People are writing in about the Amelia Sharman study called Mapping the climate Skeptic Blogosphere. It came out last year as a Working Paper from The Grantham Institute, and then to show how meaningless peer review is, this fairly pointless, weak, banal production has come out again, almost unchanged as “new” but not original research in the peer review literature. What is the point? But I had a lot of fun with this study last year, so I’m reproducing nearly the whole post. And let me stress, at least Amelia Sharman seems to be very genuine in her inquiries, which is truly rare, and admirable. I just wish the brains trust advising her had a grip on logic and reason (and had less of our tax dollars).
The bottom line is that thousands of dollars were spent on a blogroll study which discovered that skeptics “value scientific inquiry”, and are “alternative public sites of expertise.”
As well as WattsUp, Climate Audit and JoNova, obviously Bishop Hill, ICECAP, Tom Nelson, No Frakking Consensus, and Climate Etc were also found to be influential and connected. Note Climate Depot was ruled out because it pools stories rather than generating a lot of original content. I disagree, because Marc Morano compiles original lists of links and valuable information.
The new paper is paywalled. The older working paper is can be seen here. I gather they are almost the same. Paul Matthews (@etzpcm) sys: “Conclusions are same as draft ” Reviewers seem to have forced @Amelia_LSE to put in statement about sceptics being ideologically or politically motivated (p7) –“
Skeptically mapping why Big-government research is often a waste of money
I feel like such a killjoy. Usually when academics reach out to the skeptics to “study” us, it is to attack us. So I ought to be grateful that Amelia Sharman is one of the few who appears to be doing it more nicely — even impartially (sort of). It’s a big step up. But I can’t help it, the skeptic in me is … skeptical. It should be a badge of honor. Here JoNova is listed with the ground-breaking Watts Up and inestimable Climate Audit:
A network of 171 individual blogs is identified, with three blogs in particular found to be the most central: Climate Audit, JoNova and Watts Up With That.
What an honor. Bravo Bravo. I’m touched.
Figure 1: The climate sceptical blogosphere, where round nodes are category 1
(openly sceptical) and square nodes are category 2 (self-proclaimed ‘openminded’)
Jo, Anthony and Steve are some “central” grey dots in the black scribble. (Ask how much has your knowledge of the universe been increased.)
Despite the notoriety invoked by the conclusion – I’m dubious: The language is sloppy, the data iffy, the main variable has a low signal to noise ratio, and cause and effect is back to front. This is not science, nor is it about science. It’s barely sociology. (Sorry Amelia.)
Firstly, we’re mapping the skeptical world using what… blogrolls? Maybe that works for big corporate bodies with committees that keep those things up to date, who have time to consider and ponder, but, and I hate to say it, but for this this solo operator my blogroll is something I think about 0.0001% of the time. I just don’t use it. I forget it’s even there. A link could go defunct and I might notice two years later. Some people who deserve a link had to prod me, which means I’m bound to be missing valuable sites. There is information in there, true, let me just say (trying to be kind) it’s better than reading tea-leaves. Though the result resembles them and if you ask me what this means, I’d say it means tax dollars should be better spent.
Secondly, the magic mud that is post-modern science makes an appearance early on. This next passage essentially says that climate science can never be resolved. It’s not a rational debate. We can’t measure success, or know which side is right, but there is a pointed note telling everyone that skeptics say that climate change is just another attempt to diminish their freedom. This is coded way to suggest that skeptics are ideologically opposed and not very rational.
In contrast to controversies such as the health impacts of tobacco smoking which is no longer widely publicly disputed, the scientifically abstract nature of climate science and its inherently values-laden character means that scientific evidence alone is inadequate to drive policy decision-making (Hulme 2009). Hoffman (2011b) argues that the climate debate may have entered into the realm of what Pielke (2007) coins “abortion politics”, that is, a situation where no amount of scientific information can reconcile the different values held on a certain topic. While a speaking truth to power model would suggest that climate change could resolved by systematically uncovering factual knowledge, this “rational-instrument” approach whereby science is seen as providing ‘verifiable facts about reality on which rational policy decisions can be based’ (Gulbrandsen 2008: 100) is inadequate. The range of potential policy responses to climate change each hold deeply embedded ideological implications, with Hoffman providing the example of attendees at a climate sceptics’ conference in 2010 stating that ‘the issue isn’t the issue’; instead, that ‘climate change is just another attempt to diminish our freedom’ (2011b: 3).
In short thanks to academia, Amelia has been sold a bag of rocks. The climate is not “values laden”. The rain falls or it doesn’t, there is no parallel reality where it is raining on free marketeers but not raining on socialists. It’s not about whether the rain has the right to fall, or whether we should be pro-choice about rainfall. With atmospheric physics there is an answer. If climate science cannot be resolved by observations, then it is not science.
One day we will know how much effect CO2 has, we’ll also know whether the world got warmer. Right now, we’re not even sure whether man-made emissions drive the atmospheric level of CO2 directly.
But there is some light and the project is in a league above Lewandowsky. Thank you Amelia who says skeptics have an “important contribution” on the public debate.
While it is possible that these climate sceptical blogs are not making a significant impact on public discourse outside the online environment, this seems increasingly unlikely, as blogs are increasingly recognised as important contributors to the public debate about climate change (Guimaraes 2012).
Structure? What Structure?
The paper uses “Social network analysis (SNA)” telling us that it “is a useful method to examine blogospheres as it provides a coherent mechanism to interrogate their structure.” All I can say is that “Structure” is the wrong word. We are looking at a random distributed network. If anyone was hoping to find the Grand-Poo-Bah of climate skeptics at the centre of the string-art puzzle in Black and White, I have bad news.
There is no private JournoList (or SkeptoList) where we discuss strategic moves and adopt new key phrases in the PR war. There is no hub where original content gets produced by Exxon researchers and dished out in waves to each key site. The skeptics network is organic, evolving, competitive, cooperative, and above all aimed at finding the truth. That’s why it’s winning.
Strip back the jargon and this next paragraph tells us that skeptics do their own thing (I could have told her if she’d asked). We aren’t natural networkers, and there is no coordinated government grant or Koch run agency that keeps skeptics linked. Not that Sharman raised that possibility. But anyone reading counter arguments to skeptics would hear it over and over.
Of the 171 blogs, 114 list links in a blog-roll. Only one blog (found via the initial scoping process using WebCrawler) is not linked somehow to the remainder of the network. The geodesic distance of the entire network is measured at 2.71, that is, only 2.71 blogs on average separate each blog from another. While this may seem like a densely connected network, employing UCINET’s density algorithm shows a density rating of only 0.0561. The density of the network examines the proportion of possible ties that are present. A density rating of 1 means that every blog would be directly connected, with a density rating of 0.9 or less considered to be low (Faust 2006). This result means that of all possible ties (i.e. every blog linked to every other blog) only 5.61% are present, suggesting, as can be seen in Figure 1 which visualises the blogosphere using an ego network display, that other clusters of relationships, for example through particularly central nodes, may be more important.
Wherefore art thou data?
The paper uses Adwords data to guess the traffic, and “Table 8 shows that WUWT is the most visited site, followed by JoNova and Climate Audit”. For the record, those stats are inaccurate. According to google analytics (which has tracking code on all my pages ) I get 50,000 unique visitors a month (not 22,000 as reported). Since you asked…
Who knew: Skeptics like to read about science?
Did it take a whole research project and thousands of dollars to find that the most popular blogs in the skeptic world write about science?
The most noteworthy finding of this research however is that the blogs identified as the most central predominantly focus on the scientific element of the climate debate.
And in a flash of banality – skeptics like linking to the science that they like reading.
The three blogs identified as the most central are also the top three most linked-to sites according to Freeman’s indegree rating.
But it doesn’t reconcile very well with the idea that skeptics are ideologues driven by politics, eh?
Skeptics are fixed on scientific detail, and value people with scientific expertise:
The climate sceptical blogosphere appears to thus be preoccupied with a particular type of climate scepticism—“scientific scepticism”—and is less focused on other types such as ideologically-motivated scepticism which more explicitly highlights ‘attitudes and worldviews…[and] political ideology and personal values’ (Poortinga et al. 2011: 1022). The expertise that appears to be the most valued in this alternative knowledge network—command of scientific knowledge and willingness to use it to critique mainstream climate science—is thus also different to that valued in other networks of alternative knowledge.
“Alternative knowledge” my foot – be afraid, be very afraid. For this marks the stain of postmodern thinking. There is only one climate, and there are no alternatives. On climate sensitivity, one team is right, and the other wrong, or we are both wrong. There is no alternate world where skeptics and alarmists are both right.
Conspiracy theory? What conspiracy?
The paper suffers from a loose use of English, in this case the dictionary meaning of a phrase is replaced with the name-calling use. Apparently I write sub-themes of “conspiracy” (special ones that involve no conspirators):
As the categorisation results suggest, JoNova discusses a broader range of topics (for example, fake gold bars and full-body scanners at airports), yet still has a clear interest in the scientific element of climate scepticism. The key sub-themes identified were conspiracy theories (of which climate scientists’ funding was a predominant element) and the behaviour of members of the media when discussing climate science.
But the only “conspiracy” offered as an example is a quote from this post, where I point out that bloggers are more scientific than George Monbiot. This post was about FakeGate, where George was defending Peter Gleick’s theft of private information from a non-profit group for no scientific benefit.
JoNova’s conspiratorial quote?
‘The “richest of ironies is that Monbiot relies on models and opinions, while the skeptics that he looks down upon want observations and data, true to the original tenets of the scientific method. Despite not apparently knowing what makes science different from a religion, he calls skeptics “anti-science deniers”’.’
I don’t even need to explain why this is not an example of a “conspiracy” unless George is conspiring with himself. Most of the time I write about systemic failures of scientific training, investigative journalism, or distortions that occur due to monopolistic funding. The problems are often cultural. Accusing someone of “conspiracy theories” has become the handy put-down for anyone who criticizes big-government. It’s use has become inane.
The Grantham Institute should buy a dictionary.
Cause and effect assumptions are back to front
It’s not that we are skeptics who happen to be interested in the science. Instead, it is because we are interested in science, and noticed problems with government climate science, that we became skeptics…
I do not even understand the sentence in bold (my bold).
“Thus building on Merritt and Jones’ (2000) suggestion of climate sceptics as “agents of persuasion”, this research has shown that these central nodes are key protagonists in a process of continual expert knowledge de-legitimisation and contestation. Interestingly however, and in opposition to the Cumbrian sheep farmers in Wynne’s classic investigation of expertise, these bloggers do not appear to recognise their ‘dependency upon the scientific experts as the certified public authorities on the issue’ (1992: 299).
I must be reading this incorrectly, the only interpretation that makes sense is that the authors think skeptics are either so stupid or delusional they don’t realize who the real experts are. Do I have a “dependency” on certified public authorities? It doesn’t feel like it. As a taxpayer it feels like they have a dependency on me.
I presume that Certified Real Experts (TM) are the ones that lose data, hide methods, and never debate publicly?
With a bit of research, it appears the classic study by Wynne, turns out to be about a bunch of poor farmers who believed the experts and lost a lot of money because the experts were wrong. A strange study to use.
But this makes skeptics seem almost useful:
“It is possible that these central blogs in particular are not only acting as translators between scientific research and lay audiences, but, in their reinterpretation of existing climate science knowledge claims, are filling a void by opening up climate science to those who may have been previously unengaged by the mainstream knowledge process and, importantly, acting themselves as alternative public sites of expertise for a climate sceptical audience.
Are bloggers like peer reviewed journals?
…bloggers are acting as gatekeepers and interpreters in an alternative knowledge network that is running in parallel to the ways in which, for example, scholarly journal editors carry out the same function in the mainstream academic knowledge network (McGinty 1999)
Ah the ideological dark side where effect becomes cause:
Another possible reason is that these blogs are providing a basis upon which scepticism motivated by underlying worldviews or ideological values (such as disagreement for the need for government intervention) can be scientifically justified (G. Cook et al. 2004). It is possible that this contributes to a situation whereby these blogs serve as an “echo chamber”, within which users are ‘consuming news that mesh with their worldview and ideology’ (Boykoff 2013: 15), thus contributing to Hoffman’s (2011a) concept of a logic schism within the climate debate.
