Over the weekend, 350.org founder Bill McKibben penned an op-ed in the New York Times, which is nothing new, but what WAS new, is that the op-ed was about WUWT, but more specifically, about a couple of ugly comments left on WUWT. This is my response.
The article is Let’s Agree Not to Kill One Another
In the article, Mr. McKibben says:”I was used to social media abuse. Then someone suggested shooting me.”
He writes:
The Los Angeles Times published an op-ed article of minedescribing a trial in Minnesota where some protesters — acting peacefully, threatening no one and informing the company they were protesting against — engaged the emergency shut-off valves on two pipelines and forced the company to temporarily shut off the flow of oil from Canada’s tar sands into the United States. The case against the protesters had been dismissed on the grounds that they’d done no damage; I was trying in my essay to explain why nonviolent civil disobedience helped in the fight for a workable climate.
Not everyone agreed. Indeed, a few hours after my essay appeared, a website called Watts Up With That? published an attack on my article. This enterprise — which bills itself as the most widely read website about the climate, and claims about three million to four million visitors a month— is devoted to proving we have nothing to fear from climate change. The author of the blog post, David Middleton, called me a misfit and made reference to my “sunken chest.” Sure, whatever. Sadly, this just seems to be how politics unfolds in the age of Trump.
But then the commenters went at it. One said: “Anybody got Bill McKibben’s home address? Let’s see how he really feels about ‘civil disobedience’ if it shows up at his front door.” Another added, “Give him a smack for me.” One or two tried to calm people down. But there was also this comment, from someone named “gnomish:” “There is a protocol worth observing: S.S.S. It stands for shoot, shovel and S.T.F.U. Hope that saves you some trouble.”
This “protocol” was left over from the right-wing fight against endangered species laws. If, say, a protected woodpecker was on your land, the “Three S’s” doctrine held that you should kill it, bury it and keep your mouth shut about it. It was, in this case, a public call for someone to murder me, and not long afterward another commenter, “Carbon Bigfoot,” supplied my home address.
All of which stopped me cold.
I was shocked these comments somehow slipped through moderation. Had I known about it, I would have immediately deleted them. All of the commenters, “gnomish”, “Gary Ashe”, and “Carbon Bigfoot,” are now banned for this unacceptable behavior.
This problem was all news to me, and while the article appeared Saturday, I didn’t find out about it until late Sunday afternoon Pacific Time, when I got a tip from a regular reader and a regular contributor.
I immediately found and removed the body of the comment where his home address was posted, and then sent this note to Bill McKibben via Twitter, using direct messaging:
Hello Bill, I’ve been notified of your NYT article, and I’m just as shocked as you. Had you notified me of the comments in question, I would have immediately removed them. They don’t speak for me. My spam and banned words filter looks for the usual 4 letter words, and some other key phrases, but these went though. I never saw them, had I, they would never have been approved.
We disagree, sometimes vehemently, and of course we’d never wish violence on each other. I’m truly sorry this happened. What would you like me to do with the comments?
Anthony Watts
While removing the doxxing comment where his home address was exposed was the sensible thing to do, I asked about the other comments because they were now in full public view, and removing them would look like I’m trying to hide something in the face of broader exposure and criticism. I’ve opted to make inline notes with each comment, saying they were unacceptable. Example here.
This morning, Bill replied to my message Sunday afternoon, with this:
Hey, just saw this. I think taking down the comments would be appropriate. Thank you.
Interesting though, that his first response was to remove them. Hold that thought.. I replied:
I already removed the one with your address prior to writing and I’ll deal with the others today. Look for a post. Who would I talk to at the NYT about a right of reply?
He replied with the letters to the editor department, and after some prodding, gave me his contact there but said he’s “on the way out to the LA Times” implying the contact was not good. I got the impression Bill really didn’t want to see me reply in the NYT and that once again “right of reply” was not something to be afforded to “climate deniers”.
I also asked him this, twice, 4 hours apart:
No problem, and again sorry it happened. Why did you not contact me, leaving those up for days?
No reply to my question? I see you’ve posted on Twitter since and you received the message.
Several hours have passed, and still no response, but Bill has been active on Twitter since. I’ve asked a third time, an hour before publishing this essay, and still there is no response to my question:
Hi Bill, last chance for you to answer my question. “Why did you not contact me, and ask for those comments to be removed, instead of leaving them up for days?” If you don’t answer, than I’ll supply my own, based on what I think your motive was.
