Reposted from Dr. Judith Curry’s Climate Etc.
Posted on August 14, 2019 by curryja
The latest travesty in consensus ‘enforcement’, published by Nature.
There is a new paper published in Nature, entitled Discrepancies in scientific authority and media visibility of climate change scientists and contrarians.
Abstract. We juxtapose 386 prominent contrarians with 386 expert scientists by tracking their digital footprints across ∼200,000 research publications and ∼100,000 English-language digital and print media articles on climate change. Projecting these individuals across the same backdrop facilitates quantifying disparities in media visibility and scientific authority, and identifying organization patterns within their association networks. Here we show via direct comparison that contrarians are featured in 49% more media articles than scientists. Yet when comparing visibility in mainstream media sources only, we observe just a 1% excess visibility, which objectively demonstrates the crowding out of professional mainstream sources by the proliferation of new media sources, many of which contribute to the production and consumption of climate change disinformation at scale. These results demonstrate why climate scientists should increasingly exert their authority in scientific and public discourse, and why professional journalists and editors should adjust the disproportionate attention given to contrarians.
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This ranks as the worst paper I have ever seen published in a reputable journal. The major methodological problems and dubious assumptions:
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- Category error to sort into contrarians and climate scientists, with contrarians including scientists, journalists and politicians.
- Apart from the category error, the two groups are incorrectly specified, with some climate scientists incorrectly designated as contrarians.
- Cherry picking the citation data of top 386 cited scientists to delete Curry, Pielke Jr, Tol, among others (p 12 of Supplemental Information)
- Acceptance of the partisan, activist, non-scientist group DeSmog as a legitimate basis for categorizing scientists as ‘contrarian’
- Assumption that scientific expertise on the causes of climate change relates directly to the number of scientific citations.
- Assumption that it would be beneficial for the public debate on climate change for the ‘unheard’ but highly cited climate scientists to enter into the media fray.
- Assumption that scientists have special authority in policy debates on climate change
The real travesty is this press release issued by UC Merced:
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“It’s time to stop giving these people visibility, which can be easily spun into false authority,” Professor Alex Petersen said. “By tracking the digital traces of specific individuals in vast troves of publicly available media data, we developed methods to hold people and media outlets accountable for their roles in the climate-change-denialism movement, which has given rise to climate change misinformation at scale.”
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Etc.
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Here is the list of ‘contrarians’ identified in the paper [link]
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I am included prominently on the list, presumably arising from the DeSmog hit piece on me.
From the press release: “Most of the contrarians are not scientists, and the ones who are have very thin credentials. They are not in the same league with top scientists. They aren’t even in the league of the average career climate scientist.” “giving them legitimacy they haven’t earned.” Some of the prominent, currently active climate scientists on the list whose work I have learned from:
- Roy Spencer
- Richard Lindzen
- John Christy
- Roger Pielke Jr
- Roger Pielke Sr
- Richard Tol
- Ross McKitrick
- Nir Shaviv
- Garth Paltridge
- Nicola Scafetta
- Craig Loehle
- Scott Denning
- Nils Axel Morner
- William Cotton
- Vincent Courtillot
- Hendrik Tennekes
Note that this list of climate science ‘contrarians’ is heavily populated by experts in climate dynamics, i.e. how the climate system actually works.
The most comical categorization on this list is arguably Scott Denning, who strongly supports the IPCC Consensus, and gave a talk to this effect at an early Heartland Conference. Ironically, Scott Denning tweeted this article, apparently before he realized he was on the list of contrarians.
The list also includes others (academic or not) with expertise on at at least one aspect of climate science (broadly defined), from whom I have learned something from either their publications or blog posts or other public presentations:
- Sebastian Luning
- Michael Kelly
- Bjorn Lomborg
- Christopher Essex
- Alex Epstein
- Fritz Vahrenholt
- Scott Armstrong
- Willie Soon
- Steve McIntyre
- Anthony Watts
- Patrick Michaels
- Edward Wegman
- Matt Ridley
- Patrick Moore
- David Legates
- Craig Idso
- Chip Knappenberger
- William Happer
- Henrik Svensmark
- Steven Goddard
- Madhav Kandekhar
- Jennifer Marohasy
- William Briggs
- Hal Doiron
- Freeman Dyson
- Iver Giaver
- JoAnn Nova
I would not seek to defend everything that each of these individuals has written or spoken on the topic of climate change, but they have added to our knowledge base and provide interesting perspectives. Why shouldn’t they get media coverage if something that they write about is of general interest and stands up to scrutiny?
The ‘real’ scientists on their list with heaviest media impact include:
- Donald Wuebbles
- Ramanathan
- Stephen Schneider
- Thomas Stocker
- Noah Diffenbaugh
- Miles Allen
- Kerry Emanuel
- Phil Jones
- Chris Jones
- Stefan Rahmstorf
- Andrew Weaver
- Kevin Trenberth
- Michael Mann
Does anyone think these scientists don’t get enough publicity in the MSM?
Katherine Hayhoe (with HUGE MSM presence) doesn’t make this list; is anyone concerned about her outsized Kardashian Index?
