From the thanks for painting a target on my back department comes word of a new paper that attempts to figure our the mapping of the climate skeptic blogosphere.
Bishop Hill writes:
Readers may remember Amelia Sharman as one of the authors of the “Entrepreneur” paper, about the disreputable shenanigans that led to the EU’s biofuels mandate.
Amelia is now in the midst of a PhD looking at global warming sceptics and has just published a working paper, describing the results of a social network analysis of sceptic blogs.
The paper abstract is (full paper link follows):
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Title: Mapping the climate sceptical blogosphere
Author: Amelia Sharmanab
Affiliation: a Department of Geography and Environment, London School of Economics and Political Science, Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment
Abstract
While mainstream scientific knowledge production has been extensively examined in the academic literature, comparatively little is known about alternative networks of scientific knowledge production. Online sources such as blogs are an especially under-investigated site of knowledge contestation. Using degree centrality and node betweenness tests from social network analysis, and thematic content analysis of individual posts, this research identifies and critically examines the climate sceptical blogosphere and investigates whether a focus on particular themes contributes to the positioning of the most central blogs. A network of 171 individual blogs is identified, with three blogs in particular found to be the most central: Climate Audit, JoNova and Watts Up With That. These blogs predominantly focus on the scientific element of the climate debate, providing either a direct scientifically-based challenge to mainstream climate science, or a critique of the conduct of the climate science system, and appear to be less preoccupied with other types of scepticism that are prevalent in the wider public debate such as ideologically or values-motivated scepticism. It is possible that these central blogs in particular are not only acting as translators between scientific research and lay audiences, but, in their reinterpretation of existing climate science knowledge claims, are filling a void by opening up climate science to those who may have been previously unengaged by the mainstream knowledge process and, importantly, acting themselves as public sites of alternative expertise for a climate sceptical audience.
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The full open access paper can be seen here.
There is only one little fatal mistake IMHO on sentence one of the paper:
Evidence supporting the reality of climate change and its anthropogenic cause is overwhelming in the peer-reviewed literature (J. Cook et al. 2013; Doran and Zimmerman 2009).
Apparently she’s not following just how messed up the Cook et al. paper is. Maybe she and Dr. Richard Tol can talk.
This made me laugh:
While the academic literature to date has focused on the manifestation of climate scepticism in mainstream media forums (Boykoff 2007; Schmidt et al. 2013), little work has been done to understand why climate sceptical blogs exist and what their role may be as public sites of knowledge contestation.
She has no idea why we exist? Better not tell her then, its a big Exxon-Mobil trade secret /sarc. Or, maybe she can ask her Grantham Institute co-worker and ex punk rocker Bob Ward, who I’m sure has an opinion about the matter.
On the plus side, there is this:
Table 7 shows that WUWT is an extremely central node according to this test. The results of this test are interpreted against the mean betweenness score. WUWT has a score of 3971.52, significantly higher than the mean score of 180.31. As anticipated, there was a large overlap between the results for this test and those for Freeman’s in-degree centrality, with six blogs appearing in both sets of results. Accordingly, Climate Audit, ICECAP, JoNova and No Frakking Consensus also join the short-list of the most central blogs.
I think the mean score of 180.31 is a typo, likely 1800 and change.
…
WUWT is an extremely prolific blog, with 190 posts for March 2012 alone; however, the posts analysed had several reoccurring sub-themes under the overall category of science, with a predominant interest in alternative explanations for climate models, temperature data or human-induced climate change, largely in the form of scientifically-based challenges to published science.
The conclusion is also interesting, an excerpt:
The most noteworthy finding of this research however is that the blogs identified as the most central predominantly focus on the scientific element of the climate debate. Within this overall focus, providing a direct scientifically-based challenge to mainstream climate science, or a critique of the conduct of the climate science system (such as individual climate scientists’ actions or institutional decision-making) appear to be particularly important themes. As highlighted above, the direct scientific challenge that the climate sceptical blogosphere provides may be thought of as either trend or attribution scepticism (Rahmstorf 2005). The blogosphere’s focus on the scientific element of climate scepticism is important because it stands in direct contrast to research carried out among the general public, where the prevalence of trend and attribution scepticism is low compared to other types of scepticism, such as scepticism regarding the need for mitigation policies (Akter et al. 2012). This result also contradicts claims that climate science is ‘adrift in the blogosphere’ (Schäfer 2012: 529) because even though few climate scientists themselves blog—and are suggested to mainly focus on addressing the “pseudoscience” implied as existing within the climate sceptic blogosphere (Schäfer 2012)—this does not mean that science itself is not an active topic of discussion.
