Roger Pielke Jr. wrote a brief post today, which said only this:
The UK blog Left Foot Forward has provided a glimpse at a study commissioned by Oxfam by the digital mapping agency Profero. The report is not yet available but the image above is suggestive as to what it might find. I always wondered what was at the center of the climate debate universe 😉
The image in Roger’s post evidently tells use something about the communications network during the climategate story. I read Left Foot Forward’s discussion of the report — which I understand is not yet publicly available. The report evidently discussing the evolution of the climategate story, “tracking its progress from fringe blogs to mainstream media outlets over the ensuing weeks and months.”.The image reproduced at Roger’s blog and Left Foot Forward is supposed to “shed new insights into the way climate sceptics’ networks operate.”
Obviously, I can’t say whether I agree with the report; reading Left Foot Forward’s discussion, I suspect I’m going to agree with some things and disagree with others.
What I do know is that if you want to better understand why the story moved so quickly, you need to add a circle to highlight the activities of the non-blogger whose actions on Nov. 19 and shortly there after was instrumental in causing coverage of the story spring up on numerous blogs almost simultaneously on Nov. 19. I’ve added the appropriate circle:
As some of my readers know, my first post on climategate occurred on Nov. 19, 2009 and mentioned that Steve Mosher had alerted me that a link to zip files appeared in a comment on Jeff Id’s blog. After that, all heck broke loose.
I’m sure Roger enjoys being pictured as the honest broker in the middle 😛
Also, they appear to have the WSJ on the wrong side of the fence, unless they are making a distinction between the news section and the editorial pages.
ha thanks too kind.
I think he’s lovin’ it! 🙂
It is interesting to see the connections. Still, note that TAV is only connected to climate audit and WUWT through other blogs. I would have thought TAV was at least as directly connected to CA as I am! I’m pretty sure Jeff blogged more about climategate than I did.
That said, I’m not quite sure what the image means or intends to communicate.
I do note that Climateprogress does not appear. In principle, that blog normally tries to act as a megaphone for climate activists. Joe Romm was pretty silent during climategate. Maybe he thought if he didn’t discuss the emails, the public wouldn’t hear about the story? Only Joe knows.. but if he thought that. Hah!
Well, most climate science blogs seem to be missing, and instead there are lots of news orgs over on the right side.
I’d expect to see Tamino, Stoat, Deltoid, Rabitt, James Annan, etc.
Zeke–
I think the figure is intended to communicate how the story was reported. (We’ll know more when the report comes out. ) If I’ve correctly guessed the meaning of the image, Tamino, Rabett, etc. are missing because their first impulse was to not blog about the story. The result is they became invisible with respect to that particular story.
In contrast, bloggers on the left side of that picture announced the existence of the emails, read the emails and commented on their contents. I think I was the first to post– Jeff Id was on vacation when the comment appeared. I think Anthony was flying over the Atlantic. But, basically, to some extent, if you see the beginning of the story as being “gossip”, news traveled on the grapevine fast. The story broke on the 19th. I went to the opera on the 20th. A climatologist friend of mine asked me about the story during intermission!
Lucia:
Don’t you think that your ‘sphere’ should have been placed near the central line?
Len–
I don’t know how we are supposed to interpret position. If position is supposed to indicate degree of skepticism, then, sure, it belongs near the center of the graph.
I suspect the position is organized to mostly show us how things are interlinked. If so, the algorithm is going to tend to put the biggest blogs where they can draw arrows. So, WUWT is actually pretty close to RC on the graph. Roger is in the center because both RC and WUWT link to roger.
They got tAV all screwed up. It has no links to nofrakkingconsensus or noconsensus.org and I beleive it came first – not sure. Then they call it a denialist blog and ….
Prior to climategate, most of my incoming traffic was from CA despite having several posts carried at WUWT. From my tiny little corner of the world, it stinks of revisionism to discredit.
I think Lucia was first to post, although everyone’s posts came within hours of each other. I was back from my trip when the s.. hit the fan.
An unnoticed bit of the story which is partly my fault is that I think at tAV the link went to moderation. The email was sent on the 17th, it was noticed on the 19th. Some links do if they come from questionable sources and I had no control. On returning on the morning of the 19th, I may have released it from moderation along with several other emails, without reading it. I jumped in the car and drove 5 hours. On arrival Mosher had sent me an email saying look at this. I took the link down and sent emails to lucia, Steve and Anthony which said have you seen this or something. Of course they all had, the next thing I know there were posts up here and at WUWT – so I followed.
Steve Mosher emailing is the reason I think any report that discusses how the story got out should leave Steve out. I suspect that graph is made by some sort of software that tried to ‘analyze’ links to and from blogs. But I’m not sure what ‘counts’. Is the dimension of the circle supposed to indicate our level of influence in the story? Are the links to who we linked? I don’t think I’ve ever linked to “nofrakinconsensus”– but maybe they’ve linked to me?
We’ll know what the image is supposed to tell us when the report comes out.
