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Saturday, February 12, 2011

William M. Connolley, Stoat: Are the wackos wacko enough? On O'Donnellgate


Are the wackos wacko enough?


Category: septic tripe
by William M. Connolley, Stoat, February 9, 2011
Harvey Korman and Mel Brooks in Blazing SaddlesA while ago I reported Watching the Deniers say that "There will be no US Congressional investigation into "Climategate": or how global warming sceptics got duped" and commented that Even the wackos aren't really wacko enough to take on the science. But! Maybe I'm wrong. Science says:
The House of Representatives science committee's panel on basic research and education plans to hold hearings on climate change to present more views on the topic, says its new chair, freshman Representative Mo Brooks (R-AL).
Mel Brooks is very clearly a wacko, because he is dumb enough to try and take on The myth of the 1970s' global cooling scientific consensus, and it is fairly clear from the Science piece that he has spent too long talking to S+C in Huntsville.
Anyway, we can hope that Popcorn Time isn't too far away.

Incidentally, while we're on wackos there is some Ryan O'Donnell fun that I'm late to. It seems a bit reminiscent of Porky Pearce whereby you lie about people, get lots of attention, then back off later. Though whether RO has backed off much isn't clear.
You probably want to start off by reading O'Donnellgate at RC.
Note that post starts by noting that Ryan has offered to retract these allegations but as far as I'm aware has not actually done so at time-of-writing.
This was in response to a post called "Eric Steig's Duplicity" (Feb 7, 2011 - 11:53 AM) at CA (subsequently edited to Steig's Trick, note that they also carefully edited the basename too). As far as I can tell, the new post title is rather clumsy, because there is no "trick" mentioned: presumably whilst they realised the first title had gone too far they couldn't back away from insults entirely.
There has had to be heavy redaction of the text, too. For example currently we have:
While there is not much untrue about this statement, there is certainly a [material] [snip] omission. To see this [material omission], we only need look at the raw data from Byrd over this period:
but the original was far spicier:
While there is not much untrue about this statement, there is certainly a lie of omission. To see this lie, we only need look at the raw data from Byrd over this period:
And indeed, RO continued There are not enough vulgar words in the English language to properly articulate my disgust at his blatant dishonesty and duplicity. Oh dear oh dear oh dear.
There is an interesting bit towards the end:
I have known that Eric was, indeed, Reviewer A since early December. I knew this because I asked him. When I asked, I promised that I would keep the information in confidence... However, when someone makes a suggestion during review that we take and then later attempts to use that very same suggestion to disparage our paper, my obligation to keep my mouth shut ends.
Which appears to amount to, RO will keep something he promised to keep confidential, only for so long as is convenient to him. I doubt anyone will be trusting him with confidential information in the future. and this is all the more mendacious as it is clear from Eric's post at RC that RO has nothing to complain about here.
More: DC raises an interesting point in the comments at RC: RO claims to have put all the papers relevant to submission at http://www.climateaudit.info/data/odonnell/ for all to see (not troubling himself that he has thereby breached confidentiality, but never mind, remember: he has absolved himself of all responsibility to keep his promises).
But... where is the 4th review round? Could it be, perhaps, that there isn't one? This is the index as of now:
Index of /data/odonnell

Name Last modified Size Description Parent Directory - .ftpquota 07-Feb-2011 02:10 13 1 20100209 Submission.pdf 07-Feb-2011 13:25 746K 1 20100325 SI Revised.pdf 07-Feb-2011 13:25 2.3M 1 20100412 decision.pdf 08-Feb-2011 12:05 13K 1A 20100305 Review A.pdf 07-Feb-2011 13:28 209K 1A 20100426 Response to Review A.pdf 07-Feb-2011 13:28 877K 1B 20100407 Review B.pdf 07-Feb-2011 13:28 24K 1B 20100426 Response to Review B.pdf 07-Feb-2011 13:28 54K 1C 20100407 Review C.pdf 07-Feb-2011 13:28 31K 1C 20100426 Response to Review C.pdf 07-Feb-2011 13:28 78K 2 20100419 Submission.pdf 07-Feb-2011 13:25 1.1M 2 20100422 SI Revised.pdf 07-Feb-2011 13:25 2.3M 2 20100425 Submission.pdf 07-Feb-2011 13:25 1.1M 2 20100426 Cover Letter.pdf 07-Feb-2011 13:28 62K 2 20100429 Submission.pdf 07-Feb-2011 13:25 1.1M 2 20100522 correspondence re first review.pdf 08-Feb-2011 12:13 23K 2 20100610 Submission Rev.pdf 07-Feb-2011 13:25 1.4M 2 20100722 decision.pdf 08-Feb-2011 12:15 18K 2 20100826 General Note to All Reviewers.pdf 07-Feb-2011 13:28 82K 2A 20100721 Second Review A.pdf 07-Feb-2011 13:28 167K 2A 20100816 Response to Second Review A.pdf 07-Feb-2011 13:28 117K 2B 20100705 Second Review B.pdf 07-Feb-2011 13:28 132K 2B 20100816 Response to Second Review B.pdf 07-Feb-2011 13:28 93K 2D 20100710 Review D.pdf 07-Feb-2011 13:28 29K 2D 20100816 Response to Review D.pdf 07-Feb-2011 13:28 99K 3 20100810 Submission.pdf 08-Feb-2011 11:54 1.4M 3 20100812 SI.pdf 08-Feb-2011 11:59 1.1M 3 20101101 correspondence.pdf 08-Feb-2011 12:19 14K 3 20101124 decision.pdf 08-Feb-2011 12:21 30K 3A 20101025 Review A.pdf 07-Feb-2011 13:28 93K 3A 20101103 Response to Third Review A.pdf 07-Feb-2011 13:28 117K 4 20101126 Submission.pdf 07-Feb-2011 13:25 1.5M 4 20101208 SI Revised.pdf 11-Dec-2010 22:23 1.1M RO10 Code.txt 11-Dec-2010 22:21 212K RO10 Script.R 08-Feb-2011 14:46 201K Tir_lats.txt 07-Dec-2010 14:38 91K Tir_lons.txt 07-Dec-2010 14:38 91K aws.Rdata 03-Jan-2011 09:18 20K aws.txt 03-Jan-2011 10:44 142K e_w.recon.txt 03-Jan-2011 10:46 57M manned.Rdata 03-Jan-2011 09:19 35K manned.txt 03-Jan-2011 10:44 118K readme.txt 03-Jan-2011 09:30 2.5K rls.recon.txt 03-Jan-2011 10:52 57M Apache mod_fcgid/2.3.5 mod_auth_passthrough/2.1 mod_bwlimited/1.4 FrontPage/5.0.2.2635 Server at www.climateaudit.info Port 80
I put in a comment at CA, thus:
Well, this is all jolly fun.
I have a question: you say: Rather than go into detail here, I will shortly make all of the versions of our paper, the reviews, and the responses available at http://www.climateaudit.info/data/odonnell. But I don't see the reviews from round 4 there. Could you point them out, please? While you're at it, could you clearly indicate how you obtained permission to publish this confidential material.

And Phil Plait of Bad Astronomy on Harrison Schmitt "Moon walker, climate change denier" is worth a read too. It's about Articgate [sic].
[Update: PP reports that "Schmitt withdraws from NM Energy appointment."]

Refs

http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/2011/02/are_the_wackos_wacko_enough.php#more 

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