[See the Update below. While the Tweets did in fact disappear from my view from one hour to the next using the same method to view them as before, and it certainly appeared Mr. McKibben has deleted Tweets, that wasn’t the case, it turns out to be an odd nuance of Twitter. An honest mistake that Mr. McKibben also agrees with in his comment below. This is a good lesson for future examinations of this short form communications.- Anthony]
I witnessed something interesting this morning. I composed my first ever Tweet to Bill McKibben and some of his buddies to alert them to this article: July hottest ever, but U.S. tornado count – lowest since 1951: ‘poisoned weather’ meme falsified by Nature.
Here’s my Tweet:
Surprisingly, while at coffee with friends this AM, I got a flurry of Twitter responses on my phone, including two from McKibben himself. But when I went home to write about them, they had disappeard from Bill McKibben’s Twitter feed and from mine. The “view conversation” balloon, indicating responses, had disappeared. Fortunately, I was able to take a photo of them on my phone, because I had not closed or updated the Twitter app:
Note that McKibben mentions that it is “not worth the tradeoff” in reference to linking tornadoes to #poisonedweather.
Here is the screen grab I made this AM, before going to coffee, showing the direct Tweet I made to him and To Brad Johnson and Stephen Lacey of ClimateProgress/ThinkProgress.
Here’s a response I made to Bill’s mention that it is “not worth the tradeoff”:
I suggested that if he really believed what he was tweeting, he should write an op-ed about it. He gets some serious press opportunities that I do not.
And a couple of minutes later, that was gone too:
All of this deletion of Tweets reminds me of Phil Jones and his deletion of emails before Climategate showed the world what sort of person he is.
It also reminds me of the second to last email Bob Phelan sent me before he died:
Bob was right, we aren’t dealing with honest people, as demonstrated so well by Bill McKibben today.
UPDATE: Commenter Sou points out that the Tweets by Bill McKibben responding to my initial one that I pointed out as having been “disappeared” are still available via direct links. Yet, they are not in my Twitter feed nor are they in Mr. McKibben’s Twitter feed as far as I can tell. What is clear though is that my Tweets to him have been removed from his Twitter feed, and thus I suspect his replies to me became orphans without a thread.
To be accurate then, since Mr McKibben’s Tweets still exist but mine do not in his feed, I have changed the title of this post from:
Bill McKibben disappears his own commentary on #poisonedweather
to
Bill McKibben disappears commentary on #poisonedweather
UPDATE2: Bill McKibben weighs in with a comment which I’ve reproduced here to be fair. Seeing his explanation, and to be accurate, and knowing that Twitter’s nuances can often be confusing and arbitrary, I’m changing the title yet again to:
Twitter disappears Bill McKibben commentary on #poisonedweather
I managed to leave this response originally in the other thread about this subject. So here it is again in case anyone missed it–thanks
As the commenter above points out with links, I didn’t disappear or delete anything. I think what happens is that you may not be following me on twitter and so the replies don’t show up on your stream. Here’s a link to the phenomenon, which is apparently common: http://www.voiceoftech.com/swhitley/index.php/2010/05/those-lost-twitter-replies/
It’s also possibly something as simple as turning on the “All” instead of “No Replies” thing next to the “Tweets” button on your twitter home page
At any rate, they’re still up there, and have been the whole time
Anyway, here’s what I was trying to say in those tweets, in case anyone else is having the same problem.
1) I was aware that July was remarkably low for tornadoes, apparently because the heat was so intense and the drought so deep–in fact, I’d tweeted about this fact two days before your post
2) I was quoting Jeff Masters as saying fewer tornadoes was not a good tradeoff for this kind of drought and heat. Here’s a link to the article that says both of the above http://www.heraldandnews.com/article_90e490d2-e419-11e1-84eb-001a4bcf887a.html
3) In response to the other comments above, I’m not actually advising the Romney campaign
and 4) I will in fact be debating publicly on the question of climate risk on Nov. 5–the Center for Industrial Progress challenged me, and I accepted. http://www.masterresource.org/2012/07/debate-350-orgs-bill-mckibben-vs-cips-alex-epstein/ As you can see, the commenters there are convinced that my clock wil be cleaned, and perhaps they’re right.