Still, that won’t stop climate zealots like Joe Romm and others from claiming WUWT and other skeptical blogs are “anti-science”, since that’s a convenient label for them to pitch to their low-information readers.
As always, thanks to my contributors, readers, and moderators for helping to put WUWT at the center of the climate blogosphere.
Sceptic blogs exist because a lot of smart people out there do not like:
1. A “science” which routinely manipulates data to “prove” its point.
2. The existence of natural climate cycles being declared a heresy.
3. The Global Warming Industry whose only goal is its own self-perpetuation and therefore the comfortable lifestyle of its leaders.
4. Bad science in general.
5. Scary prophecies based on flawed computer models and manipulated data.
6. The denial of such self-evident facts like UHI.
7. Trying to cure a non-problem by bankrupting the western world’s economies.
The list seems endless
Congratulations to you , Anthony, and to your climate-realist friends who assist in getting the truth out to us all.
Something I’ve learned from you – Scientists are entitled to their own proofs, they are not entitled to their own data!
I remember when I first stumbled across WUWT. My first article read here was, “Earth’s Magnetic Field Has Massive Breach – scientists baffled”. That was back on Dec.16, 2008.
I was caught up in the 2012 craze of magnetic pole shifts and I set out to find out what was fact and what was fiction.
I found WUWT refreshing. After having had ran the conspiracy gauntlet of such sites like ATS and the like, I could tell there was something different here.
Here we are nearly 5 years later and still, I am no where closer to any real evidence to confirm or deny its legitimacy. Such is science.
There is one quality that this site, like the other skeptical sites have, and that is the varied views of the commentors.
You can’t get that with the Schmidts, Taminos, and Cooks of the world. I am sure everyone here has been confronted with censorship that alarmists are known for.
But as anyone can see, even alarmists comment here.
I think it’s because they want to debate, and they can’t back on their own turf. Nothing good has ever come from secrecy and all this censorship on their part is backfiring on them.
If I were you Anthony, I’d thank Ms Sharman for the free advertising.
P.S. I would also like to give advice to all the alarmist trolls that wish to come here and flame…..you guys better go back to whatever warmist site you come from and tell the moderators there to start opening up to the debate, or find those sites withering up and dying like AGW.
The scary aspect is that you seem to be so few. At least the ones prepared to put their heads above the parapet. Congratulations and heartfelt thanks once again for all your efforts.
A Baccalaureate Scientia here. Perhaps I will receive bonus points for having earned it from a notable institution: The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH).
Jack Savage says:
September 10, 2013 at 12:45 am
“The scary aspect is that you seem to be so few”
Welcome to the real world Jack, Looks like you took the red pill at last.
jbird says:
September 9, 2013 at 9:47 pm
Wow. It doesn’t take much to get a Ph.D. these days.
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I hope you don’t mean that the way it looks. My son worked extremely hard over more than 3 years for his doctorate on X-ray crystallography, as did his (now) wife for hers on plant genetics. Not all Ph.D. subjects are useless and not all of those who undertake the research are wasters.
Try “Wow. It doesn’t take much to get a Ph.D. in certain subjects these days.”
Please forgive me if I come over as a little over-sensitive – I am immensely proud of what they have both achieved and don’t like to see that belittled.
Amelia Sharmen should look at a WUWT thread on the topic she’s researching–http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/09/11/a-review-of-the-seminar-the-contrarian-discourse-in-the-blogosphere-what-are-blogs-good-for-anyway/
It reviewed a Masters degree paper Franziska Hollender of Vienna presented at a conference in the US.
