What Do We Think About Climate Change

[hoytedow]

Wow, you learned a new word.

[wardd]

now Ill teach you a new word

FACT, The word fact can refer to verified information about past or present circumstances or events which are presented as objective reality. In science, it means a provable concept

[masalai]

Oh shizenhowzen it was better when everyone was whispering - - the text was too small to read so I did not bother... The climate, as with the weather, will change...

[Boston]

Originally Posted by hoytedow

Lack of true provable facts is definitely an imperfection.

ya thats not how science works
science collects and analyzes data
then forms a hypothesis
if the hypothesis seems to be valid then it is developed into a theory
if the theory is able to predict then it is considered a working theory
example of a non working theory might be that of the big bang
example of a working theory might be that of Rapid Global Climate Shift

in either case you dont get "provable" or "facts"
you get data and predictions that result in the verification of a theory

cheers
B

[Marco1]

Wow!
Big bang is not a 'working theory'
Ans Climate crap is a working one....

Now I have seen everything.
Boston, have you ever considered taking up teaching?

[Guillermo]

In a vote of 7-0, The most prolific climate revisionist editor ever at Wikipedia, RealClimate.org co-founder William Connolley, with over 5400 article revisions has been banned from making any edits about climate related articles for six months. (Credit: WUWT)


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikiped..._.28various.29

From Wikipedia pages (excerpted):

William M. Connolley (various)

William M. Connolley previously sanctioned and desysopped
8.1) In the Abd-William M. Connolley arbitration case (July-September 2009), William M. Connolley was found to have misused his admin tools while involved. As a result, he lost administrator permissions, and was admonished and prohibited from interacting with User:Abd. Prior to that, he was sanctioned in Requests for arbitration/Climate change dispute (2005, revert parole - which was later overturned by the Committee here) and Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Geogre-William M. Connolley (2008, restricted from administrative actions relating to Giano II). He was also the subject of RFC's regarding his conduct: RfC 1 (2005) and RfC 2 (2008). The 2008 RFC was closed as improperly certified.

William M. Connolley has been uncivil and antagonistic
8.2) William M. Connolley has been uncivil and antagonistic to editors within the topic area, and toward administrators enforcing the community probation.
This uncivil and antagonistic behaviour has included refactoring of talk page comments by other users,(examples: [18], [19], [20]) to the point that he was formally prohibited from doing so. In the notice advising him that a consensus of 7 administrators had prohibited his refactoring of talk page posts, he inserted commentary within the post of the administrator leaving the notice on his talk page. [21]] For this action, he was blocked for 48 hours; had the block extended to 4 days with talk page editing disabled due to continuing insertions into the posts of other users on his talk page; had his block reset to the original conditions; then was blocked indefinitely with talk page editing disabled when he again inserted comments into the posts of others on his talk page.[22] After extensive discussion at Administrator noticeboard/Incidents, the interpretation of consensus was that the Climate Change general sanctions did not extend to the actions of editors on their own talk pages, and the block was lifted.

William M. Connolley has shown Ownership
8.3) William M. Connolley is acknowledged to have expertise on the topic of climate change significantly beyond that of most Wikipedians; however, this also holds true for several other editors who regularly edit in this topic area. In this setting, User:William M. Connolley has shown an unreasonable degree of Ownership over climate-related articles and unwillingness to work in a consensus environment.

William M. Connolley BLP violations
8.4) William M. Connolley has repeatedly violated the biography of living persons policy. Violations have included inserting personal information irrelevant to the subject's notability, use of blogs as sources, inserting original research and opinion into articles, and removing reliably sourced positive comments about subjects. He has edited biographical articles of persons with whom he has off-wiki professional or personal disagreements.

William M. Connolley's edits to biographies of living persons
8.5) William M. Connolley has focused a substantial portion of his editing in the Climate change topic area on biographical articles about living persons who hold views opposed to his own with respect to the reality and significance of anthropogenic global warming, in a fashion suggesting that he does not always approach such articles with an appropriately neutral and disinterested point of view.


I think this is the kind of zealotic attitude -from whatever camp- we should avoid here. I do again a friendly calling for all of us to try to keep a civilized and useful debate from now on, avoiding personal attacks and centering discussions in the climate change debate, for the sake of this thread. On my side, I'm ready to do so (humbly recognizing I'm not innocent), or then quit from posting here anymore.

