The discussion of the “SS-SkS NAZI” (and other) images continues apace on twitter. I ended up in a private discussion with someone. As it’s private, I’m not going to quote from it. But I do want to discuss this issue: Does copy and display of those images as done at WUWT fit fair use?
Mind you: I’m not an attorney, but my sense is copying is probably fair use and I’m going to explain why I think so. This is a blog, so naturally, I invite any real attorneys to give their views. In my discussion, I’m going to refer to this post by Eugene Volokh, an honest to goodness law professor who discussed fair use as it applies to cease and desist letters. I’m using this explanation because I think the publication of cease and desist letter contain many similar elements to Brandon Copying and WUWT displaying some of the SkS images.
The copying and display of images
It’s clear that WUWT is currently displaying copies of images that were downloaded from a publicly accessible web page at www.sksforum.org; these images are displayed here.
The displayed images had been stored on a server that hosts http://sksforum.org, and were obtained by a human entering the uri’s for the images. At the time the human downloaded the files, the images had uris in the pattern similar to “http://sksforum.org/images/user_uploaded/name_or_image.jpg”, an example without the ‘user-uploaded/’ directory in the string is shown to the right. The server appeared to have no access controls inhibiting display for anyone who entered the “http://sksforum.org/”, “http://sksforum.org/image”, “http://sksforum.org/image/user_uploaded” or “http://sksforum.org/images/user_uploaded/name_or_image.jpg”. Moreover, loading subdirectories like “http://sksforum.org/image” displayed lists of links revealing all files and sub-subdirectories in that subdirectory. ( UAH has a similar structure for providing easy access to data files to anyone interested in visiting the page.)
In any case, someone did find the images by examining the address of the image displayed on the public facing forum login page, removing the “/name_of_image” from that uri, loading that page, seeing “user_upload/” directory listed, clicking those images and then viewing the images.
here. The WUWT article highlights gems like the ones on the right.
Is copying and display of the SkS-Nazi images fair use?
Let’s now turn to whether copying this stuff seems to fall under fair use. Here is where I will cut and paste from Eugene Volokh’s article on Cease and Desist letters and see how I think that applies to the images.
This is unfortunately a tough question, because “fair use” requires the application of a notoriously mushy balancing test. Here’s a quick run-through of the four fair use factors:
1a. The purpose of the use — criticism of the original, which cuts in favor of fair use; the more detailed the criticism, the better for the user.
It seems to me that with respect to the SkS-Nazi images, WUWT has written a detailed discussion about the images, the fact that the images exist and where they were hosted, what the motives of those hosting or creating the images might be. Needless to say, numerous site visitors then comment on the images, and the motives of those who created them. In that the ‘purpose’ of the copying seems to be cut in favor of fair use.
1b. The purpose of the use — if the site makes some money (e.g., through advertising), then this cuts in some measure against fair use. But it doesn’t cut that much against the fair use when the use is critical, since criticism even in commercially distributed works (such as newspapers or books) is generally a favored use.
The images were not copied to make money. Also, even if it were, the use is critical. It’s negative criticism, but that’s permitted.
2a. The nature of the copied work — primarily not creative (the way a work of fiction might be creative), which cuts in favor of fair use.
The SkS images are creative as that is defined by copyright law. So this factor cuts against fair use.
2b. The nature of the copied work — unpublished by the author, which cuts against fair use.
To figure out whether the ‘unpublished’ issue cuts against fair use in the SkS-Nazi images case, we need to figure out if these images were “published”.
The argument for ‘unpublished’ seems to be this: the authors and domain admin hoped only the small subset of people who are in the ‘in crowd’ at sks would be aware of the existence of the images and their uri’s and so no other members of the public would view those images.
In discussions it appears some SkS supporters think this meets the definition of “private” which possibly they think is the same as “not published”.
However I suspect that argument would not fly in court.
First: the issue is “published” vs. “not published”. “Privacy” is a somewhat separate concept. And it seems to me that making the the images available to a select audience like “only the dozen or so members who have permission to visit the SkS forums” with the intention of having those dozens comment on the items is considered “published”. I think the fact that the images were not works in progress also argues for “published”. These were not shared among collaborators working on them: they were finished products handed out by the creator. Of course, I may be mistaken and it may be that court precedents have ruled that flyers sent to hundreds of people asked to keep the material private constitutes “not published”.
Second: Even if I am wrong on the above, the fact that the material was distributed on a server that actually made the photos accessible to the anyone with a browser and web connection seems to suggest the material was “published”.
The analogy in my mind is printing a book with naughty pictures of oneself giving it a title one considers boring, and then “hiding” the book on the shelf in the public library in some small town where one believes few people visit the library and few poke around on the shelves looking at books. And then telling a few people in your “naughty books” club where the book is located, hoping no one else will find the images.
I would call the act of printing the book and placing it on the shelf in a public library “published” and this is so even if the fuller description is “quietly published and advertised only in limited forums”. I think the naughty pictures would be considered ‘published’ even if you argued they were of your private bits and that you only intended them to be viewed by a small select group of people.
Of course, I could be wrong. But my impression is that courts views of “published” vs. “not published” will be strongly influenced by whether the authors (a) placed the material on a publicly accessible server, (b) put any access controls in place to limit access and (c) posted any “keep out” signs and not whether the person who made them “hoped” they would be viewed by very few specially selected people.
In contrast, cease and desist letter are sent from 1 person to 1 person (or business entity). They are not stored on publicly accessible servers and can as such be considered private.
3. The amount of the work taken — the entire work, which may cut against fair use, but the court may conclude that the critical nature of the posting requires copying the entire work (so that the reader can evaluate the criticism based on all the facts), in which case this factor may be neutral.
There are two ways to look at the amount copied. On the one hand, some entire images are copied. For example, WUWT is displaying the entire image of John Cook in the Nazi Costume. On the other hand, it appears that WUWT is displaying only a small fraction of the total image archive : about 5%.
Views eitehr way, it is fairly easy to argue that the criticism of SkS’s behavior in hosting, displaying or creating these images requires display of the images. WUWT is displaying precisely the images relevant to their commentary and not displaying irrelevant images. It’s not really possible to comment on images while only displaying pixels corresponding to John Cooks nose; so this is likely a case where entire pictures can be copied. My impression is that initially WUWT linked images which is not copying, and only switched to displaying hosted copies after SkS eliminated access to the images on the SkS server. So WUWT displayed copies only after copying was necessary to permit comment and criticism of the images.
So it seems to me that WUWT’s display is consistent with fair use.
4. The effect on the market for the work — cuts in favor of fair use, since there is generally no market as such for cease-and-desist letters, and it’s unlikely that there’d be a licensing market for the letters (since few people would license the use of the letter to a critic). Any harm to the copyright owner stems from the critical nature of the posting, and not from the poster’s competing with the author in the nastygram market.
I don’t think there is any market in images of John Cook in a Nazi uniform, Dana on his scooter or such like. WUWT’s audience is likely the only market for Anthony, Monckton and Delingpole as Spartans! (I wouldn’t be surprised if Delingpole creates a wall hanging of himself.) But really even they aren’t going to buy these images; in anycase, SkS isn’t likely to want to sell them.
We now get to Volokh’s summary for the cease and desist letter:
If it weren’t for the unpublished nature of the letter, the Supreme Court’s Campbell v. Acuff-Rose decision, on which I rely in my quick analysis above, would make this an almost open-and-shut fair use case. The unpublished nature of the work undermines that in some measure (see, e.g., Harper & Row v. Nation Enterprises); but I still think the copier’s fair use case is quite strong.
It seems to me that relative to the Cease and Desist letter, the only factor cutting against a claim of fair use in publishing the images is that the images contain creative content. That is: putting a photo of Anthony’s face (probably without permission from the copyright owner) on an image of the Wicked Witch of the West, involves an larger element of creativity that writing a cease and design letter which is probably just boiler plate. Meanwhile, the cease and desist letter has greater claim to being ‘unpublished’. The SkS images are either “published and circulated to a limited audience” or “published and made available to all and sundry”. They do not seem to be “unpublished”
But in the case of the cease and desist letter, Eugene Volokh thought the element of privacy wasn’t a strong factor.
I suspect in the current case, the authors will have a difficult time arguing their images are highly creative either. And even if they did, much of the ‘creative’ work involves using other people’s creative and often, copyrighted, content. So I suspect if any author of any of the images decides to register a copyright for the images and take WUWT to court, WUWT will win. Just my thoughts. We’ll have to wait and see if SkS tries to pursue any claims under copyright.
Real attorneys working on US copyright are encouraged to tell me their views. (Heck. Anyone can. But if you are an attorney who works in copyright, I would be interested in hearing.)
Where did SkS get the image of the WWW that they modified? That would seem to raise fair use issues too as I’m sure that Disney has a copyright of some sort on that figure.
DeWitt,
Well… yes. It might. I’m not sure how the “parody” aspect works when the parody is not of the thing you copied.
I also don’t know how the “but that directory is ‘not published’ ” would fly if copyright of the Wicked Witch of the West found the image on their server and tried to collect damages for their copying that. (I don’t know how the parody defense would hold up either because the parody is not of “The Wicked Witch of the West”, but of Anthony.)
I’m not going to worry about what arguments SkS would have to advance if they were accused of copyright violations! But I do sort of wonder how a judge would view the argument that WUWT violated SkS’s copyright on an image that included thir parties copyrighted material if that other material was used without permission. It might be irrelevant but… still.. would make you wonder a bit.
I think the question of the site “making money” is moot. Consider if they were sent anonymously to a newspaper. Obviously, newspapers (regardless of their present profitability) intend to make money off their printing or display of something like those pictures. I doubt if they would be accused of violating “fair use” for that as long as they didn’t try to sell the pictures themselves. The question then becomes one of whether blogs fall under the concept of freedom of the press in that regard.
It seems to me that the question amounts to splitting hairs.
The info is out there on a web blog [with some notoriety at that] and as such must be fair game. If the proprietor [Cook] wants to show himself dressed up as SS “Reichsfurher”, than folks agreeing with or objecting to that, have every right to propagate the image.
If the cretin [Cook] doesn’t understand that he is leaving himself wide open to whatever detractors want to make of the images and he or his supporters take umbrage at the fallout, they are indeed as naive and narcissistic as the image itself suggests.
I think DeWitt raises an excellent point – that is, does SkS “own” those images in the first place? They cannot sue for impingement of a copywrite they do not own.
BarryW–
The issue of making money can matter a lot especially if copying was done to make money. Suppose for example SkS’s server hosted something I thought would be perfect on a t-shirt. I copied, uploaded to cafe press and began marketing the t-shirts. In that case, the purpose of the copying would likely be “to make money without paying the copyright owner for their creative material”.
But in the case of the cease and desist letter or WUWT, it’s not going to weigh heavily even if the copied stuff happens to be on a site with ads (or as you note, a for profit newspaper.)
That’s why you can’t just go through the list, put + and – next to each thing and count the number of +’s v. -‘s. The fact that someone makes money does cut against. But really, the criticism matters more.
My understanding is mostly they do. After all, the first amendment isn’t just freedom of the press. It’s freedom of speech too. Moreover, back in the day, “press” was often just 1 person’s printing press cranking out leaflets. The right isn’t the “freedom of large incorporated businesses that publish high circulation newspapers, broadcast television, radio or sell profitable glossy magazines and no one else”.
Thanks for the discussion Lucia. A couple of points.
1. Only one image was hosted initially on WUWT, the “spartans” parody image. The WUWT article was pointed to the public folder initially and many people viewed it there. When SkS began their comical “a11g0n3” disappearing act, additional images were posted that were relevant to the discussion.
2. Google had no trouble making a cache, meaning it was publicly viewable, see:
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://www.sksforum.org/images/user_uploaded/
See also Brandon’s essay here: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/13/google-hacked-the-skeptical-science-website/
A curious thing is that Rob Honeycutt suggests we had to scan through “thousands” of images to find the handful of Nazi images. He’s wrong on two counts, a visual simple scroll can spot them easily, and by my count (copying the listing into MS Word and assigning line numbers to the document) there are 329 images.
3. I have not received any “cease and desist” notice, and from Brandon’s essay, it is plainly evident the SkS higher ups are well aware. I think they probably don’t want to risk the “Streisand effect” with a DMCA notice.
Such things tend to backfire and draw even more unwanted attention.
The entire episode is comical.
Derivative works of copyrighted material retain the copyright of the original material and also have a copyright vested in the creative aspects of the new material. If the creator of the derivative work did not obtain a license then it can become a tangled mess as to how the exercise of copyright effects distribution. But the copyright is there for both the original and the new creative work.
( not a lawyer, just have read Groklaw.net for ten years )
A masterful, authoritative, and insightful view from someone who obviously would have made a lawyer I’d want on my side had she chosen a different career … very well done, Lucia. I hope some real lawyers comment.
w.
Fair use question aside, what kind of sick **** photoshops themself (or lets stand on their website someone elses work of the same thing) as a smiling WW II German officer? These poor souls have really lost the plot.
Very good post, as to fair use. Alls fair in love and war.
I would have thought that it would be in the public interest to see these pictures of Cook? Someone who dressed up in a Nazi Uniform has a personality disorder and a problem with integrity.
Anthony
I can confirm that a simple visual indicates which are interesting. I learned of the images while on Twitter. I clicked, got a 404, truncated to images and found the allgone folder independently of any announcement at WUWT. I then looked, found interesting images, and the ones I opened first are the ones on display at WUWT: Richard Tol images were among the first I opened. The “Tol” in the title called out “open me!”.
The directory was gone soon after I found it.
Given the way I found the images, it never occurred to me the directory was intended to be restricted. I assumed the were just there for convenience, and available for whoever wanted to use them.
The difficulties for them are:
(a) is if they send one, and you refuse, they then have to file or the images stay up.
(b) many people have copies by now.
My main reaction when I saw the images what ” This is hilarious! What are they thinking?!”
TerryMN,
Is that question rhetorical? Tsk, tsk!
So-basically a tempest in a teapot little created, little lost-except a bruised ego or two over at SkS. Most interesting of all is that they portray themselves as villainous fascists and the sceptics as historical heroes!!
I thought the whole episode was a gas. I hope that someone trains them on website security so they don’t tank so badly in the future.
I’m quite surprised this didn’t spur a putsch, but perhaps this incident will enable them to act in a more appropriate manner in the future.
Lucia–
The issue of making money can matter a lot especially if copying was done to make money. Suppose for example SkS’s server hosted something I thought would be perfect on a t-shirt. I copied, uploaded to cafe press and began marketing the t-shirts. In that case, the purpose of the copying would likely be “to make money without paying the copyright owner for their creative materialâ€.
