In comments, FrankBi drew my attention to Lambert’s blog discussing a hate email campaign which has also been discussed by Clive Hamilton.
I think nearly everyone disapproves of hate email, (the exceptions being those who send it.) In his post, Clive Hamilton suggested those who receive these missives should store the emails; it might be useful to later investigations. Tim Lambert indicated that he would post any hate email he receives revealing the senders name.
I have a third suggestion. I am aware that Michael Tobis’s google group is always on the lookout for things they can do to support their cause. Here’s one: Someone with appropriate web skillz can create a database with a web interface that will permit individuals who receive hate mail to upload the full text of the email– including raw headers. Once a database is compiled, someone could write a script to permit forensic investigation.
Questions you might wish to answer would include: Are the emails sent from common IPs? Do the text of the emails share similarities suggesting a form letter type operation?
We do not currently know whether these nastigrams are the actions of a large orchestrated well funded shadow organizations or the efforts of a few unfunded misguided or mean spirited extremists. Either way, I suspect that collecting together all the emails would assist interested authorities identify the source. More importantly, fear of being tracked might inhibit people from sending more of these nastigrams.
I’ll admit I’m slightly tempted to create a database myself. But, I also know my blog traffic already taxes my server to its limits and that programmers like Lambert of Tobis would likely create a more efficient GUI. So, I’m just throwing the idea out there for them to consider or reject, as they prefer.
Meanwhile, to those of you sending mean spirited, nasty, threatening emails, stop it.
Sending threats is stupid, mean, and though I am not a lawyer, I suspect it is illegal in many parts of the world. Just in case that’s not enough to persuade you, bombarding people with nasti-grams counter-productive to your cause. People in the middle will just think you are deluded nuts, and by association they may think those you think you support are also nuts.
The reality is: If you do send email threatening people’s lives, property or livelihood, I want you to be caught. I suspect most people agree with me. So, stop. Just stop.
I rarely consider conspiracy when stupidity will suffice.
Even apart from the extreme example of hatemail, folks could do with a bit more contemplation before pasting some of the more divisive diatribes that often appear in the comment threads of places like WUWT and Climate Progress. There is enough antagonism in the world without bringing it into science discussions.
xkcd had a good idea on the subject awhile back: http://xkcd.com/481/
:-p
I agree with Lucia. And I will go further and state that if you are compiling lists of political enemies, please tear them up or delete them.
Andrew
A relevant question is what defines “hate email” as opposed to a “nasti-gram”? Animosity is somewhat in the sensitivities of the recipient. Certainly threats of bodily harm qualify, but some super-sensitive folks might take “I think you’re wrong about…” as an “attack” and thus qualifying as “hatred.” Before this idea goes too far, some thought should go into a reasonable rating system.
Gary–
If these were logged, we would actually know which are just nasti-grams, which are hate mail, and which contain clear threats, wouldn’t we? It’s sort of like the climategate letters. We know what’s in them because we can read the set. The same could be done for the nasti-grams.
Each person is going to rate each email differently.
Lucia,
Completely off topic, but Gavin directed me to a really neat tool that allows you to visualize various GISS-E outputs. Its interesting to look at the variability in predictions; for example, Model E predicts increasing winter snow on the East Coast this decade followed by a slow decline over the century. Similarly, it actually had the U.S. being colder in January than it really was :-p
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/modelE/transient/Rc_ij.4.02.html
Comparing January 2010 GISS temps to Model E is pretty interesting. While we can’t expect models to have a great regional resolution, and there is a lot of weather in individual months, but there are some neat spatial patterns.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/maps/
That’s a great idea.
Now, Lets see how many tawayna brawley’s it spawns.
People should stop sending hate mail. They should especially stop sending it to themselves.
You see of course, Lambert is no dummy. he watches the threads that cover the CRU whodunnit and he sees how interested people get in a whodunnit.
What better than false whodunnit?
Hint. I’m grinning.
I would really love to see one, headers and all. All I have ever seen is variantions of someone saying “I got one” or “I’m getting them”. Can anyone get one out of the “torrent” so we can see?
I once offended some advocates of a particular computer program online (really, you couldn’t make this stuff up). Accidentally, but apparently I wounded some sacred cow.
A couple of paragraphs from me were enough to trigger fevered speculation about my nefarious motives across several message boards, going on for days and running to hundreds of posts. Elaborate hypotheses were created and spun about my alleged connections to people on their enemies list, none of which were true. Connections were made based on the most tenuous of imagined evidence and imbecilic “research”. Conspiracies were “proven” by looking at blog and comment time stamps (of course, ignoring the existence of time zones) and by mispelling similar sounding names. A couple of people even decided to investigate me in person (I have no idea what they were looking for), and sit in car across the road doing a stake-out of my home.
Even today, several years after the offending material was deleted (I made sure it was deleted within a couple of days), the thing occasionally resurfaces, and some idiot starts a fresh posting on the subject, and begins a new online “investigation” of me.
My point: If people can so agitated, and act so stupidly, over a computer program, I’m sure they can get even more agitated over saving the world, or over saving trillions of dollars.
You don’t need to imagine some vast rightwing (or leftwing) conspiracy to explain people’s actions. There are plenty of people who behave badly, without somebody else instigating them to do so.
Hate email is one side of it (I’d imagine some is sent to skeptics and warmists, as I’ve seen some pretty aggressive warmists too). Offensive articles carried by major national newspapers is another – see http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/02/22/the-most-slimy-essay-ever-from-the-guardian-and-columbia-university/ and http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/02/22/the-most-slimy-essay-ever-from-the-guardian-and-columbia-university/#more-16615
In both cases, the following applies:-
Niven’s Law: There is no cause so right that one cannot find a fool following it.
“We do not currently know whether these nastigrams are the actions of a large orchestrated well funded shadow organizations or the efforts of a few unfunded misguided or mean spirited extremists.”
In the ‘climate policy debate’ I seriously doubt Exxon Mobil worries about fossil based transportation fuel being replaced anytime soon. (I think Toyota’s Hydrogen car costs $1 million a piece)
The industries threatened in the short term are coal and steel. While I am certain there are more then a few very fine coal and steel workers, as an industry they have a less then stellar reputation as to ‘upper crust’ social manners.
Occam’s Razor would suggest Coal and Steel workers as the likely source of angry emails. Of course people who are just angry with the world in general are good candidates as well.
Re: steven mosher (Feb 22 12:24),
Do you really think people are sending themselves fake hate emails? I find that hard to believe.
I also doubt Lambert would make up a fake whodunnit. This is different from saying the emails can’t be fake. They could be fake, with Lambert thinking they are real.
But, on the balance, people being what they are, I’m more inclined to image that
a) There are at least a few people sending nasti-grams. How nasty we can’t know because whole texts were not provided in Clive Hamilton’s post.
b) Some of the nasti-grams may be non-threatening but unpleasant saying things like “you dirty rat, ugly face, monster! I don’t like your face!”
c) Some may be truly threatening and frightening. (These should definitely be sent to the police.)
d) Most likely, these are mostly uncoordinated outpourings.
e) No real, honest to goodness funded group would risk coordinating any such thing.
Of course, if that is the case, forensic analysis of a well filled database would reveal that too.
Zeke–
I’ve seen those maps before. How are you discovering things like more snow in January this decade? I looked at precipitation for Jan 2005-2015 Washinton DC is blue– indicating a negative precip. anomaly. (I don’t know how this translates to snow — since precip includes rain, snow, hail, wintry mix etc.)