He’s had about 9 hours to answer as of this writing, and he’s been active on Twitter during that time.
When I first saw the article written by McKibben, I thought his complaint was about something recent, perhaps in the last couple of days, but surprisingly, the article by David Middleton (and the comments) was from ten days ago: Bill McKibben calls for civil disobedience… Because climate change.
What do I think Bill’s motive was? Remember when I said before “Interesting though, that his first response was to remove them.” yet he allowed them all to sit for 10 days. He has my email address, he has direct access to me on Twitter. Not a peep from him.
I think Bill was more interested in getting the NYT op-ed than he was concerned about the comments, or the publication of his home address. Otherwise, he would have asked for the removal immediately, and I certainly would have removed it had I known about it, even without his prodding via his NYT article.
I think Bill just wanted to take the opportunity to make climate skeptics in general look bad because a couple of errant commenters went off the rails, and we didn’t catch it in moderation.
Andrew Revkin mentioned the issue over the article, saying there was “no excuse”, and I replied:
Andrew, we have 2.5 million comments in the same span, and I employ 4 letter word filters, in addition to keyword filters. Unfortunately, I never saw these comments, and they didn't trigger any filter. They don't speak for me, I don't condone this. if seen, it would be removed
— Watts Up With That (@wattsupwiththat) October 22, 2018
Despite the ridiculous and regular claims that I’m funded by “big oil” or on the payroll of the Heartland Institute (I’m not), the simple fact of the matter is that I don’t have any money to have staff, and volunteer moderators tend to burn out and disappear after awhile.
There’s no easy solution, as Revkin noted in his reply on that thread:
Scale issue is a real impediment to fostering constructive online discourse. One of the key challenges in moving from theoretical #noosphere to an actualized #knowosphere. There's an algorithm for civilizing global fisheries (@GlobalFishWatch). Maybe for civilizing commentary?
— Andrew Revkin 🌎 ✍🏼 🪕 ☮️ (@Revkin) October 22, 2018
He’s right, at the scale we operate at, handling the volume of comments is difficult. We can’t catch everything. That said, the buck stops here, and it’s my responsibility. Mea Culpa.
So where does that leave me? I have some ideas, and I’ll let people know what I plan to do about it in a future post.
On the plus side, Bill mentioned our previous personal interaction:
In the case of Watts Up With That, I’d made the effort at de-escalation myself. A few years ago, I was scheduled to give an organizing talk in the small California town where the website’s proprietor, Anthony Watts, lived. So I contacted him and invited him out for a beer. I knew I wouldn’t change his mind on climate change, and he knew I would continue to think his work involved wrecking the planet. But it always seems like a human idea to reach out.
And it was fine. We had a couple of beers, he wrote up an account of our conversation for his website, and even most of the commenters saluted us for sitting down and talking.
Yes, it was a good meeting, but Bill was correct, no minds were changed, neither his nor mine. He graciously added:
I don’t want this website shut down; I don’t want the people who write on it prosecuted. I definitely don’t want them murdered. I just want — as the very beginning of some kind of return to the gentler old normalcy — for people to stop making death threats. That seems to me the least we can ask of one another.
Thanks for that Bill, we have reciprocal ideas there.
But here’s where Bill runs off the rails in his thinking. He wants “some kind of return to the gentler old normalcy” but at the same time he promotes civil disobedience rather than constructive debate to get his way. While he acts gentlemanly, his promotion of civil disobedience is simply mendacious, in my opinion.
In the era of the ugly Antifa, street riots, punches and death threats to Trump Supporters, and harassment of conservatives in general, among many other ugly things we’ve witnessed recently, Bill’s call for “some kind of return to the gentler old normalcy” while at the same time promoting “civil disobedience” which often turns into a spark for violent confrontations, is simply laughable.
And where was Bill when these sorts of ugly things against climate skeptics happened?
- Beyond bizarre: University of Graz music professor calls for skeptic death sentences
- Another call to arrest climate “deniers”
- Calls to punish skeptics rise with links to climate change, hurricanes
- Canadian environmentalist David Suzuki called for government leaders skeptical of global warming to be “thrown in jail”
- One climate activist predicted that skeptics will be lynched. “As climate impacts continue to become clearer to the general populace, fossil fuel executives, and climate misinformers who have played a part in this catastrophe, may some time soon prefer a safe jail cell to the torches and pitchforks that are coming their way,” wrote Peter Sinclair of the climate fear–promoting website Climate Denial Crock of the Week.
