At Shub Niggurath Climate blog, he’s done a follow up to his first essay on the ongoing issues with integrity that the oxymoronically named blog “skepticalscience” has. Excerpts are posted below. I’ll point out the John Cook has not responded to my modest proposal yet, and even today, he allows the denigrating word to be used. It appears he has no scruples in the use of language people see as offensive, nor any scruples when it comes to the keeping the integrity of invited commentary intact.
Here’s Shub’s findings:
“…resist the temptation to reply to [trolls].
Instead, do what the troll hates most — simply remove the comment.”
The recent censorship episode at the skepticalscience.com brings an often overlooked aspect to the forefront. The target of deletion Prof Roger Pielke Sr, runs a blog. The actions of Skepticalscience were revealed because he posted them there.
What if a scientist or a lay person, interacted with websites like Skepticalscience and did not have a blog?
Consider what Skepticalscience did in reader Paul and AnthonySG1′s cases. In 2007, the website had an article explaining Antarctica’s cooling —a thorn in the pitch for a clean story about global warming— as an “uniquely” regional phenomenon. It talked of how ‘Antarctica was overall losing ice’, citing a peer-reviewed paper Velicogna et al 2003 for support.
The response in the comments section from Cook’s readers was simple: ‘Antarctic ice is increasing. You cannot take a paper that has three years worth of data and conclude that the continent was losing ice’. They cited references that Skepticalscience neglected – which showed an overall increase in Antarctic sea ice.
The rewriting that John Cook undertook is now recounted at Bishop Hill.
In the first step Cook changed the entire article, taking off from the criticisms. Next, he deleted his original ‘responses’, and added new ones that made it appear as though these commenters did not know what they were talking about.
The rewriting of Skepticalscience history
After this was openly revealed, John Cook offered explanations for his actions. It went something like this: ‘I accidentally mistook my readers to have responded to my updated article. Thinking that was indeed the case, their comments sounded silly to me. So I ended up adding responses to guide new readers’
A closer examination of the threads on Skepticalscience, reveals a different picture. Let us begin by examining a few examples to get a sense of what these might be.
Let us start with the thread “Climate models are unreliable”. As is known, the website portrays skeptical arguments as such simple statements and offers rebuttals. The article was published sometime late 2007.
In July 2008, ’poptech’ left a comment which questioned assertions made in the article. He quoted scientists at the Realclimate consensus blog:
Comment from reader ‘poptech’ – deleted in 2011From mid-2008, Poptech’s comment remained intact on the thread till as recently as Feb 2011 . At some point afterward, the comment was deleted. Another of poptech’s comments upthread, to which three commenters responded (example) was deleted, leaving the responses hanging mid-air.
…
Take the exchange between ‘Adamski’ and ‘chris’ (comments 36, 37, 38, 39 originally):
Comments from ‘Adamski’ and ‘chris’ as they appeared in Sept 2009
Nov 2009 – the Adamski-chris conversation moves up due to bulk deletions! Comment #37 from chris goes missing
Feb 2010 – Comment #37 makes a comeback but chris has lost his name.
Sept 2011 – the comments as they are, in their final positionWhat is more: as can be seen from the screen captures above, Cook goes into the comments and deletes commenters’ references to each others’ posts. This is no computer glitch and it demonstrates he knew what he was doing. Nor does this square with the explanations Cook provided at Bishop Hill. . Again, as before, parts of a conversation are deleted and altered in such a way, the end result looks like something that never happened.
…
Why does John Cook do this?
The deletions carried out by Cook don’t make sense as an exercise in moderation. They seem driven by an ardent need to present a clean and neat view of global warming. Of a need to reassure that no intelligent discussions exist, and all possible questions have (long) been answered.
The structure of Cook’s website appears to push things in his direction. In the beginning, pages are born as undemanding and easy arguments. Cook then seems to realize that the skeptical arguments are more involved and complex than the simplistic picture he presents. He updates the same pages with more detail. But messy comments have accumulated below the line, sticking out like sore thumbs. The ‘broad picture’ that Cook so wants to convey is sullied.
In the meantime fresh readers, oblivious to the confusing mish-mash of claim and counter-claim, arrive in greater numbers on the shores of the global warming debate. Journalists, policy-makers and other influential opinion-makers land up everyday at skepticalscience, looking for a quick grasp on the consensus position in climate issues. How does one protect these newcomers?