Zeke:
You do need to do that. It’s actually very interesting how much different the slant a newspaper can have depending on whether you look at the editorial page versus the front section.
As usual I like the object approaches to this, even while admitting it’s not perfect.
Carrick–
Wouldn’t you say the editorial side of WSJ should be on the left of the image? In principle, the news side should be down the middle for everyone!
You know.. the other odd thing is the map leaves off blogs like the volokh conspiracy which did cover the story early on. It’s not a climate blog, but it has large readership and breaks the story out of the climate blog circle. Breaking out of the climate-blog circle is presumably an important step to getting the story into newspapers.
dotted lines?
As Lucia says we will know when it comes out.
On the timeline, after posting at Lucia’s and CA ( in that order)
I went on facebook and contacted Revkin ( other side of the great divide) Told him he was mentioned in the mails ( as not being a stooge) and that his mails were in the stack. I told him to follow the FOIA.
Andrew later said he didnt read the FB msg till 5 hours later.
1) If Roger Pielke Jr had stopped blogging, would that have prevented half the system from doing anything on the topic? It also looks like he alone links to the IPCC. I like his blog and respect his work but is he really the center of the climate blogging universe in re Climategate?
2) Is Mosher ionically or covalently bonded to the structure? He’s looking pretty radical out there on the left.
3) Tamino appears to be left off the chart? Did he not mention this topic ever?
Even more bizarre, anyone have any thoughts on why Oxfam, an aid and development charity would be funding this????
“In principle, the news side should be down the middle for everyone!”
Lucia,
It’s not the 50’s anymore. Time to adjust your expectations. The News is Progressive now. You of all people should know that already! 😉
Andrew
It will be interesting to see who parrots the mistakes made in that article. I do not think we will have to wait long.
Other weird things occurred to me.
Left foot foward says:
But oddly enough, all during climategate, Michael Tobis’s google groups was operating, and discussing the topic. (It’s no longer public. http://groups.google.com/group/planet30/ )
The group included a lot of climate bloggers quite a few of whom are activist, and also other people who Michael invited. If I recall correctly, there were quite a few posts with people debating how the story should be called something like “swifthack”. The people participating in that group are certainly interconnected in the sense they communicate with each other and, in principle, discuss how to respond to thing. That group doesn’t appear on the image– nor do most the the blogs associated with member of the group.
Does anyone think the wall street journal is in the place it should be?
My reading was that they were skeptical?
My YouTube ClimateGate video got 50,000+ hits and I don’t even get a mention?
.
Bastards.
Chuckles (Comment#38907) March 22nd, 2010 at 1:06 pm
“Even more bizarre, anyone have any thoughts on why Oxfam, an aid and development charity would be funding this????”
The same reason the Office of the Secretary of Defense did a study on blogs. To understand communications and information networking.
The ‘background’ brief I got on the study from a person inside OSD’s office used a picture that appeared in the MSM of an alleged Israeli airstrike on an ambulance during the 2006 Israel-Lebanon deal.
The picture had been discredited in the blogosphere as having been photo shopped(blast damage in the wrong direction) within 6 hours. It took Mossad/CIA 6 months to reach the same conclusion.
For people who are attempting to ‘frame the debate’ or ‘control the message’ the blogosphere is a terrifying phenomenon. They can’t even identify the major players correctly and even if they could the players shift constantly.
Harrywr2,
The SecDef bit I could believe, and yes, I remember the photos. We know we can get access to both expertise and a variety of opinions in seconds in the blogosphere in a phenomenal OODA loop, and they don’t, but Oxfam researching AGW/CC?
Being a nasty old cynic I could quite easily believe that they cared more about channeling donations into the executive entertainment fund than solving world poverty, but that makes it even less likely that they’d give a hoot about AGW!
But hey, follow the money. Must be a carbon credits angle somewhere.
[quote Zeke (Comment#38890) March 22nd, 2010 at 11:52 am]
Also, they appear to have the WSJ on the wrong side of the fence, unless they are making a distinction between the news section and the editorial pages.
[/quote]
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They also put the IPCC in the center, so someone’s sense of balance is off kilter. They should be over by the Met Office.
My comment at “Left Foot Forward” is awaiting moderation. Its permalink (March 22, 2010 at 7:25 pm) defaults to the post, at least for now.
Starts with a quote from the body of that post —
And continues —
By the way, the first ~50 comments have to be accessed via this link. And Steven Mosher’s riffs on George Lakoff (etc.) may strike some of Left Foot’s regulars as puzzling jujitsu.
AMac, you should tell them to add Wikipedia to the Believer’s side. And that William “800 edits a day” Connolley should get a big circle all to himself.
Also, Lucia, why are you shown as in the skeptics camp?
If I recall correctly, there were quite a few posts with people debating how the story should be called something like “swifthackâ€.
Yes, they had a bunch of horrible ideas. The swifthack meme REALLY backfires. The operative relationship in the Kerry Story was that his Shipmates outed him. So Swifthack by metaphor logic implies a whistleblower. The left misunderstood the power of swiftboating. They took it to mean any illegit attack. They live in old memes and dont even understand how those memes work.
