My inbox has been full of this issue this week, and I see it mostly as a tempest in a teapot. But since there is an interest, I’m putting this up for discussion. I can understand the situation, running the most viewed climate related blog, where I’ve noted that a small minority of people can cause a lot of trouble and waste a lot of time. Those people often go astray of the site policy for WUWT, and sometimes find themselves banned for repeated bad behavior. Those that might have contentious views but aren’t intractable zealots learn to work within policy and stick around, and contribute to debate here. That said, a “blanket ban” just wouldn’t work nor would it be sensible. Imagine if a single WUWT moderator decided to make a blanket policy change here. -Anthony
From Fox News:
Critics are slamming Reddit over a single moderator’s decision to ban climate-change skeptics from contributing to its science forum, attacking the move as “political censorship.”
In an op-ed titled “Reddit’s science forum banned climate deniers. Why don’t all newspapers do the same?” Nathan Allen — who described himself a Ph.D. chemist for a major chemical company and a moderator on Reddit’s “/r/science” forum — explained his decision to wipe comments from some users he dismissed as “problematic.”
“These people were true believers, blind to the fact that their arguments were hopelessly flawed, the result of cherry-picked data and conspiratorial thinking,” Allen said in his article, which is posted on Grist.org. “They had no idea that the smart-sounding talking points from their preferred climate blog were, even to a casual climate science observer, plainly wrong.”
Allen went on to attack climate-change skeptics further, saying that evidence to support their position “simply does not exist” and that such people are “enamored by the emotionally charged and rhetoric-based arguments of pundits on talk radio and Fox News.”
‘[Climate skeptics are] enamored by the emotionally charged … arguments of pundits on talk radio and Fox News.’
– Reddit moderator Nathan Allen
Finally, Allen called for other news outlets to follow his example, asking “if a half-dozen volunteers can keep a page with more than 4 million users from being a microphone for the antiscientific, is it too much to ask for newspapers to police their own editorial pages as proficiently?”
The move has drawn accusations of hypocrisy, as Reddit claims to be a haven for free speech and debate. The site describes itself as a place “friendly to thought, relationships, arguments, and to those that wish to challenge those genres.”
Brendan O’Neill, in a blog post for the UK Daily Telegraph, said Reddit has “ripped its own reputation to shreds,” and described the move as “political censorship, designed to silence the expression of dissent about climate-change alarmism on one of the Internet’s most popular user-generated forums.”
James Delingpole, columnist, climate skeptic and author of “The Little Green Book Of Eco Fascism,” was even louder in his criticism.
“The greenies — and their many useful idiots in the liberal media — are terrified of open debate on climate-change because the real world evidence long ago parted company with their scientifically threadbare theory,” Delingpole told FoxNews.com, arguing that Allen’s tactic is part of a “classic liberal defense mechanism: If the facts don’t support you, then close down the argument.”
Victoria Taylor, Reddit’s director of communications, told FoxNews.com that while it was Allen’s prerogative to ban climate-change skeptics from “/r/science,” his statements “do not reflect the views of Reddit as a whole, or other science or climate-oriented subreddits.”
More here:
http://www.foxnews.com/science/2013/12/19/critics-blast-reddit-over-climate-change-skeptic-ban/
h/t to WUWT reader “Pete”.
Reddit Science Section, now there’s a hallowed and venerable institution.
A veritable crucible of incandescent scientific thinking.
dbstealey
“They are just putting you into a like-minded group of head nodders, where you can do no damage to their completely flawed climate alarmist beliefs. ”
This is marginally insulting. It assumes I don’t know what I am doing.
In reality, no one does this. You misunderstand the structure of Reddit. No CAGWers go to the climateskeptics subforum. None of the posts there get enough upvotes to make it to their personal page.
Nathan Allen — yet another eco-fascist junk scientist who projects his own cognitive bias on others.
Steven Mosher says:
December 20, 2013 at 12:24 pm
folks need to get more creative.
thread bomb him with idiotic pro AGW comments.
no need, just link to this graph:
http://www.scilogs.de/klimalounge/files/MRIscenario1.png
that will frighten the hell out of their great grandchildren.
In reply to:
“The greenies — and their many useful idiots in the liberal media — are terrified of open debate on climate-change because the real world evidence long ago parted company with their scientifically threadbare theory,” Delingpole told FoxNews.com, arguing that Allen’s tactic is part of a “classic liberal defense mechanism: If the facts don’t support you, then close down the argument.”
