“Climate Progress blog shuts down – disappears all previous comments“ (May 30, 2011). Nothing like a measured response, eh Anthony? The Think Progress website underwent a redesign over the weekend and Anthony Watts is eager to give a definitive assessment:
It appears the mendacious Joe Romm has been given new marching orders by Center for American Progress Big Brother Blog: “Think Progress”. From what I make of it, it seems the management realized that CP just wasn’t holding much readership, as it looks like the same 30 commenters or so frequent the place. Sooo…the spin is on. Joe’s doing his best to make his forced merger under Think Progress look like a win.
So none of the cool kids read Climate Progress, Anthony’s blog is way better anyway, and Joe Romm took his ball home (“disappears all previous comments”) because of all the mean things the cool kids, who never go there, were saying.
Reality: It was a website redesign! Sometime comments take a while to reconnect. It’s not a nefarious tactic to suppress the vigorous triumph of denialist criticisms. Climate Progress and Think Progress have always been closely linked, if anything it seems that “Think” will be promoting “Climate” more, not absorbing it.
Christ! Anthony’s grasp of website management is even worse than of climate science. And that is truly saying something. Anthony sounds like a kid who can’t best his school-yard rival hoping their parent will do it for them.
Here are a few Climate Progress posts about the process:
- Stop the Presses! Climate Progress is getting an Extreme Makeover, home-page edition
- Comment here on comments and the new design “Let me start by profusely apologizing that you won’t have access to the old comments for a while.”
- “… the world’s most viewed climate website” A response to Anthony’s website stats braggadocio. Guess what? He’s cherry-picking his stats and misrepresenting them too. I guess it’s hard to break old habits.
2011-08-24 Update: It took a while, but the old comments are finally up again. So much for Anthony’s accusations.
Wott's Up With That? 
Anthony’s churnalism of distortions and lies of the known facts from the real world of reality, has reached a new denial low! Now, ain’t that the “Inconvenient Truth” !
I hear Watts is a better kisser and Joe Romm has girl germs.
A fun calculation: increase in radiative forcing is around 800 TW over a year, Explained: Radiative forcing, energy equivalent of around 100 Tunguska size Meteors hitting Earth each day.
Is there another category above and beyond Alarmism? extremelyfuckedupism perhaps?
Every single time a website goes down or Watts’ own site changes in search rankings, he hits the panic button.
If WordPress ever stops hosting his site for free there’ll be murder on the streets.
Just added this to the HS/FOI thread at WUWT. We’ll see if it sees the light of day…
Re:- (2) Steve successfully obtained the needed data and demonstrated serious flaws in Mann’s approach.
(3) Mann defended his work by saying that other Hockey Stick reconstructions validated his method and his conclusions.
And by demonstrating that the criticisms had an insignificant effect on the conclusions.
(5) Those seeking the data and methods used in the HS reconstructions became more and more aggressive, eventually turning to FOIA as a tool to pry loose the information.
MBH98/99 are now over a decade old, all the data and code for Mann 2008 were published with the paper.
Michael Mann has subsequently stated that he did, in fact, participate in an orchestrated effort to delete emails covered under FOIA,
Tosh, possibly libellous. He forwarded a mail, without comment, to Gene Wahl, who states: For the record, while I received the email from CRU as forwarded by Dr. Mann, the forwarded message came without any additional comment from Dr. Mann; there was no request from him to delete emails. Mann commented:- Mann said, “I felt Eugene Wahl had to be aware of this e-mail … it could be used against him. I didn’t delete any e-mails and nor did I tell Wahl to delete any e-mails.”
Orchestrated campaign? Participate? Handwaving.
[Simple minds need simple narratives, and Anthony’s determined to provide it. – Ben]
It seems some people are medical industry shills trying to induce diagnosable paranoia in the readers of the said site.
[What, you think there are vested interests at work here? Shocking! – Ben]
Well, that got posted, but the shutters soon came down again and I am now Wattsona non grata again. Imagine my chagrin. Still, the WattBots are deprived of this latest pearl which I post here for posterity, replying to Nick Stokes….
Nick Stokes – 3:25.
Nice summary, Nick. The lack of perspective/proportion is indeed breathtaking. Skipping lightly over the sockpuppets, false credentials, nitpicks, Nazi comparisons, personal remarks, mountains and molehills I would remind folks of some more of that ‘information’ that Mr. McIntyre accused me of spreading …
The first MBH study, MBH98, only went back to 1400 so claims the intent was to get rid of the MWP must be in connection to the sequel, MBH99.