I guess I didn’t make myself clear. By “selling the pictures” I intended it to mean your example too. The issue that I think is most important though, is whether blogs and web sites fall under that same class as newspapers and magazines. Do they have the same rights and privileges under “freedom of the press”?
Was the one of Cook dressed in a uniform a photo shop, or does he actually have a uniform like that hanging in the closet?
Not important really. It’s just I was thinking it might add value to know the original photos, what their story is, where they came from,
Lucia the L33T!
Great breakdown all told. I learned the rudiments of l33t speak when the E became the first key to fall off of my laptop. Fortunately 3 is also very close to E. (I always found it ironic individuals and different languages seem to stumble round Bs and Vs – yet on keyboards they’re side by each.)
I too am looking forward to some legally scholarly input too. If anything, the accusation of hacking seems to be the potential crossing of a line.
Oh, and I don’t think 7s make good Ts for addressing n00bs.
I think the answer is “Pretty much, yes.”
I think its quite fair to display images kept in an insecure location, that show professional moralizers are moral degenerates.
This affair reminds me of Megan McArdle’s comment about L’Affaire Gleick,
One of the intern’s other duties assigned must have been web security.
As has been noted, most of the images are themselves derivatives of other works and so the claim of copyright is muddied to begin with.
To my mind, SkS could not viably issue a cease and desist demand without demonstrating ownership of the copyright on the derivative works. In order to do so, either the individual creative artist would need to be identified and a paper trail shown that assigned SkS ownership of the images or the originating creative(s), as the owner(s) of the images, would themselves need to issue a cease and desist.
My gut says that, since the originator will most likely wish to remain anonymous, no cease and desist letter is likely to be forthcoming. But it sure would shed some light on this strange mindset at SkS if it were!
Rob Honeycutt accused me of copyright violations. I find that idea amusing. Even if Watts republishing the images was a violation, there’s no way giving people links to material in its original location would be.
Rob’s still going on about it on Twitter. 🙂
What a lovely evening this is. Thanks Brandon!
Docmartyn, “I think its quite fair to display images kept in an insecure location, that show professional moralizers are moral degenerates.”
It may sound fair, but it is not legal. There is a default copyright protection thanks to the Berne Convention. The photos that were shopped look mainly like commons stuff now, SKS can’t claim anything on them and getting copyright protection for photo shopped commons images should be interesting. If the images were original art work, then WUWT could be sued, like Memmes et al could have been sued for using Anthony’s unique surfacestations.org data base which is protected unlike a simple database of just numbers. It is like if you leave your door open, people can look in all they want, they just can’t walk off with your stuff.
In Anthony’s case with SKS, it is kinda of like he looked in the door and saw his stuff. I would get my stuff back, but that is all I should be entitle to take back. So I think he should lose the images that are not of “skeptics” just to be polite.
I should add that Gavin set a unique example on Realclimate.org with words to the effect, “If he didn’t want them stolen, he should not have posted them.”
This could get interesting if someone wants to get froggy.
One authority stated:
You want interesting stuff:
I don’t follow the drama’s closely these days, but in case no one has located the source of the pictures, I went looking and found the original used for Scooter Dana here:
http://pictureshistory.blogspot.com/2010/10/wehrmacht-german-soldiers-part-10_09.html
Here is roundabout copyright notice.
Mark Bofill, you should look at his last few tweets. He actually said Peter Gleick was sent “docs,” and that he merely “confirmed their accuracy through questionable means.”
That goes far beyond the BS story Gleick told about having received the forged document in the mail. Honeycutt is actually claiming Gleick received all of the documents in the mail. While linking to a story that claims otherwise.
He’s a riot.
Hmmm….
The source site for the images has an interesting site owner. Here is a quote:
This might be nothing.
Looking for Cook’s German Officer photo
Found this.
http://schoolworkhelper.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/Heinrich-Himmler.jpg
It’s a picture of a true to the period German uni.
That pin on Cook’s left hand lapel pocket (looks kind of like an extra button) it’s been tampered with. Nazi party pin originally. The ribbon bar is a match. So are the necktie and ribbon buttoned dow over the right pocket.
It’s not the exact same picture that Cook and friends shopped – but it’s close enough to ease your way to the original.
Found it. The source photo of the Herrcook.jpg
http://memoriasdeundestierro.blogspot.com/2009/11/heinrich-himmler.html
And I bid you a good night.
Lucia writes “The discussion of the “SS-SkS NAZI†(and other) images continues “…
I invoke Godwin’s Law! …oh nevermind.
Hmmmm. So it’s unethical of Anthony to view and/or make copies of someone else’s caricature of himself?
Perhaps if a cease-and-desists had been issues, a counter suite would be possible for defamation.
I think it’s already been said but “Whose copyright?” seems the pertinent question. If Rob Honeycutt is accusing Brandon of copyright violations then it seems fair for Brandon to know who he has infringed. I suspect if he asked that question then at that point he’ll be met by complete silence as no one particular individual or even the SkS website is going to want to claim ownership. Has anybody stepped forward yet?
Honeycutt appears to personify Arthur C. Clarke’s observation
HR,
Only the copyright owner could make a claim. To make DMCA claim they need to write a letter– and they need to pretty much swear they are the owner, yada, yada.
To make a claim for damages, they need to file in court. To do that, they would first need to register the copyright. (Copyright exists the moment the thing is created, but law suits require they be registered.) As creation by the author and display of those images by SkS could potentially trigger copyright suits against SkS and the person who photoshopped registering the copyright could heighten the risk that the copyright owner of the materials used to create the derivative copy might sue. ( As it stands, the risk is close to zero. Movie makers rarely sue for this sort of thing. The PR is bad. But some might draw the line at someone registering their derivative materials.)
There’s a matter of technicality I feel should be pointed out. I doubt it’ll matter, but…
One person does not need to step forward as the creator. Copyrights can be asserted by a group or organization. They can also be asserted by a representative of the person or group who hold the copyright.
What was the purpose behind the Nazi images? Are they visualizing themselves as SS now, not ‘SkS’? No wonder they are so eager to use the term deniers. They have first hand knowledge of the facts.
Brandon Shollenberger
They can. But the registration paperwork has indicate ‘the creator” and it has to tell the truth about the creator of the individual images. And it is highly unlikely SkS as a group created the individual images. It is even more unlikely that individual authors created them as “work for hire” while employed by SkS. SkS as an entity or any single entity could at best claim to have created “a collection”. And — I think– in copyright, there is a difference between “a collection as a single copyrighted item” and “a group of stand alone items each of which happens to be registered in batch”.
And registering as a collection only rather than a batch registration of individual items might could seriously limit the damages the copyright owner could possibly collect under US copyright. (And non-US, don’t say “but Berne”, in the US, damages are governed by US law. Not. Berne.)
So: How would being limited to filing a suit for copying from a “collection only” limit damages:
(1) The big bucks in copyright violation come from statutory damages or “actual losses”. The actual losses for these images is $0. There is a nominal damage award for other things– absent access to statutory damages SkS might get $200 per violation. Since there is only 1, that would be $200. A rather pyhric victory. Of course they might get more if they can get statutory damages (which are up to the judge to decide.) But they probably can’t because:
(2) In the US “Under 17 U.S.C. § 412, statutory damages are only available in the United States for works that were registered with the Copyright Office prior to infringement, or within three months of publication.“. I have reason to believe most of these images are older than 3 months. (Though possibly one or two are not.) I’m not sure about this but it likely difficult to date the “collection” to a date that is much, much fresher than the date when earliest individual images were uploaded accessible to people on the forum and even accessible to Google. (This is why many companies do batch do batch registrations every 3 months.)
Now you might say: They might be able to file as a collection and sue for each image individually. Sure: but this probably doesn’t get around the need to name individual creators. Courts are getting picky when someone tries to file a copyright suit over the individual item in a collection when the individual items do not all share at least one single author. So, for example: with respect to a suite over ‘image 7,8 and 9 in humogoid ‘collection’ A’ with registration being registered, the courts have been requiring that creators of the individual images must be listed– along with names, country of residence and so on. (These can be multiple authors– but the authors of each image needs to be called out.)
See http://www.extortionletterinfo.com/forum/getty-images-letter-forum/masterfile%27s-copyright-registration-method-held-invalid-by-california-court/msg9812/#msg9812
where Oscar Michelin (the guy who won the case) discusses a case quoting a ruling against Masterfile, who wanted to sue for copyright violations with respect to individual images by different creators in a collection, where Masterfile had registered the collection.
(Note by saying “its always nice to win”, this means Oscar Michelin is happy he and his client won.)
My take is this means that if SkS were to file the set of images as a “collection”, they would then their claim would need to be with respect to copyright violation of a collection. To file for individual images– they need to call out creators of each image.
Anyway: SkS is probably not going to want to file unless they can be pretty certain of a victory and lots of $$. Hiring attorneys costs alot, because things aren’t already registered, damages are limited. Plus, if they filed, the legal argument would require dates of uploading would be material to the cas. So whoever was sued would have a right to view the SkS forum during discovery, and the relevant entries could become part of the filings. I’m pretty sure collectively they aren’t going to want the SkS forum or their discussion of the images to be part of the record. So.. not going to happen.
Lucia, nice presentation on fair use.
It has been more than a week since the public was made aware of the Nazi images on Cook’s site. There appears to be no appempts by Cook and his associates to disclaim ownership of the images.
Rob Honeycutt’s ‘we was hacked’ tweets give sort of an implicit acknowledgement that Cook’s site owns the images.
If a ‘disown the images’ shoe was going to be dropped by Cook, it should have already happened.
They appear to have missed the window where they can plausibly disown the images.
John
John Whitman,
The images were certainly hosted on their site. I don’t think there is any dispute that they were put there by SkS forum peeps. I believe they were even on the server for quite some time and I am sure the admin of the forum knew they were hosted there. So whatever the view of SkS forum peeps may have been whoever the admin is was not sufficiently offended to actually remove the image.
We can’t know more unless SkS peeps tell us more. I actually know a little more–but I am sworn to secrecy as Rob Honnicut made me promise not to reveal the context behind the photos as a condition of telling me the contenxt.
Lucia,
OoohOooh a secret! Way to continue to drum up interest Rob, kudos! Can we speculate? :>
What do we know?
1) It’s something Rob doesn’t apparently care to reveal widely. Maybe it’s neither devastating or particularly flattering, but still has the potential at least to come across in a negative light.
2) Rob elects to tell Lucia (and select others? unknown) regardless, I don’t know what I can make of that. Why would he do that?
3) Lucia says I actually know a little more, so…. possibly there isn’t all that much to the explanation…
Lucia, if you feel that such speculation on your blog is inappropriate since you’ve sworn to secrecy, please delete this comment and if this is the case I hope you accept my apologies in advance.
Lucia said: “We can’t know more unless SkS peeps tell us more. I actually know a little more–but I am sworn to secrecy as Rob Honnicut made me promise not to reveal the context behind the photos as a condition of telling me the contenxt.”
– – – – – – –
Lucia,
You can’t even be bribed to reveal such secrets with cookies and brownies?
Eventually, I think they will offer an explanation of the reason for the images to the public. It will be interesting for you to see if what Rob H told you in confidence about the context is consistent with any future public explanation by Cook ( et al ) on the context.
John
A bit more from the tweets:
4) Apparently the pics are not creepy if one knows the context.
5) Rob was willing to explain the actual context in a private message to people who would state what they believed the purpose or context to be. Apparently this excluded Brandon? Brandon complained about this, it’s unclear if Rob ever PM’d him afterwards. He had a list running at some point (of people).
6) Rob maintains that the explanation is not embarrassing, and that he’s annoyed, not angry or embarrassed.
7) Apparently nothing to do with Nazi fetishes.
8) The pictures weren’t ‘made as an example of what deniers do’.
9) Some reason to speculate that Rob might be talking primarily about the Cook image at the top of this page.
John Whitman,
I think it’s up to the SkS peeps to explain the context on their own. If they think they are better off concealing rather than revealing the true context, maybe they are right. Their call!
A possibility is that SKS were concocting a ‘false-flag’ dossier of images to be placed on forums like RE, CE, BH and WUWT by anonymous posters so that the folks at SKS and Lewandowsky can issue a third paper on ‘Goodwin and Denial; use of Nazi images in Climate Denial communities”.
The best explanation is that it started as a joke. One of those, how their mother sees them, how the world sees them, how they see themselves, bits. Then someone had a brain fart and the nazi theme crept in. It’s all downhill after that.
DocMartyn,
Looking at Rob’s tweets (google twitter robhon), I get the impression that he was willing to correct anybody who suspected a ‘nefarious’ context. Whether or not his explanation is truthful is a separate question, but on this basis I suspect his explanation is a non nefarious one.
…
He mentions someplace that the images disgust him I think, although it’s not clear to me if he’s referring to the spoof video foxgoose made or the SkS images. He’s aware of an explanation for these images which disgust him. Maybe this implies that there was discussion, or at least notification / explanation on the forum about these images but the production of these images didn’t involve him…
… hmmm…
I think someplace else he talks about the winged monkeys picture being analogous to a Josh cartoon or something…
Correction, he found them ‘offensive’, not ‘disgusting’. My error.
lucia, yup. I just kept seeing people talk about how “a person” needs to do this and that for copyright violations. I knew what they meant, but it made me cringe a little each time.
Though now I’m curious if it’s possible to enforce a copyright if one cannot show the object’s specific origin. As in, if everyone agrees a company made an image, does it matter if the company can’t show which person/group/branch created it?
I’m sure it matters to some extent. I’m not sure it’s completely necessary though.
Brandon
I think you can’t. If it’s not a work for hire, then there must be a creator of the image. They can claim copyright, transfer the ownership of the copyright, license and so on. But no one else can. The creator must have created it, so they would by definition know the origin.
I’m not quite sure what can happen with “work for hire”– but even then if it is work for hire, one presumably knows the employee or set of employees who were hired. So you would still know the origin– at least to a reasonable extent. With a movie, you might not know precisely who did every single step, but you know the collection of people who worked to create the thing.
I’m not sure just how precisely they need to know who created each image when something is a work for hire. Movies contain lots of images and different people might have held the camera at different times. (This is where you really want everyone to be working for hire!)
Things could get dicey if there ever were competing claims. So for example, if photographer “X” who was not working for hire for company X claimed copyright and the company also claimed copyright but did not know which person, group etc. supposedly created the thing, courts might have to resolve who owns the copyright– or even figure out if that can be known. And a company having no idea of real provenance is going to look bad for the company. True provenance would matter because as a legal matter who created the image (or copyrighted material) does matter. If an image truly sprung into being on its own, no one would have the copyright.
Mark Bofill,
1) Having promised not to tell, I am not going to give hints, confirm or correct any speculation.
2) I don’t think my promising not to tell means I am not permitted to let people speculate in my presense.
