Historien om The Team (Real Climate) og sannheten om hvordan et av deres medlemmer, William Connolley, slettet og forfalsket Wikipedia-artikler og stengte forfattere ute, alt i "den gode saks tjeneste"
Gunnar Sunde har et par svært gode innlegg i Rasmus Benestads tråd, som viser alt jukset som foregikk i forbindelse med Wikipedia-skandalen. Siden tråden nå er stengt, og det noen ganger kan være kort vei fra stengning til sletting, vil et par av Sundes viktigste innlegg kopieres inn nedenfor. De er viktige å lese for folk som ikke tidligere har kjennskap til det som skjedde i denne saken.
Det som tydeligvis må ha blitt en for stor belastning, var da Real Climate og - ikke minst - William Connolley ble bragt inn i diskusjonen i dette innlegget:
Mens det ble jobbet herfra med å sette opp en reserveside, er det tydelig at sterke krefter som også er sterke motstandere av sannhet, har fått moderatoren (og redaktøren?) til å slette innleggene! Godt at noen av dem ble lagret i tide.
Kommentar # 43 (Benestad):
En ting er sikkert, og det er at Sunde ikke har fulgt noen ‘vær-varsom plakat’. William connolley har ikke fått uttale seg om beskyldningene som Sunde har spredt. Det ser ut som at de stammer fra James Delingpole som er journalist ved den britiske avisen Telegraph (med tvilsom troverdighet i mine øyne).
I det minste kunne Sunde ha lagt ut en link til Connolleys egne uttalelser.
Ut i fra loggene på Wikipedia (deletion logg og block-logg) ser det ut til at Connolley forsøkte å ordne og rydde opp etter at folk som hadde vært inne på Wikipedia og herjet. Loggene og Connolleys egne ord nyanserer bildet betraktelig.
Hvis man googler litt, ser man også at Connolley fremdeles er registrert som bruker på Wikipedia, registrert som ‘Master Editor II’ (senest 4 January 2014). Dermed tyder det på at Sunde bare bløffer.
Og er ikke det en redaktørs jobb og passe på at ting ikke sklir ut i kaos? I grunnen kunne man trengt noe lingende her på dette forumet, som passer på at retningslinjene blir etterfulgt.
Å insinuere om ‘faktasvindling’ er et grovt overtramp, og å klistre dette på RealClimate gir ingen konstruktiv bidrag til debatten.
Kanskje man burde gi et gult kort til folk som avsporer debatten med bløff, og utestenge dem for en liten stund, slik som de gjør på Wikipedia?
Ser vi på retningslinjene til NyeMeninger, ser det ut som at kommentaren (#20) til Sunde strider mot flere punkter: Etikk (ærekrenkende) og God debattskikk (personkarakteristikker; Sjekk så langt du kan at de fakta du presenterer er korrekte; spredning av usannheter; Behandle meningsmotstanderne dine med respekt; Hold deg til saken og ikke avspor debatten; Unngå personangrep).
Kommentar # 44 (Sunde)
Sitert tekst fra Benestad: Hvis man googler litt, ser man også at Connolley fremdeles er registrert som bruker på Wikipedia, registrert som ‘Master Editor II’ (senest 4 January 2014). Dermed tyder det på at Sunde bare bløffer.
Benestad,
du prøver deg nå på en rekke "forskjønnelser" av Connolleys handlinger her samtidig som du sier at jeg bløffer i saken, og sår til og med tvil om at Wikipedia måtte gripe inn mot Connolleys handlinger som jeg har beskrevet i detalj tidligere (se link nedenfor som viser at du er på tynn is).
Recently, the Wikipedia Arbitration Committee determined that “William M. Connolley has, on a number of occasions misused his administrator tools by acting while involved” and, as a consequence, “William M. Connolley’s administrative privileges are revoked.”
