From the Institute of Physics , a surprising study being published by them, which not only measures the increase, but now has provided labels for type1 through type 3 skeptics. It seems they really don’t understand, but they are trying to quantify it anyway. I had to laugh at the inclusion of Anderegg et al (the 97% of climate scientists nonsense), which tell me they really haven’t a clue as to how to separate the wheat from the chaff. Should any of the authors read this post, be sure to read: What else did the ’97% of scientists’ say? to understand just how badly you’ve been duped. – Anthony
Figure 1. The number of articles containing sceptical voices as a % of the total number of articles covering climate change or global warming, 2009–10.
Climate sceptics more prominent in UK and US media
Climate sceptics are being given a more prominent, and sometimes uncontested, voice in UK and US newspapers in contrast to other countries around the world, new research suggests.
The findings have been published today, 5 October, in IOP Publishing’s journal Environmental Research Letters, as part of a study looking at how climate scepticism manifested itself in the print media of the US, UK, Brazil, China, India and France during a 3-month period which included ‘Climategate’ in 2009/10 and a second period which covered the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report in 2007.
In an audit of over 2,064 newspaper articles from the six countries during the first period, the authors, from the University of Oxford and University of London, found that around one in nine articles contained a sceptical voice.
In the US, 34 per cent of all climate change stories appearing in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal during this time had a sceptical voice. Of the 511 climate change articles appearing in the Guardian/Observer and the Daily/Sunday Telegraph during this time, 19 per cent contained a sceptical voice.
Chinese newspapers came next with seven per cent of stories containing sceptical voices. India and France followed with around six per cent each and Brazil was last with three per cent.
The researchers also examined whether there was any correspondence between the political leaning of a newspaper and its tendency to give a voice to climate sceptics. Excluding China – their right and left splits are not relevant – the researchers found that there were slightly more articles containing sceptical voices in the left-leaning newspapers than in the centrist or right-leaning newspapers.
This was surprising considering the strong association of climate scepticism with the political right, especially in the US, and previous studies showing that right-wing newspapers were more inclined to question climate science.
On closer inspection of the figures, however, it was found that in the US and UK, a significant amount of the sceptical voices appeared in opinion pieces and that in the right-leaning newspapers these views were uncontested.
In the UK, the Guardian/Observer ran 14 opinion pieces containing sceptical voices during the two periods, all of which were countered or balanced by mainstream scientists. The Daily/Sunday Telegraph on the other hand ran 34 opinion pieces, more than half of which were not contested. The New York Times ran 14 opinion pieces that included sceptical voices, all of which were contested. In contrast, the Wall Street Journal ran 17 opinion pieces, all but one of which was left uncontested.
The researchers also chose to look at the type of climate sceptics that were being quoted in these stories. The types of sceptics who question whether global temperatures are warming at all appear almost exclusively in the UK and US newspapers. These two countries also give a very strong presence to the type of sceptic who challenges the need for robust action against climate change.
Even though ‘Climategate’ was a UK-based scandal, the researchers picked a period which included this event to sample data as they believed the story was big enough to spark international reporting. A further 1,263 articles were analysed between 1 February and 30 April 2007 at the time when the IPCC released their Fourth Assessment Report as this was a period in which scepticism wasn’t the central issue.
Lead author of the study, James Painter, said: “These results are significant because they do seem to support those who argue that climate scepticism is much stronger in ‘Anglo-Saxon’ countries, such as the USA, UK, Canada and Australia, as measured by its presence in the media.
“The data would also suggest a lot of the uncontested climate scepticism is found not so much in the news reports but in the opinion pages of right-leaning newspapers in the USA and the UK.”
The newspapers chosen for analysis were Folha de São Paulo and Estado de São Paulo in Brazil, People’s Daily and Beijing Evening News in China, Le Monde and Le Figaro in France, The Hindu and Times of India in India, the Guardian/Observer and the Daily/Sunday Telegraph in the UK, and the New York Times and Wall Street Journal in the USA.
