Yet, news stories covering it are dropping at the same time.
I got an email from Ahrvid Engholm, an IT journalist in Stockholm, Sweden who was concerned about the “autosuggest” for the word “climategate” in Google disappearing. He was concerned about the post November 25th trend and invited me to take a look at a tool I was unfamiliar with called “Google Trends”. He writes:
Go to Google Trends – www.google.com/trends – write “climategate” and something very interesting will appear in front of your eyes. Select “The last 30 days” to the right.
I did just that, and here is the resulting graph, edited a bit to fit in the WUWT blog space, but you can see for yourself at the link provided.
Link: http://trends.google.com/trends?q=climategate&date=mtd&geo=all&ctab=0&sort=0&sa=N
Note that the trend graph is 4 days behind in data, which is apparently normal. But, there’s some interesting things happening.
Many people outside of the USA may not be aware of why there was a drop around November 25th in the Search Volume Index.
It is likely caused by the second largest US American Holiday called “Thanksgiving” which was on Thursday, November 26th. The drop starts on Nov 25th as people start their travel plans and leave the office and schools early.
Then the upwards trend resumes on November 28th when people in the USA return from that holiday.
No nefarious Google motives here. But with the rising search popularity, it does make a fly in the ointment for why Google’s “autosuggest” function in the search box is no longer suggesting “climategate” as it once was..
Does Al Gore’s position on Google’s senior advisory board have any bearing? In Al’s bio at http://www.algore.com/about.html he says:
“A member of the Board of Directors of Apple Computer, Inc. and a Senior Advisor to Google, Inc. Gore is also Visiting Professor at Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro, Tennessee.”
It seems he has done some “advising” of Google’s search quality in the past. Here’s a story from the New Yorker via Newsbusters about that very subject. There is some history there that has some bearing on the current situation.
In the case of “Climategate”, Mr. Gore’s ability to continue his current speaking engagements might be hampered. Thus, there could well be a motive for him doing some “advising” in this case. A phone call might be all it took.
Word from some others doing investigations say Google senior staff has told them the removal of “Climategate” from the autosuggest in web searches is algorithm based.
But the Google trends data suggest otherwise, particularly since it was restored and operating in Googles autosuggest feature back on November 28th, as documented here on WUWT.
Now it is gone again. Did the removal of “climategate” from the autosuggest feature make recent Google Trends data lower that the peak on November 29th? Only time will tell us.
In the meantime, I’m switching my default search engine to Bing, which doesn’t have such problems and doesn’t have Al Gore as an “advisor”.
Bing on November 28th:
click for larger imageUPDATE:
10 minutes later…
Interestingly, Google Advanced Search turns up 1.4m hits for Climategate but Google search will only lead to this when you search “Climategate”
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100017393/climategate-the-final-nail-in-the-coffin-of-anthropogenic-global-warming/
Try Scroogle,it searches Google anonymously and cuts out the crappy advertising as a bonus.Works on Linux,not sure about the blue screen of death.
Anthony,
ask Jeeves, please
Bill W
http://uk.ask.com/
Don’t worry that the FOI leaker released blocks of captive data critical to check on the veracity of the “science”.
There’s no reason to think about the vary strange computer codes used to manipulate the data that’s based on “lost” station and temperture easurements.
That an internationally recognized journal, with all it’s editors and reviewrs missed these minor flaws should be of no concern to anyone other than a few troublemakers.
The Nature editiorial of 3 December should set your minds at ease:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v462/n7273/full/462545a.html
Never play poker with folks who can run a bluff and palm cards, then call
YOU a cheater !
I suggest that you try this with different levels of cookie enablement. Your previous search history – if cookies are enabled, seems to make a difference. Alll tests need to be done on Privacy High (IE speak) settings
I’d seen a few days ago that Anthony had posted that the search term, “Climategate” had surpassed “global warming” in Google search results. That inspired me to note on my blog the following day (as the number of search results grew ever larger) that “Climategate” had even bypassed an even bigger prey, i.e. “Al Gore”.
Today, as the number of Google search results continues to explode (now over 20,000,000) I discovered that “Climategate” had even passed “Barack Obama” who has a mere 16,000,000 results.
http://algorelied.com/?p=3326
Where will it stop? Will it even pass the heavy-weight champ, “Sex”? Well, that’s probably asking for a bit too much.
When I type in cli into Bing, the second auto suggest on the list is for Real Climate. The first auto suggest concerns Obama’s birth certificate. Climategate is nowhere to be found. I would speculate that there is a message being sent.
Is there any reason that can be forwarded why any person should believe that Google Autosuggest directly mirrors Google Trends? Does anyone have any idea how Google Autosuggest actually works?
We do know that Google Autosuggest can be downright wacky in its suggestions – there are enough jokes about this on many websites.
So, are people seeing conspiracy where there is none? Patterns where there are none? I hope not. That would be too ironic.
