The Battle of Climategate is over. The Battle for the Internet has begun.
Is this the beginning of the end of big media? I kicked my heels on the way to work today, felt a zing of joy in the crisp winter air. Blogistan kicked some arse this week – MSM; yooor boys took one hell of a beating!
Climategate of course. The story that big media and government tried to kill with censorship, obscurity, inaction and faint, misleading one para stores. But the blogosphere simply would not let it die. More than that, the superb range of analysis poured into the subject by bloggers and commenters developed and expanded the story in such a way that finally, even the miserable wretches at the BBC couldn’t ignore it. Statisticians, developers, climatologists, scientists of every hue – every little piece of Climategate was picked over, deconstructed, reconstructed, scenarioed. No media organisation on earth could have thrown the resources at this story that the distributed blogosphere did – this was true disintermediation, true people journalism, true – dare I say it – people science. Faced with daily revelations and utterly incontrovertible assertions that hit the CRU hard (the fine toothed analysis of harry_read_me.txt being the nail in the coffin) big media finally had to act. Last night, the waters broke.
Newsnight’s Susan Watts finally ran with the killer blow – the model was scrap. That crucifies CRU. CRU, sorry, but you’re all out of a job. Oh maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but you’re the sacrificial lambs in this; didn’t you know? To save AGW, one leg of the beast – the exposed fraudulent leg – has to be hacked off. I can see the narrative: “Yes, there was over-egging, good scientists swayed by their convictions. We regret this, but the other models, the NASA models especially, are sound”. So you lot are dead meat. Prof Jones will be lucky to get a post at the University of Wallamaloo. What you guys should be doing now is whistleblowing enough to stop traffic. Hell, you’re going down – why not take the others with you?
But off the *content*, and onto the *medium*; wow. Great job fellers. Bishop Hill, Steve Mac, James Delingpole, the countless others, bloody well done.
But watch your backs.
We should all watch our backs. As I wrote before (here and elsewhere), when governments that depends for their very existence on their control of the narrative lose control of the narrative, they’re not going to be happy. This may have been the first global information battle, it is not the end of the information war. Give a little whoop. Kick your heels in the air. Then get back to work. This is not over.
BOORAH!
Tags: bbc, blogosphere, climate change, climategate, copenhagen, cru, denial, fraud, infowar, lizard people, media, nwo, prison planet, revolution, the empire never ended
4. December 2009 at 1:00 pm :
Indeed , infowarriors RULE ! : )
4. December 2009 at 8:54 pm :
Right you are, Frank.
I woud be loking out for internet censorship just like China or Australia. The excuse they will use is the very one we ‘think’ is a victory over AGW. Using that as cause would fit nicely into their narrative, now wouldn’t it?
Obama: ” Those reckless bloggers who almost destroyed the the Global Governance, opps, uhh, uhhhh, I mean the fight against global warming have shown my administration that uncontrolled internet is dangerous, and uhhhh, ummmm, you see, uhhhh, THINK OF THE CHILDREN!, yea,, ummm, that’s what I mean. Internet is dangerous to the kids. So I’ve asked my Internet Czar to introduce legislation to curtail blogs and websites that we deem to be dangerous to our agenda, opps, uhhh, uhhhhhh, dangerous to THE CHILDREN, yea, that’s what I meant… the children”
……coming to an ISP near you!
6. December 2009 at 11:17 am :
Nothing much to add, it feels very much like we’re in a phoney war period now – I expect further action during Copenhagen, but just *had* to repost this comment from “mac Brachman” (taken from Chris Booker’s thread here) as an example of the sheer brilliance of AGW propagandists:
“Regarding rising sea levels… The President of the Maldives held a cabinet meeting underwater, requiring all the ministers to attend in SCUBA suits. This wasn’t just a publicity stunt”
If you don’t lol at that you won’t lol at anything…
6. December 2009 at 2:28 pm :
Theyve just pulled a similar stunt with the Nepalese Government holding a meeting next to Everest or summat … Why dont any of these buggers try having a meeting up a gum tree – its where they belong .
7. December 2009 at 12:52 am :
That would be the esteemed Australian institution, the University of Woolloomooloo (try spelling it aloud – double-U-double-O-double-L-double-O-M-double-O-L-double-O) ?
Seems an appropriate place for these charlatans. I nomiate Phil Jones to be in charge of the sheep-dip from now on. It is clearly a task worthy of his skills. He will of course need to manipulate his name a little, but that is child’s play for a man of his academic stature. “Phil” can easily become “Bruce” with the application of the appropriate “filter”.
DrDweeb
7. December 2009 at 2:32 am :
Frank,
you are correct. It is only a matter of time before there are serious laws in place all over the world, to control what the masses can do via the internet.
The Internet providers are being forced to be censors for the government and for Hollywood studios with regard to copyright issues with file sharing of entertainment.
