Editorial note

Posted on January 13, 2013 | 11 Comments

At the request of the guest author I have removed some posts and comments from this blog. They comprised the memoirs of a scientist. I will hopefully write more about his decision and the factors that led to it later.

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11 responses to “Editorial note”

  1. Marty | January 14, 2013 at 5:59 pm | Reply

    “Everybody’s tired of the climate wars.” I definitely am. I’m starting my 5th decade.
    I asked Tom to start this blog, I thank him, and he did a good job. The posts were interesting and the commenters were the best I’ve seen on a climate blog. We disagreed, but the rebuttles were well reasoned and polite. And most important, everyone acted in good faith. I actually felt that we were working toward a consensus.
    I started to write my “memoirs” (I use the word jokingly) to share with the other visitors here. I tried to make them short and entertaining. I will stand by what I said. But I was writing comments on a blog to people that I thought I was getting to know. I wasn’t writing a dissertation or a document that I would defend in court.
    When I wrote the section on Thatcher, I shortened it because I didn’t want to bore people with trivia. The phrase “little known” was in a sentence describing her appointment as education secretary. When I combined sentences, it ended up modifying her when she ran for prime minister. It was a dumb mistake, nothing more. I was trying to do a dozen things right then. I submitted it without proofing and ran out the door late for something else. It doesn’t effect what I was trying to say. I wrote it thinking that people here would make comments and the story would flesh out.
    I never thought it would spread so fast and all the loonies that it would attract. (If you remember there was a guy using the name Christopher Bugge Harder (Boogie Harder?) who wanted to know what my real name was.) One comment was more of a threat. If it was going viral I should have been far more careful of what I said and how I said it.
    (to be continued.)

  2. harrywr2 | January 15, 2013 at 3:45 pm | Reply

    It look to me to be a perspective from where you were standing marty.

    If you get four people all standing at different sides of a house a picture can form.

    Of course people who are incapable of understanding that houses have more then one side can be an unfortunate distraction.

  3. Marty | January 16, 2013 at 9:53 am | Reply

    In this age of the internet, it’s tempting to believe that everything important can be found on line. I’ve had students who thought that web surfing was research. Anything old can’t be important. We have a whole generation of experts who are nothing more than glorified web surfers. But we’re ignoring a lot of important stuff. We’re drifting into a collective amnesia.
    In 1973 the Hoover Institute, a conservative think tank, sent Edward Teller on a lecture tour promoting nuclear power and one of the reasons was to fight the greenhouse effect. I can find no record of this on the net. What I can find is Teller’s later critique of global warming and the Hoover Institute’s calling global warming a globalist conspiracy. So in this instance the memory of an old man may be important.
    When I first started researching Thatcher’s role in promoting global warming, I could only find a few well researched and referenced articles. But recently a google search turned up mostly scripts debunking the history that I remember. Most were written by those with a self interest in rewriting the history, or worse, by foolish kids who weren’t even born at the time. I’ve been accused of rewriting history. Well, isn’t that what historians get paid to do.
    If you are interested in who was pushing what, when and why; look at the biographies of the climategate team. Look at when they got their degrees and ask yourself who was in charge then.

    • Barry Woods | January 17, 2013 at 1:25 am | Reply

      Equivocation…

      When thatcher was supposedly ‘little known’ in the middle if the cold war. Pravda had given her the name, ‘the iron lady’ which resonates to thus day. She was probably at the time the mist famous female politician in the EU.

  4. Christoffer Bugge Harder | January 17, 2013 at 2:26 pm | Reply

    In this age of the internet, it’s tempting to believe that everything important can be found on line. I’ve had students who thought that web surfing was research. Anything old can’t be important. We have a whole generation of experts who are nothing more than glorified web surfers. But we’re ignoring a lot of important stuff. We’re drifting into a collective amnesia.

    Well, “Mr. Marty”,

    the obvious problem with this “oh-these-young-people-and-the-internet”-defense is that there are a lot of people out there, some of them quite old indeed, who also happen to have lived the Thatcher era, and who have also written memoires and told their recalling of important moments, too – and their stories pretty much squarely contradict yours on every verifiable factual argument you make. And guess what, these quite old people do have names – Alfred Sherman, Michael Heseltine, John Major, George Guise and lots of others, not to mention Mrs. Thatcher herself – so even an unfortunate young outsider like myself actually has a way of knowing that they did live what they claim to have lived. If you believe me, I have done my share of listening to such real senior people (including scientists – I am a biologist myself). Heck, I have even read such people´s memoires or parts thereof in real Gutenbergish print.

    And the history – as these people all lived it – was that nobody in the Thatcher government was aware of global warming at anytime before well into the 80ies, that it played no political role in any of Thatcher´s 1979, 1983 or 1987 campaigns, and that Monckton did not offer any advise on the subject (certainly not in 1979 as you appeared to suggest, neither in the years 1982-86 when he was actually employed). And besides, the basics of the science itself were pretty well established and accepted among scientists well before Thatcher came to power.

    Of course, it may be that all the “survivors” from the Thatcher era are all in some giant ongoing conspiracy to keep the truth well hidden. But then again, your story could also be put together of incoherent soundbites from the television which you pieced together in the afterthought – or completely made up, for that matter. I have no doubt that you honestly believe what you have written, but let´s get serious here: You are an anonymous blogger who ask the readers to take your near-complete rewriting of history at face value, a story which is supported by nothing besides your own constant reassuring about your advanced age. That is an awful lot to swallow in a world that has seen its fair share of “storytelling as I lived it” by the likes of Binjamin_Wilkomirski.

