If an honest man is wrong, after demonstrating that he is wrong, he either stops being wrong or he stops being honest. by Anon
********************************************
More on the Cooling: data cancel climate models [ITEM #1]
Walt Williams reflects on Earth Day: Failed predictions
[ITEM #2]
Costly climate policy threatens to bring down UK
government [ITEM #3]
Majority of Britons opposed
to green taxation [ITEM #4], not as gullible as its political and media
leaders. http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/the-green-tax-revolt-britons-will-not-foot-bill-to-save-planet-poll-shows-819703.html
Thieves fall out over Cap
& Trade [ITEM #5]
Himalayan glaciers: Newsweek reporting fails again [ITEM #6]
Antarctic ice shelf
collapsing? Much ado about nothing [ITEM
#7]
Solar fantasies: Impractical
schemes [Item #8]
Wikipedia
Trashing the bio entries of climate skeptics [ITEM #9]
************************************************************
An Australian
colleague sent me a YouTube of my NIPCC talk at the March NY Conference.
He improved it with little pointers for the slides. Very effective. http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=BnFfkwmg1K4
View it and
see why I don't accept a significant human influence on global warming
-------------------------------------------------------
From the 2007
meeting in The Hague, see http://www.klimatosoof.nl/singer
*******************************************************
Myron Ebell: Full-page ad on
page A11 of today’s New York Times by NRDC in support of
Lieberman-Warner. The large headline states: THE ECONOMIC
STIMULUS PLAN THAT CAN SAVE THE WORLD. The sub-headline is even more
outrageously false: HOW AMERICA GETS RICHER BY REDUCING GLOBAL WARMING.
It would be accurate if it said, how some Americans get richer by
reducing global warming.
William Pizer,
an economist at Resources for the Future and a lead author on the most recent
report from the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said at a
symposium earlier this week here in Washington: "As an economist, I am
skeptical that [dealing with climate change] is going to make money. You'll
have new industries, but they'll be doing what old industries did but a higher
net cost.... You'll be depleting other industries."
**********************************************
News you can use:
Women face
tougher impact from climate change.
Reuters, Tue May
6, 2008
http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSN06339904
Surge in fatal
shark attacks blamed on global warming
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2010898/posts
############################################
1. TESTING THE
WATERS
Investors Business Daily,| May 5, 2008
http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=294880707561262
Climate Change: Proving the advantage of actual
observations, German researchers say Earth will stop warming for at least a
decade. It seems ocean currents, not SUVs, help determine the temperature of
Earth.
When the United Nations World Meteorological Organization recently
reported that global temperatures had not risen since 1998, the explanation
given by WMO Secretary-General Michel Jarraud was that the cool spell was the
effect of the Pacific Ocean's La Nina current, "part of what we call
'variability.' "
Well, oops, the Earth will do it again. According to a report by German
researchers published in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature, shifting
Atlantic Ocean currents will cool parts of North America and Europe over the
next decade as well.
Noel Keenlyside of the Leibniz Institute of Marine Science at Germany's Kiel
University says "in the short term, you can see changes in the global mean
temperature that you might not expect given the reports of the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change."
The key to the Kiel team's prediction is the natural cycle of ocean currents
called the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, or AMO for those who aren't
oceanographers or don't play Scrabble. The AMO is closely related to the warm
currents that bring heat from the tropics to the coasts of Europe and North
America. The cycle is not well understood, but is believed to repeat every 60
to 70 years.
According to the greenies, the Earth is supposed to warm continuously and
disastrously without taking any rest breaks. Yet after taking actual data from
the Labrador Sea where the Gulf Stream gives up its warmth before sinking and
returning southward -- and projecting forward -- the Kiel team says the
Atlantic currents will keep rising temperatures in check around the world, much
as the warming and cooling associated with El Nino and La Nina in the Pacific
affect global temperatures.
Howard Hayden, physics professor emeritus at the University of Connecticut, has
described the machinery of the computer models used by the IPCC and others to
predict imminent and cataclysmic climate change as ones that take "garbage
in" and spit "gospel out."