Comparing elephants and peanuts
The most ridiculous thing that this article does is compare the media hits of contrarians that are politicians or journalists with that of ‘consensus scientists’. In the list of contrarians, the following are politicians and journalists that I regard as being generally knowledgable of climate science:
- Marc Morano
- Rex Tillerson
- David Rose
- Mark Steyn
- Matt Ridley
- Nigel Lawson
- Christopher Booker
- Ronald Bailey
- Andrew Montford
- Rupert Darwall
Lets face it, these individuals are relatively small potatoes in terms of climate change main stream media. Compare the media impact of the above list with
- Al Gore
- Alexandria-Ocasio Cortez
- Greta Thunberg
- Etc.
The ignorance of climate change of AOC and Greta is rather shocking. Why isn’t anyone concerned about this?
JC reflections
Apart from the rank stupidity of this article and the irresponsibility of Nature in publishing this, this paper does substantial harm to climate science.
Climate science is a very broad and diffuse science, encompassing many subfields. Each of these subfields is associated with substantial uncertainties, and when you integrate all these fields and attempt to project into the future, there are massive uncertainties and unknowns. There are a spectrum of perspectives, especially at the knowledge frontiers. Trying to silence or delegitimize any of these voices is very bad for science.
Scientists who are effective in the public communication of climate change can speak about topics beyond their own personal expertise. This requires a different set of skills from basic research: ability to synthesize and assess a broad body of research and communicate effectively. Scientists on the ‘contrarian’ list bring something further to the table: fact checking alarming statements; concerns about research integrity; thinking outside the box and pushing the knowledge frontier of climate science beyond AGW – issues that are important to the MSM and public communication of climate science.
The harm that this paper does to climate science is an attempt to de-legitimize climate scientists (both academic and non academic), with the ancillary effects of making it more difficult to get their papers published in journals (stay tuned for my latest engagement with the journal peer review process, coming later this month) and the censorship of Nir Shaviv by Forbes (hopefully coming later this week).
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I made it onto the list of “contrarians”, albeit number 148 out of 386, so I’m in the top half … and as someone on the list, I can only agree with Dr. Judith that this is a venomous attempt to poison the climate discussion and silence those of use who do not toe the PC party line …
I get attacked personally all the time, and every time it happens I think “If you had any confidence in your scientific claims, you wouldn’t bother attacking my education and history” … this kind of nonsense doesn’t happen in any other field of science, which should give you a clue as to the state of climate science.
No bueno.
Regards to all, contrary or not,
w.
Good points, Willis.
I’ve enjoyed your prose and your dogged pursuit of scientific integrity here on WUWT. Thank you.
I never understood why a paper which tabulates viewpoints of scientists and attempts to categorize ‘right & wrong’ on the basis of ‘expert’ opinions or institutional popularity should have any scientific merit, let alone be afforded ‘value’ in the mainstream media. Yet so it is in our deranged world.
This latest example is a crass demonstration of the depths to which some will stoop to support their pet cause. Reprehensible. This must be opposed loudly and clearly for what it is.
A badge of honor, to be sure.
RobR,
Indeed, it is a “badge of honour”, and I am proud that I have been awarded it because this elevates me to comparability with Bob Carter who has been awarded the same honour.
However, the facts that Bob and I have this honour discredits the paper in Nature as being a valid study of currently active ‘climate contrarians’ .
My poor health has prevented me from providing much opposition to ‘climate alarmism’ for the last five years, and Bob died in January 2016.
Richard
Greta is leaving for the US on a pretty cool sailboat. Looking for some kind of nonsense? Don’t miss this:
Cool, but slow boat so far. Last reported position was 49.19.17.54N, 5.52.34.20W. Speed 1.3 kts.
Reason for the speed? 22kt wind from the SW, which switches around to be from the W tomorrow.
There are no favorable winds for westward travel for the next week.
In addition to the brisk winds, temps in the low 60s.
And there is no plastic or synthetic made from fossil fuels on the boat? And no back up motor with a petrol engine for when she should get into trouble? And there are no synthetics in her clothes and no cotton made with lots of environmental damage and lots of chemicals etc etc etc…..
I noticed from the Guardian clip that approx. half a dozen press boats were accompanying Greta & co. out of the harbor. Unless my ears were deceiving me, the background sound was created by the dreaded Diesel motor.
Based on all the press coverage and streaming (not to mention the speed), my guess is that Greta’s N Atlantic crossing will consume several times that of a typical airline passenger.
Amazing that the paper got published!
Absolutely amazing!
Fringe benefit? A great list of climate realists was a byproduct!!!
The funniest part of the whole paper
Emmanuel Vincent: Activist & founder of Climate Feedback
Anthony LeRoy Westerling: Activist & Connections to Guardian, Schwarzeneggar Institute and Governor Jerry Brown
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jul/26/wildfires-climate-change-future-worse
Well you gotta admit there’s no competing interests there. All solid A grade watermelon. You just have to contextualise these things comrade.
Hi Tomwys,
Can you point to a single factual error that the paper made? The central claims of the
paper are that
1) Climate Scientists are cited significantly more often than climate contrarians.
2) Climate contrarians get 49% more media coverage than climate scientists
3) In the mainstream media climate scientists and climate contrarians get roughly
equal media mentions (a 1% difference).
Points 2 and 3 if accurate should put pay to the myth often stated here that the
media is biased towards the views of mainstream climate science. Rather it is the
sceptical viewpoint that gets the most media attention.
Climate “contrarians” are banned from the BBC. Climate “contrarians”never appear on the Sky News channel.
Really? What about this on Sky news https://youtu.be/ViY2J3LPgN4 and this https://youtu.be/BnDgxboOGBc where they even plug this web site.
