I posted this on the Daily Lew Issue 5 as an update, but I decided it was so telling of the state of mind for the SkS crowd that it needed its own separate post. This also happens to be post 7000 on WUWT.
I had pretty much ignored the SkS forum dump when it was happening, thinking that perhaps they were being treated unfairly, but since John Cook has gone a bridge too far now with this Lewandowsky “moon landing survey” mess and his association with it, I no longer feel the need to hold back on what is going on behind the scenes over there.
Here is Glenn Tamblyn (Skeptical Science author/moderator) secretly conversing with his SkS pals on their off limits forum and saying “we need a conspiracy to save humanity”. The Viet Cong comparison is a nice touch too. There’s talk of convening a “war council” too.
And this isn’t about science or personal careers and reputations any more. This is a fight for survival. Our civilisations survival. .. We need our own anonymous (or not so anonymous) donors, our own think tanks…. Our Monckton’s … Our assassins.
Anyone got Bill Gates’ private number, Warren Buffett, Richard Branson? Our ‘side’ has got to get professional, ASAP. We don’t need to blog. We need to network. Every single blog, organisation, movement is like a platoon in an army. ..This has a lot of similarities to the Vietnam War….And the skeptics are the Viet Cong… Not fighting like ‘Gentlemen’ at all. And the mainstream guys like Gleick don’t know how to deal with this. Queensberry Rules rather than biting and gouging.
..So, either Mother Nature deigns to give the world a terrifying wake up call. Or people like us have to build the greatest guerilla force in human history. Now. Because time is up…Someone needs to convene a council of war of the major environmental movements, blogs, institutes etc. In a smoke filled room (OK, an incense filled room) we need a conspiracy to save humanity.
[As quoted by Geoff Chambers in this Bishop Hill thread. http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2012/3/26/opengate-josh-158.html?currentPage=2#comments ]
Yet climate skeptics are being painted as conspiracy theory nutters by the very same people who say “a conspiracy to save humanity” is needed.
Gleick was fighting with “Queensberry Rules” when he assumed a fake identity and stole documents from Heartland?
Riiiight.
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For the excitable people that get upset about such things as this post, it is worth pointing out that the SkS “secret” forum was left wide open, and Cook blames himself No hack or ‘Gleick Queensberryness’ was needed, also from BH by poster David who captured this SkS announcement on 23 February 2012 by Cook himself:
Got an email from Brian P this morning saying that the whole forum was publicly available to him, even when he wasn’t logged in. I checked and this was true.A little panicky, I investigated and worked out that all the permission levels of each forum had been set down to zero. Normally, they’re set so only authors can access most of them, except the translator forum is also accessible to translators. Strangely though, there is an admin forum that only admins can access and that wasn’t set to zero – it was still set so only admins can access it.
I have no idea how this happened. Several possibilities come to mind. First, I did it by accident when I was screwing around with the database sometime. Someone with admin access (there are about half a dozen SkSers with this access) made the change. Or we were hacked in some way and the hacker changed the levels. None of the options seem likely to me but the most likely is human error on my part although the fact that the admin forum was still set at admin level belies some kind of blanket wiping of all levels.
So I’m a little freaked out – it’s not knowing how this happened that has me most worried. Has anyone been looking at the forum and how long has this been available? But I’ve been procrastinating some of those security measures that have been suggested to me and as soon as I get to work this morning, am going to implement some of those measures.
UPDATE: It gets worse.
Steve McIntyre points out the wholesale deletion of over 50 of Tom Fuller’s comments at Lewandowsky’s blog today (after they had been in place for days) and made this comment:
Steve McIntyre: Posted Sep 15, 2012 at 1:43 PM
Re: Iain McQueen (Sep 15 13:28),
In the secret SkS forum, a member of the SkS squadron stated that “McIntyre must go down”. In another post, another SkS squadron member fantasized about ripping out Watts’ throat as follows:
Sometimes you just want to let loose and scream about how you want to take those motherfucking arseholes, those closed-minded bigotted genocidal pieces of regurgitated dog shit and do unspeakable violence to their bodies and souls for what they are doing to the safety of what and who we all hold dear. (Ain’t a lack of a moderation policy a cleansing and liberating thing?)…
Work out what you are best suited too and do that. But be able to distance yourself enough from your personal reactions to also see the bigger picture of the entire war and contribute to framing that broad campaign – “We need to focus on this and this and this. But my personal contribution will be to ripe Anthony Watts’ throat out – metaphorically of course.”
Such nice people, those SkS authors, contributors, and moderators.
So… They are going to do even more of what put me on to their hoax in the first place! Yeah, that will work. NOT! But of course most of these gullible fools don’t realize it is a hoax, do they?
I’ve been training on call of duty, bring on the zombies!!