- On June 5, 2009, former Clinton administration official Joe Romm of Climate Progress defended a posting on his website warning that climate skeptics would be strangled in bed for rejecting the view that we face a man-made climate crisis. “An entire generation will soon be ready to strangle you and your kind while you sleep in your beds,” he warned.
- More about those ugly claims here.
Bill rightfully worries somebody will show up at his house, well it’s already happened to me thanks to a climate crusader.
If Bill really wants “some kind of return to the gentler old normalcy” he could start by using his influence to condemn the type of behavior listed above and work to calm some of these people.
But, I don’t think Bill McKibben really wants to embrace that. I think he simply wants to win his Don Quixotesque climate battle by any means possible.
Note: a couple of minor typos and spelling errors were corrected about 5 minutes after publication – Anthony
UPDATE: I had forgotten about this mendacious episode that Bill McKibben promoted:
It seems the well deserved ridicule of these cowards has had an effect, they have disappeared that photo from their website. See here: http://www.tarsandsblockade.org/enbridge-home-demo/
Fortunately, I have a copy of the entire web page before that disappearing act took place.
See the PDF: Tar Sands Blockade – Enbridge
No apology, just down the memory hole. What a bunch of cowardly and pathetic people they are. That goes for Bill McKibben too who thought this was a good enough idea to promote with a tweet rather than condemn it.
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Trying to appease a climate alarmist is like trying to appease an insane, hateful lefty.
It’s “like trying” because in most cases they’re the same thing.
The comments seem to have gotten off track.
How did the negative posts make it through the filters? Were they specifically written to do so?
Were the posters regulars or one-offs?
Given the amount of false flags being generated by the left, I can’t help but think it might have been a setup.
i believe gnomish
is[was] a regular poster,the other two i haven’t seen posting on other threads though i may have missed them.[There. Now it’s correct. -mod]
Note to all, including Bill Mc.
I spent my Monday afternoon pulling an RV trailer across West Texas on I-20 (east bound this time). Did ElPaso to central Texas.
Every trip I have made on that highway through the Permian Basin in the last few years amazes. Going from Pecos to Midland (125 miles) is a trip across working America — hard working America. The drilling rigs working both near and far into the distance, the numerous gas flares stacks – near and far into distance, oil tank farms going up as I drive, the constant (and I mean hundreds) back and forth of frack sand and fluid trucks on the interstate highway at 75 mph is amazing.
From my former military days it reminded me of the build up and execution of Desert Shield/Storm in 90/91. A Never ending streams of trucks, and trucks, and trucks, and people. But this is everyday life in the Permian basin today.
They are working to fuel an energy hungry economy. And they are doing it every day. Every week. Every month, so when I pull into gas station, there’s fuel to put in the tank. And when I flip on a light switch the lights do indeed come on. And nat gas to heat my home. And the Left would be happy to see those folks all in the unemployment line, because somehow burning nat gas is “carbon pollution”.
We have an economy dependent on energy… affordable energy. And there are men and women, many tens of thousands, many with hardly a high school education, working hard for their families for their pay check. And they are making good money today — by working hard.
And as I keep driving, I get to Sweetwater. Sweetwater bills itself the Wind Turbine capital of the world. By the sheer number of big turbines that stretch from horizon to horizon from Texas to Noth Dakota, it may very well be. Plenty of hard working folks keeping those things turning too. They too put power to they grid, but only when the wind is blowing. (I had a good south westerly tail wind — good for mpg pulling a trailer, as evidenced by watching the big blades hubs go around almost straight on to my direction of travel). But those turbines didn’t just grow out of the ground under the will of Green Thoughts. Putting up each turbine, manufacturing all the components for each turbine, and repairing each turbine required massive expenditures of refined oil to make them ready to turn.
People on the Left would just love to see Texas shut up, stop producing oil and nat gas, and to be happy to get a basic subsistence payment for their vote. Texas is getting it done. And those wind turbines would stop too, unable to be repaired or replaced.
Folks on the Left want to throw all those folks out of their jobs… to “Save the Planet” from the manufactured Climate Change crisis.
Climate Change is not about climate. Climate Change is about power and political control. Nothing else. The science behind it is not actual science, but merely cargo cult science of climate models and altered temp data records.
So Bill, when you want to put all those people out of work, and keep millions in Africa similarly impoverished, I get mildly angry inside too. But unlike the Left, I respect our laws. They are not to be ignored when it becomes inconvenient to do so.
