Sunday
Jan302011
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill A dissentient
Jan 30, 2011 Blogs A lot of the action on the Delingpole-Singh spat has been taking place on Twitter. While I've had a Twitter account for a while, I can't say I've used it much, although this has changed rather in recent days. I expect my normal Twitter silence to resume soon.
That said, I'm @adissentient if anyone is interested. Tweets and a "follow" button are now in the sidebar.
Reader Comments (40)
Sputnik 2 crash and burns over Truro
I am not a twitter (or facebook) user. It strikes me, given their popularity at the BBC, Guardian etc that these are tools favoured by the urban, metropolitan liberals with Arts degrees rather than the rural, climate skeptic realists with science and engineering degrees.
TS, speaking vs listening? Chatteratti VS the Techs?
TS, speaking vs listening? Chatteratti VS the Techs?
TS - agreed. Horrible nonsense for people who cannot distinguish between 'friend' and 'acquaintance' and who do not understand how precious privacy and introspection actually are to a healthy mind.
That said, well done to BH for plunging into the moronic inferno so we don't have to... ;-)
ThinkingScientist
Facebook is for normal, everyday people who have their classmates, friends, neighbours and family on their list of contacts. It's an expression of individuality that lifts them above the increasingly regimented and soulless existence that is modern wage slavery.
I just found an old girlfriend through it. I am really glad it exists for that reason. I don't use it myself.
I like twitter because it means I can write insulting messages directly to the pathetic, corporate lackeys who are paid to lie on the Guardian environment pages. When I am asked if I really believe all those journalists and 'scientists' are lying, I reply 'yes I do'. They are going with the flow.
Face book I can sort of get! if you want to keep up with mates and family it's more instant the e-mail but twitter no, it's is just a pointless stream of conciseness mumbling from some one who's ego thinks the world really needs to know they just got a burger/cat /fees march ! and as for Singh I have no time for some one who publicly backs the abusing and barracking of someone he does not agree with and then has the unmitigated Gaul to scream free speech when it's his turn !!
As an aged old scientist I have avoided Facebook and Twitter. I can see some use for Facebook as mat says above, but Twitter leaves me cold. Must be an age thing, although as a gadget man I am far from being a technology Luddite.
Having seen up close the way Facebook takes over from real life, while purporting to deliver a better one, I think I am best out of it. If I want to post pics I use Picasa and invite others to look. I have no desire to let the world know what I had for breakfast or that my little grandson threw up all over me.
Wish you well with your Tweets Bish
I tried twitter once (to receive tweets from interesting people, not to send them out) but as with Dave, it leaves me cold. So much stream-of-consciousness about it - mostly utter tripe! Stephen Fry can be good value, though mostly when he's shooting himself in the foot.
Facebook I've given up on. I use it to follow certain people who blog with it, rather than to keep in touch with people I know. When I did have friends on it I got what seemed to be an endless stream of banality and showing off. There was one "friend" I couldn't delete, however, because she would have attacked me with a rolling pin.....
What is Twitter?
As the paper that broke the story -'Clever and Courageous Royal Society President traps evil Journalist', you would imagine that after all the 'lies and misinformation' put about in the blogs of Bishop Hill, Booker and North, Guardian readers would be waiting expectantly for a tough riposte.
Er , no. The top 5 Environment stories are :-
1 RSPB 'Birdwatch'
2 Sale of Lake District forest is vandalism
3 The Livewell diet.
4 Papier mache milk bottles.
5 Don't let them plunder our forests.
Anyone would think Guardian readers didn't care !
Ooh, mat; I really like 'stream of conciseness'. If only it were.
==============
TV viewers may have wondered why Delingpole was less than cordial towards fellow malvern-educated Caroline Lucas MP, head 'Green' in the Commons, on the Daily Politics show.
A visit to the CACC website reveals that she is vice President of this organisation which sends paid trolls to attack 'denier' websites, with George Monbiot as its President.
A 'plant' has just revealed a list of blog-posts they currently want attacked or ridiculed. These are Bishop Hill (several) and of course Delingpole and Booker.
She wanted us to regard her as 'cuddly'. (Just as a rattlesnake is 'cuddly' )
@kim
and I like "unmitigated Gaul" even more.
'Asterix' possibly ?
toad, the CACC, I've just discovered, is run from here:
Sleazy bookshop in Islington
It "specialises in books and periodicals of radical interest and progressive politics".
There is something about Islington, isn't there? "http://www.carbonrationing.org.uk/fora/threads/islington-hackney-crag-stops-trading-carbon".
crag = carbon rationing action group
Returning to the topic of Singh, I note his reply to Bish:
"A few scientists exaggerate ... a few underplay ... I am only interested in the broad consensus after all the arguing."
Priceless. How can anyone maintain in the very same sentence that there is a consensus of opinion among scientists on CAGW and also that there is wide variability of opinion among scientists?
It's the very essence of warmist logic.
O'Geary 7.50PM
Yes. Its passe to use your own brain.
Apparently you don't have a brain until you've received a Nobel Prize, Pharos.
Robinson
Fat chance. I'm a politically incorrect sceptical barbarian denier, retired, with a still unfinished PhD in my loft.
