, of being ‘brainwahed by deniers’ blogs’, of ignoring the clear evidence, bombarded with requests for references, etc, etc. On the other hand, pro-AGW commentors can make the most extreme non-referenced claims, but receive no criticism.
A consolation is that RC seems to have moved away from any attempt at science. Most of their blogs are to counter and ‘ridicule opposing stories in the blogosphere (or ‘deniesphere’ as the regulars like to call it).
At least RC provides a lot of entertainment!
Helen Thomas is indeed a national treasure. More that that though, she’s a vanishing breed of journalist who seeks truth no matter what. Even if truth goes against her political viewpoint, she’ll acknowledge it and make sure it sees light of day. In that regard she’s very dangerous to lying politicians. His Obamaness is at least smart enough to figure that out (unfortunately) and that’s why he avoids her.
Looks like Real Climate is waiting for their decadal oscillation. Then it will heat up.
Actually paranoid people post about the stuff others post. Joe Romm gets about 7-10 comments and every 5th thread is about Pielke or this site.
Phe
I had the same problem with Brave New Climate. They used the patronising approach until I kept persisting with evidence refuting what they were putting forth. They then asked questions – like list the books I had read, who was I, etc and then became quite rude. My comments went to ‘moderation’ but I finally gave in.
If Gibbs wasn’t such an obvious jerk, one could almost begin to feel sorry for him. When the main duty in your job description is to provide a happy face to the press for a principal whose every statement comes with an expiration date, the period of which is asymptotically approaching zero, coming into work every day can’t be much of an upper. Every time I get sucked into watching one of these YouTubes of his performances, I expect to see Mike Rowe and his gang from “Dirty Jobs” following him around for a segment on their show. Trying to provide an explanation that’s plausible and palatable for the goings on at La Casa Blanca since Obama ascended to the throne would have virtually any human being screwing themselves down through the floorboards as they tried to apply adequate spin and will be even more challenging now that the press corps are finally beginning to realize that,despite their reams of adorational coverage, Obama’s disdain for them is as great as it is for the rest of us.
Here’s a link to essentially the same video without the “Jamie Fox…Click here!” bs over the top (with a more descriptive title, to boot)…
REPLY: THanks I changed to this YouTube link you provided. – Anthony
I do believe the press is beginning to figure out they’ve been had,
and their place in the new order.
Real Climate is a joke. I regularly read articles from a wide swath of diverse sources that offer a reasonably representative sample of the best thoughts and perspectives on the state and potential trajectory of Earth’s climate system. I particularly seek out articles that present contrary arguments and alternate points of view, in order to challenge my understandings and beliefs. However, I almost never read Real Climate, because there is minimal substance there and they have no respect for the facts. They primarily offer misinformation, alarmist propaganda and scorn on anyone who may respectfully disagree.
The greatest failure of the Global Warmingists was basing their entire narrative on the barely understood and highly unpredictable Earth climate system. If Earth warms, then the money and power might roll in, but if Earth continues to cool, then the fall of the Warmingists is inevitable and it will be spectacular…
I wonder how much traffic RC would get, were it not for links to RC from this site and Climate Audit.
I would bet at this point over 1/4 of RC’s web traffic gets sent there from links posted here. People posting these are saying stuff ‘and just see what they are saying over at RC’ .. Well folks when ya do that, you are basically keeping their hit count up and them in business. The true end of RC will be when no one goes to visit anymore. So if you have to quote from something you read over at RC then cut and paste so we dont give them hits .. Honestly given their current track record, Im not sure why anyone reads anything there.
No fan of Helen Thomas here.
She’s an antique lib from the hard school who tosses her own premises into her questions, then argues when she doesn’t get an answer that agrees with her premise.
She would normally be on-board with the current AGW administration, so the fact that she dissed Gibbs means that the
b.s.hypocrisymisinformation being shoveled out by the White House got too deep for even her to stomach.Gibbs is in way over his head in that job.
pkatt (23:21:10) :
The true end of RC will be when no one goes to visit anymore. So if you have to quote from something you read over at RC then cut and paste so we dont give them hits
There are copyright issues around fictional stories…
Only peripherally on topic, but I intend to put this post from the Guardian in the UK out onto the blogosphere in the hope that it eventually gets seen by politicians. It is from a blogger called James Cameron and amply demonstrates that there is no consensus and that the science is shaky. Anyway read and enjoy and pass on:
“How nice to hear from Andrew Simms. From his student days at LSE this bien pensant economist has done good works done for various organisations such as Christian Aid, Greenpeace, Making Poverty History, etc. He has long been employed as the purveyor of Western surplus graces to the Third World. Sadly the one thing Andrew is not and never has been is a scientist which explains the sort of tosh he has contributed this morning. As usual he is particularly upset with Physicists such as me who find his apocalyptic hysteria slightly wearing. I have to tell him that the blessed James Hansen he extols in his article was in St Andrews University recently to share with us his increasingly demented world view. Unfortunately in a fit of absence of mind the organizers of his lecture said he would accept questions. He was simply shredded by the assembled Physicists and Geophysicists and the “open” session had to be abandoned after 10 minutes. Al Gore never makes the same mistake and has NEVER debated the Global Warming Hysteria with a professional scientist for reasons which were sadly all too apparent in St Andrews.”