All joking aside, are these people just letting off a bit of steam or are they actually thinking of perpetrating violence, is this where the police are asked to step in?
Defend us from would-be altruists intent on saving humanity;
we can defend ourselves from enemies and friends.
“Or people like us have to build the greatest guerrilla force in human history.”
Seems more fitting: Or alarmists like us have to fabricate Gore’s Monkey Farce in Mann’s narrative.
Kasuha says:……
Most software, if you inadvertantly or on purpose reset permissions to default, will leave Admin privileges at a higher level. Admin is usually restricted by default so no, hacking is not more or less likely in this scenario.
Thanks Anthony – no secret forum!. Good thing they just want to ripe your throat and not rip it. 🙂
This kind of military stuff is all very childish. He clearly never quite got over playing with toy soldiers when he was a kid. It shows desperation because they are losing the rational scientific debate.
They have forgotten what science is if they ever really knew. Perhaps a good explanation of science is that made by one of the most brilliant and more importantly, creative scientists of the 20th century:
“…….a way of avoiding the disease ( of all types of prejudices, and strange and odd beliefs) was discovered. This is to doubt that what is being passed from the past is in fact true, and to try to find out ab initio again from experience what the situation is, rather than trusting the experience of the past in the form in which it is passed down.
“And that is what science is: the result of the discovery that it is worthwhile rechecking by new direct experience, and not necessarily trusting the experience from the past. I see it that way. That is my best definition………
“It should not be “science has shown” but “this experiment, this effect, has shown.” And you have as much right as anyone else, upon hearing about the experiments–but be patient and listen to all the evidence–to judge whether a sensible conclusion has been arrived at.”
Feynman of course.
When Glenn Tamblin and his kiddy pals want to play soldiers and write silly things like “..this isn’t about science…” they should be reminded that it is only about science and the evolution of human knowledge and understanding.
They are “…dogmatists, categorists, absolutists, “know-alls”; they must be fanatics, intolerant; when they meet others of their kind, a fight must follow, etc. They do not want to think, they are not interested to investigate, for why should they? They “know it all,” they are self-satisfied in their ignorance, they “know” that they “know all,” which is all there is to know about it.
“They will persecute others who think. For them thinking and science are crimes, or, at best, unnecessary waste of time; and, if forced to think, it is a serious pain to them. They take everything for granted, critical thought and the spirit of inquiry is entirely foreign to their makeup.”
Alfred Korzybski writing about Time-Binding.
The Viet Cong comparison is telling, perhaps one day those fighting the sceptics will share the enlightment of Robert McNamara and wonder too wether they could be prosecuted as war criminals.
I wonder what the total membership is in the SkS ultra-secret society. I had whopping total of 7 referred visitors today from sksforum.org, visiting the post Anthony had linked yeasterday:
http://bobtisdale.wordpress.com/2012/09/14/climate-skeptics-forget-the-obvious-intent-of-the-website-skepticalscience/
Maybe there are 3.5 members and each one visited twice. Or maybe only one visited but it took him 7 times to grasp the content.
There is a conspiracy to save humanity. It is found on skeptic blogs and other sites, where we fight daily to save fellow humans from the gullibility that arises from ignorance, to save them from those who believe they must be the leaders of the inherently stupid human species.
And we do it all while appearing to be just discussing the weather. Especially when all we are doing is discussing the weather.
It’s no wonder they think we are all insidious and deceitful. Why should we be any different than they?
(Cue Tears for Fears “Everybody wants to rule the world”…)
Must be a fun day for moderating as using the “con-” word automatically sends a comment to the spam bucket (and I wish I would have remembered that).
I’ve gotta admit that I’m just enjoying the hell out of this exposure of the pure rottenness at the diseased heart of the Watermelon “Liberal” fascist movement.
Every time I’ve lauded the proposition of taking these diseased hijos de putas out into the woods with a shovel and coming back without ’em, I’ve gotten kvetching about how nasty I am.
Well, ain’t we got big fun when we find out just how murderous are their genuine intentions when it comes to us?
J. Philip Peterson: “Where is the WUWT pals off limits forum?”
Anthony Watts: “Reply to J. Peterson: there is no secret forum on WUWT”
Think J.P. has got wind of WUWT’s Confidential-Contrarian room funded by BIG Oil?
Just in case, time to change the pwd for 67.215.65.132:514 from “Thorla-McKee”.
/sarc off
“we need a conspiracy to save humanity.”
I think Ed Caryl may have found it.
http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2012/09/15/ed-caryl-modtran-shows-co2-doubling-will-have-almost-no-effect-on-temperature/
A failed third-rate artist made quite a run to ruling the world, why not a cartoonist leading the charge? Hmm.. I wonder what they would put Lew in charge of. The Cognitive Dissonnace Ministry? There was strong admonition by kind and fair-minded real skeptics for those who took the “k” out of SkS. What can you do when they do this to themselves?