Contrarians may not be explicitly banned by the BBC. But they are only allowed exposure in order to be rubbished.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/bbc-freezes-out-climate-sceptics-fqhqmrfs6
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/sep/10/bbc-climate-change-deniers
It goes back a long way. Take the case of the two Davids. Years ago the better qualified and then more popular presenter, Bellamy, was barred because he did not believe that increasing levels of CO2 would lead to disaster. The BBC then turned to a more pliable advocate Attenborough.
Izaak,
At what point in your life might you begin to consider that “# of citations” (whether in so-called ‘scientific publications’ or in media outlets) does not matter in scientific endeavor?
Do you really, honestly believe that viewpoints skeptical of [impending climate doom unless human society changes its carbon-combusting ways] gets LESS press coverage than the officialdom of the UN IPCC?
Izaak,
That is utter, utter nonsense. I would say the coverage of sceptical opinion in the mainstream media I see or hear (e.g. the BBC) is essentially zero.
Chris
The same is true for Canada’s CBC. Zero skepticism.
2) Climate contrarians get 49% more media coverage than climate scientists
3) In the mainstream media climate scientists and climate contrarians get roughly equal media mentions (a 1% difference).
Excuse my ignorance but what is a difference between media coverage and media mention? Can mention be done without coverage and vice versa?
Points 2 and 3 if accurate should put pay to the myth often stated here that the media is biased towards the views of mainstream climate science. Rather it is the sceptical viewpoint that gets the most media attention.
Maybe there is a good reason for that, namely skeptics may have something sensible to say. Editors and journalists, though not experts in the field, may recognise that.
When did “climate scientists” and “climate contrarians” become the two opposing ends of the spectrum? This implies that all “climate scientists” believe the supposed consensus and anybody who does not believe it is not a scientist. What a bunch of garbage. There are no real facts in the paper so there cannot be a factual error.
Izaak, you obviously missed the point about ‘misclassification of contrarians”, which invalidate all the data and calculations. Curry is widely quoted, but as a ‘contrarian’ she doesn’t count as a ‘climate scientist’. See the issue? If they had measured ‘AGW climate scientists’ vs. ‘not-so-panicked climate scientists’ they might have had an interesting paper…
Taylor,
The paper is quite clear: list A (or contrarians) contains people who spoke at Heartland conferences or are listed on desmogblog plus a few others. The authors then compared
people on list A with an indentical number of people taken from a list of highly cited
climate science papers. Thus someone cannot be on both lists and there is no misclassification. People might not like the labels under which they are listed but that is another matter.
If you like you can say that the paper shows that people who speak at Heartlands conferences are on average cited 7 times less than top climate scientists but get 49% more media coverage.
An almost perfect comparison of apples and light bulbs.
Izaak,
Put down the Koolaid and step away from the clearing, you are in danger… Are scientists no allowed to speak at Heartland conferences? Is DeSmogBlog a legitimate news source and scientifically pristine, or a trashy and snide collection of smears against people with which they ideologically disagree?
You have to hold this thought in your head: ‘If I call one group “scientists” and name another, contrasting group with a different name (like, say, contrarians) then the second group can’t have scientists in it. Otherwise the first group name is rendered meaningless. That was the point of my original post. Try doing a Venn diagram on this situation and get back to me…
Obviously you’re not intelligent enough to understand you are actually making the contrarians point for them – of course they aren’t getting as many citations, because their views are being actively suppressed, as this paper attempts to justify.
Izaak, I really can’t believe #2 is actually true. We’re bombarded every day in the news media about the climate crisis rather than contrarian views.
A badge of honor, to be sure.
Izaak, your whole argument falls down when trying to make a distinction between “scientists” and “contrarians”. Wasn’t it Feynman who said “science is the belief that experts are wrong”.
There are major news organizations with a stated policy of excluding any skeptics from every and all discussions.
The list of them is long and pretty much comprehensive: It is far easier to name the few that occasionally allow a somewhat skeptical opinion from being heard on their air or in their print.
It is beyond ridiculous to suggest that climate skepticism is in any way overweighted.
There are large groups of people who firmly believe in the completely fake 97% crap.
We speak to and hear from them every single day, on the news, in social media, and in real life.
The ABC in Australia is one of them. Fairfax press another. This paper is absolutely garbage. Alarmism is being driven by media symbiosis and Gramsci infiltration in the education system and bureaucracy. The suppression of sceptical voices at every level has underpinned the political success of alarmism.
The “climate scientists” don’t need media coverage or mentions because they have the IPCC, politicians, celebrities, and the media itself to carry that water for them. If you look at actual CAGW/Climate-change/Climate-emergency coverage pro and con, you will find the pro side is massively, overwhelmingly larger.
“Climate contrarians get 49% more media coverage than climate scientists” does not mean that the media is not biased toward the climate change side. Coverage that says. “esteemed scientist says, … ,” is not the same as, “lunatic denier claims … ,” but both are counted as “coverage”. The “deniers” can get more coverage, but biased coverage.
BTW, your phrasing: “media is biased towards the views of mainstream climate science,” demonstrates your bias.
@Izaak
Please re-read the paragraph you’re quoting part of. The paper makes a distinction between mainstream media (i.e., the ones they like) versus new media (like the conservative blogs they don’t like):
Of course, the “disinformation” bit is their calumny toward climate scientists who demonstrate high knowledge and skill in their papers but do not see evidence for panicking in the actual data.