3) My guess was prior to Rob Honneycut telling me his perception of the context posted both here and on Twitter. It is here:
https://twitter.com/lucialiljegren/status/367120740325142528. The text reads:
As I am pledged to secrecy, I think cannot say whether my guess was right, wrong, near or far. Otherwise, I open the door to “20 questions”. But I can note that several people here made the same guess I made prior to being told Rob Honneycut’s version of the context.
As far as I am concerned, you can speculate all you like. If I didn’t know, I would discuss whether I thought your views were consistent with what we know or not. But as it stands, I’m not joining in as I don’t see how I can having promised not to tell people what Rob Honneycut told me was the reason.
It’s no secret Rob told me or that I promised, because that was discussed on Twitter.
An exchange of tweets between @robhon and @RichardTol has Tol promising, after being told in confidence by Rob, that he will not reveal the context surrounding the Nazi images on Cook’s site.
Prior to Rob telling Tol the real context in confidence, Tol offers up two possible contexts for images being in Cook’s site. The first potential context offered up by Tol was that someone was trying to blacken his [Cook’s] image and the second was he [Cook] or his friends have Nazi sympathies. Rob rejects both and in confidence tells Tol a third option which he says is the real context.
So that eliminates two contextual possibilities for the existence of the images at Cook’s site.
John
Thanks Lucia.
Apparently Rob considers this information ‘private correspondence’:
So far, I can speculate:
1. There was some discussion or exchange in private to which Rob (and probably others) were privy but not necessarily engaged in. Somebody was communicating with somebody else on some private SkS forum perhaps about these images.
2. Rob (and probably others, he makes some plural reference that I can’t track down right now) find at least the Nazi themed photos offensive.
3. Non nefarious, non embarrassing explanation, probably brief.
I’ll probably go dig through everybody’s tweets in more detail later when time permits. 🙂
Reposting the pictures seems obviously fair use to me.
Kudos to Brandon for doing some real science work here.
Yeah, here was were Rob used the plural in talking about being offended:
hmm. Is he implying that they were kept private because they were ‘internally offensive’? That might be a stretch, ‘and’ doesn’t really mean ‘therefore’…
http://ivarfjeld.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/himler.jpg
That’s a copy of the Himler JPG already cropped to match Herr Cook JPG.
It’s featured on a website trying to implicate the Catholic Church as culpable for the Jewish holocaust.
http://ivarfjeld.com/2012/03/20/hitler-had-the-eucharist-symbol-in-this-uniform-cap/
What that says about Cook and SkS? A lot I think.
Mark Bofil: Let me get this straight…they were so offended by the images, they locked them up and threw away the key instead of giving them a decent burial?
Boris:
Wrong attribution… the “real” science was being done by the mad photoshop hackers at SKS.
Dudes, unclench your sphincters.
Fark is still in business. If what they do doesn’t trip any lawsuit 0 you are definitely in the clear.
Seems like “Must be nice” is the rule you bend over backward to satisfy.
Those dudes don’t follow this rule. Maybe because they don’t feel they have anything to lose.
I think we could end this by convincing Cook that life goes on, even for him, after the death of the global warming hoax.
Mark Bofill
If the administrators were offended, they could have deleted them.
papertiger,
This tell us nothing. They could have a DMCA agent; that protects for user uploaded stuff.
Lucia, Carrick,
Yes, I agree with you, this would be absurd. But a couple of points to clarify:
1) (trivially/less importantly) I’m trying to deduce what Robb might have said the explanation was, not what would necessarily be true or make sense.
2) (more importantly) I think if John Cook didn’t do this himself, it was done with his sanction. Think about it, who would post a photoshopped image of Cook in Nazi regalia on the SkSForum site without his sanction? Why would that stand? Unless Cook has absurd tolerance, but if this were the case why would Cook not speak out about it and say, ‘yeah, johnny doe posted this crap without my consent, I didn’t delete it for reasons x,y,z, but I didn’t approve of it.’ Further, isn’t it likely that we’d have heard from Johnny Doe if this were done without official approval?
So, when Robb says ‘we were internally offended’, I don’t think he means Cook or the administrators, I think he means the SkS guys who were
privyable to view discussion and pictures but not necessarily involved.I’m sure there is some lame non-nefarious explanation. I wonder if I’d buy it if it were told to me.
I can think of at least one explanation, but Occam’s razor doesn’t much care for it. Perhaps there was a discussion for some obscure reason on an internal thread ‘what would we be like if Hitler had won and conquered the world?’. Maybe somebody ran with it and made images. But this is awfully specific and therefore unlikely; I don’t believe this is it at all.
“Seems like “Must be nice†is the rule you bend over backward to satisfy.”
Boy, I’d hate to see what WUWT would be like if Anthony wasn’t following the “must be nice” rule.
Boris–
It might be like Rabbet Run? Or Stoat?
Boris–
It might be like Rabbet Run? Or Stoat?
It would be like Lubos Motl or JoNova. Those two don’t pull any punchs.
I thought “tosser” was a term of endearment.
Lucia, I have to ask.
As you know, I miss your “orange wiener dog” from years past when you went through your climate knitting phase and made dog cozys.
By chance, do you ever knit an orange dachshund cozy with a swastika on it and put the photo file on your server in an open folder hoping nobody would ever see it?
Inquiring minds want to know 😉
“I thought “tosser†was a term of endearment.”
Which probably explains all those problems you had in High School…
Mark writes “I can think of at least one explanation, but Occam’s razor doesn’t much care for it.”
Occam would probably suggest the reason was “People send me stuff”
As far as why Cook et al kept them on the server, thats a much more difficult question to answer.
TTTM,
That’s a good explanation that didn’t even cross my mind. Thanks.
Anthony
Hmmm… I have never knit a swastika image. However, I have knit a greek fret like thingie, which if rotated an broken up…
http://openclipart.org/detail/169817/ancient-greek-fret-pattern-2-by-craftsmanspace
I didn’t hide the garment with this on it. I… wore…it….
TimTheToolMan
I suspect the forum permits visitors to upload. For some reason, the admin didn’t decide to delete. (Notice I don’t permit commenters to upload. I could extend WordPress to permit that. I. Don’t. The main danger is *p*0*r*n. While I suspect most regulars would survive this, I don’t want to deal with it. If it was uploaded, I would certainly delete it.)
Something else that’s probably unimportant, or at least I don’t see what I can make of it, but notice that Rob thought ‘thousands’ of pictures were involved. Rob’d be in a position to know. There are likely more images then, not mostly Nazi images. Not an original observation and it hasn’t helped me puzzle anything out so far but.
My wife is Jewish and we used to be friends with an Anglo-Indian couple whose son was in the same class as ours.
They were a Jain/Hindu couple and they had many swastikas around the house; it was a bit odd at first.
Rob Honeycutt’s claims, made under conditions of confidentially to several tweeting individuals about the real context of the Nazi images on John Cook’s site, have what relevance to verifiability?
He is saying the truth of the images must be contained.
Why?
Not to protect Cook’s Skeptical[-less] Science site from the critical independent thinkers. He appears to be containing the truth for a purpose holding on to faithful supporters of Cook’s site.
I presume that Honeycutt actually knows the truth of what Cook’s peeps are doing . . . maybe not a prudent presumption.
John
DocMartyn, those technically weren’t swastikas, but their appearance is the same. It’s weird to think that symbol is one of the oldest holy symbols known to man.
Thousands of years of good meanings ruined in under two decades. I find that sad.
I recall seeing swastikas in a stairwell at Indiana University. It was a pretty old building, so it was obvious to me that it pre-dated Nazism, but I was surprised the mosaic tiles had not been removed.
Turns out, there’s a whole Wiki page on innocent uses of swastikas, including the building on the IU campus.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_use_of_the_swastika_in_the_early_20th_century
I don’t particularly see any problem with them amusing themselves with a bit of self parody even if it might upset somebody outside the group who takes offence at the imagery or language that’s used.
It’s as important to stand up for your enemies right to free speech as it is your own. Although there’s nothing wrong in thinking they might be fools.
If it were me. I’d go with that. John if you are listening, tell em that someone uploaded several photoshopped files onto an obscure corner inside your vast internet footprint, which were discovered by third parties before you became aware of their presence.
But first, I get the crossed penguins on your brim, but what is the Nike Swoosh thing on your lapel?
Lucia writes “The main danger is *p*0*r*n. While I suspect most regulars would survive this, I don’t want to deal with it.”
Well exactly. Who would want to see selected screenshots from “Dana does Dallas”?
papertiger writes “But first, I get the crossed penguins on your brim, but what is the Nike Swoosh thing on your lapel?”
That looks like the United Nations logo to me.
Mark writes “Something else that’s probably unimportant, or at least I don’t see what I can make of it, but notice that Rob thought ‘thousands’ of pictures were involved. Rob’d be in a position to know.”
It could be that they periodically clean out that “user_uploads” folder for the very reasons Lucia doesn’t want one 😉
SkS backed Peter Gleick’s admitted theft by way of ID fraud.
SkS has no standing to whine about someone walking in the front door of their website and obtaining images freely available on it.
Giving SkS the time of day on this is a waste of effort. Not only is SkS a vile little astroturfing site that makes up crap, they are whiny hypocrites.
As to the “context” of why SkS put their own faces on Nazi images, one can easily surmise that the context was not well intentioned towards skeptics. And that SkS is whining because the loss of control of the images they left laying around their website hurt their plan, which was likely an iteration of their support for fraud and identity theft.
I’m puzzled. Why was John Cook portrayed as Heinrich Himmler? Why not Joseph Goebbels?
I never paid much attention to SkS until they attacked me for daring to comment negatively on their consensus paper. I have noted that they come with prepared points, often repeating one another verbally; and that they often come in groups, sockpuppets and all. I also noted a few occasions at which the higher-ups corrected the lower-downs, who then instantly changed position. I also noticed how Dana refers to John’s unfinished PhD as gospel.
Maybe I’m not so puzzled after all.
Richard–
That is a mystery. We could learn the answer if we knew who made the image. Possibly the reason is that’s the first image he found.
So perhaps these pictures are based on a story where the Nazis are the good guys? Perhaps an undercover WW2 movie like the Dirty Dozen, or some other incident. Operation Valkyrie?
Lucia and Richard –
I think it is a simple artist’s choice, something Cook would know about.
When you select an image for Photoshop modification, you choose one with the most easily moddable elements and the least problems. A head shot where the face is looking directly into the camera is simplest, because a head shot where the face is turned to the side slightly is harder to match in.
It also makes it easy to choose/take a photo of yourself to match.
Doing a Google image search for Goebbels shows most of the images as being unsuitable, either due to angle, or due to the fact that Goebbels often didn’t wear a full uniform, but a suit.
http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=joeseph+goebbels&qs=n&form=QBIR&pq=joeseph+goebbels&sc=8-16&sp=-1&sk=
Himmler has many more suitable choices:
http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=himmler+heinrich&qs=IM&form=QBIR&pq=himmler&sc=8-7&sp=2&sk=HS1
Looking for John Cook images, this appears to be the source of his face:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/pics/lanecove_council.jpg
But the way the uniform and face are composited in the Cook parody image, it suggests that a higher resolution photo (from the source) was used. Since only a low-res version was put on the SS website, Cook was likely the holder of the original at full camera resolution.
@robhon seems like a nice fellow. But he’s delusional vis-a-vis SKS’s role in poisoning the conversation. That WUWT should ring up John Cook to let him know the front door was open and the creepy images might leak out is silly. Particularly given the respect SkS has shown Anthony Watts. Remember that they have hosted and promoted the Gleick papers and repeated the nonsense about Anthony’s nefarious financial connection to Heartland.
What befuddles me most is the groupthink that blinds them from acknowledging or even realizing their hypocrisies. @dana1981 doesn’t work for a consultancy with a large footprint in big oil? Andy Skuce (a seemingly nice fellow and a gentleman on Twitter) earned his $ in fossil fuel and now retired he blogs at SKS? To his credit there is a nice piece on SKS about his epiphany however he’s only “semi-retired” and the website promoting his services persists.
And then of course we have @robhon accusing Brandon of stealing those images by commiting a directory traverse hack. Meanwhile Mr. Honeycutt excuses SKS’s role, and thereby his own role, in the Gleick affair.
In the vernacular of that fellow from Canada, puuuhlease.
I suggest the following could be the eventual public explanation by Cook (et al ) about the ‘context’ of why Nazi images and for what purpose.
They (Cook & peeps) will claim the Nazi images were made for a self-parody and the reason for the parody involving Nazi themes is that was the maximum effect theme they could think of for a self parody.
That kind of spin, if used by Cook, makes them appear as somewhat self critical via self parody.
As to whether that kind of potential ‘context’ explanation would be the truth, that would need verification.
Whatever is used by Cook as a ‘context’ explanation, will it be consistent with the one told in confidence by Rob H to Richard Tol and separately to Lucia?
In humor, maybe the butler did it.
John
One other thought.
We have precedence for alarmists playing dress up as superhero in the infamous Supermandia episode:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/10/31/climate-craziness-of-the-week-supermandia/
And we also have precedence for the SkS kidz believing they are in a war, and that wartime tactics are justified and encouraged:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/09/15/we-need-a-conspiracy-to-save-humanity/
It certainly then isn’t a stretch to think that they consider climate skeptics as an inferior group of people, and to see themselves and their teamates as helping to rid the world of them. Why not embrace the most efficient extermination machine the world has ever seen and paint yourself in full military uniform? It seems like an easy mental jump to me, especially when you think nobody outside your “safe group” is ever going to see you in this dress up fantasy.
I think they failed the character test:
Character is doing the right thing when nobody’s looking. There are too many people who think that the only thing that’s right is to get by, and the only thing that’s wrong is to get caught. – J. C. Watts (no relation)
Anthony,
In a way, this cuts to the heart of why I find this so difficult to explain. Why not, you ask? I think because nobody honestly thinks they’re evil, and everybody thinks Nazi’s were evil. (sweeping generalizations, I know..) It’s a big gag reflex to get past. Assuming this is so, it’s difficult to imagine why Cook would even tolerate the association, much less encourage it by creating the image (if we choose to speculate that he did so). I think it’s why the imagination runs so quickly towards some sort of parody as an explanation.
Still, I haven’t been able to come up with what I consider to be a plausible explanation, so who knows? You may be right.
Anthony,
Face shape might also have something to do with it. John Cooks face shape is more roundish. Goebbels is sort of long and pointy.
I was not told who did it.
(Edited. I left the ‘not’ out!)
lucia:
It turns out you can merge just about any face with just about any head. The problem is that what you end up with may not be recognizable as the original person. I presume in this case you wanted to be able to say “that’s John Göbbels Cook, head of the SkS, propaganda wing of the United Nations” (or whatever they were going for), so that does limit your options somewhat.