They needed to realize that they were caught in a watergate meme. no way out of that except the way nixon took. Now Jones
did try his own reframe, using Kelly. But there too he pick a bad tenor and vehicle.
character assasination was also a bad meme. more like character suicide.
[quote steven mosher (Comment#38921) March 22nd, 2010 at 3:22 pm]
The swifthack meme REALLY backfires
character assasination was also a bad meme. more like character suicide.
[/quote]
.
I think it was the two or three weeks of the MSM ignoring the story that really hurt the Believer’s side.
Amac,
puzzling jujitsu. I like that. guerilla marketing
Who knows. Andy Revkin tweeted this:
He may be wondering how he ended up on the “warmer” side of the image. He caught a lot of flack for not backing up the “warmer” side during climate gate and so did George Monbiot.
As I said, we’ll learn what the image is supposed to mean when the report is published.
Meh, media coverage of “climategate” was pretty much uniformly poor. Hence why many folks have no idea that “hide the decline” refers to divergence of tree ring proxies and not thermostats. The only decent MSM coverage I saw was in The Economist. But, then again, I come at the issue from a different perspective than most here 😛
Magic,
Yes. I mean even classic damage control, send the celebrity to rehab, would have been better than ignoring the story. Now they have kerry emanuel looking at all the papers to double check them. Mistake. They should have withdrawn chapter 6 and done and outside audit. Sadly, the longer they refuse to admit and correct inconsequential errors the MORE distrust they create.
I feel a little left out. Sigh.
Now now mosh, withdrawing chapter 6 to correct “inconsequential errors” would be spun like mad in certain corners. Plus, things generally aren’t withdrawn unless major errors are discovered.
Oh, Zeke, I would have republished it with a month with the graphic corrected and the 264 words explaining divergence expanded.
You take a month a damage. You do the right thing.
here is the secret. Retract or not, the skeptic camp will always
have a storyline. If you want to convince the undecided, you recall the tylenol, recall the vehicle, fix the shit and republish.
On another front I think they should have promoted the hell out of the CCC work. I think that menne should have agreed to the offer to co author with Watts. Same for annann and Mcintyre.
[quote (Comment#38927) March 22nd, 2010 at 3:32 pm
Now now mosh, withdrawing chapter 6 to correct “inconsequential errors†would be spun like mad in certain corners. Plus, things generally aren’t withdrawn unless major errors are discovered.
[/quote]
Have to agree with Mosh on this one, Zeke. Do the right thing. “Certain corners” are going to spin it like mad if you do or don’t anyway.
Tom you dont fit the paradigm. Hey I met a liberal skeptic. he described what it was like to be a skeptic liberal on the huffington Post. I argued about radiative physics with him. I at least got him to read scienceofdoom. one of my favorites on the warmist side now.
Did you know that you can believe in evolution and believe that Mann made some stupid mistakes.
Interesting thought. When you interact with people who spew talking points do you automatically mistrust them?
Why does Lucia posting about a mistake she made, make her more trustworthy, and to whom?
How much would gavins stock go up if he opened up comments at RC? or invited Mc or jeffID or Lucia to post? That would be a game changer.
[quote steven mosher (Comment#38932) March 22nd, 2010 at 3:52 pm]
Did you know that you can believe in evolution and believe that Mann made some stupid mistakes.
[/quote]
.
Just for the record, I’m an Atheist who absolutely believes in Evolution.
.
That doesn’t change the fact that no one has demonstrated that adding CO2, or any other greenhouse gas, to the atmosphere causes changes in the climate.
.
And if I really want to be snitpickery about it, no one has demonstrated there is such a thing as climate.
on one other thing. Its very important for blog operators to visit and comment on other blogs. It makes them one of us.
and brownies, bake brownies.
Ok magic, off to scienceofdoom for you. If you are looking at satillite data you should understand that the sensors rely on the core of AGW being “true.” RTE.
Climate is a useful fiction.
It’s all done with suction and mirrors
Mosh,
I was more arguing semantics. You can correct an error without withdrawing something. Small errors get errata; Wakefield gets withdrawn (speaking of ye olde Huff Post…) 😛
[quote steven mosher (Comment#38935) March 22nd, 2010 at 4:04 pm]
If you are looking at satillite data you should understand that the sensors rely on the core of AGW being “true.â€
[/quote]
.
No they don’t. They rely on photons being absorbed and re-admitted. That is no where near the same as AGW being true.
.
For AGW to be true, the story has to pretty much end there. In real life it doesn’t. For example, additional heat causes additional evaporation _and_ causes that water vapor to rise. This forms clouds, which over all, cool the environment.
.
An understanding of negative feedback is not denial of the science or lack of understanding of the science. It _is_ the science.
.
To put it another way, the “green house effect” and the “effect of greenhouse gasses” are not the same thing.
