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 The study’s conclusions, as yet unpublished but seen by Left Foot Forward, were presented to a closed meeting of campaigners on Wednesday night.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”
Joe Papp
Do you remember “The Producers”?
People, you’ve been done in! Left Foot Forward is a SATIRE!
The people who run it are skewering the LEFT by writing stuff that EVEN LEFTIES BELIEVE WAS WRITTEN BY THEM!
The JOKE is on the lefties, who are so gullible. A warning to “conservatives”…as the guy in the NYC audiance shouted while “Springtime For Hitler” was being sung, “I GET IT! IT’S A SATIRE!”
Ordinary Joe
How many poor little kiddies died because the money was spent on creating this waste of space? I doubt any of it came out of the executives pockets.
Suibhne
Our area used to have lively mining communities in the part of Scotland where I live.
The Communist party was well supported.
Now these villages are isolated most men unemployed and depression and alcoholism combine to reduce life expectancy.
A modern steel mill has been closed by its Indian owner with the loss of 1700 jobs.
Tata the owner is now going to transfer production to India and will be doubly compensated due to the carbon credit system.
Yet there are some people who consider themselves “left wing” who think that this is a good idea.
I know what I regard as left wing.
Take a stand with the working class people in Britain to demand an end to export of Jobs.
Support policies aimed at building a strong mining industry and an end to the scandal of unemployment.
Alexander
Thanks a lot for that graph!
It really shows the relative media power of both sides of the debate.
If a group of individuals and amateurish blogs, supported by a couple of newspapers are winning the debate against the combined power of NASA, NYT, BBC, Guardian, World Bank, Met Office, WSJ, Nature et cetera – this tells a lot about who has truth on his side. 🙂
TinyCo2
So, Oxfam wants to work out how to combat climate scepticism? Answer, look in the mirror. Chances are, the person looking back at you is a sceptic and if you don’t know it, there’s a good chance you’re also lying to yourself.
How do I arrive at this outrageous statement? Well, if CO2 was this big scary nightmare you’d be doing everything you could to cut your own CO2 levels to the bone. No, I don’t mean turning off your phone charger a few times a month or buying carbon offsets, I mean really cutting back. Choosing not to have as many kids, using teleconferencing instead of flying visits, moving to a smaller property, etc. If you can’t get your carbon footprint down towards 2 tons then you’re not doing enough to make a difference.
Most of the surveys about AGW concern show that a significant number of people are very worried about CO2. Surely by now the reductions of CO2 from these people should be showing up in the energy use statistics? No? No. So instead of finding out how sceptics can be defeated, try asking why believers don’t believe enough to make a difference.
Once you start to look at it that way you may be able to admit to yourself that the science is not all it should be; that the solutions range from interesting to unbelievably poor; that the key players are hideously unsuitable mascots for a cause that requires you to embrace self restraint; that cutting your CO2 is not just a matter of belief, it’s darned hard work; and that if we’re going to spend trillions we need something more convincing than spin and playstation climatology.