William: The discussion of AGW is banned at multiple scientific forums. The problem is observations and analysis does not support – there are at least five fundamental paradoxes – the extreme AGW hypothesis. The majority of the warming in the last 70 years was caused by solar magnetic cycle changes. Ignoring reality and banning discussion of reality does not change reality. The principal purpose of science is to discuss and resolve paradoxes.
The following is an example: http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?p=2520887
“PF (William: Physics Forums) is announcing its regrettable decision to ban all topics of global warming and climate change indefinitely. At this time we are unable to effectively moderate on the issue of climate change and global warming. We hope this ban will be temporary as we search for experts in the proper fields to assist us.
This ban will go into effect Monday Jan 11th. (William: January, 2010) Members who are currently involved in global warming and or climate change threads, have until then to wrap up discussions. On Monday such threads will be locked.
Please note this is an issue the staff has been working on for the past couple of years and we do not take this action lightly. We have explored and tried many solutions. This was our last resort.”
Goebbels would have been proud of Nathan Allen, but Victoria Taylor gets special mention, for decrying Allen’s tactics while keeping them in force.
What’s more offensive is that policy goes through the usual echo chamber of, The Nation, Huffington Post, New Republic making it’s way to the NYTimes and Washington Post where the “merits” will be seriously reviewed. If it doesn’t draw enough hostility it will follow the lead of the LA Times which announced a similar policy several months back and implement it.
AGW was and is totalitarian in purpose as are many left-wing inclinations. What was fringe in the Democratic Party is now the mainstream.
Who read Reddit?
The Reddit science section includes physics, astronomy, chemistry, nano-science, biology, animal science, environment, medicine, cancer, neuroscience, psychology, social sciences, anthropology, computer science, mathematics, engineering, geology and paleontology.
All of these topics are moderated by only 6 people? Wow! That’s one person for every 3 sections. They could run Planet Earth with a background like that.
BTW climate science is a sub-section of environment with typically 10-20 comments per posting half of which are idle chatter. Not very informative for alarmists or deniers.
A Reddit post on this November being the warmest ever recorded led to this comment by Olseadog … “It is rather ironic that the most blue section on the NOAA map [showing colder temperatures] is the southern US which has the highest proportion of climate change naysayers than anywhere else in the world.” … which is ironic because it probably has one of the highest density of temperature stations as well.
“Allen went on to attack climate-change skeptics further, saying that evidence to support their position “simply does not exist” …”
So if the evidence does not exist, why are all these AGW sites so threatened and enraged by the arguments of the opposition? If the science is 97% settled or whatever, then surely in the utmost confidence of their position, they would allow ‘sceptics’ to comment ad infinitum and make fools of themselves over and over.
But they don’t. They scream, ban, threaten, and sue. Which only leads to the conclusion that they are afraid the truth will leak out and undermine their cause. But you can’t use reason with these zealots. Why they are attracted to these causes in the first place, to swim against the stream draws lots of attention to an otherwise unnoticed little creature.
Sombody sic the 4chan anons on them. Fight foy-ah with foy-ah.
Oh, and have you heard? The only way to stop catastrophic global warming may be through violent revolution:
http://qz.com/154196/the-only-way-to-stop-climate-change-now-may-be-revolution/
TobiasN, I certainly didn’t mean to be insulting. My apologies if that’s what it sounded like.
I admit that I don’t know how Reddit operates. But any blog that deletes a point of view wholesale is not a blog that should be supported. These blogs – all of them – get their support in one way: internet traffic. Eyeballs, in the parlance.
I hope you see what they’re doing: corraling scientific skeptics into their own separate enclosure. Since as you note, CAGWers do not go to that page, Reddit is [effectively] making it a group of head-nodders.
Who wants that? We learn a lot from the climate alarmists who comment here. Sometimes they raise good points. But their central belief, their central prediction, has always been that rising CO2 will cause runaway global warming. They have decisively lost that debate, as Planet Earth clearly demonstrates every month.
Stand-up people admit it when they are wrong. That is what’s so frustrating with blogs like Reddit: they are provably wrong, but instead of acknowledging that indisputable fact, instead they resort to censorship. Feeding their traffic only supports them. I, for one, will not do it.
‘Newtruth’ according to Reddit moderators is the new Newspeak.
“When 97 percent of climate scientists agree that man is changing the
climate, we would hope the comments would at least acknowledge if not
reflect such widespread consensus. Since that was not the case, we needed
more than just an ad hoc approach to correct the situation.”