“I also doubt Lambert would make up a fake whodunnit.”
Someone made up an AGW hoax… a fake whodunnit is nothing.
Andrew
‘Andrew_KY (Comment#34351) February 22nd, 2010 at 2:03 pm
“I also doubt Lambert would make up a fake whodunnit.â€
Someone made up an AGW hoax… a fake whodunnit is nothing.
Andrew’
Is this the same Lambert who used a fake tape in a debate?
I suggest Lucia put up one of the hate-e-mails she received here, so we know what we are talking about.
Alexej–
I haven’t gotten any hate-emails. Lambert and Hamilton are reporting other people are getting hate emails.
My suggestion is that if they are getting these things, and the problem is widespread, someone should create a database to collect all of them together and save them. That way, they can be analyzed and stored.
“My suggestion is that if they are getting these things, and the problem is widespread, someone should create a database to collect all of them together and save them.”
Lucia,
You are asking the people who are dedicated to a movement that hides their emails, deletes their emails and dismisses anything negative about their emails… to be honest about their emails?
I’m not saying it’s not worth asking… but what do you think the results are going to be?
Andrew
lucia (Comment#34347) ‘…Do you really think people are sending themselves fake hate emails? I find that hard to believe’.
1. Doing far worse is not uncommon. 🙁
2. How strong is the evidence that these emails actually exist?
3. Were these hate emails stolen. 🙂
Re: Steven Mosher (Comment#34337) —
At this writing, there are 93 comments on your Noble Cause Corruption piece on Climategate. Every contributor but me and a random spammer (and you) is angry at you for failing to call out Jones et al as frauds, mountebanks, scoundrels, and all-round villians. A simple majority isn’t just mad, but really, really mad.
Tawana Brawley? People sending themselves fake hate emails? Possible, because just about anything is possible. Combine the expressions of rage on the issue of climate with the temptations of internet anonymity, and Occam’s razor doesn’t require self-victimizing schemes.
Unfalsifiable charges are just noise, at best.
What is interesting is the emotion that climate change etc… brings out in both those that believe and don’t. You would think that other subjects would elicit far stronger emotions after all its only a disagreement about 0.7C!
Lucia,
of course you have not been getting hate-emails.
But when a blog in the little city of Grenchen in Switzerland was critical of their mayor, they got an ear full, anonymous. Turns out it was written on the mayors computer, but his wife (an MP) took credit.
And when another member of swiss parliament got caught for personally filling in 100 votes for himself, he got 100+ hate-emails that he deleted at once. Now he is the victim, not the perp.
(Yes, these people are labour. And yes, the second MP is black.)
“You would think that other subjects would elicit far stronger emotions after all its only a disagreement about 0.7C!”
That’s not what the disagreement is really about, though. But you probably know that already.
Andrew
Lucia,
One of the outputs is snow cover %.
You can look at the anomalies relative to a base range of years.
Here is the Jan 2010 modeled snow cover anomaly, for example: http://i81.photobucket.com/albums/j237/hausfath/Picture96.png
To be fair, people have suggested that I have gotten threatening mails, but I haven’t.
I have received some fairly nasty mails when Morano exposed my gmail account (not that I hide it or anything) and I said so, but I got nothing that I found threatening. Others went ahead and said I had received threatening emails. Thankfully I can report that this is, at least so far, not true.
Zeke–
Here’s what I get if I average over the 10 years from 2005-2015:
It looks like on the balance, less snow is predicted in DC. However, weather still happens.
Actually, I was looking at the wrong map. Model E predicts little net change in East Coast snow in the next 10 years, though some individual months have high anomalies.
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I do want to extract the data and test Goddard’s recent claim over at WUWT that trends in winter snow cover over the past 20 years are inconsistent with model projections.
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Anyhow, sorry for the thread derail :-p
Re: Michael Tobis (Feb 22 15:27),
Morano did encourage emailing you. I think that’s not fair blog- etiquette. I think it’s fine to criticize. It’s find to let people express their opinion in comments. Adding “His email is X@Y.Z isn’t right.
The same thing said in comments at ‘blog x’ is somehow not the same as seeing your inbox fill up.
It’s chilling and creepy to experience being the focus of an anonymous stranger’s emotions. I wish it was a stretch to imagine internet-facilitated hate mail. Unfair to the targets–whatever their positions on an issue–and poisonous to discussions of policy.
I’d do it. Hate mail is counterproductive on both sides of the debate. Identifying common sources is useful intelligence. It’s not that different to tactics that have been successfully used against spammers and fraudsters. There are some legal issues, but they can be countered to an extent by modifying T&C’s. Change those so that emails sent to a role account are public rather than personal and then more details about the sender can be publicised.
I see some potential problems with a nasty mail database because the database would make these e-mails public. For one, some might feel emboldened by the public attention that such a database inevitably would yield. Second, speculations and accusations that later are proven to be baseless will almost certainly arise. There is a distinct possibility that more harm than good would come from this. So in the end, I am glad that You are not doing it yourself, Lucia.
I was actually thinking of doing that when it was snowing cats and dogs but managed to get distracted with other subjects. If you were to do such analysis, what region would you look at? Global, Lower 48?
I only have observational data handy for the Northern Hemisphere, North America, and North America + Greenland. Not sure what I’d start with… I emailed the Rutgers folks to ask about gridded anomaly products, but I’m not holding out too much hope.
The big problem at the moment is that I can only download one month of GISS Model-E snow cover data at a time, which makes collecting it a bit of a pain. I’m starting with N. Hemisphere January data, but in retrospect I probably should have gone with “winter” (Dec/Jan/Feb) projections as a more representative set.
I strongly suspect that the model projections and observational data will be noisy enough that I won’t be able to determine much, especially since snow cover is a rather poor proxy for temperature (e.g. warmer temperatures tend to increase snow fall, all things considered, up to the point at which you get rain).
“Ultimately, the most telling argument against global warming is the lack of seriousness with which the greens themselves have approached the issue.”
http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2010/02/19/how-al-gore-wrecked-planet-earth/
Andrew
The email posted in the linked article was agressive, abusive and profanity laden. There was no threat made unless calling someone a ” lazy, loathsome dirtbag” qualifies. I’m under the impression that the FBI can be fowarded any actual threatening emails and they will track them and investigate the threat. Anything else is just trash and I think(wish) publishing them would be enough deterrent.
Zeke,
I suspect you saw their “Data Requests” page. When I saw all those institutions they’ve filled data requests for, the first thing that came to mind is “climate bloggers need not apply”.
Let me know how it goes. If you come up empty handed, I used to go to that University and still have an active email address. Seeing a request coming from an alumnus might help.
Re: Chad (Feb 22 19:34),
Aren’t Goddards claims based on plots for the full NH? If so, to test his claims about data being inconsistent with models, you should do the full NH. While your at it, Americans will be interested in the lower 48.
Testing anything smaller is going to be really noisy. For example– I’m not sure how you could test claims about the snow line moving north or south– but maybe you could figure that out after testing the claim about the NH.
I generally wouldn’t trust any model’s regional snow forecasts. This is a point on which regional temperature trends, moisture trends, and the absolute temperature values play important roles. The first and third components are widely regarded as major areas of model weakness.
However we can make some broad statements. Snow fall should increase with warming in sufficiently cold places. It should decrease in sufficiently warm places.
As I pointed out the dividing line happens to fall completely outside of the US. Thus nowhere in the US should see more snowfall if their air temperatures increase in spite of moister air (and CC is actually a constraint, not a rule, for WV, so it need not necessarily be moister).
