Guest post by W. Jackson Davis (who attended the seminar today as listed below)
The contrarian discourse in the blogosphere–what are blogs good for anyway?
Franziska Hollender, Institute for Social Studies of Science, University of Vienna CSTPR Conference Room, 1333 Grandview Avenue. Tuesday Sept. 11, 2012
Summary from CSTPR
The media serve to inform, entertain, educate and provide a basis for discussion among people. While traditional media such as print newspapers are facing a slow decline, they are being outpaced by new media that add new dimensions to public communication with interactivity being the most striking one. In the context of climate change, one question has arisen from recent events: what to do with the contrarians? Some propose that the contrarian discourse is merely an annoying sideshow, while others think that it
is science’s responsibility to fight them. Blogs, being fairly unrestricted and highly interactive, serve as an important platform for contrarian viewpoints, and they are increasingly permeating multiple media spheres.
Using the highly ranked blog ‘Watts up with that’ as a case study, discourse analysis of seven posts including almost 1600 user comments reveals that blogs are able to unveil components and purposes of the contrarian discourse that traditional media are not. They serve as extended peer communities as put forth by post-normal science, however, blog users themselves do not see post-normal science as a desirable goal. Furthermore, avowals of distrust can be seen as linguistic performances of accountability, forcing science to prove its reliability and integrity over and over again. Finally, it is concluded that the climate change discourse has been stifled by the obsession of discussing the science basis and that in order to advance the discourse, there needs to be a change in how science as an ideology is communicated and enacted.
Approximate Transcript by W. Jackson Davis
(vetted for accuracy by Ms. Hollender)
Introduction
I did this study because this “mediated” society [one blanketed with diverse media] calls the integrity of science into question. A changing media landscape provides new possibilities for public discussion and participation.
Anthony Watts received an invitation to this talk and posted it online. It received 476 comments. The comment section verified my results and provided extended peer-review at the same time.
This study was done as a Master’s thesis–a small scale study by a graduate student. I sampled 7 blog posts by Anthony Watts between 2006 and 2012. I used principles of critical discourse analysis (Fairclough, Wodak). The climate blog “Watt’s Up With That” (WUWT) is ranked 118 of more than one million. WUWT gets 3 million hits per month. My results should be seen as an in-depth case study rather than overview of the field.
Discourse analysis–my primary methodology–is used to analyze prevalent power structures and views language as a social practice. provides overview of prevalent power structures.
Results
Normal science (as promulgated by Thomas Kuhn) is seen as the goal by bloggers above all else. However, their request is to provide people broadly with the means and education to evaluate and disseminate the scientific data they provide, which does not fit with the principles of normal science in which the production and review of results of inquiry stay inside the scientific community and even within a certain paradigmatic community.
Post-normal science (defined by Funtowitcz and Ravetz) as practiced by the blogger community is described as anti-scientific, yet the blog community does extended peer-review and demands the further opening of science towards the public. She believes that whether post-normal science is anti-scientific may be debatable.
Post-normal science is, in her view, a description, not a prescription. Normal science no longer fits with complex socio-economic factors that influence science.
Analyzing the seven WUWT posts, she finds discursive strategies on WUWT to include ridicule, personal attacks, and name-calling. She says this is formally discouraged on the site, but nonetheless occurs.
Narrative structures utilized on WUWT include: 1) Scientific data dissemination. 2) Critique of scientific findings. 3) Social and political implications of climate change. 4) Climate change as a political tool to challenge capitalism and impose a new model of wealth onto the American public.
Comment thread narratives include: 1) The authority and trustworthiness of science. 2) The role of science in society. These are often discussed at length.
Discussion
Science itself is not a sound action-basis and does not determine what the results of scientific inquiry imply for society. Science is not free of values and beliefs, it is not done under the exclusion of social, economic and political factors.
Data represent a social construction. Who constructs the data, and for what purpose, is relevant to the analysis. Nothing is without (observational) bias. In fact data construction is never unbiased. There is always a translation between the observed phenomenon,what we observe and what we record as the data that represent what we have observed.
