As we all know, Wikipedia has one major flaw in it’s design: it allows gang warfare.
We see this in many political entries, such as the Wikipedia entries for Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, which are revised hourly, only to be be revised again by “gatekeepers”. See more here: The-ClintonObama-War-The-Battle-of-Wikipedia
This illustrates the most basic problem with the reliability of Wikipedia in any entry where human opinion is involved. There are roving gangs (and sometimes individuals who appear gang-like due to their output level, such as disgraced Wikipedia editor William Connolley, who will no doubt wail about this note, and then proceed to post the usual denigrating things on his “Stoat, taking science by the throat” blog) and individuals who act as gatekeepers of their own vision of “truth”, regardless of whether that truth is correct or not. Some of these people may simply be paid political operatives, others may be zealots who have a belief that they are part of a “righteous cause”, something we know from Climatetgate as “noble cause corruption“. Many of the people involved don’t even use their real names, so of course hide behind that anonymity. In my opinion, it’s truly an irresponsible and cowardly way to define “truth” with no responsibility for your actions attached.
Right now, there is a war going on over WUWT’s entry on Wikipedia, with a clear intent to apply a smear. I’ve been getting a fair amount of email about it. Here are some examples:
Just a heads-up that there’s a concerted effort in progress to label both you and WUWT as “a blog dedicated to climate change denial” (first line in lede, WUWT article) and “described by climatologist Michael E. Mann in The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars as having “overtaken Climate Audit as the leading climate change denial blog”. (last line in your Wikibio). A twofer! Sigh.
It’s a determined group, and things (as you may recall) get decided by head-counts there. “They” have more heads than we do….
From another concerned reader:
I just tried fixing it and got shut down. Those people really care more about “gate-keeping” public information then just reporting the facts. It’s creepy and a little scary. Kind of like double-speak. The game seems to be finding a “source” which sides with their own viewpoint, and then bestowing high “credibility” on those sources, while denigrating anything else. I’m actually ambivalent on climate change and fall somewhere in the middle as to whether it’s a major problem. So much is unknowable when it comes to the natural sciences. But when I see the above described behavior it really, really makes me sick, regardless of which side is doing. Anyways I just wanted to bring this to your attention in case you were not already aware of it.
And this one:
Anthony,
Don’t know if you’re aware that when searching for WUWT on Bing a profile pops up on the right margin, the first sentence of which is;
“Watts Up With That? is a blog dedicated to climate change denial created in 2006 by Anthony Watts”
I used their feedback form to object but it will no doubt be ignored. No need to respond to this.
Of course, I’m not allowed to make any changes myself, because the Wikipedia rules prevent such things due to potential “bias”. (added: In some cases, even the Wikipedia administration won’t even attempt to correct falsehoods, requiring a public appeal such as this Open Letter to Wikipedia h/t to Bob in comments). But, oddly, people who have a willful bias against me and WUWT are fair game for such changes. The citations list on the WUWT Wikipedia page reads like a “who’s-who” of haters.
For the record:
I don’t “deny” climate change or global warming, it is clear to me that the Earth has warmed slightly in the last century, this is indisputable. I also believe that increasing amounts of CO2 in Earths atmosphere are a component of that warming, but that CO2 is not the only driver of climate as some would have us believe. However, what is in dispute (and being addressed by mainstream climate science) is climate sensitivity to CO2 as well as the hiatus in global warming, also known as “the pause”. Since I embrace the idea of warming and that CO2 is a factor, along with other drivers including natural variability, the label “denier” is being applied purely for the denigration value, and does not accurately reflect my position on climate.
That paragraph above should serve as it’s own entry in the Wikipedia citations for WUWT.
So, since this is a numbers game, and because anyone can edit Wikipedia articles, I ask WUWT readers to help out in this matter. Here’s some instructions on how to do so, including the official Wikipedia instructions. You can make edits after you create an account.
If you do participate, please stick to facts, not opinions. Thanks for your consideration.
I had the unfortunate duty of telling Ken Rice that he lived in a world without consensus enforcers.
==============
I wonder if Ken Rice aka ATTP “And Then There’s Physics” needs a Wikipedia entry to highlight his own failings of professionalism?
After having engaged him once or twice, and seen how he responds to others, I suspect the entry would consist of one word, which starts with @$$………..
And Then There’s Ken Rice.
Sigh…
Heh!
Wikapedia political? I never noticed..
I gave up on them a long, long, long time ago. The amount of errors is, at times, catastrophic.
Me too. I tried to add a piece on the IRA?Sin Feinn page noting how they were mass murdering, child killer who cover up sex crimes, but was shut down very quickly…….
Wikipedia has been deemed unacceptable at reference source at most top level universities in North America for a decade or more. I must have been one of the first to do so when I was an Adjunct Professor [Faculty of Applied Sciences] 15 years ago and told my students their papers would fail if based on Wikipedia references. Things have only got worse since.
“Wikipedia has been deemed unacceptable at reference source at most top level universities in North America for a decade or more.”
That should be true of Encyclopedia Britannica as well. I mean … come on! A university student who attempts to use Wikipedia or any traditional encyclopedia as a primary reference source deserves to be slapped. You may as well write a paper with a crayon.
But I think it’s unfair to suggest Wikipedia is without value. I find it’s a great resource, provided one is willing to follow up by going to the cited references for further information, and provided one understands that the Wiki entry itself may be biased.
This isn’t just a Wikipedia problem. Read any number of encyclopedia entries from fifty or so years ago and the current entries and you’ll find that they change as biases come and go with the changing times.
Its not just political.
I am a bit of an aircraft nut, and was researching the horsepower of WWII aircraft. Horsepower is usually quotes as bhp by UK /US sources and kW by European sources often with both being quoted. One bhp is ~745kW so its easy to cross-check
In one case I was astounded to see that the figures did not match. It was fairly obvious that two digits had got transposed somewhere in some reference, and the actual kW figure was a typo.
So I corrected it and explained why.
Within a day my correction was reversed by the original author!
I assumed he had some reference in which the mistake appeared and considered it ‘authoritative’
Its an interesting take on ‘appeals to authority’ and ‘chinese whispera’
Another interst is nuclear power. I have a friend who was for a time an advisor to the CND on nuclear power. SA good guardian reading technically minded bloke who is not given to hysteria and mistakes, oddly enough.
Several times O have challenged him on aspects of nuclear safety and been rebuffed with ‘there was a study done back the the 60/70s/80s showing that…’
Googling that, reveals no such studies. What WAS happening then, was that articles – the New Scientist, the Guardian or by the BBC, featured the subject under discussion with such phrases as ‘scientists say that (the subject) COULD give rise to (unpleasant effect mentioned).
Never that any real study had been carried out to ascertain if it had.
It is all pure propaganda. I remember 20 years ago my (German living) sister claiming that ‘Germany had no nuclear power stations’ despite the fact that at that time it had more nuclear capacity than the UK.
People dont deal in facts: They deal in impressions, and those on the lobbying and ’cause’ front are skilled at giving impressions.
UK wind-power has killed more people than Fukushima. No one describes it as a ‘disaster’ though.
Angel Merkel for example was a former agitprop executive in East Germany… In that game the truth is irrelevant: What counts is what people believe and who they trust to tell them.
In fact the Left by and large is of the (faux) postmodern opinion that truth is in fact what people believe it is.
The problem is that whilst the game of thrones is OK, there is at some level a game of life going on as well.
Underlying all the posturing and claims there is a real world that doesn’t care what people believe, only what people do, and if they do stupid things, they will in the end suffer.
Its lonely being an engineer, and machines may not make the best conversationalists, but at least they are not inherently clouded by belief.
> One bhp is ~745kW
Er…
1 bhp= 0.745 kw
1 bhp = 746 W (745.699871357…)
Perhaps I’m naïve, but it seems to me Wikipedia is libel for publishing known false information. I should think you could contact them and they would fix it. Just as Youtube removes improper postings. Once notified of a bad posting, Wikipedia owns it.
Need Lord Monkton on this straight away!! He is Thunderbirds.
First, I assume you mean “liable”. “Libel” is an issue, but not what you meant.
Second it is more complicated than many realize. At the risk of sounding pedantic, you cannot sue Wikipedia, there’s no such entity. You might mean Wikimedia, (note the “m”) which is a legal corporation. However, Wikimedia plays no direct part in creating, or changing content. Wikimedia pays for servers to host content, and pays developers and other staff to dream up and develop new projects. Wikipedia content (and you probably mean the English Wikipedia, one of many) is edited by individual editors, who remain responsible for their respective content.
There are some small exceptions. Wikimedia legal staff will intervene if there are legal issues, such as libel, and other issues that are not promptly resolved by ordinary Wikipedia editors.
Of course, you can sue Wikimedia, in the same sense you can sue anyone, if you can talk a lawyer into filing the suit, but you are unlikely to prevail. However, returning to your opening point, you are unlikely to prevail if you try to sue Wikimedia for “publishing known false information”, because Wikimedia publishes nothing. If you find knowingly false information, you’ll have to track down the specific editor who placed it. Wikimedia will help you identify their real name if you have a legitimate issue.
The shorter version of what Phil just ably laid out is that there is not necessarily an effective legal remedy for every wrong. My kids were always crushed when that was my response to their “Let’s sue” but adulthood seems to be going better for them that their “it’s not fair” friends.
Anthony does have a remedy though as he is asserting by using the platform of this widely circulated blog to create search results that will prevent Wikipedia from having the last or exclusive say on this. This blog simply has more subscribers and daily hits than any particular section of wikipedia for the most part.
Congrats on utilizing both a more effective and less costly remedy for an attempt to defame as well as a recognition of how search engines actually work. Now what will come up as WUWT and wikipedia are combined?
Bingo.
The other Phil,
Are you saying the Wikipedia site can have anything on it, with no legal recourse? Sounds like it.
Suppose someone posts: “Mr. X is a known child molester”? Are you saying that Mr. X can’t sue?
If that’s an exception, then where do you draw the line?
It says right at the top of the WUWT wiki page,
Disabled by who? The answer to that question is the guy who is financially liable for Wikipedia content.
No matter what is said on the page by whoever, the guy who blocked amendments to the record gives his explicit consent to the libel.
dbstealy, wow, how could you possibly get that from what I worte? On the chance that my words were unclear, absolutely not. If someone writes ” “Mr. X is a known child molester”, the first thing that will happen is that it is likely to removed in seconds. Literally seconds. In rare cases, it may take minutes. But let’s assume it lasts long enough for someone to see it. This is one of those rare case where Wikimedia satff will get involved, first, removing the entry, then helping Mr. X isf there is a desire to press charges. I wasn;t trying to suggest that one couldn’t sue, but the recourse is not against the deep pockets of Wikimedia, it is against the editor who added the statement.
