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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 […]
In the mainstream media, skeptics are called Flat-Earthers, Deniers, and ideologues who deny basic physics. So it’s no surprise that they are exactly the opposite. A recent survey of 5,286 readers of leading skeptical blogs (eg here, WattsUp) shows that the people driving the skeptical debate are predominantly engineers and hard scientists with backgrounds like maths, physics and chemistry. Which group in the population are least likely to deny basic physics? Skeptics.
I asked Mike Haseler for more details:
around half of respondents had worked in engineering and a quarter in science around 80% had degrees of which about 40% were “post graduate” qualified. Respondents were asked which areas they had formal “post-school qualification”. A third said “physics/chemistry. One third said maths. Just under 40% said engineering. 40% said they had post school training in computer programming.
Furthermore, the media “debate” is nothing like the real debate. Four out of five skeptics agree our emissions cause CO2 levels to rise, that Co2 causes warming, and that global temperatures have increased. In other words, the mainstream media journalists have somehow entirely missed both the nature of the skeptics and the nature of the debate.
The so called “experts” (say like Stephan […]
Brandon Shollenberger writes a follow up of the survey last week that was inspired by Stephen Lewandowsky’s work (thanks to all the people who helped fill it out). Note the footnote and the background reading, before commenting. 😉 – Jo
Warmists Are Never Wrong, Even When Supporting Genocide Brandon Shollenberger
Global warming proponents support genocide. That may seem hard to believe, but remember, they’ve said it’d be right to blow up dams and burn cities to the ground:
Unloading essentially means the removal of an existing burden: for instance, removing grazing domesticated animals, razing cities to the ground, blowing up dams and switching off the greenhouse gas emissions machine. The process of ecological unloading is an accumulation of many of the things I have already explained in this chapter, along with an (almost certainly necessary) element of sabotage. If carried out willingly and on a sufficiently large scale, this process would require dismantling many of the key components of civilization; no person would be foolish enough to cut off their own limbs unless they were suffering from some kind of psychotic delusion, and no civilization would be willing to remove many of the pillars of its own existence. Looking from […]
This study on “skeptics” came out in the weeks just before the Australian election. I had quite some fun with it, then promptly forgot it. (You’ll see why soon).
But Amelia Sharman, of The Centre for Climate Change Economics and Policy, seems genuinely interested, claiming skeptics haven’t been studied much, suggesting skeptical blogs are quite important, and wait for it, discovering that the thing that makes the most central skeptical blogs popular is that they are interested in the science.
Despite all the rumors that we are an organized funded campaign of political ideologues, she discovered we are not densely connected, not-centrally-organized, and what ho, we value a command of scientific knowledge. If perhaps she was hoping to uncover some secret structure that would reveal a coordinated chain of command, she must have been disappointed.
To her credit, she called it as the results described it. However that post-modern education leaves poor Sharman wandering in the dark.
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 […]
Richard Tol has been relentlessly polite in pursuing the data through email after email to John Cook, Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, Professor Max Lu and Professor Daniel Kammen, the journal editor. Tol simply wants the data so he can replicate and check John Cook’s results. Cook et al 2013 tried to demonstrate the irrelevant and unscientific point that there is a consensus among government funded climate scientists (if not among real scientists). We already know this study is fundamentally flawed (see Cook’s fallacy “97% consensus” study).
Now the University of Queensland’s scientific standards are being openly questioned too. Will UQ insist on the bare minimum standard that applies to all scientists — will they make sure Cook provides the data for a published paper? Did they realize what they were getting into when they gave Cook their platform?
Given the large media run when this paper was issued, and the importance of saving the world from a climate catastrophe, you would have thought that Cook et al […]
We’ve already found enough flaws, but Christopher Monckton analyzes John Cook’s 97% consensus paper and sharpens the scythe. He finds:
It should never have been done, it’s an unscientific method — “consensus” The “consensus” was defined in three different ways. (Which hypothesis are they testing?) None of the three definitions is specific enough to be falsifiable. The paper strangely omitted the key results. (Why make 7 classifications, if they were not going to disclose how many papers fell into each category?) Of nearly 12,000 abstracts analyzed, there were only 64 papers in category 1 (which explicitly endorsed man-made global warming). Of those only 41 (0.3%) actually endorsed the quantitative hypothesis as defined by Cook in the introduction. A third of the 64 papers did not belong. None of the categories endorsed “catastrophic” warming — a warming severe enough to warrant action — though this was assumed in the introduction, discussion and publicity material. The consensus (such as there is, and it being irrelevant) appears to be declining.