Du hevder til og med at dette kommer fra en person med "tvilsom troverdighet" (Delingpole), mens Connolley da åpenbart er meget troverdig for deg? Eier du ikke skam, selv om bare halvparten av de framkomne fakta om Connoley hadde vært sanne? Men nå er faktisk ingenting av det jeg har hevdet motsagt på noe offentlig vis, tvertimot røk Connolley ut pga. sannheten i dette, se igjen link nedenfor.
Ellers, og som med det meste annet av din "presisjon" når du uttaler deg; Delingpole er feil adresse for det grunnleggende gravearbeidet bak dette, men du tillater deg likevel å prøve å framstille det slik, sitat Benestad:
"Det ser ut som at de stammer fra James Delingpole som er journalist ved den britiske avisen Telegraph (med tvilsom troverdighet i mine øyne)".
Dette er forsøk på avsporing for å svekke påstandenes kraft, jeg har ikke brukt Delingpole som kilde (han er bare en av hundrevis av journalister i like mange medier som fulgte opp denne saken i ettertid), men her kan du få en grei oversiktsartikkel av James Solomon i National Post, som var helt sentral i gravingen bak dette:
Igjen: Hvis du mener du kan påvise at han lyver om noe her, er du bedre stilt enn de øvrige her i verden, for dette artikkelinnholdet, punkt for punkt, ble gjengitt i hundrevis av verdens største nyhetsforetak uten at noen av "the usual suspects" klarte å dokumentere noe av det som usant eller ukorrekt, inkludert hva som kom fram ifm. Climateate-skandalen som involverte ikke bare Connolley men også flere av de 9 sentrale personer i Real Climate-organisasjonen:
Fra National Post:
Wikipedia's climate doctor
The Climategate Emails describe how a small band of climatologists cooked the books to make the last century seem dangerously warm.
The emails also describe how the band plotted to rewrite history as well as science, particularly by eliminating the Medieval Warm Period, a 400 year period that began around 1000 AD.
The Climategate Emails reveal something else, too: the enlistment of the most widely read source of information in the world -- Wikipedia -- in the wholesale rewriting of this history.
The Medieval Warm Period, which followed the meanness and cold of the Dark Ages, was a great time in human history -- it allowed humans around the world to bask in a glorious warmth that vastly improved agriculture, increased life spans and otherwise bettered the human condition.
But the Medieval Warm Period was not so great for some humans in our own time -- the same small band that believes the planet has now entered an unprecedented and dangerous warm period. As we now know from the Climategate Emails, this band saw the Medieval Warm Period as an enormous obstacle in their mission of spreading the word about global warming. If temperatures were warmer 1,000 years ago than today, the Climategate Emails explain in detail, their message that we now live in the warmest of all possible times would be undermined. As put by one band member, a Briton named Folland at the Hadley Centre, a Medieval Warm Period "dilutes the message rather significantly."
Even before the Climategate Emails came to light, the problem posed by the Medieval Warm Period to this band was known. "We have to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period" read a pre-Climategate email, circa 1995, as attested to at hearings of the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment & Public Works. But the Climategate transcripts were more extensive and more illuminating -- they provided an unvarnished look at the struggles that the climate practitioners underwent before settling on their scientific dogma.
The Climategate Emails showed, for example, that some members of the band were uncomfortable with aspects of their work, some even questioning the need to erase the existence of the Medieval Warm Period 1,000 years earlier.
(Sundes kommentar; jfr. den beryktede "hide the decline"-uttalelsen fra Phil Jones, et sentralt medlem av The Team)
Said Briffa, one of their chief practitioners: "I know there is pressure to present a nice tidy story as regards 'apparent unprecedented warming in a thousand years or more in the proxy data' but in reality the situation is not quite so simple. ... I believe that the recent warmth was probably matched about 1,000 years ago."
In the end, Briffa and other members of the band overcame their doubts and settled on their dogma. With the help of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the highest climate change authority of all, they published what became the icon of their movement -- the hockey stick graph. This icon showed temperatures in the last 1,000 years to have been stable -- no Medieval Warm Period, not even the Little Ice Age of a few centuries ago.