MBH99 was all about the uncertainties in reconstructions going back so far (The clue is in the title). This detail has got lost in the noise, as has the fact that the graph picked up by the IPCC came with substantial error bars (The grey regions in the graphic above). I think Joel is right that all or most of the subsequent studies fall within those error bars, including the sequel to the sequel, Mann 2008 – with its complete code & data archive.
The curve has undoubted visual impact and it is arguable that the IPCC over-relied upon and overhyped it, and the original uncertainties, caveats and error bars got lost along the way, – but how this translates to the opproprium heaped on Mann passes all my understanding.
Icarus asks ‘Have any subsequent papers presented a substantial challenge to the findings of MBH98, and if so, what does that tell us about anthropogenic global warming?’
Smokey’s risible Heartland link notwithstanding, and extending MBH98 to both studies, the answer is that Mann 2008 showed greater variability (a less flat blade) but the central conclusion of anomalous recent warmth remains our best understanding.
The argument seems to go The Hockey Stick is broken => recent warmth is not unprecedented => it must be natural => AGW is a hoax. I leave the logical flaws in this line of reasoning as an exercise for the reader. As to the relevance of paleoclimate to the AGW controversy I can do no better than these words:
written by Steve McIntyre.
[Fickle and thin-skinned is our Anthony… – Ben]
“The Gasland movie; a fracking shame – director pulls video to hide inconvenient truths” (WUWT,Jun4,2011)
HOW IT’S DONE…………………….The industry narrowly defines the fracking problem to something that isn’t happening: fracking chemicals getting into well water.
They thereby conveniently side-step the actual complaints of (deep) methane getting into well water, and problems with the fracking chemicals that occur at the surface.
THE “CLEAN BILL OF HEALTH”……………. that resulted, as ironically described by the NYT, came from a recent Duke paper entitled:
“Methane contamination of drinking water accompanying gas-well drilling and hydraulic fracturing.”
Click to access pnas2011.pdf
From a Living on Earth interview with one of the authors, Robert Jackson:
“…near a natural gas well, less than a kilometer away, you were much more likely to have very high methane concentrations in your drinking water…”
“…the most likely explanation is that gas well casings are leaking and that methane is leaking out into the surrounding rock and aquifers…”
“Methane at low levels [in well water] is common…But when you looked at houses that were near a natural gas well you had much higher concentration of methane…”
“The way we tried to trace it is to use the chemical signature – the isotopes of methane. And what we found was that methane in high concentrations looked much more like deep methane from far underground than the methane that’s found naturally in shallow layers.”
THE CORNELL STUDY……………………isn’t on topic, but is of interest. It found that, “”fugitive” methane emissions at the fracking sites are greater than releases from conventional gas wells.”
Consequently, “”hydraulic fracturing” contributes to global warming as much as coal, or even more.” (The Hill,Jun6,2011)
From the news release: “…the hydraulic fracturing process tends itself to more leakage because it takes more time to drill the well, requires more venting and produces more flowback waste…”
Hi Ben,
do you know when the comments on the older threds will return ? Or any idea why they disapeared in the first place ?
[Golly, Joe’s definitely hiding something! Maybe you could read New Feature: Featured Comments for a clue. I have no info or insight into what’s happening at Climate Progress, but you may need to remember that web hosting isn’t some kind of magic box. If you need to reassure yourself that Joe Romm’s a no-good liar you can always visit the Wayback Maachine. – Ben]
Hi Ben,
i don´t think he´s hiding anything. Why should I ?
I just think it shows little respect for the readers. I have seen a lot of moving in the blog world (mostly of non climate blogs) and never noticed disapearing comments. Maybe because a blog move is not some kind of magic.
Oh, and I don´t like the “over the top” Attitude of Antony, just like I dont´t like yours. But I guess “he started”.
I prefer the technical stuff. (so don´t read Jeff´s “Obamacare” or whatever threads, since I know it´s politics, and I won´t argee or learn anything anyway)
You could have been impressing me by answering simply “no” and “technical problems”.
Thanks for your time anyway.
[You think Joe Romm is showing “little respect” for his readers because of this comments problem? I’d bet dollars to donuts that he was promised that they would be retained and I’m sure that they’re important to him. It’s one thing to post something, it’s another thing altogether to see it survive a chewing over in the comments. If there’s one group we ALL should be skeptical of it’s software salesmen! Perhaps I took your comment the wrong way, put sometimes it’s hard to distinguish an honest question from a denialist hit-and-run. – Ben]