Chanting to the choir: The dialogical failure of antithetical climate change blogs

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128 responses to “Chanting to the choir: The dialogical failure of antithetical climate change blogs”

1. 

   geoff chambers

   May 2, 2020

   Brigitte
   Thanks for that speedy response. You say (May 2, 2020 at 10:10 am)

   there are still uncertainties in some corners of climate science and everybody knows that there are and nobody is hiding them and science communicators are also aware of them them…

   and you support the statement with a link to “Climate Uncertainty Communication” by Ho and Budescu. We can’t read the article, but the Abstract begins:

   “The consequences of global warming will be dire..”

   I’m sure we can all agree that one of the “corners of climate science” where uncertainty is lurking is the question of what the consequences of global warming will be. The IPCC doesn’t know whether a doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere will lead to a dire 4°C rise or a barely noticeable 1.5°C. You may be right that science communicators are aware of these uncertainties, but they don’t seem to be doing a very good job of communicating them. In fact Ho and Budescu go out of their way to deny awareness of the uncertainties in the very first sentence of their paper about communicating uncertainties. Climate science communication has a long way to go.

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   1. 

      Brigitte Nerlich

      May 2, 2020

      I think the article just set out at the beginning what is least uncertain, but yes, the expression thereof could have been more circumspect. The following is possibly interesting ““If you were going to describe a situation that is the prototype for the highest and most complex type of uncertainty, you couldn’t come up with anything more appropriate than climate change,” Budescu says. There are unknowns about the natural processes that drive climate, and uncertainties about the actual climate science. There are sociological uncertainties, including how fast the population will grow, and the environmental, geopolitical and economic consequences of that growth. And perhaps most susceptible to a loose interpretation of “likely” and “unlikely” are the uncertainties posed by some people who question the existence and causes of climate change altogether.“In terms of climate change … there are people who are using this notion of ‘uncertainty’ strategically,” he says. “Basically, as a justification to do nothing. To me that is the equivalent of, ‘We don’t fully understand cancer, therefore, let’s not treat anyone until we do.’”
      https://www.apa.org/members/content/budescu-communicate-uncertainty

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2. 

   geoff chambers

   May 2, 2020

   Brigitte May 2, 2020 at 1:37 pm

   hélas, science … is a process. Findings are not timeless and universal. Things change.

   Very true. I wonder if ATTP and John Cook could be persuaded to support you on that?

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3. 

   …and Then There’s Physics

   May 2, 2020

   John,

   The false certitude expressed in the document, combined with a rhetoric that was quite out of place, led to it being an instrument of advocacy rather than just an attempt to communicate the necessary information.

   I don’t think anyone really disagrees that scientific advisors should aim to provide a reasonable representation of our best understanding, which would include aspects about which there is a good deal of certainty, and aspects that are still very uncertain. We can clearly learn from previous occasions when this hasn’t worked well. However, we should also be careful of assuming that a previous occasion when this hasn’t worked implies something about what might be happening now (for example).

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4. 

   John Ridgway

   May 2, 2020

   Professor Rice,

   “However, we should also be careful of assuming that a previous occasion when this hasn’t worked implies something about what might be happening now…”

   That’s a fair point. But were you making it when Oreskes chose to cite the misdemeanors of the tobacco industry in the 1960s to add credence to the idea that oil companies have more recently been playing the same trick of gaming the uncertainties? It isn’t a matter of making assumptions based upon a previous occasion; rather it is a matter of recognizing the similarity of circumstances and so paying more respect to the notion that history can repeat itself.

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5. 

   Ben Pile

   May 2, 2020

   Brigitte Nerlich“In terms of climate change … there are people who are using this notion of ‘uncertainty’ strategically,” he says. “Basically, as a justification to do nothing. To me that is the equivalent of, ‘We don’t fully understand cancer, therefore, let’s not treat anyone until we do.’”

   But you turn uncertainty into privilege. If uncertainty can be used nefariously, to argue against a thing, it can be used nefariously for a thing.

   It turns out the most and least informed theoreticians of the precautionary principle want the same thing. From Taleb to Thunberg, “I want to you panic”. In the most charitable form, this is an injunction to suspend judgement, the folly of which we may now see unfolding across the world, to most of its populations’ hardship, if not utter ruin, but to the glee and elevation of the precautionists.

   The cancer analogy is hackneyed. There is climatic equivalent to cancer. And such arguments that hypothesise something equivalent always rest in the abstract geometry of tail risks.

   Risks again, right… Censorship is no less a risk management tool than is emissions reduction.

   Obey and you don’t get cancer… Speak out against the anologisers and you actively promote cancer… We can’t have Youtubers contradicting expert analogies… The BBC must not be a vehicle for unauthorised replies to daft analogies… We must not let non-credible replies to experts’ incredible analogies be aired in public without a health warning, if they must be allowed at all… lest we all get cancer.

   As someone commented the other day on Twitter to his fellow academics… Biopolitics is a critique, not a manual. But maybe it isn’t.

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6. 

   Ben Pile

   May 2, 2020

   “There is climatic equivalent to cancer. ” — was meant to be — “There is NO climatic equivalent to cancer. “

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7. 

   …and Then There’s Physics

   May 2, 2020

   John,

   But were you making it when Oreskes chose to cite the misdemeanors of the tobacco industry in the 1960s to add credence to the idea that oil companies have more recently been playing the same trick of gaming the uncertainties?

   I’ve never had a discussion with Naomi Oreskes about this. I agree with you that we should be aware of history and that it can repeat itself. My point is mostly that one should be careful of suggesting that since something has happened before, it is happening now. I’ll add that your example appears to be of a document produced by a government policy department, which may well have had some kind of underlying agenda. This is why – in my view – it’s important for scientists to communicate carefully about our best understanding and why they should be doing their best to properly represent the uncertainties.

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8. 

   Thomas Fuller

   May 2, 2020

   ATTP, you are perfectly willing to engage in conversation here and at CliScep. But you do not at your own blog. Why is what John says worth responding to here but not at your own place of business?