But the UN's official verdict that the Medieval Warm Period had not existed did not erase the countless schoolbooks, encyclopedias, and other scholarly sources that claimed it had. Rewriting those would take decades, time that the band members didn't have if they were to save the globe from warming.
Instead, the band members turned to their friends in the media and to the blogosphere, creating a website called RealClimate.org."The idea is that we working climate scientists should have a place where we can mount a rapid response to supposedly 'bombshell' papers that are doing the rounds" in aid of "combating dis-information," one email explained, referring to criticisms of the hockey stick and anything else suggesting that temperatures today were not the hottest in recorded time.
One person in the nine-member Realclimate.orgteam -- U.K. scientist and Green Party activist William Connolley -- would take on particularly crucial duties. Connolley took control of all things climate in the most used information source the world has ever known -Wikipedia. Starting in February 2003, just when opposition to the claims of the band members were beginning to gel, Connolley set to work on the Wikipedia site. He rewrote Wikipedia's articles on global warming, on the greenhouse effect, on the instrumental temperature record, on the urban heat island, on climate models, on global cooling. On Feb. 14, he began to erase the Little Ice Age; on Aug. 11, the Medieval Warm Period. In October, he turned his attention to the hockey stick graph. He rewrote articles on the politics of global warming and on the scientists who were skeptical of the band. Richard Lindzen and Fred Singer, two of the world's most distinguished climate scientists, were among his early targets, followed by others that the band especially hated, such as Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, authorities on the Medieval Warm Period.
All told, Connolley created or rewrote 5,428 unique Wikipedia articles. His control over Wikipedia was greater still, however, through the role he obtained at Wikipedia as a website administrator, which allowed him to act with virtual impunity. When Connolley didn't like the subject of a certain article, he removed it -- more than 500 articles of various descriptions disappeared at his hand. When he disapproved of the arguments that others were making, he often had them barred -- over 2,000 Wikipedia contributors who ran afoul of him found themselves blocked from making further contributions. Acolytes whose writing conformed to Connolley's global warming views, in contrast, were rewarded with Wikipedia's blessings. In these ways, Connolley turned Wikipedia into the missionary wing of the global warming movement.
The Medieval Warm Period disappeared, as did criticism of the global warming orthodoxy. With the release of the Climategate Emails, the disappearing trick has been exposed. The glorious Medieval Warm Period will remain in the history books, perhaps with an asterisk to describe how a band of zealots once tried to make it disappear.
http://www.nationalpost.com/opinion/columnists/story.html?id=62e1c98e-01ed-4c55-bf3d-5078af9cb409
Prosessutdrag mot Connolley
All deeds done, her er noe av Wikipedias påfølgende prosess mot Connolley (dvs. begrenset til en av saksprosessene mot Connolley bl.a. basert på andre bidragsyteres klager før Wikipedia måtte gripe inn):
Online replies to this article included the following, appearing about 24 hours after Solomon’s article went on line:
Recently, the Wikipedia Arbitration Committee determined that “William M. Connolley has, on a number of occasions misused his administrator tools by acting while involved” and, as a consequence, “William M. Connolley’s administrative privileges are revoked.”
[Link: en.wikipedia.org/.../Abd-William_M._Connolley]
But three days later, on December 23, a follow-up article by Solomon said this:
How do Connolley and his co-conspirators exercise control? Take Wikipedia’s page for Medieval Warm Period, as an example. In the three days following my column’s appearance, this page alone was changed some 50 times in battles between Connolley’s crew and those who want a fair presentation of history.
So he is still at it, apparently. Connolley has for years been involved with a website called RealClimate.org. It broadcasts the views of a group of warmist ideologues, otherwise known as “working climate scientists.” (Among them is Penn State’s Michael Mann, the inventor of the “hockey stick.”) My guess is that even if Connolley’s Wiki privileges have been revoked, his RealClimate allies continue to labor on his behalf.
