XPost: can.politics, alt.global-warming   
   From: little"@m.an   
      
   On 12/14/2017 1:16 PM, gordo wrote:   
   > Imagine a World Without Science   
      
   Imagine a world without peer-herded grant lemmings!   
      
      
   https://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/01/09/peer-to-peer-review-how-%   
   2%80%98climategate%E2%80%99-marks-the-maturing-of-a-new-science-   
   ovement-part-i/   
      
   Peer-to-Peer Review: How ‘Climategate’ Marks the Maturing of a New   
   Science Movement, Part I   
   charles the moderator / January 9, 2010   
   Posted by Patrick Courrielche Jan 8th 2010 at bigjournalism.com   
      
   How a tiny blog and a collective of climate enthusiasts broke the   
   biggest story in the history of global warming science – but not without   
   a gatekeeper of the climate establishment trying to halt its proliferation.   
      
   It was triggered at the most unlikely of places. Not in the pages of a   
   prominent science publication, or by an experienced muckraker. It was   
   triggered at a tiny blog – a bit down the list of popular skeptic sites.   
   With a small group of followers, a blog of this size could only start a   
   media firestorm if seeded with just the right morsel of information, and   
   found by just the right people. Yet it was at this location that the   
   most lethal weapon against the global warming establishment was unleashed.   
      
      
      
   The blog was the Air Vent. The information was a link to a Russian   
   server that contained 61 MB of files now known as Climategate. Within   
   two weeks of the file’s introduction, the story appeared on 28,400,000   
   web pages.   
      
   Not entirely the “death of global warming” as many have claimed – what   
   happened with Climategate is much more nuanced and exponentially more   
   interesting than the headlines convey. What was triggered at this blog   
   was the death of unconditional trust in the scientific peer review   
   process, and the maturing of a new movement – that of peer-to-peer review.   
      
   This development may horrify the old guard, but peer-to-peer review was   
   just what forced the release of the Climategate files – and as a   
   consequence revealed the uncertainty of the science and the co-opting of   
   the process that legitimizes global warming research. It was a   
   collective of climate blogs, centered on the work of Stephen McIntyre   
   and Ross McKitrick, which applied the pressure. With moderators and blog   
   commenters that include engineers, PhDs, statistics whizzes, mathematic   
   experts, software developers, and weather specialists – the label   
   flat-earthers, as many of their opponents have attempted to brand them,   
   seems as fitting as tagging Lady Gaga with the label demure.   
      
   This peer-to-peer review network is the group that applied the pressure   
   and then helped authenticate and proliferate the story.   
      
   Now, as expected, the virtual organism that is the global warming   
   establishment resisted release of the weapon. At the first appearance of   
   the Climategate files, which contained a plethora of emails and   
   documents from the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit,   
   the virtual organism moved to halt their promulgation. Early on, a few   
   of the emails were posted on Lucia Liljegren’s skeptic blog The   
   Blackboard. Shortly after the post, Lucia, a PhD and specialist in fluid   
   mechanics, received an email from prominent climatologist Gavin Schmidt   
   from the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS). It said in   
   part, “[A] word to the wise… I don’t think that bloggers are shielded   
   under any press shield laws and so, if I were you, I would not post any   
   content, nor allow anyone else to do so.”   
      
   In response to my inquiry about his email, Schmidt posited, “I was   
   initially concerned that she might be in legal jeopardy in posting the   
   stolen emails.” Gavin Schmidt was included in over 120 of the leaked   
   correspondence.   
      
   Gavin_SchmidtGavin Schmidt   
      
   When asked if she thought the Climategate documents were a big deal at   
   first sight, Lucia responded, “Yes. In fact, I was even more sure after   
   Gavin [Schmidt] sent me his note.”   
      
   Remember these names: Steven Mosher, Steve McIntyre, Ross McKitrick,   
   Jeff “Id” Condon, Lucia Liljegren, and Anthony Watts. These, and their   
   community of blog commenters, are the global warming contrarians that   
   formed the peer-to-peer review network and helped bring chaos to   
   Copenhagen – critically wounding the prospects of cap-and-trade   
   legislation in the process. One may have even played the instrumental   
   role of first placing the leaked files on the Internet.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)