It's bad enough I get spam from well-intentioned people who can't take the time to take a moment and check out snopes.com to verify the story that Michelle Obama is beating puppies in a free email giveaway by Microsoft for Virginia Slattery, a 5-year-old who is dying of leukemia and wants to amass as many postcards as she can before her death (Michelle eats them, actually, as puppies and other small, furry creatures are a food staples of Klingons).
I have heard some judges bemoan the fact that they actually get citations to Wikipedia in legal briefs! Now, folks, understand something - Wikipedia is not verified and while it is handy for some things (like settling arguments when playing "Who's Alive and Who's Dead"), evidently global warming is not one of them.
[U.K. scientist and Green Party activist William] Connolley took control of all things climate in the most used information source the world has ever known – Wikipedia. Starting in February 2003, just when opposition to the claims of the band members were beginning to gel, Connolley set to work on the Wikipedia site. He rewrote Wikipedia’s articles on global warming, on the greenhouse effect, on the instrumental temperature record, on the urban heat island, on climate models, on global cooling. On Feb. 14, he began to erase the Little Ice Age; on Aug.11, the Medieval Warm Period. In October, he turned his attention to the hockey stick graph. He rewrote articles on the politics of global warming and on the scientists who were skeptical of the band. Richard Lindzen and Fred Singer, two of the world’s most distinguished climate scientists, were among his early targets, followed by others that the band especially hated, such as Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, authorities on the Medieval Warm Period.
All told, Connolley created or rewrote 5,428 unique Wikipedia articles. His control over Wikipedia was greater still, however, through the role he obtained at Wikipedia as a website administrator, which allowed him to act with virtual impunity. When Connolley didn’t like the subject of a certain article, he removed it — more than 500 articles of various descriptions disappeared at his hand. When he disapproved of the arguments that others were making, he often had them barred — over 2,000 Wikipedia contributors who ran afoul of him found themselves blocked from making further contributions. Acolytes whose writing conformed to Connolley’s global warming views, in contrast, were rewarded with Wikipedia’s blessings. In these ways, Connolley turned Wikipedia into the missionary wing of the global warming movement.
Makes those Scientologists look like rank amateurs.
3 comments:
When I need accurate information, I refer to National Lampoon.
On one of the lefty newspaper sites I go to occassionally, righty commenters are browbeaten over links from National Post, FOX, WND, Newsmax, and most of the other non-MSM sites. NPR, CNN, and wikipedia all get a pass.
I know, I need to quit slumming.
If you can believe anything you read on the internet, I wouldn't put too much stock in Snopes either. From what I've read it is run by a middle-aged couple with a left perspective and no particular bona fides. But then again, I read that on the internet.
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