The interesting paragraph below comes from Connolley’s own Wiki entry, and I suppose was written by him:
His work was also the subject of hearings by Wikipedia’s arbitration committee after a complaint was filed claiming that Connolley was pushing his own point of view in an article by removing material with opposing viewpoints. A “humiliating one-revert-a-day” editing restriction was imposed on Connolley, and he told The New Yorker that Wikipedia “gives no privilege to those who know what they’re talking about.” The restriction was later revoked, and Connolley served as a Wikipedia administrator from January 2006. [The New Yorker article was by Stacy Schiff, July 31, 2006]
It is not surprising that Connolley should think that he knows what he is talking about and that he should be “privileged.” The question is: How does Wikipedia decide between him and his allies
and those who say that Connolley et al. do not know what they are talking about?
One is tempted to reply: By looking at the science. But here is an important and little-noted point. The scientific problem posed by measuring manmade global warming, if such warming really exists,
is huge. There is no more complex field of science. That is because so many areas of expertise are involved — everything from the temperature effects of oceans and of cloud cover, to the study of ice
cores, to the spacing of tree rings, to the proper placement of thermometers. (How many should there be in Siberia, how close should they be to New York City? and so on.)
Faced with the complexity of the way these variables interact — and I could have mentioned half a dozen more — the true scientist, at least initially, finds it difficult to be certain about the outcome. Politicians, or politicized scientists, then seized their opportunity. Ideologues like Connolley and politicians like Al Gore filled the vacuum. Armed with world-saving missionary zeal, they milked the prestige of science to suit their own political advantage.
In so complex a field, the skeptics needed time to recover their more detached sense of what is really going on with the weather. So the warmists enjoyed a head start thanks to their political zeal and their lack of scrupulosity. Now they have come close to persuading politicians all over the Western world that we must change the way we live or sink beneath the waves.
But with the leaked emails known as Climategate more people are beginning to see that deception, not science, has been their principal weapon. And we see also that Wikipedia has lent itself to that deception.
The political exploitation of science has gone on for some time — discrediting nuclear power in addition to the use of oil and coal has been just one of its several goals. One unintended consequence, as Fred Singer said recently, is that the public may begin to disbelieve everything that begins “science says.” In the present climate, that might be healthy, but in the long run it would not work to America’s or the world’s advantage.
A footnote: Mr. Wales may be interested to know that the responses to Solomon’s article were quite civil, surprisingly so given the shocking nature of his charges. Here are two. I particularly commend the second:
[From an academic] “I will not accept any references from Wikipedia in any paper I review from here on out until this is resolved.”
“I see that a banner ad is appearing on most Wikipedia pages asking for ‘donations’…. I think I’ll contribute to more worthwhile charities.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Abd-William_M._Connolley
Online replies to this article included the following, appearing about 24 hours after Solomon’s article went on line:
Recently, the Wikipedia Arbitration Committee determined that “William M. Connolley has, on a number of occasions misused his administrator tools by acting while involved” and, as a consequence, “William M. Connolley’s administrative privileges are revoked.”
Benestad,
ditt forsøk på å lyve bort dette ved å rette motangrep mot meg som budbringer i stedet, blir derfor bare mer og mer pinlig dess flere folk som bli oppmerksomme på at du selv har vært en sentral del av nettopp dette miljøet og denne Real Climate-organisasjonen spesifikt. Dine anklager mot meg blir svært små i forhold!
PS: Jeg har ikke sagt noe om at Connolley har blitt utestengt for livstid fra Wikipedia, jeg har vist til det han ble tatt for den gangen og for hvilke forhold. I første omgang ble han kastet ut for 6 og 12 mnd. og siden har det vært en vedvarende krig for å få ham inn igjen. Så å prøve å bruke at han er inne på en redusert funksjon nå er en bevisst avsporing for å kunne stemple meg som bløffer. Og røper igjen pill råtten debattmoral.
