First, the press release on this new opinion hit-piece masquerading as peer-reviewed science that smacks of desperation, especially in light of the fact that “climate change” seems to be disappearing from grant applications.
Science community considers approaches to climate disinformation
Despite overwhelming scientific agreement on the question of human-caused global warming, a major gap exists between this consensus and the public’s understanding of the issue. Writing in BioScience, Jeffrey A. Harvey, of the Netherlands Institute of Ecology, and his colleagues examine the causes of the consensus gap, focusing on climate-denier Internet blogs and the ways in which they use topics such as Arctic sea ice extent and polar bear well-being to foment misapprehensions about climate change among the public.
Harvey and his colleagues performed an analysis of 45 climate-denier blogs, noting that 80% relied primarily on a single denier blog for their evidence, which itself had a single author who “has neither conducted any original research nor published any articles in the peer-reviewed literature on polar bears.” This paucity of expertise and evidence is common among such blogs, say the authors, as are personal attacks against researchers and attempts to misstate the extent of scientific uncertainty about crucial issues. Such narrowly framed attacks are designed to generate “keystone dominoes,” say the authors, which deniers can then use as proxies for climate science as a whole. “By appearing to knock over the keystone domino, audiences targeted by the communication may assume all other dominoes are toppled in a form of ‘dismissal by association.'”
Such misinformation poses a particular problem, because “among users, trust for blogs has been reported to exceed that of other traditional news or information sources.” To counteract the blogs’ pernicious effects, the authors argue that scientists must now engage in the “trench warfare” of public debate: “We strongly believe that scientists have a professional and moral obligation not only to inform the public about the findings and implications of their research but also to counter misinformation.” This fight, the authors caution, may require an adaptation of tactics: “Many scientists mistakenly believe that debates with deniers over the causes and consequences of climate change are purely science driven, when in reality the situation with deniers is probably more akin to a street fight.”
To this end, the authors close with a call to action: “Scientists need to more effectively use Internet-based social media to their full advantage in order to turn the tide in the battle for public opinion.” By taking the fight to blogs, YouTube, and other social media, say the authors, scientists themselves may close the consensus gap, an effort they urgently encourage. They further argue that a failure to influence public attitudes may create acute problems for numerous ecosystems; in the absence of greenhouse-gas mitigation, “the prognosis for polar bears and other Arctic biota… is bleak.”
###
Link to the paper: open access, I suggest you read it: https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/advance-article/doi/10.1093/biosci/bix133/4644513
One thing about the paper, they claim they surveyed “45 climate-denier blogs”, yet offer no supporting data or methodology I can find. There’s no Supplemental Information (SI), and nothing in the paper that shows any data whatsoever. This relegates the paper to being an opinion piece (or rather a hit piece given the open vendetta against climate skeptics that has been displayed by Lewandowsky and Mann). Plus, for a science journal to use the word “denier” is quite troubling. It is mind-blowing to me that a journal would publish “denier” used as a pejorative label with a broad brush. They expose themselves to legal issues of defamation in doing so.
From the opinion piece: “Scientists need to more effectively use Internet-based social media to their full advantage in order to turn the tide in the battle for public opinion.”
Remember that poll about social media I conducted a couple of weeks ago? Here is the results. It suggests that we should be more engaged, especially after the call to action by the Lew-Mann syndicate.
Today, here is a response by Dr. Susan Crockford, who was named in the opinion piece. WUWT was also named, but of course, I was never contacted by any of the “researchers” to ascertain my opinion or my “denial” status.
Polar bears refused to die as predicted and this is how the propheseers respond
The polar bear experts who predicted tens of thousands of polar bears would be dead by now (given the ice conditions since 2007) have found my well-documented criticisms of their failed prophesies have caused them to [lose face] and credibility with the public.
Although the gullible media still pretends to believe the doomsday stories offered by these researchers, the polar bear has fallen as a useful icon for those trying to sell a looming global warming catastrophe to the public.