As mentioned in other replies to you, many “mainstream” outlets simply solve their “problem” by disallowing any mention of “contrarian” data. Thus, the percentages are skewed much more than suggested here.
===|==============/ Keith DeHavelle (@DeHavelle)
Actually that is not the case. The list of mainstream media includes
both the Daily Mail and the Guardian. Two papers that are on the opposite ends
of the spectrum when it comes to climate change and most other things.
Izaak, as any competent researcher would know, the methodological errors already outlined make any pronouncement of fact from this paper impossible. You cannot identify a factual error when the methodology is so corrupted and vague as to be useless.
Izaak Walton,
You ask, “Can you point to a single factual error that the paper made?”
In my above comment I cite two.
The Nature paper claims to be a study of recent activities of named persons. But I have contributed little opposition to ‘climate alarmism’ since my health failed five years ago, and Bob Carter has provided no activity since his death in January 2016.
Bob and I are not the only people named on the ‘contrarian’ list who have not been active for years because of poor health or death.
Richard
Look Izaak it is simple : on one list you have only scientists, and on the other list you include media personas, like politicians and journalists. It is obvious that this choice boosts the apparent coverage of the second list. If it was scientists vs scientists or personas vs personas, it might have been fairer.
“Fringe benefit? A great list of climate realists was a byproduct!!!”
My thought, exactly, to be well utilized! 🙂
“Disgusting” might be a better description.
Forbes has turned a corner. Around that corner are backward-facing spikes like the entrance to a parking lot.
Mike Bromley
August 14, 2019 at 10:44 pm
How about Nature? Unbelievable a once respected scientific journal can publish this rubbish.
What was left of their credibility and objectivity is well and truly gone.
This has long been true of virtually every scientific publication and professional group.
If it was not the case, the lie could have never reached a point, after 30 years of increasingly shrill nonsense and an unbroken run of falsified predictions, of being more perniciously and firmly rooted than ever.
@Nicholas – yes. They long ago tipped over into the Pravda zone, where whatever they print, you are safest presuming the exact opposite is reality.
Unfortunately, this carries over into everything they publish, whatever the field. If I don’t trust Acme products to sell me a car, I can’t trust them to sell me a boat, either.
The alarmists are getting increasingly desperate to prevent anyone who does not agree with them to be heard at all. It’s almost as if they are terrified of any discussion or debate about their message….
When you believe in a religion almost any lengths are justified to maintain your world view. I find the easiest way to explode heads is start with Polar bear numbers ( which are endangered and very small, NOT ) and work up from there.
“It’s almost as if they are terrified of any discussion or debate about their message….”
They are terrified because they don’t have any evidence to backup their “message”. They don’t want a debate because this would be exposed and they would lose.
That’s why we don’t see them over here on WUWT arguing the finer points of CAGW on a daily basis. If they had any evidence, you can bet they would be beating us over the head with it every day. There would be hundreds of alarmists over here showing us the errors of our ways. But nothing like that happens. There’s a reason for that.
Tom Abbot,
You are right when you say of climate alarmists,
“If they had any evidence, you can bet they would be beating us over the head with it every day. ”
Yes, for example read this report of the debate where Monckton, Morner and I won a debate on climate change at St Andrews university.
http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=2938&linkbox=true&position=18
Richard
I do find this section of their paper particularly interesting…..
Ethics declarations
Competing interests
The authors declare no competing interests.
@Mark H
Their competing interests were partially laid out in another reply to Izaak.
But they are missing a previous line:
===|==============/ Keith DeHavelle (@DeHavelle)
“Scientists who are effective in the public communication of climate change can speak about topics beyond their own personal expertise …” etc.
================================================
I think that is eminently true for instance of the erudite Dr Richard Lindzen.
Here he is referring no doubt to some of the ‘real’ scientists listed above:
As there is not one person on earth who has expertise in all aspects of climate science, it is imperative that people are prepared to talk beyond their personal expertise.
It is actually quite tough to do. As an ex-biologist, 15 years ago I was sent off to interview a bunch of metallurgy Professors in a consultancy exercise for a research funding body. I was a very good listener, but painfully aware that I did not have the expertise to discriminate between conflicting viewpoints in a way that I was entirely comfortable doing in biology. Then I did the same for a bunch of materials chemists, which was easier as the project was a market demand study, not a strategic visioning one.
The key is distilling the right questions to ask the right people.
As for communicating to the general public, there is no a priori correlation between seniority and ability. In the first year of my PhD, my cancer research institute had an open evening for fundraisers and I was shocked at how several team leaders (akin to full Professors in a University) were hiding behind jargon. I observed glazed eyes in the group I was walking around the various stations. Before the last station, I did a more comprehensive intro in non technical language and more senior staff members commented afterwards how surprised they were that I could do it. I was shocked that they could not, but I realised soon that technical experts are often not wordsmiths. And much of undergraduate science was précis writing on reams of academic literature, a good preparation for succinct communication.
The key to communicating publicly is framing the issues, summarising progress and describing the options moving forward. Done properly, this does not betray confidences in competitive research fields as it remains at the level of fields summarised in publicly available grant programmes.
Predicted 16 years ago.
We all need to be reminded on the prescient words of Dr Michael Crichton (from his Caltech Michelin Lecture January 17, 2003, title: Aliens Cause Global Warming) :
Let’s be clear: This Nature article is about de-legitimizing anyone who is skeptical of climate alarmism.