Can you say the same about your Democratic Party base and “leaders”.
Please, can I copy /paste and link to this on my blog?
From Green to rust-colored: 14,000 abandoned wind turbines:
http://forums.canadiancontent.net/showthread.php?t=138950&fbclid=IwAR1yCyZvwqv88nG3GoG_ATiJtyxTt3xoTPos6m5XKMDAoCGvNGX65lHLZxA
Top Ten wind power generating states, MW, 2015:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Growth_of_wind_power_in_the_United_States
TX: 17,713 (0.066 MW/sq mi)
IA: 6212 (0.110 MW/sq mi)
CA: 6108
OK: 5184
KS: 3766
MN: 3235
OR: 3153
WA: 3075
CO: 2992
ND: 2143.
The MW per sq mi figure of course could be misleading, since wind turbines aren’t always randomly distributed across an entire state, if ever. In OR and WA, for instance, they’re concentrated in a narrow corridor on both sides of the Columbia River.
Even if you go by wind farm capacity, farms vary greatly in area. So it’s hard to say which state really has the highest density of turbines per reasonably large unit of area. But three of the largest farms lie deep in the heart of TX. The biggest by far is in CA (Tehachapi Pass) and #3 in OR, near me:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_onshore_wind_farms
If the website backend cannot use a flagging system without causing vulnerabilities, might I suggest that readers can reply to an offensive post with the statement “Flag” to alert whoever is watching over the comments.
Bill played the victim card…as they fall from authority we can expect more of this.
He (Mckibbon) had the big emotional letdown because was not able to follow through with the “expert testimony” in the pipeline tampering case. Being an expert witness was going to be a big deal for him personally … he was going to both absorb and reflect the spotlight … his greatness was going to be revealed.
The judge let him down. It wasn’t fair.
He then needed to do something, anything, to get the light back on himself, to get out of the low.
This was it.
He should sent private little personal thank-you notes to the three banned posters for getting him the opportunity.
It’s a very fine line isn’t it – intimidation.
So our friend William organises ‘a march’ – against Climate Change, Big Oil, Wall St. or whatever.
What is that if not a group of het-up & agitated people tramping around town, talking loudly & shouting and generally getting in the way of other people & blocking the place up.
Then they all tend to descend on a particular place – residence and/or place of work of someone in particular.
So we have verbal, visual and physical intimidation don’t we? Isn’t this what ‘protest marches are all about?
And you, William McK, organise them.
Comment?
And most of the folks in the typical march will have used fossils to get there (and home again), will be wearing fossil clothes, drinking fossil enabled sugar out of bottles and cans produced by even more fossils. While tramping along a road made of ever more fossils (asphalt) and surrounded by buildings made from fossil fired bricks and/or cement and glass.
The fact that 50%+ of them are only there looking for a Good Time (trying to get off with each other) and another 40% were there under some sort of bribe or inducement is selectively forgotten.
Nearly all of them will be thinking of the exercise they’re getting and how much body-fat they might lose, itself caused by the over-consumption of sugar = another product of fossil fuels.
The only non-fossil organic thing inside your crowd will probably be the weed they’re smoking.
Climate marches are Bad News all round.
Why not just set up a large PA in a field or football stadium and play them some loud music for 8, 9 or 10 hours continuous?
You’ll get a larger crowd and the folks will come out of it feeling & being much better, mentally as well as physically.
You could even show some of Al’s films or other nice climate change stuff on the big screens but, no soundtrack please.
Let the people decide for themselves. Do not try to intimidate, rail-road or brainwash them.
You’ll be much more popular and may even get rich.
We know that is what you *really* really want, by virtue of it being what you keep talking about and accusing others of being.
Win win for Will. What’s not to like?
Peta of Newark wrote:
“The only non-fossil organic thing inside your crowd will probably be the weed they’re smoking.”
Nah, even the weed they use to dull their senses into a drug-induced CAGW-supportive trance requires vast amounts of power to grow. Pot produced indoors can use as much as 5,000 kilowatt-hours of energy to produce 1 kilogram. And it’s nearly all grown indoors in the US, because potheads are paranoid that others of their amoral ilk will Bogart their stash.
If the kooks wish to be taken seriously, they’ll have to walk their talk… nothing on or in them produced via fossil fuels, biking to their threat-marches / mob riots / cryfests, living in a cave (because even a tent requires fossil fuels to produce) without fire (which emits CO2).
