Keith Kloor opens a recent blog post with this:
Well, there’s been an interesting response to the launch of my new blog at Climate Central. I kinda expected a few people in the climate blogosphere would grit their teeth. But I didn’t expect my new gig to prompt an immediate what-do-we-do-about it strategy session. Michael Tobis offers a vague description:
Conversation about Keith came up on the back channels yesterday as a consequence of his new blogging venture at Climate Central.
As I don’t participate in Tobis’s “back channels”, I can’t know details about the conversation. Whatever was said may (or may not) have propelled the indefatigable Anna Haynes into creating yet another Sourcewatch page, which has since been deleted– evidently by Haynes herself.
Ahhh! The creation of a Haynes-authored Sourcewatch page. It brings back such memories.
Judy Curry who has some history with Anna Haynes authored Sourcewatch pages reminisced a bit, commenting,
While Anna Hayne’s investigation of me following the Climate Heretic article was quite amusing (she was asking me medical questions, seeking to understand if there were medical reasons for apparently losing my marbles), I no longer regard this as amusing. In my original response to her email queries, I politely answered her questions, and snickered about the whole thing in the blogosphere. A few weeks ago I received another round of questions regarding companies that I have been involved in. I fully intended to answer those questions, but replied to Anna that I was dealing with a family health emergency and could not reply right now. That appeared on my sourcewatch page essentially as avoiding the questions. I am finished with responding to any queries from Anna Haynes or anyone else associated with sourcewatch.
At this point, if anyone is contacted by sourcewatch, I strongly recommend not responding.
Judy then follows with,
Also, I love mt’s “back channels,†this explains a lot.
For those wondering what the “back channels” might be– I’m not sure. That won’t stop me from speculating!
I strongly suspect it’s Tobis’ Planet 3.0 google group or some offshoot. I used to read that groups email exchanges regularly and found it amusing. I think the brilliant PR sensibilities of that group were previously evidenced in their response to a politely worded debate invitation.
Eventually, Michael had had the good sense to keep the conversation on that particular back channel private. If my suspicion is correct, keeping Planet 3.0 private may not be enough to prevent those conversations from triggering periodic public displays of silliness on the part of some subscribers to that listserve. Which is ok with me, because the silliness can be very entertaining!
Mosher, Pielke’s, Kloor all given a listing at Sourcewatch…Lucia Liljegren, nada, nilch…WUWT?? :->
Ian– Not important enough. Not funded. I wish I’d gotten to read what Anna wrote about Keith before she took it down. I’d have taken a screen shot. 🙂
Maybe Judith has some sympathy for the CRU scientists in replying to requests for information? It doesn’t seem a lot different in the method of “gotcha” type blogging if you don’t respond in a timely enough manner, which then leads to a mindset of of ignoring requests.
AndrewL–
I don’t see the connection. People contacting scientists about their research or data isn’t gotcha journalism.
It’s also very is different from Anna asking questions that are both leading and entirely personal suggesting that Judy is mentally unstable. Anyway, Judy responded to Anna promptly, and then blogged about Anna asking the questions.
Most people understand that asking people about their possible medical or mental condition is different from asking about data or research discussed in a published paper.
Lucia-
I agree that the information requested is not the same, but my impression was there was some initial co-operation by CRU which then shut down as the requests became more onerous and the information supplied wasn’t used in traditional scientific fora to criticise the work and the scientists.
It didn’t appear the inappropriate medical questions caused Judy much concern as she happily replied and blogged about it, it was when her understandable reply putting off a response was used as a smear against her that she was irked.
What does Michael have to with Anna? “Back Channels” would be people having private conversations with each other. Not everything goes on blogs, even in these days.
Junior high school was so much fun we have to keep reliving it.
bugs
Michael Tobis runs a by-invitation-only not publically readable google groups listserved called “planet3.0”. It used to be publically readable; Anna was an invitee and participated back then. Though I can no longer read it, I assume she still participates. MT’s comment at collide-a-scape suggest as much.
So the connection is: Anna could very well have been a participant in the conversation on the “back channel”.
There is nothing wrong with back channels. But MT’s post and the timing of Anna’s action suggests that conversation on the listserve MT administers may have prompted her to write her ephemeral post about Keith. That’s what MT has to do with Anna in the context of this story.
“While Anna Hayne’s investigation of me following the Climate Heretic article was quite amusing (she was asking me medical questions, seeking to understand if there were medical reasons for apparently losing my marbles), I no longer regard this as amusing. In my original response to her email queries, I politely answered her questions, and snickered about the whole thing in the blogosphere. A few weeks ago I received another round of questions regarding companies that I have been involved in. I fully intended to answer those questions, but replied to Anna that I was dealing with a family health emergency and could not reply right now. That appeared on my sourcewatch page essentially as avoiding the questions. I am finished with responding to any queries from Anna Haynes or anyone else associated with sourcewatch.
At this point, if anyone is contacted by sourcewatch, I strongly recommend not responding.”
Sounds like good advice from JC. I don’t know Anna Haynes from Anna Body and, based on the information above, I would not want to get to know her. That line of investigation sounds sick.
AndrewL–
I think your impression is confused. Cooperation shut down long before any requests became onerous. In fact, it shut down after the information was used in a traditional science fora — specifically a journal article– that criticized that Mann’s results.
