On Line Opinion: Once more, warming heats up.
One of the topics that consistently exercises the Australian blogosphere is global warming. What’s at issue, of course, is whether or not human, industrial activity is contributing to an increase in global temperatures, and possible environmental catastrophe.
There is an orthodox scientific view on this, as expressed in documents like the IPCC Report, the Stern Report, the Garnaut Report etc. It’s fair to say that most left-leaning bloggers and many centrists accept this view. But there are prominent blogospheric voices - including very popular bloggers like Tim Blair, Andrew Bolt and Jennifer Marohasy - who hold to a minority opinion that not all is as it seems in climate science.
Variously, they argue that climate change is not happening (or it isn’t as severe as we’re told it is), and/or that it is happening but it has nothing to do with human activity, and/or that the scientific orthodoxy is really just groupthink/counter-enlightenment propaganda/institutional capture by leftist scientists/scientific careerism.
The debates in this area can, of course, be quite heated. Each side has been ranging its favoured experts and arguments in tetchy exchanges for years. What’s fascinating is that it amounts to precisely the kind of thing that has come up in recent discussions here - an intra-elite debate, for which there is only so much space in a gatekept MSM, being carried on and maintained on a range of prominent and not-so-prominent blogs, which has ongoing implications in terms of its possible influence on public debate and policy. I’m not concerned here to take a position on global warming - I’m more interested in how it’s playing out on A-list blogs and prominent independent news spaces.
The trigger for these musings is the latest episode in the warming wars - this morning’s piece in On Line Opinion by OLO’s founder and editor-in-chief (and our colleague in the large research project we’re involved in) Graham Young. Graham’s a climate change sceptic, and he takes a number of his antagonists on in this piece over what he sees as their bullying tactics in public debate. It’s not just that Graham thinks that a number of public figures are trying to shut debate down; he thinks that they’re also misusing their positions in public institutions.
First cab off the rank is Robyn Williams, long-time host of ABC Radio’s Science Show. Graham claims that Williams has misrepresented his opponents (including eminent scientists), skewed other people’s arguments, and overstated his own qualifications. In short, Graham believes that no one who holds different views to Williams gets a fair shake in ABC science broadcasts, and that he’s no longer doing his job. On Williams, he concludes:
He has smeared a respected academic using doctored quotes and shoddy research, and he puffs his curriculum vitae with imagined qualifications. It’s about time that ABC science broadcasting was opened up. After more than 30 years monopolising the field, it’s time Williams did something else… I’ll be writing to the ABC. Time to get this ball rolling.
But Graham also takes a pretty significant swipe at Professor John Quiggin, a Federation Fellow in economics at the University of Queensland, prominent proponent of arguments for anthropogenic global warming, and a well-known Australian blogger of long standing.
Quiggin freely and frequently abuses any who challenge his orthodoxy using smear. He is a frequent editor of Wikipedia on the issue where along with the notorious William Connelly, he ensures that global warming sceptics are presented in the worst light… Quiggin frequently dismisses global warming sceptics as being aligned with the tobacco industry and astrology.
Ouch! Anyway, these guys work across town from each other in Brisbane, but here they are having a discussion in a way that now potentially has national and international resonances.
Graham’s using On Line Opinion - the independent platform he’s painstakingly built up over many years - to question the expertise and behaviour of two people who are situated in pretty powerful institutions when it comes to the direction of public debate.
Regarding Williams, he’s bypassing an influential gatekeeper, who has some control over the interface between scientific debate, public debate and public policy. Regarding Quiggin, he’s questioning the conduct of someone who has ready access to public policy discussions (especially with a Labor government in power). This may not reach a mass audience, but OLO’s readership of “PJ’s” might be persuaded that there’s something in this, and recalibrate their own attention to debates in this area accordingly. (Of course, comments threads on OLO will give some indication as to whether this has worked.)
Once again, I’m not taking a position on global warming, or on the claims Graham makes about the character of his adversaries Prof. Quiggin has seemed to me to be a lovely bloke on the occasions I’ve met him, and equally Graham is a valued friend and colleague.
Instead, I’m using this to try to understand the way in which a particular issue gives us an insight into the new shape of public debate, including changing relations between niche, online, independent media and the MSM, a diminishing deference to professional and institutional authority even on specialist topics, and the way in which debate ranges across a range of platforms (including Wikipedia!!)