In a study published last August in the journal Science, U.K. researchers said:
"A common criticism of global climate models . . . has been that they only
include factors such as solar radiation, atmospheric aerosols and greenhouse
gases, which are affected by changes outside the climate system (while
neglecting) internal climate change variability that arises from natural
changes from within the system, like El Nino, fluctuations in ocean circulation
and anomalies in ocean heat content."
Understanding the ocean's effect on climate took a quantum leap forward in 2003
when the first of 3,000 new automated ocean buoys were deployed, a significant
improvement over earlier buoys that took their measurements mostly at the
ocean's surface.
The new buoys, known as Argos, drift along the world's oceans at a depth of
about 6,000 feet constantly monitoring the temperature, salinity, and speed of
ocean currents. Every 10 days or so a bladder inflates, bringing them to the
surface as they take their readings at various depths.
Once on the surface, they transmit their readings to satellites that retransmit
them to land-based computers.
The Argos buoys have disappointed global warming alarmists in that they have
failed to detect any signs of imminent climate change. As Dr. Josh Willis noted
in an interview with National Public Radio, "there has been a very slight
cooling" over the buoy's five years of observation.
Actual observations trump computer models and as we learn more about the Earth
we start to realize how puny and irrelevant man's contribution to climate
change really is.
While irresponsible environmentalists panic over warming, the Earth cools and
goes with the ocean flow.
==============================================
Here the actual publication:
N. S. Keenlyside1,
M. Latif1,
J. Jungclaus2,
L. Kornblueh2
& E. Roeckner2
When asked, recently, the lead author replied "The IPCC would
predict a 0.3C warming over the next decade. Our prediction is that there will
be no warming until 2015 but it will pick up after that."
*******************************
2. ENVIRONMENTALISTS STILL CAN'T GET IT RIGHT
By WALTER E. WILLIAMS, IBD, May 06, 2008
http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=294959230563446
Now that another Earth Day has come and gone, let's look at some
environmentalist predictions they would prefer we forget.
At the first Earth Day
celebration, in 1969, environmentalist Nigel Calder warned, "The threat of
a new ice age must now stand alongside nuclear war as a likely source of
wholesale death and misery for mankind."
C.C. Wallen of the World
Meteorological Organization said, "The cooling since 1940 has been large
enough and consistent enough that it will not soon be reversed."
In 1968, professor Paul Ehrlich, former Vice President Al Gore's hero
and mentor, predicted that there would be a major food shortage in the U.S. and
"in the 1970s . . . hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to
death." Ehrlich forecast that 65
million Americans would die of starvation between 1980 and 1989, and that by
1999 the U.S. population would have declined to 22.6 million.
Ehrlich's predictions about
England were gloomier: "If I were a gambler, I would take even money that
England will not exist in the year 2000."
In 1972, a report was
written for the Club of Rome warning that the world would run out of gold by
1981, mercury and silver by 1985, tin by 1987 and petroleum, copper, lead and
natural gas by 1992.
Gordon Taylor, in his 1970
book "The Doomsday Book," said Americans were using 50% of the
world's resources and "by 2000 they (Americans) will, if permitted, be
using all of them."
In 1975, the Environmental Fund took out full-page ads warning,
"The World as we know it will likely be ruined by the year 2000."
Harvard biologist George Wald
in 1970 warned, "Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless
immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind." That was the
same year that Sen. Gaylord Nelson warned, in Look magazine, that by 1995
"somewhere between 75% and 85% of all the species of living animals will
be extinct."
It's not just latter-day doomsayers who have been wrong; doomsayers
have always been wrong.
In 1885, the U.S. Geological
Survey announced that there was "little or no chance" of oil being
discovered in California, and a few years later they said the same about Kansas
and Texas.
In 1939, the U.S. Department
of the Interior said American oil supplies would last only another 13 years. In
1949, the secretary of the interior said the end of U.S. oil supplies was in
sight. Having learned nothing from its earlier erroneous claims, in 1974 the
U.S. Geological Survey advised us that the U.S. had only a 10-year supply of
natural gas. The fact of the matter, according to the American Gas Association:
There's a 1,000- to 2,500- year supply.
