Bishop Hill The community strikes back
May 14, 2014 Climate: Sceptics GWPF This has just been posted at Klimazwiebel:
In an e-mail to GWPF, Lennart Bengtsson has declared his resignation of the advisory hoard of GWPF. His letter reads :
"I have been put under such an enormous group pressure in recent days from all over the world that has become virtually unbearable to me. If this is going to continue I will be unable to conduct my normal work and will even start to worry about my health and safety. I see therefore no other way out therefore than resigning from GWPF. I had not expecting such an enormous world-wide pressure put at me from a community that I have been close to all my active life. Colleagues are withdrawing their support, other colleagues are withdrawing from joint authorship etc. I see no limit and end to what will happen. It is a situation that reminds me about the time of McCarthy. I would never have expecting anything similar in such an original peaceful community as meteorology. Apparently it has been transformed in recent years.
Under these situation I will be unable to contribute positively to the work of GWPF and consequently therefore I believe it is the best for me to reverse my decision to join its Board at the earliest possible time."
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill
GWPF has published the response of Professor David Henderson, the chairman of its Academic Advisory Council, to Bengtsson.
Dear Professor Bengtsson,
I have just seen your letter to me, resigning from the position which you had accepted just three weeks ago, as a member of the Global Warming Policy Foundation’s Academic Advisory Council.
Your letter came as a surprise and a shock. I greatly regret your decision, and I know that my regret will be shared by all my colleagues on the Council.
Your resignation is not only a sad event for us in the Foundation: it is also a matter of profound and much wider concern. The reactions that you speak of, and which have forced you to reconsider the decision to join us, reveal a degree of intolerance, and a rejection of the principle of open scientific inquiry, which are truly shocking. They are evidence of a situation which the Global Warming Policy Foundation was created to remedy.
In your recent published interview with Marcel Crok, you said that ‘if I cannot stand my own opinions, life will become completely unbearable’. All of us on the Council will feel deep sympathy with you in an ordeal which you should never have had to endure.
With great regret, and all good wishes for the future.
David Henderson, Chairman, GWPF’s Academic Advisory Council
Reader Comments (164)
Chandra: You use the hateful term denier of your enemies and it clearly means nothing to you. If the host snips you, whether in this thread or from now on, I won't lose any sleep about it.
GrantB: The best the consensus can come up with. "I disagree with what you say but I would die for your right ... er, no. I want to obliterate your right to say it." That's the essence of the desire to divide and prevent any effective voice for climate sanity being heard.
had not expecting such an enormous world-wide pressure put at me from a community that I have been close to all my active life
Tomo - it's because he's so close - that breaking the taboo and siding with skeptics is the bigger "crime".
A little fish, and they wouldn't care. But a high profile person like this jumping ship and showing the barriers between us skeptics and academia are made of glass and not only does it legitimise outside groups like the GWPF, but it also shows the barriers are not intrinsic - they can be ignored - they are not real - there is nothing intrinsically special about academics giving them a god given right to be heard by government.
Break down the barrier between academia and outside and you break down the legitimacy for special treatment of academia. Then everyone has to be treated on their experience and qualifications. And then academics are floundering, because outsiders also have the qualifications, but in addition have a far better pool of practical experience.
This is why it is so important they enforce this boundary between "us" and "them" and make sure it is not crossed.
So GrantB you see absolute;y nothing wrong with the tactics that have been used against an elderly retired Professor ?
try reading his letter to the GWPF
from JoNova's site -
Dear Professor Henderson,
I have been put under such an enormous group pressure in recent days from all over the world that has become virtually unbearable to me. If this is going to continue I will be unable to conduct my normal work and will even start to worry about my health and safety. I see therefore no other way out therefore than resigning from GWPF. I had not expecting such an enormous world-wide pressure put at me from a community that I have been close to all my active life. Colleagues are withdrawing their support, other colleagues are withdrawing from joint authorship etc.
I see no limit and end to what will happen. It is a situation that reminds me about the time of McCarthy. I would never have expecting anything similar in such an original peaceful community as meteorology. Apparently it has been transformed in recent years.
Under these situation I will be unable to contribute positively to the work of GWPF and consequently therefore I believe it is the best for me to reverse my decision to join its Board at the earliest possible time.
