Global warming, political correctness, and wikipedia

Many of us rely on wikipedia as a quick and dirty source of information in a hurry.  And while some attack it as unreliable, it has shown to be fairly reliable in comparison with the Encyclopedia Britannica.

But on controversial subjects like global warming, DON'T expect wikipedia to be objective.  As Lawrence Solomon of the National Post reports, Wikipedia's zealots may be removing information that is not politically correct, or of the minority opinion.

For the last 18 months I have been profiling scientists who disagree with the UN panel's position. My Deniers series, which now runs to some 40 columns, describes many of the world's most prominent scientists. They include authors or reviewers for the UN panel (before they quit in disgust). They even include the scientist known as the father of scientific climatology, who is recognized as being the most cited climatologist in the world....

I then exercised the right to edit Wikipedia that we all have, corrected the Wikipedia entry, and advised Peiser that I had done so.  Peiser wrote back saying he couldn't see my corrections on the Wikipedia page. Had I neglected to save them after editing them, I wondered? I made the changes again, and this time confirmed that the changes had been saved. But then, in a twinkle, they were gone again! I made other changes. And others. They all disappeared shortly after they were made.

As it turns out, it wasn't just another user deleting his updates, but a Wikipedia editor maintaining the Politically Correct status quo.

Tabletop, it turns out, has another name: Kim Dabelstein Petersen. She (or he?) is an editor at Wikipedia. What does she edit? Reams and reams of global warming pages. I started checking them. In every instance I checked, she defended those warning of catastrophe and deprecated those who believe the science is not settled. I investigated further. Others had tried to correct her interpretations and had the same experience as I -- no sooner did they make their corrections than she pounced, preventing Wikipedia readers from reading anyone's views but her own. When they protested plaintively, she wore them down and snuffed them out.

Solomon warns that Wikipedia may not be objective on such controversial issues, but rather, may be acting as just another propoganda machine for the political left which may be the political leaning of official wikipedia editors.

By patrolling Wikipedia pages and ensuring that her spin reigns supreme over all climate change pages, she has made of Wikipedia a propaganda vehicle for global warming alarmists. But unlike government propaganda, its source is not self-evident. We don't suspend belief when we read Wikipedia, as we do when we read literature from an organization with an agenda, because Wikipedia benefits from the Internet's cachet of making information free and democratic. This Big Brother enforces its views with a mouse.

In fact, Conservopedia has a hefty list of Examples of Bias in Wikipedia (over 100).  Users of wikipedia, caveat emptor!