Finally, let me just state for the record: I don’t think you were dishonest in this post–it was something to do with the way Twitter works internally, or the way you’d configured your account. Nor do I doubt your sincerity in general. I disagree with your position, and I think that if we stick with it and do nothing about global warming it will do great damage to creation, but as I’ve pointed out publicly, I think you’re an able advocate and have fought with great effect. http://www.tomdispatch.com/archive/175549/
Let me add as well that I was sad to read of the passing of your colleague Mr. Phelan, and moved by the tributes to him.
==============================================================
To quote Bob Phelan, in what was probably his best ever inline comment as moderator, and certainly applicable to your response:
“[REPLY: Your restraint, undoubtedly in the face of intolerable provocation, is appreciated. -REP]”
Twitters nuances did do one good thing today though, it caused us to communicate -Anthony
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Thing is, the tweets from Bill McKibben are still on Twitter. Apart from the weirdness of an entire blog post about someone (not) deleting their tweets, it looks as if you don’t understand how Twitter works. Scroll down from here:
https://twitter.com/#!/search/%40wattsupwiththat
To see the tweet here:
https://twitter.com/billmckibben/status/235017486729371648
And this one:
https://twitter.com/billmckibben/status/235017746520371201
The tweet he refers to is this one:
https://twitter.com/billmckibben/status/234368313264861184
(As for July being the hottest in the USA – the climate reference network didn’t exist in the 1930s so it can’t be used to compare it with the 30’s temps. Heard the one about the folly of trying to compare apples and oranges?)
REPLY: Thanks for that, I spent a lot of time trying to locate the Tweets that had been in my feed, and more time trying to locate them in McKibben’s feed. For reasons that make no sense in this situation, they are still not visible now using the same methods I used before. But, I’ll make a update/correction since they are in fact visible via direct links.
As for the apples/oranges thing. The reverse is also true, the USHCN/COOP network of today used for that record determination is not the same as the network of the 1930’s, and therein lies the rub. There’s no good temporal homogeneity of the COOP network. Stations closed, moved, change equipment, get adjusted, etc. – Anthony
Anthony, you should have a new tab at the top… “Inconvenient Tweets”.
Does this mean you’re going to allow the fr-word in comments?
[Reply: WordPress, not Anthony or WUWT, screens specific words [such as “fraud” and “Nazi”. We don’t know all the words, as WP keeps them classified. Comments with forbidden words automatcally go into the Spam folder, so there is a delay in posting them. ~dbs, mod.]
I managed to leave this response originally in the other thread about this subject. So here it is again in case anyone missed it–thanks
As the commenter above points out with links, I didn’t disappear or delete anything. I think what happens is that you may not be following me on twitter and so the replies don’t show up on your stream. Here’s a link to the phenomenon, which is apparently common: http://www.voiceoftech.com/swhitley/index.php/2010/05/those-lost-twitter-replies/
It’s also possibly something as simple as turning on the “All” instead of “No Replies” thing next to the “Tweets” button on your twitter home page
At any rate, they’re still up there, and have been the whole time
Anyway, here’s what I was trying to say in those tweets, in case anyone else is having the same problem.
1) I was aware that July was remarkably low for tornadoes, apparently because the heat was so intense and the drought so deep–in fact, I’d tweeted about this fact two days before your post
2) I was quoting Jeff Masters as saying fewer tornadoes was not a good tradeoff for this kind of drought and heat. Here’s a link to the article that says both of the above http://www.heraldandnews.com/article_90e490d2-e419-11e1-84eb-001a4bcf887a.html
3) In response to the other comments above, I’m not actually advising the Romney campaign
and 4) I will in fact be debating publicly on the question of climate risk on Nov. 5–the Center for Industrial Progress challenged me, and I accepted. http://www.masterresource.org/2012/07/debate-350-orgs-bill-mckibben-vs-cips-alex-epstein/ As you can see, the commenters there are convinced that my clock wil be cleaned, and perhaps they’re right.