Chuckels [38907]
Oxfam is right in there commisioning stuff like this because all alarmist forecasts tell us that AGW/ACC is supposed to have disastrous consequences in the developing world. Which is the core of Oxfam’s business. Because Oxfam, just like the WWF, Greenpeace, etc. are really powerful business operations. They’ve learned to dress up as charities because it looks nicer and sell better.
Hmmm…The more I look at that graph, the weirder it looks.
Why isn’t Fox News on that image? Didn’t they cover climategate at least as much as the BBC? I don’t get cable, but in terms of air time or articles, how did Glenn Beck compare to Monbiot? What about Limbaugh?
I’m seriously waiting to read that report now, because the graphic seems more mystifying every time I look at it.
Speaking of poor images, I may have inadvertently created the most confusing graph ever when accidentally failing to turn the filters on 😛
http://i81.photobucket.com/albums/j237/hausfath/Picture205.png
Magic
http://scienceofdoom.com/
I’m not just sending you there, but if you want to discuss it that’s the best place. Otherwise we will get people arguing about greenhouses made of rock salt here. and people who think that if C02 warmed the planet that means that thermos’ shells should have C02 in them.
As far as Stoat and Deltoid, maybe they’re covered under the general site “Science Blogs”?
And in addition to the “side” WSJ is on, very odd that they are only linked through the Huffington Post.
Strange bedfellows indeed.
Zeke–
That is a very confusing graph. I don’t even want to guess what the legend says!
Lucia:
I’m not entirely sure that people to the left of the graph are intended to see the report. I’d be just a trifle concerned about what a charitable, progressive NGO taking in 180 million pounds a year is doing assembling what looks like an enemies list.
Tetris, I agree, but I suspect baser instincts. They are far more interested in the accounts receivable side of the balance sheet, so I suspect they want some pointers on this new fangled informational power networking web 2.97e2.1828 stuff that is going to be the next big thing.
see here
http://www.profero.com/unsimplify/index.html
Zeke, you have created the perfect graph. Whatever you want to do, you present that one, then say
‘And then, Simplifying we get’
followed by whatever you want to present.
Well, Lucia, its the min, mean, and max trends for dark, bright, rural, urban, less than 10 pop density, greater than 100 pop density, and all grid cell stations (for various permutations) for both the 1900-2009 and 1960-2009 periods all somehow on the same graph 😛 162 different trends, each with its own max/min bar…
And, sadly enough, its still probably clearer than this old gem:
http://i81.photobucket.com/albums/j237/hausfath/Picture53.png
Chuckles (Comment#38915) March 22nd, 2010 at 2:47 pm
Why Oxfam?
From the IPCC
http://www.grida.no/publications/other/ipcc_sr/?src=/climate/ipcc/emission/093.htm
“The A1 storyline is a case of rapid and successful economic development, in which regional average income per capita converge – current distinctions between “poor” and “rich” countries eventually dissolve. “
Zeke (Mar 22 15:35) wrote, “Plus, things generally aren’t withdrawn unless major errors are discovered.”
steven mosher (Mar 22 15:52) wrote, “Why does Lucia posting about a mistake she made, make her more trustworthy, and to whom?”
Zeke,
The way you have written about the instrumental record here has done more to influence my view of the past century’s climate trend than any other single factor. You’re willing to engage, to admit the possibility of error, to look at data differently, and to do all this transparently, in full view of code-literate skeptics.
Don’t let it go to your head, though, since I am just parroting what Mosher said about Lucia’s style. 😉
Now let’s look at the other big piece of the AGW story, the Hockey Stick.
Tiljander.
That’s a stake in the heart of the Consensus vampire.
Not that Mann got it grievously wrong, uncalibratably in error, upside-down backwards. But that he’s decided on Tough It Out. And that his allies, acolytes, and fellow Guardians of the Faith have chosen to Circle the Wagons.
Every Uncommitted person who spends 30 minutes examining the Mann-Tiljander record should be a person who turns away from the Consensus in dismay at their standard practices.
“If you’re this deluded on obvious issues, why should we trust the way you handle the subtleties of your complex reconstructions? Why should we believe your policy prescriptions?”
Chuckles (Comment#38950) March 22nd, 2010 at 5:03 pm ,
The perfect graph 😀 hahaha.
Steve,
I’ll just ask that you take my word for it that I’ve read scienceofdoom’s stuff and there’s nothing there that changes what I’m saying.
.
I know you’ve only seen me pop up in the last few months, but I’ve been at this for a long time. I don’t mind talking about things and sharing my point of view, but I really don’t want to spend time debating climate science anymore.
.
There’s nothing in climate science that disproves what I’m saying about clouds. In fact, it’s pretty reasonable. And no one can show a human signature in the climate, no matter how many papers they site.
From Chuckles link to “unsimplifiy” this crock of stuff:
“The climate change sceptics did this by significantly influencing public perception of anthropogenic global warming by single-mindedly applying concerted and consistent pressure at critical junctures in the media ecology here in the UK and abroad.”
