The Opinionator

Opinion - May 3rd, 2008 - National Post (Canada)

"Global warming is indusputably caused by man" - William Connelley

Wikipedia is full of rules that editors are supposed to follow, as well as a code of civility. Those rules and codes don't apply to [William] Connolley, or to those he favours.

"Peiser's crap shouldn't be in here," Connolley wrote several weeks ago, in berating a Wikipedian colleague during an "edit war," as they're called. In such a war, rival sides change the content of a Wikipedia page from one competing version to another, often with bewildering speed. (Two people, landing on the same page seconds apart, might obtain entirely different information.)

In the Peiser case, a Wikipedian stopped a prolonged war by freezing a continually changing page, to prevent more alterations until the dispute was settled. As occurs on such occasions, readers are alerted that Wikipedians are warring over the page, and that Wikipedia was not endorsing the version of the page that had been frozen. To Connolley's chagrin, however, the version that was frozen cast doubt on claims of a consensus on climate change. Although this was done within Wikipedia rules, Connolley intervened to revert the page and ensure Wikipedia readers saw only what he wanted them to see.

Peiser is Benny Peiser, a distinguished U.K. scientist who had convincingly refuted a study by Naomi Oreskes that claimed to have found no scientific papers at odds with the conventional wisdom on climate change. The Oreskes study -- cited by Al Gore in his film, An Inconvenient Truth -- is an article of faith to many global warming doomsayers and guarded from criticism by Connolley et al.

Peiser and other critics of Oreskes's study, meanwhile, get demeaned.

Global warming fanatics like Connolley ignore that most responsible scientists DO NOT accept the global warming hysteria. Because the MSM are addicted to politically biased Wikipedia, Connolley has a great deal to do with the impression by most people that there is a consensus.

The truth is that global warming is highly suspect, and the case for man being the cause has no credibility at all.