From Technology Review, a case of desperation. “Let the robot handle it”. I have to chuckle though, since the article cites John Cook’s “Skeptical Science” as an “appropriate scientific source”. Also amusing is “the rejoinders are culled from a university source whom Leck says he isn’t at liberty to divulge.” Well since he is in New South Wales, I’m thinking this just might be another Tim Lambert aka Deltoid production. Hacker News sums it up pretty well:
> In a way, what Leck has created is a pro-active search engine: it answers twitter users who aren’t even aware of their own ignorance.
On the one hand the idea of a reverse search engine is somewhat appealing, on the other hand; it’s Clippy for the internet.
– Anthony
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Nigel Leck, a software developer by day, was tired of arguing with anti-science crackpots on Twitter. So, like any good programmer, he wrote a script to do it for him.
The result is the Twitter chatbot @AI_AGW. Its operation is fairly simple: Every five minutes, it searches twitter for several hundred set phrases that tend to correspond to any of the usual tired arguments about how global warming isn’t happening or humans aren’t responsible for it.
It then spits back at the twitterer who made that argument a canned response culled from a database of hundreds. The responses are matched to the argument in question — tweets about how Neptune is warming just like the earth, for example, are met with the appropriate links to scientific sources explaining why that hardly constitutes evidence that the source of global warming on earth is a warming sun.
The database began as a simple collection of responses written by Leck himself, but these days quite a few of the rejoinders are culled from a university source whom Leck says he isn’t at liberty to divulge.
Like other chatbots, lots of people on the receiving end of its tweets have no idea they’re not conversing with a real human being. Some of them have arguments with the chatbot spanning dozens of tweets and many days, says Leck. That’s in part because AI_AGW is smart enough to run through a list of different canned responses when an interlocutor continues to throw the same arguments at it. Leck has even programmed it to debate such esoteric topics as religion – which is where the debates humans have with the bot often wind up.
The whole story is at Technology Review
===========================================================
Here’s Leck’s Twitter feed:
His bio on Twitter says:
“given sufficient evidence I’ll accept a claim as provisionally true.It’s a balance of probabilities,atheist,greenie & a bit of a nerd but mostly harmless:-)”
Seems like a nice enough fellow, just a bit misguided perhaps.
h/t to WUWT reader Don Penim
======================================================
UPDATE: Borepatch writes in with some news that is well worth sharing.
He writes:
I created the Clippy almost a year ago:
http://borepatch.blogspot.com/2009/11/what-happens-when-you-run-climate.html
There’s also a ClimateGate Blue Screen Of Death there, too.
I post fairly regularly on AGW issues, and am afraid that I’m one of those “deniers”. My probably two best posts on the subject are here:
http://borepatch.blogspot.com/2009/12/should-you-be-global-warming-skeptic.html (for a non-technical audience)
http://borepatch.blogspot.com/2010/02/canals-of-mars-climate-research-unit.html
If you could point attribution my way, this would be some pretty big bragging rights for me here in my little corner of the ‘net.
Thanks.
– Borepatch
Happy to do so! Sometimes humor spreads like wildfire without proper attribution because people are so focused on the funny, they forget the source. Your Clippy parody has been a source of humor for thousands, and we thank you. – Anthony
This may be the start of a sad and worrying trend. There appears to be a widespread and curious perception that anyone should be able to understand the intricacies of climate – that we no longer defer to experts, but that all of our opinions, no matter how ill-informed, are valid. It takes considerable effort, a lot of hard work and a long time to get a good understanding on any area of science. Much like climbing a mountain peak – the more energy you put in the higher you can get and the more you can see.
Currently, we mostly have imbeciles in fog filled valleys claiming that they can see as clearly as the vision of someone who is high up the hillside, with binoculars and above the clouds. In encouraging this process, by never correcting even the most egregiously moronic statements, these guys do a disservice to science.