If the admirable Crichton were with us today, he would be worried about his nation, and he should be worried about the rest of the world too.
Why is Nature the sole voice in politics?
I would have thought almost no politicians ever read it, it is a bit like Radio 3 at the BBC….
It should be noted that this paper was published in Nature Communications and not Nature.
There is a significant difference in terms of quality and impact. Plus it doesn’t look good if you
want to criticise a paper for sloppy work and cherry picking if you can’t even get the name of the
journal right.
“Nature” markets a suite of publications.
The focus of Nature Communications is….communicating. The paper claims that the good ol’ boy network of honest climate scientists bringing alarm and tales of future woes to the media are being drowned out, in those same media, by skeptics who poke holes in their silly pronouncements and speculations. Why should incompetence not be voluminously refuted?
Show us the stats. If the refutation of incorrect claims it large, that speaks volumes about the work of those calling themselves “climate scientists”.
The paper is deeply flawed. I happened to be married to someone with a degree in Communications. She would never be able to get such junk published were it not marketing the idea that anyone who is not on board with the climate catastrophe ideology, is not a real scientist.
It is clear to me that Nature Communications has an inadequate peer review system. I can’t say it is corrupt, but it is obviously incompetent. It doesn’t meet the research standards of a high school term paper. What is it doing in a Nature Journal?
Crispin,
In what way is the paper flawed? Can you point to an error in it? The paper compares two lists
of people — list A speaks at Heartland conferences (plus a few others) and list B is drawn from the scientific literature. The paper then finds that people in list A are cited 7 times less than list B but get 49% more media mentions.
What is your definition of “contrarian”?
Gerald,
my definition is irrelevant. The paper is very clear about how it drew up its list
of scientists that it then labels contrarians:
“To be specific, we combined three overlapping sets of names obtained from publicly available sources. The first source is the list of past keynote speakers at Heartland ICCC conferences from 2008 to present; the second is the list of lead authors of the 2015 Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) report; and the third is the list of individuals profiled by the DeSmog project.”
My question would be how would you draw up a list of prominent people opposed to the
climate consensus?
Izaak, the only valid comparison is those of a similar scientific background. You would never include lots of politicians in one list but not in the other.
Izaak, why would the 2nd list be anything but authors of the NIPCC? The answer of course is quite simple. The result would not be anything like what they wanted to say.
Let’s see you justify their selection criteria. It is clearly unscientific and as such should have been laughed at during peer review.
Izaak, the two lists are pure nonsense. One contains politicians which will always get more media coverage. The list are apples and oranges which makes any comparison anti-science. If you can’t see that then you are willfully blind.
Izaak
The paper’s authors presume that someone presenting at the Heartland conferences holds a certain opinion, without examining those opinions, and then searches for citations and coverage in literature and public media.
The initial presumption invalidates any possible conclusions because they did not ascertain what people think and write before “categorizing” them. Essentially, it is an exercise in “othering” and then turns into an inexplicably poor comparison of column-inches.
It is not clear that when a “Heartland” person is mentioned in the press, it is something positive or negative. The complaint by the authors is that the “Heartland” people get more space, not that they get attacked ten times more in the press. They object to their “visibility”! That makes no sense at all.
So what if one group gets more publicity than the others? Who says it is positive or negative commentary? The paper is conceptually foolish and should never have been printed in a reputable journal. I think Judith Curry’s assessment is spot on.
“It should be noted that this paper was published in Nature Communications and not Nature.”
From Wikipedia …
“Nature Research (formerly known as Nature Publishing Group[1]) is a division of the international scientific publishing company Springer Nature that publishes academic journals, magazines, online databases, and services in science and medicine. Nature Research’s flagship publication is Nature, a weekly multidisciplinary journal first published in 1869. It also publishes the Nature-titled research journals, Nature Reviews journals (since 2000)[2], society-owned academic journals, and a range of open access journals, including Scientific Reports and Nature Communications. Springer Nature also publishes Scientific American in 16 languages, a magazine intended for the general public. In 2013, prior to the merger with Springer and the creation of Springer Nature, Nature Publishing Group’s owner, Holtzbrinck Publishing Group, bought a controlling stake[3][4] in Frontiers.[5]”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nature_Research
FWIW, according to Wikipedia Holtzbrinck Publishing Group owns the following:
In Germany:
S. Fischer Verlag
O.W. Barth
Wolfgang Krüger
Argon Verlag [de]
Scherz Verlag [de]
Fretz & Wasmuth
Rowohlt Verlag
Kiepenheuer & Witsch (85%)
Verlagsgruppe Droemer Knaur (50%)
Die Zeit (50%)
In the United States:
Using the Macmillan name:
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Faber & Faber (formerly; ended partnership in 2015)
Henry Holt and Company
Holt Paperbacks
Metropolitan Books
Times Books
Owl Books
Palgrave Macmillan
Picador
Roaring Brook Press
Neal Porter Books
First Second Books
St. Martin’s Press
Tom Doherty Associates
Tor Books
Forge Books
Bedford, Freeman and Worth Publishing Group
W.H. Freeman
Bedford-St. Martin’s
Worth Publishers
Macmillan Learning
Hayden-McNeil
Nature Publishing Group
Scientific American
Using the Audio Renaissance name in Southfield, Michigan:
Renaissance Media[5]
In the United Kingdom:
Macmillan Publishers
Palgrave Macmillan
Pan Macmillan
Macmillan
Pan Books
Picador
Macmillan Children’s Books
Campbell Books
Priddy Books
Boxtree
Sidgwick & Jackson
Macmillan Education
Springer Nature (53%)
Digital Science
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holtzbrinck_Publishing_Group
It is not any less despicable or disgusting for having been published in one of Nature’s suite of publications.