I’m betting none of the leftist tards have it in them to actually live like they profess to want. And if they ever got that sort of lifestyle forced upon them by their own insanity, they’d be the very first ones wailing, gnashing their teeth, rending their sackclothes and stomping their feet in impotent infantile rage.
“It’s just so UNFAIR! We got exactly what we wanted!”
” Pot produced indoors can use as much as 5,000 kilowatt-hours of energy to produce 1 kilogram.”
…
Can you post a citation for that RIDICULOUS assertion?
Coeur de Lion wrote:
“RIDICULOUS”
I see you’re caps-locking… a sure sign that you’ve got some sort of agenda, no doubt. Which is probably why you’ve found yourself utterly unable to Google for yourself, right? Or perhaps you’re just too high to do so…
Reference: study by Evan Mills, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, US legalized indoor cannabis growing consumes $6b/yr in electricity… you’ll note it’s only a $3.5b/yr ‘industry’.
Reference: Northwest Power and Conservation Council in Oregon, which found that an indoor grow system for only four plants sucks up as much energy as 29 refrigerators.
Reference: Last summer in Portland, Oregon, Pacific Power reported seven outages from cannabis production.
Reference: Denver, CO, in which the cannabis industry consumes 4% of all electricity use. Per the Energy Information Administration and Xcel Energy, that equates to 269,583,884 KWh in 2016. (Also note the high percentage of crude-oil and coal-generated power in CO.)
Reference: MA Dept. of Energy Resources, Cannabis Energy Overview and Recommendations; “Grow operations require about 360 kWh per 25 sq. ft. of space”, to include lighting, A/C and dehumidification.
Reference: Energy Associates, “Energy Up In Smoke” report and CPUC ‘Energy Impacts of Cannabis Cultivation’ report, showing 3% of all CA electricity consumption goes to cannabis cultivation and sale; “According to the latest public data, indoor cultivators operating year-round were consuming about 150 W/sq. ft. of active canopy”.
Reference: CBC report (https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/cannabis-pot-marijuana-weed-electricity-engineering-1.4498349), showing it requires ~2000 KWh / pound of cannabis.
Reference: NPCC, 2014 (https://www.nwcouncil.org/sites/default/files/p7_18.pdf), Page 7 of 12, to wit: “Indoor Cannabis production ~ 5000 KWH/kg”
Now don’t you feel silly?
As if Portland and Denver wouldn’t have a handle on the power draw of indoor grows:
http://www.cpr.org/news/story/how-much-electricity-does-it-take-grow-marijuana-colo-cities-are-finding-out
Even with cheap hydro in OR and WA, and given competition in the legal environment, a full crop cycle indoors just doesn’t pencil out. LED will reduce your electricity bill a bit, but at the cost of crop quality.
As soon as WX permits, move your plants outside to take advantage of the free photons. Experts control the amount of red and blue light, but keeping flowering plants cool is a problem.
Did Anthony see an increase in “viewers” for the offending thread?
You know what they say any publicity is good publicity, so it may have back fired on old Bill.
He could actually have added a few more people who change their minds when they see the posts on here.
Zero, mainly because Mr. McKibben didn’t link to it.
Threats like that have no place on a discussion forum. They are disgusting when they come from either side.
They seem out of place coming from the Right side of the ideological spectrum, which may explain why this makes national news when it would be a near impossible task to chronicle all the death threats against conservatives coming from the Left.
There weren’t any threats.
Some other blogs I frequent have a “report obnoxious comment” button for bringing bad things to the attention of the blog owner. Would that help?
Once more the site with transparency is mocked and the people who hide and don’t respond are praised. Thank you Anthony for always maintaining above board and transparent honesty. It’s not to be found on the other side.
Always remember, Mr. McKibben is a propagandist.
Propagandists only use truth as a vehicle slip in their falsehoods. A truth when tied to a lie, is still a lie.
And they always pretend for compromise. “Let’s add some of my dung to your sausage. Oh what a fine sandwich we’ll make together. I’d help you eat it, but I’m a vegan.”
Too much?
spot on
Acting peacefully? Well, that’s stretching it. They used physical force to stop other citizens and a corporation exercising their legal rights to work and make a living.
That they caused no damage is essentially a lie. Just as robbing a bank when nobody is there still causes damage even if no one is physically hurt. They illegally caused measurable economic harm to other people.
