UPDATE: Joe Romm, perhaps fearing he’d be drawn into a defamation lawsuit with Laden for not checking to see if Laden’s claims were true has made a rare update to ClimateProgress in my favor. See below.
UPDATE2: Reader poll on the question “should I sue the pants off Greg Laden?”
Harsh title – I know, but justified by Mr. Laden’s actions. I could ignore him, but people like him need to be called out when they do things like this.
Here’s a screencap of a “science blogs” post made by Mr. Laden, who is no stranger to shooting his mouth off in non factual ways that get him in trouble, as Roger Tattersall (aka Tallbloke) can testify to from another Laden episode last year where Laden was forced to remove untrue and libelous statements he made. Laden’s original post about Tattersall (with all the angry unedited rhetoric) is here.
You can read the rest of his post here.
Note how Laden frames the screen cap, and of course does not provide a link to the original story (lest his readers are able to get the full story instead of his spin on it). He then goes on to say:
Heh, he was so raging mad when he wrote that he couldn’t even spell denialist correctly, or even spell the name of this blog correctly even though he has a screen cap to guide him. He claims I “wasn’t equipped to recognize this science as bogus”. Well, I found it odd, but also interesting, and as Willis Eschenbach pointed out in comments:
I don’t agree with those saying it should not be posted. In my experience, there’s no faster way to separate wheat from chaff than to expose it to the unblinking eye of the populi on the web …
Unlike Mr. Laden (who gives the impression he’s an expert in everything), I’ve never claimed to be an expert in meteors or diatoms. So, I put it up for discussion. I also put several caveats in the story clearly showing my doubts, including the possibility that the Earthly diatoms hitched a ride on a tektite, but Mr. Laden won’t show you that, I will.
You see, it’s all part of a purposely orchestrated lie by Mr. Laden. If Mr. Laden hadn’t been so caught up in his hate, and made just an ever so slightly larger screen cap, this is what his readers would have seen from the story:
In case the print is too small, here’s the full paragraph (which Laden cut off):
This looks to be a huge story, the first evidence of extraterrestrial life, if it holds up. I would remind readers that “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence“. This needs to be confirmed by others in the science community before it can be taken seriously.
I don’t know how I could have made the caveat any clearer. Anyone not blinded by hate can see that in my very first paragraph, in red even.
Of course, Laden cuts off the most important part of the caveat and without an immediate link to the story, the weak minded or members of the his choir of haters have no single click way to check his claim, but that is what he is counting on.
And of course, Joe Romm also picks up the story from Laden, to spread the lie and hate. Romm might have been duped by Laden though and didn’t check, we’ll see.
Laden also says:
It is very fun to read the comments. I provided a comment that will not be printed because Watts never prints my comments, but I’ve screen captured it for you (it is below).
Mr. Laden, your comment appeared, approved well before you wrote this hateful piece, as shown below between two other comments:
A direct link to Laden’s published comment is here, read for yourselves.
As for the “never” part of Laden’s claim about his comments appearing, here they are:
His first two comments were snipped by moderators for not following the WUWT site policy, his others, (which didn’t contain hateful words) were published, including the comment on the meteor story he falsely claims never appeared.
Mr. Laden, you are a liar who published this story knowing full well what you were doing.
What you were doing was being a hater, not a scientist. Being a hater is part of Mr. Laden’s site policy, which incredibly, he spells out for all to see. Scroll down to “commenting policy”.
What Laden did here is a perfect example of why the general public is losing faith in climate science; this mix of condescension, censorship, incomplete presentation, misdirection, and overt hatred on display is exactly why reasonable people recoil and lose faith in the climate claims being made, which in some cases, can be just as dubious as diatoms on meteors.
The difference between myself and Mr. Laden is that WUWT isn’t afraid to have topics for discussion that might be proven wrong, and in the process, people learn something. I’m also not afraid to admit I’m not an expert on meteors or diatoms, and to ask my readers (who might be) what they think while at the same time making it clear that I had serious doubts about the claim.
If people like Laden ruled science, we’d never see any advances from serendipity or other odd moments where the scientist observes something unexpected and says to him/herself “hmmm, that’s odd”, because they’d be shouted down as “bogus” without even a discussion.
