The Battle for the Internet has begun

Stumbled across this fabulous thumbnail sketch on the damage to mainstream media from Climategate. The author is FrankFisher, visit the post:

The Battle of Climategate is over. The Battle for the Internet has begun.

Posted by FrankFisher
December 4, 2009

Is this the beginning of the end of big media? I kicked my heels on the way to work today, felt a zing of joy in the crisp winter air. Blogistan kicked some arse this week – MSM; yooor boys took one hell of a beating!

Climategate of course. The story that big media and government tried to kill with censorship, obscurity, inaction and faint, misleading one para stores. But the blogosphere simply would not let it die. More than that, the superb range of analysis poured into the subject by bloggers and commenters developed and expanded the story in such a way that finally, even the miserable wretches at the BBC couldn't ignore it. Statisticians, developers, climatologists, scientists of every hue – every little piece of Climategate was picked over, deconstructed, reconstructed, scenarioed. No media organisation on earth could have thrown the resources at this story that the distributed blogosphere did – this was true disintermediation, true people journalism, true – dare I say it – people science. Faced with daily revelations and utterly incontrovertible assertions that hit the CRU hard (the fine toothed analysis of harry_read_me.txt being the nail in the coffin) big media finally had to act. Last night, the waters broke.

Newsnight's Susan Watts finally ran with the killer blow – the model was scrap. That crucifies CRU. CRU, sorry, but you're all out of a job. Oh maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but you're the sacrificial lambs in this; didn't you know? To save AGW, one leg of the beast – the exposed fraudulent leg – has to be hacked off. I can see the narrative: "Yes, there was over-egging, good scientists swayed by their convictions. We regret this, but the other models, the NASA models especially, are sound". So you lot are dead meat. Prof Jones will be lucky to get a post at the University of Wallamaloo. What you guys should be doing now is whistleblowing enough to stop traffic. Hell, you're going down – why not take the others with you?

But off the *content*, and onto the *medium*; wow. Great job fellers. Bishop Hill, Steve Mac, James Delingpole, the countless others, bloody well done.

But watch your backs.

We should all watch our backs. As I wrote before (here and elsewhere), when governments that depends for their very existence on their control of the narrative lose control of the narrative, they're not going to be happy. This may have been the first global information battle, it is not the end of the information war. Give a little whoop. Kick your heels in the air. Then get back to work. This is not over.

BOORAH!

Comments

[fletch]

And check this out - Houston gets earliest snowfall on record - so much for the warming ey?

---snip---

HOUSTON — Houston had its earliest snowfall on record Friday, with several inches accumulating in counties southwest of the city.

The previous record for early snow in Houston was Dec. 10 in 1944 and again last year, said Charles Roeseler, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.

Snow is rare in the nation's fourth largest city. In the past 15 years, it has snowed four times, including Friday.

MORE

[Serf]

Jim Salinger told a large crowd of people at parliament yesterday that the oceans were turning acidic because of our (mans) C02 emissions. He also said the planet was rapidly warming and that this was due to our emissions as well. It was one sad and scary example of what a large scale PPP marketing campaign can do to weak minded people. their were even pre made banners with the words "yes we can" written on them, hang on I'm just going to have a spew.

[Serf]

It is clear to me based on the reactions of people yesterday and the out right lies being told(by the so called experts) and parroted by the followers that the MMGW movement is well on the way to becoming a religious cult intolerant to any information contrary to their belief, even if it is painfully obvious to people who have not been indoctrinated with this simplistic alarmist rubbish.

[Serf]

I meant NGO, not PPP(Public private partnership).

[Thomas Everth]

In the past people with fringe ideas, permanent grudges or paranoid visions of grand conspiracies stood on a box in front some stature in the park yelling at the passer byes and being ignored most of the time.

Today the 'howling at the mooners' call themselves bloggers and trumpet their stuff to the millions.
The internet makes it very easy for people to immerse themselves with just the right subjective opinionated crowd matching their own place in the world and feel vindicated and often vindictive to the rest of society as amply clear when taking in the tone of voice and the guttersnipe speak many in here for example express themselves.

This leads to a fracturing of society into many splinter groups deeply convinced of their own ideas. And because they cemented their views in writing in front of the entire world to see they become totally unable to see and accept any evidence beyond their system of mutually reinforced beliefs.

Communication between these groups and with members of these groups is like trying to explain carbon dating to an assembly of pentecostal preachers. A total waste of time.