Here’s the simplest interpretation… a small cadre of well paid scientists make ambitious, inept climate models that billions of dollars of decisions relies on.
Thus, while the science-policy interface is often considered to be the most active part of the climate debate (Hulme 2009), this research has shown that in the blog environment, it is the actual nuts and bolts of the climate models, data and assumptions that are the key topics of interest. This research has also contributed to the literature on online knowledge networks by showing that these central blogs are attempting to break open Latour and Woolgar’s (1986) “black box” of science, with the lack of deference given to mainstream climate science possibly attributable again to the medium of contestation in this case. The internet enables a dramatically different type of social interaction between what Nowotny (1993: 308) terms ‘knowledge experts and protoexperts’, with the minutiae of the building blocks of scientific argument, particularly visual representations such as graphs and diagrams, laid bare for detailed, and rapid, critique. Ravetz (2012) even goes so far as to argue that the blogosphere has actualised post-normal science, with debates about quality— particularly quality related to scientific work—a central tenet of the climate sceptical blogosphere.
What does this mean? Actualized post normal science?
…the climate sceptical arguments emphasised in these central blogs may receive a disproportionately larger audience than is perhaps warranted when compared with the knowledge claims made by the majority of mainstream climate science (Boykoff 2013).
How influential are skeptical blogs? You will never know will you? What if the Skeptics Handbook was read by only a few, but very influential columnists — and it gave them the basics and the confidence to fill in details they were leaning towards anyhow. What if they emailed me privately every now and again. What if my blogs are read by a few national cartoonists, or maybe a comedy writer here and there, it would be very hard to track if or how those ideas and memes turned up in popular media wouldn’t it?
Or how about politicians? What if my site was followed by five or ten politicians at the highest levels, and they never admitted reading it, but they did their research and followed the debate so that they could design policies with back doors and minimal costs? That wouldn’t turn up in google stats either.
What if I went to dinner with people who were influential in business and they took on those arguments, but never mentioned my name? How would anyone know? Network researchers following blogroll links are stumbling around in the dark.
* The Grantham Institute was funded by a private donor, but oversees the Centre for Climate Change Economics and Policy (CCCEP) which is funded by the ESRC(The Economic and Social Research Council which is a non-departmental government body.)
REFERENCES
Amelia Sharman (2013) Mapping the climate sceptical blogosphere, Open access paper can be seen here.
The bottom line is that thousands of dollars were spent on a blogroll study which discovered that skeptics “value scientific inquiry”, and are “alternative public sites of expertise.”
Sounds like completely well founded allegations to me!
164
On the periphery this appears to be a waste of time and money however the study may have been done with a purpose of advancing the ideological tenets of the ‘Climatology World View’, to categorise those opposed the ‘settled science’.
The slightly bothersome historical aspect for me is that another politically-motivated, environmental regime did the same thing some 80 years ago when a particular Doctor performed studies on a specific group to advance ideological tenets.
He later took a sabbatical to Brazil…
25
They havent thougth this thropugh very well…it seems this “audit” was done to try and get the dirt on sceptics.
If we did the same thing to alarmists, that woiuld be a tad revealing – perhaps someone shiuld do it when they find a 1:1 correltation between nonsense and CAGW…ouch….
43
The premise that climate science does not rely on evidence alone, yet is still science, is a bizarre oxymoron. If it is not evidence based, it is not science. The authors are saying up front that it is not science issue. Yet then go on and dig deeper, in a Lewandowsky-esque bit of faux science themselves.
222
The old paper begins with this:
Everything else is filtered through that tainted prism.
The best I can say about it is it is not as bad as Lewandowsky’s Recursive Fury, which is deplorable.
345
Cohenite
My biggest gripe is that there is no mention of the fact that leading sceptic blogs, like Jo’s, are helping in the urgent need to keep the Global Warming Industry honest. Obviously, there is still lots of work to be done here.
A couple of comments are need on the above statement:
1. All attempts by the Global Warming Industry to police itself have obviously failed.
2. The loathing and scorn poured on sceptics by the Global Warming Industry is clear evidence that it does like its ‘findings’ and ‘research’ being professionally audited, reviewed and dissected, which is why so much data and code is either not released or hidden behind paywalls.
3. Without dodgy, obviously inaccurate, computer models and manipulated data/statistics, where would the Global Warming Industry be?
203
In receivership, or in gaol.
50
Then there are blogs with no ads. The mind boggles.
What is it about the warmist religion? Totally not worth the ‘paywalled’ price to read it all, thanks to blogs like this.
200
I don’t allow google ads here either. Perhaps I’m crazy, but the estimates of income I’ve seen would not make much of a contribution to our annual costs so I decided it was not worth it for the pain of putting up with flashing boxes of distraction. I really detest some ads. And I think the “problem” with having a smart readership is that people filter and ignore the ads quite efficiently.
Hence I will advertise only select businesses with individual arrangements. Perhaps I’m too precious, because I certainly appreciate the financial help from donations. (Do readers appreciate not having ads? I should ask…)
430
Yes absolutely!
180
I certainly appreciate not having ads. Some sites are so annoying I use a piece of cardboard to cover parts of the screen.
140
(Do readers appreciate not having ads? I should ask…)
With Firefox and various extensions I never see an ad., but recognise your consideration in this respect.
60
Please keep the site ad free. Apart from being annoying distractions they potentially open you up to criticism for being influenced by the advertisers. God help you if you accepted an ad by a mining or oil producing multinational!
160
I have an ad blocker programme, and I suspect many other of your contributors will as well.
60
ditto
20
If you can keep it ad free, that would be awesome. If for some reason it became profitable enough to make it worthwhile, well, we all need to put food on the table.
60
I do not mind ads too much ,years on the internet have endowed me with selective vision , much as my wife claims that over the years I have developed selective hearing.
I am happy to subscribe to your site (St Helier,Jersey) and will do so again when you next run up the flag.
You should keep the flag aloft at all times though , just as encouragement.
100
But we appreciate it when we do not have to filter them! 😉
40
I’m one of those people who mostly ignores the ads. If an especially gross one comes up (some ads are really offensive and very poorly done), I will check the box on Google ads that says “I don’t like this ad”. Otherwise, I just scroll up or down to avoid the ads. I guess the whole process is wasted on me.
20
“…I decided it was not worth it for the pain of putting up with flashing boxes of distraction…”
Which is probably another reason that adds to the popularity of this site. No in-your-face ads, no flashy distractions just good honest fact based science, with honest criticism and opinions.
Thanks Jo, and my ad-blocker appreciates it too.
30
Good call Jo
20
Jo is the sun at the centre of the sceptic blogoverse? What would Kepler say?
90
My take is that the warmist world is now painfully aware of the impact skeptics have made and will continue to make. They won’t relent mind you, they’ll just have to actually spend time and make an effort to combat the points skeptics make. This paper is an early testing of the waters and carries the warmist denial virus just below the surface.
Carry on Jo, carry on skeptics, lets continue to educate these warmists!
300
The best way to deal with warmists is to ask them to show us the science they base their claims on.
If they refuse to lay all their science on the table, I ask why, and dont let up. They eitrher scream, at you and stornm off, or they come back twice as hard. I just keep asking for their data.
People watching eventually get it…..the Warmists will hang themselves eventually.
One thing I like about ( most ) Australians is once they have decided something is complete BS, unless you can soundly reverse that opinion with facts, they will crioss thier arms and look at you like youre demented….
Perhaps in other cultures “authority” is conveyed by social status, but here unless you can prove it – forget it.
Go home, Herman.
I actually think were at that point now – especially now the Green money pit has dried up ( rebates on solar etc are gone ) and the reality that the CAGW fairy at the bottom of the garden doesnt exist is sinking in, its all starting to sound very shaky.
When the latest chicken little “the sky is falling” starts, most peopel just flick past it in th enews. I suspect the eco nutters will try and milk the latest Cat 5 cyclone as global warming related ( oh joy…), but apparently we havent had one of these for quite some time, but peopel forget “quite some time” = “they have occurred before”.
Anyway, Jo just keep jackhammering holes of logic into the ( seemingly ) impregnable wall of the CAGW lie, and eventually the weight of so much BS will collapse on itself as the cracks of scientific logic weaken the argument ( as it should ).
40
My experiences are that in less than 10% of the cases they will actually try to trot out some science. In over 90% of the cases, they merely point to authorities for their justification. In other words, they have no clue what they are talking about. They simply blindly trust authority.
10
Flying Spaghetti Monster… RULES !!! 🙂
51
Really, it’s a hairball from the author’s cat. Spaghetti would be more orderly and easier to understand. 😉
10
From a starting point where Ms Sharman is obviously surprised, and a little confused by discovering that there are one or three sites that are serious about the real Physics and Chemistry, and Hydrology, etc. and are not so much concerned, with the psychobabble that provides the mystique of climate science, she then manages to get herself entwined in that very same psychobabble, gets herself further confused, and looses the plot entirely.
My view on all this is:
a) If what you are doing, only appears to be science because it has the word, ‘science’ appended to the end, then it is probably not real Science, with a capital “S”. Domestic science, used to be a subject, taught in High Schools to female students. It was all about cooking and making curtains. You get my drift?
b) If what you are doing, cannot use the observational data, as it stands, without corrections being applied, they it is definitely not real Science. It might be painting by numbers, but we are not sure.
c) If what you are doing, is intended to arrive at a general agreement on the outcome, with no dissent, then it is politics and not even science, with a small “s”, but rather “Spin”, with a capital “S”.
280
Rereke – can I tweak point b) because of a quite common experience of requiring observations to be made accessible to us humans. For example; observational data might be billions of data points of a scan (chromotography, MRI, satellite imagery etc) that essentially has zero meaning until corrections are applied so that the data is ordered and corrected. The observation is actually different flashes or echos or whatever of particular duration and intensity and not the resultant landscape, DNA sequence or picture of a heart pumping. Those things are inferred from the data but are not the observation.
The essential thing here is that the changes to the data follow a path that is well defined and reproducible such that 100% of the original data can be recovered.
76
Yep. I can accept that. It is a good point. As you say, the key thing is that the adjustments are published and reversible.
Thank you.
130
Well lucky me. I have the pdf of the online early paper. It is everything Jo describes and worse. The worse is that presumably intelligent people have wasted so much time, resources and effort that could be directed elsewhere. I admit to only reading part in detail at this point but am struggling to get anything from the experience. I am not looking forward to the conclusion, check out this grab I saw from my scan of it;
I am going to try to include, “specific scientific knowledge claim”, next time I am out to dinner.
150
When you are inside the tent it is hard to comment on the weather outside. It is also hard to see what is going on in the world around you.
This researcher needs to get out of their comfort zone and read the technical refutations of the main stream literature, because this is where the debate actually is. It is not on crank blog sites (of ether persuasion). It is not is not in the peer reviewed literature on this topic. It is not on activist or environmental sites. It is not found in Wikipedia. It is not addressed in much of the media, in news coverage or opinion pieces (with some notable exceptions) and never in the indoctrinated press including the ‘Guardian’.
The only places where some reasonable discussion is held are on a few so called skeptic blog sites (mind you these sites still cop a fair bit of the screamer comments on either side of the topic).
It is only reasonable that reasonable people with an on going interest will gravitate towards sites where there is some reasonable discussion, whether or not they agree with it.
Recently WUWT looked at some Alexa rankings of several well know climate blogs, both for and against, and generally the skeptic sites were clearly out ranking proponent sites, although all were strangely popular. It seems that our global climate is nearly as popular an item as porn on the internet. Now I don’t want anyone jumping to conclusions here, but it is almost like the weather or climate or whatever is akin to an online interactive action game.
Therefore my conclusion, based on a sample of one, is that the strange fascination of some with atmospheric physics (which used to bore me senseless as an undergraduate all those years ago) has now become the equivalent of the massively multiplayer online role playing game ‘World of Warcraft’ and we have of course two sides, the good hordes and the bad.
