There have been some animated discussions on on a guest post: A new typology for the climate debate by Lloyd Robertson on the 15th Sept 2012. In which he made the following statement

I suppose the skydragons, whoever they are, are plain ignorant, not trying to learn, but probably honest. I don't read them, I had never even heard of them until Judy Curry sharpened her lance against them.

This immediately gave rise to a reply from Ken Coffman who described himself not as a "Skydragon" but a "Slayer" (i.e. "Skydragon Slayer") and protested against the label "plain ignorant, not trying to learn, but probably honest". Further on in the thread a number of commenters virulently protested against the "Skydragons'" general ill-mannered habit of invading blogs and diverting the subject in order to impose their questionable science.

I have to say straight away that I have no affiliation with the Slayers. on the other hand I have appreciated a number of their articles debunking the Greenhouse effect (which I think is what "skydragon" symbolises) both as a description of the actual workings of a real greenhouse and the supposed warming action of certain so-called "greenhouse gasses" in the atmosphere. This was the reason I defended the group, also because I felt they were being treated unfairly.

Anyway my reason for this post is not to continue the squabble but to ask a simple question which I have already put up on the thread and which I would like to extend to the whole BH community:
- Can anybody give me a link to a specific blog or blogs that they consider to have been invaded and paralysed by the Slayers community?
So far I have been unable to locate one.

John

I believe the Air Vent and SOD have been invaded by one of the Slayers.

http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2012/04/10/dogs-puppies-and-true-skepticism/
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2012/04/03/the-air-vent-on-moderation/

I will say, I have found most of this crowd to be ok. I also followed an exchange between Claes Johnson and Roy Spencer which I found very interesting. The two of them reached an impasse with Dr Spencer admitting that "Without studying the issue more, I cannot think of an immediately obvious way to prove you are wrong." (http://www.drroyspencer.com/2012/02/yes-virginia-the-vacuum-of-space-does-have-a-temperature/#comments).

"I had never even heard of them until Judy Curry sharpened her lance against them" may suggest about a hundred or so Climate Etc threads as worth scouring. I'm not volunteering.

I too am curious about the supposed thread-bombing. I'm not sure Madame Curry's site qualifies as the main threads there were specifically about Slayer science (Letter to the Dragon Slayers, etc.). I think they were all deleted, but I have them in my archive. They got really ugly, but the ugliness was not from Slayers. For me, all I really care about is physics, so I'm generally uninterested in talking about anything else. All told, there was something like 10,000 comments in those threads.

So, examples of inappropriate Dragon Slayer thread-bombing? I'm not the right judge, but I sure can't think of any...I'd love to see an example. I looked at the SOD link directly above (blah-blah-blah) and I did not see any of the Slayers weighing in there. Bryan is verbose, but he's not a Slayer, is he? Because we are right about the underlying physics of thermodynamics and heat transfer, it would stand to reason that there will be a lot of people who agree with the technical argument who are not officially Slayers.

Thanks Philip for the link to SoD, as among other things in the discussion he suggests two alternative labels:

a) the “greenhouse is wrong” (GIW) coalition
b) the "no greenhouse coalition".

I think not all in the GIW coalition wish to be called slayers so we should perhaps adopt one of these two.

I also note that John in France begins this Discussion without a mention of the fact that Lloyd Robertson received hardly any decent feedback on his proposed typology - because of the debate with the GIWers over something quite different and really alien. An example of a thread that was completely disfigured, for me, because of an inability to abstract and discuss at the right level. A nunber of us felt that we'd seen such effects before. But that's different from wanting to list every example - or any example. I don't want read much more in my life on this. I now read that Judith Curry has deleted some massive threads in this area yet I have almost zero interest in this either.

I am interested in the labels GIWC or NGC though. Which one should it be?

Wouldn't expect you or anyone else to, Richard. I haven't scoured it either but entered a few names in the search engine yesterday and only came up with a brief mention here and there.
The point is, there were commenters on that thread who seemed to be incensed by the behaviour of Slayers as a group invading blogs and disrupting them. I would have that one of them could have given a concrete case of that behaviour, otherwise to me it just sound like blind prejudice and persecution of a group.

Correction: "I would have liked one of them to…"
Of course the above comment was in answer to your 3 : 27 PM post.
This was not intended as a continuation of the Lloyd Robertson thread; you've already made your point there about the lack of feedback and myself and others have answered why we think it unfortunately turned the way it did. As I said at the beginning, this post was not intended to continue the squabble but to try to settle a precise point on "Skydragon thread-bombing". I've followed the links suggested and other leads and have found no evidence of such behaviour. So I'll abandon this thread unless someone comes up with something concrete.

Martin A: "What became of My Dog's Got No Nose?"

Indeed ! ? That question was raised (by Shub at 11:28 AM) on the second page of the thread in question here : http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2012/9/15/a-new-typology-for-the-climate-debate.html?currentPage=2#comments.
I said I thought I may know his identity and later (Page 3, Sep 19, 2012 at 8:37 AM) explained the circumstances of my finding it out and why I am not willing to reveal it.

Dung (if you're still around): Well you found it; didn't you? I think this matter is of interest to a considerable number of people.