Cook’s solution: the inconvenient comments go flying out the window.
One clearly sees that the mission of the website underwent a change ~end of 2009. In the earlier years, Cook seems welcoming to comments. His interest it seemed was to point out findings from scientific papers, that he thought contradicted climate skeptics’ claims. By November 2009, Cook had arrived at a dramatically different viewpoint. He saw ‘global warming skepticism’ as a sort of a mental illness or a psychiatric condition, with the afflicted being beyond any hope. Psychologic diagnoses permeates his thinking from that point on.
Cook voices his thoughts on the shift in a post in November 2009. It is hard to fathom, why, anybody who ran a website and worked hard at attracting and nurturing an online community, would commit the most fundamental of indiscretions with his readers’ comments – deleting and moulding them at his own whim.
As seen in his response above, Cook viewed the comments section of his website topics as a resource, to be used for ‘educating’ the public.
From there on, editing, deleting and moulding the historical record probably did not seem any wrong to Cook.
More here: Skepticalscience – Rewriting History
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To Lucy’s “Hypocritical Pleonastic Oxymoron”, I would refer back the the earlier comment by Izen who says:
“Self-proclaimed ‘Skeptics’ seem to be exquistely sensitive, but hypocritical, in their objection to the ‘D’ word while using ‘warmist’ ‘alarmist’ ‘Fraudulent’ and accusing scientists of falsifying data for funding.”
Do these warmist bloggers understand what they are doing when they adjust history, amend posts or delete arguments against their own position? Convncing others of your own position is a case of one head at a time, and the only people convinced by deletions etc are those already convinced.
My first encounter with the process was at Tamino’s blog: someone asked a question about a cause (I forget the details) and I said something like ‘I don’t know the answer to that. However, if I am allowed to speculate… etc etc, suggestions of what might be the cause other than CO2’. The second part was deleted and Tamino’s comment was ‘typical denier, ask them for suggestions and they haven’t any answers.’ What does he think he proves by this? Does it make him bigger, more dominant, does it attract hordes of gorgeous females, bring in lots of moolah, enhance his manhood? No. All it does is make him feel less threatened for a moment, then it’s back to worrying, feeling insecure. Does it trouble his conscience? Who knows.
I don’t often visit John Cook’s site, it reminds me too strongly of the Sustainable Development farm in Wales where you got asked questions and sent round a maze — only when you gave the right answers are you allowed to get to the centre. The right answers, BTW, did not include using nuclear power to create a prosperous lifestyle, which was when I realised that GreenPeace is just make-work for CND members made redundant by the end of the Cold War.
Perhaps I should check and see if they’ve come up with any better explanation of how we attribute the rise in CO2 levels to anthropogenic causes when the error bars on sources and sinks are so huge. Or perhaps not.
JF
In the past I have made comment on his site in the good faith that I could have my say. Eventually I was so annoyed with their moderation policy of deleting posts that disagreed with the science where importantly they disagreed with SkS moderators (often misguided) understanding of the science…that I stopped posting there entirely.
Now it seems they’re actually altering the threads to remove context of posts to make them seem illogical. What’s next, altering the posts themselves?
Agnostic, could you please provide further details (links, etc.) so anyone can look at the narrative that you are describing ?
fredb says:
“To Lucy’s ‘Hypocritical Pleonastic Oxymoron’, I would refer back the the earlier comment by Izen who says:
‘Self-proclaimed “Skeptics” seem to be exquistely sensitive, but hypocritical, in their objection to the ‘D’ word while using ‘warmist’ ‘alarmist’ ‘Fraudulent’ and accusing scientists of falsifying data for funding.’ ”
So many errors in one sentence.
First, skeptical scientists are the only honest kind of scientists. Putting quote marks around the word skeptics is simply a tactic to try and marginalize the only honest scientists in this debate. And they are not “self-proclaimed” if they are simply asking for transparency per the scientific method – which is routinely denied by the purveyors of the CAGW scam, such as the mendacious John Cook.
Next, the hypocritical alarmist crowd consists of the same people who support the stonewalling of code, data, methodologies and metadata supposedly verifying the CO2=CAGW claims. “Trust us” is antiethical to the scientific method. Back your hypothesis with verifiable facts and evidence. Otherwise, you’re just trying to hide the pea under the thimble.
