| William Connolley | |
|---|---|
 Connolley in May 2008 |
|
| Born | 12 April 1964 |
| Nationality | British |
| Education | M.A. (Oxon.), D.Phil. (Oxon.) |
| Alma mater | University of Oxford |
| Occupation | Software engineer |
| Known for | Blog activity about climate change |
| Political party | Green Party of England and Wales |
William Michael Connolley (born 12 April 1964) is a British software engineer, writer, and blogger on climate science. Until December 2007 he was Senior Scientific Officer in the Physical Sciences Division in the Antarctic Climate and the Earth System project at the British Antarctic Survey, where he worked as a climate modeller. After this he became a software engineer for Cambridge Silicon Radio.
Connolley received national press attention over several years for his involvement in editing Wikipedia articles relating to climate change. Connolley was a member of the RealClimate website until 2007 and now operates a website and blog that discuss climate issues. He has also been active in local politics as a member of the Green Party.
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Background
Connolley holds an undergraduate degree in mathematics and a DPhil from St Edmund Hall at the University of Oxford for his work on numerical analysis.[1] He works as a software engineer for Cambridge Silicon Radio, designing embedded firmware. Connolley has two children.[2]
Until December 2007, Connolley was Senior Scientific Officer in the Physical Sciences Division in the Antarctic Climate and the Earth System project at the British Antarctic Survey. His research focused on sea ice measurement and modelling, including the HadCM3 global climate model. Connolley also worked on the validation of satellite data against more direct upward looking sonar observations in the Weddell Sea area.[3] He concluded that Bootstrap data produced a better fit than data produced by NASA and that GCM predictions are more realistic than previously thought.[4]
Connolley served as a parish councillor in the village of Coton (near Cambridge, England) until May 2007.[5] He was also a Green Party candidate for South Cambridgeshire District Council or Cambridgeshire County Council every year from 2001 to 2005.[6]
Writing and editing
Connolley has authored and co-authored articles and literature reviews in the field of climatological research, including several concluding that a majority of scientific papers in the 1970s actually predicted warming, not global cooling.[7][8][9] Connolley was a member of the RealClimate website until 2007,[10][11] and he operates a website and blog that discuss climate issues.[12][13][14]
Connolley began editing Wikipedia in 2003[15] and served as a Wikipedia administrator from 2006 until 2009.[16] He has been cited and quoted in the media regarding these activities, especially with respect to his editing in the area of climate change. He was cited by Nature magazine, in their December 2005 review of the reliability of Wikipedia, as an example of an expert who edits Wikipedia.[17] Nature quoted Connolley, in 2006, as saying that "some scientists have become frustrated with Wikipedia" but that "conflict can sometimes result in better articles".[18] In July 2006, a New Yorker article described him as briefly becoming "a victim of an edit war over the entry on global warming", in which a sceptic repeatedly "watered down" the article's explanation of the greenhouse effect.[19] Connolley told the magazine that Wikipedia "gives no privilege to those who know what they’re talking about".[19] Opinion pieces in newspapers have accused Connolley of bias in his Wikipedia editing.[20] Two internal disputes at Wikipedia in which Connolley was involved also received press attention. A 2005 Wikipedia climate change dispute involving breaches of etiquette, rather than content bias, was cited by a paper in the Journal of Science Communication as an example that "resonated deeply as it highlighted what can befall respected experts who wade into controversial wiki-waters". The paper stated that Connolley did "not suffer[] fools gladly".[21][22] The same paper noted a 2009 Wikipedia arbitration in which it was concluded that Connolley had used administrator privileges to his own advantage in content disputes, and these privileges were removed.[21]
Publications
- W. M. Connolley and S. A. Harangozo (2001) A comparison of five numerical weather prediction analysis climatologies in southern high latitudes, J. Climate, 14: 30–44.
- Turner, J, W Connolley, D Cresswell and S A Harangozo (2001). The simulation of Antarctic sea ice in the Hadley Centre climate model (HadCM3). Ann. Glaciol., 33: 585–591.
- Vaughan, D. G., G. J. Marshall, W. M. Connolley, J. C. King and R. Mulvaney (2001) Climate change — devil in the detail. Science, 293: 1777–1779.
- Tom A. Lachlan-Cope, William M. Connolley, and John Turner (2001) The Role of the Non-Axisymmetric Antarctic Orography in Forcing the Observed Pattern of Variability of the Antarctic Climate, Geophysical Research Letters, 28(21): 4111–4114.
- Connolley, W. M. (2002) Long-term variation of the Antarctic Circumpolar Wave. J. Geophys. Res., 107 (8076).
- J. Turner, S. A. Harangozo, J. C. King, W. Connolley, T. Lachlan-Cope, and G. J. Marshall (2003) An exceptional winter sea ice retreat/advance in the Bellingshausen Sea, Antarctica. Atmos. Ocean 41(2): 171–185.
- D. G. Vaughan, G. J. Marshall, W. M. Connolley, C. L. Parkinson, R. Mulvaney, D. A. Hodgson, J. C. King, C. J. Pudsey, and J. Turner. Recent rapid regional climate warming on the Antarctic Peninsula. Climatic Change, 60 (3): 243–274 October 2003
- Translation of Fourier 1827: Mémoire sur les temperatures du globe terrestre et des espaces planetaires [23]
- Connolley, W. M., J. M. Gregory, E. Hunke and A. J. Mclaren (2004), On The Consistent Scaling Of Terms In The Sea — Ice Dynamics Equation, J . Phys . Oceangr. 34 (7): 1776–1780 July 2004
- Marshall, G. J., P. A. Stott, J. Turner, W. M. Connolley, J. C. King and T. A. Lachlancope (2004), Causes Of Exceptional Atmospheric Circulation Changes In The Southern Hemisphere, Geophys. Res. Lett. 31(14): Art . No. L14205 July 30, 2004
- J. C. King, J. Turner, G. J. Marshall, W. M. Connolley, and T. A. Lachlan-Cope. Antarctic Peninsula climate variability and its causes as revealed by instrumental records. Antarctic Research Series v79, pp17–30.