From Friday 5 October, this paper can be downloaded from http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/7/4/044005/article
Abstract
Previous academic research on climate scepticism has tended to focus more on the way it has been organized, its tactics and its impact on policy outputs than on its prevalence in the media. Most of the literature has centred on the USA, where scepticism first appeared in an organized and politically effective form. This letter contrasts the way climate scepticism in its different forms is manifested in the print media in the USA and five other countries (Brazil, China, France, India and the UK), in order to gain insight into how far the US experience of scepticism is replicated in other countries. It finds that news coverage of scepticism is mostly limited to the USA and the UK; that there is a strong correspondence between the political leaning of a newspaper and its willingness to quote or use uncontested sceptical voices in opinion pieces; and that the type of sceptics who question whether global temperatures are warming are almost exclusively found in the US and UK newspapers. Sceptics who challenge the need for robust action to combat climate change also have a much stronger presence in the media of the same two countries.
Figure 3. Types of sceptics by country.
Key: Type 1 sceptics (those who deny temperatures are warming), marked in blue, are almost exclusively found in the US newspapers. Type 2 attribution sceptics in red (who accept the trend, but either question the anthropogenic contribution saying it is overstated, negligent or non-existent compared to other factors like natural variation, or say it is not known with sufficient certainty what the main causes are) and Type 3 impact sceptics in green (who accept human causation, but claim impacts may be benign or beneficial, or that the models are not robust enough) and/or question the need for strong regulatory policies or interventions.
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“Type 2 attribution sceptics in red (who accept the trend, but either question the anthropogenic contribution saying it is overstated, negligent or non-existent”
Negligent? Really?
Negligible would at least make sense, negligent seems more a reflection on the proof reading and/or peer review process that let this get through.
So 97% of Brazilian climate scientists support the consensus…
Matt Skaggs says:
October 5, 2012 at 7:04 am
Type 1 Skeptic: those willing to work their way through primary source literature to understand a topic
Yes! This is the person who seems to be least understood by the climate alarmism ilk. I think it’s the primary division in this debate.
This makes them sound really wacky. Have the authors conflated those who deny that temperatures have flatlined in the past decade or so with those (who?) who deny that it’s warmed at all since 1950 (or whenever)? If so, that’s a cheap trick, designed to make skeptics look bad.
And don’t many of the skeptics who deny the existence of 21st century warming fall into the type 2 or 3 categories also? Did the authors decide to categorize them as type-1’s regardless, in order to besmirch them? Another cheap trick, if so.
A better indicator of US trends (as I’ve suggested here several times over the years) would be to examine the content all the climate-change-related articles in the annual Review of (or Index to) Periodical Literature, which covers 50 prominent US periodicals.
Oops–I meant to say:
“Have the authors conflated those who deny that temperatures have risen in the past decade ….”
(Not “flatlined”)
A lot of common sense people may not even look at the science but are increasingly sceptic how
– data are aquired
– conclusions are drawn
– results are published
– consequences blown up
– other findings are suppressed
– critical voices are silenced
– scientific method is damaged
– scientists act opportunistic and unethical
– big money is made on shaddy grounds.
To become sceptic and angry at a movement like AGW doesn’t need any science background.
Common sense, ethics, follow-the-money investigations are sufficient to understand what’s happening. And to create motivation to fight it.
john brookes- put down your pom-poms, stop cheering michael mann’s lawsuit over a pun, and pay attention to Reality for a change. btw, you mention people ignoring papers they helped write? Have you ever considered that people change their minds, based upon new evidence, all the time? Especially when the new evidence / research, is increasingly proving AGW to be flat wrong.
No, of course not. Such requires Thought, and True Believers such as yourself, would rather not think.
Oops again. I meant to say “Guide to,” not:
“the annual Review of (or Index to) Periodical Literature”
Has Joe Romm’s head exploded yet?
We should be so lucky….
Most think Q.M. only applies to the mystic micro-particle world but it is really just a mathematical way to manipulate the of singular states of information in a coherent and systematical manner.
