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”.
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Sorry,
IF THE SCIENCE IS ON YOUR SIDE, WHY DO YOU NEED TO BAN PEOPLE? Just point at the ‘science’ and your case is shut. Unfortunately they can’t do this simple act. Why not?????? LOL.
Sadly, this is nothing new; many left-leaning sites will ban you for questioning ‘climate change’. I was banned from a writer’s site just for pointing out that the supposed Heartland memo was a fake after someone else posted excerpts from it as though they were real. I think a permanent ban took about five minutes and three posts.
One of the things you rapidly learn is that those who most adamantly shout ‘it’s all the climate’s fault!’ on such forums are generally those who know the least about it.
Homewood said. “And if they do, will they ban all discussion about the discussion about their ban?”
To ban is to be banned and then to ban again till banning itself is banned by the banners due to over banning.
How much banning could a banner ban if a banner could ban banning.
Banning is like sex. You can never have enough of it until you don’t want it any more at all.
Hmmm?
“These people were true believers” I thought I was a “denier” now I am a “true believer”?
Mr. Allen says that there is no time to lose. He sounds concerned for humanity and maybe his kids, if he has any. Has Mr. Allen ever THOUGHT that sceptics are also human beings with kids???? Who elevated him to care more about my kids than him????
I see a bright and wonderful future for my children as we consume our fossil fuels. Co2 output is a win win situation, more greening, better crops, lower winter heating bills et. al. There is a lack of evidence of extreme climate or weather caused by man-made greenhouse gases since 1850 (end of LIA). There should be no alarm over the trace rise of the trace gas CO2. The Arctic is picking up, Antarctica has gone wild with sea ice, global sea ice is bang on average, nothing to worry about, except we must raise our co2 levels.
Ref: green.
Jeff in Calgary
Is that how old the users are?I thought most were in their teens judging by the content posted on there.lots of pics of cute animals though.
I was a long time poster on reddit. At that time there was only the environment subreddit, populated by true believers and sock puppets. It was a miserable experience. Comments disappearing, posting up an article and finding it with a score of -5 so it never got seen by anyone, having every comment down-voted, often they would just go to my profile and downvote every article and comment they saw there, which saved them having to look in individual articles to see if I posted. I only stayed as long as I did to wind them up. After Climategate I never bothered to post there again, and my advice to anyone thinking of visiting is “just say no” :-). A content free waste of time.
Boycotting news media works. I stopped watching and listening to Canada’s national network, the CBC a while back. I often get surveys asking why I don’t watch/listen and I simply say they are too biased left and following a predictable mantra that influences their commentary and even their programming … so I don’t listen or watch that network hardly at all anymore. And they slowly are noticing that only the leftists listen to them any more, which influences their programming further and further alienates those of us with a brain in in the middle of the political spectrum. I wonder if they will survive the spiralling whirlpool?
Riiight. Just because some self-described white trash didn’t realize you have to deal with the consequences of your free speech, which can include losing your primo gig on an idiotic program, doesn’t mean his “free speech” is being silenced. It just means a lot of people don’t agree with his moronic views.
The warmists appear to be ignorant concerning the paleoclimatic record. There are cycles of warming and cooling that correlate with solar magnetic cycle changes. Each and every time in the past the planet has cooled when the solar magnetic cycle has went into a deep minimum. The current slowdown in the solar magnetic cycle is the fastest reduction in 10,000 years.
The warmists need to develop an alternative strategy/response (plan B, planet is cooling, 97% of climate scientists were absolutely incorrect, humanity must address the global cooling problem, there will be a significant reduction in food production due to global cooling and so on.) to address global cooling, as opposed to banning the discussion of observations concerning global cooling and analysis that supports the assertion that the majority of the warming in the last 70 years was due to solar magnetic cycle changes as opposed to the increase in atmospheric CO2. As the planet starts to cool the public will notice the cooling and will expect an explanation for the cooling/massive snowfall events, blizzards, and crop failures due to early and late frosts. Planetary cooling will be front page news. Time magazine’s issue of the year will be global cooling: ‘The Next Ice Age?’ Dec 16th, 2013 Global Sea Ice Highest was the highest for 25 Years (Antarctic sea ice has set a two sigma record above average for every month in 2013).
http://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2013/12/19/dec-16th-global-sea-ice-highest-for-25-years/
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/S_stddev_timeseries.png
The total solar irradiation has dropped by 1.5/m^2 as compared to past solar magnetic cycles.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/pmod/from:1970
“It’s known by climatologists as the ‘Little Ice Age’, a period in the 1600s when harsh winters across the UK and Europe were often severe. The severe cold went hand in hand with an exceptionally inactive sun, and was called the Maunder solar minimum.
Now a leading scientist from Reading University has told me that the current rate of decline in solar activity is such that there’s a real risk of seeing a return of such conditions. I’ve been to see Professor Mike Lockwood to take a look at the work he has been conducting into the possible link between solar activity and climate patterns. According to Professor Lockwood the late 20th century was a period when the sun was unusually active and a so called ‘grand maximum’ occurred around 1985.
Since then the sun has been getting quieter. By looking back at certain isotopes in ice cores, he has been able to determine how active the sun has been over thousands of years. Following analysis of the data, Professor Lockwood believes solar activity is now falling more rapidly than at any time in the last 10,000 years.