Quick question of ethics. Suppose Skeptical Science came out and told us the story behind those images, and that story contradicted what lucia (and Richard Tol) were told in private. Would lucia still be bound by her promise of confidentiality?
I think not. If Rob Honeycutt misled her, the deal is void as he didn’t uphold his end. If Honeycutt told the truth but Skeptical Science did not, Honeycutt would be obligated to speak up else be part of the deception. He cannot, however, make that choice for lucia.
Or at least, that’s how I see it. Do you agree?
Brandon,
I’m not sure I agree. If I share a confidence with someone I trust under the proviso that they hold the confidence, it’s not clear that the actions of some other party should have any influence on that. I’m not even sure the deal is invalidated if Robb lied to Lucia. I’m not arguing that you’re necessarily wrong at this point, but I don’t think your reasoning is plainly/obviously valid either.
Ultimately, could the answer depend on how much one values the ‘credit score’ of their word, or is there an objective way to determine this?
Was it Rob’s end to tell the truth as he believed it, or to tell the truth without grace for the possibility that he had been misinformed or that somebody made an error? This is a
slipperydangerous thing to shoot from the hip on in my book (edit to correct mixed metaphors 🙂 ). I think the assumption ought to be good faith; tell the truth as you have reasonable grounds to believe.Brandon, interesting question. I would say that Lucia could say that the public statement does not agree with what she had been told privately, but she’d still be bound not to reveal it.
Brandon,
Out of curiosity, did Rob never PM you with his explanation?
No particular reason for my asking, just being nosy. 🙂
Mark
By gum I think you’ve cracked the case, Anthony! Of course they want to kill everyone who disagrees with them and of course they hold up the Nazis as super-effective overachievers in the killing-everyone-who-disagrees-with-you category. I don’t know why anyone hasn’t pointed out this obvious conclusion before! (Ahem, way to drop the ball, Brandon 🙁 )
I award you one million science points.
@ Boris, your typical snideness aside, if you were really interested in ending speculation on motives, you’d suggest to them to address the issue.
But apparently they don’t want to address the issue either. So any speculation is fair game.
Boris,
hah.
Because nobody on the alarmist side would ever want to kill everyone who disagrees with them, that’d be laughably absurd. Nobody would suggest it’s treason to disagree about climate science. Ridiculous melodrama, right?
Good one.
Mark Bofill, nope. He never told me anything. He didn’t even tell me why he told lucia and Richard Tol yet made up excuses to avoid telling me.
On the issue of breaking confidentiality, remember, the deal was for Rob Honeycutt to reveal the context of those images. If what he told lucia wasn’t the context of those images, he voided the deal by failing to uphold his end. A person is not bound to an agreement if the other party has already broken it.
Moreover, lucia agreed to keep the context of the images secret. If what he told her wasn’t actually the context of the images, she has no obligation to keep what he told her a secret. Imagine he had told her, “I like to wear dresses.” The fact she had agreed to keep the context secret would not mean she had to keep that a secret.
holocaust denier might have something to do with it.
in a weird twisted way.
na. i vote parody.
Okay. I hereby suggest it.
Good point. We can speculate all kinds of crazy things. That seems fair.
Wait, didn’t Anthony get some video taken down at You Tube over copyright issues? Maybe he has some insight on the issue.
Boris,
I had a comment in response that got hung up in moderation. Why is what Anthony suggests crazy?
No, “Boris” it is still there, what I learned was that whiners such as yourself made such a big deal about me making a claim (which was valid, as my image was used w/o my permission) that the Streisand effect kicked in and boosted WUWT’s traffic like 3x at the time. Seeing all that, I let the complaint expire as it wasn’t worth the effort.
The SkS kidz probably don’t want to risk drawing attention to their closet Nazism, so I doubt they’ll want to do DMCA.
Anthony Watts,
One difficulty for them is that copies now exist in many locations. Fresh one one will spring up. Even though they would face no risk for filing takedowns (there isn’t even a legal penalty for filing knowing false ones) filing take downs would be an endless job. And as soon as they got one set down, they’d be filing news ones.
Ultimately, if they believe there is a copyright violation, they need to sue. And even if they could prevail at law in those suits (which I doubt),other people discussing the suit would likely display the more controversial ones when commenting on the suit.
Brandon,
Yes, you can make a reasonable argument about it.
The question I’ve got is, why do we care about keeping our word?
I can think of two reasons,
1) For the satisfaction of knowing you’re a person with integrity (in which case, your argument apparently satisfies).
2) For the value created by the perception that you keep your word / credit score idea. In which case, I think it’s dangerous to play conditional games if you value your ‘keep your word’ score. Even if you’re convinced you’re absolutely justified in fact, the perception matters.
As usual, I’m more or less thinking out loud and it’s always entirely possible that I’m completely full of it. 🙂
Brandon,
Under the covenant of good faith and fair dealing that is not necessarily true. If he made a good faith effort to uphold his end, then the other party must make a good faith effort to uphold their end of the bargain.
Well… SkS has copied bits of Josh
http://www.skepticalscience.com/images/_core/team_portrait/scooterboy.jpg
The horror!!
Lucia,
I think Josh marks everything as copyrighted. Lets hope for a suit!
I made it to the SkS Team Portrait directory! What an honour. Not sure if I am in the Hall of Fame, Shame or Blame though.
Jesus . You all are talking like Cook and or one of his trustees was dressing up the crew as Nazis for a goof, and or to show his mad fotoshop skilz.
That can’t be what happened. Nobody could be that stupid and yet strangely high fuctioning.
papertiger (Comment #118676),
You say SkS is bright and clever.
Yet SkS seamlessly supports actual fraud by their pal Peter Gleick, and still whines about their openly available, non-copy righted images being seen, commented on and shown. And the ultimate irony of SkS, is that it is a site bought and paid for by alarmist interests, and run by a cartoonist. Yet SkS is regularly confused with being a blog that actually offers more than paid for hackery.
hunter, the SkSers believe what they are told, that Gleick received the documents from a source.
Brandon, if Rob himself issues a different reason, then sure. However, if SS says it, then that shouldn’t be enough. Now, it is possible Rob has told Lucia and Tol different statements, so that when a reason leaks out, he would know who broke confidence.
Hunter – I said high functioning – not the same as clever or bright.
Sort of like an illiterate who remembers great swaths of sermons spoken in church, and uses that knowledge to claim to be an authority on the Bible.
You’ll never hear me describe SkS as something other than bought out hacks.
They are AGW Public Relations astroturf. Useful for scumbags and culls to wave in the air as a talisman to ward off skeptics. That’s what makes these photoshop pics being self authored by someone at SkS implausible in my mind.
It’s fatally off message, and throws doubt on all the other half truths and outright fictions SkS traffics in.
AW:
“their closet Nazism”
Well, with Brandon’s help you’ve outed them. Now everyone knows the SkS guys are Nazis and the only reason they picked up the global warming cause is to…..exterminate Jews….or something?
Mark:
“Why is what Anthony suggests crazy?”
Besides the obvious things that you yourself pointed out?
Isn’t it clear than AW–and a lot of commenters here, frankly–have fallen into this “people I disagree with are heartless enemies” mindset? And that the weight of this viewpoint is distorting reason and logic? The alternative theory is no better–that AW knows that it is unreasonable to accuse SkS of being actual real-life Nazis, but does so anyway out of a desperate need to make them seem like awful, awful people so that his side gets bigger or more pageviews, or whatever the hell it is bloggers do this stuff for. Don’t get me wrong, photoshopping yourself into Nazi garb is embarrassing and stupid and even a little bit sickly funny if guys you don’t like get caught. Lord knows, I’m sniggering at just the image of AW’s mustachey face pasted onto a black and white portrait of Pol Pot–and what if he, like, did it himself and then, left his website open and somebody, say tamino, found it? I would post many a snarky comment on that day, believe me.
But I wouldn’t seriously think that AW respected the ruthless efficiency of The Killing Fields. That’d be nuts.
John Vetterling, you bring up an important point. There’s a difference in being wrong and in being misleading. The latter excuses any breach of confidentiality. The former is less clear.
Mark Bofill, people accept there are conditions on promises of confidentiality. For example, nobody would expect lucia to keep what she was told a secret if it became part of a criminal investigation. That’s why I think this is worth talking about. It helps us be clear and consistent about our standards.
MikeN, as long as Rob Honeycutt remains a key member of the SkS (I still refuse to call them SS) team, there’s no practical difference between him giving a different story and them doing so.
Boris
Invade Poland, Czechoslovakia and Austria?
Anyway, maybe someday, someone will write up the history of Nazi allusions during climate change debates showing all the uses on both sides.
(E.G.
Hansen death car allusions.
Spate of usages by warmists side in 2010:
http://underthebanyan.wordpress.com/2010/12/10/the-nazi-threat-and-climate-change-denial/
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0210/33371.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1198150/Battle-climate-change-like-fighting-Nazis-Al-Gore-urges-world-leaders-unite.html
http://www.sciencealert.com.au/opinions/20101412-21685.htm
Then all the Monckton usages in 2011:
(http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/8594194/Outrage-as-Lord-Monckton-calls-Australian-climate-change-adviser-a-Nazi.html ) Google for more.
The current SkS images.
I’m sure it would make a splendid article for a social science or history MA thesis. Maybe the student can get the SkS guys to reveal the context along with supporting discussion from the forum and not pledge them to super-secrecy. Or. Not.
MikeN, Gleick admitted to ID theft as a way to sneak into Heartland. SkS backed him on his fraud.
The docs ( which were obviously his, but he is allowed, like most lefty sniveling hacks, to wiggle off the hook) are not even of issue as to pointing out the hypocrisy of our SkS pals.
papertiger,
I think the only reason those images were at the website of a cartoonist hack were to be eventually dumped out someplace in yet another AGW promoter’s fraudulent efforts to discredit skeptics by yet more phony docs.
Boris is obviously closeted from reality and a victim of his own snark-fu. He’s been that way for years.
It is now ~10 days since the public announcement of the existence of the Nazi images at Cook’s site.
It is the weekend in Australia; a Friday afternoon in the US/Can; a Friday evening in Europe.
The timing is perfect for a low profile weekend PR release by Cook’s Skeptical[-less] Science site that would give their ‘context’ explanation.
So, given the frequent high sensitivity in the Western World to any slightest possibility of appearing to have even indirectly implied sympathy with Nazi concepts, it is surprising that Cook has not made a public open statement yet.
The delay, I think, is probably due to Cook’s organization struggling with a credible ‘context’ explanation that will survive more than a superficial analysis..
John
I got blocked by Rob Honnicutt on Twitter for tweeting:
“@robhon like @lucialiljegren I think the context is a private joke following being called SS rather than SkS. I will follow so you can DM”
Since then I have had a reasonably courteous exchange with him via email. I asked if I was right about the context and Rob said:
“Your guess was only partly right about the images. It wasn’t specifically related to so many of Watts followers using the SS moniker. The images came more in context of Monckton’s trip to Australia where he was accusing people advocating action on AGW of being Nazi’s. Also understand that every single author at SkS, at some point commenting on other sites, has been accused of being a Nazi. Heartland people regularly make the same accusations. Naomi Oreskes book, Merchants of Doubt catalogs many instances where prominent people (who should know better) are also publicly making the same accusations. It’s an incessant insanity constantly being bandied about by skeptics.”
I asked if I could go ahead and share this, mainly to end the speculation and he said that I could adding:
“I didn’t make a stipulation that you couldn’t before saying these things. I just want out from the flying monkey scene.”
Flying monkeys. That has to be a cartoon.
‘Flying monkeys’… hummm. The SKS folks sure do know how to offend people.
.
I wonder: Could the SKS folks ever agree to (honestly) compromise on any issue of substance? My guess: Not a chance; ideologues do not compromise. So the only rational response is to ignore them. I do wonder if they can appreciate this. Probably not.
Josh,
Thanks.
John
@Josh
If it is that simple, why not publicly address it to end speculation? Their lack of response is only making the issue worse for them.
SteveF may be right. They may not be capable.
Boris,
~sigh~ Did you not even glance at the URL’s? I understand not clicking, but I’d have thought you’d have at least rolled over them.
Parncutt wanted to talk in a serious way about the death penalty for deniers. Activists think congressmen who question AGW are guilty of treason. These are facts Boris. You can pretend that Anthony’s speculations are absurd, but it’s your pretense that’s really absurd.
Josh,
Now that Rob told you can post: Monckton is the same thing Rob told me. Which means basically, “Some one made them because they find the accusation we are Nazis ridiculous.” Making the images still a little strange, but people are strange sometimes especially when getting together to act in closed groups.
I have no idea why Rob wanted to keep this context to himself.
On the other bit where he complains that SkS or AGW activist get called Nazis: It seems to me Nazi allusions emanate from both ‘sides’ of the debate. Maybe not SkS– but certainly, there were tons of AGW activists bringing up Nazis in 2009-2010. (See links above. Or just google.)
I’m not going to Google to find out who does this most or first or whatever. It’s probably impossible and pointless. People like to say their side is opposed to whatever it is Nazis would want to do, be etc. They like to paint the other side as either being Nazis, acting like Nazis.
(gimme a ‘D’!) Wow, that’s a shame. (gimme an ‘E’!) I couldn’t begin to imagine what it must be like to be subject to an incessant insane slur like that. (gimme an ‘N’!) I mean, just imagine it! (gimme an ‘I’!) Imagine constantly being called a Nazi. (gimme an ‘E’!) Nothing in my experience prepares me to appreciate that. (gimme an ‘R’!)
Gotta go, I’m going to go cry the SkS guys a river.
Mark B, v funny. I did point out to Rob that the liberal use of the D word at SkS, and elsewhere, is very much the same thing but he really really does not get this.
lucia:
And France,Belgium, Holland, Denmark, Norway, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Russia, the Ukraine, Georgia, Yugoslavia, Greece, [others?]
Or in fewer words, Boris is a dumba** sometimes.
In his email to Josh, is Honeycutt indirectly implying the team at Cook’s site tends to think there is some sort of conspiracy of skeptics to portray SkSers as Nazi sympathizers? I would like clarification of what it is they believe in wrt to it being a conspiracy.
We skeptics are already well aware that the leadership team at Cook’s site have maintained there is a Big Oil funded skeptic conspiracy to both deny CAGW and to attack the ‘science’ at Cook’s site.
I would have this question for Honeycutt: Rob H, like Cook’s team have claimed that Big Oil is behind CAGW (denier) skeptics , do you now imply there is a Big Oil funded conspiracy of skeptics smearing Cook’s team as Nazi?
John
John Whitman–
Rob’s not here. 🙂
Lucia,
I was assuming there are sometimes frequent visitors to SkS reading posts and comments here at your venue.
Perhaps some at this thread who might pass along info.