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9. 

   …and Then There’s Physics

   May 2, 2020

   Tom,
   In what way am I not willing to engage in conversation at my place of business?

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   1. 

      Brigitte Nerlich

      May 2, 2020

      That’s a strange thing to say, I have to admit. I mean what Tom said.

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10. 

    …and Then There’s Physics

    May 2, 2020

    Brigitte,
    I suspect it’s a reference to the moderation on my blog, which some – I think – regard as stifling conversation.

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11. 

    geoff chambers

    May 2, 2020

    Brigitte
    I do appreciate your willingness to engage in a civilised discussion with us sceptics, but I’m afraid of the conversation turning sour, as has happened so often in the past twelve years in discussion with defenders of the consensus or orthodox position on climate change. I’ll try to explain:

    You say, of the sentence I quoted from Ho and Budescu: “The consequences of global warming will be dire..”

    I think the article just set out at the beginning what is least uncertain, but yes, the expression thereof could have been more circumspect.

    If “it will be dire” is the least uncertain thing that can be said about global warming, what in Gaia’s name would an uncertain statement look like? If you wanted to say something certain about the science, wouldn’t you say something that a scientist might say, even something that scientist has said, in a scientific paper?

    The article about Professor Budescu which you quote from has got me even more confused. Like you, he is interested in linguistic analysis, and the article (not Budescu) says at one point:

    Budescu acknowledges that much of the work he has done to try to help climate scientists be more effective communicators has been complicated by the gathering strength of skeptics. He is not alone in this—there is heated discussion among scientists and policymakers about how to respond when “deniers” or skeptics refute scientific evidence of climate change.

    The author of the article clearly doesn’t know what sceptics (or deniers) think, and apparently doesn’t know the meaning of the word “refute.” And this is on the site of the American Psychological Association. Finally, the claim that he has conducted a survey among 13,000 people who have read IPCC AR4 merely confirms that we are out with the fairies here.

    Which leads me to formulate (to myself) the question: “Why are you telling me this?”
    The moment you ask yourself this question, even if you don’t blurt it out as I have, tends to be a turning point, in my experience. It’s like the moment you realise that there are no Nigerian princes with inheritances they’d like you to have.

    I have huge differences of opinion with Ben, but sometimes I think he’s just further along the learning curve than the rest of us.

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12. 

    John Ridgway

    May 2, 2020

    Professor Rice,

    Okay. But we must be clear that at no stage have I used the argument that “since something has happened before, it is happening now.” Indeed, I expressed the hope that it wasn’t.

    You are right regarding the political origination of NCS-68, since it was written by the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff. Nevertheless, it was supposed to be based upon the best intelligence available at the time and, although it would probably be a stretch to refer to it as a science-based document, it was supposed to reflect the USA’s best scientific understanding of the Soviets’ weapons capability. The intended audience had a right to assume that it was factually accurate and reflected the actual levels of uncertainty, notwithstanding the policy advice contained therein.

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13. 

    …and Then There’s Physics

    May 2, 2020

    John,

    Okay. But we must be clear that at no stage have I used the argument that “since something has happened before, it is happening now.” Indeed, I expressed the hope that it wasn’t.

    Fair enough.

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14. 

    Brad Keyes

    May 2, 2020

    Brigitte, quoting Budescu:

    “In terms of climate change … there are people who are using this notion of ‘uncertainty’ strategically. Basically, as a justification to do nothing. To me that is the equivalent of, ‘We don’t fully understand cancer, therefore, let’s not treat anyone until we do.’”
    https://www.apa.org/members/content/budescu-communicate-uncertainty

    Then Budescu isn’t very good at this. It’s not equivalent, not remotely. It’s closer to: we don’t have ANY convincing evidence that what we’ve got is cancer, nor is there any reason to think the proposed chemotherapy won’t kill us faster than whatever we do have, so let’s not commit to a regimen of it just yet.

    The oncoanalogy is both a tawdry, cynical attempt to bypass rationality by evoking just about the most universal, emotionally potent boogeyman imaginable, and (perhaps worse than that) plain invalid.

    It’s torn to even smaller shreds here:

    Dear onco-analogists: your stupidity is showing

    Back to this strawman argument nobody has ever made:

    “‘We don’t fully understand cancer, therefore, let’s not treat anyone until we do.’”

    Budescu presumably would like to see this (imaginary) weapon removed from the inactivist arsenal by keeping quiet about uncertainties.

    Recall Stephen Schneider’s advice to climate scientists:

    On the one hand, as scientists we are ethically bound to the scientific method, in effect promising to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but — which means that we must include all the doubts, the caveats, the ifs, ands, and buts. On the other hand, we are not just scientists but human beings as well. And like most people we’d like to see the world a better place, which in this context translates into our working to reduce the risk of potentially disastrous climatic change. To do that we need to get some broadbased support, to capture the public’s imagination. That, of course, entails getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have. This ‘double ethical bind’ we frequently find ourselves in cannot be solved by any formula. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest. I hope that means being both.

    To a scientist, Schneider’s philosophy above is an unconscionable insult.

    Scientists adhere to radically higher standards of integrity that Schneider demands. Scientists behave more like Feynman:

    I would like to add something that’s not essential to the science, but something I kind of believe, which is that you should not fool the laymen when you’re talking as a scientist. . . . I’m talking about a specific, extra type of integrity that is [not just] not lying, but bending over backwards to show how you’re maybe wrong, [an integrity] that you ought to have when acting as a scientist. And this is our responsibility as scientists, certainly to other scientists, and I think to laymen.

    But what of climate scientists?

    You yourself assure us that no climate scientist these days would “make little mention of any doubts we might have”:

    But in the end its a judgement call and it all depends on whom you trust to speak ‘the truth’ whatever that may be, a word by the way that I would avoid in this situation, as there are still uncertainties in some corners of climate science and everybody knows that there are and nobody is hiding them and science communicators are also aware of them them

    Which is good to hear.