The choice of media arena is crucial to the discourse. Some people say blogs, and post-normal science, is a sideshow (WUWT), irrelevant, and unimportant. However, choice of media is crucial. This is among the reasons she wanted to research it.
Gate-keeping exists implicitly and explicitly on blogs, including WUWT. Censorship is taking place. Hostile comments prohibit an open and constructive discourse–but gate-keeping is no longer imposed by the medium but by human intervention. Interactivity is high, manifest as responses to posts and subsequent responses to posters.
Not all of this is true for WUWT–there is definitely gate-keeping, however. Certain kind of comments are welcome, while others are deleted by the site manager (gate-keeper).
There are very few dissenting comments on WUWT, and if so, they are viciously attacked. Self-selection of contributors therefore takes place, under the influence of and to avoid prospective attacks on views expressed.
These are all things that happen at WUWT–it is not that free, not everyone is welcome. There is gate-keeping.
Interactivity of the WUWT blog is high. No post has less than 50 comments, and the seven posts analyzed here received up to 400 comments.
Example: The post advertising this talk was published on Sept. 1, 2012, receiving at least 476 comments. Personal attacks on Ms. Hollender were commonplace, including “This girl has a brain the size of a peanut.”
She experienced extensive misunderstanding of certain terms and notions “science as ideology, “avowals of distrust, “linguistic performances.” Plans to disrupt and intervene in her presentation were posted. One comment said to offer her another Zoloft and put her by the window, she’ll enjoy the bright colors in the sunlight.”
On the plus side, the constant questioning encompassed in blog comments holds scientists accountable. She agrees with this function, which she considers valuable. This is what she expressed as avowals of distrust, which is a term from speech-act theory and describes linguistic performances that accomplish something beyond a statement.
The example of the post announcing her talk, and the many responses, illustrate exactly some of the problems she sees with the blog. About 250 have nothing to do with her talk, and instead diverge to off-track issues–and there is no formal mechanism to keep the comments on track.
Responses
Post-normal science is a description, not a prescription. It is something that is happening, not something that should be happening. We have problems now, certain things are at stake. What comes out of science is one thing–what we do with it is another.
“Science is not an ideology, but it is not free of values and beliefs–and what role science plays in our society is a matter of ideology.”
“Blogs are an underrated media arena and need to be taken more seriously in academia–extended peer review works very well in the Blogosphere, but constructive discourse is not happening because of personal attacks and ridicule.”
Peer-review needs to be extended toward wider public, “extended peer review” using non-traditional approaches. People who are not expert in the field should engage, look at material, point out mistakes. This function works very well in the blogosphere. Often papers are reviewed like this (example of Roger Pielke on his blog). This facilitates uncovering of mistakes and inconsistencies. Constructive discourse is mixed up, however, with “noise”–personal attacks, non-constructive replies, etc.
Every scientist used to criticism–but not used to being called “ridiculous.” Blogs would work better without the non-constructive discourse.
She personally takes no position on climate change in order to remain objective in her analysis. She is unbiased, deliberately avoids sitting in either of the corners.
“Q and As”
Q: Are you personally involved [in the issue of climate change and its causes]?
A. No, she deliberately avoids taking either side on ethical grounds. She will not engage, because this would compromise her objectivity.
Q. Productive criticisms emerge from this blog–does same come out of journals? Does vitriol facilitate critical attitude even though it is harsh?
A. Yes, generates content and visibility, and so vitriol is not all bad. It can lead to constructive discourse. Also steers away many people. Also generates a lot of media attention.
Re: open source journals–they still stay within the scientific boundaries. You can access them, though it is hard if you are a lay person. Blogs a better medium to reach a wider public than just your own colleagues. Access is not the same. Blogs are superior in this regard.
Q. Have you observed any difference between Anglo sphere blog tradition and European tradition?
A. She has not read many German blogs–not as many. She does read some institutional blogs, but there is less of a divide in Germany than in US, so do not have two oppositional views on climate. Don’t have the same diversion of opinion in Europe.