With my best regards
Lennart Bengtsson
Threats to health and safety - in the UK that is illegal; and in case you are unaware has no place in ANY scientific discussion.
Accusations of Macarthy-ism as well; and I thought the whole thing about Macarhy-ism was its purely POLITICAL attack on people's livelyhoods .
Or is this something the Left wing watermelons are allowed to do because they have no other rational argument; and being immature ill educated arogant little stalins they are excused from behaving in a normal civilised manner ?
(Normally I'd use a contemporary left wing dictator; but someone would then claim Goodwin's law)
This is an absolutely appalling state of affairs; no one who has any self respect or moral integrity can defend or excuse it.
{snip- unnecessary addition].
@MikeHaseler
indeed - the enforcement of these boundaries has been commented on before here by retired academics - the pettiness displayed by institutions over even trivial stuff like library facility access by emeritus academics is telling...
Like I said, I hope he reflects on the way he's been treated - with "friends" like those - who needs enemies?
@tomo - unfortunately, what I'm saying is that all those doing the attacking are doing so because of the context they are in rather than because they are nasty people, or some way motivated to attack.
At one time a University did some research whereby they divided students into "prisoners" and "jailers". The research suggested that people took on the persona of the role - the social context made the person. The same is true here - put any of us in academia, and within that social context, we would probably engage in the same kinds of attacks (to a greater or lesser extent).
At its very basic, this is like any "gang" - as someone mentioned earlier in the Hotal California - you can "sign out but never leave". It's the same in gang culture - once a member always a member and there are harsh penalties for any that transgress that "rule".
And the same is true of the "academic gang" - and for a particularly prominent member, the insult is all the greater so the attacks are all the more severe.
I don't believe this kind of attacks for "jumping ship" are new, what is new is that the internet means both the members within the gang and those outside are far more aware of what is going on. That means he gets attacked for jumping ship much more readily, but it also means that atrocious behaviour is exposed by us on the internet.
@MikeHaseler
yeah, I understand what you're saying - but it's my (limited) experience that this apparently more extreme sort of stuff generally needs ringleaders (mullahs as others have called them) who take it upon themselves to whip up the rest - and you're right - it is atrocious behaviour.
MikeHaseler,
I disagree. They are acting just like the lefties they are. Just as Obama lies, slanders and assassinates the character of anyone who disagrees with him about policy. Or uses the IRS, DOJ, EPA, BATF, et al to harass, abuse and intimidate innocent people for the "sin" of disagreeing. Bengtsson is just getting the same vicious treatment that the American Left uses against anyone they view as a threat -- tea party, nuns, Koch brothers, Palin ...
They view anyone who disagrees as evil, and thus, the proper object of whatever vile campaign of slander and abuse they decide to launch.
Rough justice for climate sceptics:
I think the action against Lennart Bengtsson was to be expected given the need for a climate agreement at COP21 Paris next year.
Other casualties - last year Lord Howell was sacked by the FCO. And this week Alan Titchmarsh was dropped by the BBC.
An interesting list of co-authored papers can be found here:
http://www.met.reading.ac.uk/users/users/1788
So who are the usual suspects?
When sceptics drop a clanger like the Unabomber poster, our community is swift to self correct. When the warmists do stuff much worse, we hear nothing but support or at best excuses from their community. Do those people have any moral baseline? Dodgy graphs, using activist literature and dressing it up as science, making mistakes, avoiding FOI requests, identity fraud, ethics breaches, lying, scaring kids, name calling and now blackmail and bullying. All ok by their standards. The only time that they have back tracked was for Splattergate and I suspect that even that was in recognition of an almighty own goal. Weirdly before they saw the public response nobody thought it might be a PR no-no to blow up kids in the name of reducing CO2.
(snip - manners]
Ben Webster at the Times is reporting that
Article: ‘Witch-hunt’ forces out climate scientistI am guessing that this will not require too much sleuthing.
[snip - response to snipped comment]
Climate Change Debate: A Famous Scientist Becomes a Skeptic
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/meteorologist-lennart-bengtsson-joins-climate-skeptic-think-tank-a-968856.html
Some decades ago my duties working as a university technician included the care of a breeding colony of 'Black Norway' rats, which are white and not black, for those who didn't know that. After a year in this position, I realised that the rats had nicer dispositions than some of the academics I worked for, although a couple of the academics were brilliant blokes who became good friends to me. I really liked ALL of the rats.
