Picture Post #74 The Swimmers

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'Because things don’t appear to be the known thing; they aren’t what they seemed to be

neither will they become what they might appear to become.'

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Posted by Martin Cohen

La Grotte des Nageurs

OK this is not exactly about the image, as much as the context. But then, that’s often what we end up talking most about here at Pi with our Picture Post series. ‘La Grotte des Nageurs’, or ancient cave of the swimmers, contains these unmistakable image of people swimming.  It was discovered in Egypt, near the border with Libya,  in 1933 and immediately caused much bafflement as it was located in one of the world’s least swimmable areas. Could it be that, say ten thousand years earlier, the Sahara had been a bit more like the seaside?

Seriously, it is thought that at this time, the area was indeed very different, a humid savanna replete with all sorts of wild animals, including gazelles, lions, gireaffes and elephants!

But back to the humans, and what I like about this picture is the way it conveys that curious lightness of being that can only be obtained by plunging into water while maybe holding something like a float, or catching a current. It’s a simple painting, by any standard, yet a curiously precise and delicate one.

The Grotte was portrayed in the novel The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje, and in a film adaptation starring Ralph Fiennes and Kristin Scott Thomas – and the two diminuitive swimming figures.

Environmental Ethics and Climate Change

Posted by Keith Tidman

The signals of a degrading environment are many and on an existential scale, imperilling the world’s ecosystems. Rising surface temperature. Warming oceans. Sinking Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets. Glacial retreat. Decreased snow cover. Sea-level rise. Declining Arctic sea ice. Increased atmospheric water vapour. Permafrost thawing. Ocean acidification. And not least, supercharged weather events (more often, longer lasting, more intense).

Proxy (indirect) measurements — ice cores, tree rings, corals, ocean sediment — of carbon dioxide, a heat-trapping gas that plays an important role in creating the greenhouse effect on Earth, have spiked dramatically since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. The measurements underscore that the recent increase far exceeds the natural ups and downs of the previous several hundred thousand years. Human activity — use of fossil fuels to generate energy and run industry, deforestation, cement production, land use changes, modes of travel, and much more — continues to be the accelerant.

The reports of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, contributed to by some 1,300 independent scientists and other researchers from more than 190 countries worldwide, reported that concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxides ‘have increased to levels unprecedented in at least 800,000 years’. The level of certainty of human activity being the leading cause, referred to as anthropogenic cause, has been placed at more than 95 percent.

That probability figure has legs, in terms of scientific method. Early logical positivists like A.J. Ayer had asserted that for validity, a scientific proposition must be capable of proof — that is, ‘verification’. Later, however, Karl Popper, in his The Logic of Scientific Discovery, argued that in the case of verification, no number of observations can be conclusive. As Popper said, no matter how many instances of white swans we may have observed, this does not justify the conclusion that all swans are white. (Lo and behold, a black swan shows up.) Instead, Popper said, the scientific test must be whether in principle the proposition can be disproved — referred to as ‘falsification’. Perhaps, then, the appropriate test is not ability to prove that mankind has affected the Earth’s climate; rather, it’s incumbent upon challengers to disprove (falsify) such claims. Something that  hasn’t happened and likely never will.

As for the ethics of human intervention into the environment, utilitarianism is the usual measure. That is to say, the consequences of human activity upon the environment govern the ethical judgments one makes of behavioural outcomes to nature. However, we must be cautious not to translate consequences solely in terms of benefits or disadvantages to humankind’s welfare; our welfare appropriately matters, of course, but not to the exclusion of all else in our environment. A bias to which we have often repeatedly succumbed.

The danger of such skewed calculations may be in sliding into what the philosopher Peter Singer coined ‘speciesism’. This is where, hierarchically, we place the worth of humans above all else in nature, as if the latter is solely at our beck and call. This anthropocentric favouring of ourselves is, I suggest, arbitrary and too narrow. The bias is also arguably misguided, especially if it disregards other species — depriving them of autonomy and inherent rights — irrespective of the sophistication of their consciousness. To this point, the 18th/19th-century utilitarian Jeremy Bentham asserted, ‘Can [animals] feel? If they can, then they deserve moral consideration’.

Assuredly, human beings are endowed with cognition that’s in many ways vastly more sophisticated than that of other species. Yet, without lapsing into speciesism, there seem to be distinct limits to the comparison, to avoid committing what’s referred to as a ‘category mistake’ — in this instance, assigning qualities to species (from orangutans and porpoises to snails and amoebas) that belong only to humans. In other words, an overwrought egalitarianism. Importantly, however, that’s not the be-all of the issue. Our planet is teeming not just with life, but with other features — from mountains to oceans to rainforest — that are arguably more than mere accouterments for simply enriching our existence. Such features have ‘intrinsic’ or inherent value — that is, they have independent value, apart from the utilitarianism of satisfying our needs and wants.

For perspective, perhaps it would be better to regard humans as nodes in what we consider a complex ‘bionet’. We are integral to nature; nature is integral to us; in their entirety, the two are indissoluble. Hence, while skirting implications of panpsychism — where everything material is thought to have at least an element of consciousness — there should be prima facie respect for all creation: from animate to inanimate. These elements have more than just the ‘instrumental’ value of satisfying the purposes of humans; all of nature is itself intrinsically the ends, not merely the means. Considerations of aesthetics, culture, and science, though important and necessary, aren’t sufficient.

As such, there is an intrinsic moral imperative not only to preserve Earth, but for it and us jointly to flourish — per Aristotle’s notion of ‘virtue’, with respect and care, including for the natural world. It’s a holistic view that concedes, on both the utilitarian and intrinsic sides of the moral equation, mutually serving roles. This position accordingly pushes back against the hubristic idea that human-centricism makes sense if the rest of nature collectively amounts only to a backstage for our purposes. That is, a backstage that provides us with a handy venue where we act out our roles, whose circumstances we try to manage (sometimes ham-fistedly) for self-satisfying purposes, where we tinker ostensibly to improve, and whose worth (virtue) we believe we’re in a position to judge rationally and bias-free.