As usual izaak, pathetic parody if Izaak Walton, is spouting falsehoods.
Right out of the box the choice of language lays bare the bias. Contrarian. The polite version of denier. Deny what exactly? That climate changes?
That climate changes?
No, of course not, that is just the go to strawman.
That human emissions of CO2, largely from the combustion of fossil fuel, is the main agent of recent abrupt warming.
How could that possibly be so ? CO2 is a trace gas not a blanket around the earth. If anything we will soon need more of it.
Do you believe CO2 has caused global greening David?
Right. So now your “trace gas” is boosting the world’s forests. Amazing.
Not really. Forests could be considered a “trace” element of the earth’s surface. It doesn’t take much CO2 when so much of the planet has no trees.
Trace elements are vital to all organisms. Try to do without e. g. selenium Loydo.
Loydo, I think this may whoooosh right over you, but CO2 used in the Calvin cycle is roughly proportional to CO2 concentration. See for example:
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/2c6a/3a5955df348def981f300d702988ec258774.pdf
The so-called greenhouse effect is logarithmic.
Accordingly, a 50% increase in CO2 (about where we are now) has the potential to give a 50% increase in greening. If it wasn’t logarithmic with respect to temperature, aside from the fact that we wouldn’t be here, it wouldn’t be the idiots that are your heroes in charge of solving the problem.
You’re welcome
So, Lydo, the process of providing nutrition is equivalent to the process of poisoning — is that what you are implying?
Confuse contexts much?
Biophysics is a different domain than atmospheric physics. To choose a substance from one domain and make it equivalent in both domains is not very bright.
Dear Loydo, can you point to us all a period of time that the climate was stable?
Go back and carefully re-read my post Bruce/
Lolly doesn’t believe the climate changes.
1) Climate changes is a strawman, i.e. false.
2) Human emissions of CO₂ is the main agent of recent abrupt warming.
Lolly also ignores the “recent” warming periods of 1930s and 1880s that exactly match the recent rate of warming.
1880s, that would be before the trace gas of 0.00028% increased to a trace gas of 0.0004%.
Plants that were near starvation at 280 ppm are many times benefit the small increase of 1.2 CO₂ atoms per 10,000 molecules of atmosphere..
An amount far too small for humans to detect in temperature, but enough that plants using CO₂ atom by atom aggregate a tremendous increase over the years.
Lolly also ignores the sun, clouds, cyclical weather patterns, and cyclical changes in ocean/atmosphere influences; e.g. El Nino that pumps massive amounts of water vapor into the atmosphere.
Funny that!
Water vapor is many times the abundance of CO₂, even in the dryest environments, and water vapor swamps the majority of infrared frequencies including most of that handful where CO₂ is partially active, most which are also dominated by H₂O.
Partially active squalls lolly! Yes, partially active. Water is an angular molecule where CO₂ is a straight molecule.
Then lolly fails to mention that the entire globe outgasses CO₂ swamping the pitiful amount of CO₂ in man’s emissions.
Recent abrupt warming doesn’t exist in the temperature records, but it does exist in the tamperature records.
Just so! Before they started relentlessly adjusting the past down with every monthly ingest, the earlier (pre-industrial) warming cycles were just as steep as the late 20th century warming. Then miraculously, they discovered all these “errors” in the past to “homogenize” away all the inconvenient earlier warming periods in much the same way as the shaft of a certain hockey stick removed the inconvenient medieval warm period and little ice age.
It is rare that I steal just one word from someone else. This is an exceptional case…
Don’t know who coined it, but it deserves hall of fame status.
“That human emissions of CO2, largely from the combustion of fossil fuel, is the main agent of recent abrupt warming.”
Well, there’s no evidence for that. You could prove me wrong by supplying some. I predict you won’t, because you dont have any evidence. That’s not a reflection on you personally, because no alarmist climate scientist could satisfy that requirement. Not one of them has any evidence that humans are causing “abrupt” warming of the Earth’s atmosphere, or any other kind of warming.
Like I said, you could prove me wrong by providing some evidence.
When you start from false axioms like “abrupt warming,” anything that you construct from those axioms is also going to be false.
How is it remotely possible that when discussing climate change, saying that the climate changes is a strawman?
(BTW, I do know the answer – the hijacking of the phrase climate change to mean something that it isn’t by leftists, kleptocrats, shit scientists, and their dupes).
Once again Loydo, I refer you to graph, to which YOU linked, showing a rise in temperature at a rate of 0.73C/century, with no recent abrupt warming other than the last El Nino event. Are you just lying, stupid, or have an attention span of less than 24 hours?
Here’s what you posted:
‘That human emissions of CO2, largely from the combustion of fossil fuel, is the main agent of recent abrupt warming. No, of course not, that is just the go to strawman.’
And there’s your strawman.
**That human emissions of CO2, largely from the combustion of fossil fuel, is the main agent of recent abrupt warming.**
False. No more need be said.
It would be useful to find out who the Peer Reviewers were and even more interesting if they were the luminaries mentioned as ‘real’ climate scientists such as M Mann?
