Ethon relocates
Via James Annan a rather good summary of what happened to Prometheus
It had appeared for some time that RPJr's his blog was on the wane, attracting little more than a handful of denialist ditto-heads, and now he's decided to knock it on the head. Personally, I found much of Roger's blogging to be interesting and thought-provoking, although I'm a bit baffled by some of the clangers he dropped (eg his bizarre cheerleading of air capture of CO2, and his lame attempt to discredit Hansen's 1988 forecast).short, but go read the rest, including Eli's comment:
If you go back and look at what I have written about Roger and his blogging, what I admired was his early awareness of the uses of the blog. Where (again, in my humble opinion) he failed was getting locked into a model and a number of obsessions and was not willing to change. A strength of his blog was the authority he and his institute brought to it, a weakness was that he took criticism personally, which, of course, some of it was. That is a big advantage of quasi anonymity. The blog lost steam when he tried to control the comments precisely because it was the friction in the comments which gave the flavoring.The Editors are working on a longer thumb sucker for tonight, but we close with elegies from the mice which capture both the tragedy and the farce. Fergus said...
From Private Eye: the poetic obituarian. E.g:and Anonymous said...
So farewell, then,
Prometheus,
Finally freed by Hercules?
You were an Honest Broker,
you said,
but now the blog
you helped to start for Nature
is honestly broke.
Prometheus of Old was known,Roger is going on sabbatical. Sabbaticals are like senior year, you get to burn the candle at both ends and take a blowtorch to the middle. A time of great productivity, new learning, new friends, new collaborators, excessive play and discovery. Eli, the lab bunnies and all the mice (ok, maybe not ALL the mice) wish him all of these.
For stealing fire from Zeus,
And giving it to the mortals
So they could cook their goose.
Prometheus of Young was known,
For stealing the publics' attention,
And giving it to himself,
With a William J. Broad mention.
Prometheus of Old was punished,
Chained to a mountain peak,
Where an eagle ate his liver,
Extracted with his beak.
Prometheus of Young was punished,
Chained to a policy blog,
Populated by nitwits,
And the neighbor's yappy dog.
Posts
16 comments:
An end to heresy?
Nooooohhhhhhhh!
I do feel RP's pain. I sometimes feel that I keep having the same arguments over and over on the various blogs. It's like groundhog day. How many times do I have to write a post saying that "no, global warming is NOT caused by solar variability."?? It gets old. I've thought several times about hanging it up on blogging.
Rabett, a very nice comment and wrapup on the RP Jr. issue over at James Annan. I also appreciate earlies posts where you clearly pointed out that Roger was using his blog in a political manner to advance an agenda, while claiming to discuss science.
That was obvious to anyone who spent more than a couple of months reading Roger. It's unfortunate that James Annan *still* doesn't get that.
Perhaps that is evidence of how clever Roger has been and the reason why Mr. Hare has been so important.
Mus musculus anonymouse
I think much of the pain was self-inflicted. After he drove away people like Eli and Dano (for whatever reason), RP started having the same conversation over and over (repeatedly) with the very same people -- and these were the people who agreed with him the first time.
--Horatio Algeranon
Oh, I get it. It's very clever.
How is that working out for you?
James Annan said: "I'm a bit baffled by some of the clangers he dropped ...his lame attempt to discredit Hansen's 1988 forecast."
And how lame it was.
RP claimed that Hansen got the scenario B (and C through 2000) temperature projection "right for the wrong reason" -- claiming that Hansen's scenarios B (and C) "dramatically" over-estimated emissions".
Well, anyone who read Eli's debunking of that myth and the recent piece on Hansen's 1988 paper at Real Climate knows how far off Roger Pielke was on his claims.
Anyone who read RP's original post and comments also knows that the guy does not understand that a slowly increasing exponential looks linear over a short time span (among other things).