It’s worth reflecting on a thought experiment, dubbed ‘the last man’, that the Australian philosopher Richard Routley introduced in the 1970s. He envisioned a single person surviving ‘the collapse of the world system’, choosing to go about eliminating ‘every living thing, animal and plant’, knowing that there’s no other person alive to be affected. Routley concluded that ‘one does not have to be committed to esoteric values to regard Mr. Last Man as behaving badly’. Whether Last Man was, or wasn’t, behaving unethically goes to the heart of intrinsic versus utilitarian values regarding nature —and presumptions about human supremacy in that larger calculus.

Groups like the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have laid down markers as to tipping points beyond which extreme weather events might lead to disastrously runaway effects on the environment and humanity. Instincts related to the ‘tragedy of the commons’ — where people rapaciously consume natural resources and pollute, disregarding the good of humanity at large — have not yet been surmounted. That some other person, or other community, or other country will shoulder accountability for turning back the wave of environmental destruction and the upward-spiking curve of climate extremes has hampered the adequacy of attempted progress. Nature has thrown down the gauntlet. Will humanity pick it up in time?

The Man who Invented Climate Change (and then disowned it)

Posted by Martin Cohen

The man who started it all off - Herbert Lamb. Source WP:NFCC#4

History, as ever gives an insight into the Climate Change debate. The historian of science, Bernie Lewin, has researched the views of the British scientist who for many years struggled to persuade governments that actually, yes, climate did change. Hubert Lamb, an academic and the founder of the influential Climatic Research Unit (better known by its acronym ‘CRU’) at the University of East Anglia in the UK, is conventionally credited with putting manmade Climate Change on the world agenda. He doesn't get many mentions though - because he came to detest the poltical abuses of his ideas.

Lamb was once described by one of his successors at the CRU, Trevor Davies ( probably self-servingly) as ‘the greatest climatologist of his time’. Davies credits him with ‘convincing the remaining doubters of the reality of climate variation on time-scales of decades and centuries’ and an obituary in Nature offers his great achievement as overturning the ‘old orthodoxy’ of climate stability. Other scientific admirers suggest that it was Lamb who first introduced the idea that climatic change has happened, and is still happening, on human time scales. But Bernie Lewin has no doubt that much of this is political fiction, noting that Lamb was far from the first to introduce the idea of a constantly changing climate. And where Lamb’s successor at his climate research centre found it, ‘ironic’ that even as the world became ‘acutely aware of global climate change’, Lamb maintained a guarded attitude to the importance of greenhouse warming, Lewin sees nothing odd in the position of a scientist advocating the idea of natural climate change being ‘guarded’ about the evidence of a global human influence. Awareness of past variability would rather tend towards scepticism of claims to have identified a single, new and extraordinary cause of climate change.

Hubert Lamb, in fact, was an old-school meteorologist, and there was something of a clash of cultures between those like him brought up on geology and weather records, and the new kinds of ‘climate scientists’ only recently tempted by research money into applying their mathematical skills to the natural world. Lamb expressed open scepticism of the theoretical physics used now to predict future climate trends noting that often the models failed to match reality. He argued for:

* the existence of negative feedbacks dampening warming trends where the climate modellers allowed only positive feedbacks amplifying them;
* that 20th century climate variation was better explained by natural factors (such as solar and volcanic effects);
* wonders how accurate the figures relied on for identifying relatively tiny temperature trends even were.

Such doubts led him to spend time analysing the political impetus for the new climate science, including vested interests, and the reasons why climate modelling in particular received so much support. Lamb completed his memoirs in 1997, just a few months before Kyoto, the international summit in which man-made Climate Change was given it preeminent role. In these memoirs he laments:

‘It is unfortunate that studies produced nowadays treat these and other matters related to changes of climate as if they are always, and only, attributable to the activities of Man and side-effects on the climate.’

This post is lightly adapted from Martin Cohen's book:
Paradigm Shift: How expert opinions keep changing on life, the universe, and everything

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Wikipedia on Climate Change

 

How has the World's largest encyclopaedia been covering the Climate Change debate?

 

 

 

Above. A typical Wikipedia 'smorgasbord' of pseudo-facts. The alarming red hot globe, for example, is based not so much on temperature data but computer 'filling in' of data - notably in the Arctic and Antarctic regions. This technique is so obviously unsatisfactory that no reputable climate statisticians accept it. And the IPCC itself, although used as the source, correctly calls the various scenarios 'projections' not 'predictions'. Wikipedians, like politicians, don't know the difference! (See notes)

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A Philosophical Investigation by Martin Cohen

February 23 2010

Being a Classic post 'reposted' from Pi-alpha

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Put 'Global Warming' into Google, let alone Wikipedia, and you will be offered, as 'settled fact', the following: 

Global warming is the increase in the average temperature of Earth's near-surface air and oceans since the mid-20th century and its projected continuation.... An increase in global temperature will cause sea levels to rise and will change the amount and pattern of precipitation, probably including expansion of subtropical deserts.[8]… Other likely effects include changes in the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events, species extinctions, and changes in agricultural yields. Warming and related changes will vary from region to region around the globe, though the nature of these regional variations are uncertain.

That is because you will be directed to 'Wikipedia'¹. The Wikipedia page goes on to predict glacial retreat, Arctic shrinkage including long-term shrinkage of Greenland ice sheet. Ocean acidification will lead to the extinction of between 18% to 35% of animal and plant species by 2050. Horrifying predictions of temperature rises are given in graphics, with a note that not all effects of global warming are accurately predicted by the climate models used by the IPCC. Ah ha! a small concession to the sceptics? Not at all, the encyclopaedia merely wants us to worry more because, "For example, observed Arctic shrinkage has been faster than that predicted." 