    Further reassurance can be found in the kind of professional awards that climate scientists not only aspire to, but win:

    Past Winners of The Richard P. Feynman Award For Outstanding Science Communication

    2018 Dr. Katherine Hayhoe

    2017 Dr. Michael Mann Distinguished Professor of Atmospheric Science, Penn State University

    2016 Dr. Naomi Oreskes Professor of History of Science and affiliated Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Harvard University

    2015 Dr. Chris Field Director, Department of Global Ecology, Carnegie Institution for Science

    2014 Dr. Jane Lubchenco Distinguished Professor, Oregon State University

    2013 Dr. Nicholas Stern Chair, Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change

    2012 Dr. James Hansen Director, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies

    2011 Dr. Richard Alley Professor of Geosciences, Penn State University

    So perhaps climate science gets a bad rap. Perhaps its practicioners don’t really deserve their notoriety as hiders-of-declines, hiders-of-adverse-r-squareds and hiders-of-uncertainties.

    Perhaps it’s Feynmanian ethics that prevail in cli sci, and Schneiderian morality of compromise has long since been repudiated and left in the past, or left in Pachauri’s Proverbial Dustbin, or whatever. Where it belongs.

    Wait, sorry, I misread something—that list above should say…

    Past Winners of The Stephen H. Schneider Award For Outstanding Climate Science Communication

    2018 Dr. Katherine Hayhoe

    2017 Dr. Michael Mann Distinguished Professor of Atmospheric Science, Penn State University

    2016 Dr. Naomi Oreskes Professor of History of Science and affiliated Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Harvard University
    ….

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15. 

    Brad Keyes

    May 2, 2020

    Brigitte,

    Ken Rice has banned most if not all of the skeptics present in this thread from his own blog.

    I think that’s what Tom was referring to when he mentioned Ken’s unwillingness to have a discussion at his place of business.

    If his actions are any guide, Ken certainly welcomes debate, he just prefers not to do it with anyone who disagrees with him.

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16. 

    Brad Keyes

    May 2, 2020

    Ken,

    Have you found calling people deniers quite early in a discussion to be a particularly good way of discouraging debate/dialogue?

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17. 

    geoff chambers

    May 2, 2020

    I got cancer once – skin cancer – which often happens to English people who’ve lived in the tropics as kids. There was a lot in the papers about it at the time, so I read about it, had two operations, and didn’t think much more about it. Then recently I read that the version I’d had – malignant metastasic melanomas – was fatal in 97% of cases. It’s highly unlikely I’m alive.

    Luckily I knew nothing about Bayesian priors (I still don’t) and “97%” didn’t have the awesome significance then that it has now. But I expect that the mention of cancer may have unconsciously sparked off my rather catty response to Brigitte just now.

    The unconscious is a funny thing (witness Ben’s slip of the finger that left out a “not” in a recent comment.) The standard work on the subject of slips and errors used to be Freud’s “Psychopathology of Everyday Life,” but the Wiki article on “Mruphy’s Law” makes no mention of it. Freud has been practically effaced from our collective culture like some vulgar denier squashed by a cognitive psychologist.

    I wonder if climate alarmism might not be some giant mass academic slip of the tongue?

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18. 

    …and Then There’s Physics

    May 2, 2020

    Have you found calling people deniers quite early in a discussion to be a particularly good way of discouraging debate/dialogue?

    My sense is that this would indeed be a good way of discouraging debate/dialogue.

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19. 

    Thomas Fuller

    May 2, 2020

    Professor Rice, your name is attached to one of a group of exceedingly poor papers written specifically to shore up the idea of universal consensus among scientists. Of course you never refer to it, quote from it or even acknowledge its existence, something that might lead us to suspect you’re aware of its inferior quality.

    But what never ceases to amaze and amuse is how these discussions never refer to actual surveys of climate scientists conducted over the last two decades. Those surveys show that roughly 66% of published climate scientists agree with the statement that ‘half or more of the current warming is caused by human emissions of greenhouse gases.’

    This narrow consensus is surely enough for research and academic purposes–and it’s enough for us lukewarmers. I would agree with it. The fact that you must push propaganda samizdat papers creating a 97% consensus out of whole cloth is more evidence–evidence that you lack confidence in the actual science, which is far more conservative than your claims.

    Those of us in opposition take perhaps a clearer view of what published science tells the world. That we still do not know what sensitivity of the atmosphere to a doubling of the concentrations of CO2 may be. That our best take on the impacts of climate change this century are eminently addressable by current technology. That it is increasingly clear that sea level rise will not exceed and probably not approach the 59cm put forward as an upper bound in projections by the IPCC, and their optimum bet for global average temperature rise of 2C above pre-industrial guesses is likely to hold sway.

    But yeah, keep swiping away at those of us in disagreement. It works wonders for the American president–it may work wonders for you too.

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27. 

    Brad Keyes

    May 3, 2020

    Tom,

    you say of Professor Rice’s sixteen-coauthored ‘Consensus on Consensus’ paper [CoC] (and, apparently, of one or more sequels he’s also attached his name to) that

    Of course you never refer to it, quote from it or even acknowledge its existence, something that might lead us to suspect you’re aware of its inferior quality.

    Strictly speaking, he has been known to attempt apologias of his consensuology work in blog posts, at least where necessary to make some show of standing up for its honor against withering critiques by academics like Professor Richard Tol.

    What he’s never done, no matter how sedulously beseeched, is to explain to us what the scholarly or (God forbid) scientific purpose of the CoC paper was—and therefore why the salary he received for wasting his University time on it, pro rata, should NOT be confiscated in the name of the people of Scotland as being the proceeds of embezzlement.

    I’d like to include here some links to that simple question—what was the scholarly or scientific rationale for carrying out the CoC study?—as posed by myself and others to Professor Rice during our conversations at CliScep, a question he’s never indicated an ability to answer, not even with the lamest boilerplate.

