Have I been censored?

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.

Update on June 20, 2009 by 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?

Comments

[Bishop Hill]

GCooper

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.

[GCooper]

It may sound paranoid, but doesn't that suggest anything posted by you is being subjected to special treatment?

I've long suspected they have categories of posters, beyond the merely banned. Perhaps you are on a 'treat with caution' list?

[Stuart]

Hmmm, just had a look and it seems Richard Black, the author of the page, has a comment
listed as "This comment has been referred to the moderators"!

Rather surreal, maybe there is some weird automated censor working there?

[Bishop Hill]

Yes, that's my conclusion. Strewth - you get better moderation on a two bit blogger account.

[per]

all the richard said- and it was aimed at the Bishop- was that he did not attend the conference you asked about.

it was up for a while, then got referred.

per

[Bishop Hill]

How odd.

[James P]

Do you think that 'yeah-whatever' is the moderator, and has spiked a couple of his own to deflect the suspicion? I do think Richard Black should be allowed to comment on his own blog!

[Jonathan]

'yeah-whatever' is impressively well-informed, is he not?
How many posts? Some labour of love!

[James P]

"yeah-whatever"

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!

[Pogo]

"'yeah-whatever' is impressively well-informed, is he not? "

I wouldn't quite say that... He posts loads of comments without appearing to understand much of what he's saying.

[Bishop Hill]

I think what is happening is that YW is scurrying off to Wikipedia to get his next lines.

[Bishop Hill]

Bizarrely, I've now had an email from the moderators saying it was due to posting of a pdf. I believe them, but Yeah_Whatever still has a posting with a pdf up, as do I, although mine is to a link on the BBC website.

[jonathan]

'yeah-whatever' You'd have to be an utter fruit-cake to do all that just for fun. He's got to be doing it on instructions, hasn't he?.

[jonathan]

Between 19 June 4:30pm and 23 June 12:13pm out of a total of 226 postings, 119 (inc 6 removed) by 'yeah whatever'.

[Bishop Hill]

I did think to encourage him - as I said in the comments thread, he's done more to win people over to the sceptic side than I could.

[Neil Hyde]

The petition has been approved:

http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/CRUSourceCodes/

[Wansbeck]

You may be interested to know that yeah_whatever posts on realclimate under the name Mark:

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/06/a-warning-from-copenhagen/langswitch_lang/pl#comment-127626

[Bishop Hill]

Wansbeck

Interesting. I think Jeff Id had picked this up one one of his posts. I wonder if he knows the provenance?

[James P]

Wansbeck - well spotted! He's so pleased with himself (or possibly cross with the opposition) that he relays some of his BBC experience on RC. I'm surprised he has the time...

[jonathan]

Between 19 June 4:30pm and 26 June 12:43pm out of a total of 351 postings, 199 (inc 12 removed) by 'yeah whatever'. My taxes help pay for this.