Somebody needs to come up with new corollaries of Poe’s Law to cover climate skeptics.
Anthony Watts posts a series on polar bears, with Grandpa Bear kvetching about what his grandson is learning in public polar bear school about climate change.
I commented, posting a link to the press release of the Polar Bear Study Group, the world’s longest-established and most-respected organization on polar bear populations and population health. It’s a rather dull press release, really, on the last meeting of the group last summer:
The PBSG renewed the conclusion from previous meetings that the greatest challenge to conservation of polar bears is ecological change in the Arctic resulting from climatic warming. Declines in the extent of the sea ice have accelerated since the last meeting of the group in 2005, with unprecedented sea ice retreats in 2007 and 2008. The PBSG confirmed its earlier conclusion that unabated global warming will ultimately threaten polar bears everywhere.
The PBSG also recognized that threats to polar bears will occur at different rates and times across their range although warming induced habitat degradation and loss are already negatively affecting polar bears in some parts of their range. Subpopulations of polar bears face different combinations of human threats. The PBSG recommends that jurisdictions take into account the variation in threats facing polar bears.
The PBSG noted polar bears suffer health effects from persistent pollutants. At the same time, climate change appears to be altering the pathways by which such pollutants enter ecosystems. The PBSG encourages international efforts to evaluate interactions between climate change and pollutants.
The PBSG endorses efforts to develop non-invasive means of population assessment, and continues to encourage jurisdictions to incorporate capture and radio tracking programs into their national monitoring efforts. The members also recognized that aboriginal people are both uniquely positioned to observe wildlife and changes in the environment, and their knowledge is essential for effective management.
All I posted was the link.
The response at Watts’ What’s Up With That?
Censored:
Ed Darrell (20:50:48) :
[snip – pointless sarcasm]
Is that emblematic of the state climate “skeptics” are in these days, that a dull recitation of the facts is “sarcasm?” “Don’t confuse us with the facts,” they seem to be saying. And, if they really think they’re making headway with stolen e-mails, why are they so crabby?
More politics than science, more bluster than discussion.
This cartoon scares them, too. Maybe they know something’s up:
Chris Riddell cartoon, December 20, 2009, The Observer
Follow up: Gail Zawacki at Wit’s End neatly captures the tell-tale signs of denialism at work. Carol Kane had a great line in Annie Hall: “I love being reduced to a cultural stereotype.” Denialists everywhere appear to share that emotion.
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 
Anthony, you are a master of deceitful suggestion. There was nothing profane in my comment.
Shame on you for suggesting there was.
What did I say: “Completely fictitious?” “Whole cloth fairy tales?”
When I get really irritated and the mendacity of climate denialists, I often use “bovine excrement.” I didn’t use that in this case.
Nuts. And I mean that exactly as Gen. Anthony McAuliffe meant it. C’mon, embarrass me. Post what I said.
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Hi again Ed,
I understand that you are unable to keep track of your own comments, so I’ll help.
Here is the second snip I made:
“What in the world makes you think such things? Is there any logical explanation for your statement, or are your claims [snip – clean up your language ]”
Reference: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/22/a-story-of-conversion-global-warming-believer-to-skeptic/#comment-274299
Since it’s your blog, you of course are welcome to fill in that snip, unless of course you don’t wish to be embarrassed by the language you used.
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Watts said:
You’re lucky I don’t edit posts for falsehoods. You’re not going to repeat it here because it would embarrass you.
I still don’t have a clue what post you censored the second time, Anthony, but I guarantee there was no profanity in it — unless, as I fear, you regard science and the facts as profantiy. Was it the post where I called the bluff on your commenter who claims Al Gore got rich off of global warming? “Bluff” is not a profanity, except when it’s not called.
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Anthony Watts said:
The answer is I made a format error. In what I thought was a humorous jest in a thread where I was accused of taking part in some plot, I acknowledge by error and noted a faux fear that someone would misinterpret the error as something more than it was.
Along comes Anthony Watts to misinterpret the error.
Why are you waiting for an answer here, Anthony? Wouldn’t your time be better spent pulling my censored posts out of WUWT limbo?
I like my humor dry, which may make me appear humor impaired to those who refuse to think. I’m not averse to the facts, though.
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People interested in this debate might also be interested in our post about the PBSG on WUWT back on June 27th.
As you can see, we’d already covered the topic prior to Ed and his comment.
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Oh forgot to add that you are the one saying your original post was snipped by profanity, it wasn’t it was snipped because it was pointless sarcasm in my opinion. You could have simply rephrased it, instead you’ve turned it all into a smear about me.
