On Tim Lambert’s weblog, our regular correspondent per was making interesting points on the R2 statistic in the thread called "McIntyre’s Irrational Demands" when suddenly // all// some [updated – SM ] of per’s comments vanished.
Was it Spam Karma or just per’s karma?
To be fair, Spam Karma has reacted strangely to some people’s posts on this weblog and both Steve and I have had to retrieve posts that got sent to hell erroneously. I assume that as time goes on, Spam Karma will learn not to mark down posts just because they’re complimentary.
There’s obviously an innocent explanation for these things.
Update(Steve ): I’ve asked people to shut this topic down and flame elsewhere.
In summary, it has been established that it was Lambert (not Spam Karma) that deleted some of per’s comments and banned per from his site. I had seen the comments in question prior to deletion and, in my opinion, they were substantive and clearly not flames.
As an encore, [John A. believes that] Lambert, emulating Mann’s prior blocking of me from his FTP site, has blocked John A. from access to his site. [edited on Oct 6].
In passing, some of Lambert’s correspondents have suggested that per is an alter ago for McKitrick or myself or is an associate of ours or "connected" to us. To remove any misconceptions on this, neither McKitrick nor I have any "connection" to per; I know who he is because he has identified himself to me by email; I can categorically assert that neither of us has even met him. I enjoy per’s comments on the controversy and am glad that he’s interested in it. I note that Lambert once loudly proclaimed that per was John Brignell, but later retracted the proclamation when Lambert discovered that his conclusion was based on copying an IP address incorrectly. His retraction was not entitled "Lambert Screws It Up Again!"
John adds: I have discovered that I am not the only blocked from even reading Lambert’s weblog. Clearly Lambert has decided that intelligent, scientifically literate critics are too ****. I can still read the site through one of the Internet’s numerous anonymous proxies, so Lambert’s ****. [edited Oct 6]
Steve adds: Lambert says that John A. was not blocked [by Lambert – added Oct 6]. He says that there were server problems at his end which prevented access to everyone. We will of course take Lambert at his word, although I will note that I did not experience any access difficulties in the period in question. Anyone who want to discuss this further will find a convenient forum at Lambert’s blog, since he has devoted an entire post to this issue.
John replies:22nd Aug 2005. I’m still blocked. What an amazing server that can set access rules all on its own that ****! It must be ****…
John adds:22 Aug 2005 (evening). I can now access the website. For some reason Lambert tries to imply that I had problems connecting to the server. I didn’t. Access rules on the server were activated to prevent access from certain IP addresses or ranges. I didn’t get a "404" or a "server down" message, I got an "access rules have been invoked" message, which could *** have been deliberately set by someone. Why? We’ll never know for sure.
Steve Aug 23: Lambert first said that other people had the same problem as John A and later said: "Anyway, I figured out what happened “¢’¬? a spambot has been spamming my blog using the same IP as you [John A], so Bad Behavior blocked access from your IP. I’ve removed the block, but if the spambot does it again, it will be automatically blocked again. If you are the only person using that IP address than your computer is infected."
John Sep 2:I note that Lambert has continued ***** [snip]. Yes, just ***[snip]. I //****// [do not believe that I was] blocked by a "spambot", or anything like it, because a spambot doesn’t block by setting rules at the level of the Web server itself. Those rules //****// [may have been] deliberately set by someone not a million miles from Lambert’s office. Secondly, I do not have viruses or spyware on machine as it is running SuSE Linux 9.3 which doesn’t have either of those problems. (If Lambert ****, he could actually check his logs and verify this) So one way or another Lambert twists and turns and accuses everyone else of **** except himself. It doesn’t help that Lambert ******.. [Edited by SM on Oct 6]
Steve: Oct. 6: If I may summarize this boring thread . Lambert’s position can be neatly summarized, in the immortal words of Bob Marley,
I shot the sheriff, but I did not shoot the deputy.
This post was originally about Lambert deleting posts from correspondent Per. Lambert admits that he shot the sheriff. John A. claimed that Lambert had, in addition, blocked him from the site. Lambert claims that this was due to Bad Behavior. Lambert stated:
I explained in detail why John A’s IP was blocked. Bad Behavior decided that a spambot had visited my blog from his IP. I looked at the log and found it looked like a visit from a spambot. If it wasn’t that then it was misconfigured software on his machine. Other people have been blocked because of misbehaving aggregators.
In my opinion, there is reasonable doubt as to whether Lambert shot the deputy. In light of this,
I have edited out some claims by John A. in the above post. Bob Marley’s decision stands.
Climate Audit 
120 Comments
I see per at comment 73. It was looking pretty strong for your side Mc. Although, Tim and some of the others are bright, the most of the arguments were ending up being “argument devices” rather than strong points. I think the “McI/K are idiots who aren’t part of our club” mantra is not going to do too well. Most people can see that you have a decent brain and that the arguments on statistical signinficance need to be beated down on a basi of the math itself, not where you got your degree.
I found the whole Lambert post fascinating. He must rely on readers who don’t come to Climateaudit as his version of the comment thread regarding the cos^.5 issue are self serving to the point of delusion. Of course Lambert is not arguing on behalf of science but is in fact arguing for a political point of view, so facts are merely inconveniences unless they support his point of view. Fairly sad really, but I think per actually enjoys sending Tim and Dano into tooth-chattering little diatribes.
John A, have you realised that your argument about entropy is wrong? Perhaps you could post a correction to your false claim.
I agree that “our side” should admit when wrong. I never did get that whole argument with poopled posing and calling each other out on not knowing their thermo and then (to my impression) getting scared to back up their pooints because they would be found out not understanding the thermo. I don’t.
Hmmm. It seems than a co-operator of website A has initiated a thread to comment upon a particular, possibly, just possibly, curious behavior at website B.
Shortly thereafter, the operator of website B chooses to append to that thread a comment which entirely ignores the subject of that thread, and which expressly attempts to divert the discussion to an entirely different, i.e. extraneous, topic, without even a semblance of addressing the topic of the thread.
It appears that the operator of website B is, by his behavior, defining himself as a troll, and since feeding trolls is a waste of time, since their pursuit of irrelevancy requires no help from others, this comment is at least sufficient, and probably much, nuch, more than sufficient, to address the behavior of the operator of website B.