As an amusing aside, I just did a search for the term “child molester”, and I briefly panicked when I saw a link to an article with the phrase “Kevin Bacon as a convicted child molester”. I misread “as” to be “is”, but after I read it, I realized it was fine.
Whoever owns the server that wikipedia is hosted on, is ultimately responsible.
Given that the founder was a former Pornographer, no surprises that pinning them down might prove difficult 🙂
The other Phil,
I was only making an analogy. My question was: where do you draw the line?
No offense intended.
Interesting point wrt libel. Since they have final say about editing, the “safe harbor” provisions don’t apply. I’d also go long with Richard’s suggestion as a libel suit is much more likely to prevail in the UK than the US.
OTOH, being criticized by Mikey Mann is a badge of honor in my book.
The other Phil:
I meant libel.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defamation
Gawd, I loved doing that.
“Wikimedia pays for servers to host content,”
Wikiwhover is legally responsible for content. Dispersion is no defense.
Oh, crap! I reread what I wrote, and I see you are correct about libel. Liable for libel is more better.
Ok, you meant “libel” My point still holds. A good lawyer (IANAL) will tell you that Wikimedia’s defense isn’t ironclad, if they are cavalier about what is included in the content, someone is likely to prevail in a lawsuit. But editors, admins, and the legal staff are very aggressive in removing libel or even potential libel. Do you have any counter-examples?
he, no problem.
This happens all the time. But although you can’t know the person’s name you can retrace their URL.
For example the NYPD HQ was used to edit information against the police by downplaying their role in Michael Brown’s death
It is highly likely that the NYPD played no role in Michael Brown’s death as that happened outside their jurisdiction.
i probably got the name wrong. I was talking about the man that died of choke hold for selling “contraband” cigarettes.
There was no chokehold. He died from heart failure due to exertion. He didn’t go into cardiac arrest until he was in the ambulance already on the way to the hospital.
It now transpires that prior to the recent UK election, parliament hosted pcs were used to edit wikipedia entries about corrupt politicians.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/general-election-2015/11574217/Expenses-and-sex-scandal-deleted-from-MPs-Wikipedia-pages-by-computers-inside-Parliament.html
http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/2015/04/22/wikipedia-grant-shapps/
Don’t forget this:
http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/an-open-letter-to-wikipedia
He could’ve made that up.
I’ve had the same problem with some of my own work. Since it is academic, there was no problem supplying abundant references. It made no difference. The article author/gatekeeper (captaincrunch21?) refused to read any of the source material cited in his/her own article or the additional bibliography provided by me. Years later, the wikipedia articles are still hopelessly wrong.
I spent some time trying to fix the junk history that can be found regarding the Little Ice Age, which ascribed the ceasing of human activities caused by the Black Plague and the resulting increased forest lowered CO2 and brought on the cold. There simply were not that many humans to do this, let alone impossible for CO2 to drive the climate like that.
When I added a couple of moderate sentences, my changes were quickly removed and I was threatened by William Connolley several times. He is a piece of work, a troll sitting on Wikipedia back then, canceling all rational input. It took a long time for hime to be disgraced for his activities and I am sure others have taken his place.
When the preaching persecution reaches high office the rot has well and truly set in. http://www.ushmm.org/learn/timeline-of-events/1933-1938
People like Willy have done so much damage to Wiki’s reputation, most quality institutions of higher learning now proscribe its being used as a source reference of any sort.
https://thepointman.wordpress.com/2014/05/29/the-scorning-of-william-connolley/
Pointman
Amazing what trouble a little willy can cause !!!
To be fair, this is a site where “deniers” like myself also come to get a fair hearing and meet like minded thinkers. That you, Anthony, are personally a “Luke warmer” who believes there is something called a ‘greenhouse effect’ when many on here don’t, is by the by.
I personally embrace the term “denier”, regardless of attempted Nazi connotations. It’s a badge of honour. Yes, I deny there is a Greenhouse Effect. Yes, I deny rising CO2 has any measurable effect on temperature of this planet or any other. Now prove me wrong!
Physics proved you wrong decades ago. Do you want to take a run at Evolution as well?
How?
HS physics will tell us what will happen to a thermometer in the mouth of a bronze statue of you stuck knee deep in a tub of boiling water but not if it’s similarly in the mouth of the real you. You want me to prove that to you?
Warren lb could write that down for us. We may have missed it. I
Wow warrenlb, even the warmists have had real trouble showing the ‘real signal’ of C02’s effect on the temps. I am quite sure that the only sources you can find are weak correlations over short time periods. They may cite models and that is just a massive ensemble of guesses. Perhaps reasonable but not any kind of proof.
warrenlb my close (“minded?”) personal friend,
All on here understand that you believe this. We also know that you cannot document any such proof. What kind of an engineer must you have been…
Warren,he asked to be proved wrong, your reply failed to do that.
Carry on.
Water vapour yes. CO2 immeasurable at the current conc.
And physics also proves that a Greenhouse Effect is almost identical to a Thermos Bottle Effect.
Given said, does anyone want to claim that the “warming”, …. partial or otherwise, …. of the earth’s atmosphere is a direct result of a Thermos Bottle Effect?
If not, ….. why not, ……. both terms infer a “heat trapping effect”?
If you are offered a “cup of coffee” out of a Thermos Bottle ……. you “just assume” it is going to be a “HOT” cup of coffee, ……….. right?
@warrenlb:
You were asked: “How?”
This is your credibility test.
GHE:
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/1520-0477%281996%29077%3C1967%3ATSREPD%3E2.0.CO%3B2
A couple observable consequences of the GHE:
A cloudy winter night staying generally warmer than a clear winter night.
Drastic temperature drops in desert regions at night.
Engineers have to account for the GHE when estimating cooling rates:
http://www.asterism.org/tutorials/tut37%20Radiative%20Cooling.pdf
Now that would be for sure …. a Thermos Bottle Effect (TBE), ……. right.
You are dead wrong, warrenlb, and you are way out of line with that Evolution remark. That wickedwenchfan, whoever it may be, is right that rising SO2 has no measurable effect on temperature. Where have you been hiding for the last 18 years when carbon dioxide kept rising but was unable to to cause any temperature rise whatsoever? The Arrhenius greenhouse theory kept predicting warming at the same time and likewise got nothing. A scientific theory that makes verifiably wrong predictions is invalid and has to be disposed of in the waste basket of history. With the Arrhenius theory gone all the predictions of greenhouse warming it it has made become false science and must be discarded as well. Since the fairy tale of AGW was built up upon these wrong predictions it follows that there is no such thing as AGW. The only greenhouse theory that works now is the Miskolczi greenhouse theory, MGT. Its predictions are straightforward: addition of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere does not warm the atmosphere. To learn how this works read my comment to Pamela Gray below. You need to learn some real climate science for which you can’t find a better source than my book “What Warming?” Get it from Amazon and educate yourself.
As a sceptic of catastrophic human caused green warming I find you to be completely uneducated. No one with a western grade 6 education should Deny basic science I.E. the green house effect is known and quantifiable. Most of the people on this blog are arguing the source,inputs and ultimate outcomes If any.
I think you left the ‘un-‘ off of ‘quantifiable’.
Bench test seldom translates directly to full scale operations. The greenhouse effect of CO2 dispersed in the atmosphere is far less quantifiable than a controlled laboratory experiment and is yet to be proven.
@chris Hagan
Unfortunately, there are all too many that fit your description, including the two posts directly below yours. Indeed, it is about ultimate outcomes, will such outcomes ultimately be catastrophic, can Man adapt, should he attempt to mitigate, what tools are available for mitigation, and what are the effects of using those tools —-both on the outcomes and on the economy. Rejecting 6th Grade Science is not the way to convince anyone of anything.
@chris Hagan
You could have just as easily stated … “a western grade 1 education” …. because most every US Public School System is now brainwashing their student body into believing the “junk science” of CO2 causing global warming climate change (CAGW).
Any “warming” effect of near-surface temperatures attributable to “radiative gases” is not cumulative from one (1) month to the next, …. let alone one (1) year to the next, ….. therefore it matters not a twit what atmospheric CO2 ppm quantities were in respect to what the “fuzzy math” calculated Average Yearly Temperatures were last year, 50 years ago or 130 years ago.
In actuality, it is not so much that the earth’s climate is “getting warmer” or “getting hotter” that is causing the calculated Average Yearly Temperatures to increase during the past 200 years …… as it is the fact that the earth’s surface has not been “cooling off” or “cooling down” as much during the yearly seasonal “cool” or ”cold” periods.
If CO2 is the actual culprit that is causing the increase in Average Yearly Temperatures …. then Summertime temperatures would be increasing at the same rate as the Wintertime temperatures, ……. but they are not.
And do not forget the discrepancy between anthropogenic CO2 production and global CO2 levels rise. Some people also doubt that the main cause of the increment of atmospheric CO2 levels is not because we burn fossil fuels.
No, you are wrong, it is not “by the by”. The wikipedia is saying that WUWT “is a blog dedicated to climate change denial”. The fact that “deniers” like you get a hearing and are laughted at from time to time doesn’t make it “a blog dedicated to climate change denial”. If anything, it is a blog dedicated to open discussion about climate change.
And about there being “many” who are deniers and just Anthony as a Luke Warmer… well, that is pretty laughable. Just have a look at the rest of the responses that your comment has received. I would rather say that the number of regular commenters here denying the Greenhouse Effect could perhaps, being generous, be considered to barely reach 1%.
The problem with the whole Wikipedia entry is that it is written from the perspective of the MSM, the political left and the alarmist blogs and papers. There are loads of entries from the Guardian and references to “denial”, “denialism” and “denialist” (what is the difference between a “denier” and a “denialist” I wonder?). The only way to make this entry even slightly truthful would be to delete it all and start from scratch.
I think it is quite fair that the entry should include a reference to the fact that much of the MSM sees you as a “denier”, but the way it is presented is that it is a “fact” that you are a denier. Clearly this is opinion and not fact and should be stated as such.
Rather than changing the text I think it should be edited to flag up those parts of the entry which are clearly opinion and politics not fact.
‘Denialist’ is Slithertongue for ‘Denier’.
=============
I almost resemble that remark Kim!
Listen, pal, it’s hard to top your name. I grin every time I see it.
==========
As I’ve note here before, there is no entry or mention of the words denialism or denialist in either of my two older local dictionaries, each dating from the early 1990s. At the very least, these terms are neologisms.