Your second post that was snipped because you did in fact use something profane when referring to another person. No, I’m not going to repeat it here.
If you want respect, and not have your comments snipped, act respectful, don’t call people names, and stop playing the victim.
Simple really.
But I suspect you’ll continue as you have, possibly even escalating the baiting in comments, so that you can repeat this exercise in personal attack.
I’m in the forecasting business, so we’ll see how this pans out. The history of Ed Darrell is on my side.
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It works well for selling propaganda and weather instruments, sure. It’s hell for the facts.
I posted a link to the Polar Beard Specialists Group, the world’s leading authorities on polar bears and their future. The post of yours is a sarcastic, inaccurate parody on polar bears.
You cut my comment out. You won’t defend your action now, once I make it public, except to say my post may have been profane, which it was not.
In the rest of the world, healthy regard for the facts is considered a virtue. In good management, management stands up for its decisions, or rescinds them when they can’t defend them.
Which suggests WUWT is neither virtuous, nor good management. As a propaganda device to spread disinformation about climate and weather, it works well for you. At the moment I’m having a difficult time finding any redeeming social value in WUWT, and you’re not helping.
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“I resent the smear,”
Gosh Ed, you’ve erred by assuming that was specifically directed at you. It’s a statement of fact about the blog in general.
And since you speak of irony, have you not noticed that this entire post of yours boo hooing over a deleted comment is a smear?
I get thousands of comments a week where you might get a couple dozen. So yes, there will be some deleted that have profane, boorish, snarky or off topic. Is that censorship? In your world, perhaps, in my world its blog management to keep the thread from devolving into a shouting match. Judging from the number of comments and the traffic WUWT gets, I think the management strategy works well.
Your whole point in commenting on WUWT is to make snarky comments to draw attention to yourself and your little blog here. For example playing the victim and yelling “censorship”. That’s fine, but I think reasonable people see the difference in behaviors between you and me.
Still waiting for the answer here pardner:
[Ed Darrell
Submitted on 2009/12/26 at 9:58am
Ah, I see I made a format error, too. Someone will, no doubt, take offense, and see a conspiracy.
REPLY: You know Ed, reasonable people just ask for it to be corrected instead of projecting. When your school students make an error, do you project conspiracy theory on them? Now what is the formatting error you’d like fixed pardner? – A]
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You’ve dumped more than a dozen of my comments, Anthony. There were six gone in one episode last year. I don’t expect you to keep a wholly accurate count, and you have a lot of people commenting. But your blog’s censorship is much more extensive than you let on here.
I still do not understand why you think a link to the Polar Bear Specialist Group is “pointless sarcasm.” It shows your general disregard for research and research ethics. Your snipping of the comment was mean-spirited, and demonstrates the mildly and humorously totalitarian ways of warming critics, “skeptics” and denialists. ‘Don’t confuse us with science. Everybody knows scientists are monsters.’
By limiting references to real science, you make the discussion more vulgar and less enlightened than it would be, even were it laced with profanity.
What I wrote wasn’t offensive in the least. It’s not that Ed can’t handle being told no, it’s that Anthony can’t afford to let the facts out on his blog too often. Goodness knows, of all the readers, more than a handful might check out the facts. Where would that leave Watts?
Ah, the smear. My comment was not racist, not foul, not calling anyone names. I’ve deleted a dozen here that didn’t carry proper attribution (and were duplicates). I edit out offensive words, the better to aid discussion. Some of those foul-fingered people may have a point. If not, let them embarrass themselves.
I resent the smear, Anthony. You’ll have to do some work to convince me now that smear is not a key tactic of your side. That seems to be stock-in-trade: Al Gore is always fat, Lord Monckton is always right, and science is akin to profanity — at least on denialist blogs, which seems to be where “Watt’s Up” is heading. And Ed Darrell’s posts are always “sarcastic” and “profane,” even when they’re not either.
Profanity is a reality in most public schools, Anthony. I can tell the difference between profanity, which we discourage, and history and science, which we encourage. I regret you’re unable to tell the difference, or unwilling. You’ve resorted to smear instead of enlightenment. In order to get minds going, in order to find the facts and get to the truth, we encourage discussion, and we don’t censor it.
We discourage and punish profanity, but our policy is to get the profanity out of otherwise valid discussion, and hold on to the discussion. If we told every kid to “shut up” every time they spoke up with an idea that was not what the textbook ordered, contrary to what the State Board of Education asks, somewhat off the beaten path of the subject, or simply rudely put, we’d quickly shut down classroom education. Kids learn by discussing facts and ideas, and learning to limit profanity if that’s their usual vocabulary.