I send all the very best to Dr. Curry. This Nature article is another journalism piece written by climate change alarmists who now resort to pathetically attacking those who they disagree with. They are panicked as their scientific credibility continually erodes.
You always have to love junk masquerading as science that first labels one group as contrarians and then talks about levels of authority and media visibility. So all you have to do is repeat junk enough and get it out there in the media and you are a better authority. I know plenty of Ponzi schemes scams that work on the same idea until they collapsed.
Climate pseudoscience garbage from start to end and it should be in one of the womans magazines as a good fiction read.
“Scientific authority” is a moronic phrase. Science doesn’t have any authority, because science doesn’t work on the basis of “authority” or reputation, instead in works on the SOLE basis of evidence … it doesn’t matter 100% of all “scientists” believe something, if the evidence says otherwise, then the evidence is right … because science is a dictatorship of the evidence.
Yes, an English Major, or someone with a degree in Medieval art, would argue on the basis of “authority”, yes, “consensus” or “the majority” have a meaning to these non-scientists because they are whole subjects repeated ad nausea what other people think. But in science, all that matters is the evidence.
If you have the evidence, that gives you authority no matter who you may be, if not SHUT UP!
“Were I wrong, one would be enough” A. Einstein
“’Scientific authority’ is a moronic phrase.”
And people who cite “consensus” (i.e. opinion) as evidence for the truth of an assertion, while simultaneously claiming to defend “science” against those who question and want to further test the truth of the assertion, are morons.
You’re exactly right. The very people that the paper asserts to be “scientists,” are not. They are just professors or other types of pure academics who pretend to be scientists. Scientists gather or produce objective data with an experiment, and let that data speak for itself. If the data is inconclusive, but a scientist has an opinion as to what conclusions he or she might draw from the data, the scientist will not confuse their own opinions with the scientific method, and will not illogically infer that their opinions are “expert” merely because they are a scientist; after all, the scientific method is just a procedure, and if that procedure is insufficient to demonstrate the truth of something, the scientist has no innate training or expertise to determine a “truth” that the scientific method can’t itself demonstrate.
But in the short-term, in actual practical terms, science does work on the basis of authority and reputation. Otherwise how did we get to the situation we are in now? The winner in the short term is in charge of scientific publishing, the scientific societies, advocacy groups, the press and the politicians. The actual evidence does not have much to do with the outcome. The outcome is based on a belief system. You can say “shut up” to this self-evident situation as loudly as you like, and it will have no effect at all.
It’s also self-evident that human beings like killing each other, but do you tell people who want the situation controlled as much as possible and called morally wrong that to say “shut up” should just let people kill with impunity??? Are you saying that jailing murderers is useless because people still like to kill each other? If it has “no effect”, does one just sigh and let anarchy be the rule?
Why even bother with science? Go back to the witch doctors and shamans. That’s the direction we are heading right now with all the pseudoscience that covers the TV and internet waves. You seem completely comfortable with that idea. Devolution.
That all seems to be the case in Portland.
It’s actually almost impossible to make an absurdist point in this city anymore.
“Science advances one funeral at a time” – Max Plank (actually a paraphrase of a much longer quote, but it has been attributed to him in this form for so long it might as well be his.)
The problem of course with this view is it depends on who has the more youthful and vigorous students to take up the old master’s mantle when he/she falls.
The quantum nature of the world probably would have floundered if other scientists and engineers hadn’t discovered that there are clever ways to take advantage of this nature to make all sorts of useful items. Ultimately, scientific theory is only useful once it can be utilized to do something in the real world. Until then it is just a wonderful mental exercise in a similar vein as fantasy literature. I fit the various types of string theory in that category right now. Until it predicts a measurable effect that current theory doesn’t, it is just a mental exercise in trans-dimensional mathematics. I also fit climate modeling in this category because it has parameterised and linearized so many linked, non-linear, real-world variables that there is no way it represents the real world states.
Scientific authority aptly characterized in Around the World in 80 Days:
“This is the Royal Academy of Science! We don’t have to prove anything!”
Last evening I was talking with a friend and mentioned a humorous recent incident. During that recitation I mentioned that I was skeptical about the claims of global warming alarmists. She immediately responded, “How can you disagree with 97% of scientists?” She is pretty close to 100 IQ, not brilliant, not stupid. She has no expertise in science. None. No idea of what the words “scientific method” imply. She thinks that if a scientists does it it is their method. Any talk about the basis for my skepticism led to a blank look. “Who are you to think you’re smarter than 97% of all scientists? You’re just a professor who knows about computers.”
Authority counts. Consensus counts. Peer review counts. To the average person, if you ask a bunch of experts and the vast majority agree, case closed. That is their compelling evidence. How else, they think, is one to know the truth when scientists speak in confusing jargon. Statements by someone who is expert is some other field are to be viewed with deep skepticism. They are trying to speak a language they don’t know.
“How can you disagree with 97% of scientists?”
I would ask how anyone can trust scientists who have gotten so many things wrong. Medical and food sciences are replete with examples. For example, an aspirin a day for heart health is their latest “Ooops we got it wrong!”
I wouldn’t be so quick with the aspirin a day thing. The jury is still out on that one. These kinds of health claims take a lot of data to tease out the true results. Don’t depend on a single study either way. I would say ulcers is a better (fairly recent) example of a “Doh!”, we got it wrong case, where the data is unambiguous that Medical Science had the causes and cure completely wrong for a long time.