Here are my questions:
In 1970, when
environmentalists were making predictions of man-made global cooling and the
threat of an ice age and millions of Americans starving to death, what kind of
government policy should we have undertaken to prevent such a calamity?
When Ehrlich predicted that
England would not exist in the year 2000, what steps should the British
Parliament have taken in 1970 to prevent such a dire outcome?
In 1939, when the Department
of the Interior warned that we only had oil supplies for another 13 years, what
actions should President Roosevelt have taken?
Finally, what makes us think that environmental alarmism is any more
correct now that they have switched their tune to man-made global warming?
******************************************
3. GREEN
SUICIDE: COSTLY CLIMATE POLICY THREATENS TO BRING DOWN UK GOVERNMENT
Summaries
from CCNet 72/2008 - 6 May 2008
LABOUR'S new green targets
will cost every family in Britain more than UKL3,000 [$6000], a Government
dossier has warned. The decision by ministers to sign up to
"unachievable" EU pledges on renewable energy will leave taxpayers
with a [UKL]75 billion bill. Most of this will be passed on to householders in
higher costs. --Jason Groves, Daily
Express, 4 May 2008
People's electricity bills
are going to soar because of this EU target. The EU have chosen the least
effective and most costly way to go green and we are all going to have to pay
as a result. Incredibly, the Government don't seem to have realised what they
were signing up to. We are handing over a huge amount of money and it's not clear
that we will get anything for it.
--Neil O'Brien, Open Europe, 4 May 2008
Five million drivers will
pay UKL50 or 90 extra in road tax next year because of the Government's covert
decision to include older family cars in new higher tax bands. Treasury figures
show that a million of those will incur at least another 130 rise the following
year, meaning that their road tax will have more than doubled over two years.
--Ben Webster, The Times, 3 May 2008
Ken Livingstone's decision
to campaign hard on climate change was a strange lapse of political judgment.
He may have won the dubious honour of being selected as the 'greenest'
candidate by Friends of the Earth, but this has little resonance with the
ordinary, cash-strapped Londoner.
--Phil Stevens, Adam Smith Institute, 3 May 2008
Recent polls suggest people
are unwilling to throw money at global warming fantasies; no big surprise
there. It is a surprise, however, to discover politicians (now in the UK, as in
the US) are becoming aware of this. In the face of this Greenism rejection, the
warmenist 'Independent' is suddenly sceptical: "We should be sceptical
about the notion of radical shifts in mood in politics ... Now is the worst
time for the Conservative Party to retreat from green politics." Why?
They've just started winning. --Tim
Blair, 4 May
[Labor] Party sources
confirmed Mr Brown will ditch the "bin tax" on householders who fail
to recycle their waste properly and shelve the delayed increase in duty on
petrol in the autumn. He will back away from "green" taxes until the
economy improves. --Colin Brown, The
Independent, 6 May 2008
You can already foresee what
could become a key theme in the next election: The Liberals champion a carbon
tax and the Conservatives accuse them of punishing consumers, attacking
resource-rich Alberta, stifling Newfoundland's fledgling boom and up-ending the
Ontario economy just as it edges toward recession. If [these arguments]
prevail, we could end up not only with a Conservative majority, but a
deteriorating environment and a weakening economy. --Susan Riley, Canwest News Service, 6 May 2008
After years of debate over
global warming, a measure to dramatically reduce carbon emissions in the United
States is set to come to the U.S. Senate floor in June. But Ohio's two senators
are likely to vote against it, contributing to what many people expect will be
the bill's failure. --The Cleveland Plain Dealer, 5 May 2008
Climate change has become
the new orthodoxy for our times. It is the moral fable that justifies new
limits and restrictions for our shiny 21st century. It provides, in a
post-tradition world, a new internalised framework for individuals to govern
their behaviour in the name of reducing their carbon footprint. In this battle,
science and religion have united behind the same orthodoxy to lower our
expectations (one with a secular, environmentalist but deeply anti-humanist
pedigree). --Bruno Waterfield, Daily Telegraph, 5 May
***************************
4. GREEN TAX REVOLT: BRITONS 'WILL NOT FOOT
BILL TO SAVE PLANET': MAJORITY OF BRITONS ARE OPPOSED TO INCREASES IN GREEN
TAXATION
By Colin Brown, Deputy Political Editor, The Independent, 2 May 2008
More than seven in 10 voters insist that they would not be willing to
pay higher taxes in order to fund projects to combat climate change, according
to a new poll. The survey also reveals
that most Britons believe "green" taxes on 4x4s, plastic bags and
other consumer goods have been imposed to raise cash rather than change our
behaviour, while two-thirds of Britons think the entire green agenda has been
hijacked as a ploy to increase taxes.