I don’t think this issue would have the same heat in (pun intended) it if the players thought they were not vying for world domination.
With this in mind, perhaps climate blogs are like game levels. You start with the trash sites and then progressively work your way up until you qualify for the Jo Nova, WUWT and Climate Audit sites. Therefore all who are reading this post have already traversed the many worlds of the Orcs and have now reached the 100th game level. Congratulations all.
121
There is something about the constricting feeling one experiences when the Enviro-Nazi’s jackboot is firmly implanted onto one’s throat while bound and gagged in the supine position that tends to attract one’s attention- it concentrates the mind so to speak.
60
Is there a game called “World of Spincraft”?
If not, there should be, because I often feel as though I am playing it.
In this game, ideas are presented to you in the most plausible way possible. Some of the ideas are perfectly valid, while others are total rubbish. By using your magic powers of “Deduction” and “Logic”, and “Intuition”, you can gain or lose points by trying to identify which idea falls into each camp. But beware, because some of the ideas that are rubbish can also contain a few grains of truth that can help you decide if another idea is good or bad.
Sorry, slow news day …
70
You say that when one of the news snippets is Elaine from Seinfeld did a nude Rolling Stone cover???
Yeah, I guess, slow news day…
30
And today I learnt that there was such a thing as “steel-cut oats.”
Yup, still slow…
20
It helps to realize that when someone is:
1. trying to get you to buy something you don’t want to
2. trying to get you to support something you don’t want to
3. trying to get you to vote in a way you don’t want to
4. trying to change your behavior in a way you don’t want to
Then it’s automatically spin that you’re being fed.
That pretty much solves the problem. And at least that way you make your own mistakes, not someone else’s.
50
It would appear that between the lines of this “study” that sceptics function from an objective, evidence based perspective (empirical science), with an indiviualistic mentality, are self reliant in resources and knowledge based on careful observation and critical analysis of the world around them, identifying nutritious facts amongst the toxic fiction, and are impervious to the abundant and toxic Gastrolobium supplied as feedstock from warmists and their trolls.
Whereas by constrast, warmists function from a subjective, activist, quasi religious/political perspective, are reliant on herd mentality (follow a manufactured belief) and are readily identifiable, just like sheep following blindly in the dust of other sheep in front on the way to
save the world“salvation”, salivating at the prospect of free food and water (grant monies and notoriety), swallowing poisonousconspirancy storiesweeds to fuel their rage.100
I bet you won’t be using that next time you’re out to dinner.
60
Back in the 50’s C.P. Snow came up with the idea of two cultures – Its thesis was that “the intellectual life of the whole of western society” was split into the titular two cultures — namely the sciences and the humanities — and that this was a major hindrance to solving the world’s problems. The educational system having since the Victorian era, over-rewarded the humanities at the expense of scientific and engineering education, which deprived the elites (in politics, administration, and industry) of adequate preparation to manage the modern scientific world.
It seems nothing much has changed. How many scientists are in the House of Commons, the House of Representatives or the USA Senate? They accept what they are told because they do not understand “the SCIENCE” and because all the hysterical claims about disasters coming shortly supposedly makes the public want action. It is slowly sinking in with politicians that much of that disaster talk is “bovine waste” and that the public couldn’t care less about global warming, especially if the “remedies” will cost them money.
The reason the Warmista talk so much about Eduction is that Propaganda, which is what they mean, is too emotive. It covers their torrents of barely credible claims aimed at scaring the punters and the increasing attempts to indoctrinate the young. Fortunately there is so little substance to their case that they aren’t making any headway, hence their need to find scapegoats.
120
What i dont understand is why so many people are so easily lead into Emo nonsense?
Surely most people run on logic not emotion?
How can you function in a physical world on emotion only? You can’t
“Feel” how to fix a car…..
10
Someone at work showed me a single page, A3 flowchart/diagram the other day that a team of public servants spent some time producing. It illustrated the interactivity between farmers and eco system components in our irrigation district. It looked similar to this model. My first comment was “what the hell is the point?” I mean what exactly are you hoping to glean from drawing a LSD affected spiders web to illustrate how farmers run over swamp harriers in harvesters?
Its pretty symptomatic of “environmentally aware” university types just emoting themselves into a frenzy.
180
There is a guy down the road from us, who keeps chickens, for the eggs.
One day, several chickens escaped from their prison quarters, and made a run for the neighbours front garden.
Unfortunately they were seen by a young Falcon, that swooped down and killed one and then dropped it, killed another, and dropped that one too, and finally managed to fly off with a third chicken.
Faced with two dead birds, the owner of the chickens offered to give one to his neighbour, in recompense for the mess left by the Falcon.
But that is not where the story ended. Another neighbour reported this incident to the authorities, who decided that the two chickens could not be plucked and cleaned and cooked and eaten, because they had not been killed in a humane way. The fact that they had died naturally, did not enter into the equation.
I was quite sad to see them take my chicken away.
220
why were you getting a chicken? Or “a guy down the road from us” was you?
314
Well done Mattb. You demolished his argument. Do you want to hear about my neighbour’s petunias?
60
petunias?
Nasturtiums.!
Always cast nasturtiums. !
Casting petunias has NO meaning.
33
Obviously he want to see it run around like a headless chook (and have dinner later).. or…..
…. just read your posts..
samo.. samo.
34
Again Mattb .. you produce a barely audible DRONE !!
You truly are a worthless piece of green sl*** !
82
Mattb…
Did you know that the GREEN SLIME that floats on water owes its very existence to CO2.
…..then it dies and sinks to the depths and putrefies, giving off CO2 and CH4.
64
I sense some hostility toward Mattb.
10
Mattb; Rereke was the neighbour, not the chicken owner.
00
Speaking of birds, a friend (in Canada) sold an antique singing-bird automaton – the kind of thing seen on Antiques Roadshow. Birds are made of plastic with bits of feather stuck to them. Siezed by US Customs, now in the hands of Fish and Wildlife who need an analysis of the feathers by a qualified ornithologist before they will release the item. It gets worse, if that doesn’t happen soon enough, or if there’s
any kind of hassle, F&W have threatened to destroy the unit. A 2,000 US Dollar antique. Methinks the EPA and F&W etc. have overstepped the bounds of common sense. See the F&W reports on ivory – antique violin bows and musical instruments having a small bit of ivory are being denied entry to the USA, even those belonging to master musicians for decades. Sigh.
50
What is designated as a “humane” way? And if the falcon killed them, who made the falcon subject to human laws? Does this apply to road-killed deer, etc?
20
I had to sit through a presentation made by some very under-worked people on the new system to be used in a mortgage processing centre. They showed a flow chart that had every box linked to each other by double headed arrows. Two years worth of work and it looked like at the last minute someone suggested that it wouldn’t be taken seriously without a flow chart.
I’m not sure but I think the lady’s name might have been Amelia.
30
I think my story of pointless diagrams was better lol 🙂
10
Well now! I feel better knowing I’m not the only one commenting about spider web drawings masquerading as something useful.
10
That network diagram reminds me of some Silurian acritarchs I once examined (have fun, look the word up). This effort appears just as dead.
30
Did they pass?
70
As a brief aside – the Wynne paper on cumbrian sheep farmers makes this observation-
“the scientists had made unqualified reassuring statements that had been proven mistaken and had not even admitted making a serious mistake”
Inevitably the deceived, ruined farmers seem to have become “sceptical” about Department of Agriculture science.
Incidentally the first line of Amelias paper, after the abstract, asserts the authority of the “97% consensus” papers
Doran & Zimmerman 2009 & Cook 2013 as the prime assumption of the logical structure of the work. It seems never to occur to her that the “argument from authority” might contain a little flaw.
On reading this I imagined her as a cumbrian shepherdess but instead of a crook, wielding a Geiger counter.
60
It is worth reading the last three paragraphs of Wynnes paper
as he sums up the relationship between “official” science and society including-
“ambivalence is treated as intellectual feebleness … but it may be the necessary corollary of a social commitment to disavowing the control of others…”
and “..it becomes evident why the quality of its institutional forms of organisation, control and social relations .. . is an essential subject of critical social and cultural evaluation”.
20
to conclude – this is exactly what sceptical blogs are doing – Amelia obviously did not read this far.
20
I’m going to add this additional quote:
“Thus, for example. the farmers implicitly recognized their social dependency upon the scientific experts as the certified public authorities on the issues, even if. as they indicated in interview, they held dissenting informal beliefs which they could defend along the lines described before. As one farmer put it: ‘You can’t argue, with them because you don’t know-if a doctor jabs you up the backside to cure your headache, you wouldn’t argue with him, would you?’, the suggestion being that when the expert tells you unbelievable things, you don’t overtly argue. thereby inviting denigration. As another said: ‘We can’t argue with them, but you can think your own ideas. I still think it [the radioactive caesium] was here before.’
These more private beliefs were rarely displayed in public, and the Parmers refused to confess to such dissent in media interviews.”
Skeptics are today more apt to express the “private beliefs”, having learned that the experts are not always right. Plus, skeptics are not sheep farmers usually–many have science degrees. People are now standing up and overtly disagreeing. This is very disturbing to scientists, who lived as “gods” in the information business, unquestioned, at least by sheep farmers.
The most interesting thing was the comment about the doctor- how many times have you had that rammed down your throat about “we don’t question doctors”. They are “experts” and you’ll look foolish if you argue. Now, people do stand up and demand explanations of their doctors.
60
Well put Sheri.
Its the difference between an inquiring mind and an automaton that believes science from authority is the only way science can be accessed.
Its possible to list many instances throughout history where inquiring minds have questioned medical authority and been right. Selecting a particular profession, then suggesting the members of that profession are somehow infallible or beyond reproach, as well as their views being beyond the understanding of the lay person is both unimaginative and provably wrong.
I bet these poor people wish they would have questioned their doctors a little more rigorously.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-408163/Doctors-removed-40-body-parts-wrongly-say-official-figures.html
30
as soon as i saw Sharman’s use of “climate sceptic blogs” in anthony’s thread, i lost interest. a couple of other excerpts i saw were such gibberish, i had no idea what she was talking about. the purpose seemed to be to suggest CAGW sceptic blogs are working in concert, & not the independent, lively, broad-based forums we know them to be. enough of that.
don’t know if any of you have been following the standoff with grazier, Cliven Bundy, in Nevada, USA, but many consider it another example of Agenda 21 in action:
Updated 10 April: UK Daily Mail: James Nye: Standoff in the desert: Last rancher in south Nevada takes on 200 armed federal agents and snipers trying to confiscate cattle from his ancestral land in constitutional dispute over a rare TORTOISE
Cliven Bundy is appealing for help to stop the Federal Bureau of Land Management and the FBi from removing his 900 or so cattle
He claims his family have owned 600,000 acres of Gold Butte since 1870
The federal government claims that the cattle are trespassing on arid and fragile habitat of the endangered desert tortoise
Heavily armed federal officers equipped with 9 helicopters and backed up with snipers have descended on the land
They have removed hundreds of the cattle in the past two weeks
The federal authorities say that Bundy has refused to pay for grazing rights for 20-years
Bundy has said the land is his and his constitutional rights are being trampled on
Eight helicopters are routinely circling the land and as of Wednesday, federal officials have seized 234 of Bundy’s 908 cattle.
It is estimated that impounding them will cost upwards of $3 million…
However, Bundy said he doesn’t recognize federal authority on land that he says belongs to the state of Nevada…
Speaking to the press on the outskirts of his land, Bundy said, ‘I have raised cattle on that land, which is public land for the people of Clark County, all my life…
‘Why I raise cattle there and why I can raise cattle there is because I have preemptive rights,” he said, explaining that among them is the right to forage.
‘Who is the trespasser here? Who is the trespasser on this land? Is the United States trespassing on Clark County, Nevada, land?
‘Or is it Cliven Bundy who is trespassing on Clark County, Nevada, land? Who’s the trespasser?’…
The situation escalated on Sunday after Cliven Bundy’s son, Dave Bundy, 37, was arrested for filming federal agents while outside an area designated for First Amendment activity on the restricted property. He was held overnight.
