Gosh, according to Leftfootforward, we skeptics are just a step away from global media domination. I suppose it didn’t occur to the people that researched this and drew up the network diagram that both sides are about equal in the “networking”. Yet only one side is “bad”.
“A fascinating new study commissioned by Oxfam and produced by digital mapping agency Profero has shed new insights into the way climate sceptics’ networks operate. The study’s conclusions, as yet unpublished but seen by Left Foot Forward, were presented to a closed meeting of campaigners on Wednesday night.
Profero’s study analysed online coverage of the “Climategate” debacle that broke last November, tracking its progress from fringe blogs to mainstream media outlets over the ensuing weeks and months.”
…
Stuart Conway, the study’s co-author, declared simply that “there are no progressive networks” – just hubs of activity here and there, lacking interconnection.
I have to laugh at that, because when you look at the graph they prepared above, both sides look like “just hubs of activity here and there, lacking interconnection”
About the closest thing to an interconnection that exists is a blogroll link, seen on blogs worldwide. I have one, so does everybody else on that diagram above. Are blogrolls the new network hive mind? Does noting an interesting story on another blog peg me as being a climate community organizer?
Apparently they never considered that maybe, just maybe, the Climategate story spread from blogs to MSM because it was real news?
Of course, it’s all speculation on their part. Nobody at Oxfam or Profero contacted me to ask any basic questions (and I’m betting none of the others either) like:
Are you part of an organized effort? (No – I blog because I like it, it gives me a sense of satisfaction, and I think it is important. For me it is like my old broadcast TV job, but using a different medium to send words and pictures. I started blogging because I had an offer to do so from my local newspaper, who still maintains a blog link to WUWT on their Norcalblogs.com website.)
Are you funded by a central organization, like the Soros sponsored Think Progress/Climate progress blog, the DeSmog Blog’s Hoggan and Associates PR firm, or Realclimate whose servers are funded by Environmental Media Services ? (No – though Climate Depot is apparently funded by CFACT, there’s no central funding that I get or any of the others get as far as I know, but ask them. As I see it we are just a loose knit group of like minded people. The closest anyone could say is a central funding source would be Google Ads, for which the blogs that have them get a few cents for each click.)
Do you answer to or are you guided by climate denier overlords? (No – but my, employees, wife and kids raise holy heck with me for spending too much time in front of the computer reading and writing blogs.)
Did you time your blog post announcing the CRU email hack/leak to influence the Copenhagen Conference? (No – that’s just when the files were dropped in my lap, and I waited two days for confirmation before writing about it. Ask the hacker/whistleblower what his/her motives and timing considerations were.)
It’s funny how somebody can write a social networking study and not ask the subjects being studied any questions. Quality research funded by charitably given British pounds – surely they could do better. Or, maybe they didn’t want to.
This comes across as a smug and slightly disturbing exercise in vacuity, but it does help illustrate the siege mentality of the AGW movement. Enhancing this childish ‘us and them’ attitude within their community allows them to cast their opponents as a sinister enemy. They need to believe skeptics are a well funded, well organised ‘movement’ – to create figure of hate in their own minds – otherwise they would be forced to accept and consider rational arguments alongside mounting evidence that contradicts their position, and the AGW hypothesis would begin to crumble. If the AGW hypothesis crumbles, lots of its strongest proponents will face humiliation and possibly financial hardship (research grants, column inches, government subsidy etc). Some people will even lose a way of life and a religion.
The authors believe they’re offering some sort of profound insight into a world, which they, the guardians of environmental wisdom are exclusively privy to. All they are really doing however is presenting a simplified and error-ridden version of the totally obvious. My subscription to Oxfam is now being redirected to a charity that does not get involved with politics and alarmist propaganda, and is interested in actually helping people in trouble.
The people who did the study described the skeptic side as:
.
The Leftfootforward post – written by people who disagree with you – called you
Nowhere in either the study or the Leftfootforward post is there any mention of top-down coordination, oil company financing, structured organization or any of the other canards you complain about. The Leftfootforward post noted “how effective climate sceptics are at commenting on forums, posting stock arguments, and linking back to sceptic sites.” That’s it. That’s what they mean by “well-networked.” Do you disagree?
If there’s something specific in either the study or the Leftfootforward post you disagree with, you should quote it and make a specific argument. Why just make up straw men and knock them down? I have a hard time seeing how that could even be fun, let alone something that would advance your case.
Snooker is a game of Chess, but with movable round balls. Mostly soft and gental effort. Where vertually nothing is “inconvienent”.
I noticed the Wall Street Journal is on the supporter side. This can’t be right.