Robinson
Did you ask for the HSI in there?
Graphic Conception
Yes, problems with Islington indeed ;-)
If you haven't already seen it, have a look at this over at Haunting the Library:
http://hauntingthelibrary.wordpress.com/2011/01/29/yet-another-warmist-group-says-communist-dictatorship-looks-very-attractive/
Pharos
If you can't finish your PhD, your only hope is a Peace Prize, then.
David S
I refuse to conclude that climate change killed off my Cretaceous microfossils, even though they are very dead.
I've always liked the description of FaceBook as a great place to keep in touch with all the people you don't want to keep in touch with.
I do use it though and like it.
Robinson. Thanks for that. Monbiot is yesterday's man. Multi millionaire Michael Meacher belongs to the day before yesterday, but to realise that that sweet little girl from Malvern Girls College who seems so 'cuddly' and managed to charm BrilloPad, is actually behind something as nefarious as paying dozens of zealots to spend their day's in blog-disruption is quite unbecoming of an MP and party leader.
I gather most members of the House give her a wide berth. To describe her as a rattle-snake is to give rattle-snakes a bad name.
Having read some of the argument today between BH and others I realise how much I would love to see a series of debates between well-balanced participants on very focussed topics within the CAGW debate (which would need to be off limits to any but the invited participants). Much like Jo Nova has had from time to time, but hers tend to be too broad and all encompassing. Perhaps it would be more exciting too if the debate is scheduled to last no longer than (say) an hour with each participant required to respond within 5 minutes of previous response.
List of suitable topics?
OT. Biased BBC is reporting that there is yet another documentary on those crazy climate change sceptics 22.00 tomorrow (Mon) on BBC4. The trainer looks interesting...
http://vimeo.com/15370110
Peter S. They'll have another go at Delingpole but Monckton is the main target . Desperation ?
I subscribe to the aptly named CACC and have taken it as a misspelling by some of the most foolish people on the planet. All they do is put in anything written on this site and by delingpole and booker to be trolled. Quite a lot of the articles fingered for trolling by these creatures are Booker's admirable crusade to prevent local authorities taking children away from parents without recourse to proper legal proceedings as laid out in the European Convention on Human Rights. I was a little surprised and had assumed it was the usual cacc-handed attempt by alarmists to mimic a non-existent "denier " consipiracy, but in a Damascan moment it came to me that these horrible people would support children being taken away from people by the state in secret courts, where the proceedings and the judgements cannot be reported, that's what they want for our future, total state control.
Peter S
This is a typical BBC straw man film. Almost all of those people are pathetic, extreme right wing loonies. Delingpole is pretending to be a pathetic, extreme right wing loony and is making a rather a lot of money doing it. There are elderly, lost looking Americans everywhere.
That's why the corporate media give so much attention to the loonies. Everyone laughs at them and rejects their arguments. Monckton is an absolute clown, no matter what he says, no matter what he knows. Monckton has made a good few quid playing the clown to Americans.
This one is for Shub, especially:
"You are no one if you are not on Twitter"
(sing along please)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYP-wBaqQAI
Surely Singh is not qualified to Tweet without a relevant accreditation in Media Studies / Marketing? At the very least an MSc in Digital Marketing Communications (see below) would seem a prerequisite. I do think we need to ensure that these unqualified commentators are denied access to the public without a thorough grounding in the relevant humanities.
http://www.emagister.co.uk/msc_digital_marketing_communications_courses-ec170043795.htm
State: Right I am the State, and I am going to force you to report who you know, what you know and what you are doing, and where you are doing it, on an hourly basis. This is mandatory.
Masses: We protest!!!
State: Tough.
Facebook and Twitter are the biggest gifts to state control without even the State having to lift a finger. Like lemmings to the cliff. The relevant agencies must be laughing their heads off, with their feet up on the table.
Geo-tagging will be next.
These logging devices will then be built into everyday items such that their use will be effortless.
In a few years, "Why haven't you got a xxxxxxxx account?" will be treated with suspicion.
Delete your accounts, and feel the real world, not some imaginary world where loneliness and low self-esteem are displaced by some Web 2.0 addiction.
Now that that great scientific brain 'E.Smith' has a regular slot here, I imagine he'll soon be joined by the rest of the Viz comic characters we enjoy elsewhere, such as 'dobbin', 'budgie' 'pablo' and 'heliumlady (aka 'johnnyfartpants').
I'm sure they add a great detail to the debate, but their too-frquent trollery makes it difficult to follow any argument, but hey, that's what George, Caroline and the rest at CACC pay them to do !
@toad: Now that that great scientific brain 'E.Smith' has a regular slot here ..
Mr Smith does have a point though. There is more than a hint of noxious trace elements in the pantomime atmosphere of it all, whichever side of the argument one prefers.
Still, if the statist boondoggle crowd insist on fielding the likes of Rees, Nurse and host of dreary, meal-ticket carpetbaggers, it was perhaps inevitable that their antiparticles would be summoned from the depths to engage in a cartoon deathmatch.
"sweet little girl from Malvern Girls College"
I enjoyed Peter Sissons's account of his encounter with her. The mask slipped a bit there.
Link
That's a good description - a cartoon deathmatch. It is like the American media.