He claims he was beaten for ‘exercising his First Amendment rights’ and did not resist arrest as officers claimed…
Indeed, Nevada’s governor has criticized the cattle roundup and what he calls “intimidation” in the dispute…
The showdown pits Cliven Bundy’s claims of ancestral rights to graze his cows on open range against federal claims that the cattle are trespassing on arid and fragile habitat of the endangered desert tortoise…
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2601140/Standoff-desert-Last-rancher-south-Nevada-takes-200-armed-federal-agents-SNIPERS-trying-confiscate-cattle-ancestral-land-constitutional-dispute-rare-tortoise.html
i heard the journalist below speak about this online & refer to this article she wrote for Range Magazine in 2003:
2003: Range Magazine: Toni Thayer: Why You Can’t Trust the Trust
Bumper stickers around Grand Staircase Escalante warn against the Grand Canyon Trust.
I am an activist environmentalist and it just about took a two-by-four to the head till I believed it.
I set out to get a little information, enough to at least disprove the bumper sticker “Don’t Trust the Trust!” Instead, I was led into a worldwide
web of names-separate, entangled, and branched. I thought they were environmentalists, but they weren’t. I was finally investigating the Grand
Canyon Trust’s Board of Directors.
My boyfriend, Steve Gessig, badmouthed the Trust during our first two years together, blaming them for his town’s demise. He grumbled about the enviros’
connections to the World Bank and United Nations and plans to eliminate American sovereignty.
I, however, am the avid environmental activist and refused to believe his undocumented accusations. I had firsthand experience with the Trust in
Flagstaff, Ariz. For years, I worked with their staff on joint projects and committees, attended their workshops, and met in their offices. They were my
friends…
Living in Escalante, Utah, Steve’s perspective was different, encircled by the United States’ largest land theft, the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument. The Trust spearheaded the designation in 1996 with a mission to protect and restore the Colorado Plateau canyon country…
The Trust made promises back then: “Other existing uses of these public lands are not affected by the proclamation [of the monument], including hunting, fishing, hiking, camping and livestock grazing.”
They lied. The 1.9 million acres have been shut down with access allowed in only a few areas. New federal workers moving into town freely come and go, beyond the “restricted” signs that keep locals from their families’ traditional sites. New resource production has ceased even though the area is rich in coal, oil, gas, uranium, and timber. The world’s cleanest-burning coal is located in only two spots—the Monument and Indonesia. The Grand Staircase field is so vast it can’t be accurately valued. It has tentatively been estimated at $1.3 trillion.
The Trust doesn’t want any cattle grazing on the Plateau, an idea that’s backed by federal government intimidation and harassment of the ranchers. The ranchers are feeling the pinch of the oppression, the drought, and their rising debt. They’re selling out and ending centuries-old family cattle careers. Enviro groups are scooping up their grazing permits…
It was hypocritical and outright wrong for Americans to consume most of the world’s resources and, at the same time, shut down our resource production. Then what? Go to other countries and rape and pillage their landscapes to fulfill our hungry resource needs?…
Rural, southern-Utah towns are reeling from the never-ending limitations and changes put upon them by the “citified” environmental groups…
http://www.rangemagazine.com/archives/stories/winter03/dont-trust.htm
91
I cannot champion a man who basically flipped of the government for 20 years and is now in trouble. He’s not a hero–he’s a person who wants his own way and is going to do whatever it takes to show the government HE’s the BIG GUY here. This is ego and very bad form. Range wars and disputes have gone on forever in the West, as have people who think they can do anything they want. Mr. Bundy is not a hero–just a jerk. (As for the snipers, I’d take armed individuals to confront such a person. He has a wild west mentality and I consider his behaviour to be threatening.)
Yes, the government lies a lot and makes promises you can keep grazing cattle and then breaks the promises (just like keeping your doctor). I guess we should have learned when we studied those Indian treaties the government signed and promised to keep.
As for enviro groups scooping up permits, didn’t people say for years “if you don’t want grazing, you don’t want hunting, buy the permits”? Be careful what you suggest as an alternative. Sometimes people actually do listen.
13
Just out of curiosity, Jo, did the paper label you/your site as “category 1 (openly sceptical)” or “category 2 (self-proclaimed ‘openminded’)”? And your thoughts?
From a scientific view of the terms, I’m actually having a little difficulty distinguishing much difference. From a humanities or “97-percenter” perspective, however, I can see the distinction.
40
Jo the way you restrained yourself to be polite in this post made it even funnier. 🙂
Wouldn’t it be nice to see the warmists attempt the same professionalism, but I guess when your losing a debate aggression is the next step…
60
Yonni,
Just by doing this sort of study they’re admitting they’re on the defense. So of course they’re aggressive. I don’t think polite squares very well with being in that position.
Were they honest it would help. If they would debate it would help. Instead we get stand up comedians publishing incomprehensible diagrams and sticking their final version behind a pay-wall as if that somehow shows that the work has some value. In reality they should pay us to read this stuff.
40
Hang on a minute!!
First, whilst it shouldn’t matter, Amelia is from New Zealand and as I understand it is very pressed to finish her PhD so unfortunately, may either be traveling or not be able to put her case. So let me put it as well as I can.
I haven’t read the current paper, but as Jo says that it is substantially the same paper, I know there is no reason whatsoever for all these mis-aimed comments.
Amelia, was doing research into the blogosphere. You may or may not think that social research into the blogosphere is worthwhile (I do), however that is not Amelia’s concern as she got the PhD and she now should be judged on whether she has done what she was asked to do at a good standard. And I’ve no doubt she has.
Originally she looked at the Democrat blogosphere, but found the number too great to analyze. So she found the skeptic blogosphere and chose that as her study area to determine how the blogs were linked. So, she just happens to have picked skeptics to study and nothing in her work suggests she has done anything but a first class job PARTICULARLY GIVEN THE CLIMATE IN WHICH SHE IS WORKING WHICH TOLERATES PEOPLE LIKE LEWANDOWSKY!
She has been respectful to those running the blogs, her analysis and conclusions appear to be robust and generally she appears to have worked in a neutral way drawing her conclusions from the evidence available in just the way we skeptics ask.
Indeed, the evidence that she is approaching the subject in an impartial and even scientific way comes from the donkey’s mouth of the academic who runs “And then there was Physics”:
Why are they studying the “sceptical blogosphere”? Also, why have they so easily bought into the sceptical narrative? Many of these sites regard themselves as the true sceptics, but – in my opinion – they really aren’t. Why have serious researchers allowed these sites to dictate the narrative? Also, what assumptions do people who work in this area make? Do they assume that they need to remain objective? Are they not allowed to have a view as to whether or not the science presented on these sites is credible?
Notice that phrase: “Do they assume that they need to remain objective? Are they not allowed to have a view .. “.
This is one of the arch alarmists criticising her and wondering how it is possible that someone in academia is not pushing the party line on global warming alarmism.
And personally have found her work incredibly useful. Indeed, after reading her work and doing my own analysis of the skeptic blogs I created the uclimate.com website.
The only issue I have with her work is that according to that stats on uclimate Climate Depot is the top ranked site (by clicks from uclimate readers).
50
One observation that I should like to make is that when one reads the paper ‘Mapping of Climate Change’ by Amelia Sharman, it is the constant use of (- – -)’s to make reference to other works.(by presumably agreeable fellow authors’ and academics who’s works/articles will give support and credence to her own arguments!)If this is not a case of networking within some sort of ‘Blogosphere’then what else is it?Are all acedemic papers like this? She is guilty of the very thing that she accuses the sceptics of! Does her work not stand alone?! Is she so insecure in her argument that she has to make constant reference to her academic peers ,or just to show off how well read she is? What rubbish and hypocrisy! And someone presumably pays her to do this! What a load of waffle!
Geoff W Sydney
50
If she accuses skeptics of being anything it is of being social!
This is a straightforward analysis which helps to understand the social relationships within a community of blogs.
She would probably have had pretty much the same set of relationships within a group of train-spotters or knitting blogs. And instead of “skeptics tend to be interested in science rather than politics” she might equally have said “trainspotters are interest in train engines” or “knitters are interesed in clothes”.
51
The ones I have read are. Academics quote other studies all the time. It’s because they don’t have time to do the original research over again. Most papers have many, many references to other papers. You can get lists of the papers that quote a study, on Google, I think. Papers list “referenced” papers at the end.
Mike: That was my thought, too. Most blogs have blogrolls or suggested links. For one thing, it helps in the search engine wars. And because people with like interests read much the same materials. What a surprise, right?
40
It would probably be better if a similar study was made of the CAGW blogs (Skeptical S etc.) and then contrasted with this work. You would probably find a small central hub that have a geodesic distance approaching 1. What to conclude from such a measure (other than the one expounded in the climate gate emails) I wouldn’t like to say…….
30
Whilst almost all skeptic blogs prominently display links to other sites (including alarmist) I found it incredibly difficult to get links from “believers” to other sites. It is almost as if they are in commercial competition with each other and so wouldn’t want to promote commercial competitors for donations whereas the skeptic blogs are just individuals with very altruistic motives.
60
RealScience has a listing (which interestingly includes the Christain Science Monitor) and a few others do. SkS and DeSmog probably don’t want any competetion.
10
Cheap policies across the board are looking favourable against the background of the Labor Debt Tsunami. They quintupled the debt (adding an extra 240 billion dollars) on the national credit card in just 4 years from Jan 2009 to mid 2013.
There are those who will probe the validity of climate catastrophist science simply for the sake of seeking truth. We can already see the alarmists and IPCC boffins are not of that ilk.
Most others will question the validity of climate catastrophe science mainly because the cost of the response policies is enormous. Labor’s debt didn’t create the “climate faux-crisis” but Labor’s willy-nilly spending of taxpayer money has made return on investment more important than ever in the Treasury.
Who’s not sure? People who do not believe that arithmetic applies to carbon atoms are the only people who are “not even sure whether man-made emissions drive the atmospheric level of CO2 directly”. Your previous Salby worshipping is counter-productive. Repeat the following two statements until you understand how they are true:
• The high correlation between the brake pedal position and the car’s speed does not imply the brakes are moving the car forward.
• The high correlation between the ocean temperature and the rate of CO2 increase does not imply the ocean is the source of rising CO2.
Repository delta measurements and conservation of mass are the way to the truth of the matter.
The Grantham institute does not need dictionaries for writing ageist bilge such as Tristan Edis’ latest consensus taunt “Oldies don’t believe in global warming“. These are the policy wonks who advocate “intergenerational equality” by day then stoke intergenerational hatred by night. Dictionaries are for people who want unambiguous and consistent meaning in their words. Considering the critical importance of doublethink to their project, a dictionary would be an impediment.
90
Andrew,
There is a difference between saying that man-made CO2 emissions “drive the level of atmospheric CO2 directly” vs. saying that man-made CO2 emissions CONTRIBUTE to the level of CO2 in the atmosphere.
Clearly, I think any reasonable person would admit that man-made CO2 emissions CONTRIBUTE to the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere.
Equally clearly, I think that any reasonable person would probably say that what DRIVES levels of atmospheric CO2 DIRECTLY would probably be the oceans, and NOT man-made CO2 emissions.
40
Putting words in capitals doesn’t make any difference. It’s a distinction without a difference.
The temperature goes up. The CO2 goes up.
The temperature goes down. The CO2…uh… still goes up.
60
Andrew,
It isn’t a “distinction without a difference”.
In any process, there are contributing factors, and there are drivers. It is important to understand the difference, and to properly identify what is a driver, and what is merely a contributing factor.
My personal belief is that “man-made” CO2 (which isn’t really man-made at all, it is simply the result of man combusting completely natural materials), is not the primary driver which controls the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere. It is a minor contributing factor.
Further, it is also my belief that CO2 (regardless of source) is not the driver of “climate change” or of global temperature. Clearly, the main driver would be the Sun. CO2 is a (very) minor contributing factor.