Zeke,
Gavin has said before that climate models are not good for any forecast below the continental scales. So be careful when you look at regional trends.
Lucia,
I have no idea if people would populate a database with fake mails. I know that with the climategate mails I didnt rule this out.
I also know that there is a pattern amongst people who believe they have victim status to fabricate attacks. I look at the example hate mail. It was nothing. Finally, it is no great feat to fake a mail including headers. I fact if somebody builds the database I would expect somebody to test the quality control by submitting fake mails to see if they had a method for detecting them.
These guys are so paranoid I bet they think people are listening to their mails by packet sniffing and by data mining.
AMac (Comment#34363) February 22nd, 2010 at 2:41 pm
I havent been back there in a while. But thanks for your support. I really didnt anticipate the amount of anger it would generate. One thing for sure is that people won’t accuse me of being a Tea Party stooge.
Fake hate mails? that’s just the kind of dirty trick that people can justify to themselves. It goes like this. They get a really nasty mail. They change a few words to make it nastier.. after all its what the person really meant.. The sender is not going to stand up and say “hey he changed some words”
Mosher, you seem to be projecting here.
Joe Cambria has sent me hundreds of abusive messages. He has threatened to sue me. In this exchange, someone who had guest post on my blog noted that he had got his first hate mail as a result. From his description of the hate mail I guessed (correctly) that it was from Cambria. That got him to issue this threat:
“If I don’t get a public apology on your website, I WILL be seeing an attorney to see if there is a shot at legal remedy. So take a roll of the dice. I don’t know the law as yet. But if there is a shot at going for it I will be seeing you in court. I can afford to have a lil fun. I am wondering if you can? Oh, and by the way, don’t try to hire a UNSW lawyer for free, a PR firm will put a stop to that. Roll the dice Timmy.”
May I ask again? Is this Lambert the guy with the fake tape?
Tim Lambert (Comment#34433) February 23rd, 2010 at 1:11 am
” Mosher, you seem to be projecting here.”
Tim. Projecting is when you accuse someone else of some trait which you posses.
“Psychological projection or projection bias (including Freudian Projection) is the unconscious act of denial of a person’s own attributes, thoughts, and emotions, which are then ascribed to the outside world, such as to the weather, the government, a tool, or to other people. Thus, it involves imagining or projecting that others have those feelings.”
Well, I’ve never received any hate mail. If I ever did receive any hate mail I certainly would not talk about it publicly. What I do note, as other’s have, is a propensity for those who view themselves as victims to perpetrate these frauds. While I don’t expect you to do this, it would not surprise me.
“Joe Cambria has sent me hundreds of abusive messages. He has threatened to sue me. In this exchange, someone who had guest post on my blog noted that he had got his first hate mail as a result. From his description of the hate mail I guessed (correctly) that it was from Cambria. That got him to issue this threat:
“If I don’t get a public apology on your website, I WILL be seeing an attorney to see if there is a shot at legal remedy. So take a roll of the dice. I don’t know the law as yet. But if there is a shot at going for it I will be seeing you in court. I can afford to have a lil fun. I am wondering if you can? Oh, and by the way, don’t try to hire a UNSW lawyer for free, a PR firm will put a stop to that. Roll the dice Timmy.—
Are you serious? You got an abusive mail from a guy and you continued to open mails from him? Do you have a victim mentality? And you call that a threat? please. What did you expect, you probably disemvoweled the poor guy and made him look stupid.
here is a challenge for your tim.
I believe I understand the psychology of your side, better than you understand my psychology.
I bet that people on your side worry that they are being watched?
True or false?
Hint. I’m grinning.
maybe i should have written that in bold for timmy
Well, I read the sample hate email – http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2005/06/hate-mail.php – and I’m disappointed.
It basically says “I don’t like you” with a few swear words and a larger number of typos used as flavouring.
Rude yes, bullying perhaps at a stretch (“bullying” is of course a very flexible word), but it certainly didn’t read like threat.
There’s no actual or implied threat of physical violence. No actual or implied threat of legal or illegal retribution.
And no explicit threat that we’re going to come after you in twenty years time, and put you on trial / seize your assets / throw you arse in jail / execute you (threats of of which types have been used not just in anonymous email but in supposedly important media outlets, and in some cases mainstream press, when discussing climate change issues).
In short, I think this example is simply a “rude email” rather than “hate email”.
Well, if by “hate mail” Lambert means simply rude correspondence, he might want to address his own behaviour. Being so quick to the insult will generate ill feeling. Don’t be shocked if some comes back at you.
If by “hate mail” he means threats, then don’t waste time and report it to the police.
Steven, you did not understand what Tim said. try reading it again.
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I bet that people on your side worry that they are being watched?
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their e-mails got stolen. other institutions have reported online attacks. they get hate mail. they get multiple FOI requests per day. the media is full of false claims and misrepresentations, implying fraud. there was an attempt to hack RC.
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you are trying to make this sound as if some scientists suffer from persecution mania. that simply is a completely false representation, of what is happening.
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Rude yes, bullying perhaps at a stretch (“bullying†is of course a very flexible word), but it certainly didn’t read like threat.
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which part of “Did you want to offer your children to be brutally gang-raped and then horribly tortured before being reminded of their parents socialist beliefs and actions?”
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and
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“Burn in hell. Or in the main street, when the Australian public finally lynchs you.”
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did you not understand????
do you guys think about what you post here?
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this downplaying of the hate mail is exactly the CAUSE of them being sent.
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Well, if by “hate mail†Lambert means simply rude correspondence, he might want to address his own behaviour. Being so quick to the insult will generate ill feeling. Don’t be shocked if some comes back at you.
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i will sit and wait, until you post any quote with a link to Tim, that is remotely similar to the stuff posted by Hamilton.
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i am holding my breath.
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If by “hate mail†he means threats, then don’t waste time and report it to the police.
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the term hate mail has a meaning. Tim using it in exactly the way that it is meant to be used.
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if he was only talking about threatening mail, he would have used that term.
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so how often do you think a scientists should contact the police each day?
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and what will they do, beyond figuring out that the mail comes from a foreign country. and/or from a yahoo account and an internet cafe?!?
> did you not understand????
I don’t know which email you are referring to, but it isn’t the one I was talking about.
As I said before – I GAVE YOU THE URL – I’m talking about the sample at – http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2005/06/hate-mail.php – the one that begins “Hi Tim (Lambert):” and ends “don’t ever contact me again as you make me sick!”
Neither of the phrases that you cite – or anything like them – appear in that email, or anywhere else in that page.
Now if you have another page or email that you’re complaining about then go ahead – I don’t doubt that you can find people on any side of any argument who have said some horrible things – but I can only comment on the ones I’ve seen, and more importantly I was commenting on the one I read – I did after all give you the URL!
(by the way, sod, I noticed you edited the post, after I began writing the above – but before you started editing the post, it was clear that the quotes about gang-rape and so on, were directed as responses to my previous comment on bullying, you specifically quoted me and then began with the gang-rape stuff).
And P.S. Just to be 110% clear: I’m not defending threats or rude email. Whoever sends them, shouldn’t.
Whether you want to call something “hate mail” is up to you. Personally I feel however that the term “hate mail” is overly broad and almost meaningless if it encompasses email that is merely rude and nasty, as opposed to actively threatening.
If somebody tells you to “fuck off, you’re an ugly fat loser” in real-life, it’s nasty and rude, but I don’t think it’s hate speech. Likewise with email.