Finally, let me just state for the record: I don’t think you were dishonest in this post–it was something to do with the way Twitter works internally, or the way you’d configured your account. Nor do I doubt your sincerity in general. I disagree with your position, and I think that if we stick with it and do nothing about global warming it will do great damage to creation, but as I’ve pointed out publicly, I think you’re an able advocate and have fought with great effect. http://www.tomdispatch.com/archive/175549/
Let me add as well that I was sad to read of the passing of your colleague Mr. Phelan, and moved by the tributes to him.
Thanks Bill for weighing in, I’ve made an update, see the bottom of the article. I’ll elevate your comment to the bottom of the post as well for full visibility.
And thank you for the kind words about Mr. Phelan. You are the only prominent warmist that has offered such condolences.
Well, okay. But nothing disappeared anywhere, so really the headline and indeed the whole story doesn’t really work. No need to get rid it, but perhaps just a straightforward acknowledgement at the top that I didn’t “disappear” or delete anything would be good. The tweets are in my feed, btw. (My guess is that if you switch your setting to “All” from “No replies” you’ll see them in yours as well).
REPLY: I’ll look again and advise. – Anthony
REPLY2: Yes I’d checked this before. https://twitter.com/billmckibben/with_replies still doesn’t show my original Tweet to you, but it will reveal that Tweet if I then visit click the conversation button. That’s backwards, as that was the thread starter Tweet but not your fault, it is a nuance of Twitter. I’ll make an additional note. – Anthony
I for one will be rather interested in how the debate comes out.
I see it is being hosted at Duke University. It would be doubly interesting if Robert G Brown were to attend and be allowed to ask a few questions. My expectation is that BOTH sides would need to be on their toes…
I just don’t get Twitter. It appears to be composd of a succession of incomplete sentences.
Ain’t Twitter great eh?
Its disjointed, truncated, arcane nature makes it the perfect medium for promulgating the Post-Normal ‘s’cientific vision.
Do you ‘follow’ me?
McKibben’s been one of Romney’s most outspoken critics, but he and Romm recently defended Romney in response to an Obama pro-coal campaign ad:
http://www.care2.com/causes/obama-slams-romney-for-having-admitted-coal-plants-kill-people.html
Fear of the truth, eh? Interesting idea. It seems to make them happy. Does that mean they have a euphoria from euphobia? Or do they merely suffer from chronic coprocephalosis? ;->
Well, well, well.
From the link that McKibben himself posted:
“I challenged McKibben to a debate, offering him $10,000 and an audience at Duke University. To his credit, after some haggling over the topic, he accepted.”
So he believes so strongly in his position that he is willing to debate it. For $10,000.00.
Apparently it pays pretty good to be a warmist journalist.
Bill McKibben:
Thank you, that was a real classy reply. Bill, you’ve just gone up a lot in my estimation. And you’ll go up even more, if you really are willing to debate the science publicly with some of us.
Your whole tone of reply is what is respected here. Sadly it is very unlike so many others of your scientific persuasion, like NASA GISS man Jan P Perlwitz for instance, who came here, was rude, outed, denied his identity, then went off in a huff to cause trouble.
[snip – by policy, WUWT does not publish derogatory snark]
Replying to David M. Hoffer above–actually, the $10k will be paid to 350.org. I’m an unpaid volunteer with 350.org. You really don’t need to demean people you disagree with. And to Lucy Skywalker–thanks for your words, and as I said, I’ve accepted a challenge to debate on Nov. 5, and am told it will be online. Not a great debater, but will do my best to make it informative–bill
Bill is someone who doesn’t understand science and so has people do what they call “art” such as writing letters to mother nature about how they FEEL about global warming (as was done in Stowe VT outside of the Helen Day Art Center), but ask him to make even on scientific argument and he is lost. He has no credentials at all to be talking about anything having to do with science.
Curiosity got the better of me and I listened to the interview outlined in Michael Mann’s tweet.
I would suggest Bill starts with a lemonade stand to learn the basics of economics.