A new study has revealed just how much more effective climate sceptics are at commenting on forums, posting stock arguments, and linking back to sceptic sites.
A fascinating new study commissioned by Oxfam and produced by digital mapping agency Profero has shed new insights into the way climate sceptics’ networks operate. The study’s conclusions, as yet unpublished but seen by Left Foot Forward, were presented to a closed meeting of campaigners on Wednesday night.
Profero’s study analysed online coverage of the “Climategate” debacle that broke last November, tracking its progress from fringe blogs to mainstream media outlets over the ensuing weeks and months.
Tracing the online paper trail back to its source, the researchers concluded that:
• The ‘Climategate’ story was first aired on climate denier blog The Air Vent, before wending its way onto more popular sceptic sites Climate Audit and Watts Up With That, and then featured by James Delingpole in his Daily Telegraph blog – whose followers propagated it further;
• From thereon in, the story was picked up by a wide range of media outlets, and went global –the culmination of a concerted effort to push it into the mainstream;
• The timing of the CRU email leak was calculated to have maximum impact on the Copenhagen negotiations, with the second wave of sceptic attacks after Christmas deliberately timed for when the environmental movement was at its weakest, exhausted from the UN talks; and
• The speed of information flow within the sceptic community, with its rapid publication of sceptical “research”, is far quicker than any scientist or NGO could hope to match – and handily unencumbered by peer review or sign-off processes.
This meant that because almost no-one from the climate movement responded to or rebutted the sceptics’ arguments, they ended up owning the story.
This allowed them to shift what political theorists call the “Overton Window”: the acceptable parameters within which a debate can be conducted. Suddenly after Climategate, it became acceptable for the mainstream media to question the fundamentals of climate science.
As cognitive linguist George Lakoff has written, if you don’t contol the way an issue is framed, you don’t control the debate. Climate progressives allowed this episode to be written on the sceptics’ terms. The result? A sizeable drop in the public’s belief in climate change (although the freezing winter may also have played a part in this).
Profero’s study then looked at the character of the online climate sceptic networks that permitted this information flow. It discovered that the sceptic community is extraordinarily well-networked and interwoven, with sites like Climate Audit and Climate Depot acting as hubs for a wide range of other individual pundits and bloggers. (And no, I’m not going to give these sites free publicity by linking to them.) Of the top five most linked-to climate commentators, four are climate sceptics.
The one exception was Guardian columnist George Monbiot, who was also the only significant voice countering the sceptics during the whole Climategate debacle. “I have seldom felt so alone,” he wrote early on in the scandal, with justification – Oxfam’s study shows that almost no-one bothered to back him up in defending the integrity of the science.
In many ways, the tactics revealed by Profero are not new. They were first tried and tested by American neo-cons in the 1970s long before the internet became a tool for campaigning. What is new is that the patterns of activity are now traceable, which means that the progressive response to climate scepticism can be more strategic – that is, if we listen to the findings.
Indeed, the reports’ insights should give pause for thought to progressives contemplating the strength of their own networks. Stuart Conway, the study’s co-author, declared simply that “there are no progressive networks” – just hubs of activity here and there, lacking interconnection. Whilst a number of blogs buck this trend – honourable mentions include Treehugger and, yes, Left Foot Forward – the pro-environmental community as a whole lacks brio and responsiveness.
It’s not that there we don’t have the numbers: it’s more than we’re not using our numbers effectively. NGOs, notably, were nowhere to be seen during the debate. Whilst there were some good reasons for this – NGOs feared they would be simply seen as “the usual suspects” in rebutting deniers – this clearly left a vacuum that needed filling by an activist community.
After presentation of the study, discussion moved onto filling that vacuum: how we can better combat sceptic networks and strengthen our own. The discussions ranged far and wide, and I’d love to tell you some of the creative ideas discussed, but you’ll have to watch this space…
For now, though, let me close with a challenge for progressive readers: one of the study’s more obvious conclusions was how effective climate sceptics are at commenting on forums, posting stock arguments, and linking back to sceptic sites. This is unsurprising for anyone who has ever trawled through comments left behind after any climate change article. By the time you read this, there will doubtless be sceptical comments posted beneath this blog, too.
So here’s what I’d like you to do:
• Read the comments, and if you notice any that cast doubt on the validity of climate science, post a response, be polite and use facts;
• You might like to make use of the handy checklist of arguments to counter deniers over at Skeptical Science;
• Link to some of the dirt dug up on sceptics’ funding by SourceWatch; or
• Refer to the discussions at RealClimate and Climate Safety.
Oh, and remember to check out James Delingpole’s column at the Telegraph. If any of it makes you angry, you might like to let him know. Did I say be polite? Scratch that.
