Guest essay by Eric Worrall
The Guardian reports that discussions of climate policy are being displaced by “attacks” on climate science.
Naturally the Guardian, and the authors of the study, blame a conspiracy of climate skeptics, rather than considering other possibilities, such as legitimate doubts raised by the Climategate fiasco, and the utter inability of climate scientists to get any predictions right.
According to The Guardian;
Era of climate science denial is not over, study finds
Conservative thinktanks in the US engaging in climate change have increased their attacks on science in recent years, a study of 16,000 documents finds.
Is organised climate science denial finished?
After global heat records were continually broken over the last decade, and as sea levels rose and scientists reported the accelerated melting of polar ice sheets, you might be forgiven for thinking the debate over climate change had shifted.
No more arguing over the science? It’s more about the policy now, right?
Well, wrong. At least according to a new study that has looked at 15 years worth of output from 19 conservative “thinktanks” in the United States.
“We find little support for the claim that ‘the era of science denial is over’ – instead, discussion of climate science has generally increased over the sample period,” the study concludes.
The conservative thinktanks under the microscope are the main cog in the machinery of climate science denial across the globe, pushing a constant stream of material into the public domain.
Sadly the main study is paywalled, but the following is the abstract of the study;
Text-mining the signals of climate change doubt
Highlights
- Think-tank contrarian information has increased exponentially over 1998–2013.
- Sceptical themes are diverse and range from scientific integrity to policy.
- Science-related discourse has grown relative to policy in key sceptic organisations.
- Think-tank discourse is highly influenced by external factors.
- We generate longitudinal data on think-tank contrarian themes over a 16 year period.
Abstract
Climate scientists overwhelmingly agree that the Earth is getting warmer and that the rise in average global temperature is predominantly due to human activity. Yet a significant proportion of the American public, as well as a considerable number of legislators in the U.S. Congress, continue to reject the “consensus view.” While the source of the disagreement is varied, one prominent explanation centres on the activities of a coordinated and well-funded countermovement of climate sceptics. This study contributes to the literature on organized climate scepticism by providing the first systematic overview of conservative think tank sceptical discourse in nearly 15 years. Specifically, we (1) compile the largest corpus of contrarian literature to date, collecting over 16,000 documents from 19 organizations over the period 1998–2013; (2) introduce a methodology to measure key themes in the corpus which scales to the substantial increase in content generated by conservative think tanks over the past decade; and (3) leverage this new methodology to shed light on the relative prevalence of science- and policy-related discussion among conservative think tanks. We find little support for the claim that “the era of science denial is over”—instead, discussion of climate science has generally increased over the sample period.
Read more: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959378015300728
Climate alarmists frequently accuse skeptics of believing in baseless conspiracy theories, but when you read something like this, it is pretty plain which side of the climate debate is living in fantasy land.
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The Earth has spoken, and a “problem” which is no problem is NO PROBLEM. Anyone who made it out of the 7th grade is capable of deciding for themselves upon perusing the evidence.
Problem is, too many people who’ve surpassed 7th grade would still rather depend on others to tell them what is correct rather than doing the perusal work. Too many people graduate high school and still haven’t the capacity for critical thinking
“The Guardian reports that discussions of climate policy are being displaced by “attacks” on climate science.”
If liars do not like to be “attacked”, they should stop lying.
Basing an entire field in scientific inquiry on an increasingly more transparent series of lies, is not fertile ground for widespread and harmonious agreement.
A wee bit obsessive, are they not?
+1
“A wee bit obsessive, are they not?”
They’re trying to keep themselves convinced.
Their mental gymnastics are more impressive than anything at the Olympics. Natural variability is willfully ignored. “The Earth reached a temperature in the mid Holocene that was ‘just right’, and it would have stayed that way in perpetuity if not for human release of CO2 blah blah blah”… (quotes mine)
It’s little better than Young Earth Creationism, from a scientific point of view. In addition to willful ignorance, add some original sin and a double helping of hubris, and you get CAGW.
“We find… discussion of climate science has generally increased over the sample period.”
—————
Thanks.
Yes, Alan, good job all you long-time WUWTers!!
****************************************************
And … Anthony, HERE’S TO YOU!
“Welcome to Watts Up With That”
November 17, 2006
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2006/11/17/welcome-to-watts-up-with-that/
Now, why am I tearing up…
Just look at what a DIFFERENCE you have made!
GO, WUWT!
Go, freedom.
If you read that post by Anthony on 11/17/06, you will tear up, too, O Silent Reader.
