Bishop Hill Have I been censored?
Jun 20, 2009 Climate Richard Black, BBC online's environment bod, has posted an article about the silly Met Office climate model that is apparently going to be used for making policy decisions even though most scientists seem to think it's risibly bad.
In the comments thread someone raised the issue of the non-availability of the CRU's raw weather station data and was met with a deluge of green rant from someone calling themselves "yeah whatever", who provided a link to the gridded (i.e. "corrected") station data. When I pointed out that this was not what was asked for, I was met with the rather bizarre accusation that I was too lazy to look it up myself and a blunt assertion that the data was available. Surprisingly, this was deemed an acceptable response by the moderators.
In the circumstances, I thought my reply was a model of self-control. I pointed Yeah_Whatever to the notorious words of CRU scientist Phil Jones
We have 25 or so years invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it.
I also said that there was a public interest in the release of the data and that Richard Black had a duty to report the refusal of CRU to do so.
And do you know what, twelve hours later it's still in the moderation queue.
Funny that.
Bishop Hill
I've done some experimentation. It seems I'm not allowed to link to the evidence. The moderators have allowed me to say pretty much everything I said before, but without the link. I then tried to post to the Phil Jones quote where it appears in a submission David Holland made to the UK Treasury on the Stern report. It's gone for moderation again.
So get that - a document at HM Treasury's website is deemed too dubious to appear on the BBC website!
Update: Now it's even stranger. Another commenter has been allowed to link to a posting on Climate Audit telling the same story. What's different about me?
Reader Comments (51)
Comment #1 is a corker.
I hope that we are turning the tide - showing the world that people can have independent thoughts about this whole climate thing.
Its a bit odd here in NZ. Thankfully my daughters school has not mentioned climate change at all in 3 years. This has probably got more to do with the school and the NZ curriculum than anything else - they are both crap.
A neighbour came round on 'earth hour' to nag me. I had put the oven on to clean itself, switched the 200 litre hot tank on to heat up after 2 days of cooling, loaded up the washing machine and the dishwasher, put the kettle on in case any neighbours came round. Then I remembered that I had some welding jobs in the garage.
She told me to switch the lights off to 'save the polar bears'. She said I was OK to carry on with the welding. She is a science teacher ! She was driving round with her family to see who was sitting in the dark. In her 2 litre car ! Yes a science teacher.
Its got to be floating - like an iceberg - not resting on the bottom.
PS: what is the source for of the "25 years" quotation ? I'll have a go at posting it.
http://www.climateaudit.org/correspondence/cru.correspondence.pdf
That'll be what did it. The Beeb tries to avoid any sort of duty lately, at least as far as balance in AGW is concerned.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/8110064.stm
Kirsty Wark: "But if you want to make informed decisions, the best way of doing that is: alongside this report publishing the methodology. Publishing the methodology late is kind of strange, isn't it? Odd. It's unnecessarily obfuscatory."
Hilary Benn: "No, it’s nothing to do with obfuscation. A group of scientists have looked at this and said that they're happy for it to be published but it comes with caveats and it comes with health warnings, and we have to be straight and honest about the uncertainty, but what this gives us, which we've never had before, is information about a range of probabilities, and I think it's important that we put that out there, because we all have to deal with this."
Interesting answer, but notice he doesn’t say anything about the methodology, and Kirsty then moves on to other points. At least it got a mention, though.
No it isn't that. I've since posted the same comment without the link and it went through fine. It's definitely something to do with the link.
Depressing reading really, it just serves to highlight the apalling lack of scientific and/or mathmatical knowledge of the general public. (And even more so, that of the "house troll").
"The message you complain about will be sent to a moderator, who will decide whether it breaks the House Rules. You will be informed of their decision by email."
Maybe this means the Bishop is waiting for a human has to make a descision? It still seem a bit long though.
per
http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/CRUSourceCodes/BhauuWC8H9oGBsZR9eAJa0C
If someone else would like to start a related petition requesting the data , it would be helpful, if I start another they would likely bounce both.
But you raise a valid point about splitting resources.
My ex wife was/is a journalist /PR practitioner, my current (and she will beat me for that comment !!) is a PR Professional, there is too much fragmentation within the so called "Sceptic" community worldwide, particularly when compared to the "Green Machine". There is a great need for some sort of unifying entity to bring all the interested parties together(No i'm not offering)
Surely, a respected site like this , can get together with respected others, such as CA,WUWT,and others to present a united front, as realists appear fragmented.