Here’s what happened: I published my professional criticisms on the failed predictions of the polar bear conservation community in a professional online scientific preprint journal to which any colleague can make a comment, write a review, or ask a question (Crockford 2017). Since its publication in February 2017, not one of the people whose work is referred to in my paper bothered to counter my arguments or write a review.
They ignored me, perhaps hoping the veracity of my arguments would not have to be addressed. But it has not turned out that way. Now, too late, they have chosen a personal attack in the journal BioScience(Harvey et al. 2018 in press).
Harvey et al. (“Internet blogs, polar bears, and climate-change denial by proxy”) pretends to be a scientific analysis on internet blog posts about polar bears, climate change, and Arctic sea ice but single me out for their peculiar brand of “scientific” smearing because most of the polar bear content on the blogs they examined (80%, they estimate) came from me.
You wouldn’t know from the paper, for example, that I am a professional zoologist with a Ph.D. in evolution (with polar bears in my dissertation), only that the GWPF describes me as “an expert on polar bear evolution” (as if this is probably a lie).
The authors state: “Crockford vigorously criticize, without supporting evidence, the findings of several leading researchers who have studied polar bears in the field for decades.”
Anyone who reads my blog or has read my paper knows this is the opposite of what I do.
The fact that I criticize with supporting evidence is precisely why these “leading researchers” feel so threatened and why the paper had to be written.
These misrepresentations alone tell you all you need to know about the motive behind the paper and the accuracy of the rest of their statements about me and others.
The long list of co-authors joining in on this attack includes several psychologists, one of whom has written similar papers before, as well as serial-litagator/climate change champion Michael Mann:
BioScience is an interesting choice for this “Forum” paper: I counted only 4 polar bear research papers in this journal since 2004 but 11 papers on “climate change denial” since 2010 (not including this one). In other words, few polar bear scientists would usually read this journal but many people interested in the “problem” of “climate change denial” would seek it out.
You can read it here (open access).
REFERENCES
Crockford, S.J. 2017. Testing the hypothesis that routine sea ice coverage of 3-5 mkm2 results in a greater than 30% decline in population size of polar bears (Ursus maritimus). PeerJ Preprints 2 March 2017. Doi: 10.7287/peerj.preprints.2737v3 Open access. https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.2737v3
UPDATE: Dr. Judith Curry weighs in.
This is absolutely the stupidest paper I have ever seen published https://t.co/jBSiJ1DMlL pic.twitter.com/XnuRZDrsUt
— Judith Curry (@curryja) November 29, 2017
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Once again we have an example of profound illiteracy. These people aren’t nearly as educated as they think they are.
Anyone who wishes for trench warfare has ZERO clue about the profound misery of the trenches of WW1. Just being in the trenches, even with no actual military action, meant that you had a 50% chance of becoming a casualty.
It makes me sick to think about it.
Vicksburg was the preview of what was to come.
Now, instead of bullets and bombs, they want tree rings and windmills to be slicing and dicing people’s lives.
Trench warfare during the Civil War in the US was no picnic either. Cheers –
https://www.civilwar.org/learn/articles/10-facts-petersburg-campaign
[And like WWI, that campaign of trench warfare never broke the actual trench lines, but the trenches were flanked around by the successful northern armies who were able to think, maneuver, and go around the rigid defenders of their status quo. .mod]
England never recovered from WWI. The sorry state of their government today is best explained by the loss of the better part of a generation in the trenches. “Now It Can Be Told” (by Philip Gibbs) gives a full account of British stupidity and duplicity. Their generals insisted in “maintaining a proactive stance” in the trenches, sending thousands ‘over the top’ in futile attacks on well-supported German positions protected by machine guns. See also “A Very Long Engagement” (2004) for a graphic depiction of what Gibbs talked about.