There however a valid word which may be useful – deniable, as an adjective, and the related noun deniability, as in plausible deniability, where some may claim to be “out of the loop.”
If something is deniable, then it should be disputed.
Wikipedia is valuable but flawed. I think contentious issues should be flagged at a system level when many edits are being made, and then the opposing viewpoints might all be included in some fashion so the Wiki user may read it all. ‘Else it’s just running censorship.
What a great idea.
Good idea. Rather than claiming to be unbiassed (there is no such thing), they should have a pro section and a con section. Let the reader deside what they want to believe.
For some reason, they’ve deleted my corrected version of this post, which was here for awhile, and began
“As I’ve noted here before…”
2nd paragraph should begin:
“There however is a valid word which may be useful…”
“I don’t “deny” climate change or global warming, it is clear to me that the Earth has warmed slightly in the last century, this is indisputable. I also believe that increasing amounts of CO2 in Earths atmosphere are a component of that warming, but that CO2 is not the only driver of climate as some would have us believe. …” ~ A. W.
I can attest that after reading this blog for some time, that the position of Mr. Watts and that of the current “consensus” on climate is the same. Both he and the warmists do believe in CO2 warming the planet but they disagree on the matter of “how much?”. They agree that the planet has warmed over the last 100 years but may disagree on “how much?” and, also, if the surface record is reliable.
From my viewpoint, it is hard to see why those people have attacked Mr. Watts and WUWT on wikipedia since both groups are on the same side in most respects. The main difference is a matter of degree.
I personally am not certain that we can really say what the average global temperature is now and certainly don’t think we know what it was in the past to the degree of certainty needed to claim warming. I also don’t think the “average temperature” of the atmosphere, if we could calculate it, is the best metric of the energy stored in the earth system. I also don’t think that CO2 plays any part at all in warming the planet on a net basis. I also think that the net effect of CO2 is so darn small it makes no difference if it cools or warms on net.
Since I am not “on the side” of either party in the dispute, I feel I can say without any bias that this smear job is totally unwarranted. (but not unexpected)
~ Mark
To suggest that the Blog denies Climate Change is patent falsehood, as attested by the many excellent articles attempting to characterise accurately the causes & extent of climate change.
The repeated attempts to justify such pejorative use of language on a basis that others have published in the same manner is more worthy of trashy red topped tabloids than of any aspiring tome of knowledge.
Use of the term denial in this context is clearly unbefitting. Attempts to dignify such abuse by academicians using the term else is a specialised area for discussion elsewhere and do not justify such clearly derogatory use here.
The standing of the whole WikiPedia project is sadly diminished much more by this than the reputation of one Blog, whose enduring popularity by the way speaks for itself.
Psychologically, the mindset of the Wiki gatekeepers seems far closer to that of prosecutors in a heresy trial, than to anything remotely recognizable as science.
Catastrophic warming is denied; what’s affirmed is that present mistaken policy is already catastrophic and worsening.
==================
You’re not allowed a difference from the received wisdom, even by as much as one degree.
Look what happened to Lomborg and he’s more of a warmist than Anthony.
“He who is not with us 100%, no ifs, no buts, no arguments, is against us 100% and is and evil denier”.
All black and white in the world of climate “science”.
markstoval,
You say you don’t understand why Anthony Watts is being attacked. You say:
Both he and the warmists do believe in CO2 warming the planet but they disagree on the matter of “how much?”. They agree that the planet has warmed over the last 100 years but may disagree on “how much?” and, also, if the surface record is reliable.
Anthony agrees with the generally accepted science. That is not the source of the Wikipedia propagandists’ hatred of Anthony and his site. What they hate is the fact that Anthony allows all points of view, and that many well known scientists post articles and comment here. This site also has a much higher number of readers educated in the hard sciences. If the public wants to understand the ‘climate’ debate, this is their best source. They can read both sides, and make up their own minds. And of course, WUWT is very widely read, and influential.
When a site allows all sides to contribute, the truth (as far as we know scientific truth) emerges. And the fact is that the original premise: that human CO2 emissions will cause runaway global warming and climate catastrophe, has been falsified by events. That derails the carbon tax politics that is at the root of the ‘climate change’ narrative.
Not only is there no runaway global warming, but there has been no global warming at all for a very long time. Believers in the original conjecture could hardly have been more wrong. They hate that, and they direct their hatred onto those who turned out to be correct: CO2 is a very minor, 3rd-order forcing that simply does not matter. Its effect is too small to measure.
What they want is to turn WUWT into another Wikipedia, so they can censor out all comments by skeptics of the ‘dangerous man-made global warming’ narrative. Because they cannot stand the thought that the public has access to any point of view but their own.
dbstealey,
I understand your comment, and agree that they can’t stand the wholesale disputing of the ‘dangerous man-made global warming’ narrative.
But I would point out that we don’t tolerate all points of view concerning CO2 and global warming here. As a moderator you know the site policy against getting too close to the position of zero climate sensitivity to CO2 or in posting links to certain groups that dispute warming by back radiation. (notice I tip-toed around using the s-word there) I do not agree 100% with any group, but I do see value in listening to all sides.
I do wish that we could pleasantly discuss these matters here, but alas, that is against site policy. I find the J. T. Kiehl and Kevin E. Trenberth, 1997 energy budget to be a cartoon and not science, yet my main complaint is not a topic welcome here. Since I freely admit that I might be wrong, it would be nice to see debate on that topic here at times.
In an odd way, Mr. Watts and WUWT are being wrongly accused of holding my position while the reality is that Mr. Watts disputes the size of the CO2 contribution of warming. (as well as feedbacks of course)
Philip Finck
You say
NO! You are absolutely wrong.
Science has no ‘sides’: it has an infinite number of possibilities and assesses available evidence to determine which possibility is least wrong.
Science could not progress if there were not an infinite number of possibilities; your “one side” would exclude a theory (e.g. phlogiston) being displaced by another possibility (e.g. oxidation).
You are guilty of the warmunist error of talking about THE science: acceptance of ‘the science’ is a denial of science.
Richard
Philip Finck,
Richard Courtney is right, science doesn’t have sides. But if science had only one side, you would surely be on the wrong side. You also say that this site doesn’t publish current research. I am confident in saying that you don’t know what you’re talking about.
markstoval,
I’ve often written that I personally think that CO2 has a negligible effect, but that others such as Dr. Miskolczi state that it has no warming effect at all.
Saying you think CO2 has no warming effect is a legitimate position. The site policy states that certain subjects are not allowed (chemtrails, etc.). But if you want to argue that CO2 doesn’t cause global warming, have at it.
dbstealey,
” But if you want to argue that CO2 doesn’t cause global warming, have at it.”
That is good to hear. I will do so in the future on a thread where it is on topic. I will avoid linking to the forbidden site that Mr. Watts as asked us never to link to, but there are many others that also good links. Especially a certain mathematician. (no, not Dr. Mann!)
Nice to have a talk with you today.
Bingo!
Actual and honest science is not advanced by attempting to censor/silence those who present and can backup “inconvenient views”.
Such views can be voiced and read here. Often the comments debunk, fine tune and/or sharpen the views expressed.
Those who stand to lose something (money, power, prestige etc.) are those who hate any who hold or allow those “inconvenient views” to be heard.
Mr. Finck:
I would say that if you paid attention that you would find that this site actually has better research than the pal reviewed hoar grant papers published by the mainstream.
WUWT readers and contributors are a bit older, therefore more experienced, better informed and therefore conduct better analyses than the average believer in CAGW.
Can anyone cite a reference? Skepticism of CAGW should be a prerequisite for anyone considered for a scientific editorial post. Other wise everything will dissolve into churches of thought instead of schools of thought.
Wikipedia is pretty good for straight technical stuff like chemistry. Politics and climate, not so much. The New Scientist also lost its citability some years ago. Ah, how great it used to be before The Warming.
P. Finck:
“Could you please provide us with the impact ratio for citation counts on this blog?”
I am sure that will not agree, but I consider these just as relevant to your rigged “pitch” and there are of course many others just as educational. But then one has to of course be capable of having an open mind.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/02/24/are-climate-modelers-scientists/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/07/11/the-pnas-old-boys-club-nas-members-can-choose-who-will-review-their-paper/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/07/10/peer-review-ring-busted/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/02/17/peer-review-pal-review-and-broccoli/
I’ve seen several posters make the claim that thermodynamics proves that CO2 can’t warm the earth.
I’ve even argued with several of them.
Their posts aren’t removed and the posters themselves haven’t been banned.
” Both he and the warmists do believe in CO2 warming the planet but they disagree on the matter of “how much?”.”
Not to speak for our host, but many of us also disagree on the matter of “what else?”. Land use changes — in particular over-grazing pastureland and clear-cutting forest — are known to affect albedo, dust-formation, water-retention, and other elements of the local weather that in turn affect the global climate. The soot that accompanies some, but not all, fossil fuel consumption has an effect, and that effect is poorly differentiated from the effect of CO2. And of course some of us worry about solar and asteroid impacts on the climate. (Yes the latter use of “impact” is a deliberate pun.)
Those of us who assume there may be other causes of climate change besides CO2 concentrations then want our governments’ spending to be generalized enough to deal with a range of threats, rather than focusing on one, potentially wrong or mis-prioritized, threat.
pouncer,
I certainly agree that mankind’s many activities, especially desertification, has effected the climate, as well as the sun and even possibly impacts by celestial bodies. Good points you made. All this single minded focus on just anthropogenic CO2 emissions is wildly misguided, as you point out.
Pouncer while I agree with the part about man having some affect on the environment, I disagree strongly that our government needs to spend even one penny trying to stop climate change. There is absolutely NO evidence that the climate is changing catastrophically or that man has done anything significant at this point with respect to causing climate change… so NO… generalized government spending to stop climate change is 100% wasted money.
they will lock the whole article down now, since they can no longer successfully gatekeep it
My grandson is in high school and many of his teachers won’t let the students use Wikipedia as a reference because they don’t consider it reliable information.
Good! I tell my kids the same thing.
Tell that to the Open University!
Of course you shouldn’t use Wikipedia as a reference, in high school, college, middle school or elsewhere. Is there anyone who disputes this? Even Wikipedia disallows Wikipedia as a reference. However, that doesn’t mean it isn’t a useful place to start researching, just make sure to go to the sources.
It’s a good place to get the officially maintained position about anything. What they call their NPOV, which is the regime opinion about anything.
As a university professor, I only use Wikipedia as a source to initially compile some references. If the subject matter is of a controversial nature and Wikipedia’s list of references is biased, it doesn’t take long to find references on the other side of the issue in published sources as even some of the biased published articles will reference opposing sources.