Q. How can you learn and take back to journals to get them to engage a broader audience?
What can the journals do [to reap this benefit of blogs]?
A. The journal Nature Climate Change offers a possible model–it has moved to an online format, there are chat rooms. There is still a barrier to access, however. The reason is economic; when you have a print journal, have to pay for it. The access [under this business model] cannot be free to everyone. Individuals can always seek out information by going to a University library, but this is not generally done. Nature Climate Change has made a step toward broader access with online forum. Scientific journals do use a certain kind of language, but it is not journals’ responsibility to teach this to the public, it is the responsibility of each individual.
Q. Your presentation is concerned with discourse between two groups [“warmists” and “skeptics”]; how do you view the two camps and where do you sit?
A. She is still undecided on the science. She feels she cannot take either side because she does not have all the [scientific] information required. She is not a climate scientist–she is undecided. Adapting to climate change may require certain lifestyle changes, which she does embrace (such as recycling). She nonetheless believes that it is important to keep an open mind on both sides. Science never proves anything beyond doubt. Still, the question remains as to what we should do about climate change. The precautionary principle is important–it is essential to act sooner than later.
Q. Do blogs help generate new ideas and avenues of research?
A. Different roles of commenters–there is the police function, aimed at exerting power and silencing oppositional voices. Another role is productive–criticism, reinforcement, engaging information.
Q. Do you see same people serving the same role repeatedly, or do people switch roles?
A. Both. Blogs are more complex than they appear.
Q. My question is about the blogs’ influence on the relation of “normal” and “post-normal” science. Many people who post on WUWT do so because they cannot get their findings published in what they consider a biased and even corrupted climate science peer-review system. Do the blogs enable exposure of new ideas that can enter the discourse of “normal” science?
A. She only looked at Watt’s posts, and not at the guest posts that would pertain more to this question. Guest posts are written by knowledgeable people. She cannot judge whether guest posters would be able to publish what they write on WUWT. It is generally not clear whether they tried. Anyone can write anything they want–there probably are ideas that do not have peer review that can be beneficially published on blog.
Q. Do other blogs have a more balanced or “intermediate” view on climate change? I am thinking of the Judith Curry blog–is this an intermediate view on climate?
A. Judith Curry has adopted “warmist” views [views supportive of the hypothesis of anthropogenic global warming], in Watt’s opinion, but her blog gets many diverse comments as well. Interaction between bloggers is interesting. Most blogs have distinct viewpoints, but none encourage diverse views.
Comment from audience. Competitive discourse as on blogs may be a “purer” method of sorting out the “truth.” Aristotle used in his rhetoric. Blogs may be modern equivalent. Gecker [sp?] and Posner [sp?] at the University of Chicago have economic blog where they debate each other on economic matters using this format.
Reply. There is initiative in Europe called “deliberative democracy”–citizens have access to information and experts. It works well, although it takes a lot of effort and expense.
Comment from audience. People are generally getting very negative on blogs right now in U.S., maybe because of the political season.
Reply. She says this is part of the reason she looked at 2006-2012–she wanted to integrate over time. She wanted to control for short-term fluctuations, including seasonal and political, as a kind of “control.”
Comment from audience. There is a major misunderstanding of [your position on] blogs — you (she) is not taking a side, but rather just describing what is going on.
Reply. She agrees–she does not take sides. She is descriptive, not prescriptive. She feels very misunderstood in that regard.
Comment from audience. A book that comes to mind is Republic of Science, by Ian C. Jarvie. He edited some journal the philosophy of social science. He defends an Anglo-American norm, very much non consciously adopted by most scientists. Ravetz came out that it is the urgency of the matter that drives standards.
Reply. She replies that post-normal science does NOT promote lower standards…one of the main problems is that whether climate change is taking place, and whether anthropogenic. The other side is concerned with what to do about it after having adopted what they perceive as a scientific consensus, so the discussion between the two opposing groups is not about the same thing anymore, which makes it frustrating for both sides.