Dear Janice, how many times do I have to tell you…” leave my eyes alone, I have enough leaks as it is ” !! LOL
I followed that link, and was surprised to find no mention of Anthony’ meteorological ineterests and skills, nor of climate change. When did climate change enter the scene at WUWT? Certainly by July 2007 when I started reading, following a link from ClimateAudit.
Anyway, we can look forward to a 10th anniversary celebration this autumn/fall.
Rich.
Say what? This is just the personal blog of some guy in Chico?
: )
I had to laugh (eventually), Janice . . reading that opening scene, knowing what was about to happen . . “So does anybody have any gee-whiz questions?”
Discussion of science has increased?
How terrible!
Such an incitement on our society!!
I conducted a study about Glo.Bull Warming and found that 97.1 % agreed with me…
{ Did I mention that I only asked myself ?? } Not sure what happened to the other 2.9 %….
Can I have some grant money to study why I am not 100% behind the GloBull Warming scam ?
That is a worry Marcus, perhaps it’s an example of split personality created by those evil Denialists. That must be worth a grant to study. What if it happens to others? Definitely a multi-year study demanding the appropriate Government support!
Actually it opens up multiple scenarios. As the fog of cognitive dissonance starts to lift, the standard keepers can commit quite abusive behavior. In today’s day and age, your likely to see variations of harassment and intimidation cases being brought to bare.
OMG Knute, I’m abusing myself….wait, that didn’t come out right !…
Bad losers.
Actually, they’re wicked losers. And wicked people act wickedly when they lose, so look out–things are going to get lots worse before they get better, IMHO.
The awakening process from cognitive dissonance can be quite traumatic.
“The awakening process from cognitive dissonance can be quite traumatic” and since it starts with massive denial of the input creating the dissonance, the AGWists are in massive denial. It’s a pity the innocent have to undergo trauma inflicted in this denial process by the AGWists upon them.
They find it impossible to see there is no evidence that climate change is caused by human activity. They are in denial that climate change is a naturally occurring phenomena – that is the core of their desperation as it would destroy their far-left goal of global social control.
contrarian information has increased exponentially over 1998–2013
=====================
what the heck is contrarian information?
Information is information. either it is true, false, or uncertain.
the reader may not like the content, but that in no way changes the information. it still remains true, false or uncertain, regardless of the reader’s opinion.
so, to be contrarian, the information must be contrary to belief. If it was contrary to fact it would either be false or uncertain.
It is contrarian when it shows a weakness of the case of the prosecutor.
For example, the girl says we was raped but she bragged about sleeping with the guy the next day, is contrarian.
For example, “flu” vaccine “works” as well against influenza as it “works” against others “flu”, and there is no known way it could actually work against anything but influenza, is contrarian.
For example, “temperature reconstitutions” cannot reconstitute the present – unless calibrated with the present, is contrarian.
These facts are “contrarian” for people who think
– that rape is so terrible it should even be prosecuted when there is clearly no rape
– that people critical of inefficient dangerous vaccines are pro-diseases (I am NOT making this up)
– that wild guesses as to how trees grow doesn’t count as science
There was a post in an Australian blog about the behaviour of a West Indian sportsman towards a female interviewer . The regular readers were mostly in complete in disagreement with the blogger and believed that it was all blown out of proportion (not that he didn’t behave like a knob). A usual ‘contrarian’ reader disagreed with the regulars and commented that more women than men get raped.
Our media is pushing us to accept such allegations as fact like they want us to be ashamed of spotting faults with AGW. No good can come of it.
What I’m trying to figure out is why they have this NEED for the world to be ending? Wouldn’t any rational person be RELIEVED if there is no environmental cataclysm incipient? They seem to want it to be true . . .
Culture has become adept at creating faux urgency. CAGW is an example of that trend. Seems to be escalating. I’m of the mind that it is a result of competing desires among people. We want this unattainable kumbayah agreement among all competing factors, yet we find ourselves elevating power via polarization.
Something has to give.
They don’t need the world to be ending, they just need for everyone to believe that the world is ending. So that we will keep giving them money and power.
“They don’t need the world to be ending, they just need for everyone to believe that the world is ending. So that we will keep giving them money and power.”
They just need us BLIND markw…we don’t even have to believe as long as we don’t look behind the curtain and expose the wizards for what they are. But times, they are a changin!
Once people look into this seriously they find lies, obstruction and hiding of evidence to back up their claims. They look behind the curtain and their eyes become very clear.
It’s a leftist lust for power, nothing more.
Yo. Team AGW. You got it. We are still out here. And that rumbling you hear is our tanks…. about to enter Baghdad… .