If I ran my classroom the way you run your blog, I’d be guilty of pedagogical and history malpractice.
What do you have to fear from the Polar Bear Specialist Group? Why do you consider the non-confrontational press release from the PBSG to be profane on your blog? You’re digging a pretty deep hole, you know?
Here, you can explain your distaste for their press release here, unfettered by a censor, and with little danger that your own readers would find their way to this backwater blog.
Why not explain yourself here?
What sarcasm?
I have no clue what you’re talking about. There certainly was no profanity. The only think I can imagine is that once again I linked to a science journal, and you found the thing offensive.
I don’t make it a practice to record every comment I make there, so you’ve got the advantage of us here. If you think my comment was offensive, post it here.
Otherwise, I think you’ve already made the point — my point, that is.
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Hi Ed,
Still waiting for your response on this one, as it pegged our irony meters.
[Ed Darrell
Submitted on 2009/12/26 at 9:58am
Ah, I see I made a format error, too. Someone will, no doubt, take offense, and see a conspiracy.
REPLY: You know Ed, reasonable people just ask for it to be corrected instead of projecting. When your school students make an error, do you project conspiracy theory on them? Now what is the formatting error you’d like fixed pardner? – A]
==========================
For the record, based on the WordPress comments system, Mr. Darrell has made 121 comments on my blog. He lost one, because of the way he phrased it, similar to the way he phrased the one above. While it did have one embedded link of value, the rest of it was indeed, “pointless sarcasm”.
But instead of saying (like a reasonable person might) that “Hmmm, maybe I should rephrase what I wrote” Ed Darrell goes off on a diatribe starring me personally because Ed just can’t handle being told “no” once out of 121 times. It that “censorship” or blog management?
Gosh, I’ve also deleted comments on racism, comments with foul words, and comments calling our current president some awful names. I’m not sorry I did. Ed when a student disrupts your class with foul words or boorish behaviors to draw attention, do you put a stop to it, or let it continue. If you put a stop to it, then are you guilty of “censorship” for not letting the student have their way with words that others may not want to hear or are disruptive?
You are welcome to resubmit your post on the polar bears paper, minus the sarcasm. Otherwise don’t waste everybody’s time.
And please don’t use language like you did in the last post I partially snipped.
Best regards,
Anthony Watts
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Anthony, you need to add irony meters to the devices you sell. If people just bought them to replace for those occasions when you personally step in to censor the discussion, when you’ve made so much noise about alleged censoring from the other side, you’d pay for your boat.
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I just snipped you again, be sure to make a whole new post out of it. We love the entertainment!
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Where is there error in any publication from the Polar Bear Study Group? What are the contrary data?
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I love hattip’s comment! It has so many of the predictable elements of denialism, as detailed here: http://witsendnj.blogspot.com/2009/12/i-have-arrived.html
Specifically, it has the obligatory ad hominem attacks, i.e., you are vane, wanting to wallow in delusions of superiority – and so much more.
It’s got the lovely juxtaposition of a) global warming doesn’t exist and b) even if it does, too bad for the polar bears, we do not need to destroy our civilization over them.
Most delightfully, hattip doesn’t even wait until after the first sentence for the inevitable spelling/grammatical error, in this case “gracios,” sic.
I always enjoy the linking of science with leftist politics, and the general anti-science attitude that equates education with corruption, and the idiotic conviction that scientists have cooked up a global hoax for the vast sums of research funding they receive, an amount that pales in comparison to the lobbying resources of the fossil fuel industries.
Lastly, since hattip brought up being bitten, I do hope he follows the link all the way to the polar bear story.
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Oh goodness gracios ED! Give it up. The Climate Change fraud has been found out. It is over. You are hallucinating.
What is it with you lefties? Some group like the PBSG put out bilge like this and you think it they are “facts”? What they are doing is shilling for more money. They seek to avoid honest labor by bilking the rest of us with their “causes”. They need to go out and get a job!
You leftist corrupt science itself–in fact so pervert the educational system that you have destroyed the very concept of education, and you talk about “facts”? You lefties and your “experts”. learn to think for yourself. Acquire some common sense. Ed, you are living in a dream world. You would not know a fact if in came up and bit you on your rump.
You need to go get a wife and have some children and live in the real world. The Polar Bears will be just fine. They do not need you to protect them.
And if not, we do not need to destroy our civilization over them. Grow up. Get you priorities straight.
And stop thinking that you are so “special”, so “concerned”. It is just vanity. you do not give a fig for the Polar Bears–you just want to wallow in your delusions of superiority. Stop wasting your time. Stop wasting our time.
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