Kommentar #49 (Sunde):
Vi har altså nå fått sett at i full bredde at Benestad mener at Connolley slett ikke var noen kjeltring som misbrukte sitt ansvar i Wikipedia på det skammeligste, men derimot nærmest en edel helt som "forsøkte å ordne og rydde opp etter at folk som hadde vært inne på Wikipedia og herjet".
For å underbygge sitt komplett umoralske forsvar av faktasvindleren Connolley prøver Benestad å både antyde at dette bare er ondsinnede rykter fra "tvilsomme" journalister som James Delingpole, framsatt av tilsvarende tvilsomme organer.
Vel Benestad,
jeg tror ikke svært velrenommerte Financial Post hadde tatt inn dette dersom de trodde det ikke kunne forsvares etterpå:
Lawrence Solomon: Global warming propagandist slapped down
October 14, 2010 9:20 PM ET
William Connolley, arguably the world’s most influential global warming advocate after Al Gore, has lost his bully pulpit. Connolley did not wield his influence by the quality of his research or the force of his argument but through his administrative position at Wikipedia, the most popular reference source on the planet.
Through his position, Connolley for years kept dissenting views on global warming out of Wikipedia, allowing only those that promoted the view that global warming represented a threat to mankind. As a result, Wikipedia became a leading source of global warming propaganda, with Connolley its chief propagandist.
His career as a global warming propagandist has now been stopped, following a unanimous verdict that came down today through an arbitration proceeding conducted by Wikipedia.
In the decision, a slap-down for the once-powerful Connolley by his peers, he has been barred from participating in any article, discussion or forum dealing with global warming. In addition, because he rewrote biographies of scientists and others he disagreed with, to either belittle their accomplishments or make them appear to be frauds, Wikipedia barred him — again unanimously — from editing biographies of those in the climate change field.
I have written several columns for the National Post on Connolley’s role as a propagandist. Two of them appear here and here.
LawrenceSolomon@nextcity.com
Lawrence Solomon is executive director of Energy Probe and the author of The Deniers.
http://opinion.financialpost.com/2010/10/14/global-warming-propagandist-slapped-down/
Kommentar #53 (Sunde):
Mer om Connolley, Real Climate og misbruk av Wikipedia
Sitat fra Benestad: Å insinuere om ‘faktasvindling’ er et grovt overtramp, og å klistre dette på RealClimate gir ingen konstruktiv bidrag til debatten.
Benestad,
å joda, vi kan trygt klistre dette ikke bare til Connolley, men også til aktivistklubben Real Climate som jeg har vist i flere runder, og jeg kan illustrere dette ytterligere her:
Connolley og hans allierte i Real Climate har fra starten arbeidet med å desavuere og latterliggjøre og fjerne fra nettet brysomme kritikere av deres AGW/CO2-hypotese, og lyktes med det i særlig grad da Connolley herjet som verst før han ble stoppet. Et sentralt punkt for Real Climate, kjent fra bl.a. Climategate-informasjonen, var å få fjernet nettstedet Climate Audit (Steve McIntyres nettsted http://climateaudit.org/ ) som egen oppslagsadresse på Wikipedia. Det "løste" man med å lure det under McIntyres navn. Grovt, men selvsagt en "suksess" for rivalen Real Climate....til også dette ble oppdaget, selvsagt. Men når det var over 5.000 saksmanipuleringer fra Connolley/Real Climate-klikken ute og gikk samtidig skjønner man at det var nok å rydde opp i, om det ikke var akkurat slik "rydding" Benestad mener å tro.....
Dette var selvsagt et svært grovt misbruk av Wikipedia, da Climate.audit.org er et av verdens mest respekterte klimanettsteder, tildelt bl.a ""Best Science Blog" i 2007, noe Real.Climate aldri har oppådd!