Doesn’t it make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside thinking about how these dogmatic AGWers view the general masses as being incapable of utilizing their cranial matter and thus deserve nothing more than an automated braindead repetative response to their queries ?
It must be a heavy weight to carry on one’s shoulders when one is omnipotent.
So who’s the self-appointed climatological/geology/astrophysics/heliology/thermodynamics/oceanography/meteorlogical/physics expert that’s responsible for keeping the bot up to date as the sciences continue to learn and evolve on a daily basis ?
Did the chatbot already berate DiCaprio, James Cameron or Harrison Ford about their frequent air travel? I see potential there.
Fudsdad says:
November 4, 2010 at 3:12 pm
Watching “What the Green Movement got wrong”.
They were wrong on nuclear power, DDT and GM food…
_____
Green movement was wrong about DDT? Really?
Sorry, don’t think so…and as far as nuclear power, well, just talk to the people downwind from Chernobyl…the one’s still alive will tell you how great it is…
I thought they already invented a warmbot that churned out repetitive and irrelevant chunks of green orthodoxy to thwart intelligent questions – it’s called Real Climate isn’t it?
R. Gates – the programme did talk to those living in Chernobyl, they moved back in the early 1990s…
R. Gates says:
November 4, 2010 at 4:19 pm
Fudsdad says:
November 4, 2010 at 3:12 pm
Watching “What the Green Movement got wrong”.
They were wrong on nuclear power, DDT and GM food…
_____
Green movement was wrong about DDT? Really?
Sorry, don’t think so…and as far as nuclear power, well, just talk to the people downwind from Chernobyl…the one’s still alive will tell you how great it is…
Well …they did..i watched the programme…do you know how many died?..do you want to tell us? Seems you have drunk deep from the fountain of disinformation…meh jog on!
Foxgoose says:
November 4, 2010 at 4:26 pm
I thought they already invented a warmbot that churned out repetitive and irrelevant chunks of green orthodoxy to thwart intelligent questions – it’s called Real Climate isn’t it?
oh you just beat me to it, i was going to say said bot was indistinguishable from…
Joe Romm
Foxgoose says:
November 4, 2010 at 4:26 pm
I thought they already invented a warmbot that churned out repetitive and irrelevant chunks of green orthodoxy to thwart intelligent questions – it’s called Real Climate isn’t it?
Around here it is called R.Gates, which I assume is short for Robot.Gates
R. Gates says: November 4, 2010 at 4:19 pm
“…and as far as nuclear power, well, just talk to the people downwind from Chernobyl…the one’s still alive will tell you how great it is…”
Please, … try to get a few facts right before commenting. There were 28 immediate fatalities at Chernobyl, and another 24 during the following decades. Here’s a summary of the UN Atomic Energy Commission reports
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/chernobyl/inf07.html
For an independent short discussion of the events leading to the accident, go here:
http://nuclearfissionary.com/2010/03/03/what-happened-at-chernobyl/
So 26 years ago, the world saw the quality of Soviet reactor design and operation. The RBMK model reactor had no containment vessel, as all non-Soviet power reactors had, and all modern designs have. About as impressive as soviet automobiles. The operators manually overrode the safety features and ran a test they knew was unstable. That one “accident” in a world of more than 400 operating nuclear power plants, and the industry is still statistically safer than the coal or oil or hydropower industries. There were 4 units at the Chernobyl site and the other 3 ran for years before being shut down so that Ukraine could join the EU.
Furthermore, there are some epidemiologists who claim the total fatalities from the accident is a negative number. Yes, the cancer rate is lower downwind than the general population. Do a search on Zbiginew Jaworowski Chernobyl Folly (it’s a .pdf and I can’t link it).
Here’s a link to a report on the Taiwanese apartment complex that accidentally was built with steel contaminated with Cobalt-60, and not discovered for more than 10 years, Some reports show the cancer rate only 4% of the general population. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2477708/
Greenpeace has caused far more harm than good with their anti-nuke pseudoscience and just plain scaremongering baloney.