That’s funny! A knowledge base that doesn’t let us use its own knowledge base as a source of knowledge.
Sorry about the Wiki entries, Anthony. The corruption of search engines will surely follow. I believe that persistent objections – everyone take a minute per day – will overcome this. It eventually got Connelley dumped out of his chair.
That’s because it’s true.
It seems that wiki has an unfortunate tendency to allow distortions to accumulate and get built upon quite quickly so they become lies. This story reminds me of recently when I was offered from a CiF commenter the following quote from the wiki page of Roger Pielke Sr as evidence that Pielke Jr* was a climate change denier:
http://www.theguardian.com/science/political-science/2015/apr/23/playing-the-ball-not-the-man#comment-51001269
It turns out this is of course a crude fabrication, there literally is no example of Pielke Sr saying “remains no” to Revkins question. But it took a while to drill down to the source of the claim and I found the initial creator of this meme was KimDabelsteinPetersen here
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Roger_A._Pielke&type=revision&diff=360548280&oldid=360533958
I believe KimDabelsteinPetersen at one time was almost as diligent at maintaining the climate narrative as William Connolley was, I’m not sure if he/she’s still active.
Although KDP initially just creates a dogmatic assertion that Pielke said ‘remains NO’ without quotes, wrongly implying it originated on his blog with a link, It seems somewhere along the line those two words eventually picked up quotes and became perfectly adequate ‘factual’ ammunition for the CiF climate concerned hard of thinking.
I wonder how, or if, wiki checks for possible accumulations like this? If people of the same ideological bent get to edit these pages it seems inevitable, even assuming the best will in the world, that their biases will obviously just lead to the site being full of plain lies like this.
* Yes, he was that dumb. He didn’t know which was which 🙂
That is known as Wikipedia fact laundering. The lie gets put in wiki then it I’d picked up by some mainstream media then that mainstream media source is now used as the credible source.
Update: Apologies to KimDabelsteinPetersen. After I edited the page and corrected the mistaken URL which, I then removed the reference to the “remains No” quote thinking it was wrongly credited to be in that URL, however someone subsequently edited it, putting back the quote, pointing out that quote *does* appear in a later URL I had overlooked. It seem Wiki can work fine sometimes
The problem with this devious information manipulation is that student’s perceptions are shaped early on and it takes years to clear their cloudy minds.
It beckons to the images of North Korean youth who believe the absurd state sponsored lies about their leader. It is so difficult to beak the bonds of manipulated ignorance…
Anfhony I went on Wikipedia website to edit WUWT and this message displayed:
Note!
This page is under a 1 revert rule restriction due to the climate change topic community probation. Do not make any edit to the article that reverses the edit of another user in whole or in part more than once in any 24 hour period. Avoid edit warring and seek consensus
for any contentious edits at Talk:Watts Up With That?. Editors who fail to adhere to these standards may be blocked from editing for a short period.
Any ideas?
“seek consensus.” UGH!
“And seek consensus”, oh that’s rich. Good luck with that. And when did truth get defined by consensus?
The thing that people don’t like about Truth is it doesn’t care about consensus. In fact, Truth doesn’t care who likes it. If Truth were on Facebook, it wouldn’t have many friends, nor followers on Twitter. But it is, as they say, out there, for those who seek it.
I’ve seen several references to “truth”.
This is an unofficial essay, but it may be helpful.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Truth
Short version – the goal of Wikipedia is verifiability. (One hopes that verifiability and truth are closely related, but unfortunately, there may be exceptions. “Truth” is an unattainable goal for a crowd-sourced wiki, but verifiability, while challenging, is at least in principle, attainable.
“Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world.
In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus. There is no such thing as consensus science. If it’s consensus, it isn’t science. If it’s science, it isn’t consensus. Period.”
-Michael Crichton, Aliens Cause Global Warming: A Caltech Lecture ”
Wikipedia can be used as a fair proxy for what passes as the politically dominant themes in society. It’s kind of depressing.
What do you mean by “any ideas”? A one revert rule does not prohibit you from editing. The usual rule in most places is that three reverts in 24 hours is deemed edit warring (although it can be fewer). It is unlikely you need to make more than one edit in any 24 hour period. If you do, let me know, I may be able to help.
Thanks Phil, I was not sure if a revert was only counted for one or multiple reverters or for total number of reversions. Anyway here goes!
Editing of this article by new or unregistered users is currently disabled.
See the protection policy and protection log for more details. If you cannot edit this article and you wish to make a change, you can submit an edit request, discuss changes on the talk page, request unprotection, log in, or create an account.
Watts Up With That?
Watts Up logo.jpg
Web address http://wattsupwiththat.com
Slogan Commentary on puzzling things in life, nature, science, weather, climate change, technology, and recent news by Anthony Watts
Type of site
Blog
Created by Anthony Watts
Launched November 17, 2006
Alexa rank
22,823 (on 2015-05-25)
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The neutrality of this article is disputed. Relevant discussion may be found on the talk page. Please do not remove this message until the dispute is resolved. (May 2015)
Looks like they are ganging up on us
Honestly, I stopped reading/using Wikipedia for anything about 10 years ago. It is absolutely riddled with rubbish, lies and propaganda. Look up Fascism, which was a grass roots, left wing, socialist movement that got ugly. Yet Wikipedia label Fascism as an historically right wing movement…
Well it is the right wing of the socialist spectrum. Also they do have Mussolini’s original party program – which reads a lot like the communist manifesto. Mussolini BTW learned his trade in the socialist party, which the wikipedia admitted when I last looked at it.
Not sure where you get your right/left wing info. My understanding is left wing equals big government and right wing equals small government. There is a continuum moving from the extreme left which is a totalitarian dictatorship or monarchy to the extreme right which is lack of government, or anarchy. The larger and more powerful govt. is left, smaller and distributed and more free is right.
I’ve also been told that this is how the US looks at the right left paradigm, and in other parts of the world they use different definitions.
Fascism is ‘socialism for one ethnic/tribal group’ while denying even simple civil rights for other tribes/religions.
This makes it both far right wing and far left wing at the same time and it is a very noxious belief system and a number of countries (ahem) practice this form or fascism.
emsnews: Are you actually trying to claim that racism is a right wing phenomena?
Mark Cooper
This thread is about how wicki misrepresents about climate change and WUWT in particular.
Many other things also get misrepresented on wicki especially – as the above article says by way of illustration – US politics. But this thread is not about them.
You provide a red herring by posting nonsense about fascism.
Fascism is the extreme right wing. That is reality, so live with it.
And please don’t try waving any other red herrings
Richard
Well, maybe we’ve got to redefine “wing”. Problem is that “wing” relates to bird which only has two wings. To me, fascism is obviously left wing. Think dragonfly, perhaps.
Socialist have been trying desperately to distance themselves from the horrors of Nazi Germany for over half a century but you always fail. It’s sort of comical the way you start acting like a CAGW activist whenever the evils of Socialism come up.
richardscourtney,
How many beers have you had? No idea why you focused on the reference to Fascism- I used that as an example only – That entry was the target of a ‘left wing” / “right wing” “gang-war” a few years ago. It is a waste of everyone’s time and resources to try and fix corrupted entries in Wikipedia, there is always one more nutter out there willing to spend 1/2 their life re-editing your re-edits.
Mark Cooper
I have had no beers becxause I am medically allergic to beer (it’s the hops).
You raised a disruptive ‘red herring’. I objected to it.
There are many examples of wicki being mob ruled on controversial subjects. An assertion that ‘black is white/ or that ‘the political ultra-right is left-wing’ are NOT examples of it.
Anybody who follows WUWT knows that at every opportunity the nonsense of “fascism is left wing” is promoted on WUWT by the far-right. Subsequent comments to yours show that your daft assertion was – as always happens – grasped by others who also want to promote your ludicrous assertion.
I again ask that you don’t promote red herrings. And I add that it would be good if you were to let go of the stinking fish you have waived.
Richard
National socialism is an extreme right wing position?
Fascism is the govt control of private business, that’s socialism, and that is of the left.
You can whine all you want, but reality lives on.
I looked up a comparison of open-source wireless drivers last week;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_open-source_wireless_drivers
I found it very helpful.
Are those left or right wing wireless drivers??
One of Webster’s definitions of ‘liberal’ is broad minded. Facism is not broad minded in the least so your assertion of where it came from is completely wrong and easily proven false.
MarkW
I again ask you to stop waving your red herring.
All governments of all kinds control businesses to some degree; e.g. by insisting on provision of independently audited annual accounts.
The OED provides this definition of Facism
This thread is about activists corrupting wicki by replacing information with falsehoods.
You are trying to corrupt WUWT by replacing information with falsehoods.
Stop. Just stop.
Richard
William Connolley may be disgraced but he still plays a role and always finds a carrier for his deed. See http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/10/09/death-by-stoat/#more-72186
Don’t say Voldemort.
Naw, he’s merely a Dementor.
==============
Correction to my last post at May 25, 2015 at 7:13 am,
it wasn’t KimDabelsteinPetersen who initiated the ‘remains NO’ words without quotes, that was from an anonymous editor. No it was *KimDabelsteinPetersen* who later added the quotation marks to make it seem like a direct factual quote here!
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Roger_A._Pielke&diff=next&oldid=360548280
Hello dahlings. How’s the paper coming along?
Where is YOUR paper, Billy?
By the way you are still able to comment here,despite that you offer so little credibility to your ravings.
Are you still wasting your life promoting the BS science of warmunism, Willy? Why?
He like so many other AGW believers, fail to notice it has not averaged at least the MINIMUM of .20C per decade warming, as the AGW conjecture and the IPCC says it supposed to do.
Now that the warming has not showed up this century, they have to explain why their many modeling scenarios never accounted for the lengthening no warming trend:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:2001/to:2015.3/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:2001/to:2015.3/trend/plot/rss/from:2001/to:2015.3/plot/rss/from:2001/to:2015.3/trend
Willie the Weasel runs through the pixels
Trimming the truth with his red pencil fix-all.
Pity his fix
When Nature sticks
And trims this eraserhead who thinks he’s the schitzel.
=================
Name-calling is helpful – how?
A stoat is a weasel. You could look it up.
sometimes you gotta get a little bit dirty when you’re wrestling pigs
Hee, hee, ToP, the name-calling was the least of it. Sorry you missed the worst.
=======
Somebody here doesn’t recognize art when he sees it.
Ah Mr. Connolley, it’s so good to hear from you again.
(This is proof that WUWT is not always the gospel truth.)