With condolences, let me say: have a nice day Tim.
I don’t think Tim is a troll. That is not fair. I’m a troll and I know the full depth and spectrum of trollishness. Tim does have a tendancy to cite points in his favor rather than wanting to examine and adress things fairly. But that is a common fault many people have. It’s not the same as being a troll. Trolls get under your skin and drive you crazy with ad hominem and teasing and the like. Sophistry or unfairness is not the same as trolling.
TCO,
There are various attributes of trolling, but the most common attribute is wasting people’s time.
I do not suggest that Tim is particularly good at it; I simply observe that that is what his post in this thread clearly does.
Getting under people’s skin, etc., are simply among the options that trolls may try, but the specific forms that a troll may use are endless; they all have the common attribute of wasting people’s time; an attribute of which Tim seems to be enamored.
I seriously don’t think he is a troll and it’s unfair to use that term improperly. He’s ardent in his cause and not exactly fair. But he is not a tease. And not personally offensive or disruptive.
That whooshing sound was my point going way over JerryB’s head.
TCO,
There are more ways to waste people’s time than just teasing, or being personally offensive, or disruptive.
Meanwhile, while someone may wonder what Tim may fantasize about “whooshing” sounds, I would raise the question: could be any more unequivical way to waste people’s time?
Mr. McIntyre-
About 10 para into the topic post at TimLambert, we find:
“Nonetheless McIntyre repeatedly demanded that I post a ferocious denunciation of Mann’s weighting error.”
This seems to be Dr. Lambert slipping into “ferociously” unsubstantiated rhetoric — have you save your oorrespondence with him, as you’ve done with some others? I know many of Dr Lambert’s followers went over the top on this Michaels&McKitrick blunder (now corrected), and some still do (a few of his followers are ignorant) — but this quote sounds like Tim Lambert going over the top too?
To clarify a typo in my previous comment, let me restate the second paragraph:
Meanwhile, while someone may wonder what Tim may fantasize about “whooshing” sounds, I would raise the question: could there be any more unequivical way to waste people’s time?
I will add that I did not intentionally omit the word there in order to provide Tim with an additional tangent on which to go off since he seems not to need any help in that regard.
Re #3: Tim, I asked everyone to discuss entropy elsewhere for reasons previously outlined. It’s unreasonable that you keep trying to have the last word. I’m a little worried about the authoritativeness of your views on entropy (where I do not have views of my own) because of the following comment of yours on statistics, where I do have views. Could you confirm that, upon reflection, you endorse the following view recently stated at your blog: "quit wasting our time by repeating already refuted arguments. The r2 value is not a statistical test. This has already been pointed out. Nor is it “bad data” or even particularly relevant." Perhaps you could clarify whether you have deleted any posts by Per, criticizing you on R2. I had indicated to John A. off air that I thought that the deletions might have been Spam Karma at work, but now I’m wondering otherwise. It looks like you’ve restored some, but not all of Per’s comments (although I’m not 100% certain of this.) While sharply expressed, Per’s comments have not met any style or content standards meriting disqualification.
Re #11: I did call for Lambert to issue a denunciation of Mann’s cos latitude error "equally ferocious" to his denunciation of McKitrick’s cos latitude error – especialy since Mann has not acknowledged his error after becoming aware of it, while McKitrick made source code available for inspection, promptly acknowledged the error and issued a correction. Lambert argued that his denunciation of McKitrick was not "ferocious". Rather than trying to establish an absolute metric for ferocity, I merely called for "equal" ferocity. A post entitled "Mann Screws It Up Again" would meet equal ferocity standards nicely; I’m not asking for greater ferocity.
Never understood why you guys even pay attention to Lambert. He’s as fanatical as a really fanatical thing, and continues in arguments so far beyond his depth it’s amazing, especially when he doesn’t even have a basic understanding of the underlying principles. Hell he doesn’t even understand thermodynamics, or even distribution of samples.
Most importantly he doesn’t understand the free exchange of ideas, vis-àƒ➭vis his long standing deleting of dissenting views on his forum. Then going a step further. He has gone to the point of making it so that the dissenting posters see their posts as if they are shown, but only the poster can see them. Not only does he quell opposing viewpoints, but he considers it worthy of his time to try and fool the poster that they aren’t being censored. Even funnier he can’t understand that it is tactics like his that are the entire issue here. It isn’t as much a who is right, who is wrong, as a fact check. One person (or group of persons) has stipulated a piece of information, one that is affecting policy worldwide, and no one has done so much as a check of the math. Then when someone does try to check the math, the shear audacity of such a thing astounds them. If their math, and their paper were so strong they’d take on all comers, knowing the facts speak for themselves. Lambert knows his facts are weak, as such he does not allow others to comment upon them, otherwise the house of cards tumbles down.
Why you guys give him anytime here, and more importantly why you post threads about him, I’ll never understand. Ignore him, he isn’t deserving of the attention.
I’m not sure what was on the Lambert site thread at various times, but I think it’s all there now from what I can tell. It may be that John was confused when the thread got broken into two pages. When I linked there the first message shown was something like 87 and after. But the earlier page still showed up at the bottom and there was even an option to “show all responses”. I’m not sure this is what happened, but it would be confusing to me if suddenly a thread started toward the end with no indication of why.
As to the quality of the thread, I think per held his own, but I think he’s got the same problem I do in not having access to all the papers it would be nice to have. This makes a tendency to bluster hard to avoid. I do know this. Having the nice R program to play with now, I’m going to start doing some serious study in statistics to have a better grasp of both the terminology and more importantly the concepts. I suspect Lambert, Dano and the rest on the warmer side are blustering even more than people on this side, but I’d like to be sure of it.
I do know the claim (essentially) that “Mann may have screwed up here and there, but hey it was a first try at temperature reconstruction from proxy data, so cut him some slack” is pathetic. It that’s what the situation is Mann should be man enough to retract and admit M&M were right and then everyone can move to the next papers. Instead he wants to claim he was right but then not defend his position.
Per stepped over the line yet again with an abusive comment so I banned him. This is the third time I’ve had to do this because of such behaviour. This time I deleted the offending comment but you can see a previous example here.