Oh right; nothing to do with the science, numbers or malpractice that they queried?
Chuckles and Harry – Oxfam are running a sea level warning ad on the London underground at the mo. predicting widespread deaths.
lucia (Comment#38941) March 22nd, 2010 at 4:24 pm
Hmmm…The more I look at that graph, the weirder it looks.
Why isn’t Fox News on that image?
Read the official report of the report.
http://www.profero.com/unsimplify/index.html
My dear old mum worked for a ‘large’ publishing concern.
All the PR campaigners already control for Fox news.
The question they are attempting to answer is how did a group of people with no budget, that no one in the public relations universe has ever heard of manage to get Climate Gate into any newspaper.
Every PR agency in the world subscribes to a news clipping service on behalf of their clients. If one pays attention to what is being said early enough then one can do damage control before there is major damage.
Because PR’s agencies spend enormous amounts of money on advertising and establishing good will with the media they are normally given an opportunity to ‘correct’ information prior to it ever being published. Or at least a heads up so they can trot the usual suspects out onto the Sunday talk shows. Sunday talk shows are normally arranged on a Wednesday.
Breaking a story on a Thursday is extremely bad form. Too late to do Sunday morning talk show damage control. Which gives the story 10 days to run before a defense can be mounted.
Think about it, someone spent $10’s of million on drowning polar bear commercials, and out of no where comes ‘the story from hell’.
The PR agency should have seen it coming and didn’t. They thought they had all the major players controlled for.
I thought I might gain some insight into how they calculate the balloon sizes. No luck. But here is what I found.
Results of google site search for climategate.
climateprogress 780
realclimate 574
desmogblog 344
tamino 50
wuwt 6330
climateaudit 1920
icecap 1310
climatedepot 1120
airvent 621
bishophill 535
Rankexploits 258
rogerpielkejr 255
Breaking a story on a Thursday is extremely bad form. Too late to do Sunday morning talk show damage control. Which gives the story 10 days to run before a defense can be mounted.
hehe.
Zeke,
The way you have written about the instrumental record here has done more to influence my view of the past century’s climate trend than any other single factor.
YUP. JohnV working with me on UHI and sharing his TOOLS (power) had the same impact on me. JohnV also did postings on C02, so I would read those and then more independent study and things started to make sense.
Zeke (Comment#38952) March 22nd, 2010 at 5:12 pm
I ordinarily hate complex charts but that one rocks
Zeke (Comment#38945) March 22nd, 2010 at 4:51 pm
If you put one hand over an eye your chart looks great
Mosh,
Try it with 3d glasses on. Also, I’m slightly frightened that I’ve run my model for 162 different sets of stations/data now… Finally finished min/max temps today, but I haven’t really delved too much into it yet, and still need to rerun some things to make sure a few oddities aren’t mistakes on my end. Next up is calculating each of those 162 trends for all of the 121 USHCN gridcells that pass the respective pair-wise filter to show the distributions! 😛
By the way, anyone have a recommendation for a good map-generating tool that I can use to show the gridcells? I suppose I could badger a co-worker into doing it for me in GIS, but I’d prefer not to have to.
curious (Comment#38964) March 22nd, 2010 at 6:45 pm
Deaths of what? Cripples? People who have been brain dead for the last 15 years? Even if the sea rises 100 meters this century, as suggested by the inimitable (fortunately) Robyn Williams, I think most people should be able to outrun it.
Zeke,
R has good map plug ins.
there is a CA thread on it
Curious, thanks for the info, I haven’t been into London recently, so I missed the aahhh experience of the new ads.
Harry, That sounds feasible, there is a fair bit of handwaving in the UK at the moment because almost all the larger bloggers here are towards the conservative side of the spectrum. Sort of USA talk radio in the blogosphere… not quite, but it’ll do.
There was a flurry recently where a left focused group was bemoaning this on a blog, and estimating that to ‘compete’ with the filthy right-winger blogs would need an initial budget of 60-80,000 pounds or so, and 3-5 people, with whom to hold meetings and strategic planning sessions.
Cue much merriment in the UK blogosphere!
Get ready, because that aint no chart of climate networks.
It’s a war plan.
And those circles on the left are targets, and they are about to get bombarded big time. Shock and awe baby.
Haven’t you heard the convoys of munition rolling in behind enemy lines? They’ve been planning this for weeks now. The attack will be a massive one and they intend to gut you all out. You guys are all smirking and joking about it.
Be warned.
Zeke:
Magicjava has some mapping tools up.
Another comment into the LFF moderation queue.
– – – – – – – – – –
Re: Oxford Kevin (March 23, 2010 at 7:20 am & 7:25 am) —
> [Response to Steven Mosher] – you said your side has the ability to disagree whilst ours doesn’t. Your claim was one of stalinist type behaviour. Your claim was easily disproved.
> In what way did Jones lie before parliament?
