Thursday, March 22, 2012
Bill McFibben on the Weirdest Weather
Bill McKFibben went on Democracy Now today to talk about the President's attempt to make everyone happy on the Keystone Pipeline (or, at least, make everyone equally unhappy), and mentioned the warm weather in the US, calling it the "weirdest weather ever seen in this country."
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Dear Friends:
In the interest of transparency, I think you should see these files from Skeptical Science.
An anonymous whistleblower has brought to my attention some database logs and other files (e.g., http://www.skepticalscience.com/logs/2012-03-21.zip (the current day is txt, past days zip)). These files detail everything that happens on the site, from forum conversations to user accounts. I have collated some of the data in a more readable form.
http://files.molongo.ru/en/my/sks.zip
Why has SkS chosen to publish all this on the public internet? Is it the first step towards transparency, or a catastrophic error? This is what I first intended to ask Mr. Cook.
Thankfully I realized what my question would have looked from the climate ethics perspective- highly inappropriate and unethical. I would have been seen as a denialist attacking Mr. Cook's work with these bizarre claims about database logs.
Clearly the most climate-ethical way to proceed would be a "leak". I have no prior background in this area so this feels quite strange and counterintuitive. But who am I to dispute the experts?
This "leak" is just a format conversion of already public material. I don't want to commit theft or forgery which, as I understand, would be required to raise this to the heroic level, but you gotta start somewhere. This is an anonymous leak per the standard, but I will consider stepping bravely forward if I get caught.
I found it difficult to read much of the discussion, so some crowdsourcing is needed here. To a layman it seems a dark and unpleasant world these people are living in. It's unlike anything on the more skeptically oriented mailing lists I have followed.
A lot of everyday conversation among SkS authors reads like hateful vulgarities. From the repeating rhetoric it looks like they have a fascination with war and violence. The discussion is much about how to frame or reframe various questions, less about substance.
Apparently more expertise in climate ethics is required to correctly interpret this material. I hope it will help to explain some aspects of the debate.
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