The nice thing about this commentary is that Monckton provides a summary of the philosophy of science (showing Cook et al are 2,300 years out of date). […]
John,
Thanks for the invite to assist with the crowd sourced online survey.
Unfortunately I just can’t see this working.
1. The survey is profoundly anti-science, it’s exactly the kind of thing I debunk on my blog. Consensus is the stuff of politics, not science. Science is not a democracy, and we don’t vote for the laws of physics, which are either right or wrong and not “97% popular”. Hence, any answer you get in this survey (and it appears you already have the answers) has got nothing to do with understanding the climate of Earth. It may possibly be helpful in psychosocial analysis of groupthink in modern science, or the effect of monopsonistic funding on scientific progress, but that brings me to problem 2, even if it were useful for that, you are not the researcher to study that. See point 2.
2. You still refer to us as “deniers” in much of your work. You admitted there was no such thing as a “climate denier” a few months ago (albeit after five years of using the term), but you have not adopted a more useful name, or apologized for abusing the English language. Clearly you think skeptics are […]
The Risk Monger (David Zaruk) was astonished to receive an advertisement from the Dutch government looking for 60 young PhD students to help with the next Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report.
They salary is “none”. But they are not just looking for any old student. You don’t need experience, but to qualify you need “an affinity with climate change”. I guess they are not looking for skeptical students who feel an affinity with logic, reason, and empirical evidence?
The reasons for asking the unpaid students is actually described as an “ambitious plan” to do a “thorough review” because there were “errors in the fourth assessment report…”. O.K.
The Risk Monger:
Maybe I am jumping to conclusions, but with all of the mess of the last IPCC Assessment Report (including a non-scientific WWF campaign document predicting the disappearance of Himalayan glaciers getting through the review process and becoming one of the IPCC’s main conclusions), shouldn’t they try to do a more rigorous review process this time around? Students, working for free, are not perhaps the ideal choice of reviewers needed to challenge the experts
What troubles the Risk-Monger more here is that many environmental activists are working on their […]
The ABC will declare that “most Australians don’t think the ABC is biased” but while half the nation thinks it’s balanced, 30% don’t know, and of the 20% who are sure there is bias, there are three times as many who think it’s pro-Labor as those who think it’s pro-Coalition. Bear in mind ABC1 only has about 10% of the Australian audience, so 90% of the nation prefers to watch something else. Did the survey ask respondents if they watch the ABC? We might find that of the 20% of the population who are familiar with ABC coverage, most think it’s biased to the left. With some probing questions, we might also find that people of different political persuasions define bias very differently. Could it be that those more likely to vote for the Coalition tend to value free speech even if they don’t agree with the views?
On the other hand those more likely to vote Labor or Green seem to think balance means skeptics shouldn’t speak at all. Is their idea of bias just “if the ABC allows skeptics to comment”. The Centre for Independent Journalism had a whole forum devoted to asking whether “balance” meant they still […]
Helen Caldicott and the ABC have excelled themselves in the Art of Ad Hominem. So much so, that Christopher Monckton is not only writing to the ABC, but also to medical registration boards as well, calling for Caldicotts’s de-registration.
On ABC Radio National (about 25% into the program). Reader Steve, writes that “Helen Caldicott declares that climate change sceptic Christopher Monckton has “got thyrotoxicosis and bilateral exophthalmos”. She gives the impression that such conditions should prevent Monckton from engaging in the public debate. Waleed Aly said nothing to stop Dr Caldicott’s ad hominem attack on Monckton’s alleged medical condition.”
Is she not aware Monckton had Graves?
Caldicott is a doctor and also the co-founder of Physicians for Social Responsibility, “an organization of 23,000 doctors”. [See her Bio]. Perhaps she thinks it would be “socially responsible” to start a show where panels of doctors speculated on the medical conditions of celebrities they had never met? They could make fun of fat politicians and disabled sports stars? What fun. How about the laughs of picking on Stephen Hawking?
Stephan Lewandowsky could be a regular guest, pronouncing that non-Labor-Green fans were paranoid conspiracy […]
In the last week, Australia was flooded or burned, Gillard called an election 9 months ahead, two of her highest ranking party members said they would quit, Gillard cut down a long serving senator to pop in her “captains pick” candidate, and one of her former party members was arrested with 150 charges to be laid. Labor is back to the polling territory it spent most of last year at — a 32% primary vote and the Greens at 9%. But these polls are swinging wildly.