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The representative of the host organization, CSTPR, stated that both audio and visual of this seminar will be posted on sciencepolicyColorado.edu in the next couple of weeks.
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Comment by Anthony:
For the record, Ms. Hollender never contacted me nor asked any questions online that I am aware of. She states that she sampled seven WUWT blog posts to come to her conclusions. As of this writing, there are 7,764 published stories, which would make her sample size 7/7764 = ~ 0.0009 or .09%. I think that if I were to do a study with a sample size that small, I’d probably be laughed at.
Since she chose what posts to sample, I have no idea what if any personal bias she might have intentionally or inadvertently introduced by her choices. I do know this though, her statement of:
Interactivity of the WUWT blog is high. No post has less than 50 comments, and the seven posts analyzed here received up to 400 comments.
The “no post has less than 50 comments” is demonstrably false. There are many many posts at WUWT which have less then 50 comments, especially in the early days of 2006 and 2007. However, even recent posts such as:
Weekly Climate and Energy News Roundup for 9/9/2012
…has only 7 comments, so this suggests to me that she wasn’t very careful with her sampling methods, and perhaps used personally formed opinions rather than hard data to come to that conclusion.
Also as of this writing there are 895,357 approved comments and the traffic count is at 125,607,045 views.
I don’t claim WUWT to be the perfect venue, and clearly there are many things that could be done better here, but I think the numbers speak for themselves. If there’s any other climate blog that can garner that kind of reach, please let me know. I encourage her to do an identical study on RealClimate, and note what she finds there, especially when it comes to gatekeeping.
UPDATE: Just a few minutes after posting, Fran Hollender responded in comments. Here’s that comment along with my reply:
Fran Submitted on 2012/09/11 at 9:39 pm
I wish you had consulted me on your added comments, too. In my talk I specifically said that in my sample (!), no post had less than 50 comments.
REPLY: It certainly doesn’t read that way, and you vetted the document by W. Jackson Davis before posting was done here. Not knowing which posts you sampled, I can’t confirm anything of what you talked about.
And further, how could I contact you? You’ve never revealed yourself to me or to WUWT that I am aware of….until now. But a search shows you commented under a fake name here on 02/07/2012 as “thedetroiter”.
Here’s the two comments:
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thedetroiter 2012/02/07 at 4:27 am
Oh, as an addition: even here in Germany we know not to trust anything the BILD writes. Most of you won’t understand the BILDblog, but its mission is to debunk their bullshit.
Before using a BILD article as a basis for an argument, thing again. Next time maybe just enjoy the naked ladies and move on.
================================
thedetroiter Submitted on 2012/02/07 at 3:25 am
Right. Green activist, you say? Vahrenholt was a lobbyist for Shell and responsible for “improving their public image”. He now works for one of the biggest energy companies in Germany.
================================
These suggest you have biases too.
– Anthony
UPDATE2: Fran has responded to criticisms in a lengthy comment here
What strikes me is that Franziska Hollender is from or at least lives in Vienna, the home of the celebrated coffee house/cafe society. Greats such as Von Neuman (on the science side) and Koestler (in lit. and politics) honed their thinking skills in such an enviroment. The open access debates in nanotechnology (http://www.nanowerk.com/nanotechnology/periodicals/open_alist.php?letter=P) are directly inspired by such informal forums. You’d think she would have made such a connection.
Enjoy your coffeee.
How disappointing. Did Ms. Hollender get a stipend or travel expense reimbursement from the Education and Outreach department’s grant funds (US taxpayer money) for her little talk? Were there no examples from Watts’ posts to illustrate her points? We really shouldn’t let students speak to the public before they’ve learned something. The humiliating memory of the event will haunt them for years. It’s like asking a pre-med student to perform neurosurgery. Not really fair to the student.
I have not yet read all of the comments here so if I am rehashing I apologise.