I also noticed that the NYTimes, the BBC are on the supporters side. Shouldn’t these two be in the middle (objective?)
I’m not surprised that the World Bank is on the supporters side given that their position is to support development of third world countries. Their view is that they see fossil fuels being used for growth by third world and developing countries for the next four decades.
And the IPCC speaks to nobody other than Roger Pielke Jr? I might believe that!
They missed a few lines so I did them a favor and added them in:
http://img213.imageshack.us/img213/9438/skepticalarmistnetwork.jpg
Also, it’s funny that they have the Met Office way out on the “support” fringe…
It would be instructive to relate the size of the balls on this chart to the financial funds of the organisation it represents, once, of course various “charities” have been added in. That would give us an idea of the power behind each lobby. I only hope that the ball created by Anthony’s pension fund would be big enough to write “WUWT” across it, compared to the bank balance of, say, IPCC, Greenpeace, BBC…
Kate (01:53:37) :
“The BBC has no links to sceptics because their own pension funds are heavily invested in carbon trading firms”
Of course! Silly me!
/Mango
Apparently there’s a bunch of people who are having a hard time figuring out this “network”, what with all the “This, that or the other site isn’t on there”, or “How come soandso is listed on the **** side?”.
Guys… the answer is written right at the beginning of the article:
“Profero’s study analysed online coverage of the “Climategate” debacle that broke last November, tracking its progress from fringe blogs to mainstream media outlets over the ensuing weeks and months.”
Therefore, if you didn’t cover the Climategate issue or (apparently) the Profero folks think you played a minor role… you’re not on the diagram.
Although, that said… these Propero guys REALLY suck at their research as they are missing some key players in Climategate, and they have attributed more influence to sites that should have possibly been less and vice versa.
Also, they include folks like JefID at TaV and Jo Nova, but Climate Progress, Deltoid, Grist, Skeptical Science, Tamino, Lambert, Quiggin, etc.. are not there.
Pfft. Whatever.
Doc
My take is that the Empire is getting ready to strike back.
Not much Canadian content on this network diagram. Where’s the Financial Post which is attached to Canada’s real national newspaper, the National Post? Terrence Corcoran, Peter Foster and Lawrence Solomon have been excellent reporters of skeptical news; the Financial Post has given McKitrick and MacIntyre a great platform in the MSM. Confirmation Canada does not count in the great scheme of things.
While I disagree with the ridiculous weightings given to the skeptics with regard to power and influence (as compared with BBC, World Bank and Real Climate – but isn’t the Guardian somewhat over-rated?) I almost have to agree with the size of the balls for the skeptical side. But WUWT should be a little bigger (definitely bigger than Climate Depot)!
Gee, the World Bank, BBC and the Guardian are pretty big elephants in the AGW room. They certainly command big media impact in terms on choosing the story. At least we kept Exxon, Shell and big coal hidden from their view, heh heh heh.
Actually, for those who know how to do this stuff it would be a good study to redo. Oxfam indeed. The organization had mixed results in helping feed the poor before becoming part of the political machinery of economy-destroying causes ( a crazy thing to destroy the set-up that provides them with their funding and goods – the USA being the world’s largest giver of aid by far). I remember while working as a geologist in Nigeria in the 1960s, I used to buy rice in the marketplace from a cardboard drum that said “A gift to the people of Nigeria from Oxfam”. They charged the locals two pennies a cup of rice and me five pennies – I guess that’s where they contributed to the economy in the best way. Oxfamers I tell this story to don’t believe me, and get quite testy about it. I guess they think I’m paid by Big Oil to make this stuff up.
The Wall Street Journal should be viewed as two completely separate data points. The editorial staff is definitely on the skeptic’s side and has been for years. I know; I read nearly all their editorials daily.
The news side of the paper, however, is firmly liberal. It only seems conservative to people because the paper is necessarily business-oriented. This actually makes it a very good read because one does tend to get both sides of issues if you read most of the general news and editorials.
I’ve written several letters to the news side recently telling them that their liberal bias on global warming is causing them to miss the unravelling of one of the biggest scams ever attempted, so far to no avail. Their news department follows developments rather than digging into them, so while they’ll report on Climategate (after a significant delay) they will do no reporting to get the real story. If there are some enterprising reporters there, they must be very, very frustrated.
Incidentally, a couple of studies that compared the type of sources cited in news articles confirmed that the news pages of the WSJ have nearly the most liberal slant of all major U.S. papers. That is, it was shown that they rely more heavily upon liberal sources to document their stories.
Anyway, I wasn’t surprised to see the WSJ on the Alarmist’s side, but they really should have put the WSJ editorial section on the Skeptic’s side. And the IPCC in the middle, and above it all? Give me a break.