The findings make depressing reading for green campaigners, who have
spent recent months urging the Government to take far more radical action to
reduce Britain's carbon footprint. The UK is committed to reducing carbon
emissions by 60 per cent by 2050, a target that most experts believe will be
difficult to reach. The results of the poll by Opinium, a leading research
company, indicate that maintaining popular support for green policies may be a
difficult act to pull off, and attempts in the future to curb car use and
publicly fund investment in renewable resources will prove deeply unpopular.
The implications of the poll could also blow a hole in the calculations
of the Chancellor, Alistair Darling, who was forced to delay a scheduled
2p-a-litre [15 cents per gallon] rise in fuel duty until the autumn in his
spring Budget, while his plans to impose a showroom tax and higher vehicle
excise duty on gas-guzzling cars will not take effect for a year. He is now
under pressure to shelve the increase in fuel duty because of the steep rise in
the price of oil.
The public's climate-change scepticism extends to the recent floods
that inundated much of the West Country, and reported signs of changes in the
cycle of the seasons. Just over a third of respondents (34 per cent) believe
that extreme weather is becoming more common but has nothing to do with global
warming. One in 10 said that they believed that climate change is totally natural. The over-55s are most cynical about the
effects of global warming with 43 per cent believing that extreme weather and
global warming are unconnected.
Three in 10 (29 per cent) of all respondents would oppose any more
legislation in support of green policies, while close to a third of citizens
(31 per cent) believe that green taxes will have no discernible effect on the
environment since people will still take long-haul flights regularly and drive
carbon-heavy vehicles
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SEPP Comment: A hint to
politicians everywhere of things to come
***************************************
5. THIEVES FALL OUT OVER CAP & TRADE
http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NmQ2ODViMjU0ODY0YmQ3ZDQ0ZjQ4ZjRmOWRkYjk3NzA
Chris
Horner, Planet Gore, 8 May 2008
You may have wondered why there has been no Congressional effort to actually legislate
the "global warming" policies that will supposedly save the planet
from itself. For six years, the Democratic minority indulged in often-nasty
rhetoric, with the gist being: We know the problem. We know the solution. Your
hearings are a delaying tactic. We. Must. Act. Now!
After winning the majority,
Dems muttered for a while about how that mean George Bush would just veto their
legi-salvation anyway: Why bother? We'll just work for a bigger majority - and
the White House. Though, as I have noted on Planet Gore before, Bush had
threatened no veto - and on those occasions since January 2007 when he did
threaten a veto, in other policy contexts, the Dems typically took it as a
challenge to pass something. So there seemed to be something missing from their
political calculation, or at least their public rhetoric.
Today's E&E Daily
(subscription required) has a hilarious apologia, "Sponsors lower
expectations for Lieberman-Warner bill," offering a walk-through of the
phenomenon afflicting our crusaders. Here as in pretty much every country in
the world (posturing notwithstanding), global warming is such a grave threat
that other people need to "do something." Given the inescapable price
tag, lawmakers looked and discovered that anything they propose would actually
be doing nothing - besides harming state economies. And if forced to choose, it
seems they would prefer it be other states' economies that are harmed.
"The
Lieberman-Warner-Boxer camp is facing increasing demands from all corners of
the Senate to change the bill that would establish a cap-and-trade system with
mid-century emission limits of 70 percent below 2005 levels.