What should be the biggest debate in the whole field of climate science right now is, “What is the primary driver controlling the Earth’s climate.” The “warmists” seem convinced that the driver (or main control knob) is indeed CO2, and (moreover) specifically the fraction of CO2 in the atmosphere specifically attributable to human activity. I strongly differ with them on that opinion and believe (based on current evidence) that CO2 does not drive or control the climate at all, but it may be a minor contributing factor.
Does that make any sense?
50
I understand that elements from Lead (Pb 83) upward can be created or destroyed. But Gold (Au 79) can not be created or destroyed. Which is why we could never turn Lead into Gold.
Carbon is 6 on the periodic table, Oxygen is 8.
These elements existed long before man came into existence, and will exist long after. They are not man-made.
At some point in history they have been captured in the structures of coal and oil. Man simply releases them.
The more relevant question is “how long does carbon dioxide remain in the atmosphere?”. My understanding is about 7 years before it get absorbed into the ocean, in which case, who cares.
20
Andrew,
A green thumb for #22, plus dozens more. Well said. Especially the part about dictionaries.
30
Andrew, I think Jo’s comment that we can’t be sure that the increase in CO2 is definitively human-induced is perfectly valid from a scientific stand-point. Salby has produced some very convincing counter-arguments to the IPCC’s, but I feel Tom Segalstand and Jaworowski already thoroughly decapitated the IPCC’s view that the increase in CO2 is mainly man-made in their brilliant 1992 paper ‘Atmospheric CO2 & Global Warming: A Critical Review’. On my blog I’ve detailed some of their arguments under the post ‘Digging into the core, Why the increase in CO2 is probably natural’ if anyone wants to check it out.
10
So, to sum up:
In the cosmic spaghetti of the skeptical blogosphere, Jo, you are one of the three central meatballs!
Keep up the good work Jo, the reason I visit sites like yours is because I am a scientist myself, and it seems that only sites like yours and Anthony’s and others on the skeptical side of things do (and recognize) actual science.
On the other side of the equation it seems like there are a lot more charlatans and snake oil salesmen pretending to “do science”.
You know that society is in trouble when the charlatans and snake oil salesmen are the ones in power… time was when the general public was smart enough to recognize the charlatans and the snake oil salesmen and they were generally reviled.
90
But are you a “skeptic scientist” who bases their assertions on the evidence or just an ordinary scientist who thinks anything getting past peer review is science?
(Rhetorical question!)
30
Since I like to answer rhetorical questions, I will say that “If it cannot be backed by observation and empirical evidence, it isn’t science!”
60
“ordinary scientist” that’s funny, LOL.
00
Lets try and dig around a bit and see if we can figure out what is driving the motives for Amelia Sharman’s study and it’s publication and maybe there are some interesting directions on the future for quite a lot of the participants in the Great Global Warming Debate / Debacle
Now I have never been directly involved in science but have occupied a spot on the fringes for more than three decades.
Science research projects like any human endeavour is usually started by an idea from an individual reinforced by a discussion between individuals or within a very small group that will start one or more participants in those discussions down a particular pathway, usually encouraged and egged on by some other participants in that same small group.
The beginnings of most science projects and their consequent papers and studies probably follow this pattern.
Now all the following is purely hypothetical but I would lay money that it is roughly the mentality that drove this study by Amelia Sharman.
Four and half years on I think most of the skeptics are now inclined to forget and to seriously underrate the impact that the October 2009 Climate Gate mail releases had on the confidence and hubris of the climate catastrophe advocates in climate catastrophe science and the green left eco loon brigades.
In October 2009 the climate catastrophe cult was supreme and had most of the western nation’s populations convinced of a near future hell fire on Earth from increasing CO2 unless we did something drastic to limit CO2 emissions.
But suddenly the very climate science and it’s advocating scientists that the entire catastrophic global warming catastrophe meme was based on were caught in the glare of the headlights of the massive publicity of the Climate Gate mail releases that showed just how ragged, lying, manipulative, suspicious, revenge seeking and shamefully sparing with the truth the scientists at the peak of the CAGW meme actually were and it really shook up the sky high confidence and hubris of the cultists of the CAGW faith.
But imminent in Nov of 2009 was the massive, end of global climate travails, politically all encompassing Copenhagen Conference with it’s rag bag collection of world leaders in attendance and it’s promise to create an all powerful, unaccountable UN based global energy and economy controlling body which at the Copenhagen Conference the collective of world leaders would be prepared to sign away their nation’s rights to running their own nations in their own people’s rights and interests which were to be subjugated to the interests of the welfare of the planet and it’s climate.
So all was well in the climate fear inducing propagandizing eco groups who as Greenpeace openly proclaimed at the time, intended to have a seat at the table of that UN global energy and global economy controlling body.
Copenhagen as we know, failed and failed spectacularly as national leaders had come to realise just how much they would be signing away to an unrepresentative UN swill over whom they would never have any effective control short of a major diplomatic and possibly a savage physical confrontation between the pragmatists and nationalistic anti UN and anti control groups and the idealistic, impractical but rabid and radical supporters of a UN based global committee that with it’s predominance of rabid and radical eco groups and leftist loons would be trying to take mankind back to the stone age in the interests of their versions of saving the planet.
So the politicians walked away and the whole hubris laden global warming catastrophe cult crashed in a dung pool of its own making.
And now quite suddenly with Climate Gate and the Copenhagen debacle, the skeptics and the major and most influential skeptic blogs could no longer just be written off as loonies intent on the destruction of the planet with big oil or what ever financing them and egging them on.
They had quite suddenly gone from a serious nuisance value to a serious threat to the CAGW ideology
And note the stages that the CAGW belief system itself has gone through until we have in effect today a form of way out there, schizophrenic climate catastrophe cultism at the hardest end of the CAGW believer spectrum
So the various radical eco loon groups and the leftists of every stripe [ Gillard Rudd and etc ] all worked furiously to keep the whole by now stinking, sinking ship of CAGW afloat including renaming it a few times.
But it has continued to slowly founder and continues sinking.
The hubris and self righeousness of the Climate catastrophe cultists of old is going and is very nearly gone, exacerbated by the complete failure of Nature to continue to show any support for the cultists by continuing to warm things up despite that most dangerous of green house gases, that deadly “Carbon” aka CO2 continuing it’s steady increase in the atmosphere.
So the cultists are getting desperate.
Nothing seems to be going their way and the Skeptics and their blogs are still there despite the fact as is well known in the highest echelons of the eco groups and the science hard liners of CAGW, that the skeptics and their blogs get no support of any sort from industry or government to keep going.
And still they keep going and creating major and increasing disbelief in the CAGW meme amongst the populace despite the billions of dollars over the last couple of decades being thrown down the gurgler by the eco loon groups and climate hardliners in propagandising against and trying by fair means and foul to eliminate the skeptical blogs and their adherents by threats, trying to bring into question their motives and their understandings of the climate science and generally trying to destroy their standing in the populace.
All to try and re-inforce and regain some of their own initiatives and standing so as to be still be in a position to be able to implement their own draconian, despotic programs of control over global energy and through that the economies of whole nations and consequently over the very basis of modern global society and Earth’s peoples in the name of saving the planet.
Even the most rabid climate catastrophe ideologist is getting very flustered as the global temperatures still continue to refuse to obey the strictures of the global warming faith and have broken the apparent lock step with rising CO2..
Nothing is working for the climate cultists and they are rapidly losing their grip on the populace, the political processes and their control of energy producion as Europe is already well on the way to reducing and probably eventually eliminating all subsidies and concessions of every type to the so called renewable energy industry , all the while building new coal and gas fired power plants as the realisation dawns that Europe is de-industrialising and that spells economic disaster for the future thanks as is increasingly being realised, to the energy deprivation policies espoused by eco loons and the climate hardliners for the last two decades.
Wit hubris gone, policies failing, politicians doors now shut to your entreaties, bureaucrats looking the other way when you walk into a meeting, Nature itself giving your most closely held ace , that anthopogenic CO2 is THE reason for the increase on global temperatures, the big two finger salute, lots of new science being published some from scientists you could rely on to bend the facts and models quite a bit your way but who are now reneging on that agreement and trying to tell it as they see it and to cap it off the skeptic blogs just keep on keeping on and getting bigger smarter and sassier every day with more and more of the populace taking a peek at those skeptic blogs to try and find out just what the hell is happening at the moment to all the guff about that dangerous warming or what ever it is.
Somebody, as is the way of human nature, has to be to blame for this debacle and the failures of the alarmists meme.
And what better object to blame but those no longer just pesky but deadly to the ideology, those damn skeptic blogs which seem to survive and thrive despite everything done or threatened to be done be them, reputationally, financially [ a bit hard that one when none of those skeptic blog owners seem to have any visible means of financial support to attack ] even the stealing of documents and the creation of fraudulent documents to destroy reputations of their owners, the attempts to destroy their professional reputations, the maneuvering to get the dismissal of editors that print skeptic papers.
And so it goes but nothing seems to dent the skeptic sphere of increasing influence and operations.
So somewhere a small, group of climate catastrophe cultists were sitting around asking themselves why it was all going wrong and nothing seemed to be working.
Until one of them suggested that just maybe we don’t really understand just how this skeptic thing actually works after all these years. And somebody else suggests it might be good subject for a research paper and so we have it, an examination and a paper of the skeptic blog sphere, researched with prior biases and inherent bigotry and all the science consequences that arise out of starting from a pre-concieved and bereft of neutral and uncommitted psychological viewpoint.
Read Sharman’s paper in this light and it shows far more desperation in trying to understand what the hell is going on with the skeptic blog sphere than it ever does in pure unbiased non bigoted research into a very new and very innovative and remarkably flexible skeptic blogsphere, a trend of the future in so many fields yet to come.
80
Before anyone makes comments about Amelia’s motivation I strongly suggest they listen to her explain her own work here:
You can hear Amelia’s talk here.
In this presentation she explains that the research was about social networks and “science networks”. But she describes how she initially looked at the democrat blogs as a potential community and then chose climate skeptics.
She also mentions climategate as affecting the dates she chose for the analysis.
10
Mike Haseler
April 11, 2014 at 1:30 am
After all that Loonendowsky, Cook, Nucatelli, Gore, Monboit and so many other climate alarmist cultists have attempted over a decade and a half to delegitimise, denigrate and destroy the Skeptic blog scene in the public’s eyes, it is only natural that all genuine skeptics and skeptic participants in the blogs will view any so called scientific investigation of any aspect of skepticsm with their own very deep sceptical approach as to the honesty, integrity and real and possibly hidden nefarious motives of the alarmists researchers which is exactly how Amelia Sharman’s contribution is being viewed and with considerable justification.
Right at the start she verifies my comment in my above post on the fact that despite all those years past where the skeptic blogs have been operating, the alarmists still do not know or understand just how those skeptic blogs operate or what the motivations are that drive both the blog owners / operators and their highly opinionated commmenters and contributors.
And that can be put down without any other considerations, to the outright arrogance, the hubris and the total all pervading collective incestuous contempt of the alarmists for any skepticsm about their beliefs, a mentality which has precluded and seriously inhibited any alarmist researchers from actually having a close look at just what motivates and drives those despicable denying Skeptics.
Why would one when you are totally convinced that you and your fellow believers are completely right and without fault in your beliefs of a catastrophic climate future for the planet, ever bother with a miserable mob of unbelieving skeptics who are dead wrong, who deny the real and actual truth on the man made dangers destroying the global climate and who are beyond the pale in social standing in that they are nothing more than a bunch of lying provocateurs paid by immense vested commercial interests to oppose the truth of the world going to hell in a ball of fire all due to mankind’s stupidity.
And so ignorance of the skeptic blog sphere has become an inherent part of psychology and belief system of the alarmists.
And that is the starting point for Amelia Sharmans’ paper and research.
As Jo has pointed out in her headline post, Sharman used only a one type of web scanner to try and find and define the central “assumed”. “assumed” in a chaotic, mixed up, ever fluctuating skeptic blog scene, the main central skeptic blogs around which all the others linked to or polarised around.