So we end up having the 'Moon Landing Deniers', the 'Truth about 9/11 conspiracy buffs', the 'young Earth fanatics', the 'global warming deniers', the 'Communist conspiracy Paranoids', the 'Bilderberg conspiracy Paranoids' (maybe the Bilderbergs are actually the Communists - a new group could form!), and I could go on and on.... Health is a great subject too of all sorts of fringe ideas being paddled in a very dangerous manner.

Bloogers - unrestricted by sanity checks and journalistic ethics - fabricate news at will and represent it as truth. They often confabulate about complicated matters best dealt with by experts who have an education to match the subject matter. In fact especially complicated matters of science are all to often in the cross hairs of opinionated bloggers as if the principals science and its process was in their way to grasp a bit of control of the way things work without doing the hard yacca of getting a degree in the subject they are meddling with.

While I cherish the power of the internet I am also pointing out the dangers. In a democratic society like ours where the majority of people must rely on what they hear rather than what they know from their own study, education and experience, demagogues and fringe polemicists have a chance at causing massive damage to the course of humanity.

Ian's cry of Boorah is symptomatic of this very ugly aspect of where things are at.

[AcidComments]

"While I cherish the power of the internet I am also pointing out the dangers. In a democratic society like ours where the majority of people must rely on what they hear rather than what they know from their own study, education and experience, demagogues and fringe polemicists have a chance at causing massive damage to the course of humanity."

Ian's cry of Boorah is symptomatic of this very ugly aspect of where things are at.

That would also apply to some of the company you keep aswell, then.

plus those naive halfwits out in the streets yesterday with Lucy Lawless and Co!

[Zolah]

the majority of people must rely on what they hear rather than what they know from their own study...

Wow. So that's OK by you? You trust politicians? Scientists with a political agenda?

In a democratic society like ours people are entitled to their views no matter how 'fringe' and 'damaging'. And its not as 'Fringe' as you think either.

Whats the solution? Perhaps we should just ban all blogs from people who don't think like you? Start burning books?

[fletch]

Thomas, that's right, lump in 'climate deniers' with other conspiracists so they'll look crazy by association. The fact is that many learned scientists also doubt the unproven theory that is man-made global warming. 31,000 of them right here, including over 9000 with PhD's.

Where the internet is successful is in letting their voices be heard, even when the warming believers try to block their voices in so-called scientific journals.

I may not know science, but it doesn't take a knowledge of science for the average Joe to know when he's being scammed, once he knows the actual facts.

The internet is really the only place to go to get the facts. I question EVERYTHING now, even things I read in the newspaper (ESPECIALLY things I read in the newspaper). If I see 'results' from a study, I want to know how it was done, how data was collected, if the people doing the study are already biased.

DON'T BELIEVE EVERYTHING YOU READ is my motto.

LONG LIVE THE INTERNET!

[fletch]

ps, the mainstream media have a LOT to answer for in their selective reporting - it's an absolute disgrace! The Climategate emails should have been front page news and on TV everywhere! It really is the story of the biggest scandal of the decade. The MSM do soft reporting on stories they don't like - the facts, but only some of the facts.

It would be like reporting that a shooting was reported at Ford's theatre on 14th April 1865 which was showing the play 'Our American Cousin' and in which the assailant escaped. All facts it is true, but when you leave out the most important fact that it was Abraham Lincoln that was shot then your reporting is kind of worthless.

I had to tell a friend of mine today about Climategate as he hadn't heard anything about it - as I said, an absolute disgrace by the media in their lack of reporting. I will be telling anyone I meet who doesn't know.

That is where the internet shines.

[AcidComments]

"Wow. So that's OK by you? You trust politicians? Scientists with a political agenda?

In a democratic society like ours people are entitled to their views no matter how 'fringe' and 'damaging'. And its not as 'Fringe' as you think either. '

Yep,

Or we could go back to the likes of those bad old day regimes. Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, etc

Believe and do everything they say or do. If you didn't agree. End up being imprisoned or executed. That's what some of the Climate alarmist elite would like to happen again. Going by some of their comments if you don't agree with their fraud and excessive exaggerations.

Speaking of which. I spent apart of yesterday evening 'undoing' the brainwashing exaggerations which was done to one of my friends 9 year boys from blatant climate change misinformation he had rammed down his throat at his school.

[robk]

Thomas

Yes, there have been many intemperate remarks here, indicating a hardening of attitudes and a growing inflexibility.

However, your above name calling and apparent inability to admit that many of the e-mails actually reveal a serious breach of trust by some key players in the debate demonstrate you are just the same.

"They [bloogers (sic)] often confabulate about complicated matters best dealt with by experts who have an education to match the subject matter."

Do you mean the experts who have now been exposed as trying to pull the wool over our eyes??