Linda Holt "I'm inclined to think that both Lennart Bengtsson's joining GWPF and his hounding off it - and the publicity that both have attracted - will be staging posts in the crumbling AGW consensus."
Linda , I agree with you. In fact I go further and say, in a perverse sort of a way, the Professor probably could not have achieved more if he had been allowed to continue to contribute to the GWPF. This assumes the disgusting episode gets the media attention it deserves and obviously that is not guaranteed.
( Nick Stoke's comment copied above sums it up really --the morality of a sewer rat)
This L’affaire Bengtsson reminds me of Matt Ridley’s lecture on “Science Heresy (October 31, 2011), at the Royal Society of Arts in Edinburgh. (In print here at Bishop Hill, via podcast at rsa.org, and long excerpt at Jonova.)
His point: good science that does not fall prey to pseudoscience NEEDS its heretics to keep it honest, and not succumb to very human foible of confirmation bias.
L’affaire Bengtsson reminds us all of the enormous power of institutionalized science Orthodoxy, as well as the great courage required to oppose it.
As Voltaire wrote, "Crush the infamous thing [the Catholic Church]."
The demonstration of wrong or poor science by whomever is able to speak - that is the essence.
This curtailment of free speech is unacceptable by any standard.
well well what did I know...
according to Judith Curry, Bengtsson is on record saying most of the pressure came from the USA.
Congratulations to the GWPF for being now relevant at planetary level (note - this is not sarcasm!!). Guess the "Global" in the title will from now on mean their reach, not the warming's.
Benny and the Lord should now relocate to Washington DC and forget the petty world of ignorant Baronesses and small-minded palaeopiezometry drop-outs.
A possiblity for GWPF and Prof Bengtsson.
In the United States there is a tort called "interference with contractual relations". Here it would seem that GWPF may have engaged in a contractual relationship with the professor, and, as a result, others's intentionally or recklessly, even maliciously, acted to interfere with and/or end that contractual relationship.
I am not qualified to address its applicability in the UK, and I do not know the facts from the minimal accounts I have seen. But there very well may be an avenue for redress by GWPF, particularly if there were overt or even clearly implied threats of economic and reputational harm toward our professor that resulted in him withdrawing.There would likely be other related issues that might be pursued.
OK Bengtsson's toast, but why aren't the other "3%" of climate scientists being similarly hounded? Lindzen seems to be alive and well at MIT, frequently publishing papers suggesting, "perhaps its not as bad as you think". The Boston Brahmins seem pretty hot on PC - wasn't the head boy of Harvard chucked out recently for suggesting girls generally were not as good at chess as chaps? So why hasn't very un-PC Professor Lindzen had his funding cut off, been snubbed by colleagues, hauled up before Enquiry Boards to explain his pernicious opinions etc etc etc ? And he also is on GWPF board is he not? Or is it that Bengtsson is being seen as a deserter, everyone's known for ever that Lindzen has been one of the crazies, whereas Bengtsson was one of 'theirs'?
This is no surprise, we know from the Climategate emails that such behaviour is the norm among Climate Scientists and they see nothing wrong with applying pressure to those who don't conform to the "consensus".
In a striking parallel with the scientific situation, they are quick to scream about "death threats" to their own which have never stood up to scrutiny while their own bile is real and documented.
According to the Times article linked by Chairman Al above, “he said the pressure had mainly come from climate scientists in the US including one employed by the US government who threatened ...” then the line goes dead.
The Times quotes Bengtsson's fears for his health and safety, and links to an article last month: “Crackdown ordered on climate-change”, quoting Andrew Miller, the Labour chairman or the commons science and technology committee, as saying that that appearances on radio and television by climate sceptics such as Lord Lawson of Blaby, the former Chancellor of the Exchequer, should be accompanied by “health warnings”, and likening climate sceptics to the Monster Raving Loony Party.
Both Times articles are accompanied by photos of Lord Lawson.
“Health”, mental or otherwise, seems to be a common theme to the treatment of climate scepticism. The underlying message seems to be. “Take care, wouldn't want anything to happen to you, would we?”
bill
I think the answer to your question might lie in my comment yesterday (May 14, 2014 at 7:14 PM) where I opined that it was Bengtsson's joining the GWPF Board that did the damage.