This is, of course, the 'full throttle' version of the theory of man-made global warming, as advanced by certain scientists and green groups. (Apart from the highly politicised IPCC summaries written by activists including government representatives with the aim of directing political policies, the sources are variously, RealClimate.org, James Hansen at the Goddard Institute, and so on. That is three names for essentially the same outfit.) 

In general, Wikipedia reprints the IPCC notes for policy makers, produced by it political steering committees, as a kind of holy writ. Actually, to say something is the 'view of the IPCC' is a shorthand, because many of the past and present authors of the IPCC reports do NOT agree with particular claims. Naturally, given their origins, the reports consist of endless weasel words and hair-splitting distinctions between degrees of plausibility. 'Very likely' to happen, 'quite likely', 'likely'. None of these complications bog down Wikipedia, where the science is all very straightforward and unremittingly alarmist. To confirm its accuracy, the Global Warming page boasts a gold star meaning it has been approved by the Wikipedia system as one of the best, the most objective and the most encyclopaedic. 

Well down the page, long after most people have stopped reading, below the scary graphs and charts, is the heading "Debate and skepticism". But this debate is confined to 'how to combat Global Warming' and calculating the benefits of limiting industrial emissions of greenhouse gases against costs. "Using economic incentives, alternative and renewable energy have been promoted to reduce emissions while building infrastructure", the encyclopaedia explains. 

But keep on reading, and there we are, at the very bottom of the page XXX words and 122 learned footnotes later, comes a dissenting note! "Some global warming skeptics in the science or political communities dispute all or some of the global warming scientific consensus, questioning whether global warming is actually occurring, whether human activity has contributed significantly to the warming, and the magnitude of the threat posed by global warming." 

That's all it says on the main page, but now - if we are curious, we might follow the link to see what these skeptics are saying. 

The 'Climate Skeptics' page starts neutrally enough: 

"Climate Skeptics include many leading researchers and scientists, such as Professor Bob Carter of James Cook University and Dr David Bellamy and then, under the heading "View of prominent sceptics" offers short quotes to show the sort of things at issue: 

From Climate Skeptics page

"Former UN Scientist Dr. Paul Reiter of the Pasteur Institute in Paris (who resigned from UN IPCC in protest): “As far as the science being ‘settled,’ I think that is an obscenity. The fact is the science is being distorted by people who are not scientists.”

UN IPCC scientist Vincent Gray of New Zealand: “This conference demonstrates that the [scientific] debate is not over. The climate is not being influenced by carbon dioxide.

Climate researcher Dr. Craig Loehle, formerly of the Department of Energy Laboratories and currently with the National Council for Air and Stream Improvements, has published more than 100 peer-reviewed scientific papers: “The 2000-year temperature trend is not flat, so a warming period is not unprecedented. … a 1500-year temperature cycle as proposed by [Atmospheric physicist Fred] Singer and Dennis Avery is consistent with Loehle climate reconstruction… a 1500-year cycle implies that recent warming is part of natural trend.”

Hurricane expert and Meteorologist Dr. William Gray: “There are lot’s of skeptics out there, all over the U.S. and the rest of the world. Global warming has been over-hyped tremendously; most of the climate change we have seen is largely natural. I think we are brainwashing our children terribly.”

UK Astrophysicist Piers Corbyn: “There is no evidence that CO2 has ever driven or will ever drive world temperatures and climate change. The consequence of that is that worrying about CO2 is irrelevant. Our prediction is world temperatures will continue to decline until 2014 and probably continue to decline after that.”

Meteorologist Art Horn: “There are thousands of scientists around the world who believe that this issue is not settled. The climate is not being influenced by carbon dioxide.”

Climate statistician Dr. William M. Briggs, who serves on the American Meteorological Society's Probability and Statistics Committee and is an Associate Editor of Monthly Weather Review: “It is my belief that the strident and frequent claims of catastrophes caused by man-made global warming are stated with a degree of confidence not warranted by the data."

This splendidly neutral page then concludes with some longer sceptical accounts including that of Professor John David Lewis of Duke University, USA, reporting that he has challenged many of the claims made by proponents of man-made climate change theory, in an article in the politically neutral journal Social Philosophy and Policy (Volume 26 No. 2 Summer 2009), saying: 'Those predicting environmental disasters today focus on particular issues in order to magnify the gravity of their general claims, and they push those issues until challenges make them untenable. Rhetorical skill and not logical argument has become the standard of success.' 

Then there is that review article, published in the Times Higher on the 03 December 2008, Professor Gwyn Prins, the director of the Mackinder Programme for the Study of Long Wave Events at the London School of Economics, which says that the 'principle product of recent science is to confirm that we know less, less conclusively - not more, more conclusively - about the greatest open systems on the planet'. 

And finally, Professor Mike Hulme's, a 'climate scientist' at the University of East Anglia's centre for such research, offered a comprehensive defence of scepticism in the December Wall Street Journal noting: "Science never writes closed textbooks. It does not offer us a holy scripture, infallible and complete." 

What a fine summary, if I might say so myself! So 'Wikipedia' gives us (as the old legal refrain goes) the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, no? 

No, no, and no! This 'sceptical page', was one I knocked up as little test to see if complaints about climate change bias on the the 'open-to-all encyclopaedia were justified. Once posted, it lasted exactly one minute. No you read that right - one minute! 

  I finished writing the page at 22:34, on the 6 February., At 22:35, 6 February 2010, an editor operating under the usual stupid (but effective in terms of the propaganda function of WIkipedia) pseudonym, MuffledThud, added the template 'Requesting speedy deletion (CSD A10). (TW))'. And that was that! No more nasty Skepticism on Wikipedia! 