The real nub of what she is saying is that WUWT is being run in a way that she doesn’t like and it would be better if it was run in a way she approves of. That would make the site infinitely less useful, productive and accesible which may well be what she would prefer. However I feel that this site is exceptional in its tolerance and hence the exposure of so many points of view that can be debated and learned from.
Yes there are certainly contributions that are trivial or facile but my hope would be that such commenters would go on to up their game. There are the obvious trolls who over time wither away only to be replaced by others but so what, we all quickly fly over them. The real thing is that WUWT provides a wonderful space for learning about science, current trends in Climate and about oneself. I have seen many contributors refine their arguments and even shift their positions over time.
It is no wonder that WUWT has become such a popular site or that its reach extends into the MSM now. Open, tolerant and genuinely skeptical are its attributes and they so perfectly reflect the character of our host.
Thank you Anthony.
“She is still undecided on the science. She feels she cannot take either side because she does not have all the [scientific] information required. She is not a climate scientist–she is undecided.”
“””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””
Is this you Fran?
“In the last weeks, I have devoted my time to my studies, making a lot of progress. Sometimes I don’t know whether to laugh or cry when reading the climate change contrarian blogs that I’m using for my research, it is definitely not a study for the faint hearted. But I’m biting my way through, because ultimately, I hope that my work will contribute to understanding better how to develop an action basis for climate change through new media.
Today, many people still don’t know – or believe – that there is a scientific consensus on climate change. Also, many do feel like they need to discuss the physical science basis, which really is not at all that accessible to the general, lay public. I, for one, don’t feel comfortable discussing many of these things.
I’d much rather talk about what we can do, what the societal influences are, and the culture behind denying science, distrusting scientists and pushing this issue further and further away.”
http://thedetroiter.wordpress.com/2011/11/10/halfway-house/
I find the the discussion of Normal and post normal to be bothersome and inaccurate.
What it appears to me is we have Establishment Science, people that depend on a government paycheck primarily, that feel they should be the ones that guide the Ship of State, not the unwashed mass. You know, the people that work and get taxed to provide those government checks. We skeptics are the Non Establishment Science, where things are not accepted sole based on appeals to authority, where Data is King and Models should be restricted to catwalks and not entrusted with our future.
SAVING THE SHIP OF STATE
I feel that the ACGW folks (The Team) have infiltrated into the rudder room (Universities, NASA, Etc) and have barred the door (restricted peer review, hiring only true believers) in an effort to prevent anyone else from influencing the direction of the Ship of State. Unfortunately, the Captain (Policy Makers) don’t understand that he is being feed bad information (IPCC, Hockey Stick, ManBearPig, etc) because the intercom (The Media) is compromised and some of his staff are in cahoots with The Team. Thus, to save the ship, we are going to have storm the rudder room (get our own people in positions of influence) and seize the bridge (throw out the enablers of the The Team). The blogs serve as our mutinous network, informing and guiding. It will be a tough fight, since The Captain takes a dim view of mutiny, even when it is to save the Ship of State from crashing upon the rocks (Carbon free Madness).
So grab your cutlasses and vote the scurry lot off the bridge in November! ARRRRRHHHH!
“The precautionary principle is important–it is essential to act sooner than later.”
The precautionary principle should also be applied to protect the economies of large and small communities, to ensure they aren’t bankrupted by the CAGW mania. If in doubt about wrecking an economy….then don’t.
Ditto coastal planning rules relating to projected “sea-level rise”, which can drastically affect the market values of people’s beachside homes and destroy retirement savings.
Aside from a fair number of “wincing” points, I actually enjoyed reading it!
Detected a good portion of courage in her essay.
We need to be informed as to what criteria to select the seven
example WUWT threads that were then sampled using
“discourse analysis”.
The basic study parameters are not described or delineated. The study
can not be replicated as described. There is no parallel random sample
of the blog’s threads to serve as a statistical control on experimental or
observer bias.
The point here is that blogs like WUWT are helping to make ‘climate science’ honest and believable – true, it is an extremely slow, uphill, process.
