Tom Nelson pointed this out this morning.
This year, for the first time, U.S. online searches for the term “fracking” became more popular than “climate change,” Google data showed. Fracking has doubled on Google’s popularity index since last year, and while “global warming” still draws more hits, the gap is narrowing.
Only one problem with this: much like many claims made by the media these days related to climate, the actual data doesn’t support the claim. It took me less than a minute to locate the most recent Google trend data and see that the claim made by By Joshua Schneyer and Edward McAllister, Reuters (republished in the Dickenson Press) isn’t true. See for yourself:
The two terms are six points apart (in global data) as of this month, and show no history of intersection.
Source: http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=fracking,%22climate%20change%22
The data shows “climate change” trending up from 2004, that we hit peak “climate change” right after Climategate, and it has never recovered.
They may intersect in the not too distant future, but unless Reuters has some inside track to Google data that others do not, the claim isn’t supported.
Note that “fracking” is also not as popular as “global warming” though both “global warming” and “Climate change are falling while “fracking” is on the rise.
“Fracking” is in blue, “climate change” is in reddish orange, and “global warming” is yellowish. Source: http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=fracking,%22climate%20change%22,%22global%20warming%22
Noting the time when “fracking” first came on the scene, one wonders that in the wake of “climategate” on November 19th 2009, if the environmental movement may have decided that “climate change” was a dying issue and moved onto “fracking” as the next exploitable call to action. The data certainly suggests it.
http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=fracking,climategate
All graphs from Google, and you can replicate them yourself here: http://www.google.com/trends/explore
UPDATE: My initial claim wasn’t fully correct. The Global data doesn’t support the claim, the USA data does:
Source: http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=fracking%2C%20%22climate%20change%22&geo=US&cmpt=q
I’ve updated the headline to reflect this data difference. Thanks to Roger Knights for pointing out the distinction in the story. – Anthony
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Interesting. So, it looks like the bad guys went with fracking and not ocean acidity. Very soon they will desperately be seeking a new gravy train…
A hypothetical glimpse of their thoughts, “How can I fund my jet-setter life style and fund my attacks on those with jet-setter life styles that actually produce something with their lives. Must find another reason for people to give me money.”
Of course there are those that aren’t hypocritical, “Must destroy all technological progress since at least the industrial revolution and maybe destroy all humans or most, not me and my friends, we’re the good guys.”
I may be a bit of a cynic here, but I trust “search trend” figures about as much as I trust Twitter’s trending topics and Facebook likes. There is too much of an opportunity to inflate the figures through automated bots and click fraud-like activities.
I don’t think these trends are easy to interpret. Global warming has had less MSM coverage since the weather got colder. Fracking is a hot new NIMBY issue as well as an energy price issue.
Some much more detailed research on the search terms is needed. How often is the word ‘hoax’ associated with GW searches for example?
How often is a specific geographical location specified with searches on fracking?
I’m sure the data Joshua Schneyer and Edward McAllister are using have been “homogenized” to correct any irregularities and then used as the input for a computer model to come to the results they have.
Then again, they are reporters. The only models they know are the ones they see in advertising.
Fracking will soon be as important to the western world’s economies as the development of the internet and the rise of the Far East’s economies.
In the USA, you are lucky enough to realise this.
In western Europe, draconian restrictions (the UK) and outright bans (France, Bulgaria and some Germany states) are going to delay the huge, obvious and much needed boost to these economies.
In much of Europe and the UK, the econuts are in charge and, just like in ‘climate science’, will seize on any distorted, exaggerated and totally false argument to try and drive their economies into the ground. And in Asia, they just laugh and laugh.
Re: falling search statistics.
When a subject doesn’t change much, or when the reviewer gets up to his technical level of comfort, the reviewer stops checking. His focus changes but his position or interest does not necessarily change.
What can easily be,however, is that positions in the community have solidified. The warmist and the skeptic aren’t thinking about their positions any more. But so are the “neutrals”, the ones who feel the truth is somewhere in between the extremes, recognize the ravings from two directions, and, in some ways, cast a plague on both houses. Climategate is definitely a game changer, however (if correlation represents a causation).
Climategate made people take sides. The climategate perps were seen to be small people in their private moments. You had to decide whether Jones, Mann and others were passionate saviours or obnoxious tools of money and political corrrectness. Once that decision was made, there was little value to further thinking – the only thing that might happen is you’d weaken your own position by learning inconveniently. Our egos don’t like to do that. It feels like we made a mistake.
A low active involvement in climate change doesn’t mean you have no dogs in that particular fight. You need Proposition 13 type voting to determine that, some action that would come at a cost to you to fulfill what you believe to be “right” within your moral sense. If Congress and Obama push through legislation on climate change, though, it won’t mean the American people are on their side, but that the political powers believe that the RESULT of climate change legislation are in the COMBINED economic, moral and political interests of individuals AND the nation.