Now I am more a little bit more cognoscenti of WP than perhaps most users, so I attempted to defend my page four minutes later - that is before the page could be 'formally' deleted. This required pasting the gnome-like WIkipedia formula : ({{hangon}}). Did that save my page? Well, yes and no. This time the page stayed there for half an hour. But then at 23:09, 6 February 2010 Tony Sidaway 'a system operator', that is to say a Wikipedia editor who has been given extra powers over most of the rest, removed the page and replaced it with an electronic alias pointing at the 'Global Warming page', which as we have seen, covers the sceptical angle very thoroughly with all of that final, er,… one sentence. As a system operator, Tony leaves a short note on the strategy. "Redirect as per Global warming skeptic, stable for over two years", in the so-called 'page history'. Later on, someone thought it safer to make the redirect 'permanent' and to to make challenging it a 'ban able offence'. 

So why is it impossible to place on Wikipedia, just for the record, some of the 'other views', 'dissenting voices' if you wish, including as they certainly do, many distinguished scientists, professors and IPCC authors? 

After all, Wikipedia has room for another 3 million articles including ones on 'Fart Lighting' and 'Nipple clamps' (the encyclopaedia's origins start with a rather sordid 'web-portal' called Bomis) and lengthy accounts of what its editors have done that day. But indeed, it is not possible. Not only Tony Siddaway but a whole group of editors patrol the encyclopaedia immediately removing any views not consonant with their uncompromising thesis. 

Instead of the full range of views, as even those IPCC reports give a nod to, there is only one only page describing other views is headed unprepossessingly: 

 

List of scientists opposing the mainstream scientific assessment of global warming

Great title guys! Makes you want to read on! Mind you, there is a rather off-putting opening disclaimer: 

"This article lists living and deceased scientists who have made statements that conflict with the mainstream assessment of global warming as summarised by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and other scientific bodies."

That's just for starters. Read the first half page of background briefing next! 

Climate scientists agree that the global average surface temperature has risen over the last century. The scientific consensus was summarised in the 2001 Third Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The main conclusions relating directly to past and ongoing global warming were as follows:

1. The global average surface temperature has risen 0.6 ± 0.2 °C since the late 19th century, and 0.17 °C per decade in the last 30 years.

2. "There is new and stronger evidence that most of the warming observed over the last 50 years is attributable to human activities", in particular emissions of the greenhouse gases carbon dioxide and methane.

3. If greenhouse gas emissions continue the warming will also continue, with temperatures projected to increase by 1.4 °C to 5.8 °C between 1990 and 2100. Accompanying this temperature increase will be increases in some types of extreme weather and a projected sea level rise of 9 cm to 88 cm, excluding "uncertainty relating to ice dynamical changes in the West Antarctic ice sheet". On balance the impacts of global warming will be significantly negative, especially for larger values of warming.

Those listed here have, since the Third Assessment Report of the IPCC, made statements that conflict with at least one of these principal conclusions. Inclusion is based on specific, attributable statements in the individual's own words, and not on listings in petitions or surveys. In February 2007, the IPCC released a summary of a Fourth Assessment Report, which contains similar conclusions to the Third. For the purpose of this list, a scientist is defined as a person who published at least one peer-reviewed article during their lifetime in the broadly-construed area of natural sciences.

Are you still interested? Well, don't be. None of the views summarised here are presented in a way to make any useful point. Add to which, there are apparently just three people, who as the page puts it, think that "Global warming is not occurring or has ceased". 

All right, let's have 'em!

• Timothy F. Ball, former Professor of Geography, University of Winnipeg: " who sceptically observes: "There's been warming, no question. I've never debated that; never disputed that. The dispute is, what is the cause." but then disputes himself by saying "The temperature hasn't gone up. ... But the mood of the world has changed: It has heated up to this belief in global warming." (August 2006)
• Robert M. Carter, geologist, researcher at the Marine Geophysical Laboratory at James Cook University in Australia who is allowed, graciously, to say "the accepted global average temperature statistics used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change show that no ground-based warming has occurred since 1998 ... there is every doubt whether any global warming at all is occurring at the moment, let alone human-caused warming."

and finally

• Vincent R. Gray, coal chemist, who thinks that:""The two main 'scientific' claims of the IPCC are the claim that 'the globe is warming' and 'Increases in carbon dioxide emissions are responsible'. Evidence for both of these claims is fatally flawed."[9]"

That's the main business over - very quickly. But space is tight on those Wikipedia servers - send more money please! Next are two slightly longer sections note those who think the "Accuracy of IPCC climate projections is questionable" or that "Global warming is primarily caused by natural processes" or (contrariwise, the duffers!) that "Cause of global warming is unknown", before the page finishes with a section called, hilariously and in full: "Now deceased", thus rounding up the other sceptics. 

And although the page offers at the top:"This is an incomplete list, which may never be able to satisfy certain standards for completion. You can help by expanding it with reliably sourced additions."- it also has a silver padlock signifying that editing is not open to most users at all.

However, it is in the safe hands of a 'user-group' called the 'Climate Change Task-force', who have special powers to stop articles presenting views that they do not agree with. Or as a notice puts it on their 'home page': 

"A decision by the Wikipedia community has placed articles relating to climate change under article probation. Editors making disruptive edits may be blocked temporarily from editing the encyclopaedia, or subject to other administrative remedies, according to standards that may be higher than elsewhere on Wikipedia. Please see Wikipedia:General sanctions/Climate change probation for full information and to review the decision."