Mosher isn’t very diligent about providing links, plus this site makes it something of a pain, with the prohibition of simple formatting. Anyway, here is the article he wrote on the subject, “The Final Straw.”
http://tinyurl.com/yju26fz
Note that it was posted 3 March 2010 at WUWT. (Is that site a reliable source of information? *Scientific* information, in my opinion, no. For opinion pieces like this one, it’s fine. Althought the Comments are less valuable for being moderated with a heavy hand, like here at LFF (n=1 in my case).)
Background piece is “Climategate: Not Fraud, But Noble Cause Corruption,” 18 February 2010. Separately, its Comments are an interesting read.
http://tinyurl.com/ykxwqtp
Re: “Your [Mosher’s] claim was one of stalinist type behaviour” — Kevin, in heated debates such as surrounds AGW, one of the first skill sets to decline is that of paraphrasing one’s (presumed) adversaries. I’d suggest you’d prompt a higher-grade discussion if you’d retire that shortcut for a while, substituting direct quotes and links to sources.
Re: “You said your side has the ability to disagree whilst ours doesn’t.” I’m not the “you” in that sentence, but I find it striking that AGW Consensus scientists and advocates have been, to a person, unwilling to call out Mike Mann for “torturing the Tiljander proxies” in the service of the Cause. It’s a simple point to grasp, thanks to Google. My LFF comment on that subject appears to have failed moderation, I crossposted it at “Lucia’s Blackboard”.
http://tinyurl.com/ydffk6l
Want to be the first to break from the Consensus pack?…
Both my LFF comments now appear in that thread, which is nice. It’s hard to tell which pro-AGW-Consensus blogs use moderation to counter the spambots, and which see it as a tool for tilting the playing field in a convenient direction. Sorry for the cross-posting; turns out to have been superfluous in this case.
It’s a good thread over there.
[quoteCarrick (Comment#39010) March 23rd, 2010 at 5:22 am]
Magicjava has some mapping tools up.
[/quote]
My current mapping tool, MapToGrid, is for taking an existing black and white bitmap image of the world and converting it to gridded information. This tool is for creating lookup tables for things like the percentage of land and water. Draw land and water on the image, MapToGrid converts it to land/water info for each grid.
.
The reverse, taking gridded data and creating an image from it, isn’t up yet. I’m writing the code as we speak and it should be ready by Sunday.
Re: harrywr2 (Mar 22 19:12),
Interesting. The first blog post was a Thursday. This was unplanned.
Heh. Didn’t they figure out that blogs matter way back during the whole Dan Rather episode?
You know it strikes me that whatever PR players really exist might have been prepared if Gavin or anyone at CRU had thought to mention that a batch of emails was “out there” to a PR firm.
Mind you, if I were Gavin or CRU, I wouldn’t have thought of sending anything to a PR guy. He’s probably as unconnected from any official PR people as I am. Mosher, & Watts didn’t contact a PR firm when they found the emails either. So, this is all outside the circle of PR firms.
Still, strictly speaking “the team” had access to the files and knew what was in it. If there is a big PR firm pushing climate change, they need to teach key people to send emails.
Amac, for me, it’s some commentary from you, Steve, Jeff and a couple of others, and a cloud of Twitterati. If I look at the lFF biographies page, that’s a very strange blog.
I think I prefer Smokeys animation here
http://vimeo.com/7928299
P.S.
If you just can’t wait till Sunday, I have some HTML/Javascript code that can take a csv file containing 2.5 by 2.5 grid info and draw it on a web page.
.
But I’d recommend waiting till Sunday for the C++ version if you can.
P Gosselin,
Does that make me a fifth column? I’ve always enjoyed over-dramatic hyperbole 😛
lucia (Comment#39023) March 23rd, 2010 at 7:48 am
“Heh. Didn’t they figure out that blogs matter way back during the whole Dan Rather episode?”
No..because ‘they’ think the Dan Rather deal was astro-turfed.(I.E. Paid political operatives posing as ‘grassroots’.)
There is no shortage of PR firms that specialize in astro-turfing.
‘They’ also know how much astro-turfing costs, so there must be some big hidden funding stream.
The British didn’t understand the power of pamphleteers in 1776 and they don’t understand now. By the time Gorbachev figured out there was a real ‘grass roots fax news network’ in the Soviet Union it was too late.
Humanity is naturally inquisitive, it will eventually find a way around those who attempt to ‘control the message’.
steven mosher (Comment#38934)
March 22nd, 2010 at 4:00 pm
on one other thing. Its very important for blog operators to visit and comment on other blogs. It makes them one of us.
and brownies, bake brownies.
totally agree..
Anyone like to meet at the bbc blogs..
Now I’m sure we all know the BBC’s position on AGW…
Yet they are duty bound to be impartial, and pretty much everything I have posted has appeared (just follow the house rules – they don’t like pdf links)
Another example it was fantastic to see lubo motl, in the guardian comments section, the guardian agw advocates just did not know how to handle him..