    I fail to see how what I say can be construed as “viral” or “threatening” in any way. I can assure you that I have no particular interest in your name or person. All I am saying is that if you want people with a modicum of scepticism in them to take your claims seriously, then you should provide some verifiable documentation. Otherwise, your stories are merely entertainment in the same style as Lord Monckton´s invention of his cure against AIDS, or his recalling of his father´s abilities to find murderers by dowsing. In my humble opinion, this is a completely fair statement which should actually be quite uncontroversial.

    P.S. And this is actually my birthname – you asked me about it and I thought I would set a good example and provide it, then. In Scandinavia it is nothing special, but I have accepted that it may sound funny to an English-speaking audience. 😉

    • thomaswfuller2 | January 17, 2013 at 4:54 pm | Reply

      Mr. Harder–Marty can speak for himself, of course, but as the blog’s proprietor I will add my two cents’ worth. I don’t believe Marty was referring to your comments as far as going viral or being threatening. I deleted comments from other sources that I think were the cause of his distress.

      I do a lot of research on the Internet as part of making a living. It can be done well or it can be done poorly. If it is done well (and often if it is combined with other types of research) it can provide valuable results. But too many just grab the first result from Google and run with it. That is poor. It happens a lot in climate conversations and it is done by both sides. Marty is right to take exception to it.

      And Mr. Harder, please pay attention. Marty is not looking to get famous or drive traffic to my website. He’s telling his story. You’re welcome to read it and equally welcome to dismiss it. As I mentioned before, I know that Marty is not in the same category is Monckton, who is a man I have no use for. I know Marty’s background and credentials, I know his character and I know what he brings to the table in terms of the debate on climate change. Based on that, Marty has a forum here for as long as he wants.

      For the moment you do not know these things about him. You have the choice of not reading any more of what he writes, reading it and questioning what he writes, or accepting it for what it is–an informal account of a life as it was lived, without footnotes. Go ahead and make your choice–but don’t complain that you don’t know what you’re being offered or that you don’t have a choice.

  5. Christoffer Bugge Harder | January 18, 2013 at 3:59 am | Reply

    Just to answer politely: I make no complaints about what I am offered on your blog, and I most certainly do not complain about not having a choice (when I can and will leave whenever I see fit). And once again, I am happy to accept at face value that Mr. Marty is a nice man, kind to children and animals, who never forgot his mother´s birthday and always looked both ways before crossing the street etc. Likewise, I would never argue with his right to tell stories to his friends and anybody else here. My own grandfather told and still tells me lots of highly entertaining stories.

    But with respect to the factual content of his story, there is so far nothing in it that connects to the reality as the outside world know it. If the personal integrity is the sole claim to veracity, then it is only of value to those personally acquainted, and as you correctly say, I am not one of those. Thus, i have no option but to remain sceptical about the factual value. If the point is mainly to provide general entertainment or reinforce familiy/acquaintance ties, then it is perfectly fine with me, and you may, needless to say, post whatever you see fit on your own blog. But if you wish to make outsiders listen and get a new perspective on this, then I would politely suggest a somewhat broader scope and a more factually accurate storytelling. Best, CBH

    • thomaswfuller2 | January 18, 2013 at 7:54 am | Reply

      Thank you for being polite, if somewhat repetitive. As we are all five-year-olds here, it’s good to have a grown-up tell us what we need to think.

      It’s a pity you think you have no options–perhaps your friends at Stoat can suggest some. Choosing to remain skeptical about what Marty writes is certainly not unwise–being skeptical is almost always a good decision.

      However, apart from getting some dates wrong, Marty is broadly accurate–Teller did campaign on global warming while employed by the nuclear power industry. Thatcher did kick off a vigorous UK response to supposed global warming and strong-armed BP and Shell to help finance it (She didn’t need to push them very hard.)

      And Marty is certainly correct that there are politically motivated attempts to airbrush inconvenient facts out of the pages of history. I have seen many such. I have been the subject of one or two myself.

      I’m glad you have given us permission to do things the way we prefer. You have signposted areas of controversy that the ‘outsiders’ you wish so much to protect can use to help evaluate what they’ve written. But insofar as nothing Marty has written ‘connects to the reality as the outside world know (sic) it’ I would submit to you that you should examine what you know of the outside world–including the subject matter Marty discusses.

      • Christoffer Bugge Harder | January 21, 2013 at 12:59 pm |

        Once again: Think whatever you like, I am not telling anybody to do anything in particular. I make the quite simple point that telling wild stories to entertain your loved ones is one thing, while rewriting major national history publicly for outsiders is quite another. If Marty feels hurt by being subjected to scepticism and criticism, then it would maybe be better for him to stick to the more private kind of storytelling.

        According to all other written insider stories, then nothing at all about global warming changed in 1975, 1979 or any other date associated with electoral campaigning of Mrs. Thatcher; Monckton and Centre for Policy studies played no part in this non-change, the phenomenon was already well known and widely accepted in scientific circles in 1979, and the major plot about using global warming as a core political ploy that “Marty” puts together appears to be little other than an entertaining story conjured up of vague memories of anynymous people telling anecdotes, crafted into a large post-rationalisation.

        Sorry, but this is not just about getting dates wrong. And with respect to the “broadly accurate”, then let me tell you an anecdote from former Danish Prime Minister I.C. Christensen, who was asked whether it was true that he was taking a French class. He replied:

        Well, first of all, the course took place some years ago. Second, It was not French, but German. And third, it was my daughter who took the course and not I. But otherwise, the story is broadly accurate.

        My humblest regards, CBH

      • thomaswfuller2 | January 21, 2013 at 1:16 pm |

        CBH, your repetition of your points doesn’t make them any more persuasive–although I’m sure your buddies back at Stoat and the other joints you hang out in appreciate it.

        As I happen to know you are wrong on the facts, wrong in your interpretation and wrong in your speculation about motives, I think it’s time to draw a line under this. Pick another topic to comment on.

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