Oops–here’s a clickable link:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/09/11/a-review-of-the-seminar-the-contrarian-discourse-in-the-blogosphere-what-are-blogs-good-for-anyway/
dbstealey said @ur momisugly September 9, 2013 at 5:57 pm
Not to mention historians. Winemaking with medieval technology is currently only possible in the UK one year out of ten. During the MWP, the regular stipend for a monk was a gallon a day. And no, they did not import it!
Was that paper written in the Queen’s English or Esperanto? I find it impossible to understand let alone to read.
You cannot argue that climate change happens but claiming that there is overwhelming evidence that we caused it is a damn lie. There is zero evidence that we do any such thing. In fact there is zero evidence that CO2 has any input into temperature increase.
Anthony, congratulations on the recognition of your work, unfortunately it’s all you’re likely to benefit from it. As you are so central to the inter-connecting web of sceptics, could I suggest you review your blog-roll to ensure it is up to date?
Thank you. My reaction was exactly the same.
My fearless prediction: by 2050, CAGW will be considered as little more than sociological case study in mass hysteria and political dysfunction, with minors in governmental corruption of science, and general scientific malpractice.
Isn’t this quite positive: from the Abstract – “It is possible that these central blogs in particular are not only acting as translators between scientific research and lay audiences, but, in their reinterpretation of existing climate science knowledge claims, are filling a void by opening up climate science to those who may have been previously unengaged by the mainstream knowledge process and, importantly, acting themselves as public sites of alternative expertise for a climate sceptical audience.”
That’s a fair definition of a “team B” (or “loyal opposition”) role – creating a forum in which the public are engaged, actual debates occur and hypotheses can be falsified, which is not “anti-science”, but true science in action. Congratulations Anthony – recognition that you are providing a valuable, world-wide scientific resource here.
Anthony;
No, that list is only the top 10. The mean refers to the average of the whole population of sceptic blogs.
What is #4? Never heard of it, and Google just gives me generic references based on the separate words. It’s not in your blogroll, either.
Bloke down the pub says:
September 10, 2013 at 3:19 am
Anthony is a pretty busy guy, perhaps you could do it for him.
BTW all, the ENSO meter broke this week or last. It looks like NOAA moved the service I use to get the data from one system to another. I chased things down this AM, and it looks happy again. We didn’t miss much, the 0.0 displayed the last couple of days should have been +0.1.
data from 00Z11AUG2013 to 00Z10SEP2013
“———-”
-0.314397
-0.331909
-0.00674132
0.112998
Billy Liar says:
September 9, 2013 at 4:31 pm
Susan P says:
September 9, 2013 at 1:22 pm
… I have to get to work calculating my Betweenness Scores for my PhD thesis on which cute cat/cute dog videos provide the most laughter and enjoyment/life enhancement per minute spent watching.
Can I get a copy of your paper when your done? 🙂
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It’ll be behind a paywall so you’ll have to ….pay!
cn
…WUWT is an extremely prolific blog, with 190 posts for March 2012 alone; however, the posts analysed had several reoccurring sub-themes under the overall category of science, with a predominant interest in alternative explanations for climate models, temperature data or human-induced climate change,…
What? I thought that we were discussing Intelligent Design, 9/11 conspiracy theory and the faking of the Apollo Moonshots?
Didn’t she find any evidence of our attempts to uncover the Illuminatii and develop a better design for the tinfoil hat?
I have not read the paper – probably won’t. I am helping too many grad students get through theses and dissertations of their own. But social network analysis is a recognized tool, and thematic content analysis is a recognized methodology for analyzing qualitative, narrative data, such as blog discourse. I looked at the article briefly to look at the rationale and support for these two methods. SNA is explained, justified, and maybe minimally referenced, and thematic content analysis is pretty much not explained, not justified, and barely referenced. Peer reviewers in social sciences will call her on this and ask for more.
As Feyerabend and others recognized very well, science is a social enterprise. This is why, ultimately, he toyingly advocated for methodological “anarchy;” to keep us from getting too locked-in to one style of method and practice of science, such as peer review. I was just thinking about this recently as I was asked to nominate four peer reviewers for my submission to a recognized journal with an admirable impact factor. This “nominate your reviewers” piece of current science is definitely a fad and not an essential aspect of science. I play along.