    I won’t, though, because I suspect pasting 20-plus URLs into my comment would result in a period of quarantine that makes COVID-19 look like a 24-hour touch of gastro.

    Makes ya think, is all.

    You add:

    The fact that you must push propaganda samizdat papers creating a 97% consensus out of whole cloth is more evidence–evidence that you lack confidence in the actual science, which is far more conservative than your claims.

    The fake graph produced by Naomi Oreskes for use in the 2015 film Merchants of Doubt, in which an endorsement rate of 235 out of 928 is misrepresented as 928 (100%) is presumably evidence that Ken has no monopoly on the lack of courage in one’s own convictions. Apparently the insecurity goes all the way up the totem-pole.

    But what never ceases to amaze and amuse is how these discussions never refer to actual surveys of climate scientists conducted over the last two decades.

    It ceased to amaze or amuse me years ago! I wish I were so easily surprised and entertained.

    🙂

    I suspect Professor Rice has no idea quite how serious his credibility problem is.

    Who was it who said what a useful gift it would be to see oneself as others do?

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28. 

    Brad Keyes

    May 3, 2020

    Ken,

    you start to moderate some commenters more quickly than others

    I’ve always said you rely on prejudice, not policy. Thanks for being open about it.

    (i.e., you get a sense if a comment is made in good faith, or not).

    As anyone capable of skepticism understands, a “sense” like that is useless, and is exactly the kind of noise a scientist would know better than to mistake for a signal.

    How can I explain this to you, Ken? See, unlike the traditional 5 senses, your newly-developed Spider Sense does NOT come with a mechanism for feedback, learning or refinement. There’s nothing anyone can do or say to stop you fooling yourself.

    If you could open an envelope after deciding that a comment was bona fide or mala fide, in which was somehow written The Truth as to whether or not you were RIGHT, then perhaps you could have honed this intuition over time.

    But you can’t so you couldn’t and you never did. Alas, you’ll go to the grave not knowing just how inerrantly and dependably wrong your psychic hunches were.

    I know how central faith is to the climate movement, but take some friendly advice: worry less about our bad faith and more about your bad science.

    If you do moderate strongly, you will then end up with comments that tend to be amongst people who can at least satisfy the moderation policy

    You don’t FOLLOW a moderation policy, Ken. You make up the rules as you go along.

    Principles aren’t principles if you adopt them pro re nata. You have to define them in advance, then follow them EVEN WHEN YOU DON’T WANT TO.

    Please tell me you’re better at astronomy than ethics.

    However, the strong moderation did preferentially tend to encourage those who strongly questioned the anthropogenic nature of climate change to stay away

    So what encouraged me to stay away? I’ve never “strongly questioned the anthropogenic nature of climate change.”

    I could also comment on my experiences posting comments on “skeptical” blogs, but I’ll leave that for the moment.

    You won’t? Phew. THANK YOU for keeping the injustices we “skeptics” perpetrate upon you just between us.

    [Readers may find your stillborn threat reminiscent of the kind of 90-lb weakling who’s constantly telling bullies he knows karate, but chooses not to use it. Let me assure them that Ken is nothing of the sort! His arsenal of anecdata about skeptical behavior would, if unleashed, fatally discredit his opponents—so thank Gandhi he’s so Christ-like.]

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29. 

    Brad Keyes

    May 3, 2020

    Ken,

    My sense is that this would indeed be a good way of discouraging debate/dialogue.

    I thought you’d think that. Without wishing to sound culturist, it’s all about culture. You’ve been raised the stereotypically UK way, to keep your nastiness to yourself.

    Unfortunately it takes about 30 seconds for us to realize you THINK of us as deniers. Your politeness is therefore a waste of psychic energy, hypertension and gastric juices. There’s no point bottling up ugly thoughts unless your bottle is actually opaque.

    What some people grasp (including no end of British people—again, I didn’t mean to put down an entire archipelago) is that hate speech is not only acceptable, it’s positively morally incumbent on us, when we hate someone.

    Dialogue and debate will only work if you start being sincere, Ken.

    So let it out.

    Then I’ll be able to ask you the following question—purely rhetorically, of course; you’ll never answer it correctly:

    “denier OF WHAT?”

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    1. 

       Brigitte Nerlich

       May 3, 2020

       I think this discussion has now run its course, become rather personal, repetitive and unproductive. It might be better to stop…

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30. 

    Brad Keyes

    May 3, 2020

    Brigitte

    I think this discussion has now run its course, become rather personal, repetitive and unproductive.

    Hint received 🙂 I think we’d sort of given up on you, and it’s great you’re back. For my part I’m far more interested in seeing your take on what’s already been said (upthread, by Ben and Geoff especially) than in repeating myself.

    It might be better to stop…

    I’m happy to stop, especially if it gives you and Jennifer a chance to resume 😉

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    1. 

       Brigitte Nerlich

       May 3, 2020

       I have to confess that my head swims just looking at the long comments. If somebody would be so kind and summarise in three bullet points what it’s all about, how it’s different to all previous discussions and how it relates to Jenni’s article, I would be most grateful. At the moment I have three work deadlines that have nothing to do with climate change and I have to give these a chance. I find concentrating under conditions of lockdown actually quite hard, especially since most of the day is spent on the phone or similar with relatives who can only hear your voice etc etc….and I don’t even have small children in the house!

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31. 

    …and Then There’s Physics

    May 3, 2020

    You’ve been raised the stereotypically UK way, to keep your nastiness to yourself.

    I’m South African. I don’t think we’re noted for keeping our nastiness to ourselves.

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33. 

    Brad Keyes

    May 3, 2020

    Ken, I should have known you were no true Scotsman! I withdraw wholeheartedly any accusations of politeness. I had a Sethafrican boss once. A couple of years ago, the papers said a sentencing judge had called him “abrasive.” Funny, I thought he was an absolute pussycat.

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34. 