Copner, i did only remove a typo during my edit.
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the quotes i gave, are from the Hamilton link given in the original post by lucia above.
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even the post you linked to, is obviously hate mail. and Tim said that he got threatened with legal action in a later post.
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so you took a look at one example mail, concluded that it is not all that bad, what is going on? nice!
And P.S. Just to be 110% clear: I’m not defending threats or rude email. Whoever sends them, shouldn’t.
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you actually are defending these guys. you just don t notice it.
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Whether you want to call something “hate mail†is up to you. Personally I feel however that the term “hate mail†is overly broad and almost meaningless if it encompasses email that is merely rude and nasty, as opposed to actively threatening.
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wikipedia tends to be a good start for a definition of a modern term.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_mail
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if you have a better definition, why not post a link?
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If somebody tells you to “fuck off, you’re an ugly fat loser†in real-life, it’s nasty and rude, but I don’t think it’s hate speech. Likewise with email.
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funny, but the last time that somebody said anything similar to that to me, must have been in primary school.
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so yes, when adults write such things to adults, it is a pretty dire situation. a situation that requires strong words and action. and contempt from everyone, and no downplaying and no assumptions that the mail was faked!
Why is the post I linked to, offensive and rude though it is, hate mail?
Like I said, if somebody says “Fuck off, you big fat loser” in real-life would you consider it hate speech? It’s nasty, but I doubt many people would call it hate speech. So why are you using a different standard for email?
Secondly as to a legal threat. Again, it might be nasty, but it’s not hate email. A legal threat simply says somebody may seek redress against some real or imagined wrong through the courts. The courts are after all how we sort out disputes in our society. Ultimately, if no compromise can be reached
– if there was no real wrong to seek redress for, any case would be thrown out
– If there is a wrong, only then the case would proceed.
It may be undesirable to be on the receiving end of a possible or actual lawsuit, but a person saying they will use our society’s standard mechanism to resolve disputes (the courts), is not hate mail.
If you have a dispute about your credit card bill, and the CC company threatens to take you to court unless you pay them, do you consider that hate mail? If you neighbour gets into a dispute about property boundaries, and he says he’ll take you to court unless you move your damned fence six inches back, do you consider that hate speech?
Finally as to the ABC article, of course I haven’t seen the emails in full, but the quotes do seem nasty and some indeed seem threatening. (but of course I wasn’t talking about those in my prior post)
As to your strawman “so you took a look at one example mail, concluded that it is not all that bad”. You’re making it sound like a drew some wide and general conclusion.
I actually did the opposite: I did look at that ONE example, and concluded that ONE example is not all that bad. And I’ve also said that calling that ONE example as a “hate email”, is in my view over-egging the pudding.
BUT… I didn’t make a general conclusion about other emails – in fact, as I’ve said repeatedly in this (no doubt, you’ve missed that too) I am not at all surprised you can find loons on any side of any debate on any issue. Some of whom may well send hate mail or go stalking. As I explained, I’ve been on the receiving end of such behaviour myself (but you’ve probably missed that as well).
Re: Tim Lambert (Feb 23 01:11),
You and others getting real hate mail doesn’t mean some people don’t create fake hate mail to send themselves. Both probably happen. My inclination is to assume most reported hate mail is real hate mail. But, in either case, providing headers and tracing to people might be enlightening.
Re: steven mosher (Feb 23 03:00),
Even if a blogger disemvoweled a guy and made him look stupid, that doesn’t justify him sending endless repetitious nasti-grams. That said, the best way to deal with people who send nasti-grams is to not respond. Let them keep flinging email into the void.
Even your own link, doesn’t truly support your position. It begins “usually consisting of invective and potentially intimidating or threatening comments towards the recipient.”. Notice that it says “AND” in the middle.
As to your suggestion that I’m defending the idiots who send such emails (whatever you call them), frankly that is offensive.
Your problem is that you are unable to work with anything but a single category into which you lump all bad email. Saying there are different degrees of badness, is in no way defending the less bad ones – it’s simply a question of categorization.
If somebody eats 1 grape from a supermarket fruit counter, it’s clearly different from somebody stuffing the whole bunch into the shopping bag without paying. Or if somebody goes 5 miles per hour over the speed limit, it’s different from somebody doing 60 mph in a school zone. Are you unable to process the fact that recognising such differences is not the same as defending the lesser offences?
Threatening would be something like: “I want to meet you in a dark back-alley”. But whoever would think of using words like that (Walter Sickert, maybe?).
A case in the US where a woman slandered another one proved: The provider has to name the perp, und the perp can be sued.
Re: sod (Feb 23 07:24),
I’m in the US and can’t imagine what sort of tort the nasti-gram writer thought he could lodge against Tim.
Copyright? Nope. Tim can almost certainly post an email if he is discussing it under fair use.
Defamation? Nope. If the letter was sent by the person complaining it was made public, the defense is truth. That’s been a defense in the US since… before we were the US. Maybe it’s different in Canada.
False light? Maybe a clever attorney would file that. I doubt he’d be willing to work on contingency!
A threat to contact an attorney who would try to identify some basis for a tort is usually a pretty lame threat. I suspect Tim wasn’t worried about that eventuality.
That said, the guy was sending nasti-grams. While I think the best thing to do with nasti-grams is not respond, it can also be important to skim to make sure the email-stalker hasn’t strated to threaten physical violence.
It’s interesting that Clive’s little rant, which will continue over FIVE DAYS on the Australian Broadcasting Commission’S HP (ABC), followed on from this meeting, as reported in the Melbourne “Age” by Stephen Cauchi:
“Greens take on sceptics February 21, 2010
AUSTRALIAN green groups have called a strategy meeting to devise ways to hit back at the climate sceptics movement, amid fears they are losing the PR war.
The groups, including Greenpeace, the Wilderness Society, World Wide Fund for Nature, Australian Conservation Foundation and Friends of the Earth, have acknowledged that the public mood has shifted following the collapse of the Copenhagen climate talks and blows to the credibility of the IPCC.
James Norman, of the Australian Conservation Foundation, said the strategy of ignoring climate change sceptics had not worked as it had been taken as confirmation of their claims. ”The stakes are too high to remain silent or disorganised in the face of this systemic disinformation campaign,” Mr Norman said.
He said the global campaign was being funded by anti-climate-change think tanks such as the American Atlas Economic Research Foundation and the British International Policy Network, which had both received grants from oil company ExxonMobil.
”I wouldn’t be surprised if they (ExxonMobil) have connections here in Australia as well,” he said.
Think tank the Climate Institute, lobby group Get Up, and the Liquor Hospitality and Miscellaneous Union will also attend the Sydney meeting, which is not open to the public or the media.
Greenpeace spokesman James Lorenz said the meeting was ”a good opportunity for environmental organisations to put their heads together and have a think about what’s going on”. Groups would plan strategies for the year.”
Clive and Tim would have been involved with this, either directly or indirectly.
The best way to fight for good manners is using your own name, and not a silly pseudonym like rod.
The ABC article has a follow-up – http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/stories/s2827047.htm
The gist, before the rant about the Australian right wing, is the skeptic blogs are (indirectly) responsible for cyberbullying emails, because of the following heinous crimes (and I’m quoting here):
1. They supply the ammunition that confirms and elaborates on climate deniers’ beliefs.
2. They provide a forum in which deniers can participate in a like-minded community that reinforces their views.
3. And they identify the individuals responsible for promoting climate lies, stimulating participants to make direct contacts with “warmists”.