Chernobyl
Terrible what happened to those people, regardless of how many or few there were. That’s it, no more nuclear power plants.
Now hydro damns, they never burst and wipe out towns downriver do they? They do? OK, no more hydro damns.
Now oil is pretty safe, we can drill for oil. Oh right, that sour gas thing, deadly and kills everyone for miles and miles.
OK coal. No one ever dies from a coal accident right? Oh, right, just all those miners when the mine collapses, but other than that? What? Coal ash is radioactive? Worse than a nuclear reactor unless you install scrubbers? Can’t take that chance.
Seriously, I get a real snarl on when someone says “no nuclear, look what happened at Chernobyl”. ALL industries have accidents and the right response is not “shut it down” the right response is “how do we make it safer?”
In the case of Chernobyl the answer is don’t design a reactor where the rods fall into each other in the event of a failure, causing a melt down, and don’t, and I mean DON’T let some idiot scientist shut off the safety systems so he can run an experiment that exceeded the safety limits of the reactor. Three Mile Island was another bone head move, the safety systems started kicking in and the operators decided that the sensors must be wrong because nothing similar had ever happened before and bypassed them.
Monstrous mistakes with devastating consequences but very preventable and I submit that if you add up all the deaths ever in every energy industry and turn it into a deaths per petawatt hour you’ll find that nuclear isn’t even close to number 1.
So a programmer plies his trade to try and amplify his voice in public discourse. Time and effort probably better spent on working in support of the actual underlying research.
Heard about some bloke called Harry who is dealing with broken databases and a big ball of mud of Fortran scripts etc. Sounds like he could make use of a Good Samaritan programmer.
R. Gates: See
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/climatescience/attachments/folder/2000398240/item/list
IanM
R. Gates says:
November 4, 2010 at 4:19 pm
Fudsdad says:
November 4, 2010 at 3:12 pm
Watching “What the Green Movement got wrong”.
They were wrong on nuclear power, DDT and GM food…
_____
Green movement was wrong about DDT? Really?
Sorry, don’t think so…and as far as nuclear power, well, just talk to the people downwind from Chernobyl…the one’s still alive will tell you how great it is…
I hate the use of the term “climate change deniers”, which was used in the title. No one denies that the climate is changing. It has always been changing. The deniers don’t believe the climate is being changed by human produced CO2. Whenever the term “climate change denier” is used, a protest should be made and a request made to replace the term with “CO2 effect denier”.
The fact that the climate has always been changing is one of the proofs that man made CO2 is not the cause of climate change. To be called a “climate change denier” is a slur.
The Monty Python skit, the Argument Clinic comes to mind with Nigel Leck as Mr Vibrating.
Man: Oh look, this isn’t an argument.
Mr Vibrating: Yes it is.
Man: No it isn’t. It’s just contradiction.
Mr Vibrating: No it isn’t.
Man: It is!
Mr Vibrating: It is not.
Man: Look, you just contradicted me.
Mr Vibrating: I did not.
Man: Oh you did!!
Mr Vibrating: No, no, no.
Man: You did just then.
Mr Vibrating: Nonsense!
Man: Oh, this is futile!
Mr Vibrating: No it isn’t.
Man: I came here for a good argument.
Mr Vibrating: No you didn’t; no, you came here for an argument.
Man: An argument isn’t just contradiction.
Mr Vibrating: It can be.
Man: No it can’t. An argument is a connected series of statements intended to establish a proposition.
Mr Vibrating: No it isn’t.
Man: Yes it is! It’s not just contradiction.
Mr Vibrating: Look, if I argue with you, I must take up a contrary position.
Man: Yes, but that’s not just saying ‘No it isn’t.’
Mr Vibrating: Yes it is!
Man: No it isn’t!
Man: Argument is an intellectual process. Contradiction is just the automatic gainsaying of any statement the other person makes.