It is rather hard to believe the reason you give for refusing to allow a discussion of John A’s claim that I don’t know what entropy is. Things like my comment policy, John Lott’s research and satellite temperature trends all get posts. Comments like #14 claiming that I don’t know anything about thermodynamics are also permitted. But asking John A to provide support for his claim is not allowed. You must have, at the least, a strong suspicion that John A is wrong and I think that is the main reason why you won’t allow discussion.
“He has gone to the point of making it so that the dissenting posters see their posts as if they are shown, but only the poster can see them”.
Timmy, are you misbaving again? Please, tell me this isn’t true or you will going to your room tonite without any dinner?
On a real note. This is a very serious accusation. Is this true? Over to you Tim for further explanation.
I actually had the impression watching that faceoff, that both parties got scared that they might be wrong, since thermo can be a tricky beast and many don’t know it nat’s ass. (IOW, I agree with Lambert.)
Tim, I also had impression that some good per posts got deleted. And I wasn’t seeing anything worse from him than from DanO, and neither was out of control. I wish you would put them back. Also, at least make a note, when deleting. (plus you could have fessed up to it immediately…I mean there was a thread topic on it and all, vice the attempt to counterpunch with post 3.
What’s frustrating about Lambert is that it’s impossible to engage him in a scientific argument. Have a look at the “McIntyre’s irrational demands” thread at Deltoid and look at the debate on r2.
First he links to a statistics site that shows that r2 is exactly the opposite of what he is trying to argue. You point this out, and then he provides a trivial example that r2 is not the “be all and end all” of statistical validation (a swipe that unhelpfully includes Pearson & RE, of all things, in its scope). You challenge him on this point, and then silence, presumably, and correctly [until this post] assuming that you’ll just “go away”.
I don’t think there is any point in arguing with Lambert about anything.
Steve: Don’t fall for Lambert’s lefty gimicks. They are tried and true. Most of us who aren’t as numneric about this subject were not able to go after Lambert with equal weight. You clearly have. Lambert, sooner or later needs to anwser the big one. Does he favour climate audit on research or not? Let’s see.
If he is hiding and deceiving people to believe their posts are on his site then he has the morals of a simple coward and liar and he ought to be called to account for. Even the Lott stuff would come into question. Lambert’s professional integrity would also be questioned in a serious way. No longer could anyone take lambert’s comments at face value because everthing, including his dirty laundry would need to be closely examined. In short we would have to look at him in the same way as we look at Lott. With suspicion.
Dr. Lambert I ask the question again. Have you been manipulating your website in such a way that would raise questions about your honesty? You need to answer this question!
Dr. Lambert: you said on line 16
“Per stepped over the line yet again with an abusive comment so I banned him. This is the third time I’ve had to do this because of such behaviour. This time I deleted the offending comment but you can see a previous example here”.
and then linked us to the per post where he called you a liar. You said he was abusive on 3 occasions. What did he say that caused you to ban him after the 3rd thread of abuse? Was it different to the first when you didn’t ban him? More abusive than the link? Why ban him the 3rd time around?
TCO, per’s objective was to get himself banned. I didn’t want to give him the attention he sought with a public announcement. I suspect that he then emailed John A to get what he wanted.
I am not going to be restoring the few comments that I removed. I don’t think there was any value to them.
Pat, per has been banned on three occasions. You might want to read the comments that followed the comment I linked to.
Ah, a mind-reader. You should use those powers to fight crime or something more productive than spending so much time arguing on the internet about who-said-what-to-whom.
I guess he missed the “Per Banned,” “Per Banned Again,” and “Per Banned Yet Again” headlines.
I can confirm that per has never e-mailed me on any subject.
Dr Lambert:
Answer the question!!!!! Are you manipulating posts on you screen in a dishonest and unprofessional way. I am going to ask this until you answer the Question.
Dr Lambert:
If you don’t answer the question I can conclude two things
(snip)
oh…chill. I agree that Tim has a tendancy not to answer when he is in the wrong (or feels in risk of it). But that is not only a trait of GWers. Some skeptics do that too (cough JohnA cough thermo cough). And Tim is actually pretty reasonable. He put up with me. I still disagree with him on banning per. Per is pretty tame.
TCO
I can understand why you have been considerd a troll. You are also a little irritating.
“I still disagree with him on banning per. Per is pretty tame.”
Yet, Dano the spam-bot, v5.2, is freely allowed to scream “STFU” and other odious epitaphs without sanction?
I really won’t find Dr. Lambert’s rationalizations convincing until he bans that spam-bot as well.
Btw, TCO, kudos for being a inpartial voice on both boards/websites.
But he usually ends his posts with nice things like “Best” and “Regards.” Often, he adds artwork to his name/signature, if the host website allows. Sometimes, it’s just a “D.” And it’s always a treat to see him say things like, “after much hand-waving.” Doesn’t that make it all better?
Besides, Tim can read minds, and he knows D doesn’t mean it when he says nasty things.
Kerry, thank you for your interest in my comment policy. I searched through all the comments and found just one comment where Dano had used the term “stfu”. You can see it here. I don’t want commenters to use such language but it is not a personal attack, like, oh, “spambot” is.
I appreciate that many commenters here (where incivility is encouraged) might not care for my comment policy, but I will continue to run my blog the way I see fit.
It is quite the ubiquitous spam-bot. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that you’ve noticed the same rote patterns.
Perhaps there should be an upgrade to Spam-Karma?
Dr. Lambert,
Terms like “STFU” and “GFY” aren’t personal attacks?
It’s your playpen, and if you wish to allow a foul-mouthed pit-bull to run amok and do you dirty work, while banning other, well, “FIIC”.
But, get off your high-horse. Or just STFU.
Nothing personal, of course.
Well…I guess we got the answer to the question (deliberate or accidental post deletion).
Oh, Gawd, Dr. Lambert!
I’m so, so, sorry!
I didn’t mean to label Dano v5.2 a spambot. Really.
I meant to label it a “FUDBOT”.
Please, oh please, pardon my indiscretion, Dr.Lambert.
Kerry, I searched for comments by Dano containing “GFY”. I found a couple of comments, but none of them were directed at other commenters. He certainly didn’t call any of them a “foul-mouthed pitbull”, or attempt to dehumanize them by referring to any of them as “it”.
John A, glad to see you’ve been reading my comment threads so closely. Did you follow the discussion on entropy? Robert P emailed me some problem sets he gives his students on entropy. Would you like me to post them? Working through them might help your understanding of the topic.
