You may recall from a previous roundup that Twitter is starting to crack down on abuse and trolls. Last week, the service suspended Steve Goddard's account (it’s since been reinstated), and this week, it locked, suspended and then reinstated Tom Nelson's account after his sour exchange with climate scientist Gavin Schmidt.
According to the way deniers are covering the story, Nelson was unfairly targeted for using the same word (crap) that Schmidt first tossed Nelson's way. But the actual conversation makes it clear that Nelson was hardly a victim. He first baits Schmidt saying "@climateofgavin still thinks Earth's climate sensitivity is 'around 3°C +/- a degree." Nelson then tweets, "Do you have a CO2 and temp. graph that implies sensitivity ~3C over 600M years?," posting a graph saying, "This one doesn't."
In response, Schmidt says, "because that one is crap as I've frequently pointed out. The temperature is hand drawn. Not even you can take it seriously, surely?" Nelson then criticizes Schmidt's "comfortable fossil-fuel frequent-flying lifestyle" and for not "caring about our children" in a series of badgering remarks. Nelson concludes by pointing to a graph from ThinkProgress saying, "Joe Romm is still selling this graph. folks: is this 'crap'?"
Twitter then locked Nelson's account until he deleted the posts that broke Twitter's rule. Of course Nelson didn't follow the rules, but took a screen shot of Twitter's demand and tweeted this out, which got him suspended. Deniers are now crying "foul play" saying Schmidt's account should also get locked for use of the word "crap." But something tells us it's not just the word that got Nelson in trouble…
In any case, Nelson just created another account and now his original account is back online, so he's free to continue badgering scientists and spreading misinformation. So much for censorship.