However, the global warming industry now knows it has to justify everything it says with unbiased, believable facts and data, or it is likely to be subject to ridicule by blogs such as WUWT, Climate Audit, or Jo nova. This is extremely inconvenient for the industry’s high priests, such as Mann, Jones and Hansen, who really do not enjoy the experience of having to justify themselves, especially when their usual practices of data manipulation and cherry picking are exposed. Sceptics will no longer tolerate comments like the original data is not available because it is: lost, “in the dog’, or subject to copyright or considerations of privacy. If that is the case, then the ‘research’ should never have been published. Let us not forget their data is of no strategic, military or financial value and has nearly always been funded by the taxpayer.
The global warming industry is a fascinating business – it neither reaps nor sows. In other words, despite enormous financial input it produces nothing useful. It survives because: i) politicians believe it is trendy/vote winning to be seen to be ‘green’, and ii) it has learned that ever more scary ‘research’ reports guarantee ever greater amounts of financial sustenance. Most sceptics view the global warming industry in the same light as a surgeon views a cancer: unless it is removed, it will eventually kill its host.
The global warming industry – remember, these are mostly government bureaucrats or ‘green’ organisations with fund raising tactics and leaders like those of bizarre religious cults – responds to sceptics with a litany of lies, half truths and distortions about their funding and motives.
Steve (Paris) says:
September 12, 2012 at 12:33 am
What strikes me is that Franziska Hollender is from or at least lives in Vienna, the home of the celebrated coffee house/cafe society. Greats such as Von Neuman (on the science side) and Koestler (in lit. and politics) honed their thinking skills in such an enviroment.
It was also the home of Karl Popper, the father of our current understanding of the scientific method.
Quote: “Adapting to climate change may require certain lifestyle changes, which she does embrace (such as recycling)….” The effectiveness of recycling to alter climate conditions doesn’t make sense to me – although I don’t like to waste needlessly. Since I don’t have a car does that earn me Gaia’s forgiveness?
Admittedly I sometimes find WUWT commentator’s jibes at others expense enjoyable. Humans have directed humor & mocking toward others long before political correctness or even “fatwas” about someone’s feelings.
Meantime good intellectual challenges keep me following here & glad there are some with fortitude to venture contrary views. People’s meandering comments only make things more interesting. I thank Anthony Watts for being down with that & current on what’s up.
[+emphasis]
Still other warmists think that “contrarians” should be exploded by pressing the “Red Button.”
” Data represent a social construction …. ” etc.
This all sounds depressingly like ‘The Practice of Theory’, the ‘deconstructionism’ which has infected the liberal arts faculties for past thirty years and now established in science departments (Gawd help us if it even gets to engineering faculties).
Biased data is bad data; science based on biased data is bad science.
I can’t say I know exactly what Kuhn meant by “paradigm shift”, but it sounds like the swarm behaviour of fish and birds.
For instance the geocentric theory of the cosmos was not abandoned because of a “paradigm shift” but because the empirical evidence discovered by often maverick individuals falsified it.
It’s the free spirits amongst scientists individually or in small groups, who have been the pathfinders, not the institutions.
Im so tired of dishonesty and manipulation!
Her first most obvious bias is in what she choosed to “study” and what she didnt. Just even promoting any part of the precutionary princilple reveals her bias. And you see a clear pattern how theese fake skeptics appear. The two main issues is about trust in science and politics. How do you earn it and how do yuo spend it.. When it comes to climatescience they didnt earnt it. It was given to them by politiciens and they spent what they havent earned within two seconds.
IPCC delivered an order and instead of evaluate and summarize the science it steared it by taking control ower the main institutions that was needed to be able to pull this off. NOT to let the the real uncerainties be known to people and to block dissenting voices became its main problem and challange. Oh my good how I just hate this IPCC charade..
1) We’re already pig sick of post normal science.
2) WUWT does extended peer review but not PNS which is something else.
3) We are dismayed at how poor climate science is. This has nothing to do with expecting climate scientists to have all the answers. PNS seems to be an excuse to do poor science but act anyway.