So what’s new? Oxfam had a question. They paid charitable money you donated to a company called Profero to get the answer they wanted. It doesn’t matter that the answer has no basis in fact or reality.
It’s done all the time. Even universities do it. That’s why the towers aren’t so ivory coloured anymore.
Just follow the money
“New York Governor Patterson last week announced a plan to divert $90 million in funds raised from New York’s share of RGGI auctions to deficit reduction. The reaction was not positive from environmental NGOs, who are understandably concerned about the “precedent-setting nature of this move.””
10 states pay carbon pollution indulgences into funds. They are to be spent in talking up polution and creating remedies we call taxes. Some people are under delusion thinking environmental taxes are for environmental cleanup or some other confused eco agenda.
What happened to that graph of interconnections for climate scientists?
The “family tree” for their PhDs, along with collaboration on papers, working together at institutes, etc.
I have this feeling they are very inbred…
Roger Knights: Notes From Skull Island:
A great list.
But I would add to that list: “common terminology”. E.g. here is a list of replacements I would insist we all use:
Climate scientists => climate forecaster (don’t suggest it is based on science)
Alarmist => “Believer” (don’t suggest there is anything to be alarmed about – highlight the fact that it is simply up to individuals to believe or not believe because there is no evidence)
Sceptic = “scientifically sceptic” (highlight that science is inherently sceptic)
Global warming = “Natural climate variation”. (warming suggests a trend, variation tells people that the climate changes naturally)
anthropogenic global warming = Manmade Global Warming (Don’t fall for the believers trick of making all this bogus nonsense sound “scientific” — its a change in temperature which anyone can understand — and so everyone can see a miniscule).
etc.
Kate (03:40:13) :
In addition to these: http://www.wired.com/science/space/multimedia/2008/07/gallery_nasa_50_mistakes
and other disasters and near-disasters: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_accidents_and_incidents
This reminds me of a survey that was carried out among the teachers of my school. Some organisation came into the school and asked us to keep a record of who we received emails from and who we sent emails to. The they wrote a big report about our social networking. LOL. And they went away laughing all the way to the bank.
Smokey, the CRU emails graphic is both brilliant and beautiful, in a wierd kinda way – put me in mind of long-legged spiders stalking other spiders.
We need to ignore the facts about this networking chart and accept it for what it is: the world view of the people producing it.
For example, I didn’t get upset when I first saw this:
http://strangemaps.wordpress.com/2007/02/07/72-the-world-as-seen-from-new-yorks-9th-avenue/
It was simply someone’s world view. It would have been pointless to explain the Hudson River is not the same size as the Pacific Ocean. Or that Texas is larger than 10th Avenue.
What is revealing is the prominence placed on WUWT and Climate Depot in the minds of these people. If you think about it, they feel nothing happens on the Skeptical side of the Universe without first passing through one of these two blog sites. Also, notice that all other science is trivialized as a small ball. This indicates whoever drew up this diagram feels “Science Blogs” are small potatoes in the AGW believer network.
Of course, IPCC is elevated above the fray, sort of like the Medieval concept of God floating above the turmoil of the earthly domain.
Attack the credibility of IPCC and the whole thing collapses. If you do attack the IPCC, you will be placed in the same category a middle ages monk would have placed a critic of the triune God-head: on the fire stake.
I’d be careful. From what I can see, “Leftfootfoward” is a SATIRE site.
The people cited are all bogus. The names are BOGUS.
It’s like the ONION.
They actually have a following of leftists who don’t realize (actually left = NO
HUMOR at ALL..) they are being scammed.
This is actually useful because it shows you what websites they consider a threat, the fact that they are absolutely confused about the Wall Street Journal and believe Pielke Jr. to be the center of the universe may actually work in our favor.
The largest skeptic sites are,
1. Watts Up With That?
2. Climate Audit
3. Climate Depot
4. ICECAP
5. Junk Science
The reason ICECAP and Junk Science do not get talked about by them is because they do not have commenting and ICECAP is frequently featured on WUWT. Climate Depot is popular because Morano is a scourge of the left having worked for Sen Inhofe and Rush references him a lot.
Climate Realists while a good site is not that trafficked based on the lack of comments.
There are some news sites they missed,
Canada Free Press
Fox News
NewsBusters
The Washington Times
They also missed a bunch of popular blogs,
Climate Science
Climate Skeptic
The Reference Frame
World Climate Report
Roy Spencer
Jennifer Marohasy (popular until she stopped posting this year)
It appears to me that the image is a rather simplistic molecular diagram of bovine manure