By 'higher standards' they mean 'lower standards', but then this is WIkipedia and people can barely write. The point though is clear, as Lawrence Solomon has described in his articles over at the Financial Post on Wikipedia, of which more in a moment. Wikipedia is open to everyone to edit, but only if they either write drivel (as most pages there are) or stick to the political line. In the case of 'Climate Change' the line is that there is not only no scientific debate left to be had, but no political debate either. 

The 'lower/ higher standards' mean that people who have been given extra administrative powers on the encyclopaedia, 'system operators', such as the ability to an other users or to 'protect pages' (which means prevent people editing them) - are formally granted dispensation to use these administrative powers on pages they also edit - and thus promote their own views. The 'Chinese Wall' that supposedly exists to stop administrators abusing their powers in content debates has been torn down for articles on 'climate change'. 

Take William Connolley, for example, a little known Greenie (one of the RealClimate.org crowd ²,) whose views make up - literally!- the science for the Wikipedia pages) who has however some special role in the Wikipedia elite. He has banned more contributors than most websites have readers!

Here's what the climate sceptic commentator, Lawrence Solomon, says about him, in an article posted on the Financial Post website on Saturday, May 03, 2008 

"Connolley is a big shot on Wikipedia, which honours him with an extensive biography, an honour Wikipedia did not see fit to bestow on his boss at the British Antarctic Survey. Or on his boss's's boss, or on his boss's boss's boss, or on his boss's boss's boss's boss, none of whose opinions seemingly count for much, despite their impressive accomplishments. William Connolley's opinions, in contrast, count for a great deal at Wikipedia, even though some might not think them particularly worthy of note." 

[From the Financial Post article ³] 

Connolley is … an administrator with unusual editorial clout. Using that clout, this 40-something scientist of minor relevance gets to tear down scientists of great accomplishment. Because Wikipedia has become the single biggest reference source in the world, and global warming is one of the most sought-after subjects, the ability to control information on Wikipedia by taking down authoritative scientists is no trifling matter.

One such scientist is Fred Singer, the First Director of the U.S. National Weather Satellite Service, the recipient of a White House commendation for his early design of space satellites; the recipient of a NASA commendation for research on particle clouds — in short, a scientist with dazzling achievements who is everything Connolley is not. Under Connolley's supervision, Singer is relentlessly smeared, and has been for years, as a kook who believes in Martians and a hack in the pay of the oil industry. When a smear is inadequate, or when a fair-minded Wikipedian tries to correct a smear, Connolley and his cohorts are there to widen the smear or remove the correction, often rebuking the Wikipedian in the process.

Lawrence Solomon adds, "Wikipedia is full of rules that editors are supposed to follow, as well as a code of civility. Those rules and codes don't apply to Connolley, or to those he favours."

Indeed they don't. Here are some of the occasions that William Connolley has used his administrative powers to block other users he disagreed with just on the Climate Change topic. (A page called BLOCK#Disputes records such minutiae for each administrator.) 

It's long, but sums up exactly the travesty of editing on the 'Encyclopaedia anyone can edit'. Remember too that, supposedly, 'blocks' are a tool there only for neutral 'uninvolved' administrators to stop 'vandals'. 

WILLIAM THE GREEN'S BUSY MONTH

1. In an edit war with User:Chris_Chittleborough on Hockey stick controversy William blocks Chris. Another 'administrator', nicknamed Chaser later says:"Will...you can't block users you're in disputes with. The policy is unambiguous and ArbCom [the Wikipedian cabal of the most powerful administrators] has indicated the same thing. This is the kind of thing that people get de-sysopped for." [Hop off, Chaser!]

2. In an edit war with User:Lapsed Pacifist on the page Shell to Sea, William blocks Lapsed for the reason "repeated re-insertion of unsourced material"

3. In an edit war with User:Jaymes2 on Global warming William blocks Jaymes2 for the reason, "repeated insertion of tripe"

4. In an edit war on Global Warming with User:Sterculius William blocks Sterculius for "Tendentious edits at GW"

5. In an edit war with User:Wedjj on Global Warming William blocks Wedjj for 8 hours, reason: "disruptive editing"

6. In an edit war with User:Supergreenred over Global Warming, William blocks User:Supergreenred

7. In an edit war with User:Britcom on List of scientists opposing the mainstream scientific assessment of global warming and Global Warming William temporarily blocks Britcom, reason for 'incivility'. Brit says: "Don't be a hypocrite WC"

8. In the same edit war with User:Britcom on List of scientists opposing the mainstream scientific assessment of global warming and Global Warming William blocks Britcom for 24 hours reason: Incivility

9. In an edit war with User:Wikzilla at Global warming William personally blocks Wikzilla twice for Three-revert rule violations.

10. In an edit war with User:ConfuciusOrnis at Climate change denial William blocks User:ConfuciusOrnis twice. William is chastised by admin User:FeloniousMonk for William abusing his administrative powers.

11. In an edit war with user:207.237.232.228 on Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change William blocks 'anon' for three hours.

12. With User:DHeyward on Global Warming William blocks DHeyward, length: 8 hours, reason: "violation of 1RR on GW; in civil edit summaries"

13. In an edit war with User:Lapsed Pacifist on the page Shell to Sea William blocks Lapsed for 3 hours giving the reason as "incivility" for this edit.

14. For comments on List of scientists opposing the mainstream scientific assessment of global warming which William actively edits, William blocks 65.12.145.148 for incivility for this comment "A great read for all you cool aid drinkers."

15. William blocks User:HalfDome for incivility because of comments on the page Image talk:2000 Year Temperature Comparison.png, a page which he actively edits.

16. William again blocks User:HalfDome for incivility because of comments on the page Image talk:2000 Year Temperature Comparison.png.

17. William blocks User:Jepp for comments on List of scientists opposing the mainstream scientific assessment of global warming, an article William actively edits. Reason: "Inserting false information: incivility"

18. William blocks User:71.211.241.40 for comments on Global warming controversy.

19. William blocks User:Juanfermin for edits on the page List of scientists opposing global warming consensus, an article William edits regularly.