John
I’m confused. Is Rob Honeycutt seriously telling us these images were made in response to being called Nazis? As in, they were so offended at being called Nazis they decided to play Nazi dress up?
Seriously?
John ,
Those guys are Nazis. Nazis don’t visit denier sites, not even lukewarm denier sites.
Lucia,
I have to call them Nazi at least once a week, just to hold up our end.
PT
Re: Brandon Shollenberger (Comment #118746)
That’s what I’m saying. How stupid to you have to be to be a cheerleader for the IPCC and global warming?
Stupid enough to dress up as a Nazi in your spare time for giggles.
Is it too late for a name change?
This is a fun game. Let’s call the SkS ers Klansmen from now on, and take bets on when a JPG shows up of them dresses in bedsheets.
aww. No fair.
Brandon publicly asked if the images were made as ‘examples of what deniers’ would do. Isn’t this more or less what Rob is telling us? Deniers call them Nazi’s.
Except he said Brandon was wrong. Totally threw me off the track.
No fair. I’m telling. :p
Actually, now that I read it again I see I might have misunderstood what Brandon was getting at. Oh well.
Thing is, he resembles Ernest Borgnine enough that I wouldn’t have known it was a photoshop.
@josh, lucia
Rob told me the same story, adding that it was a lame joke. I told him I don’t think it was funny, and that lame is an understatement.
The SkS gang now shows themselves to be not just extremists supporting fraud and theft. When off their astroturf script, they are also dim wits who can are dense enough to think calling skeptics ‘deniers’ is cool, dress themselves up as Nazi kooks, and not get the irony of just how stupid they look.
And the President himself tweeted out on how clever Cook was in helping fabricate a phony science paper. Go figure. No wonder the AGW extremists look dumber and dumber as the issue drags on.
Is Ahnold the tailpipe a contributor to SkS?
@Alexej Buergin,
The former Governor will come to regret how that particular comment of his reminds people about where he grew up and his family’s past. It is odd but no longer surprising that AGW fanatics rely on imagery and policy solutions from that era.
Parncutt wanted to talk in a serious way about the death penalty for deniers. Activists think congressmen who question AGW are guilty of treason. These are facts Boris. You can pretend that Anthony’s speculations are absurd, but it’s your pretense that’s really absurd.
What does this have to do with SkS? I’m sure I could go onto the Stormfront message boards and ask them their opinion on global warming and find that they’re on your side. But who cares? We all know there are people who believe crazy things, but that doesn’t mean that everyone who disagrees with you believes crazy things.
“Skeptics” have been playing this game forever. Find the craziest believer of AGW and smear the science with them. Fine, I guess. But if you’re going to take that bus, best to get off at the stop BEFORE you yourself reach the center of Crazytown.
Did you not even glance at the URL’s?
Do tell. Just be careful.
Boris,
Both ‘sides’ do this.
Oh, so SkS is into Nazism because of its unrivaled success in taking over other countries? Seems like that theory lies in the same insane zip-code as the one proposed by your strapping Internet hero.
Sorry… someone got banned. I’m setting a rule on maximum post variables and guessed 10. Well… it’s at least 11. (I thought my testing a comment would do it. )
I unbanned the IP. I’m watching for this as I set the rule. But a few will get caught.
“Both ‘sides’ do this.”
That’s absolutely true.
Boris,
Nobody said it does. But when you encounter multiple instance of crazies like Parncutt it’s not unreasonable to wonder if you’ve bumped into another instance, when faced with private photoshopped images apparently identifying with Nazi’s.
Boris,
Be careful of what? I said, did you not even glance at the URL’s because your response:
Appears to demonstrate that you missed the sarcasm. By glancing at the links the sarcasm should have been obvious. Don’t know if you’re dumb or just pretending to be dumb, don’t care. Hope this clarifies.
“Suppose for example SkS’s server hosted something I thought would be perfect on a t-shirt.”
Or even on a certain type of paper, that type that normally comes in a roll….97% of skeptics might buy it, possibly.
I have no idea what you’re talking about. I didn’t see any urls at all–was that the post in moderation? Because I don’t think it was visible when I made my comment. Or maybe I just missed it. I was referring to an earlier post of yours:
which was an all too brief moment of sanity in the comments. But then you ruined it.
I’ve still got no clue what sarcasm you are referring to, though.
And further, the argument that it’s reasonable to think that the guys at SkS have secret Nazi-crushes because a music professor in Australia has some bizzaro death-penalty-by-science fantasy is just the kind of mental wizardry that gets some of you guys into trouble when it comes to actually considering the science and the policy surrounding global warming. So don’t.
Ok. Fair enough then, sorry for the misunderstanding.
Look Boris, it’s wierd that they had those pics. We live in a strange world where music professors in Australia sometimes have bizzaro death-penalty-by-science fantasies. I don’t understand why you think it should be a given that SkS aren’t a bunch of weirdos, any more than it should be a given that australian music professors aren’t a bunch of weirdos. I’ve got prima facia evidence in my book of wierdness with the nazi pics.
I don’t know the SkS guys at all, with the possible exception of Neal J. King, who I’ve spent some time talking with. Maybe you do know them, so maybe it seems completely absurd to you to think anything strange about them. All I know is, a bunch of Nazi-ish images were private on their board. And that’s pretty weird, and it’s hard to make sense of it except by thinking some pretty weird things as far as I can see. You can dance around it all you want to, you can scoff at my ‘mental wizardry’, whatever. It doesn’t change the fact that nobody I know does stuff like that.
This is a test comment. I’m going to edit and see if I trigger a ban.
I’m editing. I hope I don’t ban myself.
Now you know why Eli is a bunny.
We do not know why Eli is a bunny and neither does his therapist nor his psychologist.
I don’t deny they might be weird, Mark. But if I’m going to believe they hold the Nazis up as heroes, I need a little bit more evidence than that. If you want to call them weird, that’s fair. If you want to say they high-five each other and cheer after watching The Diary of Anne Frank, then you’re objectively weirder than they are.
Remember that Cook is some sort of cartoonist in his real life. Playing with images is what he does, at some level.
Given that he does in fact back using fraud, it is only fair to think he would have used the images as part of a fraud action, to demonstrate he can do more than merely assist or back frauds like Lewadowsky and Gleick.
When even hunter’s implausible theory isn’t as crazy as yours, it’s time for some introspection.
Boris, you’ve convinced me. It’s not crazy for SkS to photoshop themselves as Nazis, it’s crazy to think it means anything.
Five fingers, O’Brien, I see five fingers now, you can give it a rest.
Eli: “Now you know why Eli is a bunny.”
I don’t think being a bunny helps you escape the symbolism:
http://distressedleftist.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/nazi-rabbit.jpg
Ah yes, the friends we have
Eli,
You never had me fooled with the bunny thing anyway. My sister had a rabbit when we were kids that bit the bejezus out of my finger one time.
I’m keeping an eye on you Eli.
Eli, I didn’t know that guy was a friend of yours, thanks for sharing.
Eli:
That was a creepy picture, Mein Hare.
Mark Bofill (Comment #118819) August 19th, 2013 at 3:12 pm
” We live in a strange world where music professors in Australia sometimes have bizzaro death-penalty-by-science fantasies.”
You live in a strange world. In my hemisphere, music professors are models of good sense.
Hi Nick,
It’s OK, Boris has already deprogrammed me. I’m not crazy anymore. But thanks for your concern. We live in the same world now.
Is Rob H’s explanation of the ‘context’ of the Nazi images at Cook’s site sufficient to answer basic questions?
Does his explanation answer the question of how could an experienced blog owner not see the problems with the images ?
It does not explain that. And Cook has not apologized for the disaster to his readership.
An implication is that Cook and his team actually, on a fundamental level, cannot perceive the problem of the images. So, I ask why can’t they perceive a problem?
Is it because the think anything they do is justified because they have faith that their mission is noble? It appears so.
John
John,
It’s all in the way you count the fingers. When they get you through room 101 it’ll all become clear.
One: There’s no problem with the images, it was a joke. Those guys are under a lot of stress because deniers like Monckton of Brenchley call them Nazis. It’s difficult to keep up the hard work, denouncing fake skeptics and deniers day after day while people are demonizing you with terms like that.
Two: There’s no disaster, the images never existed in the first place. It was private internal SkS material and since nobody has any right to know about it, nobody knows about it. Cook has adhered to this policy through several leaks and in his determination to ignore the crazy reality perceived by the crazy deniers he has achieved transcendent Zen mastery of reality. There is no disaster, the images never existed in the first place.
Three: Since the images were obtained by sophisticated illicit hacking activities using sophisticated hacking software that doubtless was procured via the use of dirty Big Oil dollars, they are fruit of the poisonous tree that have no significance except to demonstrate the utter lack of principles and diabolical nature of the nefarious deniers.
Four: Since there’s no disaster, the images never existed in the first place, the images were obtained by nefarious means, and the images were just a joke, anybody who’s got anything derogatory to say about it is indulging in mental wizardry. They’re crazy.
That’s all five fingers.
Mark,
You left out the thumb.
.
.
Oh… I see what you did there. 😉
“It’s not crazy for SkS to photoshop themselves as Nazis, it’s crazy to think it means anything.”
Your specific theory was crazy and stupid. So crazy and stupid that you want to substitute the word “anything” rather than mention again your and Anthony’s crazy, stupid theory.
Boris,
Boris my amigo, you are missing my point. From your perspective, of course my theories are going to be crazy and stupid. I’m trying to explain something quite strange in the absence of good data. In the eyes of anyone who views SkS as a positive force in the blogosphere, any theory to explain why Cook has photoshopped images of himself and SkS as Nazi’s is likely to be crazy and stupid, this isn’t all that interesting an observation to me.
In my book, the interesting observation is that you exhibit no curiosity whatsoever about this disturbing event, but rather focus your energies on accusing anyone trying to understand what happened of being crazy and stupid. Why? Tribalism gone wild? Is there a limit? At what point would you start to feel uneasy about adhering to your conviction that SkS is a group to stand by? What would it take, just hypothetically speaking?
Mark writes “What would it take, just hypothetically speaking?”
I’m thinking when they’re discovered in the basement of secret SkS headquarters working on their machine to re-establish the global warming. Working on the burninator
Skeptics can play too. How would you react if it came to light that Anthony had Nazi photoshopped images of himself and WUWT?
Speaking for myself, I’d certainly hope there was a darn good explanation, and I’d certainly want to hear it. Regardless of the explanation, I’m pretty sure I’d privately curse AW for doing such a damnfool thing, and yeah, it probably would color my perspective and cause me to distance myself somewhat from WUWT. The holy grail for GW propagandists; it might well accomplish what calling me a denier does not.
Mark Bofill:
Well, given that photoshopping images of oneself and SkS as Nazi’s is itself “crazy and stupid”, let alone leave them in a publicly assessable directory, which is beyond “crazy and stupid”, what’s a theorist to do?
Yes, and you and science blogger Anthony Watts are choosing the stupidest theory available–that the SkS crew sincerely admire Nazi killing efficiency.
Yeah, that’s your problem. And Watts too. You hate these guys SO MUCH that you want to think that they must be super secret Nazis bent on world domination through the elimination of noble skeptics such as yourselves. Did you also think Prince Harry was a super secret Nazi? Or was he just some guy who made a dumb mistake?
Does anyone actually believe what Boris claims they believe, or is he just mocking delusions his mind created?
Boris,
Take a deep breath buddy. You’ve got too much testosterone flowing or something there, I think it’s clouding your thinking.
Boris,
I got it that you think that. I promise, I won’t forget you think that during the remainder of the conversation, even if you go for a post or two without reminding me. If the problem is that you’re having trouble remembering it, by all means, keep reiterating to remind yourself.
Okay, doesn’t address my question. Pardon me for saying so Boris, but you don’t know me from Adam. You’ve got no basis for suggesting I hate anybody, or to tell me what I’m trying or not trying to do. And also for the record, I know nothing whatsoever about Prince Harry, and I don’t care to. Do us both a favor, speak for yourself.
Okay finally! Thanks for your answer.
Hey Boris,
and
So, is the difference that you hold WUWT in contempt? You tell me it’s not tribalism, OK. It’d be funny in the case of WUWT but it doesn’t appear to be funny to you in the case of SkS, am I correct in thinking that?
Thanks.
I think Boris is conflating “hate” with hilarity. We are laughing at these bozos. Note the string of Josh cartoons about SkS.
And every time I see “Boris”, I think to myself “moose and squirrel”, and laugh to myself. I laugh when I see that picture of Greenman3610 when it looks like he’s in some sort of rainbow haze in his basement, and I laugh when I see Al Gore say things like the Earth’s mantle is “millions of degrees”.
I laugh when I see SkS traffic numbers compared to WUWT’s. I laugh at their attempts at rebuttals at why their 97% consensus is science and how “deniers” don’t believe the moon landing happened because they sampled non-skeptic web sites that said it is so.
Climate alarmism has a entertainment value to it, and laughter is always the best medicine. It’s like watching an episode of “The Prisoner” with Benny Hill as #6 and Al Gore as the menacing weather balloon that keeps people from leaving the island.
Boris, I laugh in your general direction.
Brandon:
You could probably answer this for yourself by reading the thread.
Mark:
Wait, you feel free to speculate that people you don’t know are secret Nazis, but you take offense at my mild speculation? My “basis” is what you write. I could be wrong, though.
Of course. But, as I’ve stated, I could understand why others would find SkS’s flub funny.
Aw:
The “hate” shows in your stupid theory that the SkS guys are closet Nazis. And in your comments. And arguing that Hansen violated the Hatch Act and other inanities.
Don’t worry. Natasha and I laugh whenever anyone cites your blog as a reliable source.
Boris,
Much better. 🙂 But notice that you don’t find pics of me photoshopped up in hate gear, where insanely enough we have exactly that in SkS’s case. See, if you had such pics of me, I think you’d have at least some basis to make that sort of argument.
LOL!
According to Boris, this isn’t “hate”:
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/monkeys.jpg
I challenge him like Mark Bofill to find something of substance. Suggesting Hansen may have violated the Hatch Act is a point for discussion, not hate.
Pretty lame Boris (funny too).
Since SkS won’t come out and explain themselves ina public statement, any theory about why they play dress up in Nazi uniforms (not once, but multiple times) is also a valid discussion point.
Like I said, they could easily put an end to speculation, but they seem unwilling to address their own self-made problems.
Boris,
Let me support the position you insist is stupid and crazy with an additional argument.
What is hate speech?
Wikipedia gives me this:
What is discrimination?
The wiki says:
So, in what sense is calling skeptics ‘deniers’ not hate speech?
Okay. So I find that a group that promotes hate speech has decided to photoshop themselves in Nazi regalia, and still you insist that wondering if they idealize Nazi’s is stupid and crazy?
