My friend Sady is not happy. Not one bit.

She posted a comment at Skeptical Science today. She did everything right. She conformed—slavishly—to the house style. She made sure to throw in some inflammatory language directed at the Out-group, and only at the Out-group. She even had her comment peer-reviewed, like a real, live scientist: by asking three other mammals of the same age, size and ignorance to double-check her draft for violations of the Comments Policies. And of course, she backed up her “assertions” with the unimpeachable authority of a paper by Naomi Oreskes, quoting the highlighted text verbatim:

Screen 2018-02-27 at 1.27.38 amOreskes about-face

Only when it was perfect did Sady post her comment under the relevant myth (Scientists Were Predicting Global Cooling in the ’70s? Don’t be absurd!):

Screen 2018-03-02 at 3.21.04 am

So she was expecting, at the least, the courtesy of a Stalinesque deletion a couple months from now. You know, to give the thread time to grow before it was suddenly rendered nonsensical with dangling references and misnumbered comments.

But no. Her meticulously compliant, good-faith remarks were desaparecidos within the day.

Lest you doubt that we live in an age of imps, gimps and bottoms, check it out.

Those SkS Boyz with their Teutonic efficiency have raised cowardice to a science. Maybe they’ll do the same for climate one day.

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30 Comments

  3. I knew a guy called Nicolas Bliss. Parents don’t always think twice.

    Like

  4. Nope. I’m now on thought number 4, and I still don’t get what’s wrong with that name. Maybe I shouldn’t reproduce.

    Like

  8. Brad, the Oreskes paper is a great find. Got any ideas how Sady in fact found it? Do you have a date for it? (The URL would suggest 2004 but seems strange in other ways. Is it just an abstract? And http://meteohistory.org/?s=Oreskes claims to find nothing by that noted scholar on the site.)

    The deletion of the comment seems chronic. Would it be justified by SkS because they believe Sady to be a pseudonym, however unimpeachable her source? I have no idea of their policy on that.

    Liked by 2 people

  9. Richard,
    Sady says she was indulging her “Anthropologist On Mars” hobby by wordlessly lurking, learning, perving and observing at WUWT when she read a comment by AG Foster, Jr.:

    https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/08/24/study-naomi-oreskes-claims-exxon-mobil-misled-about-climate/comment-page-1/#comment-2589829

    “The deletion of the comment seems chronic.”

    Sady doesn’t care what they were smoking—no strain of ganja is an excuse for rudeness to a lady.

    “Would it be justified by SkS because they believe Sady to be a pseudonym, however unimpeachable her source?”

    Hmm. OK, but it’s not like Sady’s name is Sue Dominus or Margana Palin so I’m not sure why they’d suspect that. I only realized the other day that her name and mine were anagrams. Sady and I had a good laugh about that.

    Liked by 2 people

  11. Also, it’s several pages too long for an abstract, surely, Richard? My supervisors always said, if you can’t whittle your abstract down to a paragraph, you don’t really know what you’re saying.

    Supposing it is “just” an abstract, however: what are the epistemological implications? Would that mean it’s not in the Canon of What We Know? Or that its canonization is contingent on its being read aloud at a conference?

    (It’s not a rhetorical question. I really don’t remember these niceties—I’ve been in the real world too long I guess.)

    Liked by 1 person

  14. Brad
    “My supervisors always said, if you can’t whittle your abstract down to a paragraph, you don’t really know what you’re saying”.
    Gosh you had lenient supervisors. Mine imposed a one word limit; so-
    Boll@cks!

    Liked by 1 person

  15. Brad did Sady ever meet Valentine Smith while indulging her hobby? May grock be with her?

    Sady could try again and see if the SkS heavies know about all of Oreskes’ dark history. Would they know, for instance, that she lent her elbow to the military nuclear complex? She “validated” models for the safety of a nuclear waste repository in Nevada – collect your chips and run for the hills!