20. William blocks User:UBeR for comments on The Great Global Warming Swindle.

21. William blocks User:Peterlewis for comments on Historical climatology, an article William edits regularly.

22. William blocks User:69.19.14.31 for incivility on Global warming, an article William edits regularly.

23. William blocks User:Likwidshoe for incivility on IPCC Fourth Assessment Report, an article William edits regularly.

24. William blocks User:Kismatraval for "spam" on Global warming, an article William edits regularly.

25. William blocks User:69.19.14.29 for this comment "One thing is clear: this Wikipedia article and its fanatical guardians are a perfect example of how and why Wikipedia cannot be considered as a reliable source of knowledge."

26. William blocks User:Grimerking for 3rr on Global warming, an article William edits regularly.

27. William blocks User:Dick Wayne for posting youtube link on The Great Global Warming Swindle, an article William edits regularly.

28. William blocks User:DonaldDuck07 for "incivility" for comments on List of scientists opposing the mainstream scientific assessment of global warming, an article William actively edits.

29. William blocks User:Rotten for "incivility" for comments on The Great Global Warming Swindle, an article William actively edits.

30. William blocks User:219.64.26.28 for comments on Scientific opinion on climate change.

There's more, but that's enough to be going on with. The point is this: 

At Wikipedia, according to the bland and hypocritical publicity for the site, "anyone can edit a page" - jump right in, and edit my page, says Jimmy Wales, founder, et cetera et cetera, used to claim . And its central to the methodology of the integrity of the content that all editors are equal. Over time, the good edits are supposed to cancel out the bad edits. Is that true? Will they? No one will ever know, because in fact hardly anyone is even able to edit the 'Climate Change' or other controversial pages, and those who manage to, are immediately banned if they disagree with the 'super-editors' managing the content there.

Executive summary:

Wikipedia is not neutral, it is dangerous propaganda delivered by anonymous non-entities.

 

Does it matter though, what Wikipedia days? After all, we have the BBC and The Guardian newspaper all saying exactly the same thing in a more authoritative way. But indeed it does matter. The Guardian's environment writers use Wikipedia as a source for their stories, as its website editor, James Randerson, confirmed to me by telephone, volunteering (with endearing frankness) its use there as a supply of facts and sources, along with other details. I asked him, as the environment section's web specialist, if he was aware of the controversies surrounding the online encyclopaedia's coverage of Climate Change, specifically, that it was heavily skewed to one side of the debate? No, he said, he was not aware of that. And nor was The Guardian concerned either. As for the BBC, I have had dealings in the past with TV researchers, and rarely is there a group less inclined to look further than a convenient, ten minute source like Wikipedia. Certainly, later on, they will talk properly to experts, but the initial research will come straight off the net, and so will skew that selection of who they speak to. 

Sooo... does it matter? After all facts are facts, aren't they. But facts are not facts. Facts are versions of reality put forward by people with agendas. For example, the frightening temperature increases the page records, uses as its source the Goddard Institute of Space Studies, which is run by James Hansen, the 'big spider' at the centre of the Global Warming web who has such an 'extreme' position the matter that he has fallen out with most of the others in the pro-camp. Quoting them is like quoting Liverpool Supporters Club on 'who are the greatest' football team. Or maybe like using George Monbiot's vegetable patch as a marker for global climate change. 

Look at the details too- (in the small print) the 'record temperatures' result from spikes in measurements in the Arctic and 'parts' of the Antarctic - data sources that are considered so poor that the Met Office and other climate centres do not incorporate at all into their models. But the Goddard not only uses theses dubious statistics, as they say themselves, they then mathematically extrapolate them 'over the entire land mass' - obtaining many more record high temperatures! 

Well, what about using it to check sources, though? A quote is a quote isn't it? Not at WP. Nothing you read there is suitable for reproducing in a 'serious' newspaper - if you might lazily get away with it in a student essay or a top secret dossier for the British government on Iraqi nuclear weapons! Take the view attributed to Benny Peisner, about how he had been wrong to deny that there was a consensus amongst scientists on Global Warming as a settled fact. That's what it says he said on WP! But when Lawrence Solomon checked directly with Peisner, he found that he had said no such thing. The Wikipedia page had misunderstood or distorted his comments. Lawrence Solomon tried to correct the point, but a moment later, it was 'reverted' by 'Tabletop', who offered the explanation: "Note that Peiser has retracted this critique and admits that he was wrong". 

Despite this, it's not just The Guardian (a paper I used to occasionally write articles on Computers and Education for) uncritically regurgitating Wikipedia. All over the word, journalists are writing stories about global warming using the same strategy. 

A Day in the Life of an Environment Editor

10.00 Arrive at desk, switch computer on and have coffee

11.00 am Editorial meeting. Boss says write something (groans all round) about Global Warming.

12.00 Lunch

2.30 pm Look at Wikipedia

3.00 pm Ring or email someone mentioned there for comments

4.00 Tea and organic chocky biscuits

5.00 File 1000 words using WP and my vegetable patch as sources.

That's why Wikipedia's influence is greater than you might think, if you imagine it is just net-nerds who read Wikipedia you may be deluding yourself. Quite possibly you get a compulsory dose of it every morning in regurgitated form in your newspaper and watch it every evening on TV. 

Only a few media organisations have the 'resources' to do any 'research' into these matters - one's like the New York Times, which is a fervent backer of the cause, could it be in the interests of both the Democratic party and the Carbon Traders of Wall Street? - and the BBC. But the BBC held a meeting at which several climate experts were invited to see if there were any doubts or controversies about the climate change science, and these experts said certainly not! So the BBC has no worries. However, just to be on the safe side, it has officially designated the names of the experts it consulted a 'secret'. Like the temperature readings used by the University of East Anglia to arrive at the conclusion that the world is overheating, these sources can never be revealed. 