Apart from the fact that Britain and its allies won, the loss of a generation was keenly felt nonetheless. The loss at my school was equivalent to all the leavers for six years. The loss at Eton was worse. 1157 dead out of 5660 who served.
https://www.newstatesman.com/2013/12/real-eton-rifles
This is the most telling quote in the piece:
“Scientists need to more effectively use Internet-based social media to their full advantage in order to turn the tide in the battle for public opinion.”
Scientists shouldn’t be at all concerned about public opinion. I don’t see theoretical physicists wringing their hands over public acceptance of quantum theory, or astrophysicists trying to “turn the tide of public opinion” on whether information can escape a black hole. That these guys are admitting to a PR agenda belies any pretense of objectivity in their research; after all, if one of these socially conscious scientists these guys are advocating for performs a future study that casts doubt on the certainty of harmful global warming, publishing that study would conflict with the goal of their “battle.”
good one!……
” Scientists shouldn’t be at all concerned about public opinion.”
+ Infinity
What is, is. We’d like to understand it.
(Who’s running this year?)
That’s what scientists’ attitude should be, not slanting “science” to achieve his desired political results.
Kurt
“I don’t see theoretical physicists wringing their hands over public acceptance of quantum theory, or astrophysicists trying to “turn the tide of public opinion” on whether information can escape a black hole.”
Those guys haven’t got the captains of industry on their Khyber Passes.
No they just care about the science and not try to dictate a result. If you got took the stupid politics out of climate science you might actually get somewhere. It’s not up to science to make things fair and equitable, renewable or any other half baked political agenda. There are arguably more ways to weaponize things and destroy the human race in QM than most fields and the “human impact” is no different to climate science.
Using that example, you won’t find any Quantum Physicists worrying if there work is equitable and fair for the world or should they be activists for a renewable solution. If a QM scientists crosses that line you are no longer a scientist and are an QM activist or Terrorist which depends on your bend.
The problem is Climate Scientist think they are special a great many science fields deal with things that could end the world and none were stupid enough to go down the path of Climate Science.
Plus these idiots split infinitives. Off with their heads (figuratively speaking).
. . . and I thought I was a grammar Nazi.
I know better than to go around criticizing other people’s grammar.
Dr Michael Crichton (of Andromeda Strain, Jurassic Park, and ER fame) wrote about what was happening in the world of climate science. He even wrote about Mann’s deception and M&M’s utter destruction of Mann’s junk science.
Everyone should read Dr Chrichton’s essay on Why Polticized Science like what Mann practices must be ignored.
Dr Michael Crichton was probably 10-20 years or more ahead of everyone (his entire life).
Why Politicized Science is Dangerous
By Michael Crichton
http://www.michaelcrichton.com/why-politicized-science-is-dangerous/
Classical physics itself is an even better example. The LHC and Ligo have proved beyond any doubt there is at least 1 hidden dimension and both our leading science theories QM and GR are built on hidden dimensions. In the QM field we have deliberately set about violating every Classical law that stood and the only one still under dispute as to whether QM can violate is the 2nd law. Yet I guarantee you that almost all the public and a great many scientists from other fields still think the Classical laws are true and you can just tack this extra dimensional stuff into classical physics, we just haven’t discovered how yet. I would not like to count the numbers of times I get quoted that stupidity.
Technically, Classical Physics is pseudoscience and the question then becomes is it morally and criminally wrong to still teach it 🙂
Do you know what the terms ‘morally’ and ‘criminally ‘ mean, LdB?
“Technically, Classical Physics is pseudoscience”
Well it must be quite the pseudo-science to have led to so much technological progress.
@JohnKnight
Do you know what sarcasm is .. but you response did make me smile again :-).
Yeah, I know what sarcasm is . . I just wasn’t sure you weren’t gloating ..
80% relied primarily on a single denier blog for their evidence…..
One blog whooped theirasses…..must be a damn good blog 😉
True, there is far more “evidence” in a single denier blog than in all of the alarmist blogs and social media put together.