(the next part of the series, I guess inevitably, will be: “Tomorrow: The Exxon-funded think tanks that feed climate denial”. Anybody ready to take bets on when tobacco companies will be brought up, perhaps part 4?)
If you have a dispute about your credit card bill, and the CC company threatens to take you to court unless you pay them, do you consider that hate mail?
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those mails tend to not be abusive. the combination makes it hate mail.
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I actually did the opposite: I did look at that ONE example, and concluded that ONE example is not all that bad. And I’ve also said that calling that ONE example as a “hate emailâ€, is in my view over-egging the pudding.
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you did ignore that Tim was talking of many more such mails. and that he was threatened with legal action.
so yes, by ignoring half of this story, and the original topic, and by using a weird definition of the term, you end up with a false conclusion.
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Even your own link, doesn’t truly support your position. It begins “usually consisting of invective and potentially intimidating or threatening comments towards the recipient.â€. Notice that it says “AND†in the middle.
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notice that it says “POTENTIALLY” before that “AND”.
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Your problem is that you are unable to work with anything but a single category into which you lump all bad email. Saying there are different degrees of badness, is in no way defending the less bad ones – it’s simply a question of categorization.
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i asked you to post a link to another definition of the term. i am still waiting. till then, i ll use the definition that i have available.
I’m in the US and can’t imagine what sort of tort the nasti-gram writer thought he could lodge against Tim.
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99% of legal action claims will not be followed by real action. this is all about the threat. it obviously didn t work with Tim, but it might work in a lot of situations.
The best way to fight for good manners is using your own name, and not a silly pseudonym like rod.
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i diasgree. and i am pretty sure that if you waste some time looking at posts that i wrote, and at post written under a real name, will confirm my position.
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———————–
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The gist, before the rant about the Australian right wing, is the skeptic blogs are (indirectly) responsible for cyberbullying emails, because of the following heinous crimes (and I’m quoting here):
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well, they actually are responsible. the analysis is pretty much 100% on target. you just don t like it.
steven mosher (Comment#34437)
LOL!
I get really angry when I am freezing and nobody cares. Temps in the 30’sF right now in my So. Californian back yard.
“Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) today asked the Obama administration to investigate what he called “the greatest scientific scandal of our generation†— the actions of climate scientists revealed by the Climategate Files, and the subsequent admissions by the editors of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report (AR4).
Senator Inhofe also called for former Vice President Al Gore to be called back to the Senate to testify.
“In [Gore’s] science fiction movie, every assertion has been rebutted,†Inhofe said. He believes Vice President Gore should defend himself and his movie before Congress.”
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/climategate-and-the-law-senator-inhofe-to-ask-for-congressional-criminal-investigation-pajamas-mediapjtv-exclusive/
Looks like Lucia’s Pastor, The Rev. Big Al might be called to testify about his Book of Fairy Tales. I don’t think it will happen, but doesn’t the thought of it give you a little tingle? 😉
Andrew
I get really angry when I am freezing and nobody cares. Temps in the 30’sF right now in my So. Californian back yard.
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this is called “weather”. february will be the hottest on record in the UAH dataset.
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sceptics tend to forget reality and sometimes must be reminded of the big picture.
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would all this hate mail happened, if the authors were not constantly confused by media articles and blog posts that ignore what is really going on?
“Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) today asked the Obama administration to investigate what he called “the greatest scientific scandal of our generation†— the actions of climate scientists revealed by the Climategate Files,
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Inhof is another indirect source of the hate mail. and he is wrong. always wrong.
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in this case, i will cite an expert on the topic:
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“WRT CRU. You dont read much. Both McIntyre and I expect to find no major errors. That’s not what interests people like him or me.”
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yes, that is Mosher speaking. so it is the “greatest scientific scandal of our generation” with “no major errors”? interesting!
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“In [Gore’s] science fiction movie, every assertion has been rebutted,†Inhofe said.
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every assertion has been rebutted? and you wonder why people send hate mail? and andrew did the fact checking on this Inhof claim?
sod,
I’m not addressing the validity or refutation of any particular claims. I’m just drawing attention to some news.
Some rather entertaining news.
Andrew
@sod: Not that it matters, since wikipedia is hardly the font of all wisdom in any case, but I parse the wikipedia sentence differently.
I parse it:
invective and ( ( potentially intimidating ) or ( threatening ) )
Even if you parse it:
invective and ( potentially ( intimidating or threatening ) )
I still would say its definition requires intimidation or threats of some sort, and the world “potentially” means that a reasonable reader could understand as intimidation or a threat. (It doesn’t say “possibly” as implying the inclusion of this type of thing is entirely optiona;).
But I doubt whoever wrote the wikipedia article put that much thought into the exact phrasing in any case. It’s not that precise
And I’ve already said, if you want to call rude emails “hate mail” that’s fine by me, although I think that is overly broad, and actually sucks away meaning from the phrase. The real issue is that a physical threat is different from a empty legal threat which is different again from merely calling somebody nasty names.
They are different.
You can pretend otherwise, but I expect you know it to be true.
And even if you are so blind that you can’t admit there is a difference between these categories, you surely can admit that other reasonable people might see a difference (why would the wikipedia article refer to “invective”, “intimidation” and “threat” as different subcategories within the hole – if they were truly synonymous they’d be covered by one word)
And by the way, you haven’t answered whether you still believe that recognizeg a difference between these things is the same as defending them?
(let alone apologised to those your slurred, including me, by eliding those 2 categories).
As to the last point about ABC news.
Discussing an issue or taking a position in a debate (which is what blogs do), is NOT the same as sending nasty emails (which is what the people sending them do). But there you go, eliding categories again.
Guess what: People are responsible for their own actions. That even includes people who send nasty emails.
Or, to put it another way, if somebody reading this forum sends me a nasty email about my parsing of wikipedia, I’d have to be insane to hold you responsible for it. The person who is responsible is the person who sent it.
Re: sod (Feb 23 09:01),
Please clarify “confused by media articles and blog posts”?
Since November, there have been many accurate stories describing behaviors on the part of scientists and the head of the IPCC that have made many people angry. This anger is not the result of confusion over facts; it springs from being angry over accurate portrayals.
Similarly, there have been some inaccurate stories posted at both extremes of the climate-wars discussions. Some of these have also resulted in some anger on both sides. Either might write nastigrams– though the targets and content might differ.
Readers have also become aware of some inaccurate stories published prior to November. Those inaccurate stories were often slanted by people who held positions of public trust who either intentionally or unintentionally misinformed people. Back when the public was confused by those inaccurate stories about things like glaciers melting by 2035, some members of the public posted nasti messages at forums etc– with the vitriol pointed toward those who doubted glaciers would melt so quickly. A lot of nastiness was exhibited by those who confidently held inaccurate views promulgated by the IPCC. So, yes, some nastiness sprung from the era when people’s were confused by inaccurate stories that confused the public of the state of climate science and the journals reported these inaccurate reports by the IPCC as accurate.
All this has made some various different people angry, and some will post nasti-grams.
But if you are just going to sling around accusations that media articles and blog posts confuse people, you would be well advised to be specific. In that case, we can all discuss which articles and posts are accurate, how people learned of inaccuracy, which points people have confused on in the past, and which they are confused about now. Then, possibly, we can figure out the exact process that has resulted in anger followed by general nastiness vitriol on blogs and forums, and possibly figure out why some are sending hateful emails now.
That said: We can’t truly know why people are sending hateful emails now until we know who they are or what they think motivates them.
there is a lot of “i am not …. . I am just …..” going on here.
