Over at Climate Progress, the alarmist organ of the Center for American Progress, Joe Romm is fond of citing an offhand remark from this WUWT story as “proof” of my alleged evilness.
“Scientists” Pull a Snow Job on Reporters in Teleconference
The offending phrase that gets Romm all riled up?
Forbes supports our position. A number of alarmists have been organized to team up on the comment section to defend the undefensible. Please add your voice of support to shout them down in the comments section.
Problem is, I never wrote that update paragraph at the top of the article, Joe D’Aleo did.
Joe Romm has cited the “shout them down” phrase in his references to WUWT and my name no less than 13 times in his blogs:
False Balance Lives: In Worst Climate Story Of The Year, PBS Channels Fox News
MIT Climate Scientist’s Wife Threatened in a “Frenzy of Hate” and Cyberbullying Fomented by Deniers
Comment here on comments and the new design
Scientific American & Lemonick pull a Charlie Sheen — or a Richard Muller, which is much the same
Yes, the false accusation that Gore was exaggerating came from none other than Roger Pielke, Jr.
Deniers finally concede that “the rate of atmospheric CO2 growth has been increasing.”
Inhofe, Horner, McIntyre and Watts fabricate another phony “despicable smear” against Michael Mann
Last week, I finally had enough of his shenanigans and emailed him, and he made a change to the most recent story for which I thank him, but the other stories remain unchanged. He also suggested in his reply email that I make a note on the blog entry that it is D’Aleo’s words, not mine, and I’ve done that.
Also last week it was revealed that Joe Romm had concerns over accuracy of the blog posts at Skeptical Science: Skeptical Science gets Romm-Bombed
Romm wrote to John Cook, and Cook summarized in their secret offline forum :
“Just got this email from Joe Romm: You must do more post vetting. More errors are creeping into posts and it will start making people like me wary of using them.” – John Cook [Skeptical Science], December 2, 2011
So in that spirit of accuracy, I would think that Joe would want to go back and correct his 12 other mistakes on that “shout them down” phrase he is so fond of using. We’ll see.
But here’s a test to see just how much integrity he has. You see it seems there has in fact been a coordinated effort on the part of Skeptical Science to do exactly what Joe Romm accuses WUWT of doing. Here’s some of that dialog as posted by PopularTechnology.net:
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“I posted over at Politico just recently. Hey, we can tag team it a bit if you like, use time zone differences.” – Glenn Tamblyn [Skeptical Science], February 10, 2011
“I think this is a highly effective method of dealing with various blogs and online articles where these discussions pop up. Flag them, discuss them and then send in the troops to hammer down what are usually just a couple of very vocal people. It seems like lots of us are doing similar work, cruising comments sections online looking for disinformation to crush. I spend hours every day doing exactly this. If we can coordinate better and grow the “team of crushers” then we could address all the anti-science much more effectively.” – Rob Honeycutt [Skeptical Science], February 11, 2011
“Rob, Your post is music to my ears. I’ve been advocating the need to create a “crusher crew” for quite some time. I was not however able to get much traction on it with fellow environmental activists here in South Carolina or nationally. Like you, I spend (much to my wife’s chagrin) many hours each day posting comments on articles. One of haunts was the USA Today website […] The bottom line, would you be willing to patrol articles posted on the USA Today website?” – John Hartz [Skeptical Science], February 11, 2011
This started a new forum discussion entitled, “Crusher Crew“.
“Badgersouth and I were just discussing the potential of setting up a coordinated “Crusher Crew” where we could pull our collective time and knowledge together in order to pounce on overly vocal deniers on various comments sections of blogs and news articles.” – Rob Honeycutt [Skeptical Science], February 11, 2011
“May I suggest first on our list as being the *#1 Science Blog* “Watts up with that”? They get a few people come there to engage from time to time but rarely a coordinated effort.” – Robert W. [Skeptical Science], February 11, 2011
“I think it might be better to start out with smaller fish. Build a community and a team. Find some methods and strategies that work. Then start moving up the denier food chain with our targets set on WUWT. I could see this expanding into a broad team of 100 or more people (outside the scope of this SkS forum of course). […] We just need to raise our collective voices to drown them out. I would venture to guess that most people here know of 4 or 5 regulars on comments sections that would be interested in coordinating their efforts. I know probably 10 or 20 people who would like to help with this.” – Rob Honeycutt [Skeptical Science], February 11, 2011
This eco-strike squad was highly endorsed by John Cook,
“The Rapid Response Network would be a good way to coordinate this kind of activity, identifying new articles, logging responses, supporting each other. Can i suggest if a group engage in this, that they use the RRN as beta testers to he’ll me develop and refine the system?” – John Cook [Skeptical Science], February 11, 2011
References:
From the Skeptical Science “leak”: Interesting stuff about generating and marketing “The Consensus Project” (Tom Nelson, March 23, 2012)
Skeptical Science hacked, private user details publicly posted online (Skeptical Science, March 25, 2011)
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I had to chuckle at this admission:
“May I suggest first on our list as being the *#1 Science Blog* “Watts up with that”? They get a few people come there to engage from time to time but rarely a coordinated effort.”