    Liked by 1 person

  16. Brilliant find Brad: “But one aspect of the debate not often noted by climate contrarians, but which they might exploit if they thought about it, is that not very long ago most earth scientists held the opposite view”.

    It’s hilarious, and shows how ignorant Oreskes is. If she knew anything at all about climate sceptics, she would know that it is a commonly used argument, see here and here for example. So much so that 70s-cooling-denier Willie Connolly wrote a paper rewriting history. But I suppose maybe it wasn’t used so much back in 2004, I don’t know.

    Richard, after a bit of googling the title, here is a conference program from 2004 with Oreskes giving that talk:

    Click to access ICHM_2004.pdf

    It is also cited here, in her CV, under “invited lectures”

    Click to access HHRG-114-II15-Wstate-OreskesN-20150429-SD001.pdf

    So it looks like it is genuine if that was a concern.

    Liked by 4 people

  17. “[Christopher] Nicholas Parsons, CBE is an English radio and television presenter and actor. ”

    THAT Nicholas Parsons?

    Or is it a phonetic pun? For instance, am I supposed to know what the nickel aspartones do (if such a family of chemicals exists)?

    Like

  18. TINYCO2EMAIL (01 Mar 18 at 6:12 pm)

    Put the poor sod out of his misery. No one should have to contemplate “Nicolas Bliss” for more than 5 times. Have pity for charities sake.

    Liked by 1 person

  20. It’s more than possible that he’s getting revenge for me needing a diagram for some of his jokes but I refuse to draw knickerless parsons let alone knickerless bliss. He might have to cope with a hole in his knowledge of international smut. Perhaps Sady will explain.

    Liked by 2 people

  21. Thanks Tiny. I could have thought about it another 4 times and the penny still wouldn’t have dropped, because my mind’s ear wasn’t taking into account the very arrhotic way you people pronounce things. The pun doesn’t work in my accent.

    Like

  22. Brad, while we’re discussing your apology of a language*, why isn’t your friend Sady called Sheila?

    *we both know Strine is a quite different language, full of aberrations.

    Like

  23. Sheila, the Cleaning Sheila? Sure, it rhymes, but only in the most obvious way possible.

    Nothing you say about Strine will offend me. I never learned to speak it, for which you can thank or blame:

    1. American parentage
    2. grammar school education

    so I make no apology.

    Like

  24. Brad to understand your adopted home better, you desperately need to revise your basic Monty Python, especially episodes about the philosophy department of an outback university where males are all called Bruce, and females are all Sheila.
    I could never understand why you were Brad and not Bruce and concluded that your spell checker couldn’t.

    Liked by 1 person

  26. Pingback: My 15 Paragraphs of Minute Fame | Climate Scepticism

  27. Over three years later, your blog post here is basically what prompted me to write my GelbspanFiles blog post which I just posted minutes ago:

    “Naomi Oreskes’ Additional Oops on Gordon J.F. MacDonald Undercuts the ‘was no global cooling’ Talking Point”
    http://gelbspanfiles.com/?p=12879

    Liked by 2 people

  28. Russell: Thanks for this update on the Oreskes propositional time machine and a reminder of this brilliant post by Brad showing the Teutonic efficiency of deception maintenance on SkS. All of which I’d forgotten. Happy New Year!

    Liked by 2 people

  29. Richard Drake: Anytime! Oreskes is the gift that keeps on giving. Her big mouth is truly one of the weakest links in the whole ‘crooked skeptic scientists’ accusation, and hopefully somebody far bigger them me will expose that in a major lawsuit or in political hearings somewhere for the whole world to see.

    Liked by 2 people

  30. It was a great encouragement to see this as I thought about my new post – which I wasn’t sure I was going to do till after 11pm GMT. You have the intense (and highly valuable) focus of the hedgehog Russell. And you have I’m sure hit a particularly weak spot in the alarmisphere. Let’s pray indeed that those bigger than ourselves pick it up. But not better – at least in your case 😉

    Liked by 1 person

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