What would it take for it not to be crazy to wonder about this in your book?
(all questions asked in this comment are meant as honest question, not rhetorical)
Brandon,
No, not really. At least I don’t. I don’t think Anthony particularly believes it either, but as he says I think it’s fair game for speculation.
I just like to argue. 🙂
Mark Bofill, Boris suggests I could find my answer by reading this thread. That would require someone here have shown they believe what he claims they believe (as even if nobody here believed them, someone elsewhere could). That means we can be sure he believes someone here has demonstrated such a belief.
The only question that’s left is do Boris’s delusions consist of fabricating beliefs for commenters here, or do they consist of fabricating commenters all together?
I think that the only explanation must be that John Cook is coauthoring a paper with an expatriate Australian with the title:
“Sceptics think it’s weird that we play dress-up in Nazi uniforms – therefore (climate) science is a hoax: An anatomy of the motivated rejection of science through adverse cognitive association with the Third Reich”
The following Draft Abstract was not left in a cache on SkS:-
Dressing up like Nazi’s is almost always very unwise. Thinking that dressing like Nazi’s might be funny, or make some kind of meaningful political point, is just dumb. OK, maybe the SKS crew were preparing for an audition in a movie about the WWII era… But I kinda doubt it.
.
Mostly I think this sort of episode simply shows very poor judgement; but we already knew that about the SKS folks based on their thinking/analysis on other, somewhat less provocative, subjects. Nice to see that at least they are consistent in their poor judgement, pretty much independent of subject matter.
Paul_k – :> If that isn’t the most plausible explanation I’ve heard so far, it’s definitely the funniest!
You know actually, the few times I conversed with Cook on the Jupiter and Mars pages, back in the early days of SkS, I found him likeable and forthcoming.
It’s only after I came back later and ran into some of his third party moderators, and wholesale revisions of posts and comments that I started to develop a distaste.
Regarding the question of an albedo feedback — I expect that there are satellite measurements of albedo, or at least cloudiness, for the tropics. If there is a feedback, it should show up strongly in an annual cycle. January insolation in the tropics is about 7% higher than July, iirc. Does anyone have this information, or a link to raw data from which it can be computed?
This is a really dumb question. No, calling people “deniers” is not hate speech. Perhaps to save time I should also note that calling Kentucky basketball fans obnoxious is not hate speech, nor is calling people who use mustard based BBQ sauce tasteless morons. Calling liberals naive, calling libertarians heartless, calling conservatives pushy: all not hate speech.
Calling climate scientists cheats and liars: definitely not hate speech.
Clear now?
Now see,Brandon, if you had taken my advice, then you wouldn’t have made yourself look dumb. In this very thread, you would have found Anthony’s post:
Or, if you had thought for a second, you would realize that if I were fabricating people’s arguments that they might have actually mentioned this fact in their posts.
Paul_K (Comment #118900)
August 22nd, 2013 at 7:57 pm
With his post Paul puts this whole episode in good perspective and provides a few chuckles at the same time.
Boris,
Not really. I don’t know if calling Kentucky basketball fans obnoxious, people who use mustard based BBQ sauce tasteless morons, liberals naive, libertarians heartless, conservatives pushy, or climate scientists cheats and liars are hate speech or not. I don’t see what that has to do with it. Are you saying that categorizing calling skeptics deniers as hate speech would necessarily mean that all of these other examples should be categorized as hate speech? If so, it’s unclear to me why this refutes my argument. Because these examples are not commonly thought of as hate speech?
Would that mean that derogatory racial expressions prior to the civil rights movements were not hate speech, because they were not commonly thought of as hate speech?
If a group of like minded bigots privately use derogatory homophobic expressions, and none of them commonly think they are indulging in hate speech, are they not? Is it just a subjective matter of perception?
I’m not fond of the distinction and term ‘hate speech’ in the first place. But it’s recognized in this world we live in and defined a certain way, I don’t make the rules. How does calling skeptics ‘deniers’ not fit the definition of hate speech? Forget about common usage; I agree that it is not commonly thought to be hate speech and I don’t see how that matters.
If you could give me an argument, maybe with some logic or evidence supporting it, that’d be preferable to just a flat assertion. Just sayin.
There is a simple hypothesis which would explain how and why the “SkS Nazi images” came to be created, how they came to reside in an open directory on the SkS server, and why the SkS crowd proves unable to issue a simple public statement putting all speculation to rest.
This is that (Rampant speculation) John Cook found it amusing to create and share such perverse images with some of his cohorts, but they can’t bring themselves to admit that the genius of SkS, eager Lewandowsky puppet John Cook, not only did such a thing but wa stupid enough to leave the evidence in an open directory.
Boris:
He apparently believe I look dumb because a quote from Anthony Watts justifies claiming Watts believes the things described in these quotes:
Me? I say you have to be delusional to think that quote indicates Watts believes the Skeptical Science team are “actual real-life Nazis.”
There’s a lot more to be said, but seriously, you have to be insane if you think anything anyone here has said indicates they think the Skeptical Science team are actual Nazis.
Actual Nazis!
Brandon!!! A totally holy crap site has been discovered!
I tried to post a comment that was just “?”. I was told not to post in all caps. How do I post a lower case question mark?
😀
Hmm… Don’t know. That must be a wordpress feature. I’m not sure how to control it! That said, on my keyboard, lower case ? is /.
You could try posting .? The . is lower case!
The “holy crap” site is tested here:
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2013/going-to-risk-taking-down-the-site/
I need to add text. I wanted to test, then discuss. (And now it’s dinner time!! )
The “actual real life Nazis” was a bit of a hyperbolic flourish, but everything else you quoted is just restating Watts’ theory. If Watts’ theory embarrasses you, take it up with him. And perhaps consider not associating yourself with someone with his abysmal track record on the science.
To be clear, arguing that the SkS guys secretly admire Nazis for their ability to exterminate their enemies is JUST AS CRAZY as thinking they are actual real life Nazis.
Mark,
“Hate speech” has a specific legal definition and, as a result of that definition and its associations, has a connection to racial and religious bigotry. So, “hate speech” really only applies to groups that have traditionally experienced these kind of attacks, or basic, fundamental characteristics (e.g. gender, ethnicity, religion, etc.) It is also associated with intimidation and threats.
Calling someone a name is not “hate speech” in this sense, even though the name-caller may hate the other person, and, indeed, may be speaking. You can certainly call it “hate speech” as it is technically true, but then you look a bit silly, as it appears you are trying to associate the person arguing against you with traditional hate groups like the KKK.
Boris,
I observe a common thread in your comments:
The common thread in my view is this premise you’re operating on that everybody you’re talking to on this thread is motivated by a desire to look smart, or at least not look dumb.
At least in my case, you can spare yourself the effort. I don’t care. I say dumb things all the time. I do it deliberately sometimes for various reasons, like when I think it’s funny. I do it involuntarily sometimes, and benefit from doing so by learning something. My wife tells me I say dumb things in my sleep. I’m pretty sure my pets get exasperated with me for the dumb things I say to them. So on.
I don’t know you well enough to speculate why you appear to think this idea is such an important thing to focus on, so I won’t. But to offer a friendly suggestion, loosen up my friend. Life is too short to spend time worrying about whether or not the other peacocks are impressed with your tail feathers.
Boris,
This seems reasonable to me. Ok.
Yes, that’s what I was trying to argue.
Okay, I’ll agree that calling skeptics deniers isn’t ‘hate speech’. Thanks.
Boris, I quoted you claiming Watts believes the Skeptical Science team are Nazis twice. You said one of them was a hyperbolic flourish, but you then said all of your other claims were mere restatements of what Watts has said.
And you’re so worried about people looking stupid.
Boris,
I’ve got a response hung up in moderation that basically concedes the point we’re arguing about h8te speech. Your last points appear valid enough for me.
Mark Bofill, two things. First, I have no problem with appearing stupid except that it usually means I’m wrong about something. And of course, I want to correct mistakes I make.
Second, don’t be so quick to concede the hate speech issue. Boris is defining it more narrowly than is appropriate. For example, hate speech covers groups like goths in the UK. There is no clear difference between a group like that and a group like skeptics.
Brandon,
Honestly, I went with the hate speech thing with a specific rhetorical trap in mind that Boris didn’t fall for. Yeah, I do evil things like that sometimes, so sue me. 😉 But since he had the grace to give me a reasonable argument I figured I’d just drop it.
Some interesting background: John Cook ran a cartoon website for 15 years called sev.com.au. Nearly every page is on the wayback machine several times and you can just navigate the site from the wayback page. He ran a competition on the meaning of Sevloid/Sev in 1997, leaving hints around.
http://web.archive.org/web/20010617225638/http://www.sev.com.au/toonzone/sevcomp/meaningofsev.asp
I believe the meaning is Dummy/Dumb. An original cartoon of his refers to the Sevloid Galaxy as:
“When discovering other races and their rich resources, they embarked on a campaign of galactic conquest. Their superior speed and weaponry, fueled by their seemingly unlimited supply of antimatter, allowed them to easily overpower all races they encountered. Dominating the entire Arm, they refered (sic) to the vanquished races of the Metro Arm as Sevloidâ€
Notice the S of his Sevloid Galaxy and the use of the ensign (double S) by his §ev fans.
During the contest he put up erroneous guesses of the meaning and one was by ‘anonymous’ and JC’s response:
“Anonymous: Contagious, Infectious, Repititous Disease
Sev Note: I almost wish it was.”
Like he almost wished that being dumb was a disease and could kill a person.
Obviously JC became a believer in CC later on and began SkS to debunk myths for his new cause. So yeah, I can see JC fantasizing about being a Nazi to eliminate dumb ‘deniers’….
And as for his skepticism and science, here he explains how he came to believe that Jesus rose from the dead,: (click on the red button near the bottom to continue to the next pages)
http://web.archive.org/web/20010302151658/http://www.sev.com.au/toonzone/sevfiles/book/believe1.asp
“To begin with, I’ll reveal a bit about my past to put everything in context. I was raised in a family with no particular religious beliefs. You could say I started out as a clean slate. However, at a fairly young age of around 10, I became a Christian. Curiously, my conversion was precipitated by a secular TV drama about the afterlife. It told dramatic stories of people who died and briefly experienced the afterlife before being resuscitated.
Some went to heaven (a bright, vaseline lensed cloud) while others were unlucky enough to go to hell (a rocky, fiery cavern with badly costumed monsters). The poor production values were sufficiently impressive enough to convince a young boy that he didn’t want to spend eternity with those monsters! So I made the necessary precautions and became a Christian.
Although I spent four years at University studying stuff I’ll probably never use, I did learn one thing that hopefully made the whole time (not to mention the uni fees) worthwhile. I learnt to open my mind and question everything. I majored in Maths and Physics, always being attracted to reason and scientific thought. At the end of my first year at Uni, I seriously started to question my faith. Why exactly did I believe in Christianity?
The whole reasoning that “Everyone has their own belief and noone is wrong” seems wishy washy and illogical to me. I think it makes a lot more sense that there’s some absolute truth out there, independant of what we believe. The whole point is finding out what that truth is.â€
“After thinking about it for a while, I decided the whole issue rested on who Jesus was. He claimed to be the Messiah, the son of God. When somebody makes that kind of deifying statement, any normal response would be a Scully-like rolling of the eyes, thinking you’re talking to a nut. But if the person starts performing extraordinary deeds, then you’d have to start considering their extraordinary claims. And probably the biggest factor in deciding Jesus’ identity was whether he’d risen from the dead or not.
So I researched the whole subject, investigating all the possible things that may have happened to Jesus’ body. Logically, all the natural options were first considered. The most likely option was that his body was stolen by the disciples. Or maybe he didn’t actually die on the cross. Perhaps the disciples were deceived or hallucinated his post-death appearances.
However, all the available information seemed to eliminate these natural explanations one by one and I was left with the old Sherlock Holmes maxim, “if you eliminate the probable, only the improbable remains”. By the end of it, my faith was surer than ever – I came out of it convinced the only possibility was Jesus had risen from the dead.â€
â€I don’t know when exactly the idea of the Sev Files was born. Sometime, it occured to me that doing an X-Files parody set in Jesus’ time could be a cool cartoon (although this was pre-Internet days when I saw no avenue for publishing it). The story of Jesus’ resurrection has paranormal encounters, government conspiracies, attempted coverups… what better backdrop for a Sev File? Slowly, the idea evolved and the journey Mouldy and Scummy were travelling soon became the journey I had trodden previously – trying to find out the truth of the resurrection.
I eventually drew the cartoon for my web site but I must confess, it was fairly disorganised. I did little research beyond reading the Gospels.â€
The busy bees are evolving their definition of “hate speech” to mean “disagreeing with the popular view of climate”.
Don’t let kooks like Boris define the terms of the discussion.
Okay, so we have Boris, who didn’t notice a second instance of hyperbole, and we have Brandon, who came onto this thread and claimed Boris suffered from delusions without even bothering to check the thread.
Yes, this fits in perfectly with your m.o. of petty complaints. I will note that you now seem to accept at least the other paraphrases of mine that you quoted. Progress.
hunter,
Actually, I’ve said the exact opposite. Snark withheld.
Yes, sue, nothing says Nazi worship like a sincere belief in Christ’s divinity. Well-spotted.
No Boris, I don’t accept anything of the sort. I was just pointing out the humor of you talking about me looking stupid because of not reading things while failing to read your own words.
As for this being petty, I’m content people can decide for themselves what merit your comments have at this point. As such, I’m only posting for entertainment now. That you think that indicates an “m.o. of petty complaints…”
Boris, I was just amused in light of his Nazi photos that the symbol he chose for the Sevloid Galaxy was a double S: http://web.archive.org/web/20011201224800/http://www.sev.com.au/toonzone/sevchron/galaxy.asp
It’s also on his Sev Trek uniforms and space ships. http://web.archive.org/web/20011121191643/http://www.sev.com.au/toonzone/sevtrek/strips/sevtrek131.asp
As for the religious stuff, it’s kinda like being skeptical of CC and only reading SkS…
Anyone who mangles Holmes’ maxim as badly as Cook did (as quoted in #118974) merits a certain amount of derision.
Can you explain in your own words what Anthony meant?
But then again, you were the guy who quoted Goebbels over some disagreement about whether a spreadsheet was requested or not, so I wouldn’t be surprised if the vilest Nazi accusations come across to you as perfectly normal. I assume you must greet poor restaurant service with accusations of membership in the schutzstaffel.
I’m not a member of the KGB, by the way.