Even more hilarious, is this comment left by Skeptical Science author and moderator on Romm’s first essay where he bring the “shout them down” issue up:
Rob Honeycutt says:I think Anthony Watts relishes his position as a climate thug.
Given the evidence cited above for his own behavior, that’s a classic case of projection by Honeycutt if I’ve ever seen one.
So now the integrity test for Joe Romm is: will you condemn Skeptical Science for actual organized behavior of the same kind that you condemn me of from an off-the cuff comment made by a guest blogger?
So, as it turns out Joe D’Aleo was right, there is an organized effort “…to team up on the comment section to defend the undefensible.“. Maybe he didn’t phrase the call to action well, but all D’Aleo was doing is urging people to exercise their right to free speech if they choose to disagree. There’s no organized effort. I’ve received no complaints from Forbes or any other online venue.
We’ll see how Mr. Romm handles this integrity test when it comes to pointing out the “drown them out” calls of his own misbehaving friends. If he has any integrity he’ll condemn the Skeptical Science organized practice in the same way he has condemned WUWT and me for that offhand remark by D’Aleo.
Ball’s in your court Joe.
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UPDATE: Joe D’Aleo responds in comments:
Guilty as charged. I posted that in frustration after many attempts by me and others to post comments refuting obviously flawed claims on numerous blogs that were blocked by moderators. That site, like WUWT was not restrictive, which I encouraged people to respond to. Obviously if readers did not agree with me, they would not /should not do so.
Many times after failing to have my comments appear on some blogs and sites, I have resorted to sending an email with facts, charts and diagrams to the author to try and educate them. SInce you can’t do that in comments and a picture says a thousand words, it may be more effective, but my guess is that they just discard.
Downside then is my argument is never seen by the knee jerk commenters with their litanys…”obviously shills for big oil”, ” 97% of scientists agree”, “deniers are anti-science” , “it is far worse than we ever thought”, “the climate is nearing the tipping point”, “deniers don’t care about the air and water”……that fill the comment section.
Any comments that get through ignore the facts I present and attack my integrity, reasons for not believing, and intelligence. They go ad hominem.
As more soylent green says so well, since this i not a scientific debate and never was is “shout them” down really inappropriate?
By the way a skeptic was invited to give a talk in New England on natural factors and a professor organized a group to come in and disrupt the talk – not wait for the Q&A session after with tough questions but to try and make it impossible for the speaker to present his case. I experienced that kind of resistance twice in talks in Vermont where a group tried to convince the museum to cancel my talk and the second when a talk at a college was constantly interrupted with challenges ironically to pictures of bad climate sites. The person involved kept insisting these were not real sites. It was in the early days of surfacestations.org and I used stations from Anthony, Roger Pielke Sr. and the late John Daly.
I made mention of this on Weatherzone “Interesting News Items” and “Artic sea ice” threads 4 days ago and the collective trolls had a mild spam spasm when they where exposed. Hasn’t slowed them down much but at least we now have proof of who and what they are and can treat them accordingly.
“All this was inspired by the principle–which is quite true within itself–that in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a movement are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods.
It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation.
For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying.”
Source anyone? (Interesting intelligence behind this.)
Max Hugoson,
Here’s an easy way to source documents: I cut ‘n’ pasted your last paragraph into a search engine, with quotation marks around it. Lots of hits.
3×2 says (September 30, 2012 at 12:48 pm)
“Starve them of publicity and they will wither on the vine.”
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Wish it were true.
Unfortunately, one can draw another conclusion from the words that amused me in a comment earlier.
“It seems like lots of us are doing similar work, cruising comments sections online looking for disinformation to crush. I spend hours every day doing exactly this.”
They have to spend hours looking for sceptic views?! Odd for them (they know where we live!), but not for the generality of folks who attend the MSM and the mainstream.
That is why WUWT is so valuable.
I think this business about crushing dissenting voices is quite amusing.
In the real hallowed halls of Warmism (Guardian, Australian ABC) dissenting voices are quite simply banned!
Apart from anything else, these postings confirm that the Warmistas are a political cabal. Remember, these people are paid by others to do this; follow the money.
I don’t have a source for you Max. But, the Big Lie is, I believe, based upon constant repetition, rather than credulity.
I remember once reading about “Denialist swarms” commenting at CAGW blogs and how mean they were, lol! Seems they got it wong!
