Note: title suffix – “autosuggest still blocked” has been removed, see update2 at bottom of story.
We’ve had the term “global warming” in the lexicon since well before the Internet became a household tool, certainly well before Google itself.
So it is with amazement that I report the rise of a new term, “Climategate” in just a little over 1 week in the Google search engine.
Here’s our old friend “global warming”:
And here is the new term that is spreading like lightning, “climategate”:
global warming – 10,100,000
climategate – 10,400,000
Note that these are web searches, not news searches, but Google suggests a few news stories first. These two searches were conducted about 1 minute apart.
Individual results and search permutations may vary, but it sure seems like “climategate” has grown virally in since the story on the CRU files broke on November 19th.
Here are some other interesting tidbits about “climategate”.
Google seems to be blocking their search box suggestions from using the word, reports on WUWT and my own observation two days ago indicate it was once there. I used by upper right Google Search Box in IE8 to find out.
For example “global war….” has lots of suggestions:
And so does “climate”:
I find it interesting that climate depot and climate audit are suggested ahead of climate progress.
But even when you spell out almost the enirety of “climategate” Google doesn’t seem to think it’s worth suggesting to you:
With “climategate” now as big as, likely even bigger than “global warming” on the web, Google might want to rethink this.
UPDATE: From comments I see that “Bing”, the new search engine from Microsoft, has no such problems, and in fact puts “climategate” right at the top after only 3 letters “c l i”:
I thought the Langjokull Glacier in Iceland was a nice touch. Bing apparently rotates backgrounds, so who knows what you’ll see.
UPDATE2: About 3 hours after this story was first posted, it appears that Google has added the word “climategate” to autosuggest.
Bing was interesting.
I followed a link to www/climate-gate.org and did a search under Salinger.
In one of the emails I found this comment (http://www.climate-gate.org/email.php?eid=306&keyword= )
QUOTE:
Jim Salinger raises the more personal issue of deFreitas. He is clearly
giving good science a bad name, but I do not think a barrage of ad
hominem attacks or letters is the best way to counter this.
If Jim wishes to write a letter with multiple authors, I may be willing
to sign it, but I would not write such a letter myself.
In this case, deFreitas is such a poor scientist that he may simply
disappear. I saw some work from his PhD, and it was awful (Pat Michaels’
PhD is at the same level).
______________________________
Best wishes to all,
Tom.
END QUOTE.
There was another email where they discussed getting Pat Michaels PhD revoked by challenging his thesis. Seems there is no level they won’t stoop to.
But who is deFreitas? Nothing on wiki but Bing turned up this link: http://exxonsecrets.org/wiki/index.php/Deniers:Scientists:Chris_DeFreitas
bing yielded 50,800,000 results on climategate, and 13,600,000 on global warming. Google found only about 10,600,000 for climategate. What’s Up With That? Why is google not finding 40 million sites?
Chris Schoneveld (13:41:05) :
Who was it who suggested the term first? I recollect someone suggesting it on WUWT just after the news broke.
Bulldust. And that poster coined the straw that broke the hump on the AGW camels back.
I would find it unlikely that google is manipulating autosuggest like that. I will ask my friends when I get to SF.
*************
Hank Hancock (14:49:15) :
OT: I was having a spirited debate over at ClimateProgress regarding Dr. Curry’s open letter wherein I being very careful to stay on the point of the article and play nice in the sandbox. After being challenged by dhogaza (who was surprisingly civil in our debate although not staying on topic) and ad-hom attacked by Ian Forrester, I was effectively countering their rebuttals and mounting a good case – at which point I got banned. So, I guess this is what they mean by the “debate is over.” Much like pulling the plug on the television means the show is over despite there is still 28 minutes to go?
************
Maybe it’s just me, but in the various places I discuss “climate change” there seems to be a meme coming from AWG defenders that it is good to release the data but not the code. Releasing the data is a good thing, but certainly a lot has been found in the code when it has been obtained. I say release both!!
You’re almost certainly wrong here. The fact is you don’t know what the google algorithm is doing when it selects auto-suggestions. From what I do know about algorithms, longevity scores – this thing has only been out a week.