Its an evolution. Probably Cook was a decent misguided fellow at the outset but his stuff attracted a following of rabid dogs and transformed his original, reasonably benign, efforts on behalf of the planet savers. This is apparently what is happening in Syria and Egypt. Trouble spots attract the doctrinaire nihilist who ultimately get the original freedom-seekers to morph into rabid dogs, too. You see this in student and other protests where a fairly nice crowd of naive idealists get morphed by paid political and activist rabble rousers into something that even shocks them. There isn’t much new to learn in the field of hijacked agendas and crowd incitement. I guess the post normal word for it is The Consensus. I can see such a tribe of tyrants written into some star wars type extravaganza.
Why does Krugman and his “alien invasion” spring to mind. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/15/paul-krugman-fake-alien-invasion_n_926995.html
Excerpt from Glenn Tamblyn’s touching letter to Phil Jones:
“Many disciplines in science advance human knowledge; few disciplines of science are trying to make such a profound contribution to actual human wellbeing at this moment in history as climate science.
The threat of climate change is arousing some very primal and often very dark emotional forces. Never doubt that what you and your colleagues are engaged in is valued, deeply and profoundly, today and into the future. The words of the cowards who have threatened you will vanish into history’s dustbin where they belong.
We at Skeptical Science are trying, as best we are able, to bring reasoned analysis to this discussion. We cannot be there when the next hateful letter appears. But as far as is possible, you have our support – if there is anything we can do, just ask.
Warmth, happiness and gratitude to you, your family and colleagues.
– The team and readership at SkepticalScience.com.”
Funny!
Anybody still think the (debate / mudslinging) (with/about) them is about the science?
everyday it seems these hysterical warmists bring new crimes against the world of science. its pretty good stuff for lovers of strife, but i have to admit, its very troubling reading through some of their latest gibberish. its pretty clear they are coming unglued.
Interestingly the Viet Cong won the war.
This is just ‘Gleick’ repeated, but how many Gleicks do these religious fundamentalist warmist nutters have? The warmists are really pulling out the ‘quality scientists’. Still I hear the IPCC may have a few vacancies.
I can’t speak for others, but seeing posts like this reminds me why WUWT is my #1 blog for all things climate related (love climateaudit.org, but the posting frequency there is a lot lower — have to wait a long time for new stuff [ but oh so worth waiting for]).
Anthony & company run a forum which is open to all but moderated to maintain a standard of decorum and civility which is sadly lacking in today’s world. Just because you can use foul language does not mean that you should, or that the effectiveness of your argument is in any way augmented. Only the incompetent need profanity to make a point.
As near as I can make out, some people on the SkS private forum are advocating a “Cultural Revolution” for climate justice. That worked out so well the last time.
Anthony: I need a GUIDE to these people.
Who are they? Who doe they work for? Who funds them? Are they like us, dilettantes, (yes, a lot of WUWT readers are “climate/weather dilettantes, but I suspect, many are like me…BS ChemE, BS Materials Science, MS Mechanical, 2 – PE Certs, Tech School M.I.S. diploma…no blessed Phd, too much time spend “earning a living” and “feeding my family) or are the “professionals”?
I’d like to share this with some people who are “open to being educated”. It really would not have the proper IMPACT on them (in terms of the significance of the childishness and emotional instability of these folks) unless I give them a Curiculum Vita for the people cited.
I think the MYTH that needs to be shattered is TWO FOLD:
1. Getting a Phd in the “Sciences” means you are a “rational” person. (Complete nonsense…it means you jumped through the right hoops, and played the system right…plus a modicum of intelligence, not necessarily an inordinately HIGH amount of same, nor, alas..is there any assurance of the ability to think beyond the narrow paradigm you have been trained in.)
2. Having a “position” with an “instituation” assures you are a rational person.
Just look at the bio-med researchers who have been exposed as TOTAL FRAUDS in the last 20 years. This was not unconnected with the Internet making it easier to “cross check” all matters of information. Informaiton which …in an “information sparse” society, i.e. prior to about 1998…was difficult to cross check. Anthony as YOU well know, you are part of that information vitality these days which makes it harder and harder for “figures to lie” and “liars to figure”.
Thanks!
Max
Anthony:
A “C.V.” for these folks? Some sort of “players guide”.
I know they are supposed to be “professionals”. But most of us WUWT readers, know a few of the “figures in the movement”, but not all. A nice, objective, laundry list would do!
Thanks!
Max
There is a secret WUWT forum but only Oliver Manuel is allowed to post there.
REPLY: LOL! – Anthony