The BBC of course, is widely respected by the general public (who still know nothing, less than 1 in a hundred people know anything about it, unscientific survey, not peer reviewed at the school gates), the BBC cannot ignore the debate, if the people very involved in it, get involved there.. Maybe some of you would be very wary of speaking directly to Richard Black, Roger Harrabin,…
But by commenting there, you can reach the general public – who just see blogs like these as a very unknown quantity, possibly suspect, along the lines of moon hoax conspiracy websites…
I had never head of Climate Audit, Wats up, Bishop Hill, Jo Nova, Real Climate, before the 20th November.
I also did not know that a close friend, the mother of my son’s best friend since they were babies, had worked for the IPCC, had climategate emails, edited synthesis reports, part of working group 1, was a kyoto consensus scientists, met office round robin december 2009 signatury, and was off in brussels defending colleagues post climategate whilst I was watching her and my sons play tennis.
This may interest you three months on, she has NOT looked at anything in FOIA2009.zip…
Genuine surprise when i finally had the courage to speak to her about it, to discover climategate emails in her name. Definetly had not looked at it.. or Harry_read_me, or anything else.
Not had the time, thought it had all pretty much blown over. She is very much a part of climate research world and works somewhere you would all recognise, and has written thousands of lines of climate research code..
But that is all another story.
I could try to post on real climate, but, i did try and got moderated. same with the guardian, somethings, factual informed, they do not like and hold in a queue for days, then the moment has passed..
The BBC are part of the climategate scandal they are one of the biggest agw gatekeepers. they even have their own climategate email, from the ‘team’ leader michael mann, regarding the bbc’s Paul Hudson’s blog article: Whatever Happened to Global Warming…
He said get in touch with Richard Black BBC, who does a good job…
Leading to a classic trenbeth reply, about snow in Boulder…..
Love to see, Judith Curry, Steve mosher, Steve Mcintyre, Gavin, etc posting in Richard Black articles, a main stream media blog, with impartial house rules, where if you follow them and are polite, it WILL get posted..
See what I have been saying (you might notice I’m a bit cross with my perception of bbc bias regarding AGW theory, BUT I’m more cross about their reporting…
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/profile/?userid=14233293
Of course, if anybody came up with one fact/proof of agw catastrophic warming, I would stop being a sceptic (now cynic), overnight
It is not about winning an argument, just geting to the facts.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/richardblack/2010/02/forget_the_norfolk_polices_cri.html
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/dailypolitics/andrewneil/2009/11/climate_change_debate_calm_civ.html
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/dailypolitics/andrewneil/2010/01/questions_for_the_man_from_the.html
Sorry for a very long first post, only came across this site, because of a certain book that arrived yesterday ‘ Crutape letters…….
This month, the Wall Street Journal had a special section on the environment, and how business can be greener, less carbon emitting, etc. THey are on the right sideof the picture.
Re: Chuckles (Mar 22 13:06),
Not sure why Oxfam would be doing this other than ideological proclivity but they just lost any future donations from me.
Re: steven mosher (Mar 22 15:20),
Rather than a Watergate meme, I’d say Climategate was more of a Pentagon Papers meme.
Re: harrywr2 (Mar 23 10:52), “No..because ‘they’ think the Dan Rather deal was astro-turfed.(I.E. Paid political operatives posing as ‘grassroots’.)”
It’s funny how people (especially activists and politicians) tend to see their own reflections. Those who exist in an environment of conspiracy or spin tend to see it everywhere.
OT, but I need a hand with a data presentment issue. I have the trends from dark, bright, and all stations for the 87 gridcells in the U.S. with both dark and bright stations. Showing all of these on a standard chart makes it a tad too big:
http://i81.photobucket.com/albums/j237/hausfath/Picture207.png
Anyone have thoughts on a better way to visualize it?
zeke – I haven’t followed all your recent posts so I might be missing what you are doing with this chart. But it seems ok to me? A lot if info and it highlights the gridcells such as 49 which seem to break the pattern. It would be good to have a US map with the gridcells numbered up below it. Maybe swap the colour key so dark is dark tone, all is mid tone and bright is bright tone?
Compugeek,
I agree, it is what initially intrigued me.
Harrywr2 and I were tossing some ideas around on yesterdays original thread. That and the statement from Prospero.
I see quite a few of the UK general and political blogs mentioned it this morning, not exactly effusively either.
My current thoughts are as per here. The blogger efficient information dissemination and dispersal model terrifies anyone involved in any classic communication media operation, because they really really don’t understand it. And the more they try to understand it, the more ephemeral it seems.
In the space of 10 mins you can pop in to the b/board, the air vent wuwt, ca, bishop hill, tom fuller, romm, real climate, tamino, marino, tobis, etc etc, and check out as many different perspectives and viewpoints on a current breaking issue as you wished. Not just the posters, but their comment threads as well.
That frightens the wotsits off someone trying to control, shape and target a ‘message’ to you.