    Ben Pile

    May 3, 2020

    Brigitte: “If somebody would be so kind and summarise in three bullet points what it’s all about”

    All of it? No chance! Some essence, maybe… (How did you ever manage to wade through CiF comment threads, if this here mere snippet of a thread is too much?!)

    Countless studies have been done on ‘blogs’ by researchers, blogs being the only place there is any possibility at all of ‘dialogue’. Academic research misses this in its emphasis on blogs, and it typically misses the substance of blog discussions, proceeding from obvious preconceptions and prior framings of the ‘bad’ side.
    There is no substantive difference between lowly blog commentary and “science communicators” verbiage from the very top of global institutional science. For instances, the late Bob May, as president of the Royal Society did not hold back on angry conspiracy theories, and the late Rajendra K. Pachauri compared Bjorn Lomborg to Hitler. Moreover, though hurtful words are more common on the Internet, the consequences for stepping out of line with respect to ‘publics’ in fora such as broadcast media, academe, civil society or politics are far graver than being called names.
    There is A questionable aspect of so much research emphasis on blogs as somehow apart from other fora. Let’s call it ‘hand-wringing’, consistent with official concerns that unregulated discussion ‘risks’ the promotion of seemingly harmful ‘misinformation’ (again, no matter what the actual substance of the conversations happens to be). The good faith of the research imperatives, coming from the same agenda as the rest of it, therefore cannot be taken at face value, even if the researchers themselves show no obvious malign intent. Research — and more clearly, research budgets — has its own ideological agenda, whether or not it is clearly stated. Look closely at ESRC’s mission statements. They are all but identical to the Green Party’s. Why should bloggers/commenters, who find themselves made the objects of this research, take kindly to it, when there are so many other things that could be studied (see above)?

    Not quite bullet points, but as concise as I could make them.

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    1. 

       Brigitte Nerlich

       May 3, 2020

       Just to say, this is no longer my day-job. My funding for climate change analysis stopped in 2014. Since then I have moved to other ‘fields’. I’ll look at this asap… as I said…

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    2. 

       Brigitte Nerlich

       May 3, 2020

       Can you give me evidence for that – prior framing of the bad side?
       See Jenni’s study. Not sure what you call conspiracy theories. Is there evidence for the consequences you allude to and what stepping out line means, as compared to, let’s say, saying things that are not evidence-based?
       I would have to do a quantitative empirical study into to whether blogs are the object of study par excellence for social science researchers. I bet the are not. They were for a while, when they were novel (and Jenni’s study started in 2014 I think). Then people moved on to twitter and so on. They also study focus groups, images, media in general, etc. etc. They look into all corners of societal debates about climate change, wherever they take place. The ESRC’s agenda is shaped by societal issues; climate change is one of them, whether we like it or not.

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35. 

    Ben Pile

    May 3, 2020

    Brigitte. This is not my day job, either.

    — Can you give me evidence for that – prior framing of the bad side? —

    Barry and Jenni have a discussion about this above. Jenni replies to Barry:

    perhaps ‘gone bad’ was an unfortunate turn of phrase, especially given the nature of good and evil appears to be mostly subjective. Certainly, from my point of view as a science communicator the consensus climate science is what I need to be explaining simply and clearly to others, including all its uncertainties.

    That is to say that Jenni does see her role as normative, and brings that role and its concomitant values to her analysis. It is jarring to us objects of her study, though her study in question is far milder than some other research. I have found this very often, but perhaps more so in cognitive science, in which the researcher attempts to measure a participant’s understanding of seemingly consensus claims, but which only succeed in measuring participants’ agreement with the researcher, who has manifestly not understood the consensus. This is discussed in my contribution to this blog, years ago.

    — Not sure what you call conspiracy theories.—

    In the case of Robert May (and many others of his standing, such as chairs of public bodies and govt. departments), ‘conspiracy theories’ that he used the resources of the Royal Society and other institutions to promote included the view that there existed a “well-funded denial machine” intended to thwart climate policy. This was slightly muted under Rees, but continued under Nurse. There is more background to the story, of course, but the presidents clearly saw a future for institutional science in regulating rather than enabling debate. The RS, as with others, was unable and unwilling to provide evidence of the “denial machine”, let alone, as I discuss above, put it into contrast with the scale of the agenda that it was seemingly aimed against.

    — Is there evidence for the consequences you allude to and what stepping out line means, as compared to, let’s say, saying things that are not evidence-based? —

    Yes. Plenty. As discussed. Saying things which are not evidence-based from within ‘credible’ public institutions carries no consequences (Rees, Nurse, Gummer, Davey, for instances). Yet, and as you and Jenni have discovered, many times on this project, it is the act of seemingly ‘giving a platform’ to non-“credible” positions which draws the ire of the pro-climate “publics” — academic publics at that. We can see academics losing their positions for research which runs counter to the perceived consensus (Rudd and coral reefs, and Crockford and polar bear populations, are recent examples). And we can see academics closing ranks against perceived others. Above, I discuss the point that critics of sustainability are not invited to participate in sustainability research centres, which clearly begin from political/ideological, not ‘evidence’ premises. That is to say academia rules out criticism by institution ideological norms, which are then aggressively enforced throughout campuses.

    — I would have to do a quantitative empirical study into to whether blogs are the object of study par excellence for social science researchers. I bet the are not. —

    I don’t claim such a thing, and your reply is disingenuous. I say instead, physician, heal thyself.

    — Then people moved on to twitter and so on. They also study focus groups, images, media in general, etc. etc.

    For ‘blogs’ then, read ‘social media’. The point stands that unauthorised fora vex institutions and policymakers alike, because they create the risk of transmitting unauthorised opinions. See evidence to DCMS inquiries, for instance, and countless conspiracy theories — which have not stood up to scrutiny — from seemingly respectable institutions in the wake of the Brexit Referendum, to which research institutions were particularly and overwhelming attached, and which have misjudged every aspect of, including their own (counter-productive) interventions.

    — They look into all corners of societal debates about climate change, wherever they take place. —

    I beg to differ. And they will shrink away from mirrors. They will look where it is fashionable and convenient to look.