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this stuff is the indirect cause of those hate mails.
> this stuff is the indirect cause of those hate mails.
How?
Are the people who sent these emails unable to control their own actions? Are they not responsible for their own actions? Are they powerless tools in the hands of ExxonMobil and Anthony Watts, etc.?
The paradox, you seem to allege within these people is amazing. They’re unable to exert any self-control, yet at the same time they’re able to parse and follow amazingly subtle subliminal messages (which I can not see) which secretly instruct them to send hate email?
Surely it would be simpler to assume that sometimes people just are, or act like, idiots.
Lucia,
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You mentioned that “A lot of nastiness was exhibited by those who confidently held inaccurate views promulgated by the IPCC.”
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I never realized that so much attention was focused on the date of Himalayan glacier melting hidden away in the regional chapter of WGII, or the percent of the Netherlands below sea level. Thats not to say that they are trivial offenses, but rather that they may not rise to the level of the broad brush with which you paint (to mix metaphors :-p )
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Is there some other “inaccurate view” promoted by the IPCC that I’ve missed out on?
That said, a lot of the reflexively blaming of Exxon Mobil, big tobacco, and others for public skepticism is just silly. While there are certainly some in the old guard who have worn down their heels on the skeptic track (tobacco, CFC, and now GHGs), they are mostly limited to folks like Singer and Michaels who are bit players in the current drama.
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Rather, the latest round of skepticism (driven in a large part by blogs) involves people who are convinced for reasons of evidence or ideology that the science is incorrect. Dismissing them out of hand as “pawns of big oil” won’t convince anyone.
“sod (Comment#34470) February 23rd, 2010 at 8:49 am
The best way to fight for good manners is using your own name, and not a silly pseudonym like rod.
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i diasgree. and i am pretty sure that if you waste some time looking at posts that i wrote, and at post written under a real name, will confirm my position.”
I did, and it did not.
> would all this hate mail [have] happened, if the authors were not constantly confused by media articles and blog posts that ignore what is really going on?
In 2007, Mike Mann did some more paleoclimate reconstructions. Key parts were sloppily done, and these Hockey-Stick-confirming findings are invalid. in my opinion, if you wish.
In June 2008, he submitted his work to PNAS, whose editors and peer-reviewers approved it after a cursory inspection. It was published in September.
A few days later, Steve McIntyre wrote his first blog post on the most egregious of Mann’s errors. Followed by many other posts, by him and others. Myself included. And including McIntyre’s and McKitrick’s Comment in PNAS and Mann’s Reply, in February 2009.
The back and forth between those faulting Mann’s work (skeptics, naysayers) and those defending it (Consensus adherents, yaysayers) was and is “confusing.” Technically-minded folks can resolve the issue by reading the paper, the Comment and Reply, the paper’s SI, the relevant reference, and a few blog posts. But most people don’t do that.
As far as this episode’s contribution to the general atmosphere that led to the hate email under discussion, who’s to blame?
— Mann, for doing sloppy science and not fessing up?
— PNAS’s editors, for slipping a shoddy paper past peer review?
— McIntyre, for discovering problems and writing about them?
— Naysayer bloggers, for turning up the heat?
— Yaysayer bloggers, for throwing sand?
— Mainstream media, for lousy AGW-cheerleading reporting?
— Conservative online media, for lousy Denialist-cheerleading reporting?
— Or: Are the composers and senders of the hate mail the responsible parties?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/02/23/met-office-pushes-a-surface-temperature-data-do-over/#comment-326059
I guess they read my submission to parliament. I submitted this as a recommendation.
Sod,
Imhofe and his ilk is entitled to their over blown view of the matter, just as CAGW folks are entitled to theirs.
I’m entitled to point out my view.
BTW, when I posted my view of things at pajamas media the people were not exactly happy with me ratcheting the rhetoric down to fit the actual crime.
Go figure. I believe in AGW AND jones and Mann misbehaved.
Those are not contradictory beliefs
sod (Comment#34474) February 23rd, 2010 at 9:01 am
“sceptics tend to forget reality and sometimes must be reminded of the big picture.”
Now that is projection! (see my posts in the other thread and look at those graphs and jpegs again!) What believers in “Global Warming” errrr, I mean “Climate Change” call “Now” and what the “big picture” is takes on a whole new meaning when you respect the vast geologic record and do not feel/see/imagine the world revolves around what lowly humans do or not.
Animals and fish dying from the cold in Florida just happened in the snap shot of the “big picture”.
I conclude your concern for all things global is cherry picked just like the temperature data is.
“with me ratcheting the rhetoric down to fit the actual crime”
Steven Mosher,
Which crime (and which criminal) are you referring to? There are soooo many to pick from! 😉
Andrew
Zeke:
This is partly accurate. I think you have to split it up further though:
There is the basic science and the question does CO2 impact global mean temperature? I think you pretty much have to be ideologically driven to say either “no” or “I don’t know” to this.
Then the question “Is the Earth warming?” I think there are few who would disagree is it (I have met some), but if they disagree again it is ideologically driven.
Anyway we can skip down to the issues of impact of anthropogenic CO2 on climate:
On this issue I would argue there are at least as many who believe the impact is large based on ideology as those who disagree it is large based ideology. In fact, even among many scientists there is a “ferocity of belief” unwarranted by their own knowledge of facts, that can more easily be explained by their ideological views.
If I disagree that, for some that makes me a denier. If I disagree that global warming will lead to greater disease epidemics or to greater temperature-extreme related deaths again I am a denier for some. If I disagree on the necessity of a certain plan for CO2 amelioration
Let’s look at the follow assertions. How many “believers’ would accept most or all of these as fact?
• New York is in danger of being flooded by 2050.
• global warming will lead to greater disease related deaths
• global warming will lead to greater temperature-extreme related deaths [that is increase in heat-related deaths will more than offset decrease in cold-exposure related deaths].
• firm government caps on CO2 emissions is essential and the only way in which anthropogenic CO2 emissions can effectively be addressed.
(answer yes or no to these based on what the best science says, not what handwaving suggests might be plausible.)
Copner (Comment#34441) February 23rd, 2010 at 5:27 am
Yes the mail is rude and offensive. It’s the same kind of thing I saw back in 2007 during the blog of the year awards. On one blog in particular that Lambert visited. There the blog owner and his commenters used the eff word and said other nasty things to CA commenters who were being polite and factual.
This is not to imply that Lambert wrote any of these but rather to point out that he had an opportunity to witness the behavior and said nothing about it.
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/11/hello_stan_palmer.php
Perhaps on another date we’ll investigate what Lambert said on this blog and whether or not his comment represented the situation fairly and whether or not his misrepresentation contributed anything to the rudeness of people. That’s an open question.
oh heck, Let’s see what Lambert wrote there days before, I havent check it all, but lets see.
“I have a roundup of reactions to the NRC report on the hockey stick here. Except for McIntyre (who reckoned that it was “schizophrenic”) folks felt that it was a vindication for Mann.
McIntyre’s other claim to fame is that he was Rush Limbaugh’s source for his claim that NASA had made an error when they said that 1998 was the warmest year and that 1934 was really the warmest.
But globally 1998 was much warmer than 1934 — it’s only in the contiguous US that 1934 was as warm as 1998. And NASA never announced that 1998 was warmer than 1934 in the US — they said that there were too close to be distinguished. Because they are so close, even insignificant changes such as adjustments by 0.01 degrees causes their relative ranking to change. I think the ranking changed in each and every of the last five versions of GISS US temperatures.
