Did you ever wonder about the hordes of angry comments that appear after any major online story breaks about climate change? The ones that angrily attack the very idea that climate is changing, or that man could cause it, or that attack the integrity of the science and the climate scientists? Sometimes you might wonder if such feeding frenzies are organized.
Wonder no more. We now have a convincing demonstration of exactly how its done.
About a week ago, Amazon posted a page for the kindle version of Michael Mann’s new book, “The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars”. A few individuals who had the chance to read the book have been posting reviews, generally favorable.
On February 8, Anthony Watts over at the denialist Wattsupwiththat blog posted that the book was available, and added coyly, “I hope some climate realists eventually review the book as well.”
Wonder of wonders, within hours, a horde of denialists had apparently bought and read the 400 page book, and were furiously posting indignant denunciations of the book, science, and the scientist. Apparently climate denialism is correlated with speed reading abilities, albeit with low comprehension.
An example of the level of Watts-inspired attacks – “This book is exactly like a turd. It’s small, it stinks, and it’s disgusting. Just like Mann.”
It’s not the first time that Watts and others in the denial community have organized this kind of attack. It’s a template.
The beauty of this pure example is that it shows how the relatively small constituency of rabid deniers exhibit swarming behavior so as to inflate one’s idea of their numbers. We’ve recently seen evidence of how PR firms like HP Gary provide “persona management” software, so as to create exactly this effect thru a manufactured army of sock-puppet social media posters.
Now we see that climate deniers have an even better way. Why use sock-puppets when you can deploy real puppets?
UPDATE: In the video below, see how a Koch Brother funded Tea Party activists teaches a workshop on how to specifically game the “review” system as a “guerrilla” tactic to promote “our ideals”. The speaker helpfully admits that “80 percent of the books I put a star on – I don’t read!”
Below, my review of the book.
When future historians seek to piece together the complex and byzantine tale of how humanity dithered on the edge of climate catastrophe – Mike Mann’s book will be the most logical starting point to put the big picture together.
Because Dr. Mann has been directly or indirectly involved at so many key moments, and with so many key players – and because he has pulled together a lucid narrative with a comprehensively annotated, highly detailed chronology – anyone that wants to understand the back story of an enormous and painful paradigm shift will be extremely well advised to consult this volume.
There is enough material in the footnotes to jump-start dozens of master’s theses in, among other topics -the unfolding of our understanding of global climate – but also, the history of science, the rights of privacy under constitutional law, abuses of corporate power, and the modern distortion of media by powerful vested interests.
There have been a number of valuable contributions to the popular accounts of climate change science, but this one jumps immediately to the top of the list for anyone that wants to get the broadest historical context and overview of where we are, and how we got here.
“Apparently climate denialism is correlated with speed reading abilities, albeit with low comprehension.” LOL!
I found out about the Amazon review page through my regular check-up of alternate reality over at WUWT. I voted ‘helpful’ for about two reviews.
That’s as far as my chock-full agenda will let me. It becomes a lot easier if you can cash in 5 bucks from a fossil fuel sponsored think tank for every review you write.
I think it would be useful to insert that clip again from ‘Astroturf Wars’.
Technically it was a guest post on WUWT, not written by Watts himself. One of the major problems was that the swarm voted down the good reviews (you know, the ones who actually read the book) as ‘unhelpful’ and voted up all 1-star, didn’t even actually read the book reviews as ‘helpful’. The 3 reviews with the best ‘helpful’ ratings are posted first on the Amazon page, and then you have to click to read the rest of the reviews, so now the first 3 reviews everyone sees are 1-star, didn’t even read the book reviews.
On the one hand you have to be impressed with how well-organized the deniers are. They can swarm like locusts. On the other hand, they also do about as much damage as locusts.
Anything that goes on this blog, whether I write it or not, I am responsible for.
Watts knows what he’s doing.
5-Watts usually adds his name to every post whether he “writes” it or not. Always reminds me of the first night privilege claimed by kings during the old Dark Ages.
Peter – fascism it is. Yours. What was Watts supposed to do more than ask readers not to gleick Mann’s book?
If WUWT had not mentioned Mann’s book you’d be posting about the denial of reality etc etc.
As for the comments at amazon they’re of course as helpful as a wiki entry on climate change. Not at all, in fact.
First of all, the claim about Gleick is a lie, like most claims on WUWT.
Secondly, Watts and Nelson knew exactly what they were doing in saying
“Mann’s book currently has 15 reviews [linked] on Amazon, all five-star, many by his warmist friends. I hope some climate realists eventually review the book as well.”
They sent the swarm over to Amazon to vote down the good reviews and vote up the reviews that didn’t even read the book, and to create bogus 1-star reviews.
Though I do agree that most of the blame goes to the locusts themselves for their poor behavior.