UPDATE 23/3:
Profero, the digital mapping agency behind the Oxfam report have posted a message on their website. They say:
“We’re really excited that people are taking an interest in what we do and hats off to LeftFootForward for getting the scoop on this piece of work but we’d like to clarify what’s being discussed (most of the conversations focus upon a visual representation of some of the key conversations in the form of a landscape map) as it should be understood in the context of an entire report (120 pages or so) which hasn’t been made public.
“The report as a whole applies our own bespoke models and frameworks to both quantitative and qualitative data in order to bring to the surface complex dynamics and issues which would otherwise pass un-noticed if an automated technological monitoring solution had been used in isolation.”
201 Responses to “Combating the growing influence of climate sceptics”
Jay Currie
It is amusing to note the wonderful asymmetry between the skeptic side and the AGW promoters; a bunch of blogs vs the BBC, the New York Times and the World bank.
And even before Climategate, that bunch of bloggers were steadily scoring points. Demonstrating statistical incompetence with the hockey stick, showing that the raw data had been tortured for signal, noting that some trees were more influential than others and that, when it came right down to it, when the trees disagreed they were ditched to “hide the decline”.
The pros were and are being beaten by amateurs. And they are being beaten because the science is not nearly so certain as the AGW promoters lead us to believe. And absolutely not certain enough to base serious policy decisions upon. Lukewarmers and out and out skeptics win, and keep on winning, because they have modest goals.
Asking people to check their numbers and think again is hardly radical stuff. It is only radical in the face of a media and scientific establishment which has made its collective mind up and does not want to be bothered checking its facts and science,
mphysopt
Mosher,
If Tony of WUWT was so confident about his arguments about the surface temperature record, why doesn’t he answer Tamino’s and Meene et al.’s criticisms? (No, whining about a pseudonym is not answering the question. Frankly, only a bully intent in causing RL hurt wants to know somebody’s True Name) Oh, that’s right, he can’t show that his claims of bias have any validity at all…
Steven Mosher
WRT terminology Tom Fuller ( who should be on the chart) and I struggled greatly with the various terms “denier, skeptic, contrarian, chaosists, warmer, believer, alarmist, blah blah blah. Tom actually did a survey of various blog readers ( we both have marketing backgrounds ) to try to figure out what exactly the various factions are. Judith Curry also has a nice cladistics. In the end I’m happy describing one group and one group only. That is the group I belong to: Lukewarmers. Everybody else can go name themselves and come up with their own tagline.
The strategies and tactics that I’ve generated for people who believe in global warming ( some of the materials were included in the climategate mails ) are very bad. The principle problem is that they rely upon a total misunderstanding of the audience.
Steven Mosher
@Guy
“@Steven Mosher, @JeffID – many thanks for clarifying about the way the CRU story developed online. Thanks Steve also for pointing out that many who doubt the scientific consensus around anthropogenic global warming are not in consensus themselves.”
Yes, I don’t think people get how deadly wrong the over generalization about “skeptics” was.
Let me give you an idea. Right before Mcintyre came onto the scene Briffa and Osborne were planning
to write a paper critical of Mann. Osborne was struggling to replicate Mann’s work ( he like McIntyre needed
the residuals) Jones was in support of their efforts. As soon as McIntyre writes his 2003 paper, Mann gets very upset and effectively Briffa and Osborne are called off. At one point Osborne becomes aware that Mann hasnt
been telling the truth exactly about his dealings with McIntyre. He and McIntyre correspond and Mc offers to
let CRU settle the dispute. At first this seems reasonable. No body wanted to argue at cross purposes. In the
end the wagons are circled. For the rest of the files you can see the tension between Mann and Briffa. Jones
is in a tough spot. The brits also did not understand the pressure that mann felt from the internet stuff.
Anyway, very early on there was a chance to put it all to rest. In my conversations with Mc he’s made it clear
that all the issues would just have gone away. But they put a burr under his saddle,especially by lumping him in with others. mc is a just a very tenacious curious fellow. Accusing him of being a shill just deepened his resolve. there was another episode like this with Annann.
A cordial lunch between the two, an offer to work together to put the issue to rest… but in the end Annann could not be seen working with Mc. The issue lived on and the result was the mail
that jones sent ” delete your mails.” The silly thing is that the thing they were trying to cover up was rather silly.
But Jones and others knew that Mcintyre was watching chapter 6 very closely ( as a reviewer ) and they got
caught with their pants down.
In any case in 2007 I had dinner with Mc and Watts. Ah yes a skeptics cabal. And so there away from everybody’s ears I got to ask McIntyre what he really thought and what drove him. “I like puzzles,” he said. And so, people hid pieces of a puzzle from a man who loves puzzles and you have one dedicated opponent. I like puzzles too. So Mc and I get along.
Baerbel Winkler
RT @skepticscience: Combating the growing influence of climate sceptics – study into how networking enabled skeptics to reframe the debate http://bit.ly/bUwD8f