And as to internet comments, yes the direct and implied threats should not happen and should be removed. Unfortunately there will always be few in any large forum. But a lot of people on McKibbens side of the aisle are also rather too good at posting text inflammatory enough to provoke the kind of responses that then allows them to suddenly come over all delicate and play the victim.
It’s called being passive-aggressive, and it needs to be called out more often.
Laughable, yes.
So, shutting off a major oil pipeline is okay, Bill ?
I have no idea, of course, but I wonder how Bill would react, if somebody shut off his lights, or (if he uses gas appliances) if somebody shut off his gas, or (if he drives a gas-powered car) if somebody siphoned and disposed of the fuel in his tank. Wouldn’t all these activities be forms of civil disobedience?
I mean, does Bill use electricity?, drive a car? Isn’t an act of shutting off an individual’s use of such things also equivalent to an act of shutting off a supplier of an individual’s use?
And using a perceived death threat as a soapbox to write a long editorial just seems like an act of dramatization. Without the comments inspiring his editorial, he would have had to choose another angle. The negative comments gave him a perfect platform, and he took full advantage of it to highlight his hypocrisy.
So transparent it’s sickening.
Thanks, Anthony. Well done.
Am I right in thinking McKibben is funded by the same people who fund Joe Romm? I might even call them both proxy employees of the same business owner. As in Steyer is friends with McKibben (& funder) & Podesta who was Joe Romm’s boss, and Steyer is, essentially, Joe Romm’s financier. I that light, McKibben is like an outraged salesman for a pyramid scheme. I’m honest Bill. I always sold my pyramid options to people who wanted them. They were good phoney financials. I’m outraged anyone would complain about this!
We do have a problem with the tone and tenor in the comments. In the heyday of Climate Audit, I could link something to a friend, and they would come away feeling they had seen a serious, well thought out point of view. Steve McIntyre seldom stayed into political discussion, and when he did, believe it or not, he professed to be more inline with the Democrats in the US. Still turned out brilliant work.
I hesitate to do the same now with WUWT. Willis, Anthony, Dave all provide excellent articles but the partisan raving which follows turns away anyone other than those already in the choir. Remember, before you bash people of other opinions, that the politics often add little to the topic, and may actually detract from the ability to reach a widespread audience.
I love the update.
I was actually trying to remember that event,as it showed the blatant hypocrite for what he is.
Rules for thee,none for me.
That group threatening a home and family was one of the most disgusting displays of stupidity I have seen.
Yet Bill was just fine with it,however when suggestion is made that the favour be returned..He cries about threats on Anthony’s Site,to a 3rd party while carefully neglecting to contact Anthony.
I feel you could reinstate the “Banned Ones” as they were quite gentle in their response to the flagrant deceit that Bill peddles daily.
Any sarcasm and especially return doxing will of course be seen as “Threats of Violence” by the activists.
Standard play and pure projection.
Otherwise known as trying to use your ethics and decency against you.
Of course the entire climate change, global warming or whatever you want to call it becomes political because the proposed solution is to take people’s money and to dictate what a person should or should not be doing. Those are political arguments because it takes government action to enforce those solutions. And it is particularly obvious that the liberals, left wing, socialists, progressives or whatever you want to call them come from the point of tax and control, tax and control, tax and control with the belief that government is and always will be the best and only solution to everything in our lives.
Why doesn’t Bill McKibben claim that he has a fear of flying and of cramped spaces, than fly to where Anthony Watts lives; then gets trapped in a cramped space with him and then complains about how his phobia was triggered. Than claim that he didn’t know about getting the exact same result with an email.
I don’t doubt for a millisecond Anthony’s integrity. Sure, we’re human and make mistakes, but, from personal experience, I’ve no doubt he wasn’t aware of the comments in question.
Back when Mann was claiming to be a “Nobel Laureate”, I made a suggestion for a Josh Cartoon of Mann with a … Nobel Lariat around his ….
Well, I was thinking of “give a man enough rope and he’ll …” but I didn’t put that in the comment.
My suggestion disappeared but not his mod comment that were words to the effect of it was inappropriate and “Not Funny”.
At the time, I didn’t like it. But later I accepted it. It could have been taken the wrong way.
I’ve no doubt all of the comments Bill mentioned “slipped through” and I’ve no doubt about Bill’s motives in waiting to reveal them without alerting Anthony first.
As soon as I saw the gist of this post, I knew that the doxxing comments came under a David Middleton “guest ridicule” post. I’ve long-since stopped reading his childish antics here and IMO, WUWT would be much more reputable without him.