On-line abuse

Last year Graham Young, accused me of being blatantly dishonest for writing that Peiser had admitted to making multiple errors, even though Peiser had confirmed this in an email to Young. He ended up writing 20 comments denying Peiser’s admission.

Now Young has lashed out at me in a post at On Line Opinion. He calls me a “bully” and a “tick” and claims I use “brown-shirt tactics”. (If you don’t know what brown-shirt tactics are, see Sturmabteilung.) My crime?

Lambert, through his blog Deltoid promulgates whatever the current orthodoxy happens to be, but he does not restrict himself to his blog, frequently diving into comment threads on other online publications. And once you have Lambert on your thread, he sticks closer than a tick, hoping to suck the lifeblood out of the argument until you give up.

I post comments on other online publications!! Tactics apparently just like those used by the Nazi paramilitaries to dominate the streets of Germany.

John Quiggin, who Young also accuses of using Nazi tactics, calls him on a double Godwin.

Young’s primary target is Robyn Williams, who he accuses of the vicious bullying of Don Aitkin. Unfortunately for Young, Aitken himself rejects the charge:

For the record, Robyn Williams invited me to give a talk after the original paper’s summary in the Australian. When he read the full paper he asked me to do two. I have no complaint at all, since I recognise that that my paper does not support the orthodoxy. I also had no complaint about the introduction, other than it did not make clear that in my professional life I have had a great deal to do with the funding of scientists and science policy. Robyn made that clear in his introduction to the second talk. Just as Robyn exerted no influence over me with respect to the content of my talks, since that is my business, I believe that he is entitled to introduce speakers as he likes: that is his business. Both of us carry the can for our own decisions.

Comments

#1 Marion Delgado
May 19, 2008

Once I posted a comment. It took me 10 minutes to write. Tim Lambert responded, and he used commas like a communist fascist. I see through his little game.
#2 dhogaza
May 19, 2008

Oh, Lambert’s very subtle. For instance, he doesn’t disemvowel Tilo Reber’s posts, nor Betula’s, or Lance’s, therefore making them look more stupid than they would if he did.

Clever, clever, Tim Lambert … deep old file, that one.
#3 huxley
May 19, 2008

Every comment from Lambert is a brown trouser moment for Graham
#4 z
May 19, 2008

furthermore, the Israelis are acting like Nazis, posting comments all over the Palestinian blogs.
#5 Stu
May 19, 2008

It’s a while since I studied German history but I don’t seem to remember much about the brownshirts confronting their opponents with logical arguments backed up by evidence, so I seem to be missing something in the Lambert/brownshirt comparison.
#6 Marion Delgado
May 19, 2008

I have to, again, side with Graham. Imposing logic on a denialist is as brutal as beating a cocker spaniel for not understanding a card trick.
#7 Dano
May 19, 2008

I see, Tim, you are brown-shirtedly suppressing the blockbuster anti-warmer news event of the year:

31,000 Scientists Debunk Al Gore and Global Warming

Monday, May 19, 2008 4:24 PM

By: Philip V. Brennan

An incredible 31,072 Americans with university degrees in science, including 9,021 Ph.D.s, have signed a petition that flatly denies Al Gore’s claims that human-caused global warming is a settled scientific fact.

[...]

On Monday, Dr. Arthur Robinson of the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, (OISM) announced the results of a drive asking scientists to sign a petition stating: “We urge the United States government to reject the global warming agreement that was written in Kyoto Japan in December 1997, and any other similar proposals. The proposed limit on greenhouse gasses would harm the environment, hinder the advance of science and technology, and damage the health and welfare of mankind.”

So there, warmers! Another completely credible OISM petition.

I say we compare who dropped off, and who these PhDs are…

Best,

D
#8 bi -- IJI
May 19, 2008

Lambert is the Sturmabteilung, the Schutzstaffel, Benito Mussolini, Toujou Hideki, Slobodan Milosevic, the Soviet Communist Party, the Inquisitio Cathedrae Academiae, the Taliban, Al-Qaeda al-Jihad, Hizbullah, Saddam Hussein, the Salem witch trial judiciary, the Third World kleptocrats behind the New International Economic Order… all rolled into one.