Dr. Lambert
Answer the question posed. (snip)
It’s one of those times. You are in a room with people and each of you know what the other is thinking but everyone is remaining tight lipped. The thought hit’s you. Damn it I’ll break the ice and you do.
Just wondering what makes Dr. Lambert such an expert on climate science? I have noticed Dr. Lambert refer to several people’s credentials as being suspect both on his website and other sites. One gentleman with a Harvard undergrad and a PhD from MIT was referred as follows:
"This doesn’t make him reputable scholar and Murray isn’t one either". Charles Murray was the person with the Harvard, MIT credentials
So I looked up Mr. Lambert’s qualifications at the UNSW website. Dr. Lambert has a Math ungrad and MSc from Newcastle University, New South Wales, Australia. He followed that with a PhD at Manitoba, Canada.
(snip)
Tim’s site doesn’t seem to be working for me any more.
What does “FUD” mean?
Jeff
FUD = Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt – the spindoctor’s best friends.
Tim Lambert,
Rather than post them, simply send them to climateaudit AT gmail.com and I’ll take a look.
But just in case you’re in any doubt – I am not the person who needs understanding of entropy. You are.
Civility, people, please.
Also, with respect to the thermodynamics questions, there have been previous requests to keep the arguments outside of this forum. Please do so.
Is Dr. Lambert going to answer the question? Has he been manipulating his site as he has been accused?
I am fascinated to see that Tim banned me again.
It could be because I attributed a post to “Draino”, rather than “Dano”; but in terms of abuse, Tim knows exactly how much abuse there was in my posts- precious little. In the McIntyre thread alone, David Ball called me a “caricature” (#86), and Dano said that I lie (#60); Tim’s suggestion that he is merely getting rid of abusive posts is revealed to be- at least- inconsistent.
What Tim finds difficult is someone who knows the subject and has a contrary view; I make no secret that I looked at his post 75 and 77, and found his argument risible.
Re: 75. MBH set a statistical test (RE) as a prerequisite for their analysis. So, according to MBH, an insignificant result proves to be very significant indeed. Lambert’s comment 75 suggests he has materially misunderstood what is at issue here.
Re: 77. Tim’s link is amazing. Different purpose, different r; i found it surprising that he was able to link that with a straight face.
I suspect that the basis for his “comments policy” is that he doesn’t like losing.
yours, per
Well, he would say that, wouldn’t he?
per, you’re just going to have to get your kicks elsewhere. But thanks for picking up that comment by Dano — I’ve edited it to comply with my comment policy.
I must say that I find this new direction for Climate Audit fascinating. Perhaps you guys could rename the blog to “Tim-Lambert’s-Comment-Policy Audit”? Can I expect letters from some Congressperson demanding to see my Spam Karma logs soon?
Dear TimL
That is what is called a fig-leaf, to hide the modesty of your position. Don’t forget posts 53 and 38, also.
I don’t know if you have a copy of my posts, but I am quite clear that I wrote nothing abusive, with the possible exception of using “Draino”. I know you cannot prove me wrong. I addressed the issues, and this is not acceptable to you.
I think that you are scared witless of informed debate.
yours
per
Tim
Your the one that keeps visiting the site. Is it just curiosity that get’s you over here, or maybe its because you want to learn something new?
(snip)
Oh chill. It’s not going to get any further with the “you were mean”, “”no I wasn’t” schoolyard arguments. For the record, I think that Tim (and Steve sometimes too) snip a bit too much and although they try to be fair, it ends up being more snipping of the opposing side. But Tim can run his blog how he wants.
Per, you were doing a good job pushing the discussion ahead. Just in the future, you will need to keep it professional.* I hope you will do so, rather than arguing about why you were banned.
*Note, that this does not apply to me. I enjoy trolling and will continue to be silly as I choose. But you all need to be behaved so that my silliness has a nice contrast.
per sez:
Err, per, you were the only one banned. Is it your argument that John McCall and James Lane are uninformed?
(snip)
<br />Steve: Tim, how many times do I have ask you to discuss entropy elsewhere.?
I go to sleep and a flame war has broken out. I’ve wasted about 40 minutes snipping this thread. Children, please.
I am a chemist, not a statistician or climate scientist. But sociologically, the climate science world is by far the most interesting, because the fights are public.
There’s some sort of primate tendency to form a “dominance hierarchy”. While I come to Climate Audit and (sometimes) visit Real Climate for the AGW debate, the real fun is watching the pissing contests.
I’m not casting aspersions- I learn a ton of new (to me) science, and I have my woeful ignorance of serious statistics reconfirmed.
As a scientist, I’m damned suspicious of anybody who a) refuses to show data or algorithms or b)resorts to namecalling in lieu of argument. Arguments and data plus namecalling is fine with me. But if you don’t have the stones to put up or shut up, then we can’t get to the bottom of things, so I am pretty sympathetic to the Climate Audit concept, even if it turns out that AGW is real, and the planet is warming at 15K/yr.
I say a pox on both their houses as long as the data and models are so uncertain. It’s important, perhaps even jugular, to stay skeptical and demanding of both sides, despite what our monkey/reptile brains encourage us to do.
Tim
Is Regional New castle university and Manitoba better than Harvard MIT. So this is the reason you thought Murray was disreputable, becuuse he could only get into those two schools?
Dave:
That’s a very good post and very helpful. But we have a screaming lefty educated at the great New Castle University, which rivals MIT and Harvard for Nobel Prize winners who tends to denegrate Steve for doing a decent job.
This soon to be winner of the Nobel Prize in Math is teaching everyone a thing or too about Thermodynamics, Climate science, investigative journalism, gun control and constitutional law, Intel secrets, cosmology, humor, carpet laying, full time blogger and least of all computer science (what he teaches apparently). We are enthralled. All this learned from a regional university in Australia no less. Wish we were this lucky to have him here.
Steve, lighten up on the snipping. This is a thread to discuss flaming and snipping. Allow the flaming and preclude the snipping…at least for this thread.
I’m reluctant to lighten up snipping – let’s keep the adjectives as unflorid as possible.