Why is what Peter Sinclair writes here “Fascism”? Between his use of the term and yours, I’d say yours is the less appropriate by far.
The cardinal point: lots of people apparently sympathetic to the WUWT party line have slagged off a book they clearly did not have time to even look at, let alone read. They heard it was by Dr Mann and that was enough. Did the WUWT contributor know this would happen? I would say that’s highly likely, give past behaviour, although, granted, no one could prove it.
In what should be an open exchange of ideas and opinions, calling up sheer numbers – when those numbers have nothing by way of substance to add to the argument – is an attempt at suppression, albeit a clumsy one. As such, it has no place on a site that claims to know so much more about science than people who actually work in it.
Peter, I think you’re just sore that Anthony runs the #1 science blog site on the Internet, with huge readership. When something gets mentioned there, it gets noticed by a LOT of people.
His site gets a lot more traffic than yours, but his and yours have one important thing in common. Both of you permit (polite) dissenting opinions to be freely expressed. Even the notorious Wikepedia censor, Wm “greenman” Connolley, is active at WUWT.
Peter, your willingness to permit dissenting opinions to be expressed here is an important difference between your site and most other climate alarmist sites, which are heavily censored to control the message. That might be why your site is almost as popular as the “official” climate alarmist house organ, RealClimate, and why you’re crushing Tamino’s Closed Mind:
Site Information for wattsupwiththat.com Alexa Traffic Rank: 15,791 Sites Linking In: 5,768 Estimated percentage of global internet users who visit wattsupwiththat.com: Reach Change 7 day 0.01 -32% 1 month 0.011 +0.5% 3 month 0.0114 +4% Site Information for realclimate.org Alexa Traffic Rank: 216,958 Sites Linking In: 5,267 Estimated percentage of global internet users who visit realclimate.org: Reach Change 1 month 0.00088 +20% 3 month 0.00094 -12% Site Information for climatecrocks.com Alexa Traffic Rank: 336,634 Sites Linking In: 446 Estimated percentage of global internet users who visit climatecrocks.com: Reach Change 1 month 0.00059 -10% 3 month 0.00061 +70% Site Information for tamino.wordpress.com Alexa Traffic Rank: 892,111 Sites Linking In: 642 Reach Change 3 month 0.0002 -?No, sorry, getting the most votes in a popularity contest poll does not make WUWT “the #1 science blog site on the Internet”. That’s a joke. I can set up a poll and vote myself as the #1 most brilliant person in the universe. Winning a poll doesn’t make it so.
Forgot to “notify”
Dana – forget polls – traffic is a rough indicator of popularity, and a good indicator of where people get their news from. If the NYT publsihed an article about Mr X and Mr X got less than pleasant reviews about his book, one could make some analysis about the NYT readership but not about the NYT editors.
Peter is dangerously close to conspiracy theory. One of the friendly reviews to Mann’s specifically mentions that as a weak point of the book.
Thank you for confirming that the issue is about popularity, not quality (i.e. which site is “best”). For once I 100% agree with you. Popular, absolutely. Best, not even remotely close.
I think the right wing shill in the video makes it pretty clear that this practice is encouraged and practiced by well funded right wing operatives. Add that in with Morano’s email address tips to his thug/mob – Its not paranoia if they really are out to get you.
So Maurizio, did you go to Amazon and ‘review’ Mann’s book before reading it as well?
Kronocide – not at all.
Dana – don’t want to enter into a polemics about gleicking. Thanks for agreeing that it’s each individual who responds of their actions. Watts and Nelson…as I said could they have ignored Mann’s book? If they could’ve not, what should have they done? Please explain.
WUWT, mw, Limbaugh, Monckton, Morano and the Tea Party thrown together. If that’s not Fascism, I don’t know what is.
Am still waiting to know what was Watts supposed to do. Don’t rush.
“If that’s not Fascism, I don’t know what is.”
I don’t think I’ve got anything else to add to that.
I thought I was a pretty well plugged-in member in good standing of the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy, but I’ve never before heard of this AmericanMajority outfit. I just visited their web site, and they’re right up the road in Virginia (I’m in NC), yet I’d never even heard of them. It seems odd.
The speaker’s idea of how to be an effective advocate is bizarre, too. Spend half an hour a day clicking on 1 star or 5 stars for books you’ve never read?!? Is he joking???
So I went to archive.org, to see how long they’ve been around.
Back in 2003, that domain name redirected to The Socialist International:
http://web.archive.org/web/20031128062341/http://www.americanmajority.org/
Finally, in 2008 it comes up with what seems to be the current outfit.
It appears to be a Johnny-come-lately attempt to compete with established & respected conservative organizations like Leadership Institute (which has been doing marvelous work for over 30 years).