Now the 'science of global warming', which is to say, the notion that man-made CO2 has caused, and is set increasingly to do so, the planet to warm slightly, is certainly not all the 'sceptical way' either. But let's not get hung up on that. For any number of reasons, the world 'could be' warming up, just as the theory insists. If it is, we need a rational discussion of both the effects, the implications and possible mitigation strategies. 

None of these can start without a full and open exchange of views and evidence. Wikipedia has systematically distorted both - and it continues to do so. 

Here there are no controversies about inaccurate temperature records, manipulated temperature graphs, melting glaciers, african famines, dehydrating rain-forests, or 'complete lists of greenhouse gases' that miss out the one that causes 90 % of the greenhouse effect - water vapour*. 

Yet even giving the lobby its man-made global warming:

• if temperature records are inaccurate, then remedial activities will be directed to the wrong regions

• if glaciers are not really melting then emergency action to provide replacement fresh water supplies to a billion people in Asia is, to say the least, not necessary

• if the rain-forests are not really dehydrating then it is still worth preserving the rain-forests, rather than converting them to 'biofuels', as is the current policy

• if water vapour accounts for virtually all the greenhouse effect, then the economic value and utility of capturing other gases is functionally nil...

One could go on - but why bother? There is no debate, only propaganda. Whether Wikipedia is as we are asked to believe, just a rudderless ship being tossed here and there on the tides of prevailing opinion, I personally doubt. The bias is careful, subtle and very, very thorough. It involves wholesale abuse of the supposed principles of the site - the right of 'everyone' to edit pages and the expulsion of those who make changes that are 'off message' (like my new page on sceptical views). 

Let's leave the last word to Jimmy Wales, nominally at least, the benign dictator controlling the world's most consulted encyclopaedia. I asked him (by email) if anything about the coverage of Climate Change there had worried him, given that it was not neutral at all, and was generated in ways contrary to his claimed principle that 'all editors are equal'. In a characteristically unreflective reply, he wrote: 

"There exists a long line of people who, when their extremist agenda is not accepted into Wikipedia, accuse the community of bias."

Jimmy Wales, 15 Febuary 2010

Jimmy may or may not be worried about the goings on at Wikipedia. But the rest of us should be. 

---

Notes

About those frightening images... The 'source' is the Goddard Institute, and Gavin Schmidt, editor of realclimate.org (set up by the PR company that Al Gore's environmental advisor was a staffer for), and former home of Wikipedia editing supremo, William Connoley. Does Wikipedia note that Gavin Schmidt and Michael Mann - of the now discredited 'hockey stick' graph are both colleagues and chums? Or that the Goddard is run by James Hansen, one of Global Warming Theories' founding fathers, so to speak, who has such an 'extreme' position the matter that he has fallen out with most of the others in the pro-camp. Quoting them is like quoting Liverpool Supporters Club on 'who are the greatest' football team. Or maybe like using George Monbiot's vegetable patch as a marker for global climate change. Look at the small print too- Gavin and co admit that their 'record temperatures' result from spikes in measurements in the Arctic and 'parts' of the Antarctic - data sources that are considered so poor that the Met Office and other climate centrers do not incorporate at all into their models. But the Goddard not only uses these dubious statistics, as they say themselves, they then mathematically extrapolate them 'over the entire land mass' - obtaining many more record high temperatures!)]] 

1. Quotes from Wikipedia pages are from versions downloaded on 16 February 2010. The numbers in square brackets are left in to indicate the WIkipedia footnote gobbledegook. 

2. Lawrence Solomon,evidently confused by WIkipedia's jargon, makes some large over-estimates of the influence of Connolley. I'm grateful to the Wikipedia Review for additional details on William Connolley's activities. 

2. For those who are interested, the temperature records for the Siberia and China have been shown to have been deliberately falsified, while a much-quoted temperature-survey supposedly demonstrating only as small 'urban heat' effect contained key assertions that were impossible -that is, were flat lies. The key temperature graph of the IPCC report the so-called Hockey Stick graph, was inserted 3 times prominently by its inventor in one IPCC report, but then having been extensively discredited - notably for having 'ironed out' all evidence of past changes in temperature, not included at all in the next.The IPCC claim that all the ice in the Himalayas would have melted by 2035 was discredited when it was pointed out that it came from just one scientist, linked to the IPCC's chief, who had no evidence to back it up, and instead a personal interest in the advancing of the claim. The IPCC predictions of massive crop failure in Sub-Saharan Africa and the disappearance of the rainforests due to lack of rain followed the same pattern - one 'partisan' source, not peer-reviewed. Indeed, when spotted, they were flatly rejected by relevant specialists. But that debate has been suppressed - up to now!

• 1http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming
• 2see http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/william-m-connolley/
• 3http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fpcomment/archive/2008/05/03/who-is-william-connolley-solomon.aspx

BBC propaganda

BBC propaganda

An alarming insight into how the BBC operates?
 

 

  Who's Churning the BBC Machine?

 • 'How the BBC became a propaganda machine for climate change zealots 
 - as recounted by its former news frontman, Peter Sissons

Based on  the Daily Wail story which in turn drew on Peter Sissons's memoirs, with additional comments by Pi editors.

Sissons diagnoses it as 'political correctness'. Worrying about manmade climate change was an incontrovertible duty - a view also taken, for example, at the Guardian and the Times newspapers. But Sisson's writes:

'From the beginning I was unhappy at how one-sided the BBC's coverage of 
the issue was, and how much more complicated the climate system was than 
the over-simplified two-minute reports that were the stock-in-trade of 
the BBC's environment correspondents.

