Climate Paranoia

Over at ClimateAudit Steve McIntyre complains that Al Gore loving Google has dropped ClimateAudit from their search results:

I’ve noted from time to time that climateaudit.org ranked extremely high on many google searches. One of the ways to find articles here has been to simply use google. I often do it. Today when I googled “climateaudit curry”, I found no link to climateaudit.

In comments, John A blames Gavin Schmidt’s orbital mind control lasers: *[Update: John A says he was referring to Google CEO Eric Schmidt. Which is still nuts.]

Time to write a nice letter to Mr Schmidt, methinks.

Eventually McIntyre adds an update:

As noted below, we blocked robots about a month ago when we were trying various measures to keep the site from crashing and this may be the problem, although you’d think that there would still be search information from before then.

Hmmm, what does Google say?

You can instruct us not to include content from your site in our index or to remove content from your site that is currently in our index in the following ways:

Remove your entire website or part of your website using a robots.txt file.

So Google removed ClimateAudit from the search results because ClimateAudit told them to. Will their evil never end?

Then two posts later McIntyre weighs into Schmidt for this exchange from a recent debate:

GAVIN SCHMIDT – …So any change that there might have been because of cosmic ray impacts on climate, can’t possibly have an impact on what’s been going on –

PHILIP STOTT The most famous –

GAVIN SCHMIDT — in the last changes.

PHILIP STOTT But the most famous astrophysicist working on it say that it has.

GAVIN SCHMIDT Uh, he is drunk. [LAUGHTER]

This last comment doesn’t make sense; and Schmidt cautioned that the transcript had not been checked for accuracy, but it was enough for McIntyre:

The Team has gotten used to ad hom arguments. Here is Team ad homs reduced to its lowest common denominator. The audience must have found this as repugnant as we do.

This is pretty rich coming from a man who called Schmidt “Dumb” and makes ad hominem attacks on other climate scientists as well.

Eventually McIntyre added an update to this post as well:

Schmidt has posted on another thread that he said “wrong” and not “drunk”, which, in fairness, seems a more likely thing for him to say.

(I’m not linking to McIntyre’s posts, since they delete my trackbacks and censor any comment that links to my blog.)

Comments

#1 gmischol
March 17, 2007

Being drunk…

well if you read the transcript and follow the reactions of the audience as well as the moderator following Dr. Schmidt saying “Uh, he is drunk” and a few lines later Dr. Schmidt saying “I’m sorry” makes it for me pretty obvious that this ist not a mistake in the transcrpit. Why would G. Schmidt apologize for saying “He is wrong”, or do you think of a conspiracy?
It would be better for Dr. Schmidt to apologize for this mistake…

quote from the transcript
PHILIP STOTT
But the most famous astrophysicist working on it say that it has.
GAVIN SCHMIDT
Uh, he is drunk. [LAUGHTER]
BRIAN LEHRER
Okay–
GAVIN SCHMIDT
I’m sorry.
#2 Meyrick Kirby
March 17, 2007

Intelligence Squared have corrected their transcript, therefore I guess Dr Schmidt did NOT make a mistake.

So, time for Gmischol to apologise!
#3 FhnuZoag
March 17, 2007

I think we are missing the problem here.

Schmidt, having given an explanation as to why the cosmic ray theory isn’t right, is confonted with Stott’s:

“But the most famous astrophysicist working on it say that it has.”

But, that is a clear argument from authority. To Schmidt’s argument from facts, the questioner challenges with the assertion that because whoever was working on it is ‘famous’, anything he says must be true.

This really leaves Schmidt with very little options. He can’t argue against whatever the opposing view is, because he was not given a viewpoint. He can only say either than the man’s fame is undeserved, or say what he said here, which is to say that the guy was wrong in the this issue, or wrong because he is drunk in this issue, or whatever.

It isn’t an ad hom, when it is in response to an ad hom defense of a proposition.
#4 JB
March 17, 2007

With this kind of stuff to their credit, who needs to attack their character?
#5 JB
March 17, 2007

McIntyre: “Today when I googled “climateaudit curry”, I found no link to climateaudit.”

McIntyre was making a minor typo error in his google search. I suspect that a few people make this same error.

He should have searched for “climate fraudit curry”, for which google would have returned many links.
#6 TS
March 17, 2007

I think the comment by John A is more likely referring to Eric Schmidt, the CEO of Google. But sure, if they put a robots.txt there that blocks the crawler, it’s their own problem.
#7 Kevin
March 17, 2007

Maybe McIntyre is just overly aware of the possibilities for censorship after reading about Google’s co-op program. Coincidentally, the graphic on the Google co-op main page pictures the Realclimate customized search engine.