I’m not going to throw stones at Tim Lambert or anyone else merely because he is at a regional university in Australia. There are plenty of other things to criticize Lambert for. I don’t like this sort of ad hominem criticism. I get lots of it, because I’m not at an esteemed university. However, I was offered Ph.D. scholarships at MIT and Harvard, rather than provincial universities, but didn’t do a Ph.D. for other reasons.
Please.
Is ET Sid Viscious actually a QM?
What in the hell is a QM? More often I’m known as an SFB.
quartermaster
Okay, then what does quartermaster mean in relation to anything I’ve posted here? Or are you purposely not making sense.
I thought you might be someone I know. Evidently not.
That being the case I’d have to know more about who you are, it is a possibilty. But that is pretty out of context for here. But if you made enough incorrect assumptions, and made some distant relations I could see where you came up with that. But to anwer your question Quartermasters are in the Army, as such no I am not, nor was I.
I think Spam Kpop gave my post two in the hat.
Anywys. That’s a possibilty if your talking out of context from here, but I’d have to know more about who you are.
But Quartermaster is an Army Term, and I most definitely was not in the army.
I think Spam Kop gave my post two in the hat.
Anywys. That’s a possibilty if your talking out of context from here, but I’d have to know more about who you are.
But Quartermaster is an Army Term, and I most definitely was not in the army.
I think Spam Kop gave my post two in the hat.
Anywys. That’s a possibilty if your talking out of context from here, but I’d have to know more about who you are.
Okay I’m definitely being flagged by Spam Kop and who knows why.
Steve/someone
My reply is being nabbed by Spam Karma.
What to do? I don’t think I’m using any wonky terms
Spam cops has my other log in under terminate with extreme prejeduce.
Is something up?
Right now I’m in the filters site, and I can’t see what I’ve done to trigger it.
A lot of posts say to e-mail the admin. But I can’t find the admin e-mail anywhere.
Tim, my argument is that I know what I wrote; and, “Draino” aside, it was not abusive.
This is untrue; it seems you are starting to make a habit of making untrue statements about me.
yours
per
I’m not sure if this has been brought up before, but there’s a very similar furore going on in the field of psychology right now over some of Frank Sulloway’s work. This article in the East Bay Express describes how Fred Townsend–an informed nobody in the field of psychology–took it upon himself to “audit” Sulloway’s celebrated hypothesis that birth order is a primary determinant of political outlook, and can be used to explain pretty much every event in human history. Sulloway’s work has been lauded in the popular press as well as among academic psychologists, and he is regarded as a giant in his field, with some even going so far as to compare him to Darwin and Freud.
Anyway, it’s quite a familiar story to the one here on Climate Audit, if not in all of its details. Sulloway reacted vitriolically to a critical review by Townsend, refused to release much of his source data, threatened a small journal with legal action if they published Townsend’s critique, and launched a series of attacks on Townsend’s character and qualifications (notwithstanding the fact that Townsend’s critique is supported by other eminent psychologists). As it stands, the issue is unresolved because Townsend and his supporters remain unable to replicate Sulloway’s results.
These kinds of fusses do seem to arise in fields which have become highly politicized, don’t they? Anyway, the article also contained this passage, which seems a propos:
Sharing data with colleagues following publication of a scholarly work is a matter of course in the academic world. Recipients of government grants, in fact, are often obligated to make their data public for verification purposes. Such openness is desirable — it helps to ensure sound science. If others can review a scientist’s work and come to the same conclusions, the original theory becomes all the stronger.
Highly worth reading…
If you don’t know Boomer and Krall and the Groton and the Drum, then it ain’t you.
From #72, Murray’s cited article:
DéjàÆà➠vu.
Nope not me.
Steve:
“I was offered Ph.D. scholarships at MIT and Harvard, rather than provincial universities”
Comments like that will force Dr. Lambert on suicide watch. Then again it immediately puts you in the category of a disreputable academic for even considering going to places of such low esteem!
Let’s shut this topic down please. I’m getting complaints about it and I’m tired of it as well. For flame wars, please move the discussion over to sci.environment. Everyone’s vented now, so let’s leave this alone.
To get things back on track, I’m going to mark as spam any comments that do not comply and will not make any attempt to snip.
Re: 77
Thank you — please do!
Time to get back to climate science.
I disagree.
TCO
You do show annoying troll like behaviour. It’s not that you are rude or anything, but like Lambert, you don’t force new ideas or thougts to a thread. You seem only to place obstacles at every step. You seeing anyone about behavioural issues?
Tim Lambert said on another thread:
Tim, I’m quite prepared to try to resolve this:
(1) is there a reference showing that the diagnostic received by John A is a Bad Behaviour diagnostic?
(2) why would your IP detector be unable to distinguish between John A and a spam distributor?
(3) to my knowledge, our spam blocker Spam Karma does not prevent people from accessing the site as appears to be what happened here. What spam blocker do you have? Does it do this?
(4) Elsewhere in connection with John Brignell, you say “Brignell responded by repeatedly restoring his comment until his IP address was banned.” In such a case, I presume that the IP blocking was by a positive act by the moderator and not a passive act by spam filter. While this is a discussion of Wikipedia, this is something that you presumably know how to do and presumably have done from time to time.
1. Download Bad Behavior and look at the source. In any case it looks nothing like what you get if you tell Apache to block an IP. John A doesn’t know what he is talking about.
2. Once it detects spam from an IP address it blocks all traffic from that address. In the current version this block is for ten minutes, but at that time it lasted for a couple of days.
3. I use Bad Behavior and Spam Karma. BB blocks spambots from even reading your site. SK just stops the comments they leave from appearing.
4. Brignell was banned from changing the page, not from seeing it. When I ban an abusive poster I just tell Spam Karma that their comments are spam and it does the rest. This lets me review any comments they make and allow them through if they behave themselves.
As for the rest of John A’s assertions above — he’s been told in no uncertain terms by some who researches and teaches the subject that entropy is not a form of energy (it’s measured in different units for heaven’s sake), but he refuses to admit his error. You do yourself no favours by covering it up for him.
I’ve had some surprises from Spam Karma where we got blamed for deleting comments which were being “retro-spanked” by Spam Karma. I’m not a computer scientist; I’ve got enough to do and I don’t have the time or interest to download Bad Behavior from the source to identify its diagnostics. If you say that the diagnostic reported by John A at debunkers.org was a Bad Behavior diagnostic, then I’ll take your word for it.
