Infra Digging Michael Tobis

So this is a bit infra dig for Eli, but it has to be said. Over at Collide-a-Scape, Tom Fuller has been venting on Michael Tobis, to the point where the usual suspects, including Keith Kloor have told him to shut up. Marlowe Johnson summed it up

“I’ll take a permanent leave of absence, as a forum where Tobis gets off scot-free for his behaviour and I end up in moderation for calling him on it just doesn’t suit me.”

Now I’m not one to normally advocate censorship but when it’s suggested as a form of self help…

please, please oblige him Keith. Despite what he may think he has to offer, his signal/noise is just way to counterproductive to normal adult conversation. There are lots of other places on the web where he can indulge in his content-free trolling….

and Eli posted a follow-up which the Kloor monster threw (maybe unthrew now since it remains in moderation

What Marlowe said. MT is about the nicest person you could meet. His hallmark over the fifteen or so years that I have been aware of him is a seriousness and his willingness to listen, always, to consider another point of view (note, consider not adopt). As a result Michael can, and often is jerked around by the sophists, but no one is perfect. Tom Fuller and Co. have been conducting a jihad against Michael. Why, because MT exposes the Fuller and his friends emptiness. Recently, as Tobis has become more prominent, the drive bys have increased.

Mother Kloor did not improve

[Eli-You're the last person who should be lecturing Tom Fuller, given your history of thread-jacking insults and name-calling of the same order (do you have a "jihad" against RPJ?)--which is why you are on eternal moderation.//KK]

Ignoring the question of whether Ethon still flies or has retired to the old bird home (the answer to Keith's question, of course, is Willie Sutton, when Roger stops being petty, silly and self promoting, why then Eli will stop commenting on his pettiness, silliness and self promotion. Eli suspects he will be around for a long time, but that is another post) allow Eli to throw another issue upon the table.

Michael really is a nice person, who, if anything suffers from being too nice. As Eli wrote back to Keith

Hi Keith,
Since we are communicating via moderation, moderation in all things including moderation being a virtue, Eli would ask Keith to consider why Michael has been the subject of vicious and sneaky attacks within the last year by Roger Pielke Jr., Richard Tol, Marc Morano, and yes, last but least, Tom Fuller. They, and apparently you, sense a threat to the narrative under construction.

Be that as it may, Eli was defending Michael, and explaining why Tom Fuller attacks him regularly. The Bunny understands that dyslexia can be a passing phase and asks you to go back and read his post on this

which was amended to

Be that as it may, Eli was defending Michael, and explaining why Tom Fuller attacks him regularly. The Bunny understands that dyslexia can be a passing phase and asks you to go back and read his post on this

We will see what gets published. Yes, the inner snark emerged, but there was provocation. However, does anyone remember how Roger Jr. blew up a passing remark from MT about responsibility into a falsely claimed death threat,

Implying an equivalence between Gore, who is constantly treading a fine line between effective politics and truthful description of risks, and George Will, who is wrong from beginning to end in conception, detail and emphasis is unacceptable because it perpetuates this dangerous skew.

As for the scope of the ethical risk, let us consider the possibility that the behavior of the Times and the Post this year increases the chance of an extreme event with a premature mortality of a billion people by a mere part per million, a per cent of a per cent of a per cent. The expected mortality from this is a thousand people. Is that morally equivalent to actually killing a thousand people? It's not all that obvious to me that it isn't.

In practice one can and must excuse oneself behind all the myriad realistic uncertainties. We don't know, after all, which butterfly will cause the hurricane. Most likely if we do find our way to hell, we will have trodden on many good intentions along the way.

But the point is that we really are playing with fire here and we shouldn't be putting our own careers or our own self-worth (like a clever and easy column for the Times) ahead of the enormous scope of the problem, because mortalities on the order of a billion are by no means excluded.

which he passed on gleefully to Marc Morano, who sent it to Glenn Beck, etc. How about Richard Tol's laughable attempt to "eliteout" MT as an authoritarian, with an assist from Ethon's friend, and many other examples

So, as usual, with many detours, Bunny Labs comes to the question:

What is it about Michael Tobis that scares the denialist propaganda mills?