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Wednesday, February 13, 2013

What got me snipped from wattsupwiththat.com - 8

And yet another thread where a comment by me got vanished at wattsupwiththat.com. The topic to which I replied are accusations against late climate scientist Stephen Schneider to have promoted lying to the public. The accusations have been stated by fake skeptics for years, mostly based on a falsified quote from an interview Stephen Schneider gave to the magazine Discover in 1989.

In my comment I replied to comments by four other participants. This is the comment that was seemingly disliked:

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Mark Bofill wrote on February 11, 2013 at 10:27 am in http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/02/09/another-billboard-about-bogus-climate-claims/#comment-1222361

something.

Bofill, you just have crossed the line. You don't need to further pretend that you were seriously interested in a discussion with me.

richardscourtney wrote on February 11, 2013 at 7:41 am in http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/02/09/another-billboard-about-bogus-climate-claims/#comment-1222238

something.

Every time when Courtney is exposed to have spread falsehoods or supporting falsehoods, like when he is exposed to make false claims about the NOAA Report from 2008, or here, he is shouting "Liar!" over and over again. He behaves like the thief who is loudly shouting, "Stop the thief!" to deflect the attention from himself.

D.B. Stealey, on February 11, 2013 at 10:44 am in http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/02/09/another-billboard-about-bogus-climate-claims/#comment-1222375

requests that I apologize to Gail Combs. Ridiculous. What for? I should apologize, because she posted a falsified quote? Anthony Watts may have tried to display this here as an innocent mistake, because the falsified quote had been spread before by some newspapers (and in the fake skeptic blogosphere). Only, this explanation is not believable to me, since Gail Combs provided a link together with the quote, which pointed to a correct version of the quote. Thus, she must have known about the not falsified version. Nevertheless, she presented the falsified one.

Bruce Cobb, on February 11, 2013 at 8:10 am in http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/02/09/another-billboard-about-bogus-climate-claims/#comment-1222268

expressed his regret that Stephen Schneider wasn't around anymore to tell climate scientists what he really meant.

However, that is not a problem, since he had done that already when he was still alive.

For instance in here:
http://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/199608/upload/aug96.pdf

Go to page 5, Stephen Schneider writes there:

"Vested interests have repeatedly claimed I advocate exaggerating threats. Their “evidence” comes from partially quoting my Discover interview, almost always -like Simon - omitting the last line and the phrase “double ethical bind.” They also omit my solutions to the double ethical bind: (1) use metaphors that succinctly convey both urgency and uncertainty (pg. xi of Ref. 3) and (2) produce an inventory of written products from editorials to articles to books, so that those who want to know more about an author’s views on both the caveats and the risks have a hierarchy of detailed written sources to which they can turn.3,4,5 What I was telling the Discover interviewer, of course, was my disdain for a soundbite communications process that imposes the double ethical bind on all who venture into the popular media. To twist my openly stated and serious objections to the soundbite process into some kind of advocacy of exaggeration is a clear distortion. Moreover, not only do I disapprove of the “ends justify the means” philosophy of which I am accused, but, in fact have actively campaigned against it in myriad speeches and writings. Instead, I repeatedly advocate that scientists explicitly warn their audiences that “what to do” is a value choice as opposed to “what can happen” and “what are the odds,” which are scientific issues (e.g. p. 213 of Ref. 3). I also urge that scientists, when they offer probabilities, work hard to distinguish which are objective which are subjective, as well as what is the scientific basis for any probability offered. For such reasons I was honored to receive, in 1991, the AAAS/Westinghouse Award for the Public Understanding of Science."
(Stephen Schneider, Don’t Bet All Environmental Changes Will Be Beneficial, APS News, 1996, 5(8), p. 5, http://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/199608/upload/aug96.pdf)

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