GerryM (00:01:48) :
Is there a lecture video link?
Dear Anthony and other readers,
I was trying to follow the RC comments thread around Tom Fuller.
There was something about his next genaration questions and some answers.
I was most astonished to see, while in answer to the question about the quality of the sufrace stations your name and the related NOAA study was mentioned, but Steve’s analysis at CA was not mentioned at all (neither is his name).
(http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=6370)
Unfortunately I lack some basics here . .
In his figure 4 he seems to see an artifical trend between NOAA and NASA:USA
which seems related to some smoothing and he can show that the smoothing actually worsens a good station in different tread.
Can you puzzle it all together (probably in a different post)
What is the state of art for the temperature trend in USA (or the other world) for NASA, NOAA, satelittes, your good stations, bad stations.
I see fragments, but lack the complete picture..
(The same with the other questions Tom posted, there was some “warmer” answers, but somehow the complete picture eludes me . .)
Thanks a lot and yes . . keep up the good work,
LoN
@GerryM: Where can I read more about how Hansen was shredded? Been searching but cannot find any Cameron blog that refers to Hansen. Tx
D. Kin, dunno, I’ll ask next time he posts, I expect the University, which by the way is one of the most presigious in the UK, will have kept one. Be good if we could get it into the blogosphere though.
Take Chip Reid, & Helen “Awesome” Thomas, & preserve them for eternity so that when the time comes, you in America will be able to say,”that’s what journalists used to be like, always asking open awkward questions at inconveninet times”! Two journos who are truly switched on, all cylinders firing, raring to go! I thought at one point HT was going to have to change Gibbs’ nappy (diper?) she was so scornfully looking at him. Noo Labour launched this approach back in ’97 & all credit to them, we bought it. But it soon turned to an openly manipulative system of spin & counter spin, where no one can believe anything that is officially said. BTW it always has been the politicians’ methodology of replying to a questioner, that the question they should be asking is this……………? Then proceed to answer their own question, making it seem that they have answered the original question in a better way, the inept journos just take it lying down.
We in the UK have suffered terribly from a spoon fed weak, feeble, disinterested msm, infiltrated by eco-activists with the likes of BBC’s Richard Black & Roger Harrabin (he of infamy beaten up verbally by another eco-nut). They just accept the derisory dribble fed to them without ever looking deeper into the oft recycled stories they write. This is what your new government spin machine will produce, slick one liner quips, sound bites, announcements made to the press before being discussed in parliament (senate etc), slowly leaving the real process of government behind, hoping that the public are too lazy to notice or do anything about! Contrast the recent Climate Conference in the UK at the Met Office, slick well produced taxpayer financed extremely well orchestrated up to & including some carefully stage managed dissent to the humiliation of the invited speaker (an eminent Russian scientist), with desparing tutting & sighs from senior “climate experts” from said Met Office, all adding to the legitimacy of the show, with the “Climate Catastrophe No” debate held in London at about the same time, minimal fuss, no razmataz, no glossy imagery, etc, just good science! Of course dissent should always be organised, like those “impromptu” & “spontaneous” anti-western demonstrations we see around the world that appear to show great public support for various regimes under citicism.
Don’t like the look of that data splice on the graph. See it goes from red to blue.
Is this a hockey stick for WUWT readership? Are we going to experience uncontrolled +ve readership feedback?
Lol – happy 4th.
Re RC
It might be interesting for someone, if they had the time, to do a shadow blog of RC, the next time a juicy topic comes up. The basic idea is to copy the posting and all the comments from RC, but allow skeptics to comment also without censorship. It would be fascinating to see if some of the RC acolytes came for a visit. They might even receive some perspective widening insights also.
Shane
Actually Anthony,
Why not do it directly in WUWT.
S
@GerryM. ‘Next time he posts’… please just give the link to that blog
My last 4 or 5 comments on RC have been blocked it seems increasingly that any post which challanges the science of Real Climate gets noted and all further posts from that email address gets canned. Not a good way to run a debate, but might be expected from a religious or political fanatic .
Time to rename RC as RCR real climate religion
More press waking up:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124657655235589119.html
FatBigot (19:29:32) :
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?
Picking nits here, but the only other thing to consider is that the “error margins” are not necessarily symmetrical. Depends on the underlying Probability Distribution (as opposed to a frequency distribution ) that was used and how that was derived. The tendancy is to use the Normal (Gaussian), if the true distribution is unknown, but that in itself can be dangerous. In the case of climate, I doubt very much that the Normal distribution is an appropriate model.