On Seeps and SCAMS Part I: Lessons for Climate Scientists

There is a new paper in the literature, or soon to be in the literature, about the impact on climate scientists of denialist propaganda campaigns. The paper is easy to read, being virtually free of specialist jargon. It's written from the perspective of psychology and the lead author is Professor Stephan Lewandowsky, currently at Bristol University in the UK. There is a team of co-authors, some of whom who you'll recognise - Naomi Oreskes, James S. Risbey, Ben R. Newell and Michael Smithson. The paper is to be published in the journal Global Environmental Change, rather than a psychology journal. The reason becomes clear when you read the paper. It's explaining how climate scientists can be adversely affected by denier memes, such as "uncertainty" in climate science. [This is Part I of a three part series. Click for Part II and Part III.]

If you thought that dispassionate scientists, when doing scientific research, are immune from denialist propaganda you'd be wrong. It's not just when scientists talk about climate that they can demonstrate they've been influenced by denialists' campaigns. Even their scientific publications can be so influenced.

Rampant alarmism at WUWT (again) about UN climate talks in Geneva

WUWT is veering once again into rampant alarmism. Eric Worrall (he's just a run-of-the-mill denier from Australia, one of Anthony Watts' useful idiots) has written one of his very short "guest essays" (archived here), most of which is a copy and paste of a segment from the Sydney Morning Herald. It's a contrast to the tedious verbose "guest essays" by some other contributors I suppose.

The SMH article was about how, for the Geneva talks, the draft UN agreement to combat climate change has now swollen to 100 pages, from the 38 page document drafted at Lima.

Eric sets the ball rolling with alarmism, writing:

Given the fact that countries are free to write their own terms, including joke effort’s like China’s agreement to do nothing until the 2030s, in return for America agreeing to commit economic suicide, the greatest contribution to CO2 reduction Paris is likely to produce, will be the sequestration in some dusty filing cabinet, of all the carbon copies, of what promises to be the longest climate agreement ever written.

Eric just made up the part about China - out of thin air. China is reportedly bringing forward its plan for carbon trading. As for America agreeing to "commit economic suicide" - I don't see that happening any time soon.

(Is this really the best that people who want the globe to warm faster have to offer? Seems pathetically weak to me. Thankfully, many world leaders are taking the UN meetings very seriously.)

Framing climate policies for public support

Now all this rampant alarmism gives me a good reason for alerting readers to a new paper by Mark Hurlstone and his colleagues.  Mark and one of his co-authors, Stephan Lewandowsky, have written about the paper at Shaping Tomorrow's World.  The research was exploring how best to frame messages to build support for climate policies.