Here’s some help for the Institute of Physics that they might better understand in their own terms. I’m no qm expert so adjust as needed while keeping the concept intact.
Clearly from the graph the US and UK hold more critical expertise than Brazil general populace. Maybe they can better visualize the categories of skeptics and warmists as orthogonal quantum states in a hermitian matrix and if they will just separate the proper eigenvectors in the hermitian matrix.
Think of these more as isolated spin states if you like:
1> Has the world as a whole warmed at all (<0.1C) in the approximate period of 1700-2012? Up=Yes, Down=No
2> Has the world as a whole warmed at all (<0.1C) in the approximate period of 1998-2012? Up=Yes, Down=No
3> Does the sun have a hand in determining the climate of the earth? Up=Yes, Down=No
4> Do thermometers in close proximity to population centers register a higher temperature that temperature stations far away from any civilization structures? Up=Yes, Down=No
5> Does the factor described in(4) cause a unrealistic slope to temperature trends when this effect is ignored? Up=Yes, Down=No
.
.
.
Now they could take this hermitian matrix and run an experiment (survey) to determine the probabilities (intensity squared) taking the eigenvector states to isolate the eigenvalues of the [bra|op|ket] operated states across the assumed probability matrix [sarc]. Run this state analysis to determine the degree of any entanglements for the skeptical/warmist state groups themselves.
Then and only them may the IOP be able to plot the trajectories across the phase space to see if any attractors exist. The phase space vectors are clearly in the warmist -> skeptical direction but which states explicitly are causing this mass migration?
Maybe now the IOP in their greater mental capacity and expertise can take this from the general classical/lagrangian world into the more realistic quantum/hamiltonian world of the psychology of warmist/skeptic climate mind-states which, at best, are sometimes fuzzy from a macro viewpoint, especially in the warmist logic.
/sarc off ??
In some respects this might not be sure a far-fetched idea. Take great care to make all questions yes/no or up/down orthogonal singular states and see if there are any attractive points in the mindset (phase) space. Do I have that right? To me you should find a great entanglement in the warmists logic. As long as you never the question the apparent state stays in existence from which other states can be made logical. Ask a question (observe) and the warmist’s wave functions always seems to collapse, morphing to two impossible simultaneous states (answers) and the third dependent state is now clearly also impossible. They seem to rely on this entanglement of certain answer pairs to support some other far-removed state (question) and you can never get a clear yes/no because by forcing one question the function between the supporting states always collapses removing the fuzziness the other question that relies upon it.
Probably not making any sense to most by now so I’ll just through that idea up if anyone can follow the general gist. Maybe it’s just too early in the morning and I should have had a cup of coffee first.
I just think these 1-2-3-4 rather childish analyses of this complex question needs some digging into the more realistic deeper complexity that everyone here seems to see occurring between these two camps.
So I’ll stay skeptical. So far, UHI answers most of the trend and the climate sensitivity is between 0.25 and 0.40C per doubling (from radiosondes), natural variance is the remainder after removing some incorrect adjustments the base temperature data, it seems to narrow down to these factors.
I guess I am just saying above that the great IOP (the Institute of Physics) has fallen incredibly short of what they should be capable of, with all of the mathematical tools available to them, to help answer this multi-dimensional distinction between skeptics’ and warmists’ science viewpoints on climate and temperatures. Shame!
Hey, come on guys, what about all us skeptics who are only in it for the money? (Type $) I get 000’s of dollars each month into my bank account from someone (B.I. Goil whoever that is) as long as I keep my skeptic badge on. Surely you’re all doing the same?
its amazing this 97% keeps being used when it does not even pass a basic maths test , for you cannot know what percentage any-sub groups is of a whole group if you don’t know the size of the whole group and there is no data for the size of the whole group, and its quite worrying that science organisation fail to accept to do so in the first place .
Remember when there was just one type of skeptic? If I remember correctly I believe we called them scientists.
The scientific method itself is intended to overcome mistakes and misdeeds. When scientists make a new discovery, others review the research SKEPTICALLY before it is published. And once it is, the scientific community can try to replicate the results to see if they hold up.