4) Business already has a framework for protecting the public while still proceeding without 100% knowledge of what might happen. It involves scrupulous records, accountability, monitoring, external policing, standards, punishment, etc (all things climate science get wrong). PNS is reinventing the wheel… badly.
5) WUWT is the place for fast and furious assessment of the science. This fires the more able and determined to do some real scientific digging. It brings them together and they then can team up to examine the science at source. They become the spokes people, refining and condensing the cogent questions and arguments. They then take that to a wider audience, often to the authors. It is there that the process often stops because the ‘real’ scientists can’t deal with criticism.
6) We’ve no time for brain shrinks who poke us with a stick from afar and then smugly make evaluations.
7) Hostility has been building for many years due to constant abuse from warmists and government policies. To maintain a kinship this long, fosters a certain amount of clannishness. It takes time for someone with differing views to be accepted as an honest broker of those ideas. In other words, you need to earn your viewpoint. Until that day, expect a rough time.
8) Stop trying to evaluate what happens here with the hope the warmists could copy it. They already try and fail. Censorship here is minimal compared to most warmist sites. Attacks and insults by individuals are lower here, but inevitable given the weight of numbers. The numbers probably increase at times when both the community as a whole and the moderators as individuals are under attack from outside. In other words, don’t expect a heavy moderating hand from Mr Watts when his excellent surface stations work has been blown off by some git from NASA or NOAA. We’re all human.
9) An ideal would be a totally neutral site that could filter the best arguments from the blogs of each side and discuss the finer points. Unfortunately, any criticism of climate science, no matter how well intentioned, automatically labels you a denier or contrarian. Bing! A new sceptic site is born.
10) Imagine how hostile you’d be if you found someone was about to do a talk about you. They haven’t introduced themselves but they have studied your behaviour over a few randomly chosen days. You don’t know what you did or said those days. Was it the day the kid bit the cat and ran round the garden naked? Was it the day you had a blazing row with your partner? Was it the day you got the promotion? Nothing about your overview suggested you would say nice things about us. How would you have reacted?
Next time say ‘Hi’, have a nice chat and ask us stuff.
Thanks to Ms Hollender WUWT have disclosed Ms Hollender as an example of “fake position”!
WUWT RULES!! CAGW people cant just shoot straight can they?
Reblogged this on Climate Ponderings and commented:
Franzi OUTED!
OT and irrelevant, but the number representing the proportion of all WUWT blog posts selected for analysis by Ms Hollender, 0.09%, is still more than twice the proportion of Earth’s atmosphere that is CO2.
David Ross says:
September 12, 2012 at 12:26 am
[Franziska:]
“thedetroiter
I’m bold, different and invent myself new every single day. I care a great deal about the world and one day, you’ll see me on TV making major decisions for the UN.”
I guess you have little choice but reinvent yourself everyday when every day your ideology falls apart due to its internal inconsistencies.
“We are all individuals.” (Life Of Brian)
Franziska, watch that movie. You might learn something. Well, theoretically there’s a chance, at least.
And of course, even the most constructive criticism of her work, in this thread, will be taken as ‘hostility.’
mfo says:
September 12, 2012 at 12:39 am (Edit)
“She is still undecided on the science. She feels she cannot take either side because she does not have all the [scientific] information required. She is not a climate scientist–she is undecided.”
“””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””
Well spotted mfo. However I doubt she would see the cognitive dissonance she is suffering from. Or is she just another lying liar like so many others we have come across lately?
I’d like to make this observation:
Some of the comments here seem unnecessarily harshly critical. An inclination towards believing the orthodoxy is not an unreasonable position given how widespread the CAGW meme is and how much support it enjoys from authoritative positions. A lot of denizens here probably was at some stage along the continuum of acceptance of the hypotheses and as they began to find out more the position shifted more towards skepticism, as the better arguments and evidence were coming from that side. That certainly was how it was for me, and for a long while I also supported the precautionary principle.