And that was the first major flaw in Sharman’s whole exercise.
The web is so diverse and so chaotic that any number of web crawlers will probably never provide an accurate verifiable picture on just who is doing what and where on any particular aspects of any specific subject when accounting for all the immense diversity that makes up the World Wide Web.
So right from the start her original hypothesis is wide open to being quite wrong.
And if the starting data and original premises on which the research is based is wrong then anything that comes out of the so called research is basically useless.
The next point, the blog rolls of the skeptic blogs used to analyze the network of the skeptic blogs and their standings and influences in the skeptic blog world is laughable. If each blog owner treated the sequence of blogs in each blog roll quite equally in the way they are listed then there would be grounds for using blog rolls as a data source.
But again as Jo points out, each blog owner has their own approach to their blog roll as it is listed and if it is listed on their blogs.
So that very unequal approach to the importance and the sequencing of the links in a blog roll is again basically useless unless each blog owner could be persuaded to rank each of their listed blog links in a rating index.
Quite frankly when it comes to using blog links to base some serious research on Sharman could have used something like my Address book where there are dozens of listed contacts accumulated over the years most of which are no longer valid contacts or links.
She could have got that same spaghetti graph just by rounding up her group of friends and got access to all of their address book numbers and links from over the years and drawn up a similiar spaghetti graph of those linkings and status standings amongst her friend’s circle.
And presented that spaghetti graph in her paper.
It would have been totally indistinguishable from the spaghetti graph in her paper and had just as much veracity as the one that purports to show the interlinks and status of all the major skeptic blogs,.
In a very small nutshell her paper as any sort of claimed scientific research is not worth the paper it is written on.
31
I always enjoy your replies and responses, ROM, and this is no exception, being spot on in your evaluation. Whatever Ms Sharman’s personal attributes and intentions, her research (such that it is) is implicitly and explicitly flawed as a result of unwarranted assumptions at its very core. What the research should acknowledge is that sceptics hold the moral high ground in the climate debate (importantly- regardless of whether we are eventually proven right or wrong) as advocates of scientific honesty, openness, transparency and frank acknowledgement of the limitations of our understanding of our climate as a highly complex system which is unpredictable and unable to be accurately modelled at our present level of understanding.
Our collective disgust at the blatant confabulations of the case for CO2 mitigation, and the fraudulent and manipulative misrepresentations of political activists in railroading the debate down the path of economic destruction, has led more scientifically literate people who are not persuaded by weak arguments to form clandestine partnerships in launching and perpetuating a global resistance movement similar to that established in Vichy France in response to Nazism.
The fact is that the majority of skeptics are smarter, better organised, more pragmatic, and more intrinsically capable than their alarmists counterparts, whose narcissism and emotive reasoning are not up to withstanding the hard facts of observations which run contrary to their predictions, nor the inherent inconsistencies in their advocacy.
50
Thanks Winston 🙂
20
Recently I had an exchange challenging someone offering an assumption shared by warmists, namely that CO2 raises the effective radiating altitude, thereby warming the troposphere and the surface. Now this notion can be found in textbooks and indeed operates in all the climate models. Yet there is no empirical evidence supporting it. What data there is (radiosonde ballon readings) detects no effect from IR active gases upon the temperature profile in the atmosphere.
Of course the other person disengaged, and I later saw his comments repeating the claim as though no issue had been raised. This causes me to consider our Mcluhan global village, rife with rumors, fears and opinions, all fueled by the internet.
Once you realize that CO2 hysteria is nothing more than a set of shared assumptions, then all that matters is how widely shared are those beliefs (consensus). Those of us who insist on empirical evidence can only fight back by diluting the consensus and trying to help others come to their senses, one by one.
70
Yet there is no empirical evidence supporting it.
It may be science but it ain’t skeptic science!
00
But… but… Why hasn’t someone SAID it
yet?
PLEASE DON’T SQUEEZE THE SHARMEN!(:p)
20
I think it depends on how squeezable she is.
Maybe not very. 😉
20
Only Sweet Old Bob could say it! 😉
30
OK, I looked at the black scribble. At first I thought it might be a spider web. But then I realized it must be a hairball the author’s cat coughed up. But whatever it is, my knowledge of the universe is the same today as it was a week or a month ago.
I can’t help wondering if the diagram was done manually with pen and graph paper or on a computer. Funny that that question comes to mind as more important than what that black scribble is supposed to represent.
Can we get a refund?
Science needs an equivalent of the Better Business Bureau where aggrieved “customers” can make complaints.
Oh! Scuse me. We’re not qualified to make complaints, just to hand over the money. Now I get it.
20
The key thing is that it is a spaghetti ball. This shows that most blogs are strongly connected to other blogs without a rigid structure. In contrast, if the blogosphere were a “directed group” such as say the Scout Association – one would expect to find one “central HQ” to which everyone else was connected. Then perhaps a second tear like national campsites, activity website which a lot of Scouts groups found useful. Then there would be 1000s of very poorly connected “sites”.
So, if you had a highly co-ordinated social organisation, one would expect a very dominant single website connected to every other site so it would look like the spokes of a bicycle.
The fact that it doesn’t look like the spokes of a bicycle wheel and is more like a rat’s nest, shows that it is a community of relatively equal and highly interconnected sites.
This is strong evidence against the Lewandowsky conspiracy theory of some “hidden force” directing climate skeptics. It also shows that skeptics are highly altruistic and just generally “social”.
80
Mike,
In spite of my making fun of the whole thing I agree with you. We aren’t a single centrally controlled homogeneous group. We’re a bunch of independent thinkers. But that point has been made over and over. So why would someone undertake a study like this unless in the hope of discovering that we aren’t honest about who and what we are?
60
“We’re a bunch of independent thinkers. ”
Well some here are.
10
Mike
Am I right in thinking that you are arguing that Sharman is just using sceptical blogs as a means of evaluating a method of studying blogs of any particular area ? If that is the case should she not have been more specific in stating this ( if I have missed her explanation then I apologise)
10
Coming from the LSE/Grantham Institute this can only be an exercise in “know thine enemy.”
There is a real exasperation in the catastrophist world that while almost every part of the media and government has taken the consensus on board, they are not winning the hearts and the minds of the public. And while governments have been getting away with unpopular policies there is a definite turning of the tide of the voters away from voting for higher energy prices and unrealistic renewable ways to bridge the looming energy supply/demand gap. I think there are lots of reasons for this. Here are 4 off the top of my head:
# Inaccessibility and elitism
# Refusal to debate dissent
# Failed predictions
# Failure to acknowledge uncertainty
# Obvious political agendas
So someone at Grantham has asked the question “How are the sceptics getting so much traction without a publicity machine behind them? And how can we learn from them?” This paper could be a first step to identifying a new strategy for the alarmists.
So look out for a new blog from the Grantham Institute that tries to address the points above to try and win over a public who have much better things to worry about. Of course it will fail because the failings above are systemic and however they try the like of Bob Ward with not be able to keep the mask of openness and free debate going for very long.
Just my 5p.
50
An interesting post. From my observation, when social scientists see a group winning/losing a debate, they tend to seek social reasons to explain it. So, they tend to focus on social issues like politics, social connectiveness, psychology, etc.
This is quite amusing to watch as it completely misses the reason why skeptics are successful. The reason for this is that skeptics expect a much higher standard in their science and so there was always going to be a much higher chance that the the skeptic science would be sound and that is why we were always going to win this debate.
Perhaps a more pertinent question is why “science” has become a social construct meaning a self-identified group who determine their membership through peer review of each other. In other words, they are scientists if and only if they are peer reviewed by scientists. The scientific method (or should I say skeptic method) is now very much a “nice to have” in science. If you can use it – it’s preferable to do so, but if it too difficult to use the skeptic method, then … fine get your buddies to review your papers and you too will be a scientist.
50
That’s what social scientists do. It’s what they study. I’m not sure they are missing that skeptics expect at much higher standard for their science so much as that is not what they want to know. They work within their own limits and social scientists are often very poorly trained on the actual scientific methodology. Yes, they miss the science parts, but they really are looking for behavioural items, not the science. In the end, if they cannot find any behavioural components, they may have to look at the science.
50
Social ‘science’ is not science, it is mostly unsubstantiated opinions, glue to modeled data that’s been extrapolated from the smallest amount of anecdotal evidence. The rest they just make-up.
Sorry if I’ve offended anyone but the subject would more accurately called witchcraft. I does very little – good or bad, occasionally stumbles on a real truth (that to most others is blindingly obvious), and so very rarely will come out with something vaguely useful.
They make advertisers feel useful!
10
I observe that Lew and his crew are practicing what psychologists call “projection” (different from the IPCC kind). In psychological projection you see things like:
Claiming to be a victim of bullies, while at the same bullying others to get what you want;
Claiming that others have conspiracy theories, while firmly believing in a vast right-wing denial effort financed by Big oil and the Koch brothers;
Claiming that others are denying settled science, while agreeing with people who have trashed basic meteorology and atmospheric physics;
And so on.
30
Only the foolish waste money by researching who are, and what are the motivation of skeptics. If only replies to the many shortcomings of CAGW were coherently answered about the (UN)settled science of climate change.
Here is a quote from Reid Bryson, Emeritus Professor and founding chairman of the University of Wisconsin Department of Meteorology (now the Department of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences)
That is why there are skeptics, disprove his assertion with verifiable and repeatable science (not modeling!), and then we can move on to the next unanswered questions.
CO2 continues to rise, the magority from nature, so why has the global temperature paused…?
Why are climate models still used when their product is so evidentially wrong…?
Also clouds….?
40
Reading this post I come to think about my favorite blog several years ago. John Daly passed away to early.
http://www.john-daly.com/
A magazine named Nature is said to be a “journal of science”
20
I think the Wynne reference and statement actually means that if expert scientists didn’t keep producing work on a scale from flawed to rubbish, you, Anthony, Steve etc wouldn’t have anything like as much subject material to blog about. That is what they have said in the context of the citation.
I don’t think they actually MEANT to write that. I think they thought dropping in the Wynne reference would make them look clever.
00
“the scientifically abstract nature of climate science”
What? Quite apart from ‘values laden’, which I do not understand either, how can science be scientifically abstract? Is there a non science science? What part of the rationalism of Rene Descartes has just been thrown overboard? Does this new world mean that facts don’t matter? Is opinion really a new science, let alone this abstract thing now called Climate Science?
Or are they telling the truth, that Climate Science has long ago passed from the real world into an abstract world. Then it is Climate Fantasy. With his undergraduate degree in English from La Trobe, I used to see Tim Flannery as a science fiction writer. I am corrected. He writes Science Fantasy.
So bring on the science fantasy, without those nasty value laden facts, a world where more cyclones means Global Warming and fewer cyclones really proves Global Warming and the same number also means Global Warming. In the world of science fantasy, anything is true if you really, really want it to be true. Like a science Disneyland. I wonder what Tinkerbell and Goofy think of Climate Change?
60
11
On the subject of social science –
From The Pleasure of Finding Things Out[1981] interview with Richard Feynman and is available on Youtube, the transcription is at –
http://www.worldcat.org/wcpa/servlet/DCARead?standardNo=0738201081&standardNoType=1&excerpt=true
10
Science in general is on the decline, with very few exceptions. Not sure why but I think it’s because of lazy thinking and the greed for money.
20
Sites like the one below is the reason why science is on the decline – this is not science but more like a religious cult.
Adaptation, global warming and evolution
00
I’m sure there is a Jackson Pollock that Amelia’s diagram reminds me of, but I can’t find it.
However,Tomás Saraceno has a similar work:
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/494551602801750486/
00
Amelia now needs to do an identical study focusing on the Catastrophic Anthropomorphic Global Warming focused sites.
Those would be interesting results.
20
10 April: Bloomberg: Eric Roston: Titanic Climate Documentary Makes Reporters out of Hollywood Elite
That makes him (James Cameron) the ideal target for this question: ‘Rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic’ is a common cliche about how international climate talks never seem to go anywhere. Given your work on climate change and the Titanic, that sound right to you?