No, lol. You are not “weeening.”
CO2 EMISSIONS UP. WARMING STOPPED.
Game over.
Ahhh – the conspiracy is growing. Conspiracies do that. Luckily, we can foil these evil manipulators by wearing our tinfoil hats. No matter how much contrary information they produce we can go on just like before, ignoring anything we don’t like.
Gnome!!! You have fallen into their trap!! The tinfoli is
an “ANTENNA”.You are boosting the signal. TAKE IT OFF!
Ok how about a lead-lined bomb shelter?
Admittedly, I started to doubt global warming because of the source. Checking out the arguments on both sides only reenforced my initial impression. I have some experience with smelling bad arguments, as one side of the family was Birchers, and the other side was Red Diaper Babies. (or how to turn small l libertarian).
“we compile the largest corpus of contrarian literature to date, collecting over 16,000 documents from 19 organizations over the period 1998–2013”
If the result doesn’t include something 97% then hand back your PhDs.
They are losing on the science so they must attack the skeptics with all these psychology papers.
‘psychology ‘ has nothing to do with it at all. The authors ‘credentials’;
Constantine Boussalis
Department of Political Science, Trinity College Dublin
Travis G. Coan
Department of Politics and Exeter Q-Step Centre, University of Exeter
It’s ALL politics.
BruceC January 8, 2016 at 5:59 pm
“It’s ALL politics.”
Good catch on them being Political Science.
Probably just another case of publish or perish
Perhaps instead of just documenting the “Think Tank” writings they might have ah, read them? perhaps fact checked them with an open mind?
Yes silly me.
Oh and isn’t Think Tank two words?
michael
You will also note Mike, the Guardian article fails to mention their ‘credentials’.
Add the two others I saw mention on the gaurdian article..
Farrell (culture, environment and social movement, whatever that is)
McCright (socilogy)
Not ONE JOT of any real science among the lot of them.. as is patently obvious.
These people come from what we called the “do nothing end of campus” when I was an engineering student at the University of Utah.
Some things never change.
‘Think tank’ means ‘Think you are tanked yet? If not, drink some more booze.’
“Social movement” means defecating in public. Yes. He probably does that.
Dalquist,
“Social movement” means defecating in public. Yes. He probably does that.”
You owe me a new laptop and a Pepsi! ROFL
“After global heat records were continually broken over the last decade”
And tnat simply gets the elephant in the room stamping its feet and asking the question, is that with or without the daily upward adjustments?
All according to worlds best secret practice of course.
Yes, I know, I’d probably(wouldn’t) not understand them but there’s a hell of a lot of their “peers” asking the same bloody question that certainly would.
As a couple very simple examples, on the 1st of January the BOM’s log on the weather station at our airport recorded a top temperature of 26.2. Less than 24 hours later that had mysteriously “jumped” to 27.4!
The 20th is particularly gauling as a new December “record was set”.
The maximum temperature recorded that day, according to the stations log was 40.9 at no stage in that log did it click over to 41, yet mysteriously overnight that had suddenly jumped to 41.6!
Miraculously surpassing the previous record of December 2005 of 41.5!
On different days right through December I noted upward adustments of between 0.4 and 1.5 degrees C.
Then they have the absolute gaul to tell me it was the “hottest” December ever!
I’m sorry for the rant but I simply cannot be payed for a mug and say nothing!
That was played not payed. All offers will be discretly considered though.
I’ve been waiting years for the Big Oil Conspiracy to send me my check…
Do not apologize! That was TERRIFIC. Their “highest ever” is so misleading it is essentially a l1e. RSS and UAH surface temps. show (given the error bars) essentially NO warming for yearly TWENTY YEARS. The fact that up on top of this 1997/98 El Nino – created plateau there are a few big boulders does change the fact: CO2 UP. WARMING STOPPED.
GO, LEIGH!
“nearly” (same finger… 🙂 )
When you point out that it has been warmer several times in the past 11,000 years…. you must be paid by the fossil fuel industry!
Really? How about “you must just be smart”?
I do like your use of ‘gaul’, given the recent climate idiocy on display in France.
You give an excellent example why it is getting to the point that even the “raw” land-based temperature record must be viewed with some doubt/skepticism. Not saying it is the case in this individual situation, but with global warming being such a political issue it is fully believable that there might be global warming “enthusiasts” who would do such a thing and think they, after all, were just helping the “cause”. In the first half of the 20th century the dedicated, diligent observers would never even considering ‘putting their finger on the scale’. And ironically, is the early data that is adjusted the most, such as in Providence, RI, where NASA satellites found a UHI effect of 22°F ( http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/heat-island-sprawl.html ), but the USHCN “adjusted” temperature lowers the annual mean temperature by over 4°F! That’s equivalent to saying that every one of the recorded max & min temperatures for all 365 days of 1900 were wrong by 4F. That’s an unbelievable claim and backwards for UHI.