While Curry (and someone else up-thread also just mentioned Lindzen) are challenging aspects of the science, Bengtsson is challenging the politics and the Mission and thereby the livelihoods and belief systems of all those with a nice cushy income for life from what is turning out to be little more than a scam.
See also Mike Haseler's comment (May 14, 2014 at 10:55 PM) which elaborates on my definition of "community". The only difference between us is that I argue that the community is wider than just the scientists and extends to everyone feeding at this particular trough.
In a striking parallel with the scientific situation, they are quick to scream about "death threats" to their own which have never stood up to scrutiny while their own bile is real and documented.
May 15, 2014 at 8:39 AM NW
Yes. In one case, UEA talked about Phil Jones still receiving 'death threats'. I FOI'd them for copies of these threats.
Response: "There are none on record".
Delingpole weighs in:
http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-London/2014/05/14/Climate-Science-Defector-Forced-to-Resign-by-Alarmist-Fatwa
Presumably some of the pressure that became "virtually unbearable" was recorded in emails or letters, maybe even the odd voicemail.
Bengtsson still has an important decision to make, he can withhold/destroy any such evidence, perhaps this will allow him back into conclave, but only superficially as the cardinals will never forgive him. Or he can make it all public, expose those who would bully a 79 year old man. As a climate scientists, who is at least partly responsible for the dire state of the field, he has the opportunity and an obligation to do something positive.
As a scholar of all things Italian, I am sure Geoff is aware of the way the original Sicilian Mafia classifies people: men, half-men, monkeys, harlot-men and mud-people (in original: uomini, mezzi uomini, ominicchi, piglainculo, quaqquaraqqua').
Or in other words: the fully human, those who are human some time in their lives, those who pretend to be human but aren't, those so inhuman they're ready to sell their body and soul and finally those who have no trace of humanity left in them.
Since that's the...atmosphere among climate scientists (where most fall in the third and fourth categories, like in every other mafia-like human community) I recommend to interact with them the proper way, identifying those that are at least half-men and might have something meaningful to say. Everybody else, including paid PR people, are not worthy of any attention.
Rupert Darwall has a good article in the National Review referring to a tweet from Gavin Schmidt, which brings Bengtsson's comment about the sources of pressure into focus a little.
omnologos
No, I didn't know that about the Mafia hierarchy.When it comes to interaction, I don't think we have much choice as to who we interact with. When you're absolutely powerless you have to grab the attention of anyone you can, including MPs, journalists, and your kids' geography teacher, all of whom probably rank lower than monkeys, harlots and mud. (your translation of "piglainculo" seems a little censored).
That's Science as McCarthyism by Darwall. The best summary I've seen so far.
geoff - I was specifically referring on how to interact with members of the climate community.
Even as a "powerless" person, you can and ought to try being a man of the first category when dealing with a mafia. Only thing, don't waste time with monkeys, etc. Like many we know, they have no opinion or mind of their own, and either imitate others (the fabled "scientists say") or worse.
ps I had to think hard how to translate and still convey the meaning in one or two words. The original "pigliainculo" contains of course a homophobic slur that would have had meaning in the society of many decades ago where that classification comes from - however it is an unnecessary distraction now. The underlying theme isn't of course a matter of sexual mores and positions, rather an attitude of being ready to sell oneself in full. Hence the choice of "harlot", a word vaguely XIX century itself.
Good article, Geoff (9:54 AM) and Richard (10:02 AM), thanks for the link. A short while ago I posted a comment in the Discussion area to mark this resignation event in the 'Moral and Intellectual Poverty' thread. It draws the same conclusion as Darwall does, and as hopefully a great many people around the world are now doing: there is something rotten in the state of climate science. Here are Darwall's closing words:
{snip response to snipped comment]
Seriously. The way Bengtsson writes, makes it clear that he is truly distressed by the responses he got from those he probably considered friends and colleagues. They didn't just express their dislike of GWPF and rib him about it, they threatened to ostracise him. Including breaking off work they were about to publish. You'd think he had signed up with a paedophile supporters group rather than an organisation that raises legitimate questions about a rather slap dash science and policies in which we should all have a significant interest. They might not like the political makeup or goals of GWPF but they should at least recognise that they have as much right to exist as the Grantham Institute. Failing that they should accept that they are inevitable. Strong arm tactics will not make issues with climate science go away.