For interesserte, kan dere lete lenge etter spennende saker her:
Does WMC (les: William Connolley) have a conflict of interest regarding any specific aspects of the AGW debate?[edit]RealClimate advocacy[edit]
Yes. One of the issues with the Climategate emails is the obvious animosity shown by Phil Jones, Michael E. Mann, and a few others towards Stephen McIntyre (WP:LINKVIO removed. - 2/0 (cont.) 22:11, 8 July 2010 (UTC)) (Note: I had linked directly to the emails in question. To see them please click on an earlier version of this page in the page history. Cla68 (talk) 22:32, 8 July 2010 (UTC)). McIntyre and Ross McKitrick (M&M), in a paper published in a scientific journal, had sharply criticised the research methodology and conclusions by Mann and his associates which produced the "hockey stick" graph. Partly in response to this and other criticisms of the graph, in late 2004 Mann and associates started the RealClimate blog to defend their hockey stick research (abbreviated as "RC" in Mann's email I linked to above). WMC, who had previously declared that he thought M&M were wrong (post on 15 Oct 2004) was one of the founding members of this blog (WP:LINKVIO removed. - 2/0 (cont.) 22:14, 8 July 2010 (UTC)).[1] Soon after, McIntyre started his own blog- Climate Audit.[2] Climate Audit now has its own group of dedicated regulars, including McKitrick and a few others who are also mentioned in the ClimateGate emails. Notice that there is a Wikipedia article on RealClimate but not one on Climate Audit. This is not a coincidence as I'll explain below.
Since that time, both blogs have been extremely dedicated in their criticisms of each other. Some examples: RealClimate and [231] [232] Climate Audit and [233]. Believe me, the level of vitriol between the staffs of these two blogs would fill several volumes with material, although my own perusal of the articles turned up in the searches I linked to above appear to show that RealClimate is much more strident in its attacks on Climate Audit than vice versa. Several of the Climategate emails by Mann, Jones, and others disparaging McIntyre and his associates, which I linked to above, attest to this (WP:LINKVIO removed. - 2/0 (cont.) 22:14, 8 July 2010 (UTC)). RealClimate, in particular, which is a moderated blog (i.e. user comments are subject to approval before posting) has pulled no punches when it comes to attacking climate change skeptics (in this case, Ian Plimer). The point that concerns us is that, as a member now former member of the RealClimate staff, WMC, along with his Wiki-cabal, has brought this same battleground mentality into Wikipedia, acting as both a defender of Mann's hockey stick research [234] [235] [236] and trying to stick it to climate change contrarians [237] [238] [239] who are apparently perceived as threats to RealClimate's agenda.
According to the Alexa rankings, Climate Audit has a much higher traffic count (69,459) than RealClimate (113,471). Also, in 2007 Climate Audit was co-winner of "Best Science Blog" [240], a prize which RealClimate has not attained. So, why is there no separate article for Climate Audit? There used to be, and WMC, coincidentally, had given that topic some attention [241] [242] (notice in this diff that WMC self-ID's as a rep of RealClimate). The article, however, no longer exists. Here's why: After existing as a separate article since August 2005, in February 2009 Atmoz suddenly, and without any prior discussion that I can find, redirected it to the McIntyre article [243]. Editors who tried to undo the redirect were quickly reverted [244] [245] [246] [247] [248] [249] [250] [251] [252] [253]. The talk page discussion on why the article could not return is, I believe, a classic example of wikilawyering at its finest [254]. A subsequent AfD did not establish consensus for a redirect.
Evidently, WMC and his associates do not want Climate Audit to have its own article and have redirected it with the apparent intention of trying to make a case that it is one man, McIntyre, not an entire group of people, who have problems with WMC's friend Mann's research [255] [256]. This is political activism, not science.
- Further evidence of advocacy editing to defend RealClimate/Mann: [257] l ong thread on RealClimate talk page, also this thread is a good example of the double-standard and wikilawyering used by WMC's group to defend RealClimate while attacking perceived threats.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Climate_change/Evidence