    — The ESRC’s agenda is shaped by societal issues; climate change is one of them, whether we like it or not.

    The ESRC’s agenda is shaped by politics and ideology. Its mission statement is as clearly intended to shape society as any overtly political project’s manifesto. Indeed, the CCCEP project, instigated by the ESRC under the chairmanship of Adair Turner — himself an archetypal green technocrat, who went on to chair the CCC — was established to produce policy-based research for the CCC, and a role for Nicholas Stern and his 2007 report, to the exclusion of any criticism. And indeed, that project’s resources can be found precisely being used to attack criticism, to bully other academics and institutions away from criticism, to prevent debate, and to prevent the expression of criticism in the media. I could go on… At length.

    Never mind blogs/social media. There are much bigger problems at home. But there is no incentive for academics to ‘research’ academe. There are only disincentives. It falls to us bloggers, then… Perhaps that’s why social media vexes researchers. It is political, after all.

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    1. 

       Brigitte Nerlich

       May 3, 2020

       Ok, I think I just have to admit defeat. My expertise in this domain is just not there. I have no idea who Adair Turner is. I don’t know whether Bob May believed in conspiracy theories and what they were supposed to be. I can’t read Nurse’s mind….. I just don’t know. I have not studied these things in detail, for at least six years and even before that my research focus was only tangentially related to sniffing all these things out. The only thing I know is that we don’t study blogs or social media because they vex us, but because they are there. Volcanologists don’t study volcanoes because they are vexed by them… I don’t get this. I am really sorry.

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36. 

    …and Then There’s Physics

    May 3, 2020

    I don’t get this.

    If it’s any consolation, neither do I.

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37. 

    Ben Pile

    May 3, 2020

    Brigitte — The only thing I know is that we don’t study blogs or social media because they vex us, but because they are there. Volcanologists don’t study volcanoes because they are vexed by them… I don’t get this. I am really sorry.

    That’s very honest of you. But you did ask. And I don’t think the claim that researchers study a thing because it is there — especially if it is an object of the human sphere — can be taken for granted.

    Volcanologists do not study volcanoes on the premise that they appear out of nowhere. The subject of blog discussions similarly must have some kind of a genesis. The consensus, and various interpretations of it, which Jenni explains is her motivation, are produced by institutions.

    Behind that consensus, the political agenda is there. The research agenda is there. Research funding agencies are there. Universities are there. Research departments are there. The lofty panjandrums of institutional science are there. The supranational political institutions are there. The constellation of civil society organisations are there. The broadcast media are there. Blogs are not outside of the same ‘there’, they do not exist independently of the ‘there’, in some separate reality. Yet academic emphasis on climate change debate, discussion, dialogue, whatever you want to call it, treats them as an entirely different category, apparently oblivious to the historical development, from which the ‘consensus’ has been produced.

    You say the object of your studies (to the extent that they have ever been about this particular debate) does not vex you; though it manifestly vexes something, someone, somewhere. Because how else to explain the emphasis — and particular framing — of bloggers, blog commentators, and the expression and exchange of unauthorised opinion, and the funding of such investigations? Moreover, we can see it framed as problematic in the academic literature. We can see academics argue for the necessity of intervention. We can see researchers pitching themselves to policymakers, making promises to develop the means to “inoculate” the public against unauthorised knowledge.

    What do you think all those bloggers and commentators were talking about? Why do you think they took issue with institutional science, if there was not some question about institutional science which was raised by the fact of institutional science’s excesses? We were talking about Bob May. We were talking about the Royal Society. We were talking about Adair Turner. We were talking about the ESRC. We were talking about the CCC. We were talking about DECC.

    You make my point for me: academics study bloggers and commenters without reading what they actually say. Yet they take a view. They take a framing. And they bring prefigured understanding of things to their research. Academia is no less a closed ‘public’, that struggles to absorb challenges to its understanding than any blog’s population.

    —If it’s any consolation, neither do I.—

    We’ve been telling you that for a long time.

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    1. 

       Brigitte Nerlich

       May 3, 2020

       Of course we all bring prefigured understanding to our studies, even volcanologist do. But we try to base this pre-understanding on the best available science/evidence etc. That’s also why we, at least me, try to study emerging patterns of discourse, say, or words, or metaphors, not what every single blogger says. That is almost impossible to do. In many instances that would also be unethical, i.e. to identify individual people, unless they really are squarely in the public domain. I have, by the way, always resisted the lure of pitching to policy makers. As soon as I see one, I basically run away…When I said we study blogs because they are there…. I meant twenty years I ago I’d have looked at newspapers on microfiche or at Hansard reports or whatever, now there are blogs, a new source got listening into public conversations about climate change. They are there! Of course one should not overlook the context in which they are there as that shapes how they are and by whom they are read etc etc.

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38. Deniers don't surrender; bailing out Big Oil ~ News Web

    May 3, 2020

    […] we came across a long, ranty blog post at CliScep that took great offense to recent blog post and study by Jennifer Metcalfe that examined comments at SkepticalScience and JoNova to see how […]

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39. 

    Thomas Fuller

    May 3, 2020

    Brigitte, you are casting your net too wide. Studying bloggers as some lumpen mass is unlikely to bring you joy.

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    1. 

       Brigitte Nerlich

       May 3, 2020

       Just to say I stopped studying blogging in 2014.

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40. Climate change blog comment sections: Classroom or cesspool? | Red, Green, and Blue

    May 3, 2020

    […] we came across a long, ranty blog post at CliScep that took great offense to recent blog post and study by Jennifer Metcalfe that examined comments at SkepticalScience and JoNova to see how […]

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41. 

    Thomas Fuller

    May 3, 2020

    If I were looking for repeated patterns of speech and thought that could serve as metaphors for the climate conversation, I would focus on two areas–entitlement and grievance.

    Skeptics and lukewarmers resent the way they have been treated irrespective of the soundness of their arguments. This resentment is IMO to a large extent understandable and perhaps justifiable.