@William Howard Connolley
Not one of the blokes on this forum rejecting AGW has the temerity to publish their ‘findings’ in a peer-reviewed Science Journal or anywhere their work might be held up to the scrutiny of Scientists. You’d think they’d feel a sense of guilt for not attempting to do so, but they prefer to cite ‘global conspiracy, fraud, or incompetence’ among Climate Scientists without attempting to put forth their own coherent analysis of the Climate’s behavior.
An outside observer might conclude ‘they protest FAR too much.’
‘Blokes’ – are you a relic of the 20th century? We talk about ‘people’ or ‘men and women’. It’s terribly archaic to talk about ‘blokes’.
An outside observer might conclude ‘you are a misogynist’.
Connolley & warrenlb all dressed up:
warrenlb, “Not one of the blokes on this forum rejecting AGW has the temerity to publish their ‘findings’ in a peer-reviewed Science Journal or anywhere their work might be held up to the scrutiny of Scientists.”
Climate models have no predictive value: A Climate of Belief: http://www.skeptic.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/v14n01resources/climate_of_belief.pdf (528 KB)
ACoB SI: http://www.skeptic.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/v14n01resources/climate_belief_supporting_info.pdf (892 KB)
Poster at AGU Fall Meeting 2013: http://meteo.lcd.lu/globalwarming/Frank/propagation_of_error_poster_AGU2013.pdf (2.9 MB)
The air temperature record is unreliable due to neglect of systematic sensor measurement error:
Paper 1: http://meteo.lcd.lu/globalwarming/Frank/uncertainty_in%20global_average_temperature_2010.pdf (869.8 KB)
Paper 2: http://multi-science.metapress.com/content/t8x847248t411126/fulltext.pdf (1 MB)
Pervasive negligence and a descent into pseudo-science in consensus so-called climate science:
http://multi-science.atypon.com/doi/abs/10.1260/0958-305X.26.3.391
Every paper was peer-reviewed, some by different sets of reviewers before and after submission. The poster withstood critical contemplation by meeting participants.
Those analyses stand unrefuted, warrenlb. More to come, presuming reviewer competence.
@Pat Frank
Sorry, your posts are nothing but amateur musings, not peer-reviewed sources. Got anything from ‘Nature’ ,’ Science’, the IPCC Assessments? Or NASA, NOAA?
Sea Level Rise slowing
http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v4/n5/full/nclimate2159.html
Droughts and Floods
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/service/drought/wetdry/bar-svr-110-00/190001-201104.gif
No Warming
http://www.nature.com/news/climate-change-the-case-of-the-missing-heat-1.14525
Earth Greening
http://www.csiro.au/Portals/Media/Deserts-greening-from-rising-CO2.aspx
Insubstantial, mindless, and factually incorrect dismissal warrenlb. You can’t refute those published analyses either; nor any of my posts. Fail.
I also object to “blokes” for gender reasons.
@Pat Frank
You posted nothing but blogs and pseudo-science advocacy, but no peer-reviewed journal papers. Those that call themselves Scientists should understand the difference.
I love the way warren actually believes that science is defined by “being published in a journal that he agrees with”.
You’re wrong again warrenlb. Every single one of the papers linked were peer-reviewed by bona-fide PhD-level academic climate scientists.
The poster was examined by, and discussed with, a serial assembly of climate scientists attending the 2013 Fall AGU meeting. The papers and the poster all remain unrefuted.
The papers and the poster are all about physical error analysis; part of my normal professional competence as an experimental physical methods chemist.
Your dismissal is again groundless, insubstantial, mindless, and without any analytical merit. Fail.
Pat Frank,
You have to understand: warrenlb only recognizes his authorities. Any authorities he disagrees with are “nothing but amateur musings and pseudo-science advocacy”.
warrenlb’s reaction to anything outside of his belief in dangerous MMGW:
http://www.moonbattery.com/kathleen-backus.jpg
[In fact, I think that’s probably him! ☺]
@Pat Frank
Your criteria for ‘peer-reviewed journal paper’ seems wanting:
1) “Skeptic.com” is a website where skeptics hang out, not a peer -reviewed journal.
2) A POSTER at a conference? Even an AGU conference? That hardly qualifies.
3) Multi-Science: The editor of one of its journals, ‘Energy and Environment’ , Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen, says she sometimes publishes scientific papers challenging the view that global warming is a problem, because that position is often stifled in other outlets. “I’m following my political agenda” she says. At other times she states that E&E is not a science journal.
Most importantly, as far as I can determine, none of the examples — Multi-Science or the others– appear on the ISI Master Journal List.
None of this says anything about the quality of your papers, one way or another. But they do not seem to qualify as peer-reviewed papers, and as such, will struggle to have much impact.
It would be hard to find anyone more deluded than warrenlb. Only his “authorities” are legitimate; no one else’s count. In warrenlb’s words, any other authorities are “nothing but amateur musings and pseudo-science advocacy”. That is warrenlb’s verbatim argument.
What a sorry excuse for a human being.
By warrenlb’s criteria, Albert Einstein would be rejected.
Sometimes it’s just sad the raw troops who get flung, or fling themselves, into battle.
=====================
Bill Con,
Give up bee keeping.
Your quote on your site for May 25th 2015,
“Fortunately today’s bees, though provoked, were kind.”
What do you expect,bees like it HOT HOT HOT,not a 12C temperature,keep pedaling your bike and your hysteria about ‘Global Warming’.
Maybe you should wrap your body around the Hive to give them the warmth that ‘Global Warming’ is denying them.
Yes. I have known for a very long time that information on wiki was unreliable. So I make sure everyone knows that it unreliable. I read stuff and sometimes link to it if the particular subject is accurate at that time.
I have tried to fix wiki articles but the storm of resistance make it unworthy of my time. So I enjoy watching wiki become as the internet as a whole has become, a pool of aggressive ignorance. I put my efforts in other places.
wikipedia is mindbogglingly hell bent on conformity.
Who writes on wiki? Nope not everyone as hoped for.
1) Who knows how to use the coding feature in electronic media? (web page programmers)
2) Who knows to to run an IRC/ chat to like minded people? (programmers)
3) Who spend their days sitting at a web terminal? (programmers)
4) Who have the time to accumulate “credentials” enough to bully brilliant nubees? (programmers)
I contend that wiki is maintained by a narrow minded assembly of people, mostly overweight, gamer male programmers who know a little bit about a lot of subjects and consequently think that they are polyhistors. They want all wiki pages to look the same, regardless of the subject, They all have the same brand of politics also as a consequence and do not mind asserting those politics regardless of the harm to the article.
I have run experiments on wiki. It is possible to alter entire sections of wiki without being noticed. I suspect that the entire wiki database is at risk of complete corruption by a gentle fog of continuous, subtle, insertion of erroneous information and faux maintenance.
Because programmer type people are responsible for creating most of the content o wiki, they are missing out on the majority of brilliant expert thinkers who are not interested in asserting “consensus.” Consensus is for idiots. A majority vote by ignoramuses often constitutes a wiki fact. Voting.. seriously… voting…
So rather than use wiki, I use search engines to find sites that are operated by individuals and I use traditional academic resources.
Sometime wiki has a useful link, but most often wiki articles are blatant political propaganda. You can tell on the talk pages,… well until the editors started erasing talk subjects as well.
I submit that wki is dying a death of 1 billion cuts. it is so unreliable that no serious scholar would refer to it alone.
Things that you will never get reliable facts about on wiki (correlates to programmer/gamer/male/atheist/homosexual/socialist/greener…you get the drift)
-Nietzsche (they just love this guy)
-Anthony Watts (they just hate this guy)
-Jesus Christ (they just hate this guy)
-Alan Turing (they just love this guy)
-Voltaire (they just love this guy)
-Paschal (they just hate this guy)
-Green energy
-The United Nations
My advice, write your own web pages on a subject, and do a good job of it. It will be found and respected and read. Don’t waste your time with wiki.
Anthony, This site (WUWT) is the best answer to the BS wiki community. Your site is bigger than wiki when it come to reliable information.
That’s not what everyone told me.
Heh
I smell the miasma of the incompleteness theorem, or the liar’s paradox.
Concerning Westhaver’s indictment of wikipedia:
My father was a pioneer in the computer industry. His first system had 2,000 BITS of memory. There were two shifts of mechanics who repaired/replaced the mechanical relays performing operations. Yes, he was right at the source of “bugs.”
He said that every result was analyzed for “reasonableness.” As mechanical faults could cause errors in results, no result was trusted.
I see wikipedia that way. It has vast amounts of valuable information. But one must contemplate everything it says, to decide whether what is says is reasonable.
Anyone that takes the ‘middle ground’ on the CAGW controversy (I wanted to use debate, but that is not evidenced by reality, on purpose) should take a step back (mentally) and ask themselves – why do I even consider the side that denigrates, obfuscates, uses purposeful deception, changes data, refuses FOIA requests, etc.
There is no middle ground on a right and wrong. The middle ground is for the uniformed. (the ignorant) The political person who doesn’t want to offend. This is wiki… facts by popular vote. Consensus is a toilet word.
“There is no middle ground on a right and wrong. The middle ground is for the uniformed. (the ignorant) The political person who doesn’t want to offend. This is wiki… facts by popular vote. Consensus is a toilet word”
*******************************************************************************************************************
Why do people wearing uniforms have their own space reserved in the middle ground? 🙂 teh
SteveT
.
Why? Because the same admonition applies to every “side” in a debate. The MESSAGE, not the messenger is the only thing that matters. There are loons on every side (four of them have commented on this very post).
What should be considered is the evidence presented. Period.
Be better than the targets of your criticism.
“It’s a determined group, and things (as you may recall) get decided by head-counts there. “They” have more heads than we do….”
No.
We have more heads,
they have more (and larger) anal orifices in which to insert their heads.
(Note: my correction to the above quoted text may not be approved by the appropriate authorities.)
/grin
I wouldn’t worry. Any half thinking person will spot the massive inconsistencies that call such nonsense into questions.
In fact, if you read down the page, you get to the following citation, which is of course used to try and discredit WUWT, but unfortunately, contradicts the earlier claims that it, or Anthony is a “denier”. According to Leo Hickman, Anthony and WUWT’s skepticism is “legitimate”.
Leo Hickman, at The Guardian’s Environment Blog, also criticized Watts’s blog, stating that Watts risks polluting his legitimate scepticism about the scientific processes and methodologies underpinning climate science with his accompanying politicised commentary.”
Feynman used the term cult to designate groups of people that continue to push a specific scientific belief that is no longer supported by observations and analysis. The cult of CAGW cannot defend the cult’s belief that the increase in CO2 will cause catastrophic warming with observations and analysis.