Which would explain the recent uptick in CAGW trolls like crackerboy … aka I am so tough I type like a special needs patient. That must be his trench warfare he is going to carriage return us to death.
The climate consensus community played the “do not debate” card way too long. The drop in support for climate concern over the last 10 years should have told them that but so long as they had a very supportive president and congress it really didn’t matter to them, the grant money continued to flow. I always thought that those in the community would be much more receptive to debate when the research dollars dried up and that is indeed what’s happening.
So if there is a sudden willingness to debate, who should be debating? I don’t think it would be productive to make names but it might be best to suggest to them to leave the psychologists out. It smacks too much of Soviet era re-education. Even the impact studies scientists should not be given primacy because their scenarios depend upon model results. They really need the people measuring, modeling and making predictions. I recall when Roger Pielke Sr. had his blog, he had a sort of debate between Kevin Trenberth and Roy Spencer on terrestrial emissivity from satellites over a variety of wavelenbths . It was actually quite interesting and enlightening. You got a pretty good insight into how two people with very different views could come up with very different conclusion looking at the same data. I think that level of interaction over a variety of topics that likely have to take place over few years will be necessary to break the log jam of pre conceived beliefs.
“The 45 science-based blogs and the 45 science-denier blogs…Science-based blogs overwhelmingly used the frame of established scientific certainties.”
“Science-based” clearly means “parroting”. The science-based blogs are not named, for reasons of modesty. The science-denier blogs are not named because the selected ones are only known to crackpots.
Trench warfare? To quote Inigo Montoya, “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means” TW is the result of a standoff,. There is no advance, no retreat. Just endless carnage on both sides for no gain. But if they want to use it, go nuts, guys
Yeah, I doubt these snowflakes have the slightest idea what real trench warfare entails. A lack of understanding of history can be added to their resumes.
“To this end, the authors close with a call to action: “Scientists need to more effectively use Internet-based social media to their full advantage in order to turn the tide in the battle for public opinion.” By taking the fight to blogs, YouTube, and other social media, say the authors, scientists themselves may close the consensus gap, an effort they urgently encourage”
I “saw” this first on Mr. Kummer’s recent (I felt) oddly “Good news” oriented posting, I believe . . This was one “tell, it seemed to me;
“We don’t actually need your approval, If we did, we would avoid posting on sites where we knew there would be vehement opposition.” – Gareth
Sure seemed like a lot of “we” showed up for vehement opposition all of a sudden . .
Yep. Agree. And it’s mostly potshots. Nothing to add, only to troll.
climate-denier Internet blogs and yet they can show [no] evidence these blogs deny either the existence of climate or that climate changes.
So what is ‘denied’ then ?
Well it seems that these blogs carry-out that essential element of science , they critical review the claims being made by others and at times find them to have failed . Their ‘crime’ is to question and worse to ask the type of questions that others would rather not get asked .
What we see is what has been seen time and again , that if you use science as base this makes no sense, however switch over to religion or politics and think fanatically follower, then it does make sense. And you can understand why what otherwise would be consider not merely a normal approach but a positive one, must be attacked by what ever means.
Climate doom is the means by which third rate academics, pop-psychologists and those with political axe to grind which they known the voters will reject , have gained far to much power, influence and indeed personal wealth.
Their ‘science’ is every bit as ‘pretty’ as their physicality and ‘speech ‘ and they are a foul-mouthed bunch that hit every branch as the fall down the ugly tree. I merely hope they live long enough to see their life’s work held up as joke and see their world come crashing down on them . We can only hope that when it falls it does no damage that which we can ill afford to lose . But if it does then its only those who played three wise monkeys over what they knew to be rotten to the core practice, that will be to blame.
“Despite overwhelming scientific agreement on the question of human-caused global warming, . . .”
When someone starts with such a statement, I know the rest stinks like a long dead carp.
Susan C. and A. W. are heroes
Yes, and they wrote ‘agreement’ instead of ‘evidence’ because there it’s all they have.