Finally, “accusing scientists of falsifying data for funding” is 100% verifiable: the Harry_read_me file, leaked along with the climategate emails, openly admitted that many years of temperature data was missing. The programmer rhetorically asks himself what he should do, and answers himself by stating that he will fabricate the missing data. Temperature data is regularly altered in such a way as to make it look more alarming. That results in increased funding. Blink gifs showing the alterations of the temperature record available on request. Ask, and I’ll post examples.
So yes, fredb, the climate alarmists constantly falsify data. That is fraud, no? And they do it for money. Our money. They lie for increased funding. Izen is just being an apologist for scientific misconduct.
It is often said that history is written by the victors at the expense of the vanquished.
Since “mainstream climate science” seems to get everything backwards, well …
Notice that the November 10 date is before Climategate, so the SkS revisionism policy was independently created, and was not initially learned from the Climategate documents.
Why to waste time with someone who is and also looks like a tw*t.
SkepticalScience is acting more and more like the acronym that may not be mentioned.
Manipulate, Massage, Mangle, Molest, Misplace, Masquerade…seems to be the AGW Mantra.
Dr. Dave says:
October 11, 2011 at 1:28 am
What I’m talking about is the great outcry from the left that there aren’t enough women and minorities in fields like physics, chemistry, engineering, medicine, pharmacy, etc.
—
For the same reason NOW invented the “one free grope” rule when Pres. Clinton was accussed of fondling a staffer. Patricia Ireland actually said in Clinton’s defense, that after the gropping, the staffer objected, and Clinton stopped. So there was no reason to investigate further.
For many on the left (perhaps even most) membership in the clique is sufficient to immunize one against all criticism.
A concern troll is a class of troll that pretends to be “concerned” about the damage another group is doing to itself. Then use that “concern” to launch into an attack on the other sides position.
On a political site, a concern troll might start by saying that he has been a life long Republican, but he’s concerned that recent attacks by Republicans on say Social Security are going to damage the Republicans in the coming election. Then launch into a full throated attack on anyone who dares to say that Social Security needs to be changed.
A concern troll claims to be a member of the other team, but spends all his time attacking the other team.
The Ministry of Truth is responsible for ensuring history is aligned with current requirements.
He who controls the past, controls the present. He who controls the present controls the future.
Actually, that is wrong. What trolls hate the most is to be ignored. Censoring them does nothing because they achieved the desired result of getting a response out of you.
I too have been discombobulated at skepticalscience. Many of my comments there are gone down the memory hole. No great loss really, I’m just a argumentative lay person with skeptical POV.
But what I found most disturbing is that the Original Posts by John Cook’s team had a way of modify themselves after the fact rendering your arguments against them open to attack as straw men since the facts of the arguments you were arguing against had shifted substantially. These changes in the OP were never announced or acknowledge and the SS home team would gleefully bash arguments that address the now secretly modified OP as denialist misinformation or idiocy. And, of course, such troll-like behaviour was also an excuse for wholesale deletion of one’s comments.
But one thread I participated in still exists, probably because they figured they whooped my bootie.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/Latest-GRACE-data-on-Greenland-ice-mass.html
At comment 28, I protest— “In post # 18 I tried to introduce evidence that the MWP was global in extent and as warm or warmer than today but it got snipped out by our moderator…”
The link I thought crucial to my argument the SS moderators deleted post haste was:
http://pages.science-skeptical.de/MWP/MedievalWarmPeriod.html
Plus I presented evidence that it had been warmer deep in the southern hemisphere as well, but that was also snipped, even though the whole basis of their claim to modern “unprecedented warming” was that the MWP was a mild local phenomena.
http://climatechange.umaine.edu/Research/Expeditions/2006/seals/index.html
Later, as the deck chairs were again re-arranged to render my arguments straw men I commented at #38:
“There was a post on this site that suggested if these trends not only continued on this very short slope but accelerate exponential then Greenland’s icecap will be gone in 65 years! To be fair the post mentioned that was unlikely, but still thought the possibility was worth a mention. However, the post has been modified over the weekend. Down the memory hole! Anyway, that’s where I got the idea that someone here might possibly believe in the imminent failure of Greenland’s icecap….within our children’s lifetime! Silly me.”
