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.
What annoys me the most about all of this is that the very same people attacked me for posting a review of James Delingpole’s Watermelons book. Although I asked for trouble by starting it by saying, “I don’t actually need to read this book because James Delingpole has summarised it perfectly well on his own blog…”.
Nevertheless, my review was polite, factual and logical. These negative reviews of Mann’s new book are none of these things. Yet again, it is an example of the asymetric guerrilla warfare that these so-called “sceptics” indulge in.
Having read the SkS post about the book, I popped over to Amazon and clicked on “No” (not helpful) in response to all the 1 star reviews and yes to John Cook’s 5 star review. I would encourage all on this site to do the same.
If you can’t beat them, join them.
Martin – am not surprised in the slightest. Perhaps you should’ve called it a post-factual review.
Still no response to Bickmore then?
Okay, so Michael Mann writes a book that says he and other climate scientist have been subjected to attacks designed to intimidate him for his work on climate change. Then the deniers confirm they are trying to intimidate him by giving negative reviews of the book, without having read the book, because of marching orders given to them by a climate change denial blogger. Doesn’t anyone else see that what they doing says a lot more about them than it does about Michael Mann?
I wonder who’d ever believe Amazon reviews ever “intimidated” anybody? I think it’s just people deluded their reviews will make any difference to sales figures. As if anybody cared, Mann aside and his editor be because of the money.
You’re missing the point. Michael Mann obviously isn’t intimated by the twits from WUWT or he would have switched research topics already or switched sides or whatever. The point is that the deniers, by doing exactly what he is accusing them of doing, have proven his point beyond all doubt.
I think your analysis is too “meta” for Maurizio.
True that. That should be “intimidated” not “intimated” in my post.
What “point” would that be? That Mann attracts opposite views, “saint or sinner”??? Where is the organized conspiracy??
Had there been a different reaction would you’ve really said, “Mann’s wrong”?
So he suggests our founding fathers just used the printing press to publish nonsense, without thinking or reading they denigrated the British,. Yikes Ignorance is his bliss.
Wow, I checked out the Amazon reviews, and that is some pretty crazy stuff. There are not only 1-star reviews, but negative comments on nearly every 4-star and 5-star reviews. The guy that kept commenting on the positive reviews claiming that the book hasn’t come out yet was pretty amusing.
I also saw some mention of the “Lazy Teenager” book and how Dr. Gleick had apparently not read it before reviewing it on Amazon. Is there veracity to that claim?
No, there’s not. Gleick and John Cook were discussing the book while Gleick was in the process of reading it, so we know for a fact that he read it. Speculation to the contrary is just that – unfounded speculation. But of course the deniers latched onto the unfounded accusation as an excuse to both reject Gleick’s review, and defend their own behavior.
Ok. It seemed odd to me how sure they were that Dr. Gleick had not read it. Looking at his review now, it seems like he covered the topics contained in the book, including the hockey stick chapter.
I think Gleick was offered to demonstrate proof of purchase. I haven’t followed that story. In the meanwhile…
Shall we say that if Gleick read the “Delinquent Teenager” book, he was mighty successful in hiding that fact and in giving the opposite impression.
I described the 14 points of Fascism here a few weeks ago- funny how those attacking Mann fit that description to a Tee.
Peter- I explained to you the origin of Fascism and the (double) meaning of the word itself. Still you fixated on some guy’s description of how the concept evolved in different countries during the XX century.
It’s like discussing the Communism of Bakunin with somebody intent on defining “Communism” as only Ceasescu’s.
Etymology ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etymology ) is NOT the same thing as definition ( http://lmgtfy.com/?q=fascism+definition )
We’re grown ups (mostly), we’ve had the benefit of education. Do we really have to go over HOW WORDS WORK before having a sensible discussion?
Maurizio,
In answer to your repeated and somewhat tedious posing of the question a la;
“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.”
A question so dense light that bends around it. You also know the answer.
Here’s a third option. They could also have acknowledged the books existence and encouraged their readers to read it. A fourth option would be they read it themselves and provide their own critique.
Instead they encouraged the faithful to spam the page with half baked guff without bothering to read the text.
Dougal – there’s no evidence any of that would have elicited a different response here. Remember, Watts explicitly asked NOT to post reviews UNLESS people had read the book. Some proceeded anyway. Likewise they would have done after your third and fourth option.
The only way this can be constructed as evidence of sinister “info-fascistic” misdeed by WUWT is if one believes in their existence in the first place.
As for Tom Nelson, I have no idea who he is. If he’s part of the “info-fascistic” Climate Specter, it’s a lonely group I suspect.
Really, I think not mentioning the Amazon reviews may have prevented the 1-star review and comment bombing this time around. The temptation to bomb article comments or online polls seems to be a bit too much for the WUWT crowd. Given Anthony’s penchant for skewing online polls, his subtle mention of the Amazon reviews may well have been an understood green light for bombing, but I don’t think that is as important as the underlying problem.
Unfortunately, the attitude from some is that they think they are doing good for the world by helping to stop a UN/gov’t power grab or regulation that they find repulsive. Some seem to think that environmentalists are going to starve the third world of energy, while others indicate that the third world is just trying to bilk the developed countries out of cash.
If only this effort directed at attacking scientists were put towards coming up with palatable ideas for mitigation, we might be getting somewhere.
What really strikes me about Watts and his minions is not just their viciousness, but their *incompetence*.
Watts and Co. have spent *years* making all kinds of unfounded claims about the surface temperature record. They’ve claimed that UHI is responsible for the global-warming signature. They’ve claimed that the warming trend was a product of “station deletion”. They’ve claimed that station siting problems are responsible for the warming trend. They’ve claimed that the warming trend was created by data “homogenization” and “adjustments”. They’ve spent *years* making these claims.
But the bottom line is, *all* of these claims can be completely disproved with just a few days of work, as I found out when I “rolled up my sleeves” and dug into the temperature data myself. The only technical skills needed are a mastery of high-school math and college-undergraduate programming ability.
Run the raw GHCN data through a straightforward gridding/averaging program that an on-the-ball college compsci/engineering college-undergrad could code up and you will get results amazingly similar to the NASA global-land-temperature index.
Process raw and adjusted GHCN data separately, and you will get very similar results (minor differences, but similar warming trends).
Process GHCN urban stations and rural stations separately, and you get nearly identical results.
To counter objections that stations may have been mislabeled as rural, then pick 50-60 rural-designated stations randomly around the globe, copy/paste their lat/long coordinates into GoogleEarth to verify their status via hi-res satellite imagery, and use just those stations to compute global-average temperatures. Do that, and you will *still* get results very similar to the official NASA results. That’s right — throw out ~99 percent of the stations and process just a few dozen verified rural stations (distributed around the world so as to get full global coverage), and you will get the same global-warming trend that you get when you process *all* of the GHCN stations.
All of the above can be done in just a few days by someone who has decent (or even mediocre) programming/analytical skills. I know this for a fact because I’ve done it all myself. And I am not the most talented programmer around, not by a long-shot.
The fact that Watts and his followers (some of whom claim to smarter than many climate scientists) have been unwilling and/or unable to do in *years* what I was able to do in a matter of *days* in my spare time should tell you all you need to know about them. Watts and his fans are nothing more than a bunch of lazy, incompetent, loud-mouthed bullies.
Scientific competence obviously isn’t high on the agenda. Spreading FUD is.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear,_uncertainty_and_doubt