Who am I?

Posted by William M. Connolley on May 3, 2008
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“Next to Al Gore, William Connolley may be the world’s most influential person in the global warming debate…“. It would be nice; sadly its only the opinion of Lawrence Solomon, who is, errrrm, not very well informed.

LS’s attempts to make sense of the innards of wikipedia are quite funny, for an insider – his confusion of KDP with Tabletop, for example. But I suspect thats rather in humour. If you’d like some more, then the list of cabals is good, as is WP:GIANTDICK, which for bonus points seems to be subject to a minor edit war: Replacing Nixon with a nuclear missile is a fine edit comment. And for weirdness, WP:SPIDER is worth a look.

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  1. #1 SteveF
    2008/05/03

    I particularly enjoyed learning that Benny Peiser is a “distinguished UK scientist”.

    No he isn’t.

    [Indeed. For some reason that got held in the queue... -W]

  2. #2 Thomas
    2008/05/04

    It seems somehow Solomon forgot to mention he has been involved in some edit wars on wikipedia himself.

  3. #3 Zeke
    2008/05/04

    “Peiser, a distinguished U.K. scientist who had convincingly refuted a study by Naomi Oreskes that claimed to have found no scientific papers at odds with the conventional wisdom on climate change.”

    Bonus points for citing an unpublished survey that Peiser himself retracted two years ago.

    I’m surprised he left out the other members of your nefarious cabal, such as Steven Schultz, Raymond Arrett, etc.

  4. #4 Jon
    2008/05/04

    William, they’re on to your clever scheme to alter reality via Wiki edits. It’s only a matter of time before the consensus is shattered! Soon we’ll-

    Oh hell, it’s not even that much fun to imitate them any more. This is just downright sad.

  5. #5 bi -- Intl. J. Inact.
    2008/05/04

    I used to think that Wikipedia was good for nothing, but WP:GIANTDICK and WP:SPIDER changed that. Thank you, Stoat, thank you! (Well, WP’s still not that good for actual information, but if melodrama and laughs are your thing, then… :-B )

    Back to the article: I thought Al Gore’s right-hand henchman was James Hansen? What happened? Did Connolley surreptitiously usurp his #2 position? Things are surely afoot in the Great Warmist Cabal… :B :B :B :B :B

  6. #6 Hank Roberts
    2008/05/04

    In USA advertising terms, that’d make you the Avis of Evil.

  7. #7 fergus
    2008/05/05

    Peiser could legitimately be referred to as a ‘respected UK academic’, which is slightly different.
    Talking of Wiki, are you going to put our survey on the ‘scientists opinion page, now?
    :)

  8. #8 SteveF
    2008/05/05

    Peiser could legitimately be referred to as a ‘respected UK academic’, which is slightly different.

    Could he? I’d refer to him as a nonentity with a crap publication record.

  9. #9 Marion Delgado
    2008/05/05

    I don’t feel very influenced. Then again, I haven’t heretofore seen Wikipedia as a good place to fight the anti-science trolls.

  10. #10 bi -- Intl. J. Inact.
    2008/05/06

    Well, I just added some stuff about the “Heartland 500″ list to the “Global warming controversy” article, though I don’t think that’ll help much…

    [Still there now. BTW, let me advise you to be cautious in your first adventures on wiki. It can be difficult to know who your firends are... be scrupulously polite on the talk pages (until you know the ropes... then its still best to be polite, mostly) -W]

  11. #11 Alexander Ač
    2008/05/07

    William,

    NSIDC is predicting a good chance of 2008 being another record-breaker… so check your bets ;-)

    http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/index.html

    [Aha, thanks for the pointer, time for a new post methinks. Bets are still open - are you interested? -W]

  12. #12 bi -- Intl. J. Inact.
    2008/05/08

    BTW, let me advise you to be cautious in your first adventures on wiki. It can be difficult to know who your firends are… be scrupulously polite on the talk pages (until you know the ropes… then its still best to be polite, mostly)

    Thanks for the advice! Actually I’m not new to Wikipedia edits, and in any case I don’t intend to dwell on WP long enough to participate in all the politicking (or all the salacious affairs surrounding female super-spies…).

  13. #13 Gareth
    2008/05/08

    You might want to check the comments at DotEarth here.

    [Good point. BC there actually says "I say the odds favor a new NH record minimum - put my money there" so I've added a coment and see how fast he runs away :-) -W]

  14. #14 Thomas
    2008/05/08

    For an instruction on how to manipulate wikipedia read the emails by CAMERA:
    http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article9474.shtml
    Or, considering those involved were banned, use it as a warning.

  15. #15 Brian
    2008/05/09

    Connolley is a fraud and never was much of a scientists in my read. I am glad to see that people here know that.

    Fred Singer and many other scientists who use good scintific methods to come to conclusions have been smeared by the likes of Connolley.

    Connolley probably believes in creationism and that the world is 6000 years old. If he were to agree….it probably wouldn’t give him less credibility than he already has from real scientists……..

  16. #16 george
    2008/05/10

    Thank you, Hank Roberts! That’s the first time I’ve laughed out loud at any comment on a climate change related page for weeks. Now I will go happily dig in my garden…

  17. #17 Hank Roberts
    2008/05/10

    William, are you watching this page?
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellite_temperature_measurements

    It’s the top hit for a Google search, but I wonder if it’s in need of a sanity check, while you’ve got the cabal all wound up and frothing at the mouth and ready to leap:

    “Some believe that much of the disparity may have been resolved by the three papers in Science, 11 August 2005, which pointed out errors …”
    (No cite, no cite needed, is this “Some Guy in a Bar”?)

    “Global Warming theory suggests that the stratosphere should cool while the troposphere warms[citation needed]. However, the lower stratospheric record is mostly explained by the effects ozone depletion, which has caused a cooling of the stratosphere[21].”

    “Christy et al (2007)[25] acknowledge the spurious trends in the radiosondes and assert that ‘[w]hen the largest discontinuities in the sondes are detected and removed,’ a cooler heating trend (in line with their UAH v5.2 dataset) than the one previously held is found.[26]”
    26: Climate Science: Roger Pielke Sr. Research Group Weblog

    —– It just reads funny somehow.

    [Of course its on my watchlist. Its also fairly stable, so no-one is too unhappy with it :-) -W]