Those people who lambasted Bengtsson for his decisions thought they were protecting their side but in reality they were urinating on it from a great height. Why can they not see this? Are they stupid or just callous?
MikeHaseler on May 15, 2014 at 1:13 AM
"The same is true here - put any of us in academia, and within that social context, we would probably engage in the same kinds of attacks (to a greater or lesser extent)."
That is why some of us avoided academia, apart from only being in the top 10%(?), rather than the top 1%. :)
I could see that after the great expansion in further education in the 1960's-70's, there would be an imbalance between work and manpower, with decisions about employment and funding being made by 'those above' rather than Those Above. At least in private industry, to some extent, the customer is king, and while moving between companies can mean the reduction of status, the 'flexibility' also allows rapid promotion, on occasion! :)
Richard Drake (12:26 AM): there are some, it would seem who are unaware of the difference between "misrepresent" and "expose".
GrantB (3:56 AM): I am inclined to agree with your sentiment, there. TinyCO2 was a little over-embracing in his list; while you and others on the list do raise alternative and often contentious views, you do seem prepared to discuss and accept that you might be in error. However, TinyCO2 is correct in his accolade to many warmists; that they should display such entrenched attitudes, and cannot be wrong – black is really, really white – then having that on display to the thinking public (who do exist, as I consider myself one of them) can only help to expose the lie.
I try not to engage with our pet trolls, though there is one that is so easily led by the nose, it is hard to resist.
The huge interest in this story here at CA and WUWT, Climate etc., but also at der Spiegel (in German only) says something about us.
We all know, as John Shade ably puts it, that there is something rotten in the state of climate science. But – wait – we don't have any evidence, not the sort that would convince a jury of average punters, who see merely a flamewar between two sets of bickering obsessives. One lot are climate scientists whose word is accepted by 97% of politicians and journalists and the other lot are a bunch of bloggers.
Bengtsson's resignation won't be evidence until he names names. Our excitement is due to our expectation that all will be revealed soon, and the rottenness will be plain for all to see. Just as with the Hockeystick, Cook, Lewandowsky, Climategate, and Maurizio's outing of the BBC 28, we feel we've got the evidence, if only the public would just look at it (which means: if only the public would become as obsessively interested as we are).
We're like Hamlet, eternally concocting Cunning Plans to reveal the truth, when all we have is the word of a ghost (No offense to Bengtsson and Lawson).
I suppose that others have similar questions to mine some of which may never be answered.
- Did Lennart Bengtsson not foresee, at least to some extent, what the reaction from his 'colleagues' would be?
- If he did foresee such a reaction, did he overestimate his capacity to weather it?
- "If this is going to continue I will be unable to conduct my normal work" How does someone make the correct balance between continuing one's career in its final stages and not capitulating to bullies?
- What would I have done in the same situation? I like to think I am independent minded and resistant to pressure, but would I have told my "colleagues" va te faire enculer? Hard to say without having been there.
- Now that the affair has resulted in adverse publicity for "The Team", will the "enormous world-wide pressure" simply disappear? Or will it intensify?
- Will any of Lennart Bengtsson's "colleagues" (those at Reading University, for example) dissociate themselves from the exertion of ".... an enormous group pressure ... that has become virtually unbearable to me" ?
- Will any concrete evidence of the "enormous group pressure .... from all over the world" emerge? I don't doubt the pressure he was subjected to but it is easily minimised by apologists such as Nick Stokes ("His friends didn’t like it. He left").
[snip response to snipped comment]
"Yes. In one case, UEA talked about Phil Jones still receiving 'death threats'. I FOI'd them for copies of these threats.
Response: "There are none on record"."
Well, someone had more success.
That's what bullying looks like.
How will the BBC play this?
Linda Holt "I'm inclined to think that both Lennart Bengtsson's joining GWPF and his hounding off it - and the publicity that both have attracted - will be staging posts in the crumbling AGW consensus."
I agree. This is priceless publicity.
Nick Stokes
If Lennart Bengtsson has been bullied in to this position, then the people responsible are as reprehensible as those that sent the disgusting e-mails to Phil Jones. I personally utterly condemn those responsible, as I am sure all BH regulars do.
