A Beginners Guide to ClimateAudit.org

Key pages at Climate Audit

Climate Audit has grown to an imposing size, and newcomers report being a bit "at sea" as to where to start. Following is a first draft of what the volunteers here consider the best pages to start reading, to get up to speed on what Climate Audit is about.

What is the 'Hockey Stick' Debate About?, by Ross McKitrick, conference presentation, April 2005. CA's (=Climate Audit) discussion of this paper is here: http://www.climateaudit.org/index.php?p=166. Steve Mosher said (post #51, scroll down): "The best place to start, for me at least."
The Wegman and North Reports for Newbies, by Steve McIntyre, who prepared this guide "for the benefit of new readers who haven’t been following this particular story." Sam Urbinto says (post #2): "This was very much needed, and makes the entire issue so much clearer."

A Short History of ClimateAudit.org

Here's Wikipedia's account, for a starting place....

The early posts on CA are a bit of a hodgepodge since Steve had written several posts for his own use but then decided:

in “SPAGHETTI DIAGRAMS” , "Maybe I’ll start blogging some odds and ends that I’m working on. I’m going to post up some more observations on some of the blog criticisms." This post is dated 26 Oct 2004.

Many older posts are presently munged due to a software glitch: Garbage Characters in Old Posts. CA is working on it. Problem still there as of 12/9/07.

How do I Find what I'm Looking For?

On 7 Dec 2007 Steve McIntyre said:

"I know that people want to use every thread to discuss “big picture” matters, but please resist the temptation. It’s not because the big picture isn’t important; it is. It’s just that I also think that there’s a role for discussing specific details in a technical way and that there’s a role for this. So if you want to editorialize on AGW or IPCC, please find a relevant thread or Unthreaded."

It's usually easy to find the most recent "unthreaded", but finding a relevant thread can be easier said than done. So a page has been created here to help you with the effort. Just go to Threadfinder.

What are the Climate Audit site rules?

Please read these before you post to Climate Audit.

Road Map and Site Rules

"I don’t have time to monitor everything so my handling of taunting has been inconsistent: sometimes I’ve let it go because the person is just making a fool of themself, sometimes I’ve got fed up and deleted it. A reader has written with the following suggested ground rules which are hereby adopted:

Refrain from personal abuse and swearing,
Never attribute ulterior motives to another participant
Be patient with people who know less science or maths than you do yourself.

People who consistently break rule 1 and 2 should be issued with a yellow card by the moderator. If they continue they get a red card and are banned from the site.

While there’s a little politics from time to time, by and large, I would prefer that you don’t talk politics; there are plenty of other perfectly good places to do that. I don’t allow discussion of religion and will mark anything even close as spam." — Steve McIntyre

"It places an unreasonable burden on me to weed out angry posts and I re-iterate one more time my request that readers refrain from making angry posts as they are entirely counter-productive." — http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=2708

Comments on earlier postings of the Road Map and Site Rules are here and here.

Got a question? Try the FAQ page

Trolls, deniers and other denizens of the deeps of CA

Calling someone a "troll" is, of course, an insult. It means the person so called isn't trying to debate the subject at hand, but to stir up a fight. I was going to write that of late trolls were practically extinct at CA but there's an interesting example there at present. It may be that Steve McIntyre will erase the trollish posts soon but if so I'll change this page. Look at Two Ross McKitrick Op Eds , in particular the posts by bigcitylib:

56 - "Funny that betwen the 2004 and 2006 papers McKitrick is forced to recalculate all his figures (because
of the degree/cosine screwup) and yet his conclusions are exactly the same. Tells you something."

84 - "The cosine issue was corrected but, astoundingly, the results came out the same. Sounds like
they’re flogging the same peice of crap that was discredited in 2004, just a bigger and better version."

86 - "The cosine issue was corrected but, astoundingly, despite the fact this effected every
calculation in the paper, the results came out exactly the same (half increase attributed to
economic factors).

"Sounds like they’re flogging the same peice of crap that was discredited in 2004,
just a bigger and crappier version."

You can see that a couple of typical signs of a troll are present here.

A Repetitive posts saying nothing new.

B Ad Hominem attacks, or in this case "Poisoning the Well" by claiming that a previous publication was "discredited"

A third sign

C Failure to provide either direct quotes or links to where quotes or references can be found.

is implicit in comparing the first post with the later two where no reference of any sort is to be found as to why the publication was "discredited" when BCL now admits the cosine / radian error had been corrected.

Compare this to the later post by Curt:
"#86 bcl:

"Here’s the link to McKitrick’s erratum page showing the exact effects of the error and the correction:

"http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/Erratum_McKitrick.pdf

"Frankly, this is how science is done properly by real (i.e. fallible) people. Far better than I’ve ever seen from the Hockey Team, which often refuses to even acknowledge much more serious mistakes."

Note that Curt provides a link to the actual correction and avoids throwing an insult directly at BCL. He might have skipped the slap at the Team too, though, as without a reference this could lead to a fight; which is usually just what a troll is after.