These, without exception, accepted the UN's assurance that 'the science 
is settled' and that human emissions of carbon dioxide threatened the 
world with catastrophic climate change. Environmental pressure groups 
could be guaranteed that their press releases, usually beginning with 
the words 'scientists say..'. would get on air unchallenged.

On one occasion, an MP used BBC airtime to link climate change doubters 
with perverts and holocaust deniers, and his famous interviewer didn't 
bat an eyelid.

On another occasion, after the inauguration of Barack Obama as president in 2009, the science correspondent of Newsnight actually informed viewers: 
'scientists calculate that he has just four years to save the world'. What she didn't tell viewers was that only one alarmist scientist, NASA's James Hansen, had said that.

My interest in climate change grew out of my concern for the failings of 
BBC journalism in reporting it. In my early and formative days at ITN, I 
learned that we have an obligation to report both sides of a story. It 
is not journalism if you don't. It is close to propaganda.




The BBC is bound by charter, of course, to be accurate and not conduct campaigns for causes. Exceptions however, can be authorised. The BBC's editorial policy on climate change was spelled out in a report by the BBC Trust in 2007. This announced that the BBC had held 'a high-level seminar with some of the best scientific experts and has come to the view that the weight of evidence no longer justifies equal space being given to the opponents of the consensus'.

The Trust promised thqt that climate change dissenters had been, and still would be, heard on its airwaves. 'Impartiality' in keeping with their status as a 'minority view'. The BBC report adds: 'as long as minority opinions are coherently and honestly expressed, the BBC must give them appropriate space.' (By which it meant the same sort of thing as allowing racist parties might be allowed to comment on immigration policy, for example.)

Indeed, Sissons notes: 'In reality, the 'appropriate space' given to minority views on climate change was practically zero.'

One mystery that has perplexed PI researchers, is who WAS at this important seminar assessing the status of climate science. Numerous Freedom of Information requests have for the guest list have been brushed off - but then a list turned up on the Wayback Machine revealing that they were... a mix of amateurs, business men with profits to make from the AGW scare - and greenies.

For a start, the seminar was partly funded by the UK government and organised in conjunction with a lobby group called the International Broadcasting Trust, both of which had a particular policy aim of increasing coverage about human environmental damage.

Likewise Exeter is a nice town, but it’s an awfully long way from Broadcasting House in London. But it is the base of the UK government’s research unit whose job is to produce evidence of the effects of human-made global warming. 

When an Italian climate sceptic found the names of the people at the expert conference on a long-forgotten web-page the cat was really out of the bag. The list showed that far from a representative sample of scientific opinion, the meeting consisted of scientists whose jobs revolved around proving the theory of human-made climate change; campaigners whose commitment to the cause of fighting global warming was in inverse proportion to their expert knowledge; and groups with financial interests such as British Petroleum.

This all came out after Sissons wrote his memoris. But in these, he says that there is one brief account of the proceedings, written by a conservative commentator who was there.

'He wrote subsequently that he was far from impressed with the 30 key BBC staff who attended. None of them, he said, showed 'even a modicum of professional journalistic curiosity on the subject'. None appeared to read anything on the subject other than the Guardian.'

And, as we know too, Guardian journalists, even so-called environment ones, rely on Wikipedia! for their information.

Sissons adds that this attitude was underlined a year later in another statement: 'BBC News currently takes the view that their reporting needs to be calibrated to take into account the scientific consensus that global 
warming is man-made.'

'Those scientists outside the 'consensus' waited in vain for the phone to ring', notes Sissons.
'It's the lack of simple curiosity about one of the great issues of our 
time that I find so puzzling about the BBC. When the topic first came to 
≠prominence, the first thing I did was trawl the internet to find out as 
much as possible about it. Anyone who does this with a mind not closed by religious fervour will 
find a mass of material by respectable scientists who question the 
orthodoxy. Admittedly, they are in the minority, but scepticism should 
be the natural instinct of scientists -  and the default setting of 
journalists.'

Yet the cream of the BBC's inquisitors during my time there never laid a 
glove on those who repeated the mantra that 'the science is settled'. 
On one occasion, an MP used BBC airtime to link climate change doubters 
with perverts and holocaust deniers, and his famous interviewer didn't 
bat an eyelid.
(PI adds: This is probably a reference to the present Deputy Prime Minister of the UK, Nick Clegg, who used this comparisonn in the pre-election debates. Clegg's wife has a good reason to be concerned about the issue - she is the director of a business that makes wind turbines, and relies on government largesse.)

Sissons makes another interesting point too:

'Meanwhile, Al Gore, the former U.S. Vice-President and climate change 
campaigner, entertained the BBC's editorial elite in his suite at the 
Dorchester and was given a free run to make his case to an admiring 
internal audience at Television Centre.'

At the BBC, Gore's views were above journalistic scrutiny, 'even when a 
British High Court judge ruled that his film, An Inconvenient Truth, 
≠contained at least nine scientific errors, and that ministers must send 
new guidance to teachers before it was screened in schools. From the 
BBC's standpoint, the judgment was the real inconvenience, and its 
environment correspondents downplayed its significance.'

Sissons also records how daily reporting turned into daily applauding:

'At the end of November 2007 I was on duty on News 24 when the UN panel 
on climate change produced a report which later turned out to contain 
significant inaccuracies, many stemming from its reliance on non-peer 
reviewed sources and best-guesses by environmental activists.'

But the way the BBC's reporter treated the story was as if it was beyond 
a vestige of doubt, the last word on the catastrophe awaiting mankind. 
The most challenging questions addressed to a succession of UN employees 
and climate activists were 'How urgent is it and 'How much danger are 
we in?' Back in the studio I suggested that we line up one or two sceptics to 
react to the report, but received a totally negative response, as if I 
was some kind of lunatic.'