Now we have another Hitler takeoff
Peer review at the Climatic Research Unit:
REPLY: Note to all commenters. I’m growing tired of people posting this video, it’s stupid, it’s insulting, and it does the same thing that we accuse the other side of doing when they label us “deniers” with all of its holocaust connotations.
Don’t post this video again.
– Anthony
Al Gore was interviewed on CBC radion on Wednesday, Nov.25/09. In his intro we were informed that he was on the Board of Directors for Google.
Just sayin’
No need to put this in the comments, but I wanted to pass on to you guys that Senator Inhofe is formally launching an investigation into the CRU/Climategate affair, and particularly it’s implications for US legislation. I imagine you’ve already seen or heard this, but wanted to point it out anyway:
http://www.thenewamerican.com/index.php/tech-mainmenu-30/environment/2415-congress-launches-climategate-investigation
Maybe percipient marketing by Microsoft.
I’ll try Bing occasionally.
Don’t know what it means, but in my Firefox browser, if I type “climateg” into the built-in search box I do get “climategate” as the top suggestion (although not until I type the “g”).
The default for me is google.co.uk, not .com.
But if I actually go to Google.co.uk I get no “climategate” suggestion even if I type in the whole word.
Well, it looks like we are doing our job!
Google is no longer CENSORING the term “climategate” from their autocomplete suggestion list. It now appears when I type “clim”
But it’s too little too late in my book. The damage is already done. The fact that they chose to remove it tells me volumes about their concepts of freedom of information, integrity, and truth. I suspect the only reason they put it back in is because of this blog.
Thanks Anthony! Well done!
No problem with Safari using Google. Climategate comes up first.
i think it’s more of an IE8 thing than anything else.
I don’t think accusations like this are helpful. They make us look paranoid. If you have evidence it was removed manually, i.e. not the result of the algorithm selecting the best response, then please show it. Otherwise, I’d give them the benefit of the doubt. If it still didn’t show up in, say, a month, I’d either think it was deliberately removed or that the algorithm was pants. I think the latter would be my preferred answer here.
Climategate: University of East Anglia U-turn in climate change row
“Leading British scientists at the University of East Anglia, who were accused of manipulating climate change data – dubbed Climategate – have agreed to publish their figures in full.
David Holland is seeking prosecutions against some of Britain’s most eminent academics for allegedly holding back information in breach of disclosure laws”.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/copenhagen-climate-change-confe/6678469/Climategate-University-of-East-Anglia-U-turn-in-climate-change-row.html
Depending on what settings you use and whether you have installed the google toolbar you will find that google uses your search history to construct the list.
So it is probably premature to assume that the missing keyword is a deliberate suppression.
REPLY: I thought of that, and cleared the history beforehand, the results I posted were after the cache clear. Before the cache clear, climategate was ina separate section of suggestions based on the previous history. When cache was cleared, climategate was not suggested. -A
I find it amazing that we can castigate the Chinese and Iranian governments for censoring the internet – especially in light of this form of censorship. So much for illusory freedoms…..
Wow! And still the alphabet TV news and much of the lame stream print ignore it.
Not to defend Google but I saw a long discussion of those hit numbers on a programming blog a year or so ago and those numbers are just statistical estimates based on some secret algorithm. They don’t actually count the sites.
But that doesn’t affect their fiddling with the numbers.
Googling Climategate returns this link from 2005 where it is all George Bush’s fault.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104×3896988
Gary K
No problem with Safari using Google. Climategate comes up first.
i think it’s more of an IE8 thing than anything else.
No, Google just stopped censoring it. The autosuggest list is provided from the Google server to the Google webpage. The results shown are completely independent of the browser used to view them.
REPLY: Note to all commenters. I’m growing tired of people posting this video, it’s stupid, it’s insulting, and it does the same thing that we accuse the other side of doing when they label us “deniers” with all of its holocaust connotations.
Don’t post this video again.
– Anthony
Sorry
uhm.. What is up with the latest SOHO picture?
Is our sun really going to die?
Yeah, but if you do a google news search, news.google.com, and you just type in the letter c , you will see that climategate is the first suggestion. This means that it is on the top of peoples intrests, at least in the news section.
Climate Gate came up with 63 suggestions for me.