How Wikipedia's Green Doctor Rewrote 5,428 Climate Articles
no ob
19 Dec 2009
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 Medi�val 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 Medi�val 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 Medi�val 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 Medi�val 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
Medi�val Warm Period "dilutes the message rather significantly."
Even before the Climategate Emails came to light, the problem posed by the
Medi�val Warm Period to this band was known. "We have to get rid of the
Medi�val 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 Medi�val Warm Period 1,000 years earlier.
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 UN IPCC, 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 Medi�val Warm Period, not even the Little Ice Age of a few
centuries ago.
But the UN's official verdict that the Medi�val Warm Period had not existed
did not erase the countless schoolbooks, encyclop�dias, 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.org team - 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 Medi�val
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 Medi�val 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 Medi�val 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 Medi�val 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.
Warmest Regards
B0n oz
"It is a remarkable fact that despite the worldwide expenditure of perhaps
US$50 billion since 1990, and the efforts of tens of thousands of scientists
worldwide, no human climate signal has yet been detected that is distinct
from natural variation."
Bob Carter, Research Professor of Geology, James Cook University, Townsville
Surfer
>
>One person in the nine-member Realclimate.org team - U.K. scientist and
>Green Party activist William Connolley - would take on particularly crucial
>duties.
>
<snip>
>
>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.
>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Connolley
<Start extract>
Wikipedia activity
In 2005, an article in the scientific journal Nature compared the
reliability of Wikipedia and the Encyclopedia Britannica. It discussed
Connolley as an example of an expert who regularly contributes to
Wikipedia.[9]
A July 2006 article in The New Yorker reported that Connolley briefly
became "a victim of an edit war over the entry on global warming", in
which a skeptic repeatedly "watered down" the article's explanation of
the greenhouse effect.[10] The skeptic later brought the case before
Wikipedia's arbitration committee, claiming that Connolley was pushing
his own point of view in the article by removing material with
opposing viewpoints. The arbitration committee imposed a "humiliating
one-revert-a-day" editing restriction on Connolley. Wikipedia "gives
no privilege to those who know what they�re talking about", Connolley
told The New Yorker.[10] The restriction was later revoked, and
Connolley went on to become a Wikipedia administrator.[10]
An October 2006 article in Nature contrasted the Citizendium online
encyclopedia project, which makes a point of recruiting experts from
academia, with Wikipedia. It quoted Connolley as saying that "some
scientists have become frustrated with Wikipedia", but that "conflict
can sometimes result in better articles".[11]
<End extract>
Surfer
>On Sat, 19 Dec 2009 16:27:58 +1100, "no ob" <a...@bbb.com> wrote:
>
>>
>>One person in the nine-member Realclimate.org team - U.K. scientist and
>>Green Party activist William Connolley - would take on particularly crucial
>>duties.
>>
><snip>
>
>>
>>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.
>>
>
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Connolley
>
><Start extract>
>
>Wikipedia activity
>
>In 2005, an article in the scientific journal Nature compared the
>reliability of Wikipedia and the Encyclopedia Britannica. It discussed
>Connolley as an example of an expert who regularly contributes to
>Wikipedia.[9]
>
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v438/n7070/full/438900a.html
<Start extract>
Jimmy Wales' Wikipedia comes close to Britannica in terms of the
accuracy of its science entries, a Nature investigation finds.
UPDATE: see details of how the data were collected for this article in
the supplementary information.
UPDATE 2 (28 March 2006). The results reported in this news story and
their interpretation have been disputed by Encyclopaedia Britannica.
Nature responded to these objections .
<End extract>
Surfer
>
>The Medi�val 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.
>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Ages
<Start extract>
The Dark Ages is a term referring to the perceived period of cultural
decline or societal collapse that took place in Western Europe between
the fall of Rome and the eventual recovery of learning.[1][2][3]
<End extract>
Nothing to do with global temperature changes !
>
>But the Medi�val 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.
>
The theory of AGW suggests that CO2 emissions are pushing the planet
into a period of dangerous warming. But there is a big difference
between being pushed into such a period and actually experiencing it.
If possible we wish to avoid experiencing it.
>
>As we now know from the Climategate Emails, this band saw the Medi�val Warm
>Period as an enormous obstacle in their mission of spreading the word about
>global warming.
>
Well, I don't know who you are referring to.
It says here that the IPCC referred to the Medi�val Warm Period in
every report, so whoever they were it seems they had little influence
on the IPCC.
Description of the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age in IPCC
reports
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Description_of_the_Medieval_Warm_Period_and_Little_Ice_Age_in_IPCC_reports
<Start extract>
The description of the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age in IPCC
reports has changed since the first report in 1990 as scientific
understanding of the temperature record of the past 1000 years has
improved. The Medieval Warm Period (MWP) and Little Ice Age (LIA) are
the best-known temperature fluctuations in the last millennium.
Critics of the "hockey stick graph" of later reports have claimed that
the record of the MWP and LIA were suppressed in the IPCC Third
Assessment Report, although every report has discussed the phenomena.
<End extract>
And here is how it appears on graphs. (See images at right)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:1000_Year_Temperature_Comparison.png
<Start extract>
This image is a comparison of 10 different published reconstructions
of mean temperature changes during the last 1000 years. More recent
reconstructions are plotted towards the front and in redder colors,
older reconstructions appear towards the back and in bluer colors. An
instrumental history of temperature is also shown in black. The
medieval warm period and little ice age are labeled at roughly the
times when they are historically believed to occur, though it is still
disputed whether these were truly global or only regional events. The
single, unsmoothed annual value for 2004 is also shown for comparison.
(Image:Instrumental Temperature Record.png shows how 2004 relates to
other recent years).
It is unknown which, if any, of these reconstructions is an accurate
representation of climate history; however, these curves are a fair
representation of the range of results appearing in the published
scientific literature. Hence, it is likely that such reconstructions,
accurate or not, will play a significant role in the ongoing
discussions of global climate change and global warming.
For each reconstruction, the raw data has been decadally smoothed with
a sigma = 5 yr Gaussian weighted moving average. Also, each
reconstruction was adjusted so that its mean matched the mean of the
instrumental record during the period of overlap. The variance (i.e.
the scale of fluctuations) was not adjusted (except in one case noted
below).
Except as noted below, all original data for this comparison comes
from [1] and links therein. It should also be noted that many
reconstructions of past climate report substantial error bars, which
are not represented on this figure.
<End extract>