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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Awesome Susan re the book sales! thanks to Anthony for the blog , long my it countinue getting up Mann’s nose!!!!. Haven’t the AGW idiots ever realised that almost any publicity is good publicity? The more they carry on, the more people realise that maybe , just maybe, there are other arguments and evidence. Eventually real scientists will step in and demand an end to the damage that is being done to their profession. It isn’t the debates or different perspectives that are the problem. that is how science advances. It is the unwillingness to be criticised or even to accept that you archive your data so others may he, test, challenge it.
I became a sceptic (denier is a meretricious insult) because I am a mathematician /statistician by training. No way am i in M&M’s league but I sat down and read what I could from Mann and the M&M critiques and then the increasing numbers of comments on Mann’s dodgy maths. If you have to ignore key tests (eg R squared), use untested methodologies, then you have to explain why. That is called Science. That is not what Mann and his mates have done. The leak of information from the University of East Anglia defined the inappropriate lengths that the AGW crowd have gone to.
I cannot even trust my own Met office any more. they have closed inconvenient weather stations like Rutherglen that showed effectively nothing ie the weather was just being the weather and bumbling along as usual. Jennifer Marohasy has identified that the Australian Bureau of Meteorology doesn’t even meet the actual requirements of the international standard for taking readings,. they argue of course that their method is perfectly OK but how do we know? I believe Jennifer again because I look at the sampling process and realise its not good enough.
And then there is the inconvenient evidence that the earth seems to be greening , taking in all that “carbon pollution” and growing more food.
I do think we need to be concerned about our population growth but funnily enough that largely seems to sort itself out when we educate women and countries start to develop and coal power seems, from personal observation, to be rather less polluting that burning cow dung. Solar panels and batteries will help a bit in developing nations (but only without subsidies) but given solar and wind cannot even produce enough reliable power to renew themselves, ie create new panels, turbine blades) then if we remove coal completely in australia where i live then we will be going backwards a very long way. We here in Oz cannot possibly consider nuclear base load. All those nasty little gamma rays will make us glow in the dark ! (SArc).
So Michael Mann and mates, don’t bother using social media. I can read and I have a brain and I will continue to research and learn and if sufficient actual evidence emerges then I will change my mind because that is how both science and humans develop. You’re wasting your time on Twitter. 140 (now I’m told 280 characters) does not allow effective debate and challenge, only insult and lowest common denominator stuff.
So thanks again Anthony and everyone here who contributes. If I am a denier then i rather like the company i keep. It’s so much easier to tell the truth, you don’t need such a good memory! Even Griff is reliably funny!
NO! NO! NO!
If the data and the method are verifiable and validated against observation or by replication, that and only that, is all that is required. A consensus is NOT REQUIRED! If all your ‘science’ paper has to offer is an unfalsifiable theory then it is nothing but pseudoscience.
As for social science — it is garbage! Social science degrees are only offered because they are cheap courses to put together, making lots of money for the institution providing them, as they hand out 10th rate degrees to 10th rate academics.
Social science is as worthy to society as a secondhand split condom and as scientific as phrenology.
“secondhand”
I must be using them incorrectly ! 😉
🙂
From….many of the usual suspects……… Jeffrey A. Harvey Daphne van den Berg Jacintha Ellers Remko Kampen Thomas W. Crowther Peter Roessingh Bart Verheggen Rascha J. M. Nuijten Eric Post Stephan Lewandowsky Ian Stirling Meena Balgopal Steven C. Amstrup Michael E. Mann
” Refereces cited ”
Their references might be iffy..
Yes. Of course lads. Because common sense and ethics needs peer review.
Desperation is setting in and no matter how much huffing and puffing they do
the public just isn’t as pliable as the glory days when scientists were considered above reproach .
The scary climate salesman aren’t reading the room . Too many proven falsehoods ,
too many tax payer rip offs .
To counteract the blogs’ pernicious effects, the authors argue that scientists must now engage in the “trench warfare” of public debate
How many open offers to have a public debate have been left unaddressed by the alarmists? Jeffrey A. Harvey (j.jharvey@nioo.knaw.nl) affiliated with the Department of Terrestrial Ecology at the Netherlands Institute of Ecology, you are being called out. Lead by example.
From the opinion piece:
Although the effects of warming on some polar-bear subpopulations are not yet documented and other subpopulations are apparently still faring well, the fundamental relationship between polar-bear welfare and sea-ice availability is well established, and unmitigated AGW assures that all polar bears ultimately will be negatively affected.
There’s a word to describe a person who admits to the evidence but comes to a contradictory conclusion and that word is not scientist.