Anthony made excellent and balanced marks in response to this study and I would add one other point:
– it would be worth characterising more clearly the types of (but especially the scientific ones) objections skeptics have before commenting on the nature of the responses. A lot of vitriol and anger stems from a frustration at what skeptics believe is a neglect of scientific norms and best practise.
I think some of you guys are a little over-sensitive that the study might be biased….and it certainly is as Anthony pointed out, but not to the extent that say the Lewandowsky study was. But look at it again, a good deal of it is not unfair or unbalanced. I’d have thought polite constructive engagement would be more productive in this case.
Well, based on personal experience, I can inform the writer of this that left-wing websites and ‘climate science’ (i.e. warmista) websites are more than capable of viscious ad hominem attacks, so they probably self-select their own communities too.
I received a particularly vituperative blast at Jennifer Marohasy’s site from a scientist who thought that, despite being funded by taxpayers pounds/dollars/roubles etc, that the ‘good public should STFU when any discussion of how their money was actually spent’ was concerned. I was neither amused nor silent as a result…..
The Guardian’s opinions are that you can attack any white, middle class, heterosexual man 100 times and that’s fine, because they are the cause of all ill, whereas attacking an individual woman, black, homosexual or Muslim, no matter how badly they behave, is ‘racist’. If two women are fired in a UK Cabinet reshuffle, it’s ‘big willy politics’. When Maggie Thatcher emasculated an entire Cabinet that was ‘furthering the women’s struggle’. Yeah right. If Thierry Henry, black footballer, blatantly cheats to get his national side to a World Cup finals, you’re not allowed to roast him by calling him a four letter word, because that is ‘racist’. But calling a white referee a ‘fookin nobhead’, as has happened many times in the UK, is not worthy of mention. The referee did no worse and perhaps only made an honest mistake.
What you will find is that all communities have hierarchies and the only thing which differs between them is the rules which determines who gets to the top and what values and beliefs enable you to do so.
I’d like this social researcher to do a similar analysis of a warmista rag (e.g. The Independent, Guardian in the UK) and see if they reach identical conclusions about community behaviour.
However, as soon as this researcher says that the ‘science is settled’, THEY are the person who must shut up, because they have betrayed the creed of science which is that the only thing which settles the science is data.
Dissenting voices on WUWT
As someone who originally became a sceptic because I inadvertently put a dissenting comment on wikipedia, and then genuinely tried to support those of a different view (sceptics at the time), I am aware that from time to time those of opposing views have commented here and met with not a little adverse comments.
However like all meeting places WUWT has a certain set of protocols and those who come in with all guns blazing attacking other commentators usually get a resounding thrashing.
However, those alarmists who do observe the protocol and address the facts and not try to tackle the poster will post without direct hindrance.
However, there can be a bit of a “scrum” to comment on posts of opposing views – just because so many people share the same view here. That I’m certain is intimidating. In order to “allow” such posting contentious posters both need to be coached in how to make their point without incurring the rath of fellow posters and we need people to actively counter more hostile comments with “XXX let him talk”.
In other words, with a forum which is very one sided, we would need to pro-actively support alternative views rather than just “not censor them”.
However, in my view the main reason we don’t get dissenting voices is because after such views try to make their point they find that most people ignore comments without any substance or based on the authority of people whose work is highly questionable.
Indeed, one of the strongest forms of “censorship” is that those with a contrary views are often ignored and as the intention seems to be to provoke a reaction rather than discuss anything of substance, they just seem to fade away.
From one of Franzi’s posts on her Screwkyoto blog:
“Maybe you want to give this thing another thought. There’s nothing bad about admitting you’ve been wrong. And if you think you’re totally right about your point, argue it, tell me why. Maybe you know something I don’t.”
With that attitude – and even taking into account the fact that English isn’t her first language – she is bound to go far in (say) a post with the EU.
I can see her being wheeled in to explain to the government of country ‘X’ why a “No” referendum vote doesn’t really count, do it again.