If it is a fact that if there is no CAGW problem to solve that is a good thing not a bad thing. All of the developed countries are deeply in debt. The green scams are very, very, expensive and do not work. There are more than billion people on the planet that lack access to electricity. Access to reliable, low cost electricity is one of the most important steps in reducing poverty and increasing people’s standard of life.
Curious the cult of CAGW does not discuss the unintentional consequences of policies connected with CAGW.
CO2 is not a poison. Life on this planet exists because of CO2, not in spite of CO2. Plants thrive when CO2 increases. Commercial greenhouses injected CO2 into their greenhouses to increase yield and reduce growing time. The optimum level of CO2 for plant life is around 1200 ppm.
Calling people who discuss peer reviewed papers and observations that disprove CAGW ‘deniers’ is a necessary cop out as the Cult of CAGW cannot defend CAGW.
The regions of the planet that warmed in the last 30 years (high latitude regions) is the same regions of the planet that warmed when solar activity was high. There has been an abrupt change to the solar cycle. There is observational evidence now of high latitude cooling. There are periods of millions of years in the paleo record when temperature is high and CO2 is low and periods when CO2 is low and the planet is warm. The planet cyclically warms and cools with the cycles of warming and cooling correlating with solar cycle changes. The past warming is not unusual based on previous warming cycles and correlates with a period of very high solar activity.
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.anomaly.antarctic.png
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/01/25/yet-another-study-shows-lower-climate-sensitivity/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/04/17/temperature-models-vs-temperature-reality-in-the-lower-troposphere/
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/interview-hans-von-storch-on-problems-with-climate-change-models-a-906721.html
Roy Spencer: Ocean surface temperature is not warming in the tropics.
http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/TMI-SST-MEI-adj-vs-CMIP5-20N-20S-thru-2015.png
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2013/02/tropical-ssts-since-1998-latest-climate-models-warm-3x-too-fast/
I notice Connelly does not in his blog discuss the dozens and dozens of observations that disprove CAGW. For example 1) the sudden increase in sea ice both poles, 2) the fact that there has been no warming for more than 18 years, 3) the fact that top of the atmosphere radiation analysis vs short term temperature changes shows the planet resists temperature changes rather than amplifies temperature changes, 4) the fact that there has been almost no warming in the tropical regions when the general circulation models predict that the most amount of warming due to CO2 should be in the tropics, and so on.
Actually, he was much more specific. A Cargo cult was a specific type of cult that would go though the motions of technology without any understanding of it, and be frustrated that it wouldn’t work.
I have a friend who:
— invented a number system that is the (only) natural dual of the binary number system, is the most economic number system, and fits hand-in-glove with quantum computing;
— has the only coherent theory of interest
— theory of hoarding
— theory of speculation
— law of liabilities
— solved Gibson’s Paradox
— invented triple entry accounting
— vastly improved the Braille system
… I could go on and on and on …
Wikipedia deleted his entry, citing that he had contributed nothing ‘notable.’
Yet Kim Kardashian, Paris Hilton, and Miss Piggy live on.
Sounds to me like Wikipedia got it right. Perhaps you have a different definition of notable?
Electric Universe doesn’t exist in Wiki world either, it’s been expunged along with articles on various people, many of whom have authored books and had papers published.
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Electric_Universe_%28physics%29&redirect=no
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Talbott
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre-Marie_Robitaille
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_J._Crothers
Many people who have authored a book or two, or had several papers published, are under the impression that this is enough to deserve a Wikipedia article. Generally not. There are guidelines for determining inclusion. Stephen J. Crothers may have done enough, but I took a brief glance at the deleted article, and the deletion appears warranted. That said, if someone were willing to do a little bit of research, there might be enough written about him to try again.
In case anyone care, the deletion of the article about Stephen J. Crothers was not cavalier. Some may disagree with the reasoning, but it wasn’t a close call: see
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Stephen_J._Crothers
for the debate.
Considering what makes it into Wikipedia as permanent articles, I have a hard time buying the integrity and intellectual honesty of all hand-wringing & concerned discussions which preceded before Crothers (and others being deleted)
He was deleted because of the subject of his work, and the notability argument is very convenient and I find it fraught with double standards and questionable reasoning.
Are you saying Kim Kardashian and Miss Piggy are not the same person?
Who knew?
RobRoy,
‘Struth: I found out from my wife just last week that the Kardashians and Bruce Jenner are related. I’d never understood the K’s claim to fame.
I don’t consider myself any better off now.
(But I do know who Miss Piggy is.)
Dbstealy
The K’s are famous for being famous. There have been many in Hollywood over the years. Zsa’Zsa Gabor is a notable example. Asking why she was famous only drew blanks. She got famous for doing things only after she was famous for being famous.
If your friend posted an image of “his” self as a 22 yr old curvaceous transgender bubblehead, then his name would be in common parlance, due to the efforts of 17-24 year old male editors who predominate wiki.
BTW I did not understand (truly understand) much of what he developed.
Gibson’s paradox is stated as though it operates with its own independent variables. However, at least for several decades now, the Fed has used interest rates in active attempts to modulate the economy. They don’t like “high” unemployment and they especially don’t like deflation so they play with money/bond issuance and interest rates at will to compensate. Interest rates have some effect if they are in a working range of several percent but now they are so low that reductions have little effect and any increases have major negative results. Gov. banking setting negative interest rates would normally sound just short of nonsensical since then banks can make money with cash on hand and actually have to pay interest on outstanding loans to the borrower and yet this is what some European countries are doing in attempts to further boost their economies. These active control attempts (by flawed humans) basically make the “paradox” moot (and maybe the “coherent theory of interest”).
Wouldn’t hoarding and speculation come as psychological issues?
What is the definition for “Law of Liabilities”?
I am intrigued however by the alternate dual of the binary system.
BFL,
Hoarding and speculation proper (as opposed to gambling) are not psychological issues. Hoarding and speculation are intimately tied to warehousing. The theory of hoarding might better be called the theory of warehousing. (And it should be noted that the warehouseman is not guided by price, but by basis.)
There are only two ways human beings can deal with future uncertainty: engineering and speculation. The first is widely recognized, the second is widely ignored. To make things worse still, speculation is often confused with gambling, although the difference between the two is quite clear. Speculation deals with risks created by nature; gambling deals with risks deliberately created by man. In contrast with the former, the latter adds nothing to human welfare.
You might appreciate:
CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES OF KONDRATIEV’S LONG-WAVE CYCLE
http://www.professorfekete.com/articles/AEFCausesAndConsequencesKondratievs.pdf
* * * *
On the law of liabilities:
IS OUR ACCOUNTING SYSTEM FLAWED?
It may be insensitive to capital destruction
http://www.professorfekete.com/articles%5CAEFIsOurAccountingSystemFlawed.pdf
* * * *
On the natural dual to the binary number system:
A Primer on Quotient Sets and Stepnumbers
http://www.maxphoton.com/primer-quotient-sets-stepnumbers/
Quotient Sets and Stepnumbers
http://www.maxphoton.com/conversation-with-antal-fekete-quotient-sets-stepnumbers/
I have lived a sheltered life. There are mathematical attributions to words I have barely heard. This is terrific.
Max, thanks.
I think that probably any previous effective economic theories have been broadsided by hedge funds, derivatives, CDO’s and the like, most of which have very little effective oversight or regulation and could be considered high leverage gambling. They effectively move money from the bottom to the top tiers without producing any thing of concrete value. World value of these commodities has been placed at around 1.2 quadrillion dollars or about 14 times world GDP. One of the sad downsides of totally “free” capitalism.
I recall an episode wherein Stephen Colbert mustered his entire audience to swarm Wikipedia in an effort to alter the article about African Elephant populations. Yes, the audience OVERWHELMED the idiot editors at wiki. for a brief while… eventually they blocked the elephant site, labeled anyone who edited the article as a Colbert m@sturb@tor and eventually the article went back to a earlier archived state.
It had the effect of bugging a few elephant enthusiast for a short time.
I suspect that editing Watt’s wiki page will result in a lock and a reprinting of an archived page dated before today.
I think Anthony ought to correct the record here at WUWT. It will eventually make it to the mainstream and cancel out wiki. Everyone knows wiki is partisan BS, even the partisans.
Well actually I think being derided by wikipedia is a badge of honour – like, If you write a book about economics, you want Krugman to denounce it.
Readers here are not the only ones who think Wikipedia has issues, this is from the 4th quarter 2013 MIT Tech Review
“The volunteer workforce … has shrunk by more than a third since 2007 and is still shrinking. Those participants left seem incapable of fixing the flaws that keep Wikipedia from becoming a high-quality encyclopedia by any standard, including the project’s own. Among the significant problems that aren’t getting resolved is the site’s skewed coverage: its entries on Pokemon and female porn stars are comprehensive, but its pages on female novelists or places in sub-Saharan Africa are sketchy. Authoritative entries remain elusive. Of the 1,000 articles that the project’s own volunteers have tagged as forming the core of a good encyclopedia, most don’t earn even Wikipedia’s own middle-ranking quality scores.
The main source of those problems is not mysterious. The loose collective running the site today, estimated to be 90 percent male, operates a crushing bureaucracy with an often abrasive atmosphere that deters newcomers who might increase participation in Wikipedia and broaden its coverage.”
Has anyone said the source of the problem is mysterious? Your summarization is spot-on, and well-recognized.
Even seemingly innocuous articles are completely bogus. For example, I am a lifelong British car enthusiast and have owned, driven or maintained most of Britian’s best. Almost every Wikipedia article on these classic vehicles is poorly researched and innaccurate, ofttimes substituting uninformed opinions for research which is childishly simple to perform in this domain.
You are welcome to improve those articles. I have no personal interest in cars, but I know editors who are very serious about it. I would be happy to put you in touch with them if you would like to help improve the coverage.
Aren’t those “editors” the ones who should be improving Wikipedia articles? Why not put them in touch with Wiki?
Personally, I won’t waste my time with a propaganda blog like Wikipedia, when some pimply kid still living at home has more time and ignorance available and can simply delete or change anything I might post.
Wikipedia is a lost cause. Anything outside of an esoteric subject like subatomic physics or mathematics will eventually get politics injected into it, and it is invariably the politics of truly despicable and wretched human beings like the odious William Connolley.
There are too many good things in life, and too many alternatives to waste time on something like that cesspool. Just type your search terms into your browser. You willl get pages and pages of other sources. Wikipedia will be only one of many, and you know before you click on it that Wikipedia is heavily biased and censored. Why would you want that?