But the SS tag team quickly found a comment, not an OP, that seemed to plug the memory hole. The point being, I suppose, that SS had never headlined a claim that Greenland might totally melt in 65 years, although I swear I was deeply inspired by the insanity of that claim. Hey, maybe, I’m just losing my mind.
Exhausted from trying to field a rational debate in an ever shifting house of mirrors I figured my time would be more usefully spent changing my ute’s oil filter…
He’s a pirate. What do you expect?
Readers might be interested in the current SkS topic ‘Pielke Sr. and SkS Warming Estimates’ where Pielke Sr is engaging in a largely cordial scientific discussion with the regulars. I can’t help but feel it could all fall apart in the blink of an eye.
Shub,
Thank you for posting here with your wonderful article.
John
Can’t see much response to all this clattering racket over at Skeptical Science, why do you suppose that is? Pull yourselves together you people!
No surprises here. There is clear evidence that they have done the same long-after-the-fact deletions of comments at Real Climate.
What is weird about it is that the general public may or may not fully understand ‘the science’, but they sure as heck understand duplicitous behavior… and nobody believes what a liar says. Simple honesty and personal credibility (in all matters) are permanently joined at the hip; you can’t have the latter without the former. When trying to support your desired political outcomes is more important to you than your personal honesty, you have lost all public credibility…. and it is hard to recover that. Skeptical science is toast.
Cook is part of the Social Club. Unfortunately students and others who lack expertise quote his blog as a source (see the 10 fingerprints, for example) of “proof”. He has generally made statements, not research. Then they pat each other on the back.
“By November 2009, Cook had arrived at a dramatically different viewpoint. He saw ‘global warming skepticism’ as a sort of a mental illness or a psychiatric condition, with the afflicted being beyond any hope. Psychologic diagnoses permeates his thinking from that point on.”
This would be the point at which Cook subconsciously realized that he could not effectively counter the best skeptical arguments. This inability apparently caused him great psychic discord. From that point on he begins projecting this psychic discord upon those who continue to cause him such distress. I suspect he is beyond any hope.
Well, if nothing else, all this hoopla will keep him busy editing his life away. That should count for something. Although I can’t think of a worse way to spend your life, so really it counts for a lot of something. Now don’t anyone tell him I said that. He might close shop and melt into the background noise of the universe and spoil everything. Shhhhhhh…
PS: Life is all about teaching and learning and never knowing which we’re doing while we’re doing it. Whoever invented this system sure had a real sense of humor.
In response to JSmith
http://www.skepticalscience.com/monckton-myth-7-snowjob.html
Here is my first tentative foray into engaging on the issue. I twice tried to respond to the posters in particular this:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/monckton-myth-7-snowjob.html#38780
“And if future when submitting graphs, please use the appropriate scale for the axes, in you case the y-axis.”
To which I tried to reply along the lines of “But scaled in the way you have, you lose any sense of scale of the decline of extent. Using my graph you can still make out the decline, but it puts it into context.”
I have subsequently learnt about the climate shift (and shifts in general) that occurred at the end of the 80s and that appears to be occurring now, so now the jump that I talk about in the posts makes more sense to me.
Either way, the discussion was fairly moot. No one really disputes that the climate varies, and that warming is a part of that variance. Therefore, if the world does warm, snow extent is likely to decrease. What is disputed is the principle driver of the warming, or attribution. Also that snow extent declining is a positive feedback for global warming (whatever the attribution). In recent years that appears to be doubtful as even AGW advocates are suggesting that increased snow fall might be a feedback of warming as it provides more moisture in the air which can then precipitate as snow.
And before it’s mentioned, total snowfall does not tell the full story either. For snow to contribute to albedo, it is its extent that is important, not how much of it there is. What would be interesting to know is how greater snow fall can prolong the extent, because deeper snow will take longer to melt away entirely.
“One clearly sees that the mission of the website underwent a change ~end of 2009. ”
The timing of this alleged change is consistent with the timing of the Hacked CRU e-mails, the failure of COP 15 to produce desired agreements, and the unusually cold and snowy winter of 2009.
Most millennialist movements reach a point when their timetable for global change is clearly not being met, and their message is being consistently ignored by outsiders. Despite this rejection they continue to trust that they are spreading their urgent message. The resulting disconnect is referred to as cognitive dissonance. It can be indicated by a change in the movement’s attitude or rhetoric.