Also note the oxymoron – there is nothing scientific about any “agreement.”
“Trench Warfare”.
Unless I misunderstand my history, “trench warfare” refers (primarily) to the result of a political conflict.
Not science.
+1
Also stalemate with horrific loss of life.
What is worse is what I read in a guardian article (that bastion of truth) :
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2017/nov/29/new-study-uncovers-the-keystone-domino-strategy-of-climate-denial
Perhaps our resident poley bear expert Griff would like to prove tgat one?
that is a quote from the advertised paper.
I think it is true, BTW.
OK, fair enough, sge apparently has not published about current polar bear populations. That’s very misleading, especially as she actually states that on her blog and has a very impressive list of publications.
It’s a bit like claiming that last Wednesday afternoon was the hottest evah Wednesday afternoon in November while it’s raining in downtown Melbourne, therefore CAFW ™ . Nobody would be as disingenuous as to do that, would they?
this is from the Crokford paper:
NOT PEER-REVIEWED
“PeerJ Preprints” is a venue for early communication or feedback before peer review. Data may be preliminary.
Learn more about preprints or browse peer-reviewed articles instead.
Testing the hypothesis that routine sea ice coverage of 3-5 mkm2 results in a greater than 30% decline in population size of polar bears (Ursus maritimus)
Well…. apparently, yes they would.
Ah well.
Reallygullible, I suggest you start here.. https://www.amazon.com/dp/1541281829/
Its is described as “For pre-schoolers”
Hope you don’t find it too difficult.
Do you have trouble understanding the words “peer review”?
You mean publishing in a journal ????
Or are you so scientifically illiterate that you didn’t know that was the purpose.?
No need to answer…… your gullible ignorance is obvious to all.
The troll’s are trying to redefine peer review.
To them it means that the experts that they trust have to agree with it.
Susan’s work has been more thoroughly peer reviewed than almost any climate science paper, because she makes all of her evidence available to anyone who wants to to review it.
Whereas the the so called climate scientists keep their data and methods hidden and only show it to those who already agree with them.
I suspect not much of Dian Fossey publications on Gorilla’s would have been peer-reviewed either.
Move to harder science fields:
None of Einstein’s four famous papers published in 1905 were peer-reviewed.
On the other hand Peter Higgs did write a paper on the Higgs mechanism in 1964 the editors of Physics Letters rejected it “of no obvious relevance to physics”, one of reviewers alleged to be Stephen Hawking.
Peer-review is an interesting an animal with very checkered results and I am not sure it means a whole lot.
Well, I’ve said before that the real argument is related to who gets the grant money. If these people are wrong, and it appears more and more that they are, then they won’t be as likely to get the grant money they want.
For example, I believe Mann’s grants bring in some $3.8 million/year to Penn State, and the University gets to keep half of it. He gets the other half plus his salary and perks. The “denier” meme is a thorn in his side because it means that his grant money will go elsewhere.
He and his Lexus buddy will use every trick in the book, including trying to destroy the credibility of the work of other people, to keep that money flowing. Attempting to turn this AGW nonsense into some sort of religious experience with help from the ever-helpful ALgore sect is one way to do that. He’s learned which psychological buttons to push (not difficult) and is something of a cult leader.
The only way he can be discredited and the stop the nonsense is to continue to prove that he’s wrong, no matter how hard he stomps his little feet, how many tantrums he throws.
At some point, this nonsense will stop, maybe when another 14 feet of snow fall on Boston, but this time, the snow doesn’t melt, because there’s 20 feet across the US/CAN border. You just have to keep presenting facts and not respond to the silliness, but be VERY aware of it.
Oh he’s very worried about his grants going forward.
I imagine he wet himself bigtime when Hillary lost.
“He gets the other half plus his salary and perks.
The ‘principle investigator’ (PI) does get a salary. This will be somewhat higher than average for a university professor, and much lower than a VIP in a major corporation. Much of the money goes to others, such as cooperating researchers, graduate students, and technical support staff. An example of the latter is the person that makes maps for reports.
