Hell Hath no Fury like a Denier Scorned or The Only People who Accept Science are Paid Trolls? WUWT?

Tell me your real name, occupation and source of income or I'll ban you!

Anthony Watts and his band of deniers are predictable.  Hell hath no fury like a denier faced with facts. In a recent thread you can see what happens.  Here is a rundown.

A commenter by the name of Jai has been reminding WUWT readers about numbers and science and the dearth of deniers in the world.  Anthony Watts is not about to let any nonsense such as facts get in the way of a good yarn.

Jai gets an avalanche of attention for saying scientists accept AGW

Jai writes a total of nine comments so far by my count.  The first comment of his got all the deniers very worked up.  This is what he wrote in response to an article that three members of the American Meteorological Society resigned because, unlike the society, they reject climate science.

June 21, 2013 at 1:32 pm Only 14,000 more members to go.
http://ametsoc.org/MEMB/

Apparently they had a problem with this:
http://www.ametsoc.org/policy/2012climatechange.html

There is unequivocal evidence that Earth’s lower atmosphere, ocean, and land surface are warming; sea level is rising; and snow cover, mountain glaciers, and Arctic sea ice are shrinking. The dominant cause of the warming since the 1950s is human activities.
———–
This happens to be the position of :

And then he listed all the scientific societies and professional associations that have endorsed the fact the humans are warming the earth.  So his post was quite long.  It's a long list.  (His comment wasn't nearly as long as William Astley's, who typically adds a zillion words every time he writes a comment.)

Well, you should have seen the reaction.  In total, jai's name is mentioned 97 times in that thread.  Now isn't that a familiar number!  Only nine of those times are comments from jai himself.

On "hassling" and conspiracy ideation

The onslaught gathered pace fairly quickly after John Tillman wrote about Anthony getting funds from the Heartland Institute.  This is what Anthony replied:

REPLY: Actually Heartland didn’t provide that money, they connected me with a donor who ran a technology company.  The work that was funded to make the NOAA data for the CRN easily viewable (since they NEVER mention this new state of the art network in the monthly state of the climate reports) is still in progress here http://climatereferencenetwork.org- Anthony

Jai then does some conspiracy theorising of his own and asks Anthony not for a name, not for a particular business, just for the industry the donor works in:

June 21, 2013 at 5:19 pm Hey Anthony!  Can you provide the industry that your “technology company” donor works in?

Anthony sez "no, people like you will just hassle those people".  Hassle an entire industry?  I suppose...

Anyway Anthony gives us all a lesson in "hassling". Plus conspiracy theorising. (my bold italics):

REPLY: Why not ask Peter Gleick, I’m sure he has plenty of stolen information yet to be revealed. I’m not going to share since the goal of him and people like you is to hassle those people....

You really need to stop with the regurgitated hate-talking points. All you are succeeding in doing is showing people how little you really know and how biased you are. – Anthony 

...Can we get a FAQs on “Jai Mitchell”? For example, is that your real name or a fake, what NGO’s do you belong to, and who pays you to spread this stuff here? - Anthony

Apparently writing a list of scientific organisations and asking for the industry Anthony's benefactor works in is "hate-talking points".  Crikey!  I'd hate to peer inside Anthony's head any more than I have already.  It's a weird paranoid place.

Anthony deletes the next comment from jai, somewhat mysteriously writing this.

[snip - questions upstream require your attention before going further, since you have been skipping them, I'm going to help you remember - Anthony]

Is this the first time a comment has been deleted because a reader hasn't answered a question they've been asked?  Like I said, jai's name is mentioned 97 times, 86 of those mentions are by others.  So that could be anything up to 86 questions that jai didn't answer.  Whew! that's a lot.

Anyway, Anthony lets jai's next one through, though not without another rejoinder and more conspiracy ideation:

jai says:
June 21, 2013 at 5:44 pm  Anthony, I didn’t ask for specifics, I don’t care who gives you money. It was only in the interest of the topic of discussion. If your donor in some way associated with the fossil fuel industry? That shouldn’t be too revealing to your sponsor.
Have a good weekend!

REPLY: “Technology company” should be plainly evident as NOT being a fossil fuel company.
So no FAQs from you? Like if you are a fake name or employed by an NGO to be here? – Anthony

And jai replies politely, thanking Anthony (apparently easily dropping his conspiracy theory when faced with facts) - while Anthony tries once more to get all jai's personal information:

jai says:
June 21, 2013 at 5:48 pm  No Technology company does not in any way shape or form indicates they are involved with the fossil fuel industry, since you said they are not then that’s enough, thanks for answering my question!

REPLY: so why are you afraid to answer questions put to you? – Anthony

Finally Anthony sums up the questions he's been wanting jai to answer:

June 21, 2013 at 5:53 pm @Jai Mitchell, to be clear the questions are:
1. Is Jai Mitchell a fake name?
2. Are you a member of an NGO that has issues with WUWT?
3. Are you paid by an organization to be commenting on blogs? The reason I ask is that you don’t seem to be employed during the day, and you have a constant stream here.

Not having managed to get the FBI file on jai, Anthony Watts decides jai goes onto the first and probably last rung of the "ban" list:

Anthony Watts says:  June 21, 2013 at 6:01 pm @Caleb Since he is a disruption, and won’t engage, Jai is now on moderation, his comments will always get the attention of a moderator at this point.

"Won't engage" is Anthony's code for "he won't give me all his personal details"

It doesn't take much for WUWT-ers to form a lynch mob behind Anthony Watts

Jai made 9 comments with a total of 97 mentions, Janice Moore made 15 comments from a total of 19 mentions.  Being a denier like Janice doesn't rate highly on WUWT.  Goes to show if you want fame on WUWT you have to write something vaguely sciency and then the anti-science mafia will rise up as one in their paranoia and form a lynch mob, with cries of "troll", "hate" and all the rest.

Brings back memories...

I reckon Anthony must be worried his new moderation policy might wreck his audience demographics.