I have soured on wikipedia in the past year, I used to give it a free pass for the usual reasons, I never expected perfection, only a balance set more toward honesty and integrity than spiteful agenda driven politics.
Nearly ever important subject which should require the most balanced presentation of viewpoints has been hijacked to only allow for but one often socially dominant theme. The Talk pages are cringe-worthy and intellectually disgraceful.
Pseudo-skeptics have taken Wikipedia over, unlike actual skeptics, these people are the stalwart defenders of maintaining the current paradigm. They arm themselves with the belief that all concepts challenging the consensus view must be labelled in some derogatory fashion as pseudo-science, denial-ism, or simply deleted outright. The worst of all circle-jerk echo chambers.
http://curatti.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Echo-Chamber.jpg
Some of my favourite related links:
http://wikipediocracy.com/
http://wikipediawehaveaproblem.com/
http://www.technologyreview.com/review/411041/wikipedia-and-the-meaning-of-truth/
http://www.skepticalaboutskeptics.org/examining-skeptics/wikipedia-captured-by-skeptics/
http://www.sheldrake.org/about-rupert-sheldrake/blog/wikipedia-under-threat
http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/bitwise/2014/12/wikipedia_editing_disputes_the_crowdsourced_encyclopedia_has_become_a_rancorous.html
https://sites.google.com/site/cosmologyquest/the-editor-s-musings/scientific-censorship-of-wikipedia-magnetic-reconnection
He who controls the means of communication has a good shot at controlling the present. The goal of the climate kooks and slimeballs is to control the present and hopefully control the future.
That Wikipedia is too corrupt to stop this sort of overt corruption just shows that Wiki is part of the problem, not part of the solution.
Examples of Bias in Wikipedia: Global warming (from http://www.conservapedia.com)
A recent charge is that U.K. scientist and Green Party activist and Realclimate.org member William Connolley functioned as a Wikipedia editor and website administrator, repressing information that militated against Climate Change. As such he “rewrote Wikipedia’s articles on global warming, on the greenhouse effect, on the instrumental temperature record, on the urban heat island, on climate models, on global cooling. On Feb. 14, he began to erase the Little Ice Age; on Aug.11, the Medieval Warm Period.”[48]
Michael Mann is a well-known global warming alarmist who is ridiculed for his so-called scientific work on tree ring temperature data, the Hockey Stick theory and was the subject of fraud in the Climategate scandal. Wikipedia decides not to allow any mention of his involvement with Climategate. Any mention of Climategate is immediately removed from Mann’s page. [49
Lets see — since ALL the World’s Institutions of Science conclude AGW, why should those who can’t earn a spot in the pantheon of valid science and reject Evolution, DNA, Plate Tectonics, or AGW have a place in Wikepedia? It’s not a democracy.
In 2004, directors of eleven academies signed a joint statement which accepted IPCC’s unwarranted, baseless, evidence-free, anti-scientific assertion that a human effect could be detected in allegedly observed warming.
That document was unsupportable then and is worse than worthless now, with eleven more years of flat to cooling global temperature, assuming such a thing is measurable.
The proposition that anyone who doesn’t agree with the falsified notion of CAGW is an unscientific bible thumper has been falsified. One contrary example is all it takes.
Why do you repeat what is clearly a deliberate lie, when repeating it doesn’t strengthen your argument at all?
@sturgishooper
Yes, Unsupported by you and your cohorts. But the PhD publishing Scientists in these Institutions seem to disagree. I trust them, not you.
@takebackthegreen
If it’s so easy to falsify my claim, why don’t you do it? Post an official position statement of one of the Worlds National Science Academies, Scientific Professional Societies, Major Universities, NASA, or NOAA disputing that Man’s burning of fossil fuels is the primary cause of industrial era Global Warming? Go ahead.
With all due respect, is something wrong with you? I clearly, obviously, plainly did not address that part of your statement (the part which concerned academies and institutions).
Try again.
warrenlb once again falls back on his favorite logical fallacy, the appeal to authority.
He’s got nothing else; he has no convincing evidence, for sure.
But when someone posts the names of more than 31,000 scientists and engineers (including more than 9,000 PhD’s) who refute the demonization of CO2, warrenlb rejects that overwhelming number of authorities, because they’re not his authorities.
Coukld warrenlb be any less credible?
William Finck
How many scientists (not their organizations) have signed a document stating that CAGW is a large, looming, or devastating threat? Of the few that I have casually seen, it’s much fewer than the 31,000 that they bring up from the OISM.
Why does a lesser number get a pass from your criticism and why do you consider it more convincing?
“…and reject Evolution, DNA, Plate Tectonics, or AGW”
The fictitious and discredited AGW does not belong in that group. What about linking Deniers with the Holocaust – you haven’t tried that specious line for a while.
The linking ploy might work for the naive followers of the MSM, but not here.
@takebackthegreen
Oh no. I said anyone who rejects ONE of those sciences (Note the OR AGW in the list) doesn’t deserve place in Wikepedia. Are you self-nominating yourself for my list?
Linking lies to support a lie? Thanks, warren. It works fine with useful idiots, like yourself.
warrenlb cites Wikipedia as his ‘authority’.
heh…
Yes! It has been edited down to claim there was really no little ice age and today is warmer than the Medieval Warm Period. The goofball even has a doctored graph that elevates today temperatures to be much higher than back then!
Absolutely disgusting.
In checking a fact, you shouldn’t rely on only one reference. I have a high-school teacher to thank for that basic wisdom.
Many of the people involved don’t even use their real names, so of course hide behind that anonymity. In my opinion, it’s truly an irresponsible and cowardly way to define “truth” with no responsibility for your actions attached.
Maybe you should enforce that conviction with your mod dbstealey?
Since when has he hidden his identity? http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/03/18/wuwt-milestone-1-million-comments/
Jimbo was the millionth? Where is Jimbo.
Jimbo always has the links.
Learn something new every day 😉
Kit Carruthers,
I post under my own name. Why does that bother you so much, when there are hundreds of others who use anonymous screen names?
The answer is simple: you cannot refute the facts I post, so your climbdown is to use ad hominem attacks like you did above.
If you can refute any evidence I cite, then do it. That will be a first.
Got me there, David. You’re far too smart for me – you’ve got all the answers!
He is and he does…………
I am very proud to have become over time, a complete denier of AGW and I’ve got 4 higher degrees in Sciences (with lots of statistics LOL). In my view lukewarmers are basically pandering to the AGW folks. There is no evidence whatsoever that in the real world (our atmosphere) 1000’s or 100’s PPM C02 has or has had any effect on Global temperatures over the past 500000 years. Its a complete furfy and the lukewarmers are slowly seeing the light as many convert to the denier category watch this space. The lukewarmers, despite the appalling evidence of massive fraud (refer to Homewood etc), are still feeding the AGW frenzy.
+1
It depends upon your definition of Lukewarmer. Which is why sweeping pronouncements of Truth are very rarely helpful in a debate.
If the definition of Lukewarmer is “a person with basic scientific literacy who recognizes that CO2 is a greenhouse gas but believes Earth’s Climate System is currently too poorly understood to state definitively how much of an effect CO2 has on it,” then I’d say that “Lukewarmer” is the right position to take.
“a person with basic scientific literacy who recognizes that CO2 is a greenhouse gas …”
There are highly educated men and women who argue that CO2 does not do what your “basic scientific literacy” tells you it does. We can disagree without being disagreeable, but please don’t claim that “the science” says CO2 warms the surface via back radiation. The jury is still out on that one.
What?
I did not “claim that ‘the science’ says CO2 warms the surface via back radiation.”
I said that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, a more general characterization which is not in dispute, having been experimentally demonstrated. Your sentence–which, again, is not mine–says something different and more specific.
The exact nature and extent of the effect of CO2 in the Earth’s climate system isn’t known. The logarithmic decline in its effect as its percentage rises is a strong argument for it having a tiny influence. But arguing that it has zero influence is obviously wrong (if we measure with enough precision, every atom in the atmosphere has some effect). More importantly, it is a distraction that gives ammunition to the CAGW true believers.
Why make the already monumental task of repairing all the damage done by the mass CAGW-hysteria even more difficult?
It depends on the lukewarmer. Every time Mosher starts spouting off, I get the urge to go full metal denier, just because his smug version of lukewarming is as annoying as the full blown “got Jesus” warmism.
tbtg:
Definition of CAGW Denier: a person with basic scientific literacy who recognizes that changes in CO2 have NOT ONCE in the geologic history of the planet preceded temperature, but ALWAYS followed.
Sure, why not? That’s one of a hundred reasons to reject the idea of CAGW. To my mind, “CAGW denier” is an accurate description.
OTOH, calling someone a “Climate Change Denier” (or being one) is idiotic. “Climate Denier” doesn’t deserve discussion.
I’ve witnessed “science” activists editing wiki during an argument to remove information about a study that undercut their arguments. The website is about as reliable for scientific information as a cork board outside of any college student’s dorm room.
The problem with wikipedia is that the normal user can’t distinguish between “opinion articles” and undisputed facts. For the latter, wikipedia is usually a reliable and detailed source, but the political items are usually quickly highjacked by left-leaning authors which generally seem to have more eagerness and spare time for their opinion wars.
Since there are more undisputed facts in wikipedia than biased opinion items, many people don’t realize that wikipedia is not at all trustworthy and impartial for political and controversial questions. Therefore, wikipedia has become a valuable propaganda tool for the political left, which is questioning its integrity as an impartial and honest encyclopedia for everybody. As a consequence, I have stopped giving donations to that – formerly very good and sincere – institution.
In order to regain a generally accepted trustfulness, I suggest that wikipedia should introduce an unmistakable warning banner above every item, which would be red for opinion articles or green for undisputed facts. The decision about the question which status and color every item should get, can be answered easily by all users via a “biased opinion” button, which can be used if anybody thinks so. Thus, after reaching a certain “noise-level” threshold, every biased opinion piece would get its distinct red warning banner.
With this simple method, wikipedia could become a fair and impartial institution again. So – let’s hope the people responsible do understand the message…
“The problem with wikipedia is that the normal user can’t distinguish between “opinion articles” and undisputed facts.”
I’d say that’s part of the problem. Wikipedia should be more about factually reporting representations of bodies of work and less about trying to the the “arbiter of absolute truthiness”.
If someone writes a book on why the thing the moon is made of cheese, and it stays on the NYC bestseller list for 10 months, this would make this person notable for that alone. Now, what does wikipedia need to do?
I think they should:
Maintain an article covering the basic facts about author and his work and what he asserts. Facts like where he was born, his education, other notable trivia, his magnum opus and reception in scientific and literary circles.