Ohio Democratic
Sen. Sherrod Brown told the Cleveland Plain Dealer this week he was holding out
in his support for the Lieberman-Warner bill because it did not do enough to
protect his home state's manufacturing jobs while still stimulating investments
in alternative energy. "I have serious concerns about any climate-change
bill that doesn't take into account energy-intensive industries like we have in
Ohio - glass and chemicals and steel and aluminum and foundries," Brown
said.
"He's
concerned," Brown spokeswoman Joanna Kuebler explained yesterday.
"He's leaning toward a no."
Sen. Maria
Cantwell [NB: Democrat] of Washington said in an interview that she is also
pushing for changes in the Lieberman-Warner bill to benefit her home state's
abundant supplies of hydropower. "We want to make sure people who are
already good at reducing CO2 emissions will continue to do that and not be
penalized," she said. Cantwell explained that she has not joined the bill
as a cosponsor because she wants to keep working on it.
Sen. Kent
Conrad (D-N.D.) said he wants a more beneficial emission allocation system for
his state's rural energy producers." Obviously, I represent a state that's
a significant power producer," Conrad said. "Most people don't think
of North Dakota that way. But we produce electricity for nine states. We have
the largest coal gasification plant in the country. We have very large reserves
of lignite coal." [Meanwhile], Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) maintained that he
is a long way from backing the Lieberman-Warner bill. Instead, he is taking a
close look at an alternative climate bill circulated from Sen. George Voinovich
(R-Ohio) that opens with tax incentives for new energy technologies but falls
back on cap and trade if the other ideas have not worked by 2030."
That mean George Bush and
those nasty filibustering Republicans are blocking a climate bailout. Or, maybe
not so much. As my CEI colleague Myron Ebell characterizes this: thieves fall
out when it comes time to split up the loot.
**************************************
6. METEOROLOGIST TAKES DOWN
NEWSWEEK’S SHARON BEGLEY FOR MORE SHODDY CLIMATE REPORTING
By Chief Meteorologist Craig
James, of a Michigan NBC TV affiliate)
[Note: For a complete report on Begley’s embarrassing climate reporting see http://blogs.woodtv.com/?p=3578]
Excerpt: In the May 5, 2008 edition
of Newsweek, there is an article by science writer Sharon Begley trying to
convince us that global warming isn’t good for crops after all. Her first
example is a glacier in the Himalayas called the Gangotri glacier. She writes
that over the last 25 years the glacier has shrunk about half a mile, a rate
three times the historical norm. The implication is, of course, that this was
caused by increasing atmospheric CO2 produced by human activities. Since this
glacier supplies 70% of the flow to India’s Ganges River during the dry season,
loss of the glacier would cause great harm to India’s crop irrigation. However,
this article in the Times of India, contains the following quote: “According to
Geological Survey of India data, between 1935 and 1996, Gangotri glacier
receded at an average 18.80 metres per year. Studies by other institutions show
that yearly recession dropped to 17.5 metres during 1971-2004 and further to
12.10 metres in 2004-05.” The river
flow may be falling and the glacier retreating, but is it really three times
the historical norm? The Indian government calls it a natural phenomena that
may have been exacerbated by the building of four dams.
Her next example is that of
a diminishing snowpack in the United States, particularly in the Pacific
Northwest. Was she out of the country this winter? Take a look at these snow
depth comparisons from the Northwest Weather and Avalanche Center in Seattle,
Washington. You can see that this year’s snow pack in the Northwest was between
133% and 330% above normal. In many locations in the central Rockies, the
Midwest and northern New England, the highest snowfall amounts of any year were
recorded. Of course, one year does not make a trend, but since the Pacific
Decadal Oscillation has gone negative, this may indeed be the beginning of a
trend.
*******************************
7. ANTARCTIC ICE SHELF COLLAPSING?
Ice Cap, 25 March 2008
http://icecap.us/index.php/go/political-climate
Icecap Note: Lets put this in perspective. The account may be
misinterpreted by some as the ice cap or a significant (vast) portion is
collapsing. In reality it and all the former shelves that collapsed are small
and most near the Antarctic peninsula which sticks well out from Antarctica
into the currents and winds of the South Atlantic and lies in a tectonically
active region with surface and subsurface active volcanic activity. The vast
continent has actually cooled since 1979.