McIntyre hyped these ranking changes to try to make it look like global warming isn’t happening and this fed Limbaugh and Drudge and the rest.”
Let’s break that down into claims:
1. Mc thought the NRC report was schizophrenic.
2. Mc’s other claim to fame was that he was Rush limbaughs source for a claim about global temps.
3 Nasa never announced that it was warmer in the US in 1998 than 1934.
4. nasa said they were too close to be distinguished.
5. Mc Hyped these changes to make it look like global warming isnt happening
6. Mc fed this to rush and drudge.
So, let’s do a little fact check on this.
http://climateaudit.org/2007/08/06/quantifying-the-hansen-y2k-error/
http://climateaudit.org/2010/01/23/nasa-hide-this-after-jim-checks-it/
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/climategate-2-0-—-the-nasa-files-u-s-climate-science-as-corrupt-as-cru-pjm-exclusive/2/
steven mosher (Comment#34505)
egads what a vile nasty blog.
Andrew KY,
The people in question I would refer to are as follows.
1. Jones
2. Briffa
3. Mann
Let me get rid of the minor players right away. Briffa, violated IPCC procedures; included material from Wahl in ch06. this material did not go through the review process and was lifted from Wahl. Briffa knew he was violating the procedure and shows a fear of getting caught.
Impact: ch06 is tainted
Remedy: withdraw ch06.
Jones:
1. Violation of IPCC rules
2. Violation of FOIA.
3. Misrepresentation of reconstruction record.
4. Bias in his treatment of McKittrick paper.
5. Journal/review manipulation.
Impact:
1. CRU is unaccountable.
2. UHI question is unaccountable
3. Ch06 is unaccountable
4. Publication record tainted.
Remedy.
1. Redo temperature record.
2. WIthdraw IPCC chapter Jones was author of.
3. Withdraw Ch06
4. Removal from post at NOAA
5. Revisit articles that Jones was a reviewer of.
6. Withdrawl of Jones papers if data and code is not provided.
Mann.
1. Journal corruption.
2. interference with replication.
hey I like that crime.
and you guys can fill in the blanks.
Steven Mosher,
Finally, a (luke)Warmer makes a list of documented facts on a blog!
I must admit that I’m pleasantly surprised.
That’s twice today that has happened. Hmmm…
Maybe this evening, a beer truck is going to lose a case and it will fall into my pickup truck on the way home from work. I’m rollin’ with the windows down, baby. 😉
Andrew
liza,
Yes. My visit to that blog was the inspiration for the “piltdown mann”
In Nov of 2007 I visited that thread. I saw the hatred encouraged by the blog operator. The blog is about evolution, which I believe in.
I thought, gosh evolution as a science was very contentious and evolution had survived a hoax, the piltdown man, couldn’t climate science survive the simple errors of Mann? Then I looked at how long the Piltdown man hoax lasted. Then I thought
“piltdown mann” pretty funny.
So, if people want to know how that idea got its birth, it started by me reading that blog.
If you visit CA in nov 2007 and view the comments you can see
exactly when it happened.
Andrew ky.
thanks. tell imhoff I’m available to testify. ha.
“liza (Comment#34507) February 23rd, 2010 at 11:33 am
steven mosher (Comment#34505)
egads what a vile nasty blog.”
It is but maybe it is just a fake?
steven mosher (Comment#34510)
I kind of remember this. Didn’t SteveMc make fun of the Pharyngula name or was it Al Gore’s speech at that AGU about emotions and the Amygdala? (brain thing)? lol! (see how my brain works? lol)
Science debate has always been knock down drag out fights BTW. Least in the geology departments; according to my husband. lol
Alexej Buergin (Comment#34512)
Nothing would surprise me. I don’t think it’s fake though. I hope that professor isn’t a teacher. Yuck. My daughter got fed up and dropped out of college because her professors were angry and vile people.
@Liza,
No, it’s not a fake. Would that it was.
I seem to remember that he and this one –
http://scienceblogs.com/islandofdoubt/
were very active in demonizing James Randi for daring to suggest that there might be some doubt about some aspects of AGW et seq.
Alexej Buergin (Comment#34512) February 23rd, 2010 at 12:13 pm
A fake blog.
Well, which parts would be fake. Let’s see if you can tell a consistent credible story.
1. The blog operator:
A. a believer in AGW?
B. A stealth denier.
I think you could probably go back through the post history and
examine this. Did he have a master plan to be a stealth denier?
2. The commenters?
A. believers in AGW
B. Deniers posing as believers saying horrible things.
Lets do the logical combinations:
1A2A: its true: he’s stupid and rude.
1A2B: he’s a believer and he sanctions “false” comments that
make his side look bad. therefore he’s stupid and endorses rudeness.
1B2A: He’s diabolical, they are rude.
1B2B: the grand conspiracy.
Is that it?
One famous open-minded blogger recently wrote the following at a really well-known climate blog:
.
“. . . Monckton and his cadre will suffer mightily at the hands of a very fickle and very angry public. When global warming becomes so obvious that Joe sixpack can no longer deny it — which will happen before this decade is out — the backlash will be ugly. I hope it doesn’t reach the heights of abusiveness that struck the nobility class after the French revolution — but I wouldn’t bet on it. Even pacifists like myself will probably be unable to stem the thirst for revenge. My advice to Monckton: prepare to flee the pitchfork-and-torch-carrying mob.”
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Does that constitute a hate posting? a nasti-gram? or perhaps it’s only friendly advice?
Calling P.Z. Myers rude is like calling the ocean wet. That said, he can be amusing at times.
New Scientist has an interesting article about the fellow awhile back: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20427360.900-p-z-myers-mildmannered-scourge-of-creationists.html
Ya Zeke,
PJ is a hoot. Some people take rudeness too seriously.
Don’t any of you folks have spam block?
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When Obama ran for President, I signed up for his newsletter. But even after he won he kept spamming with requests for money several times a week. I don’t give money to any politicians and certainly not to ones who spam me, so now he’s on spam block and goes straight to my spam folder, then gets automatically deleted.
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If I can do this to the President of the United States, why can’t you guys do it to the dweebs who are constantly pestering you?
I spam block, but apparently tim Lambert gets hundreds of mails from a wacko and he continues to open them and read them.
1. He’s a glutton for punishment with a victim complex
2. he’s paranoid.
3. he’s worried about the guy cause he did something to him that
he is not telling us about.
4. he has no idea how valuable his time is
5. he does have an idea how little his time is worth.
6. he’s confabulating
other explanations? i dunno
Mosher, you response to the email I posted was to accuse me of making it up. Now that’s not something I would think of doing, but your accusation suggests that this is the sort of thing that you would do.
By “messages” I mean both emails and comments directed at me left on my blog. It’s nice that you think it is simple to block him. Perhaps you could persuade him to use the same email address every time?
Tim Lambert:
Could you work out the IP server, and report him for abuse?
Tim
Please learn to read. I did not accuse you of making anything up.
Hint. I’m grinning.
what part of that dont you get?
As a fan of Orson Welles I recommend his last film: F for Fake.
While it has not been confirmed, I noticed that one person blogging here has the same name as one who used a fake tape in a debate. That is the reason I now see fakes everywhere: Once a fake, always a fake.
When somebody, who gets a lot of nasty emails, reads and then deletes them at once instead of bringing a charge, I hear fake, fake, fake.
As the blonde MP in Switzerland who wrote fake e-letters to the editor noticed to her chagrin, the best defense may be ridicule.