Usually universities are audited by a federal agency and an agreement is signed regarding the amount that goes to the university rather than the research. Buildings and labs have to be available and maintained, heated, A/C, lighting, keeping budgets & audits, and much other stuff.
PI’s do not get rich from this work, although there are some perks.
My Heartiest Congratulations to Susan Crockford and Anthony Watts.
There could be no higher praise for the success of their work in getting alternative views of the details of Climate Science and the Global Warming Controversy out to the general public than to be singled out for vicious attack by the likes of Lewandowsky and Mann.
Thanks Kip! I agree.
And thanks to all the rest of you for your support.
Book sales should be booming this week, as it should be with all of the extra traffic I’m getting.
Susan
Thank you, Susan. Putting the truth first is tough in a hostile environment. You are an inspiration.
The green badge of calmage ; )
“Acknowledgments
The authors wish to thank the three anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on the manuscript.”
Yup.
I am amazed that they use terms like ‘denier’. It tells me that what they really wanted to write was “big nasty poopy face!”
Is there anything that has not been corrupted by this madness?
Not really. Here in oz, we are apparently facing an economic crisis because Climate Change ™ , although when you actually read the report, it states that the perceived risk of climate change is going to possibly cause some economic problems.
So it’s not Climate Change ™ itself, it’s the risk of tge imagined problems, or really the risk of the problems caused by imagining the problem of Climate Change ™ , specifically because people will buy less coal.
Now there’s a bait & switch if evah I saw one!
Methinks they doth protest too much.
Trench warfare.. ????
Yep, we notice they just keep digging themselves deeper and deeper.
As the quicksand that the AGW farce is build on, keeps pouring in on top of them. 🙂
Ha! Excellent definition of their trench warfare.
“…… “among users, trust for blogs has been reported to exceed that of other traditional news or information sources.” ”
Yes! This much is quite true.
So when your research is crap and filled with little statistical tricks…. yeah… you’re little [pruned] Mann.
I think Little Mann is still smarting from how M&M showed he and his hockey stick were a complete fraud. He got spanked, He continues to get spanked. Everyone in the field surely must know that by now. Those that don’t care are simply as dishonest as Little Mann.
Man’s day of reckoning is coming.
Like Matt Lauer’s.
Like Harvery Weinstein.
Like Jerry Sandusky.
don’t forget Trumpster.
You have NOTHING as always, little mr Gullible.
Just a few banshees wailing and gnashing their stumps. !!
I would suggest billboard advertising of the political climate scam like the Wall Drug approach. sarc
Climate change deniers ever read Limits To Growth, or any of its updates? The 40 Year Update in 2012 changed their expectations for global population overshoot and collapse from sometime after 2030 to NLT 2024.
The cause of that collapse remained the same, what Claude Levi-Strauss called the poisoning of the planet. Its food and water resources by our man-made chemical pollutants.
The only measurement of that increase is the CO2 ppm rating from Moana Loa. It is now well in excess of 400 ppm. Of the other 90,000 manmade chemicals floating about and accumulating in our biosphere, relatively little has ever been disseminated out to my level of ignorance. I’ve seen nothing about detoxifying any of the region destroyed by Harvey, not just Houston.
Cooked, contaminated, or both? When the microorganisms at the base of all our sea/food chains are unable to adapt to the environment in which they are forced to live, how much longer will us apex consumers?
[???? .mod]
“It is now well in excess of 400 ppm”
But needs to go much higher.
CO2 is NOT a pollutant of any sort at atmospheric levels.
Never has been, never will be.
It is , in fact, one of the two Fundamental Building Blocks of All Life on Earth.
There have been many “peak, that is and peak that” farces put forward over time..
…. and in nearly every case the end was diametrically opposite to the alarmism.
You have been sold a huge dump of brain-washed propaganda lies and pap.