    And this is because of the entitlement assumed by upholders of the consensus, who have consistently belittled, attacked and attempted to de-platform skeptics and lukewarmers.

    The two competing metaphors made rational discussion rare and when it occurred, particularly vulnerable to disruption.

    In another world we could have focused the debate on emissions, concentrations, impacts, adaptation and mitigation. This was not that world.

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42. 

    Brad Keyes

    May 4, 2020

    Tom,

    This was not that world.

    If it were in the interests of the Upholders for this to be that world, then surely this would be that world, would it not?

    There’s nothing STOPPING them from permitting a rational discussion—and I say ‘permitting,’ because like it or not, all the money and power and media access is on their side (upholders), not ours (skeptics and lukewarmers).

    The (non-)debate is the way it is because they choose to make it this way, and to prevent it becoming any other way.

    The question is surely what could possibly possess someone to spend 25 years doing something which (if they’re right about the climate) is delaying the rescue of human civilization from an impending Ragnarok.

    If they’re right about the climate, then the very debate their behavior makes impossible is mankind’s only hope.

    Doesn’t this tell you that they know perfectly well that they’re NOT right about the climate?

    What could they possibly stand to gain from aborting every attempt at civilized debate, unless they knew their ragnarokalyptic claims could not survive civilized debate?

    Brad

    PS Their Side isn’t really upholding a consensus, it’s going wildly further than that. If the issue were The Consensus: Right Or Wrong? I’d largely agree with it. And why not? The consensus view does NOT entail any reason to lose a second’s sleep over climate change.

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43. 

    geoff chambers

    May 4, 2020

    Bullet Point Reply to Metcalfe’s article: “Chanting to the choir: The dialogical failure of antithetical climate change blogs” – concerning this paper
    https://jcom.sissa.it/archive/19/02/JCOM_1902_2020_A04

    1.

    My motivation for studying two antithetical blogs on climate change science was to look at whether laypeople—those without a scientific background—were engaging in deliberative discussions about the science on blogs.

    Two informal surveys suggest that “laypeople” who comment at “sceptical” climate blogs are far from being “without a scientific background”. One third of those detailing their education at Jeff Id’s blog had an MSc or PhD, (Matthews 2013) and a similar result was found at BishopHill, the British equivalent of JoNova’s.

    I chose antithetical blogs because I was interested to see if the quality of dialogue was different between those who engaged with the consensus science of climate change
    (https://www.skepticalscience.com/) versus those who engaged with a blog that denied such science (http://joannenova.com.au/).

    The wording here is hopelessly confused. “Consensus science” is a nonsense. Everyone concerned is “engaging with the science.” It is impossible to “deny science” in the sense that an atheist might “deny Christ,” precisely because science is not religion. People on both blogs may “discuss science” or “argue about the science.” Or they may do something quite different while being under the illusion that they are discussing science.

    [Correction to paper, in which it is stated that: “SS was set up and is maintained by John Cook, a research assistant at the Center for Climate Change Communication at George Mason University” At the time of setting up SkS John Cook was a cartoonist and website designer with a bachelor’s degree in science. His site is usually referred to as SkS to spare his feelings, since it was discovered that he likes to dress up in Nazi uniform.]

    I was particularly interested in the dialogue between commenters on such blogsites as this had rarely been studied compared to science blog posts or bloggers. I was interested in dialogue on a publicly controversial issue like climate change because deliberative dialogue is thought to have the potential to bring about democratic change and action, compared to the mere dissemination of information.

    Metcalfe is to be congratulated here on her intended method of analysis, which concerns what people say, as opposed to their putative age, sex or skin colour. In this she distinguishes herself from almost all other commenters on the nature of climate sceptics and their blogs.

    Since the publication of my article on 14 April, there’s been some interesting twitter discussions about it. Concern has been expressed in several tweets that I did not comment on the scientific credibility of each of the sites. Related to this, other tweets were concerned that by looking at antithetical climate change blogs, I have been giving false balance or equivalence to the issue in a similar way to how some journalists will give climate scientists and deniers equal space. Other tweets are concerned that I call both John Cook (Skeptical Science blogger) and Joanna Nova ‘science communicators’. To be frank, I did not expect such reactions to this paper…

    To be frank, this is not credible. Every time a sceptical scientist or commenter is given space in the mainstream media or the scientific literature, it is absolutely guaranteed that bloggers and activists supporting the “official” version of “the science” will cry foul and “false balance,” and demand censorship or correction. It is not possible to follow climate blogs and not know this.

    Firstly, I did not assess the scientific credibility of each of the blog posts nor of the comments made on each post because this was not the purpose of my research. I am not a climate scientist, which means I could not rigorously assess the scientific credibility of the blogposts or comments, even if I wanted to. However, commenting as a science communication practitioner of more than 30 years, I am very aware that Skeptical Science goes to great lengths to ensure the peer-review credibility of their posts. The site won a prestigious Eureka prize for its excellence in science communication in 2011. The opposite is true for Joanna Nova’s blog site.

    What “opposite”? That JoNova has won best topical blog, best Australian-NZ blog, and Lifetime Achievement awards in the annual Weblog Awards? Or that JoNova’s site does does not “…go to great lengths to ensure the peer-review credibility” of her posts? Credibility to whom? And how is “peer-reviewed credibility” different from the common or garden kind? What can the author mean which doesn’t contradict her claim that she “..could not rigorously assess the scientific credibility of the blogposts”?

    I deliberately focussed on the comments rather than the posts. I looked at the comments as contained on each blog site and was not specifically looking to see if Skeptical Science engaged with deniers or if Jo Nova’s site was engaging with those supporting scientific consensus. And what I found interesting when exploring the dialogue between commenters on both sites, regardless of their scientific credibility, is that they consolidated “their own polarised publics rather than deliberately engaging them in climate change science”. The problem with this, even for a highly credible blog like Skeptical Science, is that the blogsites are not engaging laypeople deliberately in their science. Instead, I found that the dialogue for both sites were dominated by a few vocal commenters, and for Skeptical Science most of these commenters made very technical comments that an average layperson would not understand. I was actually surprised that only rarely did commenters on each site try to influence other commenters to their point of view. I concluded that this was largely because they were already talking with like-minded people.