- Connolley, W. M. Sea ice concentrations in the Weddell Sea: A comparison of SSM/I, ULS, and GCM data. GRL 32 (7): art. no. L07501 2 April 2005; see also Sea ice: What I do in my spare time for a popular exposition
References
- ^ Connolley, William M. (1989). Preconditioning of iterative methods for linearized or linear systems. — D. Phil Thesis. Oxford: Oxford University Numerical Analysis Group. p. 208. http://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/display.do?ct=display&doc=UkOxUUkOxUb15311358&indx=4&dum=true&dscnt=0&indx=1&srt=rank&tab=local&ct=search&frbg=&vid=OXVU1&vl%2814382746UI0%29=any&vl%28204862243UI1%29=all_items&vl%281UI0%29=contains&fn=search&dstmp=1274005464581&vl%28freeText0%29=Connolley&mode=Basic&scp.scps=scope%3A%28%22OX%22%29
- ^ Connolley, William. Profile of Connolley at his blog Stoat, accessed 8 December 2010
- ^ "Dr William Connolley / Senior Scientific Officer / Climate Modeller / Physical Sciences Division". British Antarctic Survey. http://www.antarctica.ac.uk/met/wmc/biog.html. Retrieved 24 October 2010.
- ^ Connolley, William M.. "Sea ice concentrations in the Weddell Sea: A comparison of SSM/I, ULS, and GCM data" (PDF). http://www.antarctica.ac.uk/met/wmc/papers/ULS-grl-2005.pdf. Retrieved 26 October 2010.
- ^ Internet Archive copy of Coton Parish Website
- ^ The Green Party South Cambs
- ^ William Connolley (24 January 2005). "The global cooling myth". RealClimate. http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=94. Retrieved 30 December 2009.
- ^ William M. Connolley (2005). "Was an imminent Ice Age predicted in the '70's? No". http://www.wmconnolley.org.uk/sci/iceage/. Retrieved 2007-12-16.
- ^ Peterson, Thomas C.; William M. Connolley, and John Fleck (2008). "The Myth of the 1970s Global Cooling Scientific Consensus". Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 89 (9): 1325–1337. doi:10.1175/2008BAMS2370.1. http://ams.allenpress.com/perlserv/?request=get-abstract&doi=10.1175%2F2008BAMS2370.1.
- ^ Connolley, William M. (6 December 2004). "William M. Connolley Filed under: * Contributor Bio's — william @ 6 December 2004". RealClimate. Archived from the original on 2007-08-16. http://web.archive.org/web/20070816105435/http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/william-m-connolley/. Retrieved 2010-02-09.
- ^ Connolley, William (1 December 2007). "Goodbye to all that" – announcement of departure from RealClimate. RealClimate. Retrieved 26 October 2010.
- ^ William Connolley's personal website. wmconnolley.org.uk. Retrieved 26 October 2010.
- ^ Stoat Taking science by the throat..." Connolley's personal blog
- ^ "Connolley's webpage analysing papers relevant to a modern Ice Age". Wmconnolley.org.uk. http://www.wmconnolley.org.uk/sci/iceage/. Retrieved 22 July 2010.
- ^ "I am all powerful (part 2)". Scienceblogs.com. 19 December 2009. http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/2009/12/i_am_all_powerful_part_2.php. Retrieved 22 July 2010.
- ^ "A child's garden of wikipedia, part I". Scienceblogs.com. 4 January 2010. http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/2010/01/a_childs_garden_of_wikipedia_p.php. Retrieved 26 October 2010.
- ^ Giles, Jim (15 December 2005). "Internet Encyclopaedias Go Head to Head". Nature 438 (7070): 900–01. doi:10.1038/438900a. PMID 16355180.
- ^ Giles, Jim (October 5, 2006). "Wikipedia Rival Calls in the Experts". Nature 443 (7111): 493. doi:10.1038/443493a. PMID 17024058.
- ^ a b Schiff, Stacy (31 July 2006). "Know It All: Can Wikipedia Conquer Expertise?". The New Yorker. http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/07/31/060731fa_fact. Retrieved 26 October 2010.
- ^ See, e.g., Delingpole, James. "Climategate: the corruption of Wikipedia". The Telegraph, 22 December 2009, accessed 30 March 2011
- ^ a b Mathieu O'Neil: "Shirky and Sanger, or the costs of crowdsourcing". Journal of Science Communication, Vol. 9, Issue 1, March 2010, International School for Advanced Studies
- ^ Keen, Andrew. The Cult of the Amateur: How Today’s Internet is Killing Our Culture, p. 43. New York: Doubleday, 2007. ISBN 0385520808
- ^ "William M. Connolley's page about Fourier 1827: MEMOIRE sur les temperatures du globe terrestre et des espaces planetaires". Wmconnolley.org.uk. http://www.wmconnolley.org.uk/sci/fourier_1827/. Retrieved 2010-07-22.
External links
- Connolley's page at the British Antarctic Survey website
- Forte, Andrea; Bruckman, Amy (2008). "Scaling Consensus: Increasing Decentralization in Wikipedia Governance". Proceedings of the 41st Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS 2008): 157–157. doi:10.1109/HICSS.2008.383. http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.84.8022&rep=rep1&type=pdf.