UPDATE: Joe Romm, responding to my email to him, has offered the closest thing he can to a walkback on the lie (of which he was also a victim) by Laden. He’s posted this on the Climate progress story by Laden smearing me. He sounds like Fox News “we report, you decide”.
JR UPDATE: Watts feels he was quoted out of context, that he put in appropriate caveats. His response is here. Greg Laden replies here. You decide.
In other news, in his latest childish rant, Mr. Laden wants his readers to think that I’m a child hater (even though I have two grade school aged children of my own).
It is against my blog policy to provide links to science denialist sites. It would be unethical for me to do that on a regular basis because it would enhance the google juice of pseudoscience. I’ve got children. I want them to grow up in a better world, not the world that Anthony Watts wants them to grow up in. So, no.
Another lie by Greg Laden. I never get how extremists like Laden think they somehow can be the only people that care about children’s future. I want a better future for my children to, just not the same one Mr. Laden envisions. As these commenters put it:
Jimmy Haigh says:
January 16, 2013 at 10:33 pm
“Laden clearly has issues…”
Issues? He’s got an entire subscription.
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I generally like the Pharyngula blog by PZ Meyers, but he is a fully signed up warmist. So, no surprise that he swallowed Greg’s lies hook line and sinker.
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2013/01/16/diatomsiiiiin-spaaaaaaaaaaace/
As I stated previously; I use to comment at his site and he has taken the term “out of context” beyond anything I had ever witnessed when he totally changed what I had posted and left my name attached. I became extremely angry at such dishonesty and I wrote him an email describing his ancestry and present ape like condition in no uncertain terms, using language that the Army had taught me. He is one unethical piece of work and has a following of equally qualified people. That these kind of basically illiterate and totally ignorant folks try to catch Mr. Watts up on anything should be considered by him to be a compliment of the highest order.
I use to comment on his site just for fun. He ran one of his ignorant comments saying, in essences, that cougars never hurt anyone and should not be feared and I presented him with evidence that they in fact have killed many people but that naturally went against the narrative of the minute that Greg was pushing because he knew that cougars were good because they are atheist.
John Swallow
December 4, 2011
I quit with this dishonest site some time ago and it will be interesting to see just how distorted what I have foolishly wasted my time putting forth now might be presented, if it is at all.
It doesn’t seem like it takes much to get some one with a distorted mind such as Ivy to “smile”. People with that mentality are generally fairly happy but it seems like the comment could be construed as having some racist overtones to it.
It seems like the drones on here didn’t catch the part about my not being a hunter and no where do I advocate the killing of cougars; but, I also know that they can be dangerous animals and the public needs to be made aware of that fact and not have some fools saying that that there is no problem with them and not all residence of the north woods are “Jungle Jims” and so full of knowledge as Greg is regarding all things both great and small.
• Greg Laden
December 4, 2011
John, one of the reasons you are so annoying, besides your global warming denialism, is that you ignore what I’ve said on this blog about dangers of wild animals and about being realistic about dealing with them.
Cornering and killing whatever cougars you run into, still, is not OK, despite what you say.
For Lula to have been fired, we would have had to fire him. The writer always risks that subtle things will be lost by small minded people.
John, I’ve enjoyed posting some of your comments, which are usually bannned here. But I think for now we are done for a while. Feel free to keep sending me the offensive idiotic emails, though, they are very entertaining!
Not that anyone cares; but, the above came from this series of Greg’s nonsense:
<http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2011/12/02/please-do-not-shoot-the-endang/#c6047851
Invite him to a press conference and he can then show us what he really knows….as an aside we can ask him about the logarithmic nature of CO2’s ability to create heat….what negative feedback is…if he has ever heard of a Holocene etc…? We can also introduce him to messrs Lintzen, Spencer,McIntyre and many others…oh and a quick lesson in Earth Science from Bob Carter….now that would be funny. Especially when he realises that we are suffering Carbon Dioxide starvation!
‘Graham says:
January 16, 2013 at 11:33 pm
A lying Laden? Must run in the family.’
