Nature Communication’s Black List of Climate Change Contrarians

People with the temerity to correct the record on climate change must be silenced.

That’s the outrageous point of a new study published in the journal Nature Communication.

“The time has arrived for professional journalists and editors to ameliorate the disproportionate attention given to (climate change contrarians) by focusing instead on career experts and relevant calls to action,” the authors said.

While the study’s goal is severely off base, it nonetheless produced two mathematical rankings CFACT is more than a little tickled by.

According to a ranking of how often “contrarians,” as the study labels us, are cited in the media, CFACT’s Marc Morano is far and away the world’s most effective climate communicator.

Marc is number one, with 4,171 media references, nearly double Senator James Inhofe’s 2,628 and Secretary Rick Perry’s 1,903.  Marc appeared in many multiples of media references compared to anyone else as you proceed down the rankings.

Steven Hayward of the Powerline Blog wrote, “Morano is truly the Pete Rose and Hank Aaron of climate contrarians.”

The study also ranks our website, CFACT.org, on its list of the  top 100 “most prolific media sources” for articles skeptical of the global warming narrative and ranks Climate Depot number 1!   See, figure 2b.

The list of 386 people on the climate blacklist reads like an honor roll.  Here’s a sample:

• Apollo Astronaut Harrison Schmitt – the only scientist to walk on the moon;
• Apollo Astronaut Walt Cunningham –  from the first crew to ride the Saturn V rocket;
• Freeman Dyson – The eminent Princeton physicist who postulated the Dyson sphere;
• Ross McKitrick and Steven McIntyre – the Canadian researchers whose meticulous mathematical audit debunked Michael Mann’s infamous hockey stick graph;
• Anthony Watts – The prominent meteorologist and creator of Watts Up With That;
• Rick Perry – The U.S. Secretary of Energy;
• Judith Curry – A climate scientist with over 130 peer-reviewed papers;
• Roy Spencer and John Christy – Scientists who manage temperature satellites and developed the first successful satellite temperature record;
• Fred Singer – The genius scientist who established the weather satellite network;
• Roger Pielke, Jr. – The professor who showed that extreme weather hasn’t worsened and disaster costs declined;
• Richard Lindzen – The MIT scientist known for his brilliant work on atmospheric physics and author of over 200 papers;
• Will Happer – The Princeton atomic physicist and pioneer in optics;
• Rudy Giuliani – America’s Mayor;
• Mike Pence – Merely the Vice President of the United States (V.P. Gore’s OK?)

While the rankings appear to be genuine in terms of the amount of media individuals garnered, the study’s black and white, unnuanced choice of whom to include on its contrarian list is bush league.  It actually used DeSmog Blog as a major source!  It’s mathematical comparison showing that people who debate climate policy in the public policy arena have greater media exposure than researchers who are cited in academic journals is an apples and oranges comparison, lacking scientific validity, that yields a no-brainer.  It’s decision to not rank the amount of media garnered by warming campaigners,  which would have yielded a useful comparison, reveals this for a bogus and offensive propaganda hit piece.

We are each exposed to a mountain of media every day.  Peruse the headlines and media coverage of climate for yourself.  Do you need a mathematical analysis to determine which way the coverage is skewed?  Wouldn’t you love to see those hard numbers?

Shame on study authors, Alexander Michael Petersen, Emmanuel M. Vincent, and Anthony LeRoy Westerling.

But, thank you to all our friends and supporters who helped CFACT become the most effective climate communicators in the world.  Facts matter!

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EDITORS NOTE: This CFACT column is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

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