The social networking sites are being used as a tool of the State to find out more about people. Already we are hearing reports of Iranian’s all over the world being threatened by Iranian police thugs via internet, getting details from facebook and so on and the CIA is supposed to have all the postings on these sites such as Facebook saved for future use.
One US department is trying to make comments on reviewing books and products on the internet a crime.
The only hope we have is that there are so many of us, and so few of them who are competent, and that technology will keep ahead of them.
7. December 2009 at 2:37 am :
You might find my investigation of the climategate whistleblower of interest. Go to http://castlecarrie.wordpress.com/
cheers
7. December 2009 at 11:15 pm :
Climate change alarmism is just so much …
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nB6zg05CxYg
8. December 2009 at 1:44 am :
And Gordon et al can be thanked for …
http://thedahlbergrepurcussions.blogspot.com/
12. December 2009 at 11:03 am :
Hmm. This last couple of days I’ve noticed a distinct solidifying of the pro-AGW front – admittedly derived from just three examples:
(1) Nick Cohen on This Week did a rather nasty piece saying that the internet is “a haven for the world’s nutters and fruitcakes… this convention for the under-educated…”. Climate change was “not dreamt up by a few scientists from Norwich…”. “We’re not allowed to call them deniers any more…”. And scepticism is too fine a word for “them” apparently. In the studio discussion that followed, however, Portillo was a beacon of reason, and you could tell that Andrew Neil wasn’t convinced, either.
(2) In Any Questions Ben Goldacre said that ‘sceptics’ were just saddos getting a thrill from imagining they were David vs. Goliath; but that they were confusing the ‘establishment’ with ‘established’ science.
(3) In Have I Got News For You Hislop was fully behind the scientific consensus and ridiculed “the blogosphere” in general.
To me, it feels as though there is a move (or maybe a ‘meme’ spreading) to neuter ‘the blogosphere’ through ridicule, and I think it will work. Bloggers are going to end up with the same social standing as train spotters.
12. December 2009 at 11:20 am :
Just following on from my last comment: what a wonderful word ‘meme’ is. It’s a one-word counter to the “Only a global conspiracy could otherwise explain the AGW consensus” straw man argument, for example. If Richard Dawkins can be proud of anything, it is to have coined such a memorable word for an idea that would otherwise take several sentences to express.
12. December 2009 at 1:56 pm :
#Nick Cohen on This Week did a rather nasty piece saying that the internet is “a haven for the world’s nutters and fruitcakes… this convention for the under-educated…”. Climate change was “not dreamt up by a few scientists from Norwich…”. “We’re not allowed to call them deniers any more…”.#
Well fuck Cohen. Here’s what the grand old man of laying into the MSM has to say on that score…
“Oh, Nick Cohen’s a maniac. If you’ll notice, he never cites anything. Does he cite anything? That already gives you the answer. Go back and check. He doesn’t cite anything. These are just diatribes, tantrums. I’m not interested in them.”
http://www.guernicamag.com/interviews/1409/chomsky_half_full/
…quoting Chomsky on here isn’t a premod offence..is it?
They’re definitely getting very worried. I’m really not sure that anybody with a serious interest in what’s going on reads a paper or relies on the BBC. Why would you? It’s cheaper, more convenient and easier to find a bit of balance and background by clicking a couple of buttons…I think a lot of them, especially columnists and commentators are genuinely shocked to discover that their little fiefdoms are off the friggin map now we’ve got a bypass or two….thousand. You get the impression they must have assumed we were hanging on their every word. I’ll only read anyone who writes well, can sustain an argument or is entertaining and 95% aren’t journalists of any stripe.
14. December 2009 at 4:41 pm :
quoting Chomsky on here isn’t a premod offence..is it?
There is no modding here….
And yes, they are, all of them, extremely worried. I have been absolutely bang on 100% right here – and I really wish I hadn’t been. Governments, media, columnists, NGOs – they’re fucking terrified that the proles are not only thinking for themselves, but are *publishing* these thoughts for others to read. This shakes the world.
They’re not going to just give up.
Take a look at this for instance
http://www.francisdavey.co.uk/2009/12/government-wants-new-powers-to-block.html
A storm’s coming.
14. December 2009 at 10:26 pm :
Agw is an attempt to silence or severely curtail the internet. What do we think the effect of cap and trade will be on server farms? This guy has worked out the cost at $4654.52 per rack per year assuming 36 200W servers per rack! This cost would be in addition to the existing power costs. Suddenly cheap hosting and cheap internet access has gone. How are these extra costs going to be met in the highly competitive markets of hosting and internet access?
5. January 2010 at 12:33 pm :
I think a HUGE amount of thanks should also go to Steve Mckintyre and Anthony Watts of Wattsupwiththat.com and climateaudit.com too. Also a big thank you to all the contributors and all the people who leave comments on those sites and sites like this one. We are all helping each other to understand and recognise the nature of the beast.
They have also made a huge contribution to sanity and reality based observational analysis of real empirical evidence supported climate study.
Unlike warmists who start with a faith based conclusion and then work backwards to make evidence fit that conclusion.