It was once “well established” that the Earth was at the center of the universe, and that the Sun orbited around it. “Just another code word for “consensus,” which in science is what we call “meaningless.”
Fat finger – shouldn’t be a quotation mark before “Just.”
My favourite quote from the piece is:
“Rhetorical devices to evoke fear and other emotions, such as implying that the public is under threat from deceitful scientists, are common tactics employed by science-denier groups .”
So, presumably, “science-denier groups” doesn’t count as a rhetorical device?
Do these people even bother to read back what they have just written?
LMAO. One might rephrase,
“Rhetorical devices to evoke fear and other emotions, such as implying that the public is under threat from dangerous climate change caused by human fossil fuel burning, are common tactics employed by pseudo-science promoting Eco-Fascists.”
Another opinion paper (hit piece) held out as science.
Nice review process
This opinion (hit) piece is undergoing peer review as we speak. 😉
I do wish we had access to the review comments. This is what is missing in this peer process.
The most amazing thing about this paper is that they provide the evidence within their own paper that they are wrong.
“the effects of warming on some polar-bear subpopulations are not yet documented and other subpopulations are apparently still faring well”
So their stance is really “While observations show we are wrong, our models continue to show we will be right and we don’t like to be criticised.”
I can remember back when Alarmists trolls used to reply with links and pages of the IPCC reports. One by one their objections have been fielded. Year after year. Now the Alarmist replies are getting Pathetic.
Susan Crockford has done good work. I’m grateful.
“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.”
Here comes another wave of paid Internet trolls.
Crackers will be here to carriage and linefeed us to death.
Yeah . . alarmists think scepticism is someone else’s job.
That’s the part that always gets me.
This is on reddit in several places. Each thread will have hundreds or thousands of comments, half or more of which are deleted. Pretty funny if you ask me.
Slime correlates as well with CO2 as anything else, though more work is required on the Medieval Slime Period. I think I know just the man to do it.
Stirling is an author and the polar bear issue is dominant… Susan is right, it is precisely because she supports her criticism that they needed to write this paper and she seems to be the true, real target of this.
The key here is that readers in the eyes of those authors are supposedly unable to read and judge a good discussion when they see one. Readers, for them, are simpletons who cannot appreciate the validity of a demonstration… since they dare to doubt the word of the official experts.
This attitude is eerily similar to the fake-news accusation western media/think-tanks are using in an attempt to discredit any other geopolitical analysis that do expose the true goals of western actions. There too, readers have been supposedly “had” by the other side propaganda… As if propaganda was the exclusive other side’s evil trademark while truthful information naturally graced our side only. Our side doing false flags and lying? Impossible, right? Readers are denied any intelligence and ability to appreciate how flawed, hypocritical and misleading “our” side can be, despite mounting numerous historical examples, FOI access declassification of documents showing the opposite of what media claimed for months.
This attack on Susan shows these guys are worried, so worried they cannot even quote Mitch Taylor’s work, a tell-tale that contrary to their claims, science is not to be served in their paper. But, hey, who am I as a reader to figure that one out?
As usual, the relays from Canadian Press are prompt to help: CBC a member of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists did not miss this new paper… http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/climate-denier-blogs-ignore-science-1.4424956
No investigation here from them, pure slander on Susan.
Here in England it is currently snowing. Since fully qualified climate scientist David Viner stated back in the year 2000 that snow in England was now a thing of the past, it follows that, by pointing out, in 2017, that it is snowing, I am obviously a climate denier spreading fake news. It goes without saying that I am being paid handsomely by fossil fuel companies to spread the lie that it is snowing in England.
The problem that the alarmists now face is that English people are quite capable of looking out of their windows.
Snow? Naaah. Proxy water. Nothing but snow – “Ersatz”.
mann complaining about using proxies (if I understood it right) is pretty funny seeing as his whole existance in climate discussion was based on proxies.
Biology was corrupted half a century ago when the environmental movement took wing. The biological activist icon Ehrlich was foaming at the mouth since the sixties when he wrote his doomsday door stopper Population Bomb. He jumped on the global cooling panic and wrong again, flipped to global warming. He received a prestigious award from the Royal Society for a lifetime achievement of getting binary issues diametrically wrong. They love this guy.
Susan Crockford and Jim Steele are outstanding honest and brave exceptions to the rule that biological/ecological sciences are now just a branch of the corrupted social sciences. This is why they come up for so much abuse by these clones. Mann and Lewandowski show what they have by the company they keep. I consider smears by these two to be favorable reviews of such sterling scientists as Crockford and Steele.