And this comparison is perfectly OK, because Clinton did it too!!!

~~~

Dano:

31,000 Scientists Debunk Al Gore and Global Warming

Gore Gore Gore Gore Gore Gore Gore Gore Gore Gore!
#9 dfb
May 20, 2008

Dano,
Are you serious? That’s such a patently ridiculous post, that I can’t help but think you’re pulling our respective legs.
dfb
#10 Bernard J.
May 20, 2008

I reckon that it’s the full moon that is stirring the lunatics to a slanderous fenzy, Tim.

Today I had the first accusation of being a liar thrown at me, by Ian Mott over at Marohasy’s blog, on the “World Wildlife Populations ‘Plummeting’” page where a few of the armchair experts on matters ecological are insisting that the Zoological Society of London is deluded in saying that there is a significant decline in the sizes of vertebrate populations.

The thing is, Ian Mott refuses to tell me what it is that I am lying about, or how he can tell that I am lying, because the knowing of it will make me a better liar.

Water off a duck’s back as far as I am concerned though, especially after Herr Mott made the comment that Marohasy’s is “one of the very best environmental blogs on the planet”…
#11 sod
May 20, 2008

It’s a while since I studied German history but I don’t seem to remember much about the brownshirts confronting their opponents with logical arguments backed up by evidence, so I seem to be missing something in the Lambert/brownshirt comparison.

everyone who is able to read german and interested in the “green party/ environmentalism / AGW – NAZI ” connection needs to read a german blog named “oekologismus.de”.

if you ever make it to germany, i will buy you one beer for every topic that you can point out, that doesn t include a comparison to NAZIS/faschism.

ps: the blog is a case stuidy in Logical Fallacies as well..

31,000 Scientists Debunk Al Gore and Global Warming

i did a google news search on the headline and as alaways the first source to show up, was “newsmax”.

how often will the Oregon Institute revive that utter bogus list of nonsense?
#12 bi -- IJI
May 20, 2008

Over at Quiggin’s blog again, Young’s giving the same old excuse that “the word `denier’ is derived from `Holocaust denier’”. I replied by pointing out that the word “denier” had existed in the 15th century.

What a doofus.
#13 bi -- IJI
May 20, 2008

By the way, sod…

It’s no longer 19,000 scientists, but 31,000 scientists! Oh noes!

If I have access to a CGI-enabled web server, I may try to do a news item titled “1,000,000 scientists say greatest threat to world peace is chocolate rain”.
#14 dfb
May 20, 2008

bi — IJI
I always thought that deniers came from denial, which geographers believe to be somewhere in Egypt.
Geeze, get your facts straight.
#15 Alan Woods
May 20, 2008

Oooh you’re clever bi. And did you know the word ‘gay’ orginated in the 14th C, so it can’t possibly have a modern meaning of ‘homosexual’, can it?
#16 luminous beauty
May 20, 2008

I, for one, think it is prescient of global warming deniers to see a connection to holocaust deniers.

If global warming is not properly addressed it will sooner or later make WWII look like a walk in the park.

Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.
#17 Dano
May 20, 2008

Any disinterested observer can see the brownshirts here are conniving to create another world socialist government, designed to quash the awesome, cheeto-stained powah! of the rational individual. I beseech thee to cease and desist, else I’ll design another building to stop you!!!!!

Best,

D
#18 kent
May 20, 2008

Just as I predicted, the tide has turned against the warmists and they are going ballistic. The truth is out of bed and taking on AGW with a vengence.

The number on the list continues to grow. When compared to the UN’s IPCC 2500 number it looks like an 800 pound gorilla.
The temperature for April is in and it does not look good for for the warmists. Even May is looking cool. Frost last night in Canada’s Manitoba province. Hope it wasn’t a killing one.
Luminous beauty, you should be talking about climate change not global warming because it is the cool cycle that is going to do most of the damage not the warm one.
#19 bi -- IJI
May 20, 2008

Alan Woods: The issue here is whether “denier” must mean “Holocaust denier”. Of course it can mean that, nobody disputes this.

kent: Are you still going to use the Galileo excuse?
#20 Chris O'Neill
May 20, 2008

kent:

The temperature for April is in and it does not look good for for the warmists

because as we all know, AGW of 0.2 deg C/decade cannot possibly be overwhelmed by natural cooling in a decade, e.g. the strongest cooling trend decades in the past 158 years were:

June 1851-May 1861: -0.22 deg C/decade;

July 1877-June 1887: -0.35 deg C/decade;

July 1885-June 1895: -0.25 deg C/decade;

July 1895-June 1905: -0.31 deg C/decade;

August 1899-July 1909: -0.32 deg C/decade;

April 1941-March 1951: -0.45 deg C/decade;

May 1957-April 1967: -0.21 deg C/decade;

The global warming denialists are right. Obviously it is impossible for a natural or other cooling trend to overwhelm a 0.2 deg C/decade warming trend from rising CO2 because such cooling trends have never occured in the past.
#21 dhogaza
May 20, 2008

When compared to the UN’s IPCC 2500 number it looks like an 800 pound gorilla.

Goon, you mean. With about the same level of intelligence.
#22 kent
May 20, 2008

No D-hogaza, I mean Gorilla. More disagree with IPCC than agree with it.Get a grip, reality bites and it bites hard and you have yet to get it, as do many Tim Bits. Unless the temperature goes up soon in North America then food production for 2008 will decrease. We need to be worrying about cooling not warming. Warmists are distracting us from really important issues.
#23 pough
May 20, 2008

Ballistic, eh? Let’s see… eyes kinda closing because I’m tired, giggling a little bit because I’m picturing a gorilla next to a dweeb and kent chooses to listen to “darn darn floor big bite” for climate science over Nebbish (or maybe Steve?) with the coke bottle glasses and the decades of school, specific knowledge and experience. Heh. Ballistic.

BTW, I am skeptical that random mutation and natural selection can account for ALL the complexity in the whole universe, including gravity and tectonic thingy and the quantum dead cat with a big bang. I need to get my name on some lists, be a part of that Gorilla of Science™!
#24 Paul Norton
May 20, 2008

Kent, when I compare the roughly 10,000 people who, like myself, are members of the Australian Greens with the paltry 226 people who are members of the two Houses of the Australian Federal Parliament, we look like an 800 tonne green gorilla. This comparison of the number of voluntary individual members of a political party with the number of parliamentarians selected through a structured process of election is no more and no less flawed than your comparison of 31,000 bottle-washers and fictitious persons with 2500 scientists selected by the structured processes of the IPCC.
#25 Alan Woods
May 21, 2008

bi – it is fiction to claim that the term ‘denier’ in the context of climate change bears no relationship to the term ‘denier’ in the context of the holocaust. The dominant negative connotation that derives from the term ‘holocaust denier’ carries over to ‘climate change denier’. Similarly if you use the word ‘gay’ for one of its other original meanings, you can’t escape the power of its dominant meaning. Thats why kids today use the term ‘gay’ to describe something undesirable (not that theres anything wrong with that .
#26 Vagueofgodalming
May 21, 2008

I think the warmists still win (I agree with Kent, though, that all this fiddly evidence-based peer review nonsense is a tedious waste of time):

2500 IPCC outweigh Hearland Institute’s 500;

Al Gore outweighs the 800lb Oregon Petition.

Roll on the Dictatorship of the Blogotariat!
#27 Barton Paul Levenson
May 21, 2008

kent posts:

Just as I predicted, the tide has turned against the warmists and they are going ballistic. The truth is out of bed and taking on AGW with a vengence.

The number on the list continues to grow. When compared to the UN’s IPCC 2500 number it looks like an 800 pound gorilla.

kent, the Oregon petition has no quality control. The 31,000 scientists include engineers, teachers, and doctors; only 40 of the 31,000 (0.13%) have anything to do with climatology. The list also appears to include some dead people. It includes corporations. (How does a corporation sign a petition? Who holds the pen?) In short, it’s a propaganda exercise designed by people who aren’t very good at covering their paper trail.
#28 Ian Gould
May 21, 2008

bi — IJI, you misspelt Tojo.

Clearly you’re an anti-Japanese racist.
#29 bi -- IJI
May 21, 2008

Alan Woods:

You’re changing the argument, and going down a really slippery slope. There’s of course a “relationship”, in the sense that both global warming deniers and Holocaust deniers, well, deny stuff. Am I making a Nazi comparison every time I use the word “deny”?