In this day of technology, all ground-based data should come from fully automated weather systems such as the Oklahoma Mesonet system ( http://mesonet.org/ ), which have triple redundancy temperature sensors and automatically record and verify the data every 5 minutes and make it available to the public within 10 minutes of being acquired, has excellent real time visual graphics, and you can download the historical data going back to 1994. This system has been in operation for over 20 years.
In 2009, when I compared the 1994-2008 GISS adjusted data, the USHCN adjusted data and the Mesonet measured data for Ada, OK, the USHCN adjusted showed that the temperature had warmed at a rate of 0.31°C/decade; the GISS homogenized showed that the temperature had warmed at a rate of 0.52°C/decade; and the raw unadjusted or handled by human hands Mesonet data showed that Ada, OK cooled by 0.31°C/decade.
The current “adjustments” corrupt the land datasets. When I say they are “corrupted”, I’m not implying bad motives (may or may not be true), I am saying that the data loses its usefulness for scientific purposes and can actually be detrimental to real science and cause false conclusions to be drawn. Eg., if someone does some research examining a physical parameter and finds a physical phenomenon that suggests it should have caused significant cooling of the climate from 1940s-1970s but looks at the current data from GISS and sees no cooling of the climate,(~0.1°C) they would falsely conclude that it doesn’t, when in reality it may indeed have been a significant factor. because the contemporary temperature record showed ~0.4-0.5°C of cooling(5yr running means). This is why the original raw measured data should always be shown, with notes as to what other considerations might be given to the data. That is not what is being done today.
A look here would probably clarify mine and the “outsider” scientific community’s angst at [bureaus] of meteorologys or their equivalents around the world.
Here in Australia we had the chance to expose their dirty little “tricks” of temperature enhancements but we’re again thwarted by a global warmist in the government.
http://joannenova.com.au/2015/06/if-it-cant-be-replicated-it-isnt-science-bom-admits-temperature-adjustments-are-secret/
And don’t for one instance think the Australian public is the only ones being stonewalled by this publicly funded cartel of weather [bureaus] around the world.
Have a look at the shite fight that is ongoing in America for exactly the same reasons.
Their refusal to explain their methodology “in worlds best practice” of tricking temperature records UP!
I don’t give flying fruit who you are if the log at a temperature station records a “top” temperature not just today but a hundred years ago I want to know how and why it just got hotter or cooler than was actually recorded!
And again I’m ranting.
The numbers of denialists isn’t growing, the number of delusionals is shrinking, while the ranks of people who couldn’t care less is swelling. Including the politicos at Paris that neatly bent the greenies over the desk and went through the motions. And the greenies thought it was “true love.” Sucka’s! … lmao.
For how many years now has the Guardian been at this??? One would think they were tired of it by now. For how many more years will they continue – and for how many more years will the suckers continue buying the paper ??
Indeed,
I loooong ago became disillusioned with the G (implies I was “illusioned” of course but I’ve got over that) and now simply look on at them with astonishment and wonder just how are they going to be able to defend their attitude and behaviours when they also move on from this?
My guess is they won’t even try…..
Doesn’t this “paper” constitute “proof” that all the OTHER articles the Guardian published in the recent past about “Denialism is Dead” …were wrong? Dana Nuttybelly is wrong. Bill McKibben is wrong. Everyone on the AGW side who claimed otherwise…just got proven wrong…by AGW evidence!
You can’t fix stupid, not even with more stupid!
Unless you wear ” SNUGGIES “
Marcus…you HUSH yer mouth right now! 🙂
Hopefully with their falling circulation and continued losses, the Guardian might not be with us too much longer. If we can kill off the BBC that would put a massive hole in their circulation. Not sure if they pay for copies or it is issued to the BBC free to make sure their news output is correct and suitable bias is included in all programming – after all the head of comedy took part in the 28Gate climate change briefing.
We in Canada quite often hear the Gruniad quoted on the CBC as the source of one of their many stories, all of which support the “climate change” belief. Along with the NYT, And the WaPo.
Ian M
Perhaps to use in the toilet . . .
“in the toilet”
like the Pravda?
“Think-tank contrarian information has increased exponentially over 1998–2013.”
Yes, but contrarian food supply only increased linearly.