Careful – this goes a bit too far, IMO.
[off-color humor, not even funny ~ mod]
An hysterical warmist who is crowing because a sceptical ‘deniar’ is not sceptical enough ?
There must be a word to describe a person who will find fault no matter what you do.
Laden should remember when NASA made a claim 16 years ago about past life being found in a meteorite which was announced to the world by the President Clinton. What does Laden have to say about NASA’s claim and President Clinton’s statement?
and
I just posted this on Laden’s blog. Let’s see if it get through as I can see 3 pro Watt’s comments have made it (so far).
Sounds to me like ‘bin Laden’ was more honest.
“this mix of condescension, censorship, incomplete presentation, misdirection, and overt hatred on display is exactly why reasonable people recoil and lose faith in the climate claims being made”
Exactly this that made me doubt the windbags and start looking at the evidence in the first place. For this I could almost thank them if only they weren’t so smug in their ingnorance.
The reason one can safely ignore folks like Laden is that they only attract other
incompetents who couldn’t argue their way out of a wet paper bag.
“There must be a word to describe a person who will find fault no matter what you do.”
The mother-in-law?
(only joking, Granny …)
Yes Eternaloptimist there is a word a very simple word “idiot” just about covers it.
I do not recall ever going to any blog hosted by Greg Laden or Joe Romm (or John Cook) except when they are linked to in posts at blogs that are open, uncensored and balanced. Some of the many open, uncensored and balanced sites are: BH, JC, CA, WUWT, JoNova . . .
Laden, Romm and Cook get increased hits when their misbehavior is pointed out by sites like WUWT, so it reinforces their misbehavior. That is positive feedback operating to increase their misbehavior. They would seem to be unstable due to that positive feedback.
John
I went over to Laden’s to read his policy. Wow. Crazy… Typical.
Even in his commented blog reply where he tries to salvage things he basically says that, of course he realizes that Anthony had reservations… but the article should have been discounted immediately (ie. not published and discussed.)
You know, the people at the top are supposed to be the gatekeepers of truth, yadda yadda. Exactly the sort of mentality that the AGW crowd was employing at the publishing level to make sure that claims that they are sure were wrong don’t see the light of day.
Seemed an entirely appropriate comment considering the back-story.
Laden is a closed minded idiot. His proposal that everyone should be smart enough to immediately dismiss a claim based on ones vast wealth of knowledge is idiotic. I work with a scientist who acts like this and it’s funny how often he turns out to be wrong. He just makes himself look foolish.
Goldie says:
January 16, 2013 at 11:07 pm
Do people have nothing better to do?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
If you are just want to be an Al Gorezeera or other elitie’s slave then ignoring their henchmen certainly makes sense. If you are not interested in wearing a slave collar then yeah, you call out every single one of these henchmen when they put a foot wrong.
Of course if you are too stupid to realize the actual war is about slavery vs freedom then I guess you ignore everything until the day the slave collar snaps shut like the Russian Intelligensia did.
I’m guessing Greg’s ‘Reading Comprehension’ score on his SAT exam was fairly low.
Yes, there is indeed an element of hate, as Mr. Watts writes, in the “comments policy” paragraph:
” Interestingly, those who post racist or denialist remarks on this blog tend also be profane, obnoxious, and often threatening. And if anybody around here is gonna do that, it’s ME, dammit!”
“Racist or denialist”, well, well, that’s as clear an example of guilt by association as I have ever seen. Hard to tell though if his outbursts are a result of real hatred or just a delayed youthful blustering attitude.
Lew Skannen says:
January 16, 2013 at 11:41 pm
Sad loser desperately trying to get hits on his pointless blog.
These people know that WUWT is a source of hits and any reference from here is going to drive traffic….
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Which is why I avoid the temptation to go to the pointless blog and add to the traffic.
tempting though, very tempting.
Best comments anywhere!!! You guys are funny. “sphincter bone” “planet laden”
Why anyone watch SNL this is better “Gans Besser”
I just finished writing a rebuttal to Laden’s piece. Michael Mann has unskeptically promoted much dodgier extra-terrestrial science than this. In Xenu he trusts : )