[hoytedow]

Don't be crest-fallen, Guillermo. Everyone who visits this thread and posts with an opinion has said something harsh, in the heat of the moment, on both sides. We all are red-handed in this. Humility is a virtue, but you should be proud of the solid stand you have taken in the face of scathing attacks from the dark side. I don't believe I am alone in this opinion.

[wardd]

come to the dark side, we have cookies

[Boston]

well at least your consistent

make false accusations
spread disinformation
pretend doubt
make personal attacks

sounds exactly like classic agnotology to me

Agnotology (formerly agnatology) is the study of culturally-induced ignorance or doubt, particularly the publication of inaccurate or misleading scientific data. The neologism was coined by Robert N. Proctor,[1][2] a Stanford University professor specializing in the history of science and technology.[3] Its name derives from the Neoclassical Greek word ἄγνωσις, agnōsis, "not knowing" (confer Attic Greek ἄγνωτος "unknown"[4]), and -λογία, -logia.[5] More generally, the term also highlights the increasingly common condition where more knowledge of a subject leaves one more uncertain than before.

A prime example of the deliberate production of ignorance cited by Proctor is the tobacco industry's conspiracy to manufacture doubt about the cancer risks of tobacco use. Under the banner of science, the industry produced research about everything except tobacco hazards to exploit public uncertainty.[5][6] Some of the root causes for culturally-induced ignorance are media neglect, corporate or governmental secrecy and suppression, document destruction, and myriad forms of inherent or avoidable culturopolitical selectivity, inattention, and forgetfulness.[7]

Agnotology also focuses on how and why diverse forms of knowledge do not "come to be," or are ignored or delayed

next will come a few straw man arguments followed by cherry picking data

[Boston]

looks to me like the agnotologists (deniers) have invaded wikipedia and what few actual scientists were hard pressed to keep up with correcting the misinformation

Competence is required

WMC: wikipedia needs editors who are actually capable of editing the science-based climate articles [429], [430]. Examples of the "skeptic side" making *any* positive contribution to the science are so rare that I can't think of any, even small ones; making substantive contributions is unknow.
[edit] False neutrals

There are very few "true neutrals" in the area of climate change (nor even a clear definition of the term). But there are many who make false claims to neutrality, such as AQFK, whose real opinions occaisionally shine out [431]; [432]
[edit] Excess kibitzing

Climate change suffers from too many kibitzers who make no productive contributions. For example ZP5 has made *no* productive contributions to climate change articles: inchoerence such as [433] is more in his line.
[edit] MN: BLP violations, misrepresentation of science

MN has persistently misrepresented the state of climate science, often to a BLP-worrying degree. In [434] he asserts that The hockey stick has since been proven to be a fraud. MN's judgement is generally faulty. For example [435] he attempts to get User:Hipocrite/GWCC deleted. In [436] he adds strongly POV controversy to a direct quote from a PNAS paper for "balance", apparently giving equal status to blog comments and published literature. Placed on civility parole: [437] after his promise to be "civil at all times" was negated by a string of edits including [438] [439] [440].
[edit] Lar has falsely claimed to be neutral

Throughout the climate change probabtion, Lar has claimed to be sufficiently neutral to issue sanctions against me; he has taken nothing from Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Lar. Yet previous to the probation Lar had been incivil [441] (this all swirls around his failed nomination for delete of one of my pages; see Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/User:William M. Connolley/For me/Misc arbcomm-y stuff). His block of me was overturned on the grounds that he was "too involved" [442]. Lar continues to refuse to recognise his involvement. But even more clearly the evidence he has presented (especially " BLP Problems noted in the external press" section) shows his biases; in particular (see talk) once it becomes clear that the BLP issues with that article have nothing to do with the editors Lar wants sanctioned, he switches his position and appears to blame people for *not* editing the article ([443] appears to ask people to prove that they weren't watching the article. Let's quote Lar, it is worth seeing: Since the "regulars" can't prove they weren't aware of this article (although I'd be surprised if they weren't, frankly, since JD is one of their demons, isn't he?). What is this "demons" nonsense?).
[edit] Problematic editors

