Friday, November 20, 2015

I Suspect Ann Reid

Well, I've been trying to figure out why I've been banned from NCSE's blog. I don't know exactly why, but I do have quite a few ideas. As to who banned me, I'm a bit more certain. I suspect it was Ann Reid, the executive director, who has recently taken over from founder, Eugenie Scott.

To recap, I've been banned from NCSE's blog and had my comments from the last three posts I commented on deleted. The next earlier  post I commented on, had some of my comments put in perpetual moderation. Comments in earlier posts appear to be intact. I posted all my deleted comments on this page.

The last post was by Ann Reid entitled What We're Reading. It was a list of seven linked articles, some about climate. I made this comment on one about Bill Nye:
Bill Nye, the totalitarian guy, actually says:
"Part of the solution to this problem or this set of problems associated with climate change is getting the deniers out of our discourse. You know, we can’t have these people – they’re absolutely toxic."

Tuesday, November 17, 2015

I'm Banned at NCSE




I've been banned at NCSE's blog Also, the comments from the last three post I commented on have been deleted. Fortunately they use the DISQUS commenting system, which saves and displays your pending and removed comments, so I've posted my deleted comments on this page. On the  post I commented on before these three, I had a few of my comments put in perpetual moderation. I have a post about it here. All my other comments at NCSE appear to be intact. I intend to post more commentary on all this when I get it better sorted out. 



Links:

Monday, October 26, 2015

NCSE Blogger Puts My Comments into Perpetual Moderation and Quotes Mao

NCSE blogger Steven Newton had this post a couple of weeks ago. It was a rather bland description of a recent study about the consensus on climate change and he included some whining about the use of the word "skeptic" to denote climate skeptics and Climategate being a fake scandal. So I made a comment that included some quotes by Willis Eschenbach from this WUWT post. It was put in moderation with the option of allowing readers to see the post anyway.

Another commenter liked my comment and suggested that it might soon disappear. I replied that I had made preparations and included a link to this blog. Newton and some of his regulars belittled my blog. I also made a response to a comment by Newton that disappeared from the thread. I asked him if he deleted it and he replied that he didn't know what happened to it. He said as a rule that he was not deleting comments. And he included this quote from Mao: "let a thousand flowers bloom". I responded by reposting my comment and hazarding a guess as to what Mao's moderation policy might be.

NCSE uses the DISQUS commenting system. When you log into your own DISCUS profile, comments that are in moderation will include a red box that says "pending". Deleted comments will have a red box that says "removed".

Wednesday, September 30, 2015

Parody Amazon Review of Mann's Book Disappears

With the recent vanishing of the RICO20 letter and the impending vanishing of ringleader Jagadish Shukla's IGES, I thought I'd write about another obscure disappearance -- an Amazon review of Michael Mann's book, The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars.

It was a parody written in the style that a North Korean propagandist might use in a tribute to the late Kim Jong Il. It was fairly long (about seven or eight paragraphs) and very well done. I noticed it's absence because I had made a comment some time ago and went back looking to see if there were any newer responses.

(Update: If anyone saved a copy of this review, I would greatly appreciate it if they would post it in a comment here)

(Further Update: A small portion of this review has been found. See this post.)

Tuesday, June 23, 2015

Commenter Takes his Ball (Deletes his Comments) and Goes Home

I went over an old Disqus thread at this post for the NCSE's blog. It was a new blogger named Kate Heffernan introducing herself. She is interested in climate and referred to 97% consensus papers. So I fired off a comment:
"It astonished me that people were allowing ideology to cloud their judgment on anthropogenic climate change, choosing to disregard the 97% of peer-reviewed scientific articles on the causes of global warming that support the theory, instead favoring positions on climate change that suit their worldviews."
Some skeptics of climate catastrphe may be allowing their idiology to cloud their judgement. But is your side doing the same thing? Those 97% studies have been found to be of very poor quality. Check out what Jose Duarte and Tom Fuller have to say:

Monday, June 22, 2015

Blocked @billmoyers.com

I read this post by Naomi Oreskes at billmoyers.com and fired off this snarky comment:
Maybe delaying action is a good thing. Right now climate action consists of subsidizing a bunch of boondogles like shipping woodchips across the Atlantic to burn in power plants in the UK or filling the landscape with huge white elephants that give intermitent power with no credible prospects for storage. Advances in next generation nuclear plants could make them all superfluous. Lomborg has it right -- more research.
Prevent future authoritarianism? It looks to me like a ruse for loony, delusional, economics and engineering illiterate leftist to grab power.
It was put into moderation and removed. It was a bit hasty  and shrill and I could have checked the spelling a bit more. I don't like blowing a chance to be heard on a post by a major climate figure like Oreskes, so I thought I would make an apology and try again:

Friday, March 27, 2015

Chris Mooney Zaps Comments with Quotes and Links about Himself

It's probably understandable. Chris Mooney has a post up at the Post's Energy and Environment section about the just published response by Ruth Dixon and Jonathan Jones, to Steven Lewandowsky's crappy moon landing hoax paper. I tried to make the following comment:
A lot of respectable people, such as Tom Fuller, consider Lewandowsky a charlatan:
"I feel for Jose Duarte–I really do. He’s taking apart Lewandowky’s latest effort, which is not very difficult to do. Lewandowsky is not just a charlatan–he’s incompetent as well. But Duarte seems really surprised–almost shocked–at how low Lewandowsky can stoop to get his message through to the media."
 https://thelukewarmersway.wordpress.com/2015/01/08/the-grand-tradition-of-propaganda-in-climate-releases-to-understand-lewandowsky-you-must-travel-a-long-road/

Friday, March 20, 2015

Desnarkization

I recently participated in an amazing comment thread at Skeptic Insight. It was in this post by Donald Prothero about the Willie Soon disclosure story. A commenter remarked on how modest the amounts were and I responded with a quote from Christopher Monckton from a Breitbart link, saying that they were even smaller than that. Then Greg Laden jumped in:
You are using co-conspirator Chrisopher Monckton cited on a major climate science denialist site to make a claim about Willie Soon’s “innocence”? Very funny.
Now Greg Laden is a rather bellicose CAGW proponent, who most climate skeptics and lukewarmers would consider big game. So I had a great time and even posted a comment at WUWT Tips & Notes. Prominent commenters, Tom Fuller, Smokey and Brad Keyes jumped in. Lots of fun! I suspect Fuller found this thread, because I linked to one of his posts. It's happened before.

Now on to the subject of snark.

Wednesday, March 18, 2015

Is Naomi Oreskes Hot?

I recently found an opening at Rabett Run to make what I thought was a timely point by posting a comment that included delicate subject matter (at least to the PC bunnies). At Eli's blog, Judith Curry is often referred to by commenters as "Aunt Judy", which refers to a porn site (hmm, should I include a link?) featuring older women. Rajendra Pachauri has just had to step down as head of the IPCC due to charges of sexual harassment. In this post about the movie, Merchants of Doubt, a commenter included "I think Oreskes is kind of cute myself" in a comment. So I made this comment (with the previous commenter's name x'd out):

Donald Prothero Calls Judith Curry a Notorious Climate Denier

This thread follows an episode where I point out where Donald Prothero has called Judith Curry a notorious climate denier here.
Anyone who cites a notorious climate denier without the relevant credentials like Judith Curry does not deserve a detailed rebuttal to this pile of drivel.
Apparently, a bunch of Dr. Curry's readers decided to check out Skepticblog (archived here) and commented on another of  Prothero's posts here. Prothero soon deleted all these comments, but I had made a copy and posted them in the previously mentioned thread. You can follow the links and read the whole thing. There were 16 multi-paragraph comments with lots of links and I had to resort to posting 4 at a time. I appreciate Dr. Curry's letting me do this and she even let the single long list out of moderation. I started this blog so I wouldn't have to send other deleted comments to her blog to crash on her sofa.

First Experience with Comment Deletion at Skepticblog

There used to be a blog associated with the Skeptic Society called Skepticblog. It is archived here. They had a lot of posts on climate, mostly by paleontologist Donald Prothero. Most regular commenters there tended to tow the standard AGW line, along with Prothero. There was a very articulate commenter, with the handle markx, who just seemed to run circles around them. He didn't deny any basic AGW theory. He just challenged a lot of points and was very effective. On this post, I noticed one of my comments appearing in an odd place and that markx was getting mad and leaving. When I figured out what was happening, I started a discussion in the comment policy thread here. You can go to those two links and read the whole thing.


List of Links

http://www.skeptic.com/
http://www.skepticblog.org/
http://skepticblog.org/2012/12/19/shifting-baselines-and-dying-oceans/
http://skepticblog.org/2008/11/03/skepticblog-comment-policy/#comment-82288







Introductory Post

My Views on Climate and Energy

I'm very interested in climate change and energy issues. I started following them on blogs over half a decade ago. I have learned a lot and formulated opinions on climate science, energy, the politics involved, science in general and especially scientists.

I hold a lukewarmer position on climate change. It may turn out to be a big problem, but there is nothing urgent about it. "Climate emergency" is an oxymoron.

I find energy to be one of the most fascinating and important climate related topics. Unfortunately, I find people often have a lot of preconceptions about it that are detrimental to society. I think the most important source of energy for the future is nuclear power for reasons that are too elaborate to go into here. So called renewable sources such as solar and wind are not being critically evaluated.