It’s coincidental too, that you missed out on the discussion of the very real content censorship capabilities of Google co-op which was also discussed in that post, despite being able to hone in on every claim that Steve later modified. Maybe not.
#8 nanny_govt_sucks
March 17, 2007

What was Gavin apologizing for?
#9 wflamme
March 17, 2007

For not immediately admitting his opponents were right, of course.
#10 Lee
March 17, 2007

Google coop is an ADDITIONAL set of capabilities, that do not change the basic google search. It does not alter the results of a google search unless a user decides to use the coop capabilities.
#11 JB
March 17, 2007

“What was Gavin apologizing for?”

You got me.

Nothing that I can see, even if he did say “he is drunk.”

When it comes right down to it, “he is drunk” is not as serious a criticism as “he is wrong”, since one can be drunk and still be right.
#12 Thom
March 17, 2007

McIntyre must be plunging into some sort of deep depression brought on by changes in the American political scene. Now that Democrats are running Congress, he is less likely to get calls to go and testify and perhaps get his mug on CSPAN

Very few people get calls to come and testify about their science. And I think McIntyre is the only person in the history of the United States who has made his way into the congressional record based on a first and only peer-reviewed journal article.

He should just count himself lucky and pick a new hobby. Try bright red shiny cars, or dating young women.
#13 John Sully
March 17, 2007

Oh Thom, I’m afraid that he has decided to go after Phil Jones and the HadCRU boys now. He sent a FOIA to EAU asking for 17 year old data and was told by Jones that he no longer has it. Next he sent a materials complaint to Nature. So he does have a new hobby — just not one which would be fun, like fast cars or younger women.
#14 James
March 18, 2007

John Sully, I think you are misrepresenting the situation somewhat.

Jones et al (1990) is concerned with estimating the UHI effect on the termperture record. The paper concludes the effect is small. It is based on three rural/urban networks from Russia, China and Australia.

Several years ago, before Steve M. became famous/imfamous in climate science, he wrote to Phil Jones asking for the identities of the sites used in these networks. Jones replied that the information was on a diskette somewhere and would not be worth retrieving as the sudy was somewhat “stale”.*

However Jones et al (1990) is relied on in the IPCC AR4, in a section where Jones is the lead author.

Steve M. has stated quite clearly on Climate Audit that he is not saying there is anything wrong with Jones (1990), he just wants to look at the data, and in effect “audit” the study.

(BTW, Jones has at no stage said that he doesn’t have the information).

The question I’d pose to you, John, is whether you think that it’s acceptable that a paper relied on by the IPCC is impossible to replicate because the information necessary to do so was not archived at publication, or subsequently, and may even have been lost entirely?

* I’m surprised by this notion that scientific papers have some sort of use-by date. The same argument is advanced in respect of MBH.
#15 Chris O'Neill
March 18, 2007

“And I think McIntyre is the only person in the history of the United States who has made his way into the congressional record based on a first and only peer-reviewed journal article.”

And so lightly reviewed was that journal article it contained a major error.
#16 John A
March 18, 2007

My reference to “Mr Schmidt” was referring to the CEO of Google who is Eric Schmidt.

Lambert screws up once again. Anyone surprised?
#17 John A
March 18, 2007

Chris O’Neill:

And so lightly reviewed was that journal article it contained a major error.

And so shocking that that error that it didn’t actually exist:

http://www.climateaudit.org/pdf/mcintyre.huybersreply.pdf

Obviously another grad from the “Lambert School of Physical Ignorance”
#18 JB
March 18, 2007

John A “Time to write a nice letter to Mr Schmidt, methinks”.
“My reference to “Mr Schmidt” was referring to the CEO of Google who is Eric Schmidt.”

To think that a large (billion dollar) company like Google would care (one way or the other) about a blog like Climate Audit is absurd in the extreme.

I suppose we are to believe that they hard-coded the censorship into their search engine so that whenever someone puts in Climate Audit, they get nothing returned?

Ground control to Major Tom.
#19 John Cross
March 18, 2007

John A: Ah, I see. You think it is Eric Schmidt, not Gavin Schmidt who has the orbital mind control lasers. Glad you cleared that up.

Not that anyone really cares, but I think it is amusing that these are the 17th and 18th posts from John A since he said he would never post here again.
#20 JB
March 18, 2007

“these are the 17th and 18th posts from John A since he said he would never post here again.”