My Dog's Got No Nose - has posted at Tallblokes Talkshop

http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2012/06/07/mdgnn-limits-on-the-co2-greenhouse-effect/

Like John in France - I was able to work out who he was by googling some of his quotes. I also agree that is up to him if and when he reveals his identidy. He has a source watch page and is also mentioned on the Exxon secrets web site - which is really a badge of honour IMHO.

Leopard,
Perhaps I should have said "such behaviour from Slayers". Doug appeared to me to be a thread-bomber/sock puppeteer, but not a Slayer but I'll have another look. I'm only concerned here with groups of Slayers thread-bombing. That's what was being complained of in the Lloyd Robertson thread and that's all I'm trying to elucidate - nothing more.

My impression when all this Slayer-bashing started heating up, was that they were taking the comments all over the blogs by one individual under the pseudonym of "Faux Science Slayer" and magnifying them into a group attack. That's what I meant by "tarring them all with the same brush".

I don't mean to weasel out of any responsibility, but I don't think Doug Cotton is a Sky Dragon Slayer. Does he consider himself a Slayer?

"I will state, however, that, like most members of Principia Scientific International I am not a "Slayer" though that does not mean that I disagree (or agree) with any particular points made by any particular authors of the book. I will state, though, that Prof Claes Johnson and I are in complete agreement that radiated energy is not converted to thermal energy when it meets a traget which is warmer than the source of emission, this belief being in accord with the Second Law of Thermodynamics and classical physics relating to objects with measurable temperature..."
--Douglas Cotton http://climatechangedispatch.com/home/10046-latest-study-confirms-no-atmospheric-warming-from-carbon-dioxide

Am I out of bounds by requesting a better example of Slayer thread-bombing? I can't be responsible for every tedious and verbose commenter who is in general agreement with our real world physics, but overstays his or her welcome somewhere on the web.

Hmmm, perhaps I'll have to retreat a bit...if Mr. Faux is judged and convicted as a violator, then we'll have to wear that one. I believe I know who Mr. Faux is and he certainly is a Slayer. Beyond abusing the English language quite a lot, I don't know of him as a thread-bomber, but I can visualize it happening.

Shub, OM does not appear in the SP version of Slaying the Sky Dragon and I don't think he appears in the UK version either. He might be in an early version of the eBook, but not in any edition I had a hand in creating, editing or publishing.

Ken, you did identify yourself as a Slayer at the beginning of the Lloyd Robertson thread, but I agree with you about the Doug individual. But that's all I've had so far: references to the odd thread bomber unconnected with the Slayers and exchanges between people like Claes Johnson or John O'Sullivan and generally, webmasters, - all completely on topic.

Shub, OM is a good example of what I call a single-issue commenter. Each time he shows up you know where he's going before you read it.

Ken, I do know who Mr Faux is and like a number of qualified engineers of my acquaintance, he's a rotten speller. I don't let that bother me but it does make a bad impression so he really should pay more attention to his spell-checker. Outside of his rants I think that like OM, he has some very interesting ideas and concepts and as I have already said, I think the impression people get of group thread-bombing stems from their ubiquity on the blogs; pity that the two of them seem to think they have a mission to foist them on everybody willy-nilly.

- the ideas and concepts, I mean.

A part list of skydragons is given here

John O'Sullivan lawyer and front man ( a bit like Al Gore)

Claes Johnson accomplished mathematician.

Two projects

1. It all went wrong with Planck and the photon
2. IPCC science and Greenhouse theory in error.

However all attacks on 2 rely on accepting 1.

There is an obvious fault in logic here.

Hans Schreuder and Alan Siddons once said that a hot object cannot accept radiative energy from a colder object.
This understandable but mistaken idea seems to have hung up the group as if it was an act of fundamental faith.

Tim Ball , Charles Anderson , Joseph A. Olson ,Martin Hertzberg also write in support

The best of their output is from Joseph Postma who has made a significant contribution to the climate debate.

He is well worth reading!

The various characters grouped under Doug Cotton are your thread bombers.

I seriously wonder if Doug is a plant from Skeptical Science to destroy the groups reputation.

If so he is quite successful in that project.

I think the idea that.....

" ..a hot object cannot accept radiative energy from a colder object.
This understandable but mistaken idea seems to have hung up the group as if it was an act of fundamental faith."

......comes from a mistaken idea of what thermodynamic heat is.

Some of the 'slayers' and a lot of IPCC science advocates share this confusion but come to opposite conclusions.

For both groups radiation is the same as heat.

So for the warmists this means a colder object can heat a warmer one.
But some of the slayers remember Clausius saying that this is impossible by his famous second law.
So radiative energy from the colder cannot be absorbed by the warmer in their opinion.

Of course when Clausius refers to heat, it is the energy fraction capable of doing thermodynamic work.
So for a purely radiative exchange heat is the net radiative flux and is always from a higher to a lower temperature.

Joseph Postma is well worth reading.
I cannot believe he shares the same ideas about photons as Claes Johnson.

Another person linked to the slayers is Peirs Corbyn the Astrophysicist running Weather Action who has a very good track record in weather prediction.

So the slayers then are like the curates egg - good in parts.