It was the immediate pre-Iraq war period that finally convinced me that the Corporation had moved beyond 'hopelessly biased' to 'actively evil' and it was the BBC's online boards and the activities of its 'moderators' that threw the switch.
In that period, the BBC's boards were assiduously being worked by a small number of Leftist academic activists who also seemed to be getting their letters read-out on R4 and 5 'Live' with impressive reliablity.
These activists were given a ludicrously easy ride by the 'moderators'' and formal complaint achieved (as ever with the BBC) nothing at all.
At that point I realised participating in anything the BBC runs is a waste of time. The Corporation will skew the evidence to get the results it wants (cf. Any Questions/Answers panels, audiences and phone-ins)
The BBC has made its decision about 'AGW' and anyone who dares disagree with it can expect nothing but trouble from the hive-mind..
The thing is, it doesn't look like censorship any more. They seem quite happy for Peroxisome to link to the Phil Jones story, but not me. I wonder if there are two tiers of moderation - the first one automated, the second human. The humans are off for the weekend.
I've long suspected they have categories of posters, beyond the merely banned. Perhaps you are on a 'treat with caution' list?
listed as "This comment has been referred to the moderators"!
Rather surreal, maybe there is some weird automated censor working there?
it was up for a while, then got referred.
per
How many posts? Some labour of love!
Difficult to take anyone seriously with a moniker like that, though. He seems to lack the social graces too, but that seems to be rather common among the warmists. Whoever described him as the 'house troll' may be on to something!
I wouldn't quite say that... He posts loads of comments without appearing to understand much of what he's saying.
http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/CRUSourceCodes/
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/06/a-warning-from-copenhagen/langswitch_lang/pl#comment-127626
Interesting. I think Jeff Id had picked this up one one of his posts. I wonder if he knows the provenance?
I guess we should ignore him.
IMHO he's just a "shouty" "Wikipaedia Warrior".
He preaches the party line... Or should I say "he PREACHES the party line"? :-)
He must have a lot of free time. Personally, though I've been tempted to "have a go back", I know it would be a complete waste of time, and, I "have a life". :-)
It's hard to believe that he's doing it all in his own time with no remuneration, but OTOH, how would he keep a girlfriend?
The post then disappeared: referred to moderators.
Now almost 24 hours later and still no response.
It seems that if you don't like a post you simply click on the complaint button and the post will be permanently removed. A very unsatisfactory situation especially for a public service.
Rob.
I think the moderators don't work at weekends. There is just an automatic system for picking up blacklisted words and so on. Anything referred at the weekends gets sorted on Monday.
"Would a moderator care to explain (sorry, but there seems to be no other way of communicating with them) why YW is allowed to accuse everyone of lying, but when I point this out (and the legal ramifications), my post is spiked?
Is YW a moderator (or moderator's assistant) himself, I wonder? It would explain a lot... "
It didn't make it, of course, and the only reply I've had is the standard email from the moderators saying that they had to remove it. If only YW worked for the DCSF...
I finally received an email on Tuesday morning stating that my post had been removed as 'off-topic'. A bit harsh as it was a response to another poster and discussed problems with temperature reconstructions which are a major input into climate model certainty; the blog topic.
I had earlier seen a post where someone appeared to have deliberately altered a quote so for light amusement and to see how this moderation thing works I made the following complaint:
'I believe this post is defamatory or libellous for the following reason:
Dr. Lehr is misquoted. The phrase 'greenhouse gas envelope' has been replaced with 'total atmosphere'. The nature of the edit means that this is unlikely to be an accident and although this has been brought to the attention of the poster it has been ignored and he continues to use the misquote to question Dr. Lehr's work in further posts: 453, 454, 459, 463, and 464.
Although the apparently deliberate nature of the misquote says much more about the integrity of the poster than that of Dr. Lehr, I feel that this behaviour should not be tolerated.'
The post was left in place and some time later I received the following reply:
'Further to your complaint about some of the content on a BBC blog (reference number P25204925), we have decided that it does not contravene the House Rules and are going to leave it on site.'
Alleging a post to be off-topic appears to result in instant removal for some but wilful misrepresentation appears to be OK for others.
One guess who the other poster was!