It would be better for the skeptical side to see several spikes of Google searches with consistent post-spike downward seaching.
Another, somewhat cynical thought: it is probable that the average person has only enough interest and energy to follow a couple issues at any given time (which is why a war is a great distraction from an economic failure of government). So what we really need is for something else to replace in the minds and hearts of the liberal middle class Caucasian the CAGW story.
Now if carbon taxes etc. could be shown, with the Uncertainty Principle in mind, that all 401K monies, all retirement funds and pensions would – at a 95% certainty level – collapse, we might have an issue with enough blood and guts in it to initiate a major rethink of the catastrophic global warming farce.
Seems a little extreme, even if possible.
Reuters may be right, if they filtered the Google results to look only at US trends. Here’s the quote:
REPLY: Ah missed that. I’ve checked it out. Indeed it does for the USA, but not the world, see update. – Anthony
A more accurate comparison would be to add the results for “climate change” and “global warming” together and compare to “fracking”.
Many people in the U.S. (myself included) just want to know more about fracking and associated industries.
Google “proppants.”
People may be searching for “fracking” just to find out where the jobs are. Besides, warmists have fractured the search results for global warming by inventing new names for it every few years. What would the search results be if you added all the results together for terms like global warming, climate change, climate disruption, extreme weather, global weirding, etc.?
Fracking isn’t the real story here, but rather directional drilling in conjunction with fracking multiple times in the same hole. It really increases the surface area so more gas can be extracted from the formation.
Uh Anthony, the story is correct — US data did show fracking passing climate change and the story specified US searches.
REPLY ; uh, John Sully, apparently you missed my update . Anthony
There’s no groundswell political trend, there’s a Hollywood movie funded by Middle East Oil Interests aimed at US Oil production.
Pure propaganda, with no “I’m A Middle Eastern Oil Producer Competing With American Oil Companies And I Support This Ad” disclaimer at the end.
Using raw data is “bush league”. We’re dealing with climate change here! One must subject the data to “sophisticated statistical techniques” in order to tease out important signals otherwise lost in the noise and and which tell the tale one wishes to promulgate. If that desired tale does not emerge, alter the techniques until it does emerge. Whur’ you been, boy?
Peter Miller says:
December 26, 2012 at 11:25 am
“In western Europe, draconian restrictions (the UK) and outright bans (France, Bulgaria and some Germany states) are going to delay the huge, obvious and much needed boost to these economies.”
Merkel declared a complete moratorium on fracking for the time being. No fracking projects ongoing in Germany. The federal minister for the environment has been replaced by a new one but the course stays the same : full steam ahead for wind turbines and solar panels.
Electricity prices keep exploding (so do coal imports from the US; an inevitable consequence of mandating inefficiency is an increased demand for raw materials).
True or not, does it mean anything? I doubt it.
Reuters is involved in green agitprop anyway… Sir Crispin Tickell anyone?
Well “fracking” has the hot new movie…with Gasland ll soon to be released.
Betapug says:
December 26, 2012 at 2:51 pm
“Well “fracking” has the hot new movie…with Gasland ll soon to be released.”
Matt Damon, The Promised Land, financed by the UEA, to be specific.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Promised_Land_%282012_film%29#Film_financing
Don’t worry. Multi Well Pad or “Octopus” is the “new fracking”. This means that fracking has already become an obsolete technology. http://www.energyandcapital.com/articles/multi-well-pad/2892
Google search results:
Global Warming – 76,900,000 results
Climate Change – 120,000,000 results
Climate Disruption – 201,000 results
Combined terms equal to almost 200 million results.
Fracking – 14,800,000 results.
Conclusion: What a gas.
Anthony,
“Not fully correct” is not fully correct. We all have bad days. Perhaps your initial Google search defaulted to global, or perhaps you missed the authors’ scope of “U.S.” Please just say you were wrong, and concentrate on why they being right doesn’t really matter.
REPLY: Sure, I was wrong for the reason you mention, I didn’t note that they referred to the US, as the language was a bit couched. Had the authors made source links like I do there wouldn’t be an issue, but they didn’t show their work, so there’s always a risk when that isn’t done. Though, there’s still some useful information in the post, which I why I updated it to reflect new data I became aware of. Notably that it is a U.S. issue but not a global issue and that the starting point seems to be around the time of Climategate. – Anthony
Justin Bieber – 649,000,000 results.
’nuff said.
Jeff Alberts says:
December 26, 2012 at 7:07 pm
Justin Bieber – 649,000,000 results.
’nuff said.
————
Obama 675 million
cn