As in the physical and physiological world, we believe that the social world generally operates in an orderly fashion, and that we can discover its rules and laws. “Social networks” exist more assuredly than black holes exist. So, it is a legitimate endeavor to strive to understand what they are, and how they work. We need methods and tools to do this.
There is nothing wrong or un-scientific about this.
The author has an agenda.
When I teach on science, I teach that, for the most part, we usually have an agenda. I normalize this, Plus, I note that the principles of science are intended to allow us to hash out our competing agenda on a playing field – science – where we all agree to the same rules.
We have the concept of “disclosure” to acknowledge that financial interests can engage in science, as our pharmaceutical companies do, but that we should know about it so we can take the results with a grain of salt of proper size.
Would we discount our health-preserving meds because the researchers had an agenda? Sometimes we should, but the alternatives are few for pragmatically having a viable drug pipeline.
So, this study is naïve, and the author may be unaware of the internalized agenda promoted. However, it is not a legitimate complaint or criticism to say that this is not science because there are some analytic methods that some of us do not know.
– – – – – – –
Amelia Sharmanab,
You have missed some areas in your purview.
One area you have missed follows. Blogs that are significantly critical of IPCC centric alarming bias have sometimes focused on the frequent absurd conspiracy theories promoted by types of people like Oreskes, Cook, Mann. Mostly the conspiracy theories promoted by those types of individuals have these paranoias : 1) skeptics are conspiring with big fossil interests to hamper climate science; 2) skeptics support a political party that is conspiring to hamper climate science; 3) individual skeptics are personally conspiring to harm reputations of individual climate scientists out of hate for science.
So, I suggest you fit that into your rather artificially constrained purview.
John
TimC says:
September 10, 2013 at 5:02 am
“That’s a fair definition of a “team B” (or “loyal opposition”) role – creating a forum in which the public are engaged, actual debates occur and hypotheses can be falsified, which is not “anti-science”, but true science in action.”
The LSE, where the woman operates, is a purely Fabian institution. The MO of Fabians is the gradual transformation of the entire world into a socialist utopia (with them controlling ALL resources). To infiltrate all other parties they have created GLOBE international (GLOBE international has its global headquarters in the same building as the Fabian Society.)
Fabians are not interested in a “loyal” opposition but in infiltrating. “Engaging” the public means to them representing the public with their own patsies (think NGO’s) that they then call “stakeholders”. Et voila, here’s YOUR representative, don’t you just love him, never heard of him? Don’t share his opinions? Think he’s a socialist loon? Well, TOUGH and now P.O. you ungrateful prole. After all that we’ve done for you.
So understand; the woman explores the skeptic network to help them to get it under their control. They are not interested in a “loyal” opposition; only in a CONTROLLED opposition. (Hegelian dialectic; Hegel being the teacher of one Karl Marx)
This is useful research.
If we know which blogs are most visited we may suggest, efficiently, in posts at those places that we ‘allow’ sites such as 97% at the Guardian to wither on their vines.
If we regularly ask readers to NOT go to any Guardian, SS or ClimateProgress links we can get our message over much more easily than going there, attempting to engage but getting censored, deleted and mobbed.
Let the alarmist blogs, opinion pieces and commentary all become the echo chambers they so richly deserve to be.
We have sufficient numbers now for new skeptics to find the meat and potatoes of our argument without suffering the Romm’s, Cooks and Nuticelli’s sickly, weak soup.
😉
TheLastDemocrat says:
September 10, 2013 at 6:50 am
“Would we discount our health-preserving meds because the researchers had an agenda? Sometimes we should, but the alternatives are few for pragmatically having a viable drug pipeline.”
You surely are a Democrat, though that is irrelevant.
You ask for science to be evaluated on the same standards as medicine, the most egregious of your errors. Physicians do not serve the truth first and foremost. Physicians are not using patients for the sake of experimentation. First and foremost, physicians endeavor to relieve suffering. That goal lies entirely outside of science. The surgeons who decided to cut a hole in a patient’s leg and thread a balloon through an artery to the heart did so because it was the last chance to relieve suffering. They were not practicing science, though their work might have made use of past scientific discoveries.