New York Times environment reporter and believer of potentially catastrophic AGW Andrew Revkin is stunned at Twitter by the behavior of the White House.
Apparently blogger Steve Goddard had left a very factual tweet at the WhiteHouse Twitter page:
Source: stevengoddard.wordpress./
Obviously Goddard’s inconvenient fact was too much for the White House – so they deleted Goddard’s tweet. Andy Revkin, much to his credit, found that type of raw censorship “disturbing”. Here’s what Revkin just tweeted:
It looks like under Obama, society is not open at all. Some may even argue that it has become Stasi-like, especially when one considers the massive scale of the government’s Internet snooping and intrusion. The vibrations that Andy is picking up are not imaginary. He’s right in calling this disturbing.
Sorrowfully, America appears to have departed from what we know is an open society based on democratic principles. All this makes Richard Nixon look like an angel. I’m stunned.
Steve Goddard was also chilled by the WH totalitarian behavior: http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2013/06/24/censored-by-the-white-house/.
I have always considered Revkin to have an honest disagreement on this matter with alot of us. I can see why he is disappointed by this, but his crucial assumption is wrong on many of the people on his side. They are not interested in the right answer, but only their answer. My pt is that I think Andrew wants the right answer, he just thinks its different from our side, but is in search of it. That he assumes that others on his side are, I think is a mistake on his part.
As for me, I am not disappointed by this, because this is exactly what you would expect out of these people
There could be some Constitutional issues here. There is this thing called the First Amendment. Goddard was denied that today by the White House when they deleted his voice at Twitter. It’s clear, there is a price that has to be paid if you want your comments to appear at the taxpayer-paid WH Twitter site. There was nothing wrong at all with Goddard’s comment except that it disagreed with policy. That is not a reason for the US government to take his comment down.
The 1st amendment gives us citizens the right to speak freely without government interference. This means that Steve Goddard will not be drawn and quartered for having made his statement. He may, as can you, make the statement in whatever way suits you. The 1st amendment does not give anyone the right to force the President or the blog editor to print or publish or speak from the White House steps. This amendment is a protection from the government.
IMO, Revkin is basically rational; he sees (and calls out) some of the more outlandish claims being made about CO2 and CAGW: that weather is becoming worse, that tropical storms are increasing in intensity, etc. He also makes a point of peppering his postings with rational skeptics who have excellent credentials (though he makes sure he’s not perceived as being their “friends”).
However, Revkin appears to have accepted without question that increasing CO2 is “wicked” or that it is inexorably tied with irreversible, dangerous warming. “And soon! Er, at some point, um, in the not too distant future. Really. We’re sure.”
Deep down, I believe Revkin would actually like to challenge this key principle, but he has made a career out of riding the wave of fear in CAGW, so being a catalyst to exposing a scam would be akin to surreptitiously shutting off the power to the pool wave, resulting in some vandalism to his board by other surfers.
Were Revkin to question this fundamental canon of CAGW, his blog would be pulled. This IS the NYT, people.
Kurt in Switzerland
Looks like the Guardian and the NYT are now, that Obama’s re-election has happened, for the time being under less restraint about what they write about the Obama administration than usual. I’m expecting the same to happen at Der Spiegel. (NYT-Guardian-Spiegel is the big leftist media axis of the West)
They’ll bash Obama from now on; giving his successor a better headstart.
“They’ll bash Obama from now on…?”
THAT would be something!
It is necessary now. The current Teleprompter-Reader-In-Chief cannot be re-elected. It is time to destroy his myth.
Don’t think for a moment that NYT and Guardian are not doing exactly what their controllers want them to do.
“Teleprompter-Reader-In-Chief ” The acronym we use is “TOTUS.”
No; as far as I know, the TOTUS twins ARE the teleprompters.
On the whole this is good for Science. They are shooting themselves in the foot. This is how guys like Revkin will eventually realize that he has been had by the TEAM and CO as well! LOL
As long as the administration makes policy based on fact it is defensible.
This proposition of fuel policy will be based on what the White House says is ‘future projections’ – what ever that means – and is indefensible.
Its an exercise in preparing the public for tomorrows big speech with the hokum of ‘saving future generation’ and ‘reducing extreme weather’, when in reality it is about political power, control, and increasing taxes.
This big US government will become the gatekeeper of each American’s fuel requirements.
Pierre, can you shed some light on how it happened that the title of the indicated article got changed to what it reads?
It should read as follows:
New York Times Andrew Revkin Shocked: “…Disturbing To See White House *Delete* Factual Tweet On Hurricane History” (My emphasis, –Walter)
Somehow the word “delete” vanished from the correct title of the article. I assume that was due to an unfortunate accident.
Just to make clear what has happened, I am not talking about what this discussion thread states here at your blog but how the title reads when your blog entry is shared with others.
That’s probably an automatic wordpress URL condenser algorithm. If people read only an URL and think that’s the article well too bad.
You can use the “a” tag of HTML when you want to give the link in other blog comment and don’t want the URL name to be the first thing people see.
This way you can make your link appear like this (This is a link to an explanation of the HTML link tag syntax)
Dirk, the problem is not that people might read only the URL. The problem is that FB translates the URL into an article header that does not contain the word “delete”.
It was my mistake. I hit the “publish” button without first proofreading the title. Then I noticed I had spelled Revkin’s name incorrectly and that I had left out the all important “delete” word. I can’t go back and change the URL.
Ok. I’m not a facebook user. Do they do that? What a very pointless algorithm.