Perhaps what he really meant was that he would never post anything that was not pure, unadulterated nonsense again (and if his statements about Google are any indication, I’d say he has probably not violated his promise — at least not in spirit).
#21 Lee
March 19, 2007

I wonder what that letter would be, JohnA?

“Mr Schmidt, why have you stopped indexing our poor site after we asked you to stop indexing our site? It’s censorship, I tell ya, and I won’t have it.”

Gaahhhh.
#22 Harald Korneliussen
March 19, 2007

nanny_govt_sucks, another hint for you:

“I’m sorry, but you’re wrong”. I bet you hear that phrase a lot, eh? It’s not too unusual to put an “I’m sorry” next to a statement that someone is wrong. “You’re wrong. I’m sorry, but you are”. It’s a way to indicate that you take a person seriously, although he is wrong. Surely that’s aproppriate when talking about someone who’s not present, and who is “the most famous astrophysicist working on it” as well?

You got to love a phrase like that, though. I suppose Tim Lambert is the most famous computer scientist working on simulated evolution of lace patterns.
#23 Chris O'Neill
March 19, 2007

“And so shocking that that error that it didn’t actually exist http://www.climateaudit.org/pdf/mcintyre.huybersreply.pdf ”

Yes it takes a whole paper to show that an error simply doesn’t exist. McIntyre’s conclusions about the RE benchmark in this paper are nearly the same as the conclusions in this paper, even though the first paper has a major error that McIntyre admitted. McIntyre’s solution to this problem is to make up a ridiculous set of noise proxies that gives the RE benchmark figure that he wants, i.e. after being told by Huybers that using just the North American PC1 will give a 99th percentile RE benchmark of 0.0 when his blunder is eliminated, McIntyre then proposes using 21 white noise proxies in conjunction with the North American PC1 to make a supposedly more accurate RE benchmark. The 21 white noise proxies are supposed to be noise mimics of the other 21 proxies in MBH’s temperature reconstruction. The only problem is, those 21 other proxies have statistics that are nothing like the statistics of white noise. Like the North American PC1 proxy, those other proxies have the statistical characteristics of red noise, not white noise, so a white noise assumption is not going to produce the right RE benchmark. Considering the blunder he made in the first paper, it’s not surprising that McIntyre continues making them.
#24 Laser Potato
March 19, 2007

…lemon curry?!
#25 Dano
March 19, 2007

Thom wrote:

He should just count himself lucky and pick a new hobby. Try bright red shiny cars, or dating young women.

Have you seen or heard the guy? He’s found his niche. Too bad its not a successvul niche, but still.

Best,

D
#26 gmischol
March 20, 2007

for Meyrick Kirby

not I won’t apologize for now. Why would Philip Stott say the following:
Philip Stott: that’s a serious accusation against some very serious sci- some are infintely better than any of us on this platform today
if Gavin Schmidt had said He’s wrong

Doesn’t really make sense. Paper is patient. I hope the Podcast will clarify this.
#27 Meyrick Kirby
March 20, 2007

Gmischol, what Philip Stott said is irrelevant to my point.

You accused Gavin Schmidt of saying someone was drunk, and demanded an apology.

Your accusation has been shown to be false. Gavin Schmidt did not say anyone was drunk.

Yet you refuse to apologise for your incorrect and hasty accusation. Clearly you have one standard for yourself, and another standard for everyone else.
#28 JB
March 20, 2007

“Have you seen or heard the guy? He’s found his niche.”

Dano, I’d say it’s more of a slot or groove or perhaps pocket.
#29 Eli Rabett
March 20, 2007

Gavin Schmidt should have said the guy was drunk. Drunk is more fun than stupid.
#30 Kevin
March 21, 2007

You know, Steve McIntyre seems pretty responsive to criticism that is true. Rather than all this elementary school insulting crap, if any of you can disprove what he claims, you could post it right on his blog.
#31 Tim Lambert
March 21, 2007

It would just get deleted, Kevin.
#32 Lee
March 21, 2007

Kevin, Lambert’s posts routinely get deleted from CA.
#33 Kevin
March 21, 2007

Tim: Seriously? That would be surprising. I’ve seen plenty of posts there that are either insulting to Steve personally or insulting to his analysis or contrary to his analysis. Why single you out?
#34 Chris O'Neill
March 22, 2007

“if any of you can disprove what he claims, you could post it right on his blog”