You said that “a spambot has been spamming my blog using the same IP as you [John A], so Bad Behavior blocked access from your IP”. That sounds odd to me. How can he have the same IP address as a spambot? I know that Mann’s ban of me at his FTP site extends to other people in Toronto on the same cable network although I don’t know how far (which is a very big network).
As to entropy, here you’re just being tiresome. This is my site content-wise. I work at the content and I’m not prepared to spend time and energy dealing with esoteric thermodynamic issues and therefore don’t want to convene a discussion of these topics. If you wanted to promote or criticize creationism or intelligent design, I’d do the same thing. This is hardly unreasonable. I’ve asked that this discussion be carried on elsewhere. You’ve got your own blog, you can whale away at them all you want there.
With the large volume of posts that I’ve done, if the best points you can score against this site are against a comment (not a post) by computer support to the site, then you’re conceding a lot of ground and I’ll take that as a compliment.
Click on the link to Bad Behavior, click on the download link, download and unzip it, look in bad-behaviour-banned.php. Takes no more than two minutes.
Some ISPs share IP adresses between multiple users.
As for entropy, I didn’t bring it up again, John A did in this very post. You have a post on your blog claiming that I don’t understand entropy. It is unreasonable for you to ban discussion of an issue raised in this post. And it’s not something esoteric. Entropy is not a form of energy. This is basic physics. You are going out of your way to avoid learning that John A is wrong.
All I’ve done in my posts that mention climateaudit is respond to criticism from your blog. In that area your track record is very very poor.
– falsely claiming that I said that Mann had released all of his code
– falsely claiming that I had attributed McKitrick’s degrees/radians error to M&M
– your gerrymandered “cos latitude” speciality
– falsely claiming that my criticism of Essex and McKitrick was “mostly just belligerence”
– ludicrous claims that I don’t know what entropy is
– falsely claiming that I deleted all of per’s posts
– falsely claiming that I blocked John A from my site.
You did manage to correctly identify an error I made in a comment, so climateaudit’s score is one out of eight. That’s a failing grade.
Let’s try to deal with the matter at hand before running off in all directions. Once again:
Can you explain this for me?
I did. See my second paragraph.
Tim,
I don’t believe Steve ever said that you didn’t know what Entropy is. John might have, but if anything posted on Steve’s site is fair game, then so is his claim that you “attributed McKitrick’s degrees/radians error to M&M” since the post in question was on your site.
BTW, while you’re correct that entropy isn’t energy, it’s related via temperature so in many cases where the temperature is nearly constant the change in energy is proportional to the change in Entropy. But since we can’t discuss Entropy here I’ll let it go at that.
Dave, I’m counting things written by Steve and things in posts rather then just comments as things by climateaudit. I’m not counting comments from random people.
Re #86 – as a matter of interest, how extensive can this sharing be? Does this mean that, at a blog-end, you can only identify a user by his IP address as being 1 of up to say 5 or 50 or 5000 or 50,000 potential users in an ISP area? Can you give me a ball park idea? If you can confirm that it’s largish, I can see your point and will edit the remark retrospectively.
I really don’t want to get into text criticism of your other points. But let’s pick one of your laundry list. You said that I was
In this very post, I said:
Although people may disagree on the justification for your deletion of per’s posts, I think that it is common ground that you deleted some of his posts. Accordingly my comment was correct. I try to express things carefully, but still get mischaracterized a lot, which you seem to have done here.
Other comments that I actually made in this post were:
If you’re keeping a scorecard, then I don’t see anything incorrect in this comment. For example,
– Lambert’s retraction was not entitled “Lambert Screws It Up Again”. Surely I get one out of one for that.
I later added the comment:
Again, my comment was an accurate report of what you were then saying. You seem to have a different story now. I don’t necessarily fault you for that, but I would urge that you be a little less strident in your initial explanations if there’s some uncertainty attached to them.
Later I said:
Again, that seems to be an accurate report of what you said.
The IP address I have is not shared by anyone, so the answer is: nope, no spambots from this IP address. None. Rien. Nada.
Since I use Linux and Firefox, the chances of me having spyware or spambots are vanishingly small.
So what did happen? I accused you of changing something on the server that caused me to be blocked from even reading your site. I took it to be a change to the Apache server itself, perhaps a change to the hosts file. But as it happens, the most likely culprit was the Bad Behavior plug-in, because when it blocks an IP address as a spambot, it shows the exact message I received (see http://www.ioerror.us/software/bad-behavior/412-precondition-failed/ )
But that doesn’t let you off the hook. There are TWO ways that Bad Behavior could have been triggered.
The first way is if a spambot from my IP address had been slamming your website – except that that didn’t happen. it couldn’t have. I’m certain that the server logs from your website will confirm that statement. I had only posted once on your weblog and that was it.
The second way is: Someone edited a file called robots.txt and added the following:
User-agent: [John A’s IP address retrieved from weblog comment]
Disallow: /
Then the Bad Behavior scripts re-read the robots.txt file and founnd a new entry, which it interprets as a hostile attack from a vile spambot and I got a 412 error. You of course, blamed in on "the Internet".
To manually change the robots.txt file, the only person who knew my IP address was you, Tim.
Re #88 Tim,
I assume that from your peculiar phrasiology that the statement was indeed made by John A in an editorial statement. Care to give us the name of the thread? Unlike TCO I don’t spend all my time reading old threads here, though I think I’ve read most all the posts as they were made.
John A, is it possible that Tim sees an IP address of your ISP rather than your actual IP address?
Tim, could you email me the IP address that you saw and I’ll try to reconcile this factual issue. Do you also have information on the spam that was being sent to you from that IP address?
Steve,
The answer is that my ISP (which is British Telecom) assigns a public IP address to my DSL router. In fact, the IP address assigned is leased, that is, assigned for a fixed period of time and renewed automatically by the router. So my IP address which is seen by the outside world (and logged on people’s website) is globally unique. It applies only to traffic coming from my DSL router and no-one else.
Your connection is not direct via a DSL router. You connect to the internet via your cable provider. The cable provider provides a private IP address to your PC, and similarly private IP addresses to all of your fellow customers (including your neighbour). But private IP addresses are special in that the routers on the Internet will not forward them on or route traffic to them.