~~~

Ian Gould: I think my spelling’s more correct actually. In my opinion, leaving out any indications of long vowels in transcriptions of Japanese words is a grievous crime against humanity, right up there with Tim Lambert commenting on others’ blogs.
#30 Ian Gould
May 21, 2008

I could have sworn Tojo had two short “O”s.

I even checked Wikipedia – then after your second post I checked again and after using the less correct form in the artcle title wikipedia does indeed support your position.

I blame the western imperialist brownshirt Wikipedia editors.
#31 JB
May 21, 2008

Tim a “Brownshirt”?

Here’s all the proof you will ever need.

Worst of all: he is a member of that so-left-wing-it’s-right-wing extremist group, the “Holey Brownshirts” (or is that just a couple of pixels? Or maybe 3)
#32 Eli Rabett
May 21, 2008

Woods, take it and stuff it. You are a denialist and no one really cares if your feelings are hurt.
#33 jodyaberdein
May 22, 2008

Sorry Kent:

Did you just imply that correctness and the majority view are the same thing?
#34 onna
May 23, 2008

I can’t believe some of the dumb comments here, especially kent’s, but then I live in the Northwest where we have a lot of hunters, it is really easy to spot the right wing hunters, they are the ones cutting the arms off of dead bears. why you may ask, beacause they have the right to “bear arms”, and they don’t accept global warming (scientists are liers)
#35 (((Billy)))
May 24, 2008

Just an historian dropping in my two cents regarding the use of the term ‘deny’ (so if I am wrong here, chock it up to a liberal arts education which (save for archaeology and geology) sadly neglected the hard sciences). One of the favourite denialist methodoligies is to focus on minute details. If a climatologist A states that X% rise in CO2 will create Y result, and climatologist B states that no, climatologist A is wrong, it will result in Z, then the denialist latches on to B’s paper, quotemines it, and then states that Scientist Climatologist B claims that Anthrpogenic Global Warming isn’t happening. This is why (even though I am just an historian) I try to find (at the very least) the abstract of the paper(s) in question (finding the whole paper is (for me) useless, as I don’t grok statistics (though I did take a course titled “How To Lie With Statistics” in college (fun course))). When I see “31,000 scientists claim X” I am immediately suspicious and wonder how many of those claims are based upon arguments over the degree of change and not the fact of the change. Just my two cents (whoops, I’m American, so call that 1.2 cents.