I did. He responded by changing the point.
#35 Kevin
March 22, 2007

Chris: In which thread?
#36 garhane
March 23, 2007

When I was a kid we used to watch a strange guy, Albert, who would walk along the sidewalk touching fence pickets, every second one, or jumping over concrete sections, every second one, or doing other things like that. He would get frantic if you interrupted him, and might go back to where he had started, and start again; and if you told him his count was off he would really go into orbit and do a section again and again and again, counting aloud whether anyone was watching or not.It got boring watching him, and it soon was not even fun to ridicule him, and then we all forgot him. Maybe he is still in that neighbourhood, counting away. Mcintyre reminded me of him, so I have not bothered to look at his site for a year or so. Funny, seeing this lot of posts, I was not sure who it was about, for a moment. Time flies when you are not wasting it. Don’t see any reason to waste time on him though, any more than I would want to watch Albert count pickets.
I like this blog most when Lambert applies his logical and computational skills to eviscerate bought and paid for creeps. Forget Albert.
#37 Chris O'Neill
March 23, 2007

“Chris: In which thread?”

http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=933
#38 chrisl
March 23, 2007

You seem to have got a few big shots in there Chris O.
One mans big shot is another persons hair splitting.
Don’t give up over there, I’m sure they will see reason.
#39 James
March 23, 2007

Chris, thanks for the link to your ridiculous hair-splitting. It seems to me that you got your arse handed to you on that thread.

But that thread has nothing to do with the Huyber’s matters you mentioned earlier. Is there another thread at CA where your dissent has been crushed? The bit where McIntyre “changed the point”?
#40 Dano
March 23, 2007

I’m not sure how he got his arse handed to him at all: there are a bunch of statements that haven’t been proven empirically.

Perhaps the alignment of ideological wishes to comments allows one to wish that an arse-handing occurred.

Best,

D
#41 Chris O'Neill
March 23, 2007

“thanks for the link to your ridiculous hair-splitting”

Don’t give up so soon. Read to the point where he gave up his original argument.
#42 james
March 24, 2007

Chirs, I’ve re-read the thread, and I stand by my original comments. I won’t rehash the argument here, others can look for themselves.

But you haven’t responded to my point that the linked thread has nothing to do with the Huybers debate, which was the topic that you claimed you had challenged McIntyre on, and that he had changed the subject.
#43 James
March 24, 2007

Tim, don’t you think you should should add a correction to your original post, given that John A has explained that he was referring to Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, not Gavin Schmidt? Maybe John A is paranoid, but I doubt that he’s insane.
#44 chrisl
March 24, 2007

It is very interesting watching experts such as Curry, Juckes, Wilson and O’Neill arrive on a CA thread full of bluster and bravado, only to be asked a lot of tricky questions by the various posters. Pretty soon they seem to realise how busy they are and won’t be able to answer any more questions and by the way aren’t blogs a waste of time.
#45 Meyrick Kirby
March 24, 2007

Tim, don’t you think you should should add a correction to your original post, given that John A has explained that he was referring to Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, not Gavin Schmidt? Maybe John A is paranoid, but I doubt that he’s insane.

MAYBE?!

Yes, I sure the CEO of Google has nothing better to do than make sure all trace of ClimateAudit is removed from Google’s systems.

P.S. What’s the difference between paranoia and insanity? Surely the former is an example/type of the latter!
#46 Kevin
March 24, 2007

Chris:

Having reread the thread, I think you’re just wrong. You stated for rhetorical effect that Steve was abandoning his point, sure. About five other posters pointed out correctly why your reasoning and interpretation re: Biondi et al. was invalid.

Tim:

Since this whole blog entry was a dig at CA “paranoids” and their jumping to conclusions, wouldn’t it be consistent of you to admit your own re: John A’s statement?
#47 Chris O'Neill
March 24, 2007

“You stated for rhetorical effect that Steve was abandoning his point, sure.”

What rhetorical effect would that be? I can’t help it if it’s a fact that he abandoned it.

“About five other posters pointed out correctly why your reasoning and interpretation re: Biondi et al. was invalid.”

Thank you for your opinion. I wonder why Steve McIntyre couldn’t manage to do this but instead chose to launch a non sequitur?
#48 Chris O'Neill
March 24, 2007

“But you haven’t responded to my point that the linked thread has nothing to do with the Huybers debate, which was the topic that you claimed you had challenged McIntyre on,”

No it wasn’t. I made a comment about Huyber’s paper earlier on. Then later I responded when someone suggested we post on McIntyre’s blog about his claims. There was no suggestion that posting should be restricted to one of his claims in particular. McIntyre has made a lot of erroneous claims. Different ones come up in different contexts.
#49 Tim Lambert
March 25, 2007

Kevin, just for you, I’ve added an update to the post.
#50 Kevin
March 31, 2007

Tim:

Your consistency is like a shining city on a hill!