"A strength of his blog was the authority he and his institute brought to it"
I understand it is tradition to say only nice things about someone when their dog (or blog) dies, but knowing the particular history here, I wonder if that may not be one of those double entendres.
As we all know, lots of nasty fellows are infamous for the (tyrannical) authority they brought to their jobs.
And how about this one:
"what I admired was his early awareness of the uses of the blog."
What is that psycho-babble all about?
Lie back on the couch while I probe your earliest awareness of your blog (and your Id and your ego -- which is very big, I notice)
Nice try, Eli, but who are you trying to kid?
Certainly not the mice in the cheese factory.
We know you are grinning with us from ear to furry ear.
And we can hear you laughing through the internet tubes.
"You won't have Roger Pielke to kick around anymore."
That's too bad. By the way, Congress is now getting involved in the continued funding of skeptics by Exxon Mobil issue.
Would love to see Pielke Jr. blog on this the way he did, criticizing the Royal Academy.
Gonna' miss the little guy.
Mus musculus anonymouse
I see the problem.
Andrew I hope you don't stop. Though I have to say I have great respect for your patience in dealing with not just the same tired nonsense but also the continuous attacks on your integrity... I think the problem is that most blogs collect a small group of regular commenters that keep going over the same arguments over and over again.
Like a married couple.
I must say I liked his blog in the beginning.
But his tolerance of the FUD purveyed in his comments, his insistence on pointing out bad behavior without actually saying what was good behavior (no, linking to a paper he wrote 4 years ago and not giving a synopsis does'nt count), and his...um...incidents of cerebral flatus eventually undermined his credibility.
His dad is on the same path, IMHO.
Best,
D
Dano,
Back when you and Eli were frequenting the blog, it was actually fairly entertaining.
You had the Hemphills on the one hand and the Rabetts on the other and Roger staking out the "Silent Middle" where he tangled himself up in rhetorical knots trying to make his "arguments".
I particularly liked the way Roger's arguments changed from start to finish. It was like watching the extinction of a species, as it got restricted to a smaller and smaller plot of land and finally -- poof -- disappeared from the face of the planet.
-- Horatio Algeranon
Andrew, please persist.
The boring and repeated Talking Point postings are like the high=school recreation called "TP-ing" . Turf stuff, just being annoying and obvious draping their flimsy banners all over your yard.
Do you check the IP numbers? Has anyone quietly put a private little list together the serious climate bloggers can check, among yourselves, just to flag the people whose Frequently Asserted Beliefs come back over and over?
We know they're not serious questions from those folks. Being able to tell quickly whether this is a child or naive adult, or an annoying TP-ing, might help.
They're bingo numbers, but scoring's never been regularized on those. Maybe doing it by IP number instead of by subject would make it more amusing?
It saddens me to see the good writers and thinkers are being worn down by the people who just post the same stuff over and over.
Ironically, it seemed to me that once RP banned or discouraged the amusing and interesting posters, he too got worn down by the same repetitive TP-ing of his own site.
Hank, my impression is that RP Jr. didn't get worn down by those commenters (who had been present for a long time and who had been generally supportive of his views) so much as realize that a blog whose comments were largely from such sources was beginning to reflect on his own credibility. His father has yet to learn that lesson.
My guess is Roger woke up one morning and asked himself
well, how did I get here?
And asked himself, how can I work this?
And told himself, this is not my beautiful blog
And told himself, this is not my beautiful life
Same blog as it ever was, same as it ever was, same as it ever was
Oh, I agree, I don't think RPJr got worn down by the persistent believers.
I was responding to Andrew's comment that he (Andrew) is tired of the same beliefs asserted over and over.
Him, I'd miss grievously.
I agree that Andrew should persist.
And Horatio, the humor ranged from a tactic used to disarm to the more frequent recent realization that a stance was a joke and the only honest reply was ridicule. Sure, these folks choose denialism as their identity, and as such I'm actually laughing at them, but...but...so what?
Best,
D
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