“Authority counts. Consensus counts. Peer review counts. To the average person, if you ask a bunch of experts and the vast majority agree, case closed. That is their compelling evidence.”
This is a human survival mechanism. It pays off to conform to the majority opinion, especially when you personally are not knowledgeable enough to understand the entire situation, usually because you are young and inexperienced, or untrained, so you listen to your elders who have managed to survive through circumstances unfamiliar to you.
This works out just great as long as you can depend on “your elders” to be correct in their assessment of the situation. If they are correct, then you are correct when you follow their advice, but if they are incorrect then you are probably going to suffer a big fall of one kind or another.
You should probably listen to the village chief’s advice. You should probably take everything you hear from an Alarmist with a grain of salt.
The other George August 15, 2019 at 7:10 am:
Last evening I was talking with a friend and mentioned a humorous recent incident. During that recitation I mentioned that I was skeptical about the claims of global warming alarmists.
She immediately responded, “How can you disagree with 97% of scientists?”
I would ask how she “knows” what “97% of scientists” agree on? What is her basis for her faith in that statement? = “Well “everyone” knows that!
Show her how the meme was created and how it modern media pollute the quest to investigate by “shutting down” those who think, reason and inquire.
Which is the basis of true science.
Yes, indeed, those are good suggestions, Danny. In fact, I already tried, beginning with the origin of the 97% number itself and how that study cherry-picked. Her response was to cite annual reports from some specific aggregation of scientists showing that the number in their society who “believe in” AGW has varied from 95% to 97% in recent years. She segued into the claim that I was cherry-picking from the 3%. “And even if it is not 97% but only 80% that is enough to believe it. That many credentialed experts can’t be wrong.”
“it doesn’t matter 100% of all “scientists” believe something, if the evidence says otherwise, then the evidence is right”
Interestingly Mike I remember a situation, probably not unique, where that actually happened and 100% of all scientists including scientists in the field who went on to win Nobel prizes (Hitchings, Elion), and also including myself and my post-doc advisor, believed how something worked at the molecular level. It related to the therapeutic drug methotrexate and the enzyme it inhibits (dihydrofolate reductase). When the data came out, it was 100% opposite to what we all believed. It shows what a mockery the 97% consensus is, even if it wasn’t bogus.
An interesting and illuminating paper,
About Nature, that is.
This paper smacks of desperation by the alarmists.
John Maddox will be turning in his grave!
In a similar vein, from Greta Thunberg as reported by the BBC ( https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-devon-49330423)
‘The teenager, who refuses to travel by air because of its environmental impact, said of climate sceptics: “There’s always going to be people who don’t understand or accept the united science, and I will just ignore them, as I’m only acting and communicating on the science.”’
There is no consensus regarding climate change. It is just speculation. Scientists never registered and voted on the validity of the AGW conjecture. But if they had the results would have been meaningless because science is not a democracy. The laws of science are not some sort of legislation. Scientific theories are not validated by a voting process. Consensus is politics and not science.
This abstract uses the term “contrarian” which makes it a religious paper having nothing to do with science. Scientists have no authority in the first place.
Instances of the word “heretic” were probably replaced by “contrarian” at the last moment.
Here is an admission.
I believe in climate change.
Here is another, I believe Mann Made Climate Change, takes up far too many column inches.
I thank god (I believe nature is god) for the clarity and purity of the scientific method.
Richard Feynman would have all these charlatans posing as climate scientists for breakfast.
“If the observations do not support the hypothesis, the hypothesis is wrong”.
At no time, have the climate models, that are now used to orchestrate climate debate and formulate global policy, been supported by observation.
But but the paper is peer reviewed ! .. oh wait
>>>>>>”Here we show via direct comparison that contrarians are featured in 49% more media articles than scientists. Yet when comparing visibility in mainstream media sources only, we observe just a 1% excess visibility, which objectively demonstrates the crowding out of professional mainstream sources”<<<<<
Excellent! I'm so happy! tra la la la….
Meanwhile, at least 2 of our local councils have declared a climate emergency. One of them created a new job…''Climate Emergency Officer'' AND…. is donating $15,000 to a youth group to help them teach more young people to become climate activists. I kid you not!
The disease has taken hold completely down here (Southern Australia). We now are in desperate need of a vaccine……….
Mike,
I was in Melbourne back in March when the Green New Deal (GND) fever was being promoted. Seeing mothers urging their children to chant “Reach Higher! Reach Higher!” as they demonstrated outside the parliament building, sent chills down my spine. The echoes from a previous period, when parents encouraged their children to raise their arms in the air and chant, “Seek Higher” (or similar) was too frightening to ignore.
We must not let this nonsense win.
our local papers editor in her personal comments column just called Aus a socialist nation TWICE
seriouly going to have to write in this week and have a go at that!
Respectfully, I think you are making a mistake here Dr Curry: this paper is not bad or junk science.
Instead, it is a quite well done POLITICAL hit job with a thin veneer of science-y talk on top.
Scientific Deplorables! We need a video of Mann screaming “why aren’t I 50 articles ahead in the journals!”
~¿~
Nature sold itself out to ‘climate doom ‘ years ago and so it publishing this rubbish is no surprise at all.
In the end this is a classic ‘argument from authority’ claim which is NOT science for reasons Feynman and Einstein outlined.
But when you ‘hero’s ‘ are people like Mann , given his ‘antiscience track record’ you really are not out to support good scientific practice but politicized BS .