The climate change area has a number of problematic editors who make effective collaboration or progress difficult or impossible. GoRight was permanently banned [444] for a succession of problems collectively amounting to being a strong net negative. TGL was banned for 6 months [445] for significant soapboxing, use of talkpages as a forum for general discussion, treatment of the probation area as a battleground, incivility, anti-collaborative sarcastic remarks, and tendentious and disruptive editing. Just recently he has made implausible allegations of sockpuppetry swiftly rejected as worthless [446]. MNs understanding of sourcing is so poor that he has been prohibited from introducing new sources [447].
[edit] The Bishop Hill (blog) and LHVU's bias

The Bishop Hill (blog) was deemed non-notable and merged into Andrew Montford. Despite continual consensus for this merge, ideological opponents of the merger persisting in objecting. An RFC was started, which served no purpose other than to waste time and inflame tension. During this period, LHVU enforced his own preferred version of the BH(b) page [448] [449].
[edit] Fallout from Climatic Research Unit email controversy

A great deal of the recent trouble on the climate change pages has come not from the *science* but from the fall-out of Climatic Research Unit email controversy. Wikipedia repsonded badly to this incident: half-formed opinions and poor news sources were used to build a poor article over the objections of the science-based editors. Subsequent events (most clearly the outcome of serveral investigations) have vindicated those objections, as the current state of the article and more measured mainstream coverage demonstrates [450]. Not everyone has realised this [451].
[edit] No-one knows you are a dog until you start barking

Contrary to assertions elsewhere, new editors to the climate change area are not met with hostility - see User:Thegreatdr, below, for example; or User:ScottyBerg; or User:Snowman frosty; or User:Avetar [452] or Userave souza [453] or User:Awickert [454]. But when an editors first edit is a BLP-violating accusation of fraud [455], the second is a BLP-violating assertion of speculation as fact [456], the third a reversion of the fraud nonsense [457] and the fourth an aggresive complaint [458]: why, even then the editor is met with a polite reference to the policies [459] (all those from MN). But even having been pointed to all this, MN still refuses to read our policies [460] which presumably accounts for his current "sourcing" parole. TGL did not start with a blank slate, having previously been a pusher of the "Barack Obama birthplace" conspiracy [461] (and getting blocked for disruption [462]). TGL's first edit near Cl Ch was to the UHI page [463] where he failed to understand the subject. Despite his editing history he was met with politeness [464] which he returned with incivility [465] which rapidly transition into accusations of collusion [466]. TGL's failure to understand the subject continue [467] and he then veers off into deliberate incivility [468].

Indeed the only good evidence of people leaving due to the poor atmosphere is when pushed by the "skeptic" side [469].
[edit] Misc stuff

Worth a quick browse if you have time.

* Who got it right and who wrong at Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Climate_change_exaggeration?
* Talk:William_Connolley#Redux: I [Jimbo Wales] recommend that Weakopedia be blocked if he does this again... this is just too ridiculous to permit to continue
* Incivility and battleground mentality from JWB [470] William M. Connolley (talk) 22:02, 2 July 2010 (UTC)
* AQFK has indulged in edit warring with spurious BLP exemptions [471]
* Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Hide the Decline; Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Climate change exaggeration
* Lar wanted a diff of me apologising to someone, since he doubted I ever did. There are many, but H likes User_talk:William_M._Connolley/Old_talk_13#Sock_puppets; I like me apologising to H. Or there is [472]. And since BozMo complained that I hadn't apologised to him [473].
* Even highly contentious subjects can be edited in peace and harmony; see for example Soon and Baliunas controversy.
* User:Slim Virgin behaves abusively [474] (edit comment: attempting to bully other editors into leaving the page alone)
* JWB has been pointlessly inflammatory [475] (note the image) as recognised by the clerk [476]. He failed to understand this and persisted in continuing the argument on the clerks talk page [477].

William M. Connolley (talk) 10:57, 10 July 2010 (UTC)
[edit]

might be important to note that wikipedia is a open on line encyclopedia that anyone can gain edit privileges into
needless to say the deniers have taken full advantage of this fact and through tactics similar to Guillermo's managed to get one of the only real scientists sanctioned for his efforts to correct the denalist spin

[Guillermo]

I'm not crest-fallen Hoyt. I'm just tired and boried of trying do as good and honest contributions as I'm able to do from my laymanship in these matters, just to have to put up with permanent personal attacks and scorning, and then finding myself as an idiot entering in useless diatribes because of my treacherous Spanish hot-blood.