A left wing site with a warmist believer running the environment
board claims the skeptics are the bad guys and blocks them. What a shock.
And this warmist preacher Nathan Allen even calls skeptics the
pejorative term “denier posters”.
When you can’t question an idea it’s a religion.
When its followers don’t question their idea it’s a religion.
When its leaders won’t allow their idea to be questioned
it’s a religion. This proves the closed mind, dogmatic,
Global Warming cult is a religion.
So in effect there can be no fair discussion on Global Warming when the moderator has taken such a firm bias stance on one side. Banning others for being non-believers belongs in medieval religion. Something you would expect the scientific mind to be fully aware of. I haven’t been on this reddit board but experience tells me, with this sort of bias, that the shoe is on the other foot. I’ve seen years of very abusive warmers. So I’m not going to countenance this abuse smokescreen, especially as the moderator kicks off by provoking folk with such pejorative language himself.
I’m sure when there’s no skeptics for warmists to abuse and provoke matters on reddit, things should calm down and the warmists can quite happily preach to the converted.
@dbstealey: “Since as you note, CAGWers do not go to that page”
No, alarmists troll r/climateskeptics continually. But occasionally there are good discussions. There are a fairly wide range of skeptical perspectives represented there, too.
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2013/12/mckibben-tries-to-get-his-green-weenie-revoked.php
Meanwhile, on another planet, far far away………….
Isn’t it ironic that the press / media which fights for its freedom of speech suppresses it. Reddit and the Guardian are as bad as each other, I have suffered over a dozen bans at the Guardian climate section. All I do is present the peer reviewed evidence, ask for evidence, point out that the weather is not the same as climate and so on.
Now who is this Nathan Allen PHD in chemistry and climate? Here is is ranting and raving.
I feel embarrassed for him. I don’t want to show him climate change advocates covered in oil money, it’s just too easy now. LOL. CRU and Shell / BP 1970s? Dana of Guardian? Mann’s university and Koch? Pachauri and ye olde Glorioil? Gore and Occidental? Big green groups investments in fossil fuels? Like I said the hypocrisy goes on and on.
Mr. Allen, if you are reading this, please take a look at the mote in your own eye first. You are a disgrace and I don’t know what IDIOT gave you a PHD, you are an utter and absolute disgrace to science.
You talk about sceptics ignoring the science. It is you who ignores the OBSERVATIONS compared to the science. I have a theory that predicts that all ducks are white. Tomorrow someone captures a black duck. Game over. See surface temperature standstill, 17 years and Santer et. al.
Anon:
Thank you for that detailed reply. I am amazed at how overt Climate Nexus is at its goal of “managing” the media. We can only be grateful that they’re doing a crappy job of it.
It sounds like reddit/science already has an effective mechanism for keeping everyone on message. Makes me wonder why they bothered banning “denier” posts. All it did was damage their reputation.
And it makes me wonder why similar “user-rated” sites such as Slashdot have a healthy community of climate skeptics who do not seem at all suppressed. Perhaps it’s because the Slashdot community is more technically savy than reddit/science overall.
Sooooooo many ‘scientists’ have nailed their flag to the mast over CAGW. If [when] it’s shown to be exaggerated what will these alleged ‘scientists’ do? Will they ever be taken seriously again? [Children won’t know what snow is, ice free Arctic in 2013 et al. ]
C’mon people…you do NOT need Reddit!! Just dump it already… It’s a waste of your precious time.
I never heard of these guys before the debate here.
Don’t need to hear of them again either.
It’s really funny looking at Mr. Allen’s page. When you go to make a comment they give you more hurdles. It must feel good preaching to the choir. Well done Mr. Allen ye olde company chemist and part time atmospheric scientist. You have opened my mind and I am now a firm believer in Catastrophic Anthropogenic Runaway Global Warming. We must act now!!!!
See how easy it is? Ban people and they will agree with you. Well done Mr. Allen you utter genius. You deserve an ‘Ignobel’ Prize.
Here is a comment on Mr. Allen’s page. We really do have a long, hard struggle. I hope this man will one day be at peace with the truth.
He obviously does not get out much. I feel his pain and loss (financial) for the says:
Chances are this idiot and fool has carbon investments somewhere and he feels he is about to lose his shirt. Follow the money >>>>>>
It’s attitudes like Allen’s that make “get back to reddit” a popular insult on other forum-based websites. A haven for the small-minded and easily-led.