(short pause)
Mr Vibrating: No it isn’t.
davidmhoffer says: November 4, 2010 at 5:32 pm
“Monstrous mistakes with devastating consequences but very preventable and I submit that if you add up all the deaths ever in every energy industry and turn it into a deaths per petawatt hour you’ll find that nuclear isn’t even close to number 1.”
David: Here’s a link to a paper that shows just that.
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf06.html
The summary, in fatalities/TeraWatt-year is: Coal: 597, Natural Gas: 111, Hydro: 10,285, nuclear: 48
The numbers include mining, transportation, generation, and direct waste handling. The numbers do not include estimates for lung disease downwind of emitters. The reason the hydro number is high is the collapse of a few dams and flooding downstream. Coal is high because of the quantity of transportation needed.
Green movement was wrong about DDT? Really?
It depends whether or not you like Africans and Asians, I suppose.
[Said with considerable self-restraint.]
I think that Leck’s Bot is a great idea. The same sorts of arguments against AGW are constantly being made, despite the fact that they have been debunked. The people making them are not really thinking clearly, and the fact that a Bot can provide a reply that is to the point and backed with scientific literature is great.
If Anthony could show that the Bot is producing wrong or inappropriate, or misleading answers, he would have a case against this idea. Simply claiming that Skeptical Science is no good won’t pass. It does quote recent scientific literature as a counter to the GW skeptic’s claims.
So far, all I have seen as the case against Leck’s Bot amounts to cheerleading by GW skeptics for their side.
Twitter doesn’t always go to plan though:
Twitter backfires for Climate Camp
A day of mass action by the Climate Camp protesters showed how badly Twitter can go wrong
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/aug/24/twitter-backfires-climate-camp
Too much of a mouthful. I suggest Dioxide Dissident or Dioxide Deviationist (a subtle dig).
eadler says:
November 4, 2010 at 6:26 pm
————————-
eadler – I think that the arguments for the case of CAGW are trite, shallow, repetitive and easily reduced to tweet length. I believe a tweetbot to be completely capable of reproducing in entirety the sum of factual knowledge in favour of anthropogenic global warming and completely agree with you that it is a great idea.
It’s a fantastic way of showing off how hollow the argument is.
The Clippy cartoon is fantastic! LOL!
This is a very funny post. It’s absurd at so many levels. Who on earth would think CAGW could be debated on twitter? What and how long would it take to realise the ‘debate’ is with a bot? Why would anyone bother with twitter anyway? The basic philosophy -if one may call it a ‘philosophy’- behind twitter is absurd. M8, any1 with 1/2 brain should know that there is no reason why communication should be restricted to 160 characters. Is there a worldwide shortage of bandwith or what?
As for the twitter-bot, this indeed is the kind of mendacity right up Tim Lambert’s alley. Of all the pro-CAGW blogs I have visited, Lambert’s Deltoid has the most obnoxious set of commenters ever imaginable. The guy has a unique talent that attracts only the bad CAGW cultists, and extract the worst out of them. IMHO, the only skeptic that would visit Deltoid for a debate are the ones with a masachistic streak. If you have any self-respect, don’t visit Deltoid. Never whatsoever!
The one and only thread at Deltoid that I bothered to post anything on was late last year. That would also be the one and only time in my life that I ever visited a blog or a website for purposes of trolling, and I fr@kking loved it!
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/11/on_those_stolen_cru_emails.php#comment-2102934
David J Ameling said:
“The fact that the climate has always been changing is one of the proofs that man made CO2 is not the cause of climate change. ”
Nothing wrong here, except that CO2 has always been in the atmosphere changing climate.
In order for that to prove CO2 is not one of the causes of climate change would require proving that CO2 has never been in the atmosphere, quite a tall order I’m afraid.
I just pray that the left never changes their tactics. Look how well telling everyone “If you don’t support us, you are a racist moron.” worked for the Democrats. Stay the course Greenies!