Liza, Steven Mosher:
Fake blog? Of course not.
Was it not the bad guy in “The Big Lebowski” who became a criminal because she spent a winter in Moorhead, Minnesota? Maybe that is the reason here, too.
Lucia said:
“I haven’t gotten any hate-emails.”
Do you want some?
I mean – apparently those who fight for the noblest of all causes get them, so it may help you in being elevated to such company.
😉
Oh and re PZ Myers and his execrable blog – in the above link he is quoted saying about religion:
“This is something that I would like to get across to people: disrespecting ideas is a good thing.””
But I don’t think he extends that to disrespecting of HIS own ideas. Which might be a good thing as well.
Alexej Buergin (Comment#34586) February 24th, 2010 at 3:04 am
I have no idea what you mean there; yet! But I like your spunk!
Re: EW (Feb 24 07:54),
No… I don’t want any hate mail!!!
If I did develop a hate-mail stalker I would:
1) create a folder to store it.
2) write an email filter to put stuff in there automatically.
3) check the IP’s etc.
4) monitor to see if it went from just nasty and transitioned into actual threats.
5) if the final thing occurred, I would report it to the police.
IPs can be spoofed. But the fact is that if you hope for someone who knows forensics to trace something, you need to keep everything that might possibly help them. So…. keep stuff. Hand over.
Oh, I might also ask other bloggers if they are being harassed.
It is unlikely I would do any of the following:
1) Post their email online.
2) Write a post about the email if it appeared to be from 1 person. ( Individual trolls like recognition.)
3) Reply to the email.
But so far, no nasti-grams!
Liza:
were we not talking about a guy called Myers who is at the University of Minnesota? Well, the Coen brothers (makers of great films like Fargo; oh Brother where art thou; the Big Lebowski) seem to know that part of the US well. And in TBL the explanation for bad deeds was: She spent a winter in Moorhead, MN (just across the Red River from Fargo, ND). So maybe it is the cold in Minnesota that makes Myers nasty?
(No; most people there are very nice.)
OK, Lucia, then I will not write any.
I just thought that obtaining a hate mail somehow underpins the worthiness of the addressee. Y’a know – the forces of evil regrouping against The Righteous Ones etc.
Chad,
Harking back to our brief thread hijack on snow cover percent, here is my first-pass analysis of modeled and observed North American January snow cover percent using model data that the authors of Frei and Gong 2005 were nice enough to provide to me:
http://i81.photobucket.com/albums/j237/hausfath/SnowCover1967-2010.png
Now I need to look into correcting the CIs for possible autocorrelation and writing something up.
Are those uncertainty intervals the standard deviation in trends across a number of runs? Or an estimate based on a teme series? Or what?
Either way, if I’m reading your figure right, generally, the models predict a negative trend in snow cover, but it’s a very, very, very small reduction. I’m assuming -0.002 is -0.002% not -0.2%, if the latter, then I don’t need three “verys”,and could just use 1.
Also, one model predicts a small increase in snow cover.
On the one hand, this means that in the “scientist vs. Morano DC snow incident”, the scientist should have shout his trap. More snow in NA is not what the models predict. It’s weather. On the other hand, I’m pretty sure if we get all the weather noise in the models, and the snow rate itself we just aren’t going to show they are clearly wrong on this.
Those are confidence intervals. The OLS slope is in % snow cover per year (which isn’t % change in snow cover, but rather is the physical % of North America +20N latitude covered by snow in January).
And it is -0.2%, I just can’t figure out how to change the units to %s in STATA. Also looking into turning the “actual” range into a background color bar to differentiate them.
Zeke–
Ok. So your going to have to show us measured and simulated snow in the same units. I know Steven Goddard showed something like square meters or miles or something and you are showing percent of NA. I have to admit that I have not cluttered my mind with numbers like the total number of acres in the north american continent!
Lucia,
Here is a version that I like a bit better.
http://i81.photobucket.com/albums/j237/hausfath/SnowCover1967-2010band.png
Out of curiosity, should I be comparing model projection trend CIs to observation trend CIs or observation trend mean?
Also, the relative magnitude and CI of the trends should ideally be insensitive to the units chosen. The problem with using absolute areas in this case is that each model has a pretty different baseline snow coverage area. Hell, based on how coarse their grids are, each model has a non-trivially different North American land area. 😛
I guess I could take the % snow cover numbers and normalize them to the actual North American land area, which would probably work.
Re: Zeke Hausfather (Feb 24 17:06),
Sort of both. The metric to use is the difference over pooled st. dev. That would appear as d* in santers paper,so it’s a different graph. The one you are using is good in some ways, but makes it difficult to assess whether the difference in a model mean and the observations is statistically significant. The uncertainty intervals can overlap by as much as 40% and the difference might still be statistically significant. (Or not– it’s impossible to tell form the information in the graph.)
Still, most of those model means are clearly within the uncertainty of the data. Those differences are definitely not statistically significant. The only two close calls would be the ones with model means outside the uncertainty of the data.
Zeke:
In my opinion, you look at the difference between mean values, diff = model — data, and then compute the uncertainty of this difference using sum-of-squares of quadrature:
sigma_diff = sqrt(sigma_model^2 + sigma_data^2)
p = erfc(diff/(sigma_diff*sqrt(2))
You then reject any models with a p value < 0.05 (2 sigma) or 0.003 (3 sigma).
If Lucia saying we should pool the model results together (I wasn't sure, but that's what Santer does), I disagree. I don't believe there is a useful physical interpretation to the mean of the models.
That is an interesting stat homework problem:
Compute the p-value associated with a 40% overlap of error bars between two measurements, assuming the uncertainties of the measurements are equal and the overlap between the two error bars is 40% of the difference between the two measurements.
Of course, Lucia needs to define what she means by “significant” before we can test her statement. 😉
One thing I meant to point out Zeke is it is common to use the 2-sigma CIs when comparing model to data. Is that what you did here?
When I said “Lucia needs to define what she means by ‘significant.'” I should have followed by
Stephen Mosher, Stephen Mosher, Stephen Mosher
My bad.
If you want to compare individual models to data by the way, the best way to do is it subtract them, compute the CI for the that differenced value, then plot the differenced values.
You’d have a thick horizontal line associated with a difference of zero, and the vertical axis would be labeled “Modeled — Measured Annual Trend in Snow Cover Percent”.
If you aren’t sure what I mean, post the values in tabular form, and I’ll post a graph of this.
Carrick, the CI bars for both the observation and the models are two sigma.
I’ll play around with trying a d* approach, but the resulting graph might be a tad more confusing to a lay audience than simply showing the mean and CI of the model projections and observations. It would allow me to state with confidence that the models and observations are consistent/inconsistent, though its not much of a question in most cases for the 1967-present series (1989-present is a bit more interesting).
Carrick: here is the data if you want to take a stab at it.
http://drop.io/0yhqyon
“Tim Lambert indicated that he would post any hate email he receives revealing the senders name.”
Lambert should post his own hate mail to others by the looks of things:
Found here;
http://larvatusprodeo.net/2008/05/08/legal-eagles-take-flight/
“And Tim, if you just want to go around putting me down I suggest you give people a bit of a background i.e. just because I carelessly aimed a snark at you once, you sent me not one but *three* abusive emails and have been back to hounding me since. you really are a vindictive little twerp and if you continue this I may just be inclined to publish those emails and tell you boss about them, ok?”
Lambert sent several abusive emails referring to the person as “a lying piece of shit” apparently