What they should not do is:
Dismiss him as being notable because of his book “pseudo-science” subject matter (Wikipedia should not be in the business of classifying science into such categories, just the facts, Ma’am.)
Editorialize his article by qualifying every pertinent line with selective inserted adjectives, like “highly controversial author”, “pseudo scientific author”, blah blah blah…
The article should not be a debunking or a refutation of the subject or the subject’s work. It’s fine to have a controversy section, but it should be contained within a “SECTION” not the entirety of the whole article.
Criticism when given needs to be reasonable in nature, it should suffice to simply state or highlight the more conventional position(s) on the subject. The “consensus” position no doubt has its own article and does not need to be presented point by point.
After reading a posting by Richard Ortiz below, I think my suggestion above for a more impartial wikipedia could be improved by a quote from him:
When an article is marked by a red banner as biased opinion piece, then wikipedia should:
“allowing pro- and con- articles to be linked so that people could get both sides of an issue. The people in the pro- side couldn’t edit the con- articles, and visa versa. Because both sides, or multiple sides, of an issue could be posted, it also had the effect of keeping the postings more honest.”
Refraining from donating is a strategy that will work. I have never contributed to Wikipedia, and never will, specifically because of my interactions with William Connolley and generally because of the blatant bias on any article that deals with a controversial topic.
I suspect many readers here would agree with me. Perhaps the only thing that is missing is public awareness of this. WUWT attracts many readers. Perhaps if Wikipedia’s behavior would change if they knew just how many potential donors they’re alienating.
The article was recently protected (about an hour ago), with an expiration of 8 June. While this protection is in place, IP editors and very new editors will not be able to edit.
Years ago when I first heard about how people can easily edit and re-edit Wikipedia posts, I stopped using it as a resource.
I think it’s a good idea if there was a way to set the facts in stone once the facts have been verified.
There are multiple, serious discussions about how to do that, while still permitting editing. The editors of medical article are particularly interested in this, and are thinking through some ways to do it.
Wrestling pigs in mud. Bad idea.
Wiki is good…for things like – A quick biography search, as for Charles Dickens. When his great Grandson came to town to do a one man show about his great grand father, I was able to have a very “educated” conversation with him at the “meet and greet” after the performance.
However, ANYTHING REMOTELY POLITICAL/CONTROVERSIAL/ETHICAL/MORAL/RELIGIOUS, etc…
it’s completely dominated by the LOUD LEFTISTS.
Sad.
“Wrestling pigs in mud. Bad Idea”…. exactly. I would like to see the pig pen fence pulled down and the muddy pigs run rampant over everything.
On 22 May the editor Mann jess included the word “denier”
If you look at their talk page:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Mann_jess
you can see several editors explaining why this is a problem, including one I think if as a warmist.
Tillman reverted it (along with other material), Mann replaced it (although the edit summary relates to the other material, not the word itself)
Then others stepped in, adding and deleting the term. It is currently not in. As noted in my post above, the article is now semi-protected, which will cut down on the war. However, some of those participating are not stopped by the semi-protection, although they are in violation of the one-revert rule, which I expect will be politely pointed out, and forcefully, if ignored.
One of the problems with the WUWT entry is that there are plenty of negative sources against WUWT, because critics will happily include negative descriptions of WUWT. People who are simply using the content of WUWT don’t tend to describe WUWT. So there are few positive descriptions of WUWT.
Similarly, critics of any specific journal will mention their opinion of that journal. People who trust the journal will simply use the content and tend to not describe the journal itself.
Well CO2 is not a ‘driver’ of climate. It’s an amplifier. Thre is no circumstance that I’m aware of where CO2 increase has preceded temperature rise in the record. If there is I apologise but the Vostok ice cores seem to indicate otherwise.
I am not sure there is a war to win. In my case when I see a blog trashed very badly I am curious just how bad and search for the blog on my own jus to check it out. The very first stuff to hit the screen determines if I stay or not. The very first stuff to hit the screen also plays in my mind as to whether I have the correct site or an imposter as well.
What come up when wattsupwiththat.com is accessed from and internet search is most important, especially if the warmists are simply portrayed as differing on degree instead of devils. People then read on to try to see why the warmists are so hateful.
A true disparity between a vitriolic wiki page and simple explanations without hate throws up red flags to those people whom find this site searching as a result of wiki.
Sadly, Wikipedia has become a source of disinformation.
Become? That implies a point in time when it wasn’t.
Everyone should know the list of atmospheric gasses that absorb upwelling longwave infrared radiation, and then re-radiates it in all directions. And they should know the contribution each type of gas makes. Everyone should also know the amount of warming these gasses provide to an already sunlight globe, based on latitude, longitude and altitude, within the atmospheric layer that includes our experience of weather and ground based temperature. Finally they should be well-informed on the water vapor central component connection to AGW.
Source 1.
Re: greenhouse gas emissions. Not a bad source. Only argument I have is that a naturally warmer world in the past also produced substantial increases in CO2. If our industrial world happened to coincide with natural warming, there is scant evidence that the current CO2 increase is all anthropogenic. If natural warming (which is clearly shown in “greening” trends) caused at least some substantial increase in CO2, the left over human emission part would not have enough chops to provide measurable differences in temperature or weather.
http://omssscience.blogspot.com/2011/06/what-is-greenhouse-gas.html
Source 2.
Re: atmospheric water vapor and its theorized increase due to increased AGW CO2 warming. The following link is the trend (1988-2014). Note that water vapor increase visually correlates with El Nino conditions. And we have had a few of those in that time span. Again, scant evidence that any increase is related to human emissions. One would have to exclude ENSO natural variations before ascribing increased water vapor to human emission of warming greenhouse gasses.
http://images.remss.com/cdr/climate_data_record_browse.html
Taken all together, there is little evidence that AGW is the significant part of recent warming. Natural sources cannot yet be ruled out. Those climate scientists who say different have failed to perform one of the most important rules of the scientific method, to rule out drivers that were present prior to the industrialized age.
No global warming (greenhouse effect) on Titan, which is exclusively the domain of methane (the only GHG constituent in Titan’s atmosphere).
The laws of physics apply everywhere the same. Since methane doesn’t trap heat and radiate it back in all directions, warming the surface of Titan above ambient as registered at the distance of Saturn, the greenhouse effect doesn’t exist. Either that or methane isn’t a greenhouse gas.
papier, you too easily believe what people say or write versus studying physics and chemistry. Many skeptics are well versed in these two topics. Many skeptics are dumb as a post. Let’s get down to Earth. What do you know about the light spectrum and its absorption/re-radiation properties? I would hazard a guess: Apparently very little.
There is a greenhouse effect on Titan, but it is predominantly due to nitrogen and hydrogen.
LOOK IT UP instead of making it up!
Hello Philip. Yes I have. That’s McKay’s introduction of the new property of ghg, “the anti-greenhouse effect”. He claims there is a property of methane that makes it invisible to temperature under special circumstances, further that these special circumstances only make methane partially transparent leaving a net warming of 12 degrees Kelvin bring the surface temperature of Titan to ~ 93.65 K, where in the absence of methane it would be a frigid “effective temperature” of 82 K.
What is an effective temperature?
This is the puzzling part, because “effective temperature” is a black body Stefan- Boltzmann formulation used to estimate the temperatures of dwarf stars that reside outside of the main sequence Hertzsprung – Russell diagram. McKay uses it as an ad hoc to apply the global warming overlay to other planets. It has no physicality. It’s not supposed to be applied to planetary bodies. There isn’t even a real way to apply it with reliability to solar bodies.
It amounts to a fudge factor.
A better method would be to use actual surface temperatures measured in situ at the distance of Saturn.
That brings us to Hyperion. Hyperion is Titan’s closest neighboring moon. With a practically twin albedo to Titan, and no atmosphere whatsoever, Hyperion’s surface temperature is ~ 93.65 K.
Mike and Pamela you can both kiss my …. No need to get insulting.
I checked this crap out many times from many different angles.
Why are you all so quick to jump me on about something you haven’t checked out even once?
Nitrogen and Hydrogen suddenly have to be green house gases to make McKay’s ad hoc work up a global warming on Titan.
That should be a clue for you people.
Hell, the math doesn’t even work on McKay’s ad hoc formula. Go back and read Philip’s link from Science Mag again. Carefully.
Pamela — I will pass on “everyone should know” and proceed to AGW etc. Something tells me you think ENSO natural variations have something to do with periodic increase of atmospheric water vapor content of the atmosphere. You say that visually water vapor increase correlates with El Ninos and I am inclined to believe that on physical grounds. For most of the world El Nino peaks correspond to approximately half a degree temporary increase in global temperature. This should influence water vapor content of air but I was not aware that you could actually see it graphically. But water vapor central component connection to AGW? If you mean it as a positive feedback of absorption by carbon dioxide forget it. The true feedback is negative as Miskolczi has shown. And then you mention human emission of warming greenhouse gases. Ignoring minor contributions, that would be carbon dioxide. It really is a greenhouse gas but there is one problem with it: it does not cause any greenhouse warming of the atmosphere thanks to the presence of water vapor. And without any greenhouse warming the existence of AGW is impossible. It works like this. First, water vapor and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere form a joint optimal absorption window in the infrared whose optical thickness is 1.87, determined by Miskolczi from first principles. If you now add carbon dioxide to the atmosphere it will start to absorb in the IR just as the Arrhenius theory says. But this will increase optical thickness. And as soon as this happens, water vapor will start to diminish, rain out, and the original optical thickness is restored. The added carbon dioxide will of course keep absorbing but the reduction of water vapor keeps total absorption constant and no warming is possible. This is why we have the hiatus/pause now. Its existence invalidates the Arrhenius greenhouse theory used by IPCC. It is actually not the only hiatus we know of. There was another one in the eighties and nineties that lasted from 1979 to 1997 or 18 years, the same as the current one. You do not know about it because the big three of temperature data – GISS, HadCRUT, and NCDC – have covered it up with fake warming. I discovered this when writing “What Warming” and even put a warning about it into its preface but nothing happened. Figure 15 in the book shows this hiatus as it appears in satellite data which these crooks still do not control.
Anyone who would base their opinion on a website based on their Wikipedia entry without actually visiting said site is some kind of incurious creature on whom rational argument would be wasted. Nothing of value is lost.
Good point.
Well-said.
Yes
Even though Wikipedia may be unreliable as a source of information, it is still used by millions of people every day as a reliable source of information. Therefore, as a propaganda tool, wikipedia is rather important for the warmists to control. After reading many wikipedia articles in the area of climate, the warmists have done a really good job of controlling wikipedia, in my opinion.