Isn’t it an oxymoron to be both a scientist and non-skeptical?
Yeah, well don’t tell that to Lewandowsky and “Scientific American!” 😉
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=how-to-stop-misinformation-from-becoming-popular-belief&WT.mc_id=SA_CAT_BS_20121005
At least there is diversity in sceptics – apparently the “faithful” are incapable of forming their own opinions and readily swallow the doctrine – they apparently don’t need the spoonful of sugar.
Ever herd of Herd Behaviour ?
The IOP has done itself no favours in publishing this paper under its name. Instead of a paper responding to the critics of the AGW meme and using their highly qualified membership to thoroughly analyse the science, we get a text which simply assumes that the AGW view is correct and merely lists dissent against it. Where are the responses which carefully step through and check the IR radiation, feedback factors, and convective processes which form the disputed GH effect? Where are the statistical analyses of the effects of UHI and temperature measurement errors? What comment have the worthies in the IOP got on solar effects of cloud formation on the climate?
It would seem that we have an institute which has ignored its own subject capabilities and allowed itself to be associated with a misleading and presumptuous attack on those who have gone where the IOP should have been leading.
The sample size is so small that results can have no meaning whatsoever….2 (two) US newspapers? That’s the US sample? Ridiculous. Waste of time and paper.
I would suspect a historical graph of popular AGW support would take the form of a bell curve. Any polls taken in the early days of the MSM push to expose the masses to AGW fear would have resulted in a high level of skepticism, only after a decade of propaganda would the brainwashing of the masses yielded results and skeptics would be at minimum. But thanks to the good work of intelligent skeptic activists, the dishonesty of the AGW sham is now getting through to the more intelligent of the masses and the skepticism is again on the rise.
“Antarctic ice expands against odds”
But some people will always bet against themselves.
“Again, this masks the fact that in certain areas there has been quite a significant decrease where in other areas there has been an increase,” he said.
“One of the reasons we are down on this ship doing experiments is we are still struggling to understand what are the processes affecting Antarctic sea ice the role of sea ice in the global climate system, how it affects the interaction between the ocean and the atmosphere.
“And we are still at a stage where the models are in slight disagreement with what we are observing. A lot of our work is aiming at picking that gap between what we are observing and what the models are telling us.”
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/health-science/antarctic-ice-expands-against-odds/story-e6frg8y6-1226489479585
I used to be a warmist.
Then I became a skeptic type 2 but embracing 3 IOW I believed in greenhouse gas warming effects but did not believe we were responsible for the increase in CO2 (to me, that’s easily explained by the huge oceans – recent warming PLUS thermohaline 800 years after MWP) -and even if we were, it was not a serious problem.
Then I became a skeptic type ZZ IOW I no longer believe in the 33 degrees warming power of CO2, not at all at all. I’ve studied the GHG theory and found it wanting, I’ve studied the formula for blackbody radiation and found the IPCC maths badly wrong – leading to a 33 degrees “GHG effect” that is visibly fatuous. I’ve studied the IPCC ice core hockey sticks and found them as telling as those of Mann. Finally I’ve studied with Graeff the warming effects of gravity, and seen how mere Gravity easily and gracefully explains our temperate planetary climate. This seems to be too big a sea change even for WUWT to handle at present – but I support WUWT’s prime function which is still the first thing that is needed – to detox Climate Science from its current hallucinations of grandeur and delinquency of method, and return it to simple Scientific Method again, with a bit of humble pie.
Only then there will be enough breathing-space to reconsider gravity and the one faulty premise of the otherwise great scientist and good man, Clerk Maxwell (and several others).
How does this get to be “research”? At best this is an undergrad thesis from social sciences that should get a passing nod in “the New Scientist”. The World has truly gone mad!
Ric Werme says:
October 5, 2012 at 6:07 am
“OTOH, “I am not a number!” Colors are in. Instead of a type green skeptic, can I be type emerald?”
You can, number six, but you may not.
Oh dear, that’s showing my age, but at least my memory has not totally vanished.