I can’t think why Gillard likes this uncertainty, and doesn’t call an election immediately…
The Australian:
The poll puts Labor’s primary support at 32 per cent – a wipeout of the six-point gain recorded between December and January – as the Coalition’s support rose four percentage points to 48 per cent in the past three weeks.
With the Greens steady on 9 per cent and “others” going from 9 per cent to 11 per cent since the poll in January, the two-party-preferred figure has the Coalition back with a huge election-winning lead of 56 per cent to 44 per cent.
Ms Gillard’s support as preferred prime minister fell four percentage points from 45 per […]
He’s dangerous. During his last Australian tour he debated at the National Press Club, and a phenomenal 9% of the polled audience changed their mind in an hour. Fifty university academics (including Lewandowsky) tried to get Monckton banned from speaking at a university. Activists were so scared they intimidated a few venue operators into canceling his speeches at the last minute (but the show always went on bigger and better somewhere else).
Monckton was escorted right out of Doha after speaking the bleeding obvious from the floor, he leapt from a plane in Durban, and he convinced the prof who wanted to execute skeptics to withdraw it with an apology.
GetUp are so afraid Australians might hear more of Monckton and people like him, they panicked and ran a whole ad campaign packed with conspiracy theories at the mere hint that libertarians might like to set up a Fox news equivalent in Australia. The travesty!
It’s an election year, we’re subject to a heatwave of weather propaganda. It’s the perfect time for Christopher Monckton to make an entrance, and right now he’s on a plane on the way. Officially the tour starts in South Australia, on February 2. See the […]
The American Geophysical Union – can it be saved?
Seriously: the 2012 Convention included Mann, Gleick, Lewandowsky, Oreskes and Cook.
If you are one of the 58,000 members, you could ask yourself if you want to be aligned to an organization that thinks “science” means sometimes you need to impersonate someone else, steal their documents, and hide your own data. Is it AGU science if you use algorithms so badly that you could replace your data with a phone book and produce the same result? What if your data is used upside down? The AGU thinks you should speak twice.
Is it the AGU’s idea of “rigorous” if you make headlines out of irreproducible results that use flawed samples, fake data, and issue a press release months before your paper is even ready to be published? Is a sample size of ten in a self-selecting internet poll enough to publish a paper? Do you find out the opinions of one group by interviewing the people who hate them, but then present the results as if you surveyed the first group? Is it OK to call people who disagree with you insulting names? John Cook does, and he was invited […]
Christopher Monckton and many other skeptics have been writing to Prof Richard Parncutt who had posted a dissertation telling us “logically” influential climate skeptics should be executed. (His words recorded at Webcite). Below, Monckton points out it is a hate-crime, and he will begin notifying Austrian prosecutors, Interpol, the International Criminal Court, and possibly Australian authorities too. In response, Parncutt unconditionally apologizes and withdraws the suggestion. [For some reason, lots of people can’t see anything at this link, but it works for me. Try cut and pasting […]
When Robyn Williams recently equated skeptics to paedophiles on the ABC “Science” Show the skeptic-most-targeted was Maurice Newman, former chairman of the ABC itself. Newman responds to these deplorable and unscientific insults in today’s Australian and throws down the challenge to the current board.
ABC clique in control of climate by: MAURICE NEWMAN From: The Australian December 18, 2012 12:00AM
On November 24, Robyn Williams intoned to his audience on ABC’s The Science Show, “if I told you that pedophilia is good for children, or asbestos is an excellent inhalant for those with asthma, or, that smoking crack is a normal part and a healthy one of teenage life, you’d rightly find it outrageous. Similar statements are coming out of inexpert mouths again and again, distorting the science”. My article was given as an example of an anti-scientific position.Really? Questioning climate science is like advocating pedophilia, abetting mesothelioma and pushing drugs to teenagers? Well yes, according to the ABC’s science man. Stephan Lewandowsky, a guest on the program, asserted that those with a free market background were, according to his research, more likely to be sceptical of science. As well as climate science, “they are also rejecting the link between […]
Hat tip to Graham Young editor of Online Opinion.
“That is worse than anything Alan Jones said. ” Follow Graham Young on twitter.
A bad-taste joke by Alan Jones in October created a national storm. These comments in the “science” show were supposedly considered, deliberate and researched.
This morning on the “science” show Robyn Williams equates skeptics to pedophiles, people pushing asbestos, and drug pushers. Williams starts the show by framing republicans (and skeptics) as liars: “New Scientist complained about the “gross distortions” and “barefaced lying” politicians come out with…” He’s goes on to make the most blatant, baseless, and outrageous insults by equating skeptics to people who promote pedophilia, asbestos and drugs.
