Controlling Wikipedia's Articles on Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming

The close-knit group of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming (AGW) zealots had a major problem:  How were they going to make the Medieval Warm Period, well-known in the history books, scholarly publications, and encyclopedias disappear so the temperature rise in the late 20th Century would look remarkable and uniquely rapid?  Indeed, it would be best if the temperatures of the last thousand years or so looked pretty stable and then the temperatures shot up.  The hockey stick temperature proxy data of Michael Mann and Keith Briffa was so manipulated as to provide the thousand year flat and steady temperature history they desired.  Weird additions to the late 20th Century land surface temperatures and the movement of weather stations into cities and metropolitan area suburbs provided the dramatic necessary temperature rises of the late 20th Century needed to spread the alarm that man was destroying the Earth with his use of fossil fuels and the resulting emissions of CO2, a supposedly viscous greenhouse gas.

But all of those already published books told everyone about the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age that ended about 1840.  How might they spread the necessary misinformation quickly and get it into the hands of a public largely "educated" in government-run schools and therefore untutored in history and science?  They set up a website called RealClimate.org to put out the party line.  But then they still had to control the very popular source of easily searched information called Wikipedia.  William Connolley, a member of the 9-person RealClimate.org team of bloggers, a United Kingdom scientist, and Green Party activist, took on the job of controlling Wikipedia and its message on catastrophic AGW.

Lawrence Solomon tells the story here.  The important remaining part is given here:

Connolley took control of all things climate in the most used information source the world has ever known – Wikipedia. Starting in February 2003, just when opposition to the claims of the band members were beginning to gel, Connolley set to work on the Wikipedia site. He rewrote Wikipedia’s articles on global warming, on the greenhouse effect, on the instrumental temperature record, on the urban heat island, on climate models, on global cooling. On Feb. 14, he began to erase the Little Ice Age; on Aug.11, the Medieval Warm Period. In October, he turned his attention to the hockey stick graph. He rewrote articles on the politics of global warming and on the scientists who were skeptical of the band. Richard Lindzen and Fred Singer, two of the world’s most distinguished climate scientists, were among his early targets, followed by others that the band especially hated, such as Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, authorities on the Medieval Warm Period.

All told, Connolley created or rewrote 5,428 unique Wikipedia articles. His control over Wikipedia was greater still, however, through the role he obtained at Wikipedia as a website administrator, which allowed him to act with virtual impunity. When Connolley didn’t like the subject of a certain article, he removed it — more than 500 articles of various descriptions disappeared at his hand. When he disapproved of the arguments that others were making, he often had them barred — over 2,000 Wikipedia contributors who ran afoul of him found themselves blocked from making further contributions. Acolytes whose writing conformed to Connolley’s global warming views, in contrast, were rewarded with Wikipedia’s blessings. In these ways, Connolley turned Wikipedia into the missionary wing of the global warming movement.

Insidious, but it was all done so that the smug elitists could feel good about controlling the ignorant trailer park masses and save the Earth.  It was absolutely wonderful how smug they felt.  And it was great that they had the full backing of socialists and environmentalists almost to a man and woman.  This meant they had the full cooperation of the governments and their government-run schools.  The children were really well-indoctrinated, as were all college graduates.