I have no idea how Google Autosuggest or Google Trends work, but comparing “climategate” with “climate change” in Google Trends paints an interesting pattern (which I do not know how to interpret).
Compare: Climategate, climate emails, global warming, climate change
Climategate is taking over from “climate emails” in searches.
Climategate now equals searches for “climate change” and is already over half of “global warming”.
RE: Ed Scott (13:29:46) :
That’s a good point that I’ve been thinking about as well lately. All the proxy studies used the instrument record (CRU being the biggest fish in a three fish pond) to calibrate… I think, if I heard correctly, these were even used to calibrate the satellites which have been diverging from GISS since 2003 (http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/01/18/giss-divergence-with-satellite-temperatures-since-the-start-of-2003/)
Right now I get –
When I type “climate” – “Climate-gate” and “Climate gate scandal” is on the list.
When I type “climate ” (note the “space” after “climate”) – “Climate gate scandal” remains on the list.
When I type “climate g” – “Climate gata scandal” is at the top of the list.
When I type “climageg” (or “climatega” or “climategat” or “climategate”) – nothing similar to “climategate” is on the list.
It would seem that Google has decided that it should be “Climategate”, not “Climate Gate”.
However, when I type “Climategate” and do the search, there are 21,100,000 hits, yet only 6,540,000 for “climate gate”.
Odd, eh?
A check in Canada shows that it is mainly in BC and Ontario that people are searching for Climate gate, with BC being at the front.
Google definitely did autosuggest climategate and now it doesn’t. Bing autosuggested it until earlier today and now it doesn’t. Even looking at ‘climate change’ brings up only mainstream propaganda sites, not a mix of angles.
I actually find this, taken together with the continued mainstream media silence, a lot scarier and more sinister than the idea of an immoral group of scientists getting carried away and fudging their data while being egged on by eager financial and political groups.
I’m not a conspiract theorist but even to me It’s starting to look like deliberate widespread censorship.
Chris
OT
Well I’ll be dammed! The BBC Climagate dam has just broken wide open with FOUR Climagate interviews on the Radio 4 ‘The World Tonight’ radio programme, one after the other! Here’s the game changer: Michael Mann has (in the first long interivew) DISOWNED Phil Jones repeatedly. Mann on three occasions condemned Jones for the emails he sent to him (Mann), saying ‘I cannot defend that’ and such like. This is stunning stuff.
The second interview was with five members of the public who worked in scientific fields. All five of them said they did not believe global warming – so the interviews were edited to about a minute and a half!
The third report was by Paul Moss into why the public were sceptical, with one scientist saying ‘There is no debate to be had on global warming.’
The fourth interview was with the ‘climate environment’ editor of the warmist ‘New Scientist’ magazine. ‘Science is all about debate’, she said – and then said the science was settled on global warming. :-))
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qtl3
Install ixquick Startpage HTTPS Privacy Search Engine and be safe:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/13036
Gives you 48,499,072 hits for climate-gate.
Why would Sweden and Australia return more traffic for Climategate than USA?
Climategate is back on google….
Stolen Climate E-Mails Cause A Ruckus In Congress
This story in on NPR website….for those who may want to commment.
Here, now, UK, I see others have got Climategate on Google autosuggest. No autosuggest here either now or during the past hour, either on Firefox or on IE. WUWT?
Google
21 million results for Climategate
http://www.givemebackmygoogle.com/
188 million results (from “Google”) for Climategate
184 million for Climate Change
ps
Seeing the depressing standard of the average returns of Climategate on all these search engines today… makes me realize what an extraordinary jewel this website is. Once again Anthony, thank you, I don’t know how you do it.
Switched to bing sometime ago – cause Google is just too intrusive (Bing probably is as well, but I do like the pictures!)- but on the auto-suggest topic – Google has Gore , but Gates and Balmer are up to their pelvises in supporting the notion of man-caused climate change too. Not that there could be any conspiracies here ….
Try this Google Trends search. People are continuing to have an interest in CRU, and we can imagine what has happened to Phil Jones news in the most recent 4 days. CRU probably leaped up quickly because the “climategate” name hadn’t become popular until later.
http://www.google.com/trends?q=climategate%2C+global+warming+emails%2C+cru%2C+phil+jones&ctab=0&geo=all&date=mtd&sort=0
Hmm, if I type in “clim” climategate is right on top of the autosuggest list from google. Not sure what’s going on…
Australia… because they’ve become aware enough of the climate science mess that they replaced the head of their Liberal party with someone who isn’t trying to push cap & trade legislation. The climategate issues were brought up during their ruckus.
I’m also curious about Sweden doing the most searching for climategate.
Robinson (14:01:59) : and others.
This is an excellent and powerful piece. I feel that it is a “call to arms” for the deep-green enviros. I love that it destroys warmism and enviro-chique.