    It is unfortunate that the three pairs of posts examined in the paper were all on the same subject – the attribution of extreme weather events to global warming. The IPCC and the whole scientific community is in agreement on the point that no such attribution can be made on a timescale less than several decades. I have avoided looking at the content of the blog threads studied by Metcalfe, but the descriptions of the subjects in her paper make it clear that there is nothing of scientific value to be said on the issue. There are scores, possibly hundreds of other subjects of contention between sceptics and consensus believers, and therefore between SkS and JoNova, but this is not one of them.

    With regard to the false balance argument: this is a research paper written for a scholarly audience, not a journalistic piece. As a science communicator who also writes popular science articles, I would never give credence or equal weight to anti-science commentary regardless of the topic. […] I certainly don’t regard Jo Nova as a ‘science communicator’, and perhaps I should have made it clearer in my paper that this was her claim rather than mine. However, it’s an interesting point to consider: what do we call lawyers, teachers or doctors who’ve gone bad?

    This characterisation of JoNova contradicts the claim (point 5 above) about not judging the credibility of the two blogs. The author’s claim in a subsequent comment that her view of “good and evil” is subjective frankly doesn’t help her case.

    My research for this paper does not claim to speak for all climate science blogs, credible or not. It provides an in-depth exploration of the comments and dialogue on two among many. My research did not aim to promote either of the blogsites examined. But I hope my research adds to our understanding about online dialogue about climate science. From my perspective, we clearly need to find ways other than blogs to engage laypeople in credible climate science which leads to political and individual action.

    Only if “we” accept the view of the consensus science supporters at SkS, and reject the views of the sceptics at JoNova. But this contradicts the claim of objectivity in (5) above. And who is “we” here? Certainly not the objective researcher who treats the views of the two objects of research equally, and claims that she “could not rigorously assess the scientific credibility of the blogposts or comments, even if I wanted to.”

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    1. 

       Brigitte Nerlich

       May 4, 2020

       sorry, in various ‘meetings’ today and Jenni is working all day in Australia

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44. 

    geoff chambers

    May 4, 2020

    Correction:
    Ignore my comment at (3) above:

    Metcalfe is to be congratulated here on her intended method of analysis, which concerns what people say, as opposed to their putative age, sex or skin colour.

    At the time of writing I had only read her intentions in the introduction, and not her results (Table 2.)

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45. 

    …and Then There’s Physics

    May 4, 2020

    Tom,
    So, the lack of dialogue and the polarisation is all the fault of these others people, the people who uphold the consensus and who have consistently belittled, attacked and attempted to de-platform skeptics and lukewarmers?

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46. 

    geoff chambers

    May 4, 2020

    Ouch. My correction has appeared before the comment to be corrected, which is presumably in moderation because of its length. Sorry.

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47. 

    Brad Keyes

    May 4, 2020

    The authors of the don’t hesitate to call named individuals ‘climate change denier this’ and ‘climate science denier that.’

    What can anybody hope to contribute to a field they so catastrophically misunderstand?

    Are they really so encyclopedically ignorant of the content of the climate debate? As Geoff might puts it, “it is not possible to follow climate blogs and not know” that deniers of climate change are strictly mythical creatures.*

    To quote John Cook, the creator and proprietor of Skeptical Science, himself:

    There is no such thing as climate change denial.

    (Let’s not further confuse Jennifer by mentioning that Cook subsequently taught an entire online course on the very phenomenon he admitted was imaginary. We needn’t revisit the issue of the climate movement’s dearth of credibility.)

    Is there any point even reading on? I almost suspect it’s an IQ test, and I’ll lose 1pt for every paragraph I get through before the penny drops: it’s not worth the saccades.

    *Unless, of course, the authors are referring to people—like Michael Mann—who deny the changes in the Earth’s climate that took place before ~1900 AD. Even Mann doesn’t deny ALL climate change, however. He selectively concedes the reality of the last century and a bit’s worth.

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48. 

    Brad Keyes

    May 4, 2020

    Ken,

    you asked Tom on which side the fault lies for the lack of dialogue. If you think the following episode could possibly have happened in reverse—with the ‘skeptic’ refusing to be in the same room as the ‘consensus scientist’—then say so.

    Otherwise your question isn’t really a question at all: it’s self-evident to all that “your side” has a monopoly on anti-dialogue behavior:

    As for polarization—to the extent that it’s anyone’s “fault” (that is, assuming it’s an inherently bad thing)—yes:

    Your Side is wholly responsible for it, because Your Side of the debate chose, and still chooses to this day, to adopt a position in polar opposition to ours. All you’d have to do to end the polarization overnight is to become skeptics, like us. That you choose instead to persist in your diametrically-contrary belief system is strong evidence that any ostensible commitment on your part to fighting polarization is just so many empty words.

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49. 

    …and Then There’s Physics

    May 4, 2020

    All you’d have to do to end the polarization overnight is to become skeptics, like us.

    That was certainly my impression too.

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50. 

    Brad Keyes

    May 4, 2020

    That was certainly my impression too.

    So you knew what it would take to end the polarization all along, and still chose not to do it?

    How telling. For all your show of worshipping at the altar of consensus, you’ve knowingly spent 30-plus years standing in the way of a genuine, global consensus on climate change by refusing to agree with skeptics.

    We can’t move on, as a society, until this silly civil war of climate disagreement is over.

    I’m glad we had this chat, so that in thirty years’ time—when your side is STILL holding out against a reconciliation of views—we can dispense with the coyness about What You Knew and When You Knew It.

    Let’s just hope it’s not too late by then.

    Ending polarization: it’s in your hands, Ken.

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