“What if I told you pedophilia is good for children, or that asbestos is an excellent inhalant for those with asthmatics, or that smoking crack is a normal part and a healthy one of teenage life, to be encouraged? You’d rightly find it outrageous, but there have been similar statements coming out of inexpert mouths, distorting the science.”
“These distortions of science are far from trivial, our neglect of what may be clear and urgent problems could be catastrophic and now a professor of […]
ARC Grants have just been announced for 2013
Let’s look at what won a grant in light of the fact that nearly 80% of all the applications for ARC funding fail. (Indeed Nobel Laureate Brian Schmidt wonders if our best scientists are hobbled by an arduous waste-of-time process where they spend up to 30% – 50% of their working life applying for grants.)
Looking at the current round of successful grants. How do you beat four out of five candidates for funding? Here’s one successful method:
Step One: Use statistically insignificant results obtained by dubious techniques to generate a paper with conclusions that grab headlines.
Step Two: Make sure these “results” support contentious Labor Party policies, and actively promote the spurious conclusions in the media prior to publication.
Step Three (optional): Possibly go on to publish the paper, then again, maybe not.
Step Four: Apply for more money.
Apparently the ALP need to find budget savings from the science program to deliver their promised “surplus”. They are thinking of a grants freeze — which is a good way to create uncertainty and encourage the best researchers to leave the country. Here’s […]
Stephan Lewandowsky is back, reminding us why argument-by-distant-unrelated-topic is a quick way to get confused.
Should we spend money trying to change the weather? Spin the wheel: Did smoking cause cancer? “Yes!” Was that money well spent? “Yes!” Is climate sensitivity 3.3C! “Yes” . The heck, it must be, because some different scientists were right about a different topic, in a different subject, in a another era. Look at how similar the problems are? No one was sure if any particular lung cancer was due to smoking, just “like” no one will ever know if Sandy was caused by your SUV. Climate starts with “C” and so does Cancer. Spooky eh?
The answer to planetary dynamics comes from tactical analysis of PR strategies by people who oppose The Consensus. Why do we even bother with satellite measurements, cloud microphysics or ARGO buoys?
No atmospheric evidence will convince Lewandowsky, he’s looking for code words in the commentariat.
The tobacco industry claims that smoking does not cause cancer, preferring instead to think of medical science as an “oligopolistic cartel” that “manufactures alleged evidence” linking smoking to cancer.
Climate deniers likewise accuse climate science of being “riddled with corruption” and of manipulating or […]
There’s a mindset, a world view here that’s profoundly unreal, anti-science, and of course, fully funded by the Taxpayer from start to end (how could it be any other way?).
From the researcher who holds childish assumptions and misunderstands his own results, to the site that posts it all as if it were “higher thought”, to the trained communicator of science who then parrots the mistakes and insults half the population at the same time. Cheers! Private money couldn’t fund a satire like “The Conversation”. (Well, it could if it were funny.)
The Conversation recall was funded with $6 million.
Stephan continues his war on science
Lewandowsky’s bread and butter stuff is breaking the central tenet of science — namely, that evidence is more important than opinions. His mission (though I don’t think he’s aware of it) appears to be to return us to pre-Enlightenment days when Bishops controlled the public conversation. In this post-post-modern era, some things are so post they’re posterior — some parts of science are returning to unscience. This “science” is not about your data or reasoning, and not about your results — it’s about your ability to get a grant, a title, a university badge. […]
In May it was all over the newspapers, in June it was shown to be badly flawed. By October, it quietly gets withdrawn. The apology and press release are coming soon…right?
Thanks to help from the Australian Research Council it only took 300,000 dollars and three years to produce a paper that lasted all of three weeks. But it scored the scary headlines! It was “confirmation”, it was “unprecedented warming”, and it was a scientific certainty that was based on “27 natural climate records” and “over the last 1000 years”. What could possibly go wrong? They had 2 whole proxies that went right back a thousand years, and they’d used computers (!) to rehash the data 3000 ways! Frankly, I’m surprised it lasted three weeks. Let’s remember that if one single journalist had simply asked “how much colder was it in 1200AD?” Gergis, Karoly and the rest would have had to say “0.09 of a degree”. No one asked. But Gergis et al, had a proxy in Tasmania, and another in New Zealand, and they were “confident” they could calculate the whole grand continental collective temperature to nine one hundredths of a degree? Seriously.
As Mike E then pointed out […]
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