I think there is something to the whole social aspect of the skeptosphere. You see all this emailing going on, co-moderation, etc. (e.g. WUWT and CA). In addition, you see people like McI who are very careful to NOT call out Watts or the Heartland on some of their big boners (don’t want to annoy friends), while also maintaining plausible deniability by not endorsing stupidity. A lot of these people are retirees and like to hang out with kindred souls. And there’s a definite flavor of conservative political sympathies with the commenters and bloggers (and I don’t really beleive Steve when he says he’s a liberal on US terms…think JeffId’s rants are more the reality).
Not really a new problem though. I remember roughly 25 years ago, Jerry Pournelle floated the idea that the REAL way you undermine regimes dependent on control of information was by enabling free flow. He wanted to take all the personal computers and modems then being thrown out by businesses and individuals upgrading (from TRS-80s, Apple ][s, etc. to IBM PCs or Macintoshes) and just hand them out on the streets of Moscow or Beijing.
The “blogosphere” is much advanced past the old days of FIDONet but media and PR organizations are still stuck in the 70s IMO.
Indeed, I’m a fan of Pournelles western cultural wmd concept.
On the media side, they, the media, are used to having a dominant narrative or message, received wisdom, that is disseminated through a defined and controlled conduit. Them.
When that is firmly established as ‘the way it has always been done’, it is laughable to suggest that a ragtag bunch of renaissance dilettantes fiddling round with a new medium, could possibly provide a competing information service.
To them I say,
Beware of self selecting unrestrained and intelligent groups, it is amazing what they can do. You will not like the results.
Hey — I remember when Jerry Pournelle was a contributing editor to “BYTE” magazine!
The Blogs now have credibility…
The Times runs this story today quoting from and using Bishop Hill as a resource..
Lord Oxburgh, the climate science peer, ‘has a conflict of interest’
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7071751.ece
This is the other ENQUIRY, into the Climategate Scandal (CRU)
It is supposed to look at the allegations into the AGW science.
The UK government/UAE establishment have appointed as a chair, a vocal AGW advocate, with direct financial vested interests in AGW theory..
The blogs message is now getting reported in the UK MSM.
My theory is at least one or 2 newspaper, will let the climagate floodgates open after the general election.
The Telegraph (tory graph) has made hay with the UK Members of Parliments expenses scandal for over a year (another leak/hack/whisltblowing) the probably do not want to REALLY complicate the UK general election, where ‘climate change is very acrimonous.
Gordon Brown infamously calling sceptics, ‘flatearthers’ ‘anti science’, copenhagen time – and said 50 days to save the planet..
And really scarily, Ed Milliband- Minister of State: said Copenhagen time sceptics were ‘climate sabatouers’ very, very close to ‘terrorists’ – with the quite frightening implications with the UK’s anti terrorist laws..
June July – if we do not get a hung parliment, and loads of industrial action, may be interesting with respect climategate.
I noticed that the accu-weather blog, http://global-warming.accuweather.com/ didn’t even make the chart. Are we that irrelevant and futile over there? Are we too unbiased and commercially based for the community?? GK
G.Karst–
We still don’t know if that image is really supposed to tell us!
Re: Tim W. (Mar 23 14:52), “I remember when Jerry Pournelle was a contributing editor to “BYTE†magazine!”
Yes, in fact, I believe it was in one of his Chaos Manor articles that he proposed personal computers and modems to undermine totalitarian regimes. You probably wouldn’t be surprised to know Jerry is also highly skeptical of the AGW hypothesis (although he’s willing to look at data). Fallen Angels had some slams against the Gore-style alarmists.
I am highly amused when scientifically illiterate Malthusians call skeptics or undecideds like Pournelle, Dyson, (myself) and others names like “flat earthers” and “anti science”.
Dear all,
I’ve done an imagemap that makes the image clickable. Please feel free to copy the HTML code at
http://ecotretas.blogspot.com/2010/03/quem-e-quem.html
Ecotretas
The google sitesearch is an interesting tool
I tried in the UK, Bishop hill as a comparison/refernce:
Bishop Hill: 415
Pistonheads: 1940
Telegraph: 1670
BBC: 699
.
Pistonheads is where I found out about climategate.
Nothing to do with climate research at all, a 12 year old car enthusiast website in the UK.(Very big site)
It has a very active news/politics/economics section (you need to be registered to see that section)
This is where the ‘normal’ people hang out, neither sceptics/advocates.. (just a very broad cross section of the UK general public)
This may have been very influential (from 20th Nov, topic started, poster caught the excitement at watts up). I know many people there were prompted to contact BBC complains/trust, write to MP’s and get involved. (I discovered climate audit, jo nova, watts up via that site)
.
The fact that pistonheads figure is over double, the bbc perhaps says something about the bbc coverage of climategate..
.
I tried climate gate on the bbc’s own search, in the weeks leading up to copenhagen, and it reported zero…
Even though BBC, paul hudson had a named climategate article, That folowed his: whatever happened to global warming article, that prompted Michael Mann’s climategate email, that he’s give Richard Black (bbc) to see what was going on.