And being a GULLIBLE little person without much obvious thinking ability.. you fell for it.
“Climate change deniers ever read Limits To Growth”
I read that back in the 70s. It was complete tosh then. It predicted all sorts of things that never happened. What has happened. is that prosperity has spread bringing billions of people out of destitution. life expectancies have increased. Famines, epidemics, and wars are far less widespread than they predicted.
” what Claude Levi-Strauss called the poisoning of the planet.”
A French intellectual, of course a communist, who claimed to be an anthropologist, which means that he wrote incomprehensible B$ about Indian tribes in the Amazon. He was in no sense a scientist.
“relatively little has ever been disseminated out to my level of ignorance.”
You can say that again.
Channeling Harold Egbert Camping, I think.
I’ve read Limits to Growth, and recognized it for the garbage that it is from the very first.
The planet isn’t being poisoned, the reality is that even at it’s worst, pollution was never enough to poison the planet, and the planet has been getting cleaned up for 40 years now.
Of the other “90,000” chemicals, none of them are close to toxic levels. Heck most of them can only by detected using the most sensitive instruments available.
BTW, those micro-organisms are doing just fine, and are probably better adapted than you are. You’ve already proven that they are more intelligent.
Don, have you ever served on a submarine. CO2 becomes toxic around 12000-14000ppm. There isn’t enough biomass on the earth to raise CO2 concentrations to that level.
Very true however, astronauts are at risk when sleeping and being poisoned by their own exhaled breath that is why they always sleep with a fan on.
Don. Read it. As for “updated” versions. Rehashed garbage is still garbage. You might try reading books by people who have been correct at least occasionally instead of people who are constantly, wildly wrong.
What person believes everything they read or hear about?
Gullible people do. Most others will want some evidence. Arctic ice melting? An adjusted temperature chart? Lewandowsky saying you’re crazy?
I don’t believe because I have spent a lot of time and energy looking at the evidence and testing it.
Ms. Crockford: change to “lose” in the following:
“have caused them to loose face”
[Done, thank you. .mod]
Thanks Roger, it is fixed on the original but that was done after Anthony posted it here. I was very tired.
If their faces get too loose, will they slide off?
‘Such narrowly framed attacks are designed to generate “keystone dominoes,” say the authors, which deniers can then use as proxies for climate science as a whole. “By appearing to knock over the keystone domino, audiences targeted by the communication may assume all other dominoes are toppled in a form of ‘dismissal by association.’”’
Well you did put up the keystone dominoes to knock over which wasn’t going to be too hard for all us experienced, evil Holocaust deniers remember? When you’re experienced in evil like us we do know not to dabble with blowing up schoolkiddies and tipping polar bears off skyscrapers. Well at least not sharing around the incriminating pictures. That’s fluffy kittens 101 to Dr Evils.
They even fail with their metaphors.
If the “keystone” is knocked down, then the entire “arch” IS in fact in ruins.
(Relating “keystones” to “dominoes” makes no sense, unless you are using them to build imaginary towers like children do. And in that sense if you remove the “key” dominio holding up the edifice the whole thing DOES collapse.)
Google doesn’t know what a keystone domino is either.
Perhaps the panic exhibited by this paper has less to do with facts on the ground and much more to the prior WUWT article pointing out the change in grant funding implying dramatic reductions in Climate Change grant money.
I expect to see more panicked papers as predictions do not occur and funding dries up.
And hopefully all those misemployed in the ‘Climate Change™’ industry with mere sociology, or social science degrees have to get some real productive work.
They should start by leaning “Do you want fries with that?”
The problem is that some of our more respected Universities (e.g. George Mason University) are offering graduate degrees in “Climate Change Communication”
Clearly in order to even enroll you must believe there is a CAGW problem that you then want to learn how to convince others of.
This comes awfully close to the logical fallacy of “Begging the Question”.
Like the authors of the subject article they usually start out with “given that the science is settled…”