Judy thought it waswere hilarious that an odd person would be contacting her under the guise of being a “journalist” and said as much.
My take is Judy is describing what Anna does. She’s decided that she’s devoted sufficient time to Anna’s enquiries and is not going to reply anymore. People who read SourceWatch — especially those involving Anna– can learn about their journalistic practices and interpret the context at SourceWatch in that context.
You will note that in the thread at Collide a Scope, Anna appears to be irked that after she posted her article publically at SourceWatch, she emailed Keith and he didn’t promptly respond. Based on the words in her comments it appears that she likely emailed on Saturday night and was upset he didn’t respond to her email by Sunday Morning.
I think many targets of Anna Hayne’s emails would be well advised to refuse private communication and insist all communications be public. I’ve exchanged email with her and my inclination is to suggest we discuss almost everything publicly.
As far as I know, there was no discussion of Keith on the Planet 3.0 list. It must have been some other back-channel.
So many back channels!
Actually, I was intrigued by this by in comments at his blog:
Zeke, that’s not quite correct, there was one post to the Planet3 list consisting of a subject “Keith Kloor moves to a new, Climate Central-hosted, blog” and a link to the new blog, with absolutely no other commentary. There was no reaction from anybody on the list.
I’m on a few other closed lists with MT and of course have exchanged private emails, but the only other recent mention of Kloor I’m aware of was a thread consisting of two comments, one similar to the Planet3 one pointing out the new blog (though with some added context and disappointment generally regarding ClimateCentral in that case), and 1 response from me pointing to my old article on Keith, which I posted verbatim on MT’s site. I of course do not hold any rights in the two emails that I have not posted and so will not post them myself; perhaps their originators will. Keith’s vision of some grand conspiracy against him says a lot about him, and nothing about us. Anna is not on the second mailing list, and no mention of Anna came up in “back channels” whatsoever.
Arthur
Arthur–
Keith didn’t describe a grand conspiracy against him.
Anyway, Keith’s observations about Anna only say that he got an email from her and then asks questions which she is free to answer. She’s joined comments but seems to have mostly ignored the comments preferring to take the opportunity to ask Judy Curry questions.
Out of curiosity, is Anna still on Planet3.0? She used to be on that and the Michael’s post indicates she remains on at least one list he participates on.
Anna is not on the Planet3.0 members-list
The entire Kloor “conversation” :
Title : Keith Kloor moves to a new, Climate Central-hosted, blog
body : http://www.climatecentral.org/blogs/welcome-to-frontier-earth/
/end of conversation
really worth all the speculation…
BDW–
Interesting. I’m pretty sure she used to be on the list back when it was publicly readable.
I wonder if she’s on the other list people mentioned.
Anna is still on the P3 mailing list, and is not on the list where the brief discussion of Keith Kloor took place.
I often disagree with her way of thinking and acting, though she means well.
There was no coordinated effort against Keith, at least that I know of.
I’d also like to point out that I invited Keith to the P3 list when I formed it. He did not respond to the invitation.
I am sorry that the P3 list is not world readable. It served an interesting function when it was. But as recent events show, a generally paranoid attitude is widespread these days on all sides.
Several members objected to the archives being opened up. On occasion, less active participants would show up, unaware that what they were saying was public. This led to some minor embarrassments.
So it stays closed, at least until somebody’s email gets hacked or laptop gets stolen. There’s nothing particularly nefarious going on in my opinion, though. Anyway a person would be foolish to try to keep secrets in email even in some other field of interest!
Michael–
Ok. So BDW was mistaken.
I haven’t suggested any coordinated effort against Keith. I guess some of you are intent of rebutting the non-accusation. Maybe you’ll manage to convince people someone made the accusation.
I know. I used to read the list while sipping coffee in the morning. I sometimes found hot tips.
I think it’s not in your interest for it to be world readable. But if it goes back to being readable, I’ll resume reading.
My take is many of the more active participants also posted thing that ought not to be posted. For example this:
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2009/the-tribe-speaks-to-the-press/
No one suggested your list was nefarious. I certanily didn’t. Your conference call with the press wasn’t nefarious. But it also wasn’t meant to be made public–was it?
Note that in my other post, I point out that you have suggested the existence of a “political list which dreams up and coordinates their random ambushes on innocents and serious researchers.” The baseless accusations of nefarious behavior on the part of those with whom you disagree are emanating from you.
Wait, I am confused. You are saying that I am saying that it is nefarious if they probably do it but not if I definitely do it? Great. What?
Well, you figure out what I should say to that one. I neither know nor especially care. You must be running low on material.
Michael
Now I’m confused. When you day you definitely do “it” — meaning that which you accuse others of doing–, are you saying that your Planet 3.0 group definitely “dreams up and coordinates their random ambushes on innocents and serious researchers.” Or anything equivalent?
If so then I think your group is doing nefarious things and you are also accusing others of being equally nefarious.
I thought I was saying was that I don’t think your group does particularly nefarious things. I think it merely write things that would be a rather embarrasing to its members if their discussion became widely known. Sort of like the behavior in many college fraternities.
Meanwhile you did suggest the existence of some other hypothetical group who does do nefarious things like “dreams up and coordinates their random ambushes on innocents and serious researchers.” I think this is an accusation that some other group exists and has established a list to do nefarious things.
Well ok, you are confused. Eli can live with that.