More on Hamlet (geoffchambers, 10:50 AM). Hilary Ostrov may have been the first, with respect to this resignation event, to have deployed 'Something is rotten in the state of climate science.' in her comment yesterday at Climate Etc: http://judithcurry.com/2014/05/14/lennart-bengtsson-resigns-from-the-gwpf/#comment-553777
But it is a comment that should have been hoisted above the portals of the Met Office, the IPCC, and sundry academic and federal organisation groups in the US and Germany, for several decades.
Response: "There are none on record"."
Well, someone had more success.
That's what bullying looks like.
May 15, 2014 at 11:12 AM | Unregistered CommenterNick Stokes
Yes, I remember that. It was an earlier "Phil has received death threats" announcement by UEA.
The emails revealed (which NS gives a link to) are unpleasant and should have been investigated, with prosecutions folowing. From the analysis of language, use of specific words, and circumstances (they followed rapidly a news item on climategate in a redneck publication) they came mostly from US and Australian low life - not "colleagues".
And, from my recollection of reading them in detail,. there were at most two that actually mentioned an intention of doing away with Phil. The rest were along the lines of 'eat shit and die faggot'.
I remember at the time noting that the UEA did not treat them as 'death threats' - eg they did not report them to the police. I also noted at the time:
However, despite the rude words, I don't find them specially shocking. It's the everyday vocabulary of the US underclass - I lived in the USA for a while and met people who expressed similar sentiments in similar language.. I certainly find them no more shocking than some of the sentiments of violence in the climategate emails.
I really can't wait until Nick Stokes gets to be 'elderly' and 'retired' so that then, no matter his fine brain (debatable) or principled stands, we can just write him off as 'elderly' and 'retired'. It's such a good job the professor wasn't black otherwise NS would really have stuck it to him!
The climate obsessed are afraid of skeptics. They are afraid of honest open discussion. They are afraid of freedom of conscience. They are afraid of debate. They are afraid of being asked tough questions.
They are afraid because behind the sycophantic media reports, the political leaders carrying their water, their insider tax subsidies, they know they are pushing lies.
Think of the punk mentality it takes to intimidate an old man into resigning from even belonging to an organization the cowards don't approve of.
The climate obsessed are a modern parody of puritanical faux moralization. They are Lysenko apparatchiks writ large.
geoffchambers "who see merely a flamewar between two sets of bickering obsessives."
It's true. The public are uninterested in both sides but there are intermediate observers. There will be Conservative MPs who are on the fence but who will be nudged by what could easily be seen as climate science's almost phobic attitude to the GWPF. Politicians might not understand the science or even care to but they will understand that their politics is being systematically excluded. Ironically supporting scepticism for all the wrong reasons. Journalists will store this event away and use it as evidence that the consensus side has reached its conclusions through bullying and exclusion. Those issues resonate with the public and let’s face it, they don’t need much persuasion that green taxes and windmills are a bad idea thought up by bad people.
The warmists will be able to point to this and say 'see, we feel so strongly about the dangers of climate change we are prepared to act like a pack of internet trolls'. Hmmm.
Warmists built their empire with much more subtle forms of control but it was always there. Without this sort of pressure, the polarisation between Steve McIntyre and Phil Jones might never have happened. Mann created the ‘them and us’ atmosphere. Without it, the proxy reconstructions might have been improved behind closed doors and we might never have heard of any of the key players. Imagine that.
It’s true that sceptics can go overboard on some of the issues (and some people on the internet can be seriously weird) but it’s nowhere near as damaging. Random members of the public are able, even expected to act like a rabble but respected members of a scientific community are supposed to have higher standards.
What could Bengtsson have done as part of GWPF that could be more damaging to the consensus than being bullied out of it, mere days after joining?
"I really can't wait until Nick Stokes gets to be 'elderly' and 'retired'"
Instant gratification. I'm retired. People think I'm elderly. As you might expect, I know better.
But I'm just echoing Marcel Crok at May 14, 2014 at 2:17 PM.
I remember reading something similar furore from the economics community because one of their number had written a paper that said a higher minimum wage wouldn't cost jobs. Academics are weird!
"That's what bullying looks like." Nick Stokes
It's was also a fine example of how sceptics tend to reject bullying. No, it's not universal and it's not 100% of the time but key sceptics like the Bish and Anthony Watts are clear on the issue. Now link to the articles from your side doing the same.
Nick Stokes:"But I'm just echoing Marcel Crok"
So you didn't think it worth railing against? Shame.