The well funded, well organized, global skeptic network laid bare /sarc

Watts Up With That?
March 23, 2010

Gosh, according to Leftfootforward, we skeptics are just a step away from global media domination. I suppose it didn’t occur to the people that researched this and drew up the network diagram that both sides are about equal in the “networking”. Yet only one side is “bad”.

“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 The study’s conclusions, as yet unpublished but seen by Left Foot Forward, were presented to a closed meeting of campaigners on Wednesday night.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.”

…

Stuart Conway, the study’s co-author, declared simply that “there are no progressive networks” – just hubs of activity here and there, lacking interconnection.

• A d v e r t i s e m e n t

I have to laugh at that, because when you look at the graph they prepared above, both sides look like “just hubs of activity here and there, lacking interconnection”

About the closest thing to an interconnection that exists is a blogroll link, seen on blogs worldwide. I have one, so does everybody else on that diagram above. Are blogrolls the new network hive mind? Does noting an interesting story on another blog peg me as being a climate community organizer?

Apparently they never considered that maybe, just maybe, the Climategate story spread from blogs to MSM because it was real news?

Of course, it’s all speculation on their part. Nobody at Oxfam or Profero contacted me to ask any basic questions (and I’m betting none of the others either) like:

Are you part of an organized effort? (No – I blog because I like it, it gives me a sense of satisfaction, and I think it is important. For me it is like my old broadcast TV job, but using a different medium to send words and pictures. I started blogging because I had an offer to do so from my local newspaper, who still maintains a blog link to WUWT on their Norcalblogs.com website.)

Are you funded by a central organization, like the Soros sponsored Think Progress/Climate progress blog, the DeSmog Blog’s Hoggan and Associates PR firm, or Realclimate whose servers are funded by Environmental Media Services ? (No – though Climate Depot is apparently funded by CFACT, there’s no central funding that I get or any of the others get as far as I know, but ask them. As I see it we are just a loose knit group of like minded people. The closest anyone could say is a central funding source would be Google Ads, for which the blogs that have them get a few cents for each click.)

Do you answer to or are you guided by climate denier overlords? (No – but my, employees, wife and kids raise holy heck with me for spending too much time in front of the computer reading and writing blogs.)

Did you time your blog post announcing the CRU email hack/leak to influence the Copenhagen Conference? (No – that’s just when the files were dropped in my lap, and I waited two days for confirmation before writing about it. Ask the hacker/whistleblower what his/her motives and timing considerations were.)

It’s funny how somebody can write a social networking study and not ask the subjects being studied any questions. Quality research funded by charitably given British pounds – surely they could do better. Or, maybe they didn’t want to.

This article was posted: Tuesday, March 23, 2010 at 1:35 pm

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