The full Wilkins 6,000 square
mile ice shelf is just 0.39% of the current ice sheet (just 0.1% of the extent
last September). Only a small portion of it between 1/10th-1/20th of Wilkins
has separated so far, like an icicle falling off a snow and ice covered
house. And this winter is coming on quickly. In fact the ice is returning
so fast, it is running an amazing 60% ahead (4.0 vs 2.5 million square km
extent) of last year when it set a new record. The ice extent is already
approaching the second highest level for extent since the measurements began by
satellite in 1979 and just a few days into the Southern Hemisphere winter and 6
months ahead of the peak. Wilkins like all the others that temporarily broke up
will refreeze soon. We are very likely going to exceed last years record. Yet
the world is left with the false impression Antarctica’s ice sheet is also
starting to disappear.
**********************
8. SOLAR FANTASIES: IMPRACTICAL SCHEMES
By George Smith
The January issue of Scientific American magazine has a front page
article on US energy independence from foreign oil, by building a large 2.94 TW
photovoltaic power plant in the useless desert wastelands, of California,
Nevada, Arizona, and New Mexico. The
authors are Ken Zweibel, James Maso, and Vasilis Fthenakis. A smaller 558 GW thermal solar plant would
also be required. The PV plant would
supply electricity at 5c/kWh, and cost $1.20/kW peak, which comes to around
$4.20 per square foot; which is a very good deal if you are building any kind
of structure capable of surviving that 100-year storm.
It's a somewhat modest undertaking that will be ready by 2050. The required land area is only 30,000 square
miles for the PV plant and another 16,000 for the thermal plant, which will
sell electricity for 9c/kWh, and cost $3.70 per Watt to build.
Now 30,000 square miles is a quite interesting number and it converts
into 19.2 million acres; which just fortuitously happens to be the area of
ANWR. But whereas drilling for oil in
ANWR would require 2000 acres for the drill sites, leaving only 19.198 million
acres for wildlife, the desert southwest plant would require the whole 10.2
million acres, plus of course the 10.2 million acres for the thermal plant; and
it is for certain that the whole area would be strictly off limits to humans
since just some ordinary rocks tossed onto the solar cells would be very
destructive, so it would be constantly patrolled by armed guards if it was to
survive even an amateur attack.
Silicon solar cells have a temperature coefficient of -2mVolts per deg
C, and operate at 500 mVolts output Voltage, so cooling of the solar arrays
would be crucial to good efficiency, so you would certainly want to have
reflective type infrared filters on the surface to keep out solar rays which
are beyond the bandgap of the silicon.
Actually they are considering even more exotic semiconductor materials,
that would exploit a larger fraction of the solar spectrum but they are only
talking about 14% efficiency for the cells.
Now I like the idea of using solar where possible, but what is the
likelihood that environmental concerns that already fought to protect the
desert south west from destructive practices, while allowing human usage, would
sit still for the complete exclusion of personal use from nearly 50,000 square
miles of very delicate desert habitat which is home to all manner of endangered
species; even more so than ANWR is.
Now my only reason in pointing this comparison out, is to make the
point, that renewable green energy (solar) is extremely diffuse, and gathering
it up in large amounts is not as simple as it is cracked up to be.
And estimates of the construction cost are a pipedream.
-------------------------------------------------------------
SEPP comment: And who will keep
dust and sand – and the little desert
animals -- off the collectors?
******************
9. THE
OPINIONATOR: AT WIKIPEDIA, ONE MAN
ENGINEERS THE DEBATE ON GLOBAL WARMING, AND SHAPES IT TO HIS VIEWS
Lawrence Solomon, Financial Post, May 03, 2008
Next to Al Gore, William Connolley may be the world's most influential
person in the global warming debate. He has a PhD in mathematics and worked as
a climate modeller, but those accomplishments don't explain his influence --
PhDs are not uncommon and, in any case, he comes from the mid-level ranks in
the British Antarctic Survey, the agency for which he worked until recently.