[snip -OTT – mod]
Bernard Shaw writing about censorship stated that it existed to prevent people challenging current conceptions, ideas and institutions. Progress according to Shaw means challenging current ideas and replacing the institutions which promote such ideas. In short, the essence of progress is the removal of censorship. The greenshirt internet thugs wish to censor anyone who disagrees with their belief in the infallibility of their belief.
The doctrine if indefectibility easily applies to CAGW:
“Although the individual scientists do not enjoy the prerogative of infallibility, they can nevertheless proclaim the science of catastrophic climate change infallibly. This is so, even when they are dispersed around the world, provided that while maintaining the bond of unity among themselves and while teaching authentically on the matter of catastrophic climate change, they concur in a single viewpoint as the one which must be held conclusively. This authority is even more clearly verified when, gathered together in a conference, they are teachers and judges of catastrophic climate change for the universal consensus. Their definitions must then be adhered to with the submission of faith.”
There are none so blind etc….
Charles Gerard Nelson says:
September 30, 2012 at 2:45 pm
I think this business about crushing dissenting voices is quite amusing.
In the real hallowed halls of Warmism (Guardian, Australian ABC) dissenting voices are quite simply banned!
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But they can control them. Blogs on the internet are another story. “Freedom of the press”. When that was written there were multiple independent papers across what was to become the United States. Over time they were bought up and became subordinate to the groups that owned them. The same thing happened after radio and TV came along. Control loosened a bit with cable TV (i.e. Fox News) but not completely. Enter the internet and blogs. There will be efforts to silence the blogs that go against “the grain”. If that fails, there will be efforts to control them, regulations perhaps like “the fairness doctrine” that attempted to shut down talk radio. The climate has become a lever some use to achieve a political objective. There will be resistance.
By the way I laughed when I saw the photo. Notwithstanding using a child as propaganda it is a classic example of failing to check the background before allowing yourself to be photographed.
Joe Romm has no integrity. He was screaming bloody murder over the Heartland billboard that depicted the Unibomber, while at the same time his site was running an article that compared so-called “deniers” with the Norwegian children’s camp mass murderer, Brevik (I’m not sure of this spelling). And didn’t he send all his commenters over to PBS to comment on Anthony’s appearance? They came across as totalitarian dogma zombies. Their public statements really help the realist side of the debate over climate policy, IMO.
All in all it’s just another brick in the wall…..
any rational case for CAGW is crumbling.
I think Joe and his breed are basically cowards, as are all AGW bletheren.
They are happy to sit on their insignificant blogs, and delete any contrary opinion, feeding misinformation to their minitude of readers, but are nearly always too cowardly to openly engage in debate.
Pucillanimous Gits.
Any chance of getting some 600+ signs to his next rally ? 😉
[snip – sorry – you can’t speak for WUWT – only Anthony can do that -mod]
The phrase ‘Crusher Crew’ reveals exactly where they are coming from! These are the people who wish to crush truth, science, argument and logic which will destroy their lies.
Why do you bother with this guy. Every time he opens his mouth simply show him this:
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/1-s2-0-s0921818112001658-gr11.jpg
and then listen as he goes ballistic trying to distort the fact that the global temperature is not repsonding to co2, had responded to the flips in the PDO and amo when they warmed and is starting back the other way since they added their heat and that was that. As soon as the AMO flips, it goes back to where it was in the 1970s ( hopefully no lower since because of the energy policy we have we are in enough trouble)
. As they say a picture is worth a thousand words
OpenMind
You can’t reason someone out of a position they didn’t arrive at through reason in the first place.
Gunga Din says:
September 30, 2012 at 3:09 pm
“…Enter the internet and blogs. There will be efforts to silence the blogs that go against “the grain”. If that fails, there will be efforts to control them…”
And the tool is now in place… while no one was watching.
http://www.extremetech.com/computing/132585-us-president-issues-executive-order-that-gives-him-control-of-the-internet
Sort of a backhanded compliment, really. Aside from the interesting and thought-provoking articles, WUWT is a go-to site for me because of the open-mindedness of the site’s moderators. A lot of dissenting and varied opinion is allowed, even encouraged. The “Krusher Krews” wouldn’t even discuss carpet bombing WUWT and other skeptical sites if they were run like the echo chambers the warmistas frequent. On those, there are far too many incidents of “disappeared” comments that disagree with the alarmist dogma, even on government-run (I’m calling a spade a spade here) sites like RC.
Well, you have to be able to post. Skeptical Science won’t even allow posts of published literature when it disagrees with their ideas.
That type of blog is not a discussion.
And the few posters that frequent SS are prob over 50 miles from home as they are all experts……right?
Crusher Crew? Rapid Response Team? Ain’t adolescence a jolly time though?
Their voices should start changing any day now.
Baghdad Romm