“loosen up my friend”
Thanks for the advice, Mark. I wouldn’t post here if I didn’t enjoy it. And obviously I don’t care if I’m popular. 🙂
H@te speech isn’t dressing up photo’s of yourself and your leaderership team as Nazi? Add to that context the same individuals claim their critics to be mentally ill and that isn’t h@te speech either? Also, it isn’t h@te speech to call your critics ‘deniers’; which is a cowardly and vague pejorative implication that your critics are similar to ‘holocaust deniers’? Finally it isn’t h@te speech to fabricate Capitalist (Big Oil/Fossil Industry) conspiracies claims about your critics? Then nothing can be h@te speech, it seems to me.
With those practices then Cook’s blog has established enough of a pattern of behavior to be reasonably suspect being at least h@te speech accessories .
Cook’s apparent noble cause syndrome has a rather consistent pattern of weirdness . . .
John
Wow. I repeated a famous quote that happens to be from a Nazi. Boris portrays that as accusing someone of being a Nazi, takes offense and ignores the substantial point I made.
Apparently it’s okay for Michael Mann to repeatedly lie. It’s okay for “investigations” to blindly accept these lies as fact. But repeating a quote used dozens of times each day is not okay. Do that, and you should be shunned.
I wonder what Boris would say if I showed John Cook using the same quote. Or Michael Mann. Or himself. I’d eager all three have.
Assuming I believe you are correct, what makes the spreadsheet “lie” a “big lie”? Would Michael Mann still have a job if he hadn’t “lied” about the spreadsheet? Would he have been convicted of fraud? I mean, this was a “BIG LIE,” so the consequences must have been huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuge.
Boris, King of Non-Sequitirs?
Brandon,
I think it’s referred to as ‘haggling over the price’.
Boris wonders “what makes the spreadsheet “lie†a “big lieâ€? ”
When you dig into lies its entirely possible to find the liar was mistaken and its wasn’t intentional. The first provaby known lie is always a “big lie” because it removes doubt and defines the person.
So in the context of that, was Mann simply mistaken?
I haven’t looked into precisely which spreadsheet you’re talking about but seem to recal Steve McIntyre had some issue with Mann over a spreadsheet that Mann did or didn’t supply. So perhaps I’m wrong about the specifics of this post.
Does that make me a liar?
TTTM,
It’s probably best not to bring up the name of he who shall not be named, because to counter that then Boris will have to throw salt over his shoulder and dance widdershins about his computer chair.
Let us instead, as you wisely suggest, acknowledge that one occasionally is mistaken in their recollection of facts and that it is sufficient to correct the record when the opportunity arises.
“Boris, King of Non-Sequitirs?”
You don’t remember that you used the Goebbels quote to describe Mann lying about whether or not a spreadsheet was requested? Interesting.
I feel a bit like a troll, but this is so amusing. Boris referenced something. I discussed it, giving an accurate depiction of it. Two comments later, Boris claims I don’t remember it. This, despite the fact Boris’s latest comment fits my depiction of the issue in question.
There’s a reason I said he seems delusional.
In case anyone cares about this latest exchange between Boris and I, he’s referencing something I wrote in this document. I headed a section with a quote as such (typo in the original):
Shortly thereafter, I said:
That is the total extent of my supposed Nazi accusation. I said not a single word about Nazis. All I did was quote someone who happened to be a Nazi and cited him by name and position.
To Boris, this is terrible.
In case anyone cares about this latest exchange between Boris and I, he’s referencing something I wrote in this document. I headed a section with a quote as such (typo in the original):
Shortly thereafter, I said:
That is the total extent of my supposed Nazi accusation. I said not a single word about Nazis. All I did was quote someone who happened to be a Nazi and cited him by name and position.–
Brandon,
Thanks for the explanation.
No, no…it’s laughable.
Yes, I realize all you did was quote a Nazi when talking about Michael Mann and a spreadsheet. I’m sure Goebbels is routinely quoted in disagreements about spreadsheets and other documents. I actually think Pol Pot gets quoted more often on allegedly deceptive power-points, but I doubt I could prove it.
I agree with SteveF, it does help to remind, because it highlights the intellectual dishonesty perpetuated by people like Boris, who pretend indifference to the individual they defend, while grabbing at any straw to attack any person who criticizes the individual.
This behavior usually shows up when that Individual has done something particularly egregious, and rather than just admitting the Individual blew it, Boris often engages in a series of intellectually dishonest behaviors, involving but not limited to, misrepresenting other people’s words by clever paraphrasing and “rhetorical flourishes” as he calls it and flagrantly cherry picking sentences without regard to the surrounding content.
In other words, pretty much the behavior Boris’s exhibited here towards the “enemies” Anthony Watts, which he has used as a subject of attack in an effort to switch focus from the image of Cook’s pearly whites in an SS uniform, or towards Brandon upon multiple occasions for having the temerity to criticize Mann.
A few years ago, on another thread, Boris unloaded on Lomborg, for having the temerity to write an essay entitled “Going to Extremes
How activists and the media distort climate reports to make global warming sound scarier than it is.” Boris seemed to have picked up a bit of tepid support from toto, until (I think) toto realized that Boris hadn’t actually read the essay he was attacking, just picking phrases from it to randomly attack.
Regarding Boris’s criticism of Brandon, see the comment “Boris hadn’t actually read the essay he was attacking, just picking phrases from it to randomly attack”. I think it applies here too.
I actually don’t need Boris to try and explain why what Brandon did was laughable (the explanation Boris gave wasn’t actually an explanation and really didn’t make any sense), because I already get plenty of giggles watching Boris make logical pretzels as it is.
Thanks for the trip down memory lane, Carrick. I see you are still putting thoughts into people’s minds.
You are still (STILL?) mad that Lomborg praised the IPCC report?
It looks to me like Lomborg thinks the IPCC report:
a. is important
b. doesn’t exaggerate
c. illustrates real environmental problems
Can’t wait to see how I’ve misread that sentence.
And of course I’ve read Brandon’s essay. The Goebbels stuff is (kinda) relevant here, but I could also explain how Brandon doesn’t understand what plagiarism is, for example.
As for an explanation for “laughable”, I thought it was obvious that calling a lie about a spreadsheet a Goebbelsian “big lie” is ludicrous exaggeration.
funny its not actually a Goebbels quote. more like a paraphrase
The source:
http://www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/gpa/goeb29.htm
“There is no point to debating Mr. Churchill about English ship losses or the damage caused by German air attacks. He follows the time-honored British policy of admitting only that which is impossible to deny, then cutting it in half, while at the same time doubling or tripling the enemy’s losses. This balances the accounts. The astonishing thing is that Mr. Churchill, a genuine John Bull, holds to his lies, and in fact repeats them until he himself believes them. That is an old English trick. Mr. Churchill does not need to perfect it, as it is one of the familiar tactics of British politics, known to the entire world. They made good use of the trick during the World War, with the difference that world opinion believed it then, which cannot be said today. That is because at the end of the World War British plutocracy believed that Germany would never recover. In part from indifference, but also in part from boastfulness, they made the mistake of telling the world the tricks they had used to defeat the Reich. In the memoirs written by British statesmen, Mr. Churchill in particular, one could see that the London plutocrats had no problem lying to high heaven during the war. They were even proud of fooling Germany in so easy and clever a fashion. They revealed their methods. They are not believable any longer. We only need to refer to the World War and note that the same men are determining English news policy as did from 1914 to 1918, and everything becomes clear.
That is of course rather painful for those involved. One should not, as a rule, reveal one’s secrets, since one does not know if and when one may need them again. The essential English leadership secret does not depend on particular intelligence. Rather, it depends on a remarkably stupid thick-headedness. The English follow the principle that when one lies, one should lie big, and stick to it. They keep up their lies, even at the risk of looking ridiculous.
Boris,
You’re very clever and you’ve argued every which way from dawn to dusk. None the less, the bottom line remains that SkS is led by a group of people who think Photoshoping themselves as Nazis is funny, and who think making subtle Nazi-references of those who disagree with them (“deniers”) is reasonable for educated folks.
The time and effort put into the Photoshop job is considerable, and the time and effort put into trying to hint that their “opponents” are Nazi-sympathizers (“deniers”) is also considerable. It’s not an aberration or some thoughtless and momentary lapse.
As you know, skeptic sites, however low you hold them to be, have unilaterally made and abided by an agreement to not use SS as the abbreviation for Skeptical Science, but rather SkS. The honorable thing for SkS to do would be to drop the whole Holocaust-referencing “denier” word, but they have not.
mosh,
Thanks for the quote. The final two sentences seem so apt in this context. I don’t doubt that all sides in this debate / argument / montypythonskit think it sums up their opponents perfectly.
Mosher,
I had never seen the whole quote. This part: “The astonishing thing is that Mr. Churchill, a genuine John Bull, holds to his lies, and in fact repeats them until he himself believes them” would seem to apply to a host of politicians, both historical and active. I rather think that the same applies to most of the leadership of which Her Goebbels was a key part. No, I don’t think much of politicians… or the people who act like them.
Boris:
And you’re still misquoting/mischaracterizing/”rhetorically embellishing” what other people say, and being misleading about what you claimed at the time yourself.
Of course I approve of what Lomborg said the sentence you quoted above (though the nuances are missed on you I suspect), I generally agree with it, and said as much at the time, to include this statement from Lomborg:
However, I think you’re still having trouble with treating a document entitled “Going to Extremes How activists and the media distort climate reports to make global warming sound scarier than it is” as being primarily about the reliability of the IPCC assessment reports rather than being about e.g. “activists and the media” and how they “distort climate reports to make global warming sound scarier than it is.”
In particular, you seem to have problems interpreting what “fairly reliable” means. It doesn’t mean treat it as a bible. I view the IPCC AR4 as an important source document, but not necessarily free of embellishment itself, and like any source document, caveat emptor applies here too.
While this is certainly OT, I think it’s worth repeating what I said there:
SteveF, the certain irony in Göbbels “quote” is how many people think the “big lies” were referencing the Nazi’s approach on propaganda, rather than being part of a criticism of British propaganda. But I suppose a bit of that Marxist doctrine “accuse others of what you do” applies here with that too.
Boris,
The issue of Mann and the spreadsheet is that his statements are demonstrably false, and even when that has been clearly shown, he continues to repeat the same false statements. One must conclude either that he believes his own falsehoods, or does not care if what he says is true or false. Either one does not reflect well on Mr. Mann, no matter what legitimate complaints he thinks he has about Steve McIntyre.
.
The puzzling thing for me (honestly puzzling) is how someone like Mike Mann, who is obviously not stupid, can’t see that the best way to help defuse the situation, and maybe make some progress toward a reasoned discussion, is to acknowledge silly errors (like the spreadsheet story). What seems completely lacking is a sense of how to have a constructive interaction with someone with whom you have some disagreements.
Carrick,
You betcha! I would go further than “as a researcher”… I would extend that to “as a human being”. Often people’s conclusions are wildly, even absurdly, disconnected from the data claimed to support those conclusions. There is some of this even in climate science! 😮
Oh?
Because that’s what I said?
Look, Lomborg thinks the IPCC report is important, reliable, non-exaggerated and reflects real environmental problems. We know this because those are the words he used.
Alternately, we can look and see if other work by Lomborg says anything similar.
Here’s one.
If you want to argue that Lomborg doesn’t believe what he’s saying, and is just saying that he agrees with the IPCC for rhetorical effect, well I agree that’s possible.
His words couldn’t be much clearer, however.
SteveF, yes, that certainly true in a larger context too!
It’s interesting that this comes up just now, as Judith Curry has an interesting recent post on over-confidence I know I’m right (?).
There’s this really cool link on “how good of an estimator are you” that tests just this question. (Make sure to read the follow-up question too.)
Basically it asks you to write down 95% CL intervals for a 10 questions, like “how how is the surface of the sun”?
Keeping in mind that on 10 responses, you should typically get 9 right here’s what was found. The most common number correct was only “2”.
I thought this little bit was really interesting too (Steve McConnell, as quoted in the second blog post):
In a nut shell this cognitive distortion is the source of why conclusions are often of dubious value and the farther you get away from the empirical evidence, the less reliable the results become…
Have you seen this, Lucia?
http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v3/n9/full/nclimate1972.html?WT.ec_id=NCLIMATE-201309
“Recent observed global warming is significantly less than that simulated by climate models. This difference might be explained by some combination of errors in external forcing, model response and internal climate variability.”
But we saw it here first.
Boris, I get that if you cherry pick Lomborg’s comments in the way you have consistently done, you derive the meaning you obtain from it.
The problem is not in this, the problem is that you fail to understand the error in cherry picking comments, instead of considering them in the context that they were original written. And by rewriting his comments in your own words, e.g. switching the word danger with problem, you are also completely changing the meaning of what was being claimed by Lomborg.
A related concept is the principle of charity, which suggests the need to read the entirety of an author’s piece, assume internal consistency, and apply an interpretation based on that. You pretty consistently fail in this respect, something I doubt I need to point out to you.
Thanks for the link Niels. From the abstract:
Sounds like familiar territory. 😉
Niels,
OK, so they have stared to face reality. That is at least progress. II’m not going to spend money to hear thier words of wisdom, but I will venture a guess: they say it is internal climate variability combined with aerosol offsets….. could not ever be that the models are wrong about cloud feedbacks. Still, admitting reality is a good first step, sort of like drunks hitting bottom and starting with AA.
Niels A Nielsen,
Thanks. I think it’s clear that it is getting to be impossible to say the model projections are anything other than too high. It is interesting to notice all the caveats and cautions when the paper is models over predicting warming relative to the sorts of breathless excitement when Rahmstorf used his “slide and eyeball”, or “extrapolate at the end and pretend that’s real data” method. (It was Rahmstorf… right?)
Lucia
Yes, and that is what is ‘wrong’ with climate science….. always predicting the future catastrophe, always exaggerating the rate and the consequences, always the ‘we are doomed’ POV. It is not the end of the world, it is relatively modest warming. Lets have a rational discussion about what course of public action (if any) makes sense, especially in light of the need of a couple of billion people for electricity…… and not a little electricity.
SteveF, I think it is the entire paper and figures you can find here:
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.dk/2013/08/new-paper-finds-climate-models-have.html
You guessed right, they do not mention wrong cloud feedback as a possible cause of the discrepancy .
Interestingly, they don’t say the heat is hidden in the deep ocean either 🙂
Neils,
Thanks for the link. The authors do not even raise the subject of ECS, and only mention that the models’ transient sensitivity might be too high (hinting at heat going into the deep ocean). The paper represents progress I guess, but ignores the obvious: the models are in no way an accurate representation of Earth’s response to forcing. With my appologies to George Box, like all models, the GCMs are wrong. The bigger question is if they are useful. The recent divergence between the models and reality calls into question if they are useful for their primary function of predicting the responses to increases in GHG forcing. The data suggest they probably are not terribly useful. It is hard to know if they ever will be useful for that purpose, but what is important is for people to understand that they do not appear able to make accurate predictions today. Basing public policy on GCM predictions of rapid warming is simply crazy. IMO only a substantial reduction in public funding for GCM development will focus the modeling community’s attention on the need for real utility in the models.
