And most regulars will recall William Connolley. Connolley’s likely best known for his hijinks as a former editor at Wikipedia. (See the WattsUpWithThat posts here, here, here, here, here, here here….and here.) But Connolley is also a former climate modeler with the British Antarctic Survey…plus a co-founder of, and former contributor to, the blog RealClimate, where he authored or co-authored a grand total of 14 blog posts from December, 2004 to March, 2008. Connolley now blogs at ScienceBlogs/Stoat.
WattsUpWithThat regulars will remember “Sou”, a.k.a. Miriam O’Brien. As Anthony Watts notes in his post My Blog Spawn:
Proprietor: “Sou from Bundangawoolarangeera” aka Miriam O’Brien of Mt. Beauty, VC, Australia
Some of Miriam’s skills: being a “a sixties-something woman with an interest in climate science“, sniping at WUWT, snark, Twitter snark, photography, business consulting, being on a board of directors.
Anthony continued:
Given her daily rants, she has now qualified for “Internet stalker” levels of infatuation and invective. Assigned to the permanent troll bin.
How do those two bloggers form the basis for an article?
More background: Connolley was the first troll to appear on the thread of my post I’m Retiring from Full-Time Climate Change Blogging. See his January 3, 2014 at 3:11 pm comment. But that’s not the subject of this post. This post is about Connolley’s first link in his blog post, one that serves as his reference for my work on the processes and aftereffects of El Niño and La Niña events—a body of work that includes more than 150 well-illustrated, data-based blog posts about El Niño and La Niña processes and one book solely about ENSO. Connolley writes. [I’ve removed his hyperlink attached to my name so that readers don’t get ahead of me]:
I hasten to add that RP Sr is not speaking of me, no, he is talking of renowned blogger Bob Tisdale.
Where would you have expected the hyperlink to lead? My blog? Maybe WattsUpWithThat? Maybe the exchange I had last year at SkepticalScience about the long-term effects of ENSO?
Give up? The hyperlink was to a post by Miriam O’Brien from HotWhopper. (I’m glad I hadn’t been drinking coffee when I clicked on that link.)
As a reference for his understanding of my work, Connolley linked Miriam O’Brien’s post Bob Tisdale is Perennially Puzzled about ENSO [Miriam hyperlinks to archives, not the original blog posts, so I’ve done the same here]. Miriam’s post is her response to my post titled SkepticalScience Still Misunderstands or Misrepresents the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO). (The WattsUpWithThat cross post is here.) In that post, I provided graphs of a number of datasets broken down into logical subsets that contradicted the SkepticalScience representation of ENSO, and I challenged SkepticalScience to provide links to climate model-based, peer-reviewed papers that explained why those variables for specific parts of the globe responded as they did to El Niño and La Niña events.
Of course, Miriam O’Brien did not address the content of my post. She did not discuss the datasets I presented, as I had presented them. And Miriam quoted me out of context—nothing surprising there. Miriam could have saved herself a lot of time by simply noting that she agreed with Nuccitelli’s post and disagreed with mine–but she didn’t. Miriam O’Brien wasted her time creating a couple of illustrations so that she could restate Dana Nuccitelli’s misunderstandings and misinformation.
Miriam O’Brien fancies herself an expert on just about every climate-related subject. Yet she is only capable of using the Monty Python contradiction approach to argument, which is why I find her blog so amusing…and, at the same time, I find her blogging style pitiable because she doesn’t realize she’s become an embodiment of a Python caricature.
CLOSING
It’s quite telling that William Connolley, a co-founder of RealClimate, used Miriam O’Brien’s HotWhopper post as a reference for his knowledge of ENSO. It indicates his understandings of the complex coupled ocean-atmosphere processes and aftereffects of El Niño and La Niña events are as limited as Miriam’s. And if Miriam O’Brien serves as one of his scientific or technical experts, it also suggests Connolley’s arguments about human-induced global warming have grown as laughable as hers.
Sisi, you are free to check me out. I’m not hiding. Your choice of the word “poor” in reference to my typo is telling. People who know anything about me might choose many other words, but “poor” that’s not something people use to describe me in any sense. You hide behind a weird name with the sole purpose to distract people from engaging in the quest for truth in science. That’s pretty low. My bet is that you’re on the dole and I’m paying for you to be so dull and bored that you support policies that make it harder for people to pay your bills. You are a child troll. Your words and style of writing are probably endearing to people who don’t know any better.