He found 24 different occasions in the last 10,000 years when the sun was in exactly the same state as it is now – and the present decline is faster than any of those 24.”
Wayne Delbeke says:
December 20, 2013 at 7:04 pm
“Boycotting news media works.”
Agreed! Just look at CNN…
Reddit is good for cat pictures mostly. I’ve tried to post a few times in their climate change forum, but it’s a complete circlejerk. There’s no attempt to even look at logic or existing papers. Many times I’m asked to prove my assertions and I give a list of papers and then I get no replies, just tons of downvotes.
Also, they adamantly refuse the acknowledge that the pause exists. It’s a little funny… yet sad.
(Note: For the record, it is only a “pause” if global warming resumes. As of 17 years ago, global warming has stopped. ~mod)
Jeff Alberts says:
The issue has less to do with his views than who he is. After all, he didn’t advocate discrimination against anyone, just gave his religious opinion on sexual morality. It’s hard to imagine this furor happening if he were a nonwhite Muslim, even though Islam is actively murdering people for being homosexual as official doctrine (Qom in particular). The real driver here is oikophobia.
A&E could have chosen to ignore the remarks, but they decided to make an issue out of it. That’s their free speech right. The A&E boycott movement, which is already at 1.6M, is also free speech.
The DD guys can pack up and take their extremely successful “primo gig” somewhere else that wants the top-rated cable show ever.
Reddit, Who?
talldave2 says:
December 20, 2013 at 8:46 pm
You’re right, that was my point. Someone said his free speech was being suppressed, it wasn’t, it was just being exposed to the light of day. Bringing anyone else into the picture is simply a strawman.
@dbstealey –
Well said – the only answer the AGW crowd has to contrary evidence is censorship Which, of course, is proof that it is a totalitarian ideology, with little ultimately to do with climate, and everything to do with, inter alia, transferring wealth from poorer (ordinary folk) to richer (the elite which claims to know better what is right for us than we do).
Any one claiming to be scientists that regards the infamous 97% claim to be valid is in fact both not practising science nor any-type of scientists worth a dam. Unless they believe there are in fact ‘only ‘ 77 climate ‘scientists’ in the world.
Any comments I make on the Guardian, regardless of their veracity or accuracy, are “pre moderated”; in effect they are censored as none ever get published.
Net result? I don’t visit or engage on the Guardian website, I leave them to wallow in their delusions.
@Gary Young
The ban is does not cover the whole reddit site.
There is a sub-forum on reddit where skeptics of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming can post articles and discuss news and science:
http://www.reddit.com/r/climateskeptics/
WUWT articles are popular there.
They are wallowing at a thread on the Reddit issue at CIF today with over 1,400 comments so far. I just made a rather spirited comment that I don’t trust the mods there not to moderate, so if it’s not out of place I’ll copy it here.
Alarmist:
Show us your data or any source that credibly refutes the IPCC position and we will listen.
My reply:
No, people like you won’t listen. You never have in all the years I’ve been reading the comments at CIF. You warmists are afraid to discuss the science or even to look at evidence that goes against your alarmist fantasy. You defend yourself against reality by constantly making personal attacks on the messengers, raising quibbles about any item of data they present, refusing to follow logic where it leads or to used joined-up thinking. Many of you even relish the thought of shutting down all dissent like the totalitarian thugs you really are. You are a disgrace to your intelligence and your education. It was wasted on you. You have gone mad in a herd, and you will only recover your senses one by one as the climate stubbornly refuses to get any warmer in the coming years. And thankfully by 2030, you will be as close to extinction as flat-earthers, steady-staters and people who subscribe to the cosmology of Immanuel Veilokovsky.
Jeff Alberts says:
December 20, 2013 at 7:11 pm
“Riiight. Just because some self-described white trash didn’t realize you have to deal with the consequences of your free speech, which can include losing your primo gig on an idiotic program, doesn’t mean his “free speech” is being silenced. It just means a lot of people don’t agree with his moronic views.”
Wait; one homosexual activist starts an outrage campaign; then one boss at that network makes a decision, and that’s lots of people for you. For me that’s two people.
Could even be that it was a marketing stunt from the start, like the Amazon drone.
This just follows a long line of alarmist sites that have a ban on skeptics. Some announce it, others don’t.
Very seldom do you see alarmist comments on sites where they don’t control the moderation.
rabbit says:
December 20, 2013 at 4:31 pm
“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.”
Well if that is so now, then it took slashdot AGES to get there; a few years back they were hysterically warmist and shouting down any skeptic. They are herd animals at slashdot. Probably one of their leaders has ordered to switch to skepticism some time back.
Nathan Allen just doesn’t geddit.
This is old news. Skeptics have been effectively banned from /r/science for months. Originally they were just heavy handed mods. Ironically they’d often delete the best supported, devastating arguments against AGW, leaving behind rants to help create the illusion that skeptics had nothing relevant to say. They enacted secret rules to delete posts, like making it a no-no to discuss the warming hiatus unless the article was specifically about that (even if the article mentioned required an assumption of warming it was off limits to discuss). And eventually they started adding people to the subreddit’s filters. The skeptics received no notification and couldn’t even tell that their posts were removed unless they logged off.
But this is good. This shows them for what they are. This will only make real scientists realize how much political forces have twisted and perverted the “science”.