CAMERON: “A more apt metaphor is that the entire crew of the Titanic before it hit the iceberg had been replaced by a bunch of monkeys,” said Cameron, a National Geographic Explorer, who has visited the Titanic wreck a dozen times in submersible vessels. “There’s a period of time when the iceberg’s in sight, and you have to turn, but you’re not turning. That’s the period we’re in” with climate change.
Our pre-wreck period is chronicled with precision and unprecedented production values in The Years of Living Dangerously…
Cameron explained his standards for accuracy in documentary work (using a different part of his brain from the science-fiction generator, he said). “You have to look at the provenance of any statistic,” he said. “Where did it come from? How many people have signed off on that? Is it in peer-reviewed research? Are there dissenting voices? And are the dissenting voices minor enough that they don’t need to be credited at this point?”
It’s easy (for anyone predisposed to such a thing) to have science-envy of Cameron’s documentary work. This is, after all, a person who developed his own vehicle so that he could strap himself in and drop to the deepest part of the ocean.
Journalism too rarely draws on the methods of science. To counter the trend, this blog post was prepared as a controlled experiment, sort of. Right after interviewing James Cameron by phone, I bumped into a different James Cameron — the chairman of Climate Change Capital, a pioneer in international climate law, and a member of the advisory board of General Electric’s Ecoimagination…
The two Camerons have never met, although the lawyer and entrepreneur Cameron was confused for the Avatar and Titanic director by several inattentive people at the World Economic Forum in Davos, in 2010, when the director appeared, too…
“I’m absolutely ready to share space with creative people so that we can visualize how life could get better having solved this problem,” said Cameron, the GE advisor. “It might well be the less we talk about [climate] as a problem that might end humanity, we might solve it — without declaring as such that we’re solving it. That’s a visual challenge as much as it is a technical one.”
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-04-09/titanic-climate-documentary-makes-reporters-out-of-hollywood-elite.html
00
9 April: Mother Nature Network: Inside ‘Years of Living Dangerously’: A Q&A with producer Daniel Abbasi
MNN got the story behind the new, ambitious global warming series from the producer — and climate change expert — himself
MNN: How did you get involved with the project?
Daniel Abbasi: Joel and David already had a lot of the elements in mind. I’d been involved in the climate change issue for a long time. I was working at Mission Point Capital Partners to help people do carbon investing. They’d left “60 Minutes,” and I was thinking about what was next as well. And we talked about how we could raise the money for this…
Q: What experience in the environmental sector do you bring to it?
A: I’m not a climate scientist myself but I spend a lot of time with them. I was at the Environmental Protection Agency, in the policy office. I was appointed because I worked on the Clinton-Gore campaign, and in the course of that work I talked to a lot of scientists. I was the associate dean at the Yale school of forestry and environmental studies and worked on climate issues there. I now serve on the U.S. National Climate Assessment and we help scientists do and review their work. On the series, I weighed in on the science, the politics of the issue, the policy…
Q: What do you think is the most pressing climate change issue?
A: There’s a diversity of manifestations, but they all stem from the burning of fossil fuels, the deforestation, particularly in the tropical belts. Indonesia is the third largest emitter of greenhouse gases, after China and the U.S., where it’s because of industry; in Indonesia it’s because of deforestation. We need to dramatically reduce emissions. We have to have electricity generation that is de-carbonized, like solar and wind…
Q: Some on the political right see global warming as a liberal conspiracy. How did that happen?
A: In the ’90s, during the Clinton/Gore administration, the issue, unfortunately, did become quite politicized between Democrats and Republicans…
Our hope is that this show will be able to transcend that, because what we’re doing is we’re putting a human face on this…
Q: What are the plans for spreading the word?
A: There will be a companion website that will provide supplemental information about the stories, solutions and ways for people to act on them. One of our funders is Paul Allen and his production company is involved in developing social change initiatives and partnerships around this with the website that will carry out into the real world…
http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/climate-weather/stories/inside-years-of-living-dangerously-a-q-a-with-producer-daniel
00
10 April: Variety: TV Review: Brian Lowry: ‘Years of Living Dangerously’
The celebrity power fueling “Years of Living Dangerously,” Showtime’s multipart, James Cameron-Arnold Schwarzenegger-Jerry Weintraub-produced documentary devoted to sounding alarms about climate change, is inevitably a double-edged sword. Big-name stars obviously call attention to a project that otherwise might be lost in the shuffle, but they also make it easy for deniers to dismiss the message because of the messengers (oh those silly tree-hugging Hollywood dilettantes — though Schwarzenegger has right-wing street cred as a recent Republican governor). Nevertheless, this is a serious look at an important issue, and the fact its talking heads could just as easily be working on “Ocean’s 14” or “The Expendables 3” shouldn’t be held against it…
“Is there a way to discuss climate change,” Don Cheadle asks, as he ventures deep into the God-fearin’, science-hatin’ heart of Texas, “without politics or religion getting in the way?”…
“A thermometer is not Republican,” Cheadle quips at one point, and it should be noted Weintraub, too, is a Republican, so party affiliation isn’t the sole determinant in this conversation.
“Years of Living Dangerously” has been assembled with all the glitz of a major Hollywood production. It’s just that unlike most movies associated with the time of year when temperatures are supposed to rise, nobody knows in this one what the ending will be.
http://variety.com/2014/tv/reviews/tv-review-years-of-living-dangerously-1201153623/#
00
10 April: Reuters: Piya Sinha-Roy: Hollywood heavyweights put climate change manifesto on TV
As temperatures continue to rise and habitats come under threat, a group of Hollywood heavyweights is seeking to bring the spotlight back on climate change with a new documentary…
Cameron believes that progress can only come from legislative change.
“I think the U.S. is trailing the pack. I think the U.S., instead of showing the kind of moral leadership that it should, is being shamed by almost every other country in the world that’s actually taking action,” the director said…
Bringing Hollywood voices to the issue has its advantages…
“If people are watching people whom they associate with escapist fiction, laying bare some sobering facts, it may lend a resonance they wouldn’t otherwise have,” said (Michael C.) Hall, who traveled to Bangladesh, a nation threatened by the rising sea levels…
With “Avatar” sequels planned in 2016 and 2017, Cameron said the films will be “about our connection to nature and our connection to each other.”
Joining the documentary’s celebrities are the scientists, a group of nine advisors who aid the stars in making the scientific case about climate change.
But the documentary also acknowledges the climate change skeptics, from the Texans who believe droughts are brought on by the hand of God, to the scientists who believe global warming is part of the planet’s natural process…
But Cameron makes clear he is skeptical of the skeptics.
“I think it’s important to analyze each of the skeptics’ arguments very carefully and when you analyze them, they fall apart; they fall apart in the light of science.”
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/04/10/us-climatechange-idUSBREA390UM20140410
00
10 April: MissoulaNews: We are the new polar bear
Scientist M. Sanjayan talks about his upcoming television series “Years of Living Dangerously”
Q: What do you think of the recent and dire report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that basically says no one will come out unscathed?
MS: If you look at the first IPCC report you would almost want to put the polar bear on the front of it … The good thing about this recent IPCC report is that it squarely puts the focus on humans. When you read this report you’re like, ‘Oh I get it. We are the polar bear.”…
Q: How did you become interested in climate change?
MS: I’ve always felt like a bit of a fraud talking about climate change. Some years ago, Steve Running [University of Montana climatologist] and I were lucky enough to meet David Letterman out in Eastern Montana where he has a home. After that meeting, Letterman invited me on his show. He preceded to really pummel me with questions about climate change—not in a mean way, he was charming as can be. But it was clear that this was an issue that deeply mattered to him and that I, as a lead scientist for a big environmental organization, The Nature Conservancy, should have answers. I was repeating things I’d learned in books and papers. I was intellectualizing it and ducking and weaving so that I wouldn’t get caught basically with my pants down not really having an answer on late-night TV.
It was kind of funny and it worked for television; I don’t come off looking bad, but it scared me inside. I realized that if I was to get out there and tell the story about climate change I had to do it with a lot more conviction. I had to feel it in my bones…
http://missoulanews.bigskypress.com/missoula/we-are-the-new-polar-bear/Content?oid=1953710
00
10 April: Medill Northwester Uni: Elle Metz: Panel urges group viewing of SHOWTIME’s climate change series to mobilize action
A panel of medical professionals and climate-change experts, hosted by communications group Climate Nexus on Wednesday, urged viewers to watch the show with family and friends in hopes that the series will spur climate change conversations and action.
“The television can be very passive,” said panelist Dr. Catherine Thomasson, executive director of Physicians for Social Responsibility. “The goal is to have people talking” and for them to realize “they don’t have to do it all themselves.”…
Humans are “motivated to change by individual stories of loss,” said Dr. Lise Van Susteren, a board member for the Center for Health in a Global Environment at Harvard; more so than by science and statistics.
People are “knowing figures behind climate change but not quite feeling it,” said George Marshall, the co-founder of the Climate Outreach Information Network.
Physicist Joe Romm, one of the series’ two chief scientific advisors warned that, if action isn’t taken, the harsh narratives featured in the show “will be everyone’s stories.” Climate change is “the most important story for all of humanity,” he said…
“There’s a widespread social silence” when it comes to climate change, Marshall said – in individual interactions, in the media and in politics. Two-thirds of people rarely if ever discuss climate change, he said.
Marshall urged people to “break the silence” by attending a series watch party. Viewers can host their own party or search for one in their area at 350.org.
“We form our views through conversation with people who share our values,” he said. By watching “Years of Living Dangerously” with these people and discussing its content, viewers will open up a climate-change dialogue.
Better yet, they’ll band together to take action, such as calling up their local political representative, said Thomasson.
http://news.medill.northwestern.edu/chicago/news.aspx?id=229657
00
The warmists “study” the sceptics the same intent as the Japanese “study” whales.
20
I would hope that they are not becoming cannibalistic!
00
It is possible that these central blogs in particular are not only acting as translators between scientific research and lay audiences, but, in their reinterpretation of existing climate science knowledge claims, are filling a void by opening up climate science to those who may have been previously unengaged by the mainstream knowledge process and, importantly, acting themselves as alternative public sites of expertise for a climate sceptical audience
I have been reading this blog for a number of years, I don’t usually post any comments. What Sharman has said above is pretty much true for me. I am not a scientiste, nor an expert on climate change or mitigation solutions ie: I am a layman.
I started reading this blog when I first heard about the issues Mann’s hockey stick and the tree ring data. The more I read, the more sceptical of the IPCC I have become. I value the contributions made by numerous people in the comments section and it really has educated and enlightened me to the scientific process. In essence I originaly believed in CAGW but through this site I now question the science. One thing I have learnt is that evidence will trump a projection from a model every time.
So, thank you Jo and thank you to the regular contributors.
30
It might help to understand the role of these blogs even more to mention a conversation I had with a journalist at the Glasgow Herald who I met to try to understand why I wasn’t getting anything about climate skepticism into the paper. At first I thought it was “they don’t like skeptics”. But when I started exploring wider issues, it turned out that they don’t even have a science correspondent any longer. It is also true that all newspapers are struggling to keep their head above water in the internet age.
There is no reason to believe that there aren’t just as many stories or particularly science stories as there used to be, so what is going on?
The answer is the internet. More and more people are going to the (free) internet for news. Given a geographically proportional number of bloggers. The number in Glasgow (1million people) will be relatively small – so the Glasgow Herald is still the place to go for much of the news around Glasgow. In terms of Scotland (5million), there are 3 or 4 competing national newspapers, anyone of which can be accessed online, so there is now fierce competition between the regional papers and likewise the number of bloggers is increasing.
But when we come to the billions worldwide, and subjects like “science” which anyone with a bit of spare time can blog on, and which requires a high degree of expertise – the Glasgow Herald just can’t hope to compete.
And when I realised that … it finally twigged … the reason I couldn’t get the “mainstream media” to cover skeptic material … was that people like Jo Nova, Watts, etc. are already the mainstream for this kind of material.