I actually feel bad scolding you because you probably really don’t know any better. Not too long ago, you’d risk a spanking and be forced to sit in the corner and you’d get no dessert.
dbstealey says:
January 14, 2014 at 5:53 pm
“And I like Mario’s comments.”
+++++++
I’m flattered. Thank you.
[Snip. Enough ad-homs against Prof Lindzen. ~ mod.]
Bob Tisdale says:
January 14, 2014 at 4:49 pm
“Wow, you guys are still at it with Connolley?”
I think he has realised that he accidentally said something he is not now prepared to honour.
“Wouldn’t it be more interesting to have M and me debate here on WUWT?”
Of course a large number of people, myself included, immediately jumped on that and asked if he would like a true, proper, chaired debate at a normal, civilised, level instead of name calling and other such stuff
Strangely silent since then but we wait, hoping……
William Connolley says:
January 15, 2014 at 12:47 am
[Snip. Enough ad-homss against Prof Lindzen. ~ mod.]
Bile will out I suppose. He just digs a bigger hole for himself.
Please do note that to be fully correct as per Connolley’s observation that is should be E Prof. Lindzen (or however else we are supposed to shorten Emeritus Professor – I cannot find it in my usual references for abbreviations) unless we too might just possibly offend the man. Not that I think he would be so deeply offended by such a usage but…..
So who out there knows or can find the correct terminology so that we can get his status properly recognised. It seems very unreasonable to drop the Prof. bit entirely as that definitely would offend.
OK found it. That should read Prof. Emur. Lindzen. rather than Prof.
Dealing with spluttering, ranting, name calling individuals is all grist to the mill for any seasoned Chairman (if the venue is a real debate/meeting).
Dealing with such on the open platform of the web is slightly more trying and does up the bandwidth and reading requirements somewhat.
Such is the penalty for using a truly global forum.
A debate would be interesting. Connolley, knowing the climate “debate” well, would be a very good candidate to debate Mockton. A much better candidate as most scientists that know the scientific literature well, but not the kind of things that are discussed here.
The win/lose part does not make any sense whatsoever, however. Who would “win” the debate would depend on who is invited to sit in the audience. I am sure you do not really expect “alarmists” in the audience being convinced by Mockton, just as I have never seen and no longer expect a climate ostrich being convinced by scientific evidence.
Victor V says:
“Who would ‘win’ the debate would depend on who is invited to sit in the audience.”
That is why it was suggested to have the debate at Oxford, which has a centuries-old method of determining the winner: the door each audience member leaves through records his/her vote. It was proposed that the audience would consist of neutral members. That would not be hard to accomplish, as there are various ways of assuring at least reasonable neutrality and an ethical resaponse.
But the real reason there will be no debate is the requirement that the winner would take the loser’s position, whether it was writing articles for WUWT, or moderating at Wikipedia.
dbstealey says:
January 15, 2014 at 1:54 pm
It was proposed that the audience would consist of neutral members.
This may not be realistic. However you could have all members give their opinion at the start and see how many changed their mind at the end.
Victor Venema says:
January 15, 2014 at 1:02 pm
+++++++++
I checked your link to your name. I must say, your analogies are very clever and logical counterpoints made to weak claims that you say were made by “ostriches”. Perhaps any debate that you would find “interesting” would be based around the question, “where is the quantifiable evidence that additional CO2 was to blame for “almost all of the” short term warming in AR4’s SPM or “most of the” short term warming that stopped well over a decade ago” in AR5’s SPM? Note I said “short term” since the claims of the IPCC have been pigeon-holed to exist only in the short term. I do not think they are trying to make a case for the 50-70’s period being a warming trend. And I do not think they are blaming pre – 50’s climate on anthro’-causes.
The problem Connolly has is that he knows there is no evidence to support the claims made by the IPCC. If he had it, he’d reveal it cogently. Certainly “ostriches” may have made some lame counter points, at least the way you represented the so called ostriches. But your proving your version of their claims to be lame does not provide evidence that additional CO2’s effect on climate has been measured and that it is able to be separated from the variability that exists in climate. Sure, it was easy to be fooled by themselves where we had some correlation for a 25 or so year period. At that time, the claim was that natural variability was tiny compared to the so called proof that more CO2 was the culprit. After all, the models knew the answer and were programmed to produce their proof. You know this, right? Did you study the models and how they were programmed to respond to feedbacks? If you do know how the models work, at least now, you understand why they’re being tossed out.