SteveF–
They may be saying what they think. They may also be filtering judiciously. It seems one can include almost any amount of excess speculation or hyperbole if the result is “it’s worse than we thought”, but findings that suggests forecasts are predicting too much warming need to tap dance around that.
The comments over at http://klimazwiebel.blogspot.com/2013/08/hans-von-storch-and-eduardo-zorita-on.html are interesting .
We see complaints suggesting:
1) It’s just ENSO (La Nina). But the recent fyfe paper corrects for ENSO and gets substantially the same result with and without correction.
2) Weighting by runs relies excessively on GISS models with low sensitivity. Maybe so. But if we look at models with more than 1 run, the only 2 that contain the trends are FIO, which has a quite low trend over 20 years and MPI-ESM-MR. And the only reason the observed trend is inside the uncertainty intervals for that model is that I account for the extra uncertainty due to the unknown location of the model mean. If we merely consider the spread of runs about the model mean, the trend is outside that spread. That is to say: The earth weather isn’t within the spread of ‘weather noise’ about the sample mean trend. It is only withink the spread of “weather noise+ the uncertainty in our knowledge of the location of the model mean trend for the period if we could only run a zillion runs.”
(BTW: I can’t merely consider the spread of runs using my method I get the ‘weather’ over many periods, and so I do need to add that extra bit.)
So as much as there might be some validity in the notion that the method is dominated by the runs with too little variability, it really won’t hold up too well.
I have read through the Curry/Webster paper on uncertainty that was linked from a link above to the Hockeyschtick and here again. I have found this paper/review to be a very relevant and I was heartened to see that the authors and others have had the same concerns that I thought had not been considered by anyone prominent in the field of climate science. I have excerpted three passages from that paper that have been major concerns and questions for me with the IPCC reviewing process.
Good stuff and I highly recommend a reading of it.
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/2011BAMS3139.1
“Chapter Lead Authors should provide a traceable account of how they arrived at their ratings for level of scientific understanding and likelihood that an outcome will occur.†Failure to provide a traceable account is characteristic of uncertainty monster hiding.
“Continuing with the legal analogy, Johnston (2010) characterized the IPCC’s arguments as a legal brief, designed to persuade, in contrast to a legal memo that is intended to objectively assess both sides. Along the lines of a legal memo, Curry (2011a) argues that the consilience of evidence argument is not convincing unless it includes parallel evidence based analyses for competing hypotheses, and hence a critical element in uncertainty monster detection.”
Kenneth–
BTW: I did notice you said you’d like to guest post. The timing was just when I’d changed over the script for bot-banning, so I wanted to wait rather than risk having you be forced to endure too much torture on the ‘admin’ side of the blog. But if you would like a guest post, send me an email. I’ll set that up and we can make sure I white list your IP and all that.
“BTW: I did notice you said you’d like to guest post.”
Lucia, I think I said my posts and analyses are not suited (worthy) for guest posting. I like to throw my analyses out there in hopes of starting a discussion at some point. When that is done on someone else’s dime (guest post) that might not always be appropriate either.
Lucia,
That is an interesting thread. I tried to leave a comment for von Storch, but it appears to have been eaten by their comment system (a true PITA!). von Storch seems to think there is NO means by which you can discriminate between ‘good’ and ‘poor’ models, and specifically rejects simulation of ENSO as a discriminating metric. I could not disagree with him more. The inability to discriminate just means public money is going to be wasted and good models (if they were to ever exist) could never displace poor ones. Were I a bit more jaded, I would suspect that von Storch doesn’t want to see poor models de-funded, but I will instead assume he just has very poor technical and practical judgement on this particular subject.
SteveF–
I don’t think he means you can’t use ENSO at all. I think he means you can’t use ENSO alone. Why that and not something else?
I’m of two minds. It is difficult to pick the good and bad models because there are many possible metrics. One would have to pick several metrics, and preferably ones that permit statistical tests with sufficient power that they could deems a particular models wrong if it is wrong. So, he is correct that we can’t use ENSO only. One would need a method that somehow uses several metrics, preferably ones that don’t permit much tuning and you need to figure out how you weight things. So possibly, one could weight together: (a) ability to get ENSO, (b) ability to get MJO, (c) rainfall pattern somewhere.
I would think ENSO is a metric one could use– particularly if you focused on something more repeatable and distinct. Possibly the correlation between temperature in the warm pool vs. surface temperatures? Frequency analysis is problematic owing to the possibility of aliasing and all. (But then again… correlation can be thrown off too.) So that’s in favor of ranking– and using ENSO.
So the question then is: As a practical matter, how do you pick which collection of features to use to rank? But beyond that, we are often limited by the fact that we only have one realization for the earth. So, in the end, we have the difficulty that one can suggest that the earth was somehow temporarily in some particular “spot” in a cycle, with whatever metric you used for comparison being more variable than it appears on earth. If so, when you do bayesian analysis, you never knock out any models as obviously wrong because your analysis assumed that earth variability is very large– thereby making it impossible to deem anything clearly wrong.
On this
I think more broadly, any investigation that is going to show some models are bad at certain things is going to be unpopular. And some models are certainly going to look worse than other models.
Lucia,
“I would think ENSO is a metric one could use– particularly if you focused on something more repeatable and distinct. Possibly the correlation between temperature in the warm pool vs. surface temperatures? Frequency analysis is problematic owing to the possibility of aliasing and all. (But then again… correlation can be thrown off too.) So that’s in favor of ranking– and using ENSO.”
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I think ENSO a a very good place to start, since a substantial portion of all measured variability (tropical temperature, rainfall patterns, and more) on Earth correlates strongly with ENSO. Add to that average temperature change, regional temperature change (especially by latitude and over land or water), and maybe ocean heat uptake, and you would be able to soon start separating the baby from the bathwater. Heck, any rigorous means to discriminate is better than we have now… where every model is fabulous, and no model is ever really wrong. Reminds me of Garrison Keillor’s quip about all the children in a town being above average in intelligence. In the case of very costly publicly funded models, the joke is on the taxpayers.
SteveF–
But what test statistics do you use to diagnose “good ENSO”. On the one hand, I think I can look at some models time series and often know the weather is clearly too ridiculous. For example: Too much like Altnerating Current, or Amplitude to high or what not. But given that earth ENSO sits on top of force variability, solar, volcanoes and such, how what precise metric do you use to say “this ENSO is matches earth ENSO”. That’s where things get difficult.
Is not the problem with models and ENSO one of getting the timing correct, i.e. the models might be able to mimic the periodical ENSO or ENSO like fluctuations but not get when the ups and downs occur? The RCP4.5 models that I have looked at do have these fluctuations, but the occurrences appear random. SteveF, are you saying that you would expect a “good” model to also get the timing right?
Also is it all the easy to select winners and losers with climate models with regards to temperatures? Excluding the effects of AGW here, if I were to consider the earth’s climate as just one of many that could have occurred over let us say the instrumental period and that multiple climate model runs provide multiple possibilities of realizations I would have a range of possibilities that could be quite large – if I had sufficient model runs to select from.
Is not the best we can expect from these models, for the time being at least, one of getting the effects of AGW from GHGs correct? Unfortunately, in order to determine how correct the models are with regards to GHGs using historical temperature data, the natural and AGW effects need to be somehow separated.
Kenneth,
That’s not a “problem”. It is just an accepted feature that timing is not correct. Know I know there are people who think this is a “problem”, and it would be if climate models were weather forecasts. But they are not creating weather forecasts and they aren’t trying to create them.
For a climate model, the problem would be not getting things like amplitude, frequency, teleconnections etc. correct.
The analog is for an engineered system with turbulent flow: Depending on the application, an engineer might want to know the distribution of amplitudes and spectral properties of force by wind flowing over a bridge. They would want this to predict how the bridge might response (so that we could design to avoid having a ‘galloping gertie”). But no one would remotely care if vortex shedding exactly mimicked how vortices were shed on any calendar day. It wouldn’t matter. (And btw, you couldn’t do it for exactly the same reason you can’t predict weather!)
But being unable to do this isn’t a “problem” unless for some unimaginable reason you are fixated on the notion that you “need” to do it.
That said: if the frequencies, amplitudes, spectral properties etc. of the vortex shedding was wrong, then that would be a problem.
Now turning to climate models: Sensitivity, ENSO, MJO, Monsoons etc. are all supposed to be “emergent” in the models– developing from the physics. But only the spectral properties, amplitudes and such are emergent. So, getting those things wrong would be a problem for a model as they would indicate something is wrong with “the physics” (or the implementation of the physics in a model.) Getting timing wrong is just a feature that doesn’t matter. (And it actually does not.)
Kenneth,
” SteveF, are you saying that you would expect a “good†model to also get the timing right?”
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Heck no! I would expect things like frequency and range of influences (biggest to smallest) on measurable variables to be reasonably similar to the Earth’s historical record. I mean, if a model generates 1997/1998-like super el Ninos very often then that would not be good. If the average period is too long or too short that would also not be good. If the magnitude is too consistent or too variable that would not be good.
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“Is not the best we can expect from these models, for the time being at least, one of getting the effects of AGW from GHGs correct? ”
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Maybe, but I don’t see how they have a chance of doing that if there are substantial structural problems evident in patterns of variability which do not match the Earth reasonably well. So long as there is the kind of divergence between reality and projections we are seeing right now, I am strongly inclined to simply consider the models useless for making projections of things that matter… like future temperatures and rainfall.
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All the pulling of hair, gnashing of teeth, and intellectual contortions we see in the papers that acknowledge the existence of “the pause” is the most important diagnostic of all: climate science is struggling to come up with a reasonable explanation that does not make high climate sensitivity unlikely. Simple and obvious explanations, like the models have positive feed-backs grossly overstated, still seem too toxic to even formally consider in publications. (Though I suspect there is some informal/off the record consideration of that possibility. 😉 ) ‘Kicking and screaming all the way’ is what we are watching; the process isn’t pretty.
Without sounding like the uncertainty monger/monster in Judith Curry’s review that is on the other side of abusing uncertainty and looks to uncertainty to impede progress, I wonder Steve if you or I would be happy with some experts coming up with a criteria to select the best models and that criteria were biased in selecting the future temperatures in the panic range. Now we have some consensus models and we have licked the uncertainty issue. No more stalling as we can predict the world is ending as we know it unless some radical efforts are initiated immediately.
Uncertainty might just be something with which we are going to have to live (and die) and including climate modeling.
Lucia,
“Now turning to climate models: Sensitivity, ENSO, MJO, Monsoons etc. are all supposed to be “emergent†in the models– developing from the physics. But only the spectral properties, amplitudes and such are emergent. So, getting those things wrong would be a problem for a model as they would indicate something is wrong with “the physicsâ€
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Yes, and I think that is one reason why even calmer folks like von Storch and Zorita seem so reluctant to buy into this kind of model testing/evaluation…. and why there is a diligent search for other explanations for model deficiencies in making predictions which don’t point at errors in ‘the physics’. What is clear is that there is little interest in ‘fit-for-purpose’ type evaluations of the models.
lucia (Comment #119060)
August 29th, 2013 at 2:36 pm
“Problem” was poor choice of words as I agree with you about the (lack of) importance of timing – unless one were attempting to make comparisons over short periods of time between the observed temperatures and a few model realizations.
Kenneth,
“Uncertainty might just be something with which we are going to have to live (and die) and including climate modeling.”
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Maybe, but if so it will be the only field I know of where humanity can make no progress toward an accurate understanding of a complex system. Accurate prediction is the currency of models; if that is impossible, then it would be better to scrap the whole enterprise. I doubt very much the problems are insurmountable; another decade should pretty well sort out the big questions (like transient and equilibrium climate sensitivity)… the field just has to get past the politics first.
SteveF (Comment #119063)
August 29th, 2013 at 2:50 pm
“Yes, and I think that is one reason why even calmer folks like von Storch and Zorita seem so reluctant to buy into this kind of model testing/evaluation…. and why there is a diligent search for other explanations for model deficiencies in making predictions which don’t point at errors in ‘the physics’. What is clear is that there is little interest in ‘fit-for-purpose’ type evaluations of the models.”
What I find interesting is that the warming pause that is being conjectured as a result of heat going to the deeper oceans evidently is not something that the climate models currently handle or at least handle directly. I suppose the ocean depth temperature changes could be used to parameterize this phenomena in future models but how would the timing be related to some physical property that has evidently been overlooked up to now? Since the effect is relatively large do we throw out all the current models and start building new ones as part of a regime change.
I have not read von Storch or Zorita on this matter, but I would guess that if the community could lay off in portions to 3 or so items none of these items alone has to be very far off the mark. Since it would appear that there is nothing solid to hang their hats on, I would think the comments say more about those making them than any science on which it might be based.
Kenneth,
“What I find interesting is that the warming pause that is being conjectured as a result of heat going to the deeper oceans evidently is not something that the climate models currently handle or at least handle directly.”
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The models consistently predict much more ocean heat accumulation that has been measured. Before ARGO became operational it was expected to be the “final confirmation” that the models are right and we will soon cook in our own juices. When the ARGO data showed the models were wrong, there was a sudden discounting of the ARGO data by climate scientists (it must be wrong) or “the heat is just going into the deep oceans below 2000 meters”. Of course, there is not a shred of evidence that ARGO is very wrong, and no evidence of significant heat accumulation below 2000 meters.
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The current wave of papers on ‘the pause’ is just more of the same; the canonical 3C per doubling is just too sacrosanct to the field to change in light of new data. But, eventually, change it will.
SteveF (Comment #119065)
August 29th, 2013 at 2:58 pm
“Maybe, but if so it will be the only field I know of where humanity can make no progress toward an accurate understanding of a complex system. Accurate prediction is the currency of models; if that is impossible, then it would be better to scrap the whole enterprise. I doubt very much the problems are insurmountable; another decade should pretty well sort out the big questions (like transient and equilibrium climate sensitivity)… the field just has to get past the politics first.”
Economics comes to mind as a field that has been influenced by politics and a field that on the macro scale can get things very wrong. I personally think there are better systems of understanding how humans interact in economics and that understanding deals with the limitations of the modeling of those human interactions and the simplifying assumptions that those who are prone to modeling have to make and simplifications that produce wrong results.
Climate, of course, being in the realm of physics and is more amenable to modeling. While physics can often lead to deterministic results, I think that the chaotic nature of climate pushes some to consider the climate models less deterministic and more stochastic.
What on Earth are you talking about, Carrick? When did I switch “danger” with “problem”?
Quoting someone directly as evidence is not “cherry-picking,” especially since you can provide exactly zero quotations that refute what I’ve written or provide any “context” beyond that of your own imagination.