Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Auditing the auditor, or Dr. Once-ler tree hater

Everyone knows that Steve McIntyre hates trees and dendrologists, but now it appears he is clear cutting his blog.

Following comments over at Deltoid, it appears that the Lorax, an awkward Dr. Suess character and tree defender, has been disappeared down the Climate Audit memory hole although his smile still exists in the comments. The Nightingale (Jimmy) sings at Tim's Place

Re #41 and the related comments about the absence of the Lorax thread over on Climate Audit.

I was enjoying watching McIntyre's responses to the awkward questions that were evolving there and, like others, thought it very strange that the entire thread was wiped. I wrote my first post on their site to ask where it had gone (no hint of my thoughts on the subject and I didn't include the link to my Helium site where I've posted pro-AGW articles).

It seems that the mere mention of Lorax is enough to frighten them off. I tried to post on their new Unthreaded topic with a general clarification of ENSO and it appears I'm banned. Received this message:

http://www.ioerror.us/bb2-support-key?key=a461-f554-dfd9-b1ad

For McIntyre to whine about transparency and getting a fair go in the scientific community is hypocrisy of the highest order.

Eli has sent Ethon over to demand all the raw data, the code and a complete map of the Climate Audit memory hole.

Join our campaign to free the Lorax.

UPDATE: It looks like great chunks of the Lorax Chronicles have been moved to an unthreaded thread but until Ethon gets all the data, the auditors auditor cannot issue a clean sheet.

UPDATE2: Gets even weirder. The story is now that someone identified Lorax and this became a serious issue. Whooo boy.

UPDATE3: For various and sundry reasons having to do with the comments below Eli has edited out otherwise reasonable comments by reasonable people. He asks forgiveness which may or may not be given. Whatever.

11 comments:

Deech56 said...

A number of comments appear in an "unthreaded" thread:

http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=7213

san quintin said...

Hi Eli
I'm a regular reader (if not poster). This seems very alarming to me...but didn't something similar happen to Chris Colose a while back?

EliRabett said...

Let Eli put it this way, if there was a threat, whoever issued the threat needs to be identified immediately and the police called in and Eli will support this in any way he can.

Anonymous said...

Eli, I (yes, this is "Lorax") am here to set the record straight. I want to be very clear, as things seem to be getting out of hand.
First, I personally requested that McIntyre remove the Lorax thread. Second, there was NO death threat, period. Third,The reason that I requested them to remove the Lorax thread is b/c someone was making posts on that particular thread (who knows my identity) and they were dropping major hints that threatened my anonymity. Fourth, I do not wish to be part of this online blog war between you and CA.

While your intentions may be honorable, I am really OK with how things ended at CA and with the Lorax thread, and it is an experience that I had (until today that is!) put behind me. So please do not try and drag me into your battle with CA or try and use the Lorax thread issue as leverage against CA. You know as well as I do that there are plenty of other issues that you can take issue with them on.

I do not agree with how they audit at CA (especially with regards to the Briffa issue), or with the musings of McKitrick in the Canadian media (those were my original reasons for going there, and my posts on those issues are still available at Unthreaded, as far as I know). That said, I am not going to fault them on this issue because I do appreciate the fact that they were professional and respected my request to remove the Lorax thread. Now I trust that you (Eli Rabett) will choose to behave in the same professional and respectful manner.

Eli, there are no points to be scored on the Lorax issue, there is no conspiracy, no cover up. So I urge you to please move forward and let this go.

Thanks,
Lorax

PS: I will not be posting here or at any other blog (whether it be RC, CA or any other blog)again. I've had it with blogs.

Carrick said...

Nice comment, Lorax. We'll miss ya. Seriously, we need other viewpoints besides the burn the other-sides fields type arguments that are going around on both sides.

As to this:

http://www.ioerror.us/bb2-support-key?key=a461-f554-dfd9-b1ad

Follow the link, it says your guy's access is being automatically blocked because he has a virus on his computer..

He should fix that.

Anonymous said...

Eli,

The hints were posted on the Lorax thread, nowhere else-- unless they moved some of the comments from the Lorax thread to Unthreaded. Again, my preference would be to dump the whole Lorax thread.

If you insist on posting the comments from the Lorax thread, then I would not be impressed in the least, but I would hope that you would then at least respect my request to delete all comments/posts starting from the post immediately before when I complained about the email until the thread was shut down. Additionally, please delete all those posts made by the poster who was dropping hints (e.g., making references to other places where Lorax had posted). Really, the only posts of any importance are the ones when I ask McIntyre and McKitrick questions and their replies to those questions-- the rest is just noise.

Eli, wish to reiterate that I do not intend to be a pawn in this battle between you and CA. I don't agree with what CA does, really I do not, but I'll state it again, this is not something that you or I can fault them with, as the request to shut down the thread came from me. Now please, I'm urging you, can we all please move on?! There are more pressing matters to deal with. (e.g., family).

I do not want to have to deal with this matter again, and now consider this matter closed.

"The Lorax just looked at the Onceler and didn't say a word. He grabbed himself by the seat of his pants and flew up into the sky".

Lorax

EliRabett said...

For the record, please note that Eli did NOT post any comments from the Lorax or the Unthreaded thread, but simply linked to the latter. Since the questions were reasonable he thinks there should be no issue with that.

Nor AFAEK is there a blogwar here or there. Having been an attempted victim of mobbing by bender and the gang Eli has some sympathy.

And so it ends

Douglas Watts said...

Another great moment in free scientific discourse.

EliRabett said...

From the moment that Stevereno threw out the first log.

bi -- International Journal of Inactivism said...

Lorax:

Um, I asked whether there are any "major hints" as to Lorax's real identity because I wanted to find out for myself just how "professional and respectful" McI was in handling this whole issue.

You see, if I asked someone to remove any material on his web site that may blow my cover, and that someone decided to simply stash it away in another thread where outsiders can easily access (um) sensitive information about me, I'd certainly call that the exact opposite of professional and respectful.

(Hmm. So how can I express the sentiment that 'this just doesn't smell right' without offending people's sensibilities? That's a tough one...)

-- bi

Anonymous said...

bi, the thread was left on the CA server but only accessible uder the moderator/owner password. No outsider can reach it and it is not accessible through Google cache.
And AFAIK, there was no direct revelation of Lorax identity, just hints.

EW