If we’re talking about evidence, there is none to support the claims of the IPCC in their SPMs. Thus, Connolly’s side of the debate can only make deceptive statements and distract from the fact that past claims of proof have been duly debunked using the IPCC’s own metrics. You know what they are. Thus, we have it, their only “supposed” proof, the models, are now in the trash bins. After several decades, they are back to square 1, trying to find (to model) a new “smoking gun” which exists within their wildest imaginations.
There, that’s my feedback that you had asked for in your blog site.
Mario Lento says:
January 15, 2014 at 6:10 pm
Victor Venema says:
January 15, 2014 at 1:02 pm
++++++++++++
Mario says====> PS – I have to say, I really do want to know what is true. I am not an ideologue. So, I do not claim with any certainty that I know what will happen with climate. My guess several years ago was that it appeared warming was not in the immediate future and that cooling was likely.
As I’ve said before, being wrong once teaches me more than being right. So school me.
But as of this time, I claim with certainty that I have not seen evidence of proof of catastrophic warming being caused by a 25 to 40% increase in CO2. As a matter of fact, it appeared there was more warming at lower CO2 concentrations than at today’s peak levels. By all logic supposedly used by “the climate scientists”, the stall, slow down, reversal, pause, non-warming, or cooling over the past 1.5 decades was claimed to be impossible to occur. Only impossible if their hypothesis (certainly not a theory because there has never been a true consensus) were in fact correct. Get it? Their hypothesis was nullified by it’s own metrics.
wbrozek says:
January 15, 2014 at 5:57 pm
dbstealey says:
January 15, 2014 at 1:54 pm
It was proposed that the audience would consist of neutral members.
This may not be realistic. However you could have all members give their opinion at the start and see how many changed their mind at the end.
+++++++++++++++++
Wager: although I would like to see the debate in any decent forum, I wager $100 that 99% of pro-AGW folks would declare victory regardless of the outcome. However, if there were in fact credible evidence to support the AGW claims, I wager $200 that 75% of us skeptics would declare defeat. All most of us want is for truth and honesty. There is no ulterior motive except to be allowed to thrive freely and for important decisions about our energy policy to be based in truth.
philjourdan says:
“Given [Connolley’s] past practices and performance, I think it is wishful thinking on your part that should he decide to take the challenge, he would honor the rules.”
I had thought of that, and you are probably right. It would require honest, ethical individuals to abide by their pre-debate agreement. I have no doubt that Lord Monckton would play by the rules. But Connolley? Not so much…
wbrozek,
I had in mind this method of tallying audience votes. With an audience that was inclined to favor the alarmist argument, Lord Monckton still won that debate. Today, sentiment is even less pro-alarmist and more skeptical.
Thank you, Bob Tisdale and D. B. Stealey, for correcting (or trying to, heh) Mr. Connolly’s (and rabbet’s) failure to grasp what I meant by my compliment to Mr. Tisdale on his have-to-go-back-to-work thread on his cite and, in the course of your explanations defending my honor. How lovely to know you think I’m “nice,” D. B. — I always imagined you thought I was mostly just a pain.
Gratefully,
Janice
**************************************************
FYI (anyone): By citing Einstein as a recipient of a purely honorary Ph.D. (this one, from Oxford University, England), I was merely establishing the merit of such a degree. I could have used any one of dozens of fine scholars who have been awarded and deservedly so an honorary degree. I picked Einstein because I knew that fact without having to look it up as I would have had to for anyone else.
I stand by my assertion. Bob Tisdale, by his scholarship, has proven beyond all doubt that he is, indeed, a de facto Ph. D..
Only one deluded by pride or envy could fail to recognize such an obvious fact.
Have a nice day! (LOL)
Janice
“on his site…” (ooops)
[But all others must sight his site to cite his exciting inciteful farsight. Mod]
Oh, Mod, how nice to hear from you once again! #(:))
You are soooo punny.
J. Moore says:
“I always imagined you thought I was mostly just a pain.”
Not at all.
William Connolley says:
January 15, 2014 at 12:47 am
[Snip. Enough ad-homss against Prof Lindzen. ~ mod.]
Now you gona and done it. He’s gone off somewhere sulking and vindicated (in his own mind) that WUWT has censored his most important posts and thinking.
Did kinda fail on the whole ‘debate’ thing but….
And please, please make it Prof. Emer. Lindzen in future so as to not offend by reducing his status 😉
@ur momisugly D. B. Stealey — thanks!
Janice: I told you so… 🙂 no pain, but still a gain.
Thanks, Mario.
;(0_0); <– uh, oh….. my head just got TOO BIG. Now, I'm stuck in the hallway all night… I'll just have to think about all my mea culpas for the week so I can sleep in my bedroom instead of on the floor!