Some limited hot discussion is spicy and desirable to keep the thread interest up, I know and agree with, because all of us are humans, but the permanent scorning of the opponent, incorrect and biased assumptions about intentions, appeals to authority as the only resource, blind true believing instead of clear thinking and scientific debate with numbers and reasons, lack of understanding and refusing to appreciate and consider all efforts and contributions, as well as the endless political ranting, make this thread to be a not attractive place to be at all if attitudes do not change. And this not only a fault of the AGW camp, let me say.

Anyway, thanks for your support.

[Boston]

Addendum: Robert Watson (scientist)

The recent mini-edit-war over Robert Watson (scientist) is this case in minature. If you only have time to look at one thing, look at that. Hipocrite has provided the relevant diffs, so I'll just interpret them as I see it.

An anon added some text. It was wrong. All the scientifically literate edits agree it was wrong [478] [479] [480] [481] [482]. Even those less happy to judge the scientific content agree that the edit is impermissible as SYN [483] [484] [485].

So, removing it was correct and re-adding it was wrong. How then did we end up in an edit war? Answer: because some of the "skeptics" revert unthinkingly, merely to cause trouble. And despite an extensive conversation on the talk page, and on my talk page, to which I've contributed, not one of the "skeptic" reverters has shown up to explain themselves. You should read MN's explanation where he as good as admits that he didn't know what was going on but reverted anyway.

As I said at the start competence is required. If you leave the "skeptics" in charge of pages like Robert Watson (scientist) they will be full of meaningless drivel William M. Connolley (talk) 20:42, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

[Guillermo]

Originally Posted by Boston

looks to me like the agnotologists (deniers) have invaded wikipedia and what few actual scientists were hard pressed to keep up with correcting the misinformation

might be important to note that wikipedia is a open on line encyclopedia that anyone can gain edit privileges into
needless to say the deniers have taken full advantage of this fact and through tactics similar to Guillermo's managed to get one of the only real scientists sanctioned for his efforts to correct the denalist spin

Do you see what I mean, Hoyt?

Good by.

[Boston]

maybe if you were not following play by play the denialist hand book you would find a more engaging environment

of course you might also think of apologizing for making false accusations and for lying about having made claims against my tenure at university as well

little things that go a long way towards credibility and trust

I am merely setting the record straight when false or misleading information is presented

[Boston]

I'm not crest-fallen Hoyt. I'm just tired and boried of trying do as good and honest contributions as I'm able to do from my laymanship in these matters, just to have to put up with permanent personal attacks and scorning, and then finding myself as an idiot entering in useless diatribes because of my treacherous Spanish hot-blood.

Some limited hot discussion is spicy and desirable to keep the thread interest up, I know and agree with, because all of us are humans, but the permanent scorning of the opponent, incorrect and biased assumptions about intentions, appeals to authority as the only resource, blind true believing instead of clear thinking and scientific debate with numbers and reasons, lack of understanding and refusing to appreciate and consider all efforts and contributions, as well as the endless political ranting, make this thread to be a not attractive place to be at all if attitudes do not change. And this not only a fault of the AGW camp, let me say.

Anyway, thanks for your support.

well you were caught out in a blatant lie and making wildly false accusations against fellow forum members, and you did manage to drive old Alan off the forum with your beligerance and personal attacks personal insults and insisting on cherry picking which is what I think finally got to him

then you act all wounded when your tactics are called into question
if you actually wanted to discuss the numbers you would have but instead you insisted on cherry picking a single data set and refusing to consider anything but that
which simply isn't science
that might have got to him as well

then you launched into a viscous litany of personal insults on the man and now your acting all hurt that no one takes you seriously

cant imagine why your complaining when it is you who made false accusations against others and then lied about it, at least in my case

then blame the "AGW camp"

pretty obvious your simply not facing up to realities

the simple truth is your posts follow a play book and its just not fooling anyone

you might try and draw on information from something other than the deniers web sites
or are you getting your info in some kind of kit directly from the oil and gas industry