We are heading toward a big contrarian starvation. We need more sustainable information.
they are absolutely correct from their point of view but great news for the sane people amongst us that know what a crock of sht they have been trying to sell us.
But John, these snake oil “salesmen” are not selling and they still have their hands in taxpayers pockets right around the world.
How do we stop them?
We tried in Australia and he was politicly assassinated by a global warmist in his party.
Canada has done exactly the same thing.
Both are now going about restoring the taxpayer funding that was cut from these thieving barstards.
People will be taxed to the point where they’ll take it no longer, and then they’ll be taxed some more. Stupidity must be a synonym for tax payer.
@ur momisugly AGWers:
We science realists are not your main “den1er.” You are daily being soundly refuted and defeated in your humanity-damning pseudo-science by one far more powerful than all of us put together:
Earth
(youtube by Bravo1989Tango)
The first sentence in the Abstract says that “Climate scientists overwhelmingly agree that the Earth is getting warmer and that the rise in average global temperature is predominantly due to human activity.” —
This statement itself is a faulty observation.
Human activity — there are several components of human activity.
Alarmists are using human activity to refer anthropogenic greenhouse gases emissions but deniel group says there are several other human activities that affect temperature.
Even IPCC agreed that the greenhouse effect component is more than half of the increase and the non-greenhouse effect part is less than half — a qualitative statement.
Even in the greenhouse effect component in addition to human induced anthropogenic gases, there is another component of natural effect through volcanic activity.
For quantifying the anthropogenic greenhouse gases component, IPCC is using trial and error approach in the identifying correct sensitivity factor — in each report they reduced this factor and this factor has plus or minus 50% range over the mean.
In addition to the trend, the systematic variation component plays important role. We need to take in to account all these.
To tell these, is not denial of climate science. It only brings the climate science in right perspective. Also, the temperatures are widely varied with the space and time in climate system.
Dr. S. Jeevananda Reddy
If you’re in the plurality then how can it be a conspiracy?
Indeed
minor detail eh ?
I am curious about the source of the funding for the “well funded” work by skeptics. I would like some of that funding. I think the funding goes the other way by about 1,000 to 1 or so.
+1
The IPCC budget itself was $7.5 million in 2015. Look at the amounts spent on meetings. How the hell does one spend $140,000 on a single meeting?
http://www.ipcc.ch/apps/eventmanager/documents/31/250820150923-Doc.%202,%20Rev.1%20-%20IPCC%20Programme%20and%20Budget.pdf
Dessert???
That’s easy. Invite Al Gore et al and reimburse their travel expenses.
Call Professor Lewinsky. Conspiracy theorists also tend to believe that the Earth is flat. (Actually, some models assume it.)
Excellent CG. +100
And that NASA faked the moon landing! GRAHAM READFEARN is a conspiracy theorist!
The warmists must know that almost all (pick a percentage) of dooms day climate skeptics are not paid by big oil, yet they make it sound we are all having weekly meetings to contrive some unwarranted conspiracy to overthrow a fact that is somehow in our best interest. It is funny to be on the other side of the fence just to see how ridiculous it sounds. It is inconceivable to them we have free thinking minds.
On the light side, please grant me some leeway on this science orientated site to quote a few references from the Princess Bride movie (it is Friday night after all) that could apply:
Westley: Give us the gate key.
Yellin: I have no gate key.
Inigo Montoya: Fezzik, tear his arms off.
Yellin: Oh, you mean *this* gate key.
Buttercup: You mock my pain.
Man in Black: Life is pain, Highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something.
Miracle Max: You rush a miracle man, you get rotten miracles.
Vizzini: You’re trying to kidnap what I’ve rightfully stolen.
Independent thought is what the warmists fear most. Have you noticed they belong to a collective?–one in which independent thought is not tolerated; submission to their borg-like cult is required or their house of cards comes tumbling down.
Weird how they get comfort and security out of a bunch of cards, the idiots.
Hey, save me a seat up front at this weeks meeting, eh?
Grrrh … Lewandowsky.
Or Lew an’ donkey?
“Climate scientists overwhelmingly agree that the Earth is getting warmer and that the rise in average global temperature is predominantly due to human activity.”
– Abstract
“That sector is not disputed. It’s clearly ours”
– Kor, the Klingon
The only climate deniers I know are those who deny the MWP, Little Ice Ace, Dust Bowl, Holocene Optimum, warmth of the Eemian and earlier interglacials, this week’s cold wave, the decrease in hurricanes and tornadoes, and the 20-year standstill of accurately measured global temperatures.