He was the Parish Councillor
for the village of Coton in the U.K., his Web site tells us, and a school
governor there, too, but neither of those accomplishments are a claim to fame
in the wider world. Neither are his five failed attempts to attain public
office as a local candidate for South Cambridgeshire District Council and
Cambridgeshire County Council as a representative for the Green Party.
But Connolley is a big shot
on Wikipedia, which honours him with an extensive biography, an honour
Wikipedia did not see fit to bestow on his boss at the British Antarctic
Survey. Or on his boss’s boss, or on his boss's boss's boss, or on his boss's
boss's boss's boss, none of whose opinions seemingly count for much, despite
their impressive accomplishments. William Connolley's opinions, in contrast,
count for a great deal at Wikipedia, even though some might not think them
particularly worthy of note. "It is his view that there is a consensus in
the scientific community about climate change topics such as global warming,
and that the various reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
(IPCC) summarize this consensus," states his Wikipedia page, in the section
called "Biography."
Connolley is not only a big
shot on Wikipedia, he's a big shot at Wikipedia -- an administrator with
unusual editorial clout. Using that clout, this 40-something scientist of minor
relevance gets to tear down scientists of great accomplishment. Because
Wikipedia has become the single biggest reference source in the world, and
global warming is one of the most sought-after subjects, the ability to control
information on Wikipedia by taking down authoritative scientists is no trifling
matter.
One such scientist is Fred
Singer, the First Director of the U.S. National Weather Satellite Service, the
recipient of a White House commendation for his early design of space
satellites; the recipient of a NASA commendation for research on particle
clouds -- in short, a scientist with dazzling achievements who is everything
Connolley is not. Under Connolley's supervision, Singer is relentlessly
smeared, and has been for years, as a kook who believes in Martians and a hack
in the pay of the oil industry. When a smear is inadequate, or when a
fair-minded Wikipedian tries to correct a smear, Connolley and his cohorts are
there to widen the smear or remove the correction, often rebuking the
Wikipedian in the process.
Wikipedia is full of rules
that editors are supposed to follow, as well as a code of civility. Those rules
and codes don't apply to Connolley, or to those he favours.
"Peiser's crap
shouldn't be in here," Connolley wrote several weeks ago, in berating a
Wikipedian colleague during an "edit war," as they're called. In such
a war, rival sides change the content of a Wikipedia page from one competing
version to another, often with bewildering speed. (Two people, landing on the
same page seconds apart, might obtain entirely different information.) In the
Peiser case, a Wikipedian stopped a prolonged war by freezing a continually
changing page, to prevent more alterations until the dispute was settled. As
occurs on such occasions, readers are alerted that Wikipedians are warring over
the page, and that Wikipedia was not endorsing the version of the page that had
been frozen. To Connolley's chagrin, however, the version that was frozen cast
doubt on claims of a consensus on climate change. Although this was done within
Wikipedia rules, Connolley intervened to revert the page and ensure Wikipedia
readers saw only what he wanted them to see.
Peiser is Benny Peiser, a
distinguished U.K. scientist who had convincingly refuted a study by Naomi
Oreskes that claimed to have found no scientific papers at odds with the
conventional wisdom on climate change. The Oreskes study -- cited by Al Gore in
his film, An Inconvenient Truth-- is an article of faith to many global warming
doomsayers and guarded from criticism by Connolley et al. Peiser and other
critics of Oreskes's study, meanwhile, get demeaned.
Connolley and his cohorts
don't just edit pages of scientists actively involved in the global warming
debate. Scientists who work in unrelated fields, but who have findings that
indirectly bolster a critique of climate change orthodoxy, will also get
smeared. So will non-scientists and organizations that he disagrees with. Any
reference, anywhere among Wikipedia's 2.5-million English-language pages, that
casts doubt on the consequences of climate change will be bent to Connolley's
bidding.
Connolley no longer works as
a climate modeller -- he now works as a software engineer for a company called
Cambridge Silicon Radio. And as an engineer of opinion at Wikipedia. –
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Lawrence Solomon is executive director of Energy Probe and Urban Renaissance Institute, and author of The Deniers. LawrenceSolomon@nextcity.com *************************************************