So how do you access the Internet? The answer is that your cable company has a Network Address Translation (NAT) gateway. This gateway takes packets marked with private addresses and envelopes them in new packets which have one PUBLIC IP address. The disguised packets are then routed by the Internet in the normal manner. When the packets come back, the gateway strips off the public IP address and forwards them using the private IP addresses.
That’s why Mann blocked not only you but also your neighbour, because from his perspective he was seeing the Public IP address of your cable company’s NAT gateway, and its that which Mann blocked, blocking all of you.
To the point, Lambert knew which IP address my ISP had assigned to my DSL router because it’s stamped into each comment on his weblog. He then altered the robots.txt file in the way I described.
What a lovely man.
this thread is extremely boring
Re #94, 95. I agree. I’ve tried to stop this topic.
But since Lambert will come into other threads and start flashing, I thought that, in the absence of other alternatives, we could at least try to restrict this behavior to the equivalent of an industrialized zone where Lambert can expose his shortcomings to his heart’s content to other consenting adults.
After everyone’s had their say, I’ll turn off the topic.
TCO – read #79 on your views when I shut down this topic before.
John, just set up Tor. When I have to deal with any such foolishness I toggle my proxie settings to the manual proxy configuration that I’ve set up. Tim would have to fit the whole internet into the robot.txt file to keep me out. As that would close his site down I don’t see him doing this. Works well for http.
Perhaps Tim can’t tell Akregator from a “spambot” :)? No insult intended Tim.
Leave it open. It’s still frigging miserable to watch, but I prefer the freedom.
Since I don’t read his weblog, why wwould I want an RSS feed from it?
No, the answer is the parsimonious one.
Steve, you can close the thread. If the Aussie whiner comes back with more crap, I’ll put his IP address in robots.txt – poetic justice.
Re #99, “Since I don’t read his weblog …” no insult intended John.
John A, robots.txt does not work that way. The user agent field specifies the user agent for the robot not its IP address. The Bad Behavior plugin doesn’t even read the robots.txt file — it justs blocks bots that are known to ignore it.
I suppose I could have modified the source of the plugin to test for your IP and block it, but why would I go to that much trouble? If I want to block your IP all I have to is add a line to .htaccess. But then you get a message from Apache, not Bad Behavior.
If your ISP has given you a unique IP then I guess the only other possibility is misconfigured software. I did look at the log and it looked like a spambot access, but it’s long since been purged so I can’t recheck it.
Steve, it’s a climateaudit score card, not just a Steve McIntyre score card, so it includes things John A wrote in the post at the top of this page. First paragraph:
You claim that this comment is accurate:
But it isn’t. What I actually wrote was this:
You guys are so cute when you talk computer geek stuff…
As to the blocking: Tim, it’s hard to keep up with all your different stories and pulling quotes out of context. Here’s the rest of the quote:
My comment was based on your first story – that there was no "blocking", but there were server problems. Thus the distinction between whether you specifically instigated the blocking was not at issue in this remark. It was you that changed your story later – saying that it wasn’t server problems but some mysterious spambot with the same IP address as John A.
As to whether you deleted all of Per’s posts or some of Per’s posts, a few lines below John A’s post, I summarized the debate as follows:
I don’t see how one could be more accurate than that. Even if the lead paragraph by John A. was slightly inaccurate i.e. that you had not deleted all of Per’s posts, the fundamental issue is that you had deleted some of his posts. I fail to see how you have been incrementally impugned by suggesting that you had deleted all per]s posts, rather than some of his posts. However, while I don’t agree that anything material turns on whether you deleted all of the posts, as opposed to some of the opposites, I’ve edited the sentence in question to say that you deleted "some" of Per’s posts and not "all" of Per;s posts; I marked the editing.
On the blocking front, I take it that your current story is that John A was blocked by your anti-spam software, but you are unable to explain so far why this would happen. There is a plausible explanation as to how the blocking could have occurred through intervention of a type that you know how to do. I’m really quite prepared to edit down some of the rawer comments in the post, but still lack any plausible explanation for why the blocking would occur. (I am usually able to diagnose why Spam Karma blocks certain posts and don’t see why you are unable to do so – even as a speculation – in this case.) Again, is there any plausible explanation as to why John A would be construed to be a spambot?
I got blocked at the same time as JohnA, so wouldn’t be surprised if it was not just the server issue that John was (over)reacting to.
Of course, Tim was very recalcitrant to say what he did with the per discussion. But I thought he eventually said that he erased it (and felt justified in doing so. Of course, I disagree with erasing posts–per had some little ad homs, very mild, just “asidish spice” in my book. I’ll show you some d** f**ing cursing and trolling, you little girls, if you want to see real misbehaviour. Then you can punish me.
Steve, you misread my first comment. I didn’t say that he wasn’t blocked — I said that I hadn’t blocked him. Contrary to your claim, that was the point at issue. Here are your exact words:
I mentioned the server problems to illustrate the absurdity of assuming that just because you couldn’t access a site, you had been personally blocked.
I explained in detail why John A’s IP was blocked. Bad Behavior decided that a spambot had visited my blog from his IP. I looked at the log and found it looked like a visit from a spambot. If it wasn’t that then it was misconfigured software on his machine. Other people have been blocked because of misbehaving aggregators. Strangely enough, they didn’t accuse me of blocking them from my site. Nor did they accuse me of lying when I explained what happened.
Note further that in the debunkers thread Jeff Norman said that he got the same messsage. How am I supposed to have gotten Norman’s IP address?
Tim: After the above statement (Which seemd to be the case at the time), you said that you hadn’t blocked John A., which I duly reported as follows:
You then said at your blog:
Having noted at your blog, that a correction had been issued, it ill behooves you to come over here 2 months later and cite the uncorrected comment. Let’s look at your response to my comment. I had reported your comment as saying that server problems had prevented “access to everyone” and noted that I had been able to access to your site. Preventing “access to everyone” can be interpreted two ways: (a) it was not the case that everyone had access; (b) all people were denied access. I think that(a) is the more reasonable interpretation of my comment, but I wasn’t trying for huge precision. The topic bored me inordinately then as it does now. You then said – apparently as a contradiction to the above – that (c) you did not claim that “nobody” had access. (c) is obviously consistent with (a) and inconsistent with (b).