[FrankFisher]

Firstly, hi all. Second, the BOORAH was mine Thomas, not Ian's.

To respond to Thomas's post; those are dangerous attitudes you have there. There is a kernal of truth in the assertion that the 'net gives voice to all manner of nutters, and that peer approval can suggest to them that the insane is sane. True enough. It's also the case that - as with democracy - the largest mob can dominate, regardless of whether their cause or claims are valid. I remember speaking to Arthur C Clarke about this (well wouldn't you namedrop that if you could?) and found myself arguing against the "power of the internet", putting the point that in a yelling crowd, you cannot even hear an individual, let alone know if he is right.

BUT, climategate has worked differently. To begin with, there certainly *was* a media cover-up. Two weeks of near silence, globally. I cannot recall any other subject treated in the same way, and then, as if a switch had been thrown, suddenly it's front page news. Why? The *story* hadn't changed, the *facts* hadn't changed, why did all these news networks decide, as one, that it was suddently news? Tell me there's nothign going on there.

But better than this was the analysis provided - distributed analysis - by hundreds of highly expert individuals, all contributing for free, with no organisation, no management, each picking their specialist area and taking climategate documents apart. No media organisation int he world could put that volume of resources to work. Precious few national governments could. And that has paid off - harry_read_me and the like *prove* that the models are scrap, that the data is manipulated. Accept that, and one third of AGW comes tumbling down. The only other leg that has credibility is NASA, and that is now the focus...

Thanks for picking up on my post btw, briefingroom.

[WebWrat]

Thomas .... you didn't need to write all that hogwash. You could have just said, "I have had a frontal lobotomy."

This tickled me, "... journalistic ethics ..."

If you believe journalists have any ethics and tell the truth these days, you are sorely in need of some urgent therapy.

I haven't read any of those rags you call newspapers for ten years and I don't watch TV news ... I believe they are just vehicles for socialist propaganda.

I think all journalists (except Ian of course) should be tarred and feathered and exported to Cuba.

The truth is on the net.

[dlr]

What do you think ACTA the "Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement" is all about. It has little to do with Piracy, and everything to do with censorship and control of the internet and online media.

You've surely heard of the great firewall of china http://www.greatfirewallofchina.org/faq/7/Who_is_censoring? , and the Australian internet filter http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_Australia

Our Government is not far behind: http://thomasbeagle.net/2009/07/09/nz-internet-filtering-faq/

and from our Department of Internal affairs:

http://www.dia.govt.nz/diawebsite.nsf/wpg_URL/Services-Censorship-Compliance-Digital-Child-Exploitation-Filtering-System?OpenDocument

[Thomas Everth]

Just opened my copy of Scientific American to read this:

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=war-is-peace

which perfectly matches my own sentiment in all regards and those I expressed here above.

And I agree with dlr and others here that internet freedom should be cherished and there should be free flow of information. I want to make it perfectly clear that I am against censorship!

What I am pointing out is the challenge posed to democracy from the splintering of society into all sorts of fractions which hold deeply held and seemingly immutable beliefs engraved due to published written opinions. People defend all sorts of stands once they have committed themselves to them - hastily perhaps - in a blog as very few people have the guts to say: I was wrong!

Bloggers carry a greater responsibility for the well being of our democracy than they realize. The vast majority of our voting population is scientifically illiterate and will have to rely on the judgment of experts. Many bloggers would like to put themselves into the shoes of these experts without the credentials to do so and without any oversight by anybody who might mitigate what they say.

This is a real challenge to democracy! In the end truth is what must prevail but much of the blogosphere is about self righteousness, agendas and beliefs - not a good neighborhood to search for truth in!

[BammBamm]

I find it a little ironic that when Al Gore signed he national supercomputing agreement he 'invented' the internet.
The same internet that has exposed him for what he is.

[Leon]

Any so called science coming out of a political organization with a political agenda = BS

[CM]

Bammbamm, it's no surprise to learn that you swallowed that 'invented the internet' thing hook, line and sinker.

[BammBamm]

No - I didn't - I was being very Cynical ..
However Al Gore has publically claimed he invented the Internet.

He also claims that MMGW is real also!

Oh no!

[robk]

Thomas

"In the end truth is what must prevail but much of the blogosphere is about self righteousness, agendas and beliefs - not a good neighborhood to search for truth in!"

Unfortunately there is no guarantee truth will prevail when our experts are trying to decieve us.

Have you yourself got the courage to admit when you are wrong?

Some of the experts you seem to be relying on have been caught telling lies. I prefer the opinions of other experts.