So, basically any “universal subject” which could be covered equally by any newspaper in the (English speaking) world is now so easily covered by bloggers working for free, that the “mainsteam” (I now call them dinosaur) news media just don’t have a hope of attracting the kind of people who want to read that material.
So, this whole idea of “Buying a newspaper” and reading “the news”, is a thing of the past. These days, people “graze” for their news in an a la carte menu provided by the internet. It is very much like the change from shops “with service” – where you waited your turn to be served, by a salesman who you were paying in order to push their ideas of what you wanted (at great price) … to self-serve supermarket of news, where you pick your own and so the price is much reduced (and a lot of salesman/journalists are out of a job).
20
Hi Jo!
Just posted this on your facebook wall.
Thought youd be interested in this.
James Camerons new mini series on climate change is almost on TV, but the first episode is now available on YouTube.
“Years of Living Dangerously is an eight-part global warming documentary from James Cameron featuring celebrity correspondents like Harrison Ford, Olivia Munn and Matt Damon.”
So there you have it. Celebrities preaching global warming to convince the masses.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brvhCnYvxQQ
00
As if Avatar wasn’t embarrassing enough.
00
James Cameron expects that people will sit through *eight* parts of his documentary? I doubt it. Public interest in CAGW is falling these days. He’d be lucky to get people to watch one part, forget about eight.
Further, he hopes people will gather in little groups to watch it and be inspired to become activists. Very, very unlikely.
Perhaps JC’s CAGW beliefs are so strong that he cannot imagine that people would sincerely hold any other point of view.
10
In Avatar, James Cameron describes the quest on the planet Pandora for the laughably named element “Unobtainium”.
Now James has returned with an eight part mini series about mankind’s quest on our own planet for a not so elusive element- “empty cranium”.
10
James Cameron does GREAT fun fantasy and Sci-Fi.
but that’s all it is. !!
00
Vitol energy trader leaves company – sources
April 10 (Reuters) – One of Geneva-based Vitol’s senior energy traders, Felix Euler, has left the company, three trading sources said.
https://www.pointcarbon.com/news/reutersnews/1.4822345
10 April: Reuters: Germany seeks arrest of Briton in carbon trading scam
Frankfurt prosecutors on Thursday sought the arrest of a British national in connection with suspected tax fraud worth 58 million euros ($80 million), widening a carbon trading probe that has also drawn in Deutsche Bank.
Authorities issued an international arrest warrant for Faisal Zahoor Ahmad, 33, saying that as general manager of a Munich-based company called Roter Stern GmbH, he evaded taxes through trading European Union carbon emission certificates…
Reuters was unable to reach Ahmad or any representatives of Roter Stern for comment. Roter Stern was suspended from trading on the Munich-based Bayerische Boerse’s carbon platform in 2010 and was dissolved after insolvency proceedings the same year.
The warrant broadens the carbon trading scandal that has also affected Deutsche Bank, where prosecutors are investigating 25 staff, including co-Chief Executive Juergen Fitschen and finance chief Stefan Krause, on suspicion of tax evasion, money laundering and obstruction of justice.
Deutsche Bank, contacted by Reuters on Thursday, referred to its December 2012 statement in which the bank said it was cooperating fully with the authorities…
British tax authorities declined to comment on the investigation…
Investigators have looked Europe-wide into networks of trading companies that were established purely to carry out such fraud…
At least 14 people have been jailed in three countries so far for their involvement in carbon trading VAT fraud.
European police agency Europol has estimated that such crime has cost taxpayers more than 5 billion euros in lost revenue since 2008.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/04/10/us-carbontrading-germany-idUSBREA3915F20140410
00
UN climate report stops short of clear economic case for action
BERLIN, April 10 (Reuters) – A U.N. report about ways to fix global warming due on Sunday is likely to disappoint investors seeking clear-cut economic calculations about the benefits and costs of curbing rising greenhouse gas emissions.
https://www.pointcarbon.com/news/reutersnews/1.4822357
Reuters has changed the above headline – which was straightforward – to this new nonsensical one, which should more accurately be “financial institutions seek clearer IPCC economics to guide financial action”:
10 April: Reuters: Alister Doyle: UPDATE 1-UN climate report seeks clearer economics to guide action
A U.N. report about ways to fix global warming due on Sunday is likely to disappoint investors seeking clear-cut economic calculations about the benefits and costs of curbing rising greenhouse gas emissions.
Authors say the report stops short of an economic bottom line since it is hard to put a value, for instance, on human lives lost to extreme weather or on risks of a faster melt of Greenland’s ice sheet that would push up sea levels.
The United States and other governments, at talks in Berlin, were pushing for clearer economic arguments from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which is meant to guide ***trillion-dollar*** curbs on greenhouse gas emissions…
STERN REVIEW
The lack of a clear economic bottom line “is a worry … the elements are all there but it takes too much work to lift them out,” said Nicholas Stern, chair of the Grantham Research Institute at the London School of Economics…
Investors are also concerned about difficulties in comparing IPCC estimates of costs and benefits.
***”It’s a hard read,” Stephanie Pfeifer, Chief Executive of the Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change that groups pension funds and asset managers that control 7.5 trillion euros ($10.35 trillion), said of the reports.
Clearer economic conclusions would help persuade companies and investors to act, she said…
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/04/10/climate-un-idUKL6N0N24IF20140410
00
Interesting and informative. Had not seen this type of analysis done on the global warming debate before.
I took a look at the PDF (via your link) of the draft study. The paper listed skeptic sites I was not familiar with, yet they appear to have some high centrality to the whole skeptic community. I then took a quick look-see at your blog roll and these unfamiliar blogs (to me at least) were not included there.
After you’re done with the accolades, maybe you should consider lending a helping hand to other skeptical blogs so that your readers (including moi) are aware of bloggers that are also supporting the cause in a “central” fashion. If a peer reviewed study identified these bloggers maybe, at least, they should also be on your blog roll.
——————
Sure, suggest away. I had not heard of quite a few skeptical blogs in that paper, which was surprising. I thought I had tripped across every skeptical blog on the net in the last 6 years, – Jo
00
Just for the record, and convenience in looking up unfamiliar blogs, here is the full list from Sharman’s paper, in alphabetical order:
An Honest Climate Debate
Australian Climate Madness
Bishop Hill
Cheadlines
Climate Audit
Climate Change Denier
Climate Change Dispatch
Climate etc.
Climate Nonconformist
Climate Realists
Climate Research News
Climatequotes.com
CO2 Insanity
Digging in the Clay
ecomyths
Errors in IPCC Science
False Alarm
Global Shamming
Global Warming
Global Warming Science
Global Warming: A Worn-Out Hoax
GORE LIED
hauntingthelibrary
ICECAP
iloveCarbonDioxide.com
Impact of Climate Change
JoNova
JunkScience
Kiwi Thinker
No Frakking Consensus
Rajan’s Take: Climate Change
Roy Spencer
Science and Public Policy Institute
The Friends of Carbon Dioxide
The Global Warming Heretic
the reference frame
Tom Nelson
Tory Aardvark
Web Commentary
00
Jo,
don’t you see: so powerful is your conspiracist instinct, you even imagine conspiracies of one! Which doesn’t even make sense!!
Anyway, I for one am glad to see your efforts finally being recognised by the academy. In a world obtunded by fearful faith you provide an alternative, knowledge.
(I’m sure Sherman left out that last comma by accident.)
00
Plain Jane:
Really? The Japanese are trying to find a cure for being a whale?
11
A harpoon is a very effective cure for being a whale.
10
This is why Skeptics will prevail
how honest are the “experts” really?
10
I think I can help with the mysterious sentence about the skeptical bloggers being dependent on the scientists. “If the CAGW alarmists would stop disseminating nonsense, those troublesome bloggers would have no reason to have websites.”
10
Lord Stern has just barfed up his imagination again.
How do these people place themselves in a position into which they are listened?
The only rational conclusion one can reach is that the entire world is insane.
20
Photoshopped?
CSIRO study finds some of Australia’s remote beaches are most polluted
PHOTO: A red-footed Booby on a polluted beach in Australia. (CSIRO: Dr Denise Hardesty)
. . .
The rock it is standing on is not the same as the background.
There is no ‘garbage’ in the lower photo.
And isn’t it strange that only remote beaches no one sees are the most polluted?
Then again, they aren’t council cleaned like Bondi.
An “F” for fail or funny from the CSIRO, trying to make readers guilty with it’s enviro-propaganda.
30
lol.. I’ve never seen such “clean” flotsam as in that first picture.
HILARIOUS. !!!
00
Straight from the supermarket shelves.. 🙂
00
Lower picture.. sea foam etc is a NATURALLY occurring substance.
Seaweed create gelatinous substances, so much so that they were used in ice cream
(do they still use seaweed based gelatine, anyone know ?)
Algae creates esters and can cause similar effects to saponification. (ie SOAP and FOAM)
As Crowded House sang…. “Its only NATURAL”
00
Oh, yeah, definately photoshopped. A quite poorly at that. They need to hire someone with better skills.
00
Here is today’s green sermon to Gaia as delivered by the most Reverend Desmond Tutu:
“People of conscience need to break their ties with corporations financing the injustice of climate change.
We can, for instance, boycott events, sports teams and media programming sponsored by fossil-fuel energy companies.
We can demand that the advertisements of energy companies carry health warnings.
We can ask our religious communities to speak out.”
~ ~ ~ ~
Theology professor Susan Thistlethwaite explained that “frigid weather” was an “example of the kind of violent and abrupt climate change that results from global warming.”
The good professor also claimed that cold weather in the United States is a punishment sent by God for “our sinful failure to take care of the Creation.”
Church leaders pray for drought-ending rain
(They’re not praying to Gaia?)
. . . .
Huh?
Isn’t man made Global Warming stronger than God and his ‘creation?
“Christians, therefore, should respond to these troubling “signs of the times” with a messianic spirit, humbly acknowledging that we are exceeding the limits of God’s creation in our fossil-fuelled development …”
Evidence exists that many who deny the dangers of global warming do so out of religious conviction.
So, who does a confused christian climate denier pray to?
00
I have oft wondered about this. Christians now do not appear to believe, or at least they don’t act like they do, that God is the supreme being and made the Earth. Once in talking to Jehovah Witnesses, who asked if I believed in CAGW, I said no, I did not see how we could destroy the planet without God’s permission. It would not have been a good design plan.
Then there’s the rewrite of the Bible for the movie Noah, proving once and for all we are evil and God did not bring upon mankind the flood for those evil ways, except that ones that environmentalists now point out. (An obviously updated Bible that Al Gore came out with was the source for the film). For a group of “scientists” who resent being called a religion, they dive right in and make nice with a nonexistent “god” when it serves their ends. Their motto should be:
“We love you if you’re on our side”. No matter who you are, what you represent.
(Heck, at least the nurses at the NY hospital protested the Koch brothers–AGW fans have no problem with Big Al getting half a billion from oil.)
00
This is an interesting article regarding the movie Noah.
The movie is based on Gnosticism.
00
An enormous fuss was made in Britain about a religious nut who blamed the recent floods on the government’s approval of gay marriage. Less fuss is made when green god-botherers like Thistlethwaite and Tutu talk equally irrational left-wing nonsense.
00
Film industry notice regarding “Years of Living Dangerously”
Showtime Presents: Years of Living Dangerously
Working Title: “The Sky is Falling” series
Disclaimer: This could be the scariest science fiction production of all time, created by Sci Fi masters James Cameron and Arnold Schwarzenegger. Docudrama style could be confusing to people unfamiliar with the scientific realities.
Warning: Some content is inappropriate for:
Viewers with IQ over 85:
People with any critical intelligence watching this stuff will have an unpleasant, possibly nauseating experience
Viewers with IQ under 85:
Impressionable people will be mislead and should be protected by rational and calm adult supervision.
Addition: Beware of a thread bomber (pseudoname “Pat”) who is attracted to websites discussing this series.
00
It’s demeaning to take papers like this Amelia Sharman study seriously. More important is to write about the way humanities-trained academics are influencing the scientific community. The latter doesn’t know how to stand up to political correctness. This is one of the reasons the global warming scare continues.
00