You did not at the time complain that the statements were unreasonable or that a correction was not promptly issued (even if you regarded it as graceless). It ill behooves you to come nearly 2 months later and make complaints about such trivialities that you did not make on a timely basis.
so reviewing the bidding:
(1) we all agree that you deleted some of Per’s comments and that you did not delete all of Per’s comments;
(2) we all agree that John A was unable to access your site for a period of time from his computer (during a period ot time when other people were able to access your site and when he could access your site from other computers);
(3) we all agree that you know how to block someone if you want;
(4) I think that we all agree that you have blocked people in the past. Indeed, I beleive that you’ve claimed in the past to do fairly tricky blocking where you’ve arranged things so that someone thinks that his posts are going up, but they are visible only to himself. However, I’m not 100% sure as to your history in this respect.
(5) we all agree that your first explanation of this phenomenon was “server problems”;
(6) we all agree that your first explanation does not explain the particular diagnostics that John A experienced and that you do not presently continue to offer this explanation;
(7) we all agree that your second explanation was that there was a spambot with John A’s IP address, causing your anti-spam software to block John A’s IP address;
(8) I think that we all agree that there is no spambot with John A’s IP address.
So we’re now on to a new theory – how boring is this? As I understand your present explanation, just made now,
(1) Bad Behavior reported the visit from John A as a spambot visit. (2) you inspected the Bad Behaviour log and “found that it looked like a visit from a spambot”.
You’ve never mentioned this manual inspection before. What does a spambot visit look like in a Bad Behavior log? In a Spam Karma log, it’s usually pretty easy to distinguish between a poker site and a comment from yourself. What did you do after your manual inspection? Did you carry out an act of specific acceptance/rejection after inspecting the Bad Behavior log?
I’m a little puzzled by your theories as to why Bad Behavior would pick on John A. You’ve proposed two new theories:
(1) misconfigured software on John A’s machine. You’re a computer expert. Do you have any examples of “misconfigured software” that would account for the Bad Behaviour diagnostic?
(2) “misbehaving aggregator” – help me here: what is a misbehaving aggregator? and why would it cause the particular Bad Behavior identification which seems to have taken place?
Finally, misunderstandings occur in life from time to time without any particular fault. If you have a situation where (1) there is some pre-existing controversy because you are deleting comments and blocking access to Per; (2) I have been pettily been specifically blocked from Mann’s FTP site; (3) John A’s access is being blocked by the combination of a “misbehaving aggregator” and your Bad Behavior software; (4) you have the skills to block individuals and perhaps have done so in the past; (5) even though you are a computer expert, your initial explanation of the phenomenon (“server problems” did not explain the particular diagnostics, then I think that you can appreciate how someone could reasonably interpret the events as indicating that you had taken overt steps to block access.
If you say that you didn’t, then, as I tried to say before, we will take you at your word, but equally I expect you to agree that the events could have a led a reasonable person to misinterpret the sequence of events. Can we leave it at that?
Steve, check out SAY IT WITH CHARTS for some very simple philosophy on presentation charts. I have done a little bit of work with the author. ILL it. Don’t bother with purchasing it, unless you are rich.
Here is what the latest update to the post says (added two whole weeks after the original post):
This is unreasonable, wrong, and exactly the opposite of taking me at my word. I’ve raised the matter now because I only recently noticed John A’s accusation.
And no, I do not agree with your 5,6 or 8. For 5 and 6: I never said that server problems blocked him. I said that I had been unable to access it because of server problems. For 8: Given the nonsense he wrote about robots.txt, I have no confidence in John A’s ability to determine if another computer was sharing his IP address.
I don’t recall why I concluded that it was a spambot when I looked at the BB log.
An example of misbehaving software causing BB to block is given here.
And no, your conduct in this matter has not been reasonable. You most definitely had no basis for concluding that I had blocked John A. Reasonable behaviour would be to point out the access problem and ask for it to be fixed as other users have done.
Tim…
Give it a rest. You feel beat up on this site. Steve (and others) feel the same at yours. Assuming there’s merit (and I’m not making any value judgements here) to your issues, why not let them go and actually discuss the points made at this site. You seem to spending an awful lot of energy on something that is really meaningless.
I am going to a seminar next week on blogs and science communication. How they bring together the major players in incisive debate on the big scientific issues that affect us all. I am wondering where this thread fits in 🙂
Not just really meaningless, but something purposely designed to waste Steve’s time. Who cares what Tim Lambert thinks anyway? And why should he care what John A thinks?
If everyone on the Hockey Team had been treating Steve in an appropriate way there might be some excuse for a nothing like Tim (yes, I’m a super-nothing), to take especial umbrage at what Steve said, but when Steve has been subject to relentless ill-treatment at all levels it’s just a sign of Tim’s contempt for anyone willing to gainsay the Team.
Let him prove his bona fides by engaging in an actual discussion of the scientific issues and then maybe he’ll be worthy of being treated deferentially.
I am Gazoo from the constellation Orion. I come from the interplanetary void to randomly deny access to the Tim Lambert weblog.
Having a post with false accusations that I am lying is purposely designed to waste Steve’s time? Well maybe. In which case you should be criticizing John A, who is responsible for the post.
Sigh!
Just how would anyone know if you’re lying or not in a case like this? You’ve got a explanation, and I certainly can’t judge if it’s correct or not. And obviously neither can Steve. If you and John A want to duke it out 12 rounds, fine but don’t expect me to sign up for pay-for-view. You stated your position. That should have been enough. Repeating the same line over and over again is just a purposeful attempt to waste the time of and/or intimidate Steve.
I have summarized this above as follows. The original claim in the post was that Lambert had deleted posts by Per – this Lambert has admitted. Lambert denies that he blocked John A. Thus, Lambert’s position can be summarized (in the words of Bob Marley) as :
I have edited down allegations about the “deputy”. Lambert has admitted to the original claim about “shooting the sheriff” – we’ll leave it at that. The thread is now closed.
At TCO’s request, this will be open for a little while. Maybe Lil’ Tim, the Rasta-man himself will come and rhyme for us.
I feel very pettish in my troll status!
You want rhymes? OK.
A blogmeister name of Tim Lambot
thought he finally had caught a big spambot.
But he started to blow
like the troll TCO
when he tried old “poor me!” as a gambit.
In lieu of a trackback.