Further to recent discussions, and on a tangent from Axel’s post yesterday, I’m also wondering what we can assume about the operations of the public sphere in these debates. Does it matter if blogs and independent media get a big or mass audience (or even whether they reach them by means of “two-step” effects) if they’re able to short-circuit wider discussion by appealing directly to policy-makers? Or, in this case, strategically targeting for criticism those who might have that kind of access by virtue of their institutional roles. In this sense, are some bloggers better off appealing to insiders, and only seeking an audience among the wonks and PJs?
Anyway, I suspect this debate has a while to run…
“understand the way in which a particular issue gives us an insight into the new shape of public debate,…”
I think your statement of the reason for your research is not very well thought out and not supported by this page of writing and observation at all. (I doubt a CRC grant application would accept it as it is!)
I would like to see some of your observations on this “public debate”, not just what Robin said, or what Graham said - after all, isn’t the public your focus?
As an aside, I put to you the theory that the debate is actually stagnant, or non-existent. The climate change deniers aren’t evolving their attacks, like science evolves its theories: it can’t because it’s not a rational position. Their arguments are simply about distortions/selections of facts, out of context explanations and self reassurance. These tricks are constant, even if the focus of their attacks changes.
I envy your position of doing research in such an interesting field. However, to avoid the appearance of slackness or simply pursuing your own blogging hobbies, you need more rigor in the questions you wish to answer. This will then mean less need for rather amateur qualifiers like “Once again, I’m not taking a position…” - a sure indicator of more work required!
Best of luck,
Karlis.
Thanks for your comments, Karlis.
This isn’t published academic research and I am not presenting it as such. Blogging about Australia’s blogosphere is an adjunct to the funded research (with the blogging mostly done on our own time) but neither this nor any other post should be read as a definitive research outcome. Nor is it a grant application.
The focus is not the rights and wrongs of the climate debate, as I’ve stated repeatedly throughout this post. I have my own opinions about this, but they’re simply not relevant to this blog or the topic at hand.
You obviously have a position that you’re keen on in this debate, and perhaps you don’t like to see opposing positions presented at all - not even in the context of outlining a blogosphere discussion on the matter. I’m sorry if you find the fact that I’ve registered the presence of a debate upsetting, but it really does exist. Follow the links.
If you’d like to make arguments about the relative merits of these arguments on climate change, I suggest you do it on some of the blogs I’ve linked to. If you have any substantive criticisms of my presentation of the blogosphere discussion, please make them. If you want to regard as a weakness my caveats about not personally taking part in the debate, I can’t stop you. All I can do is gesture at those caveats again, there in black and white, in the original post.
Cheers
Jason
I think you should be cautious about various bogs and the climate change ‘debate’.
This particular topic seems to bring out he worst in people from far left to far right with debates turning quickly into personal slanging matches of little content and value.
It’s a pity such an important issue is frequently characterized by comical and bitter personal attacks rather than discussing evidence and scientific findings.
As the first commenter correctly assert stagnant and non-existent deabte. I would add vicious personal attacks verging on defamation to the list.
Zombie - I take both of your points: it’s a debate that’s been around for awhile, and that there is a lot of heat in it. I’m not sure that this particular instance of it is necessarily full of defamatory claims, though, and there are lots of other topics out there that excite comparable amounts of much anger.
If you’re studying the evolution of debate in the blogosphere, it’s just impossible to entirely ignore this topic. It comes up literally every day on a lot of the country’s most popular blogs, and there is to-ing and fro-ing both ways on a pretty regular basis.
I’ve tried to be as careful as I can in presenting it, and I’ve tried pretty hard not to take a side, because whatever my own view I don’t think it would be appropriate to voice it on this site.
I would try not to present mere slanging matches, and I think this morning’s events raise a few important issues.
I hope that satisfies you.
Sorry, I think we’ve both misinterpreted each other. I’m not interested in the debate: I’m interested in where ARC grant money is going!
You’ve observed that Graham has no deference to authority. Good. So? Is he alone in that? Is this trend increasing? Is this a trend in blogs alone? Is it only on one side of the debate? How many sides are there to the debate? etc, etc.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but this is what I see as how to answer your questions in the 2nd last paragraph. Do you have these results?
btw: There’s no such thing as an authority, only experts at best. - Carl Sagan.
Karlis - did I misinterpret this?
Sounds to me there like you’re only accepting that a particular side of this has any value as public discourse. That’s fine, but I’m not able (or willing) to discuss it in these terms in this context.
If you’d like to find out more about the way we’ve spent the ARC’s money, it’s on the public record. AFAIK they’re very happy so far.
The reasons I pose these things as questions is precisely because they’re matters of interest - i.e. potential research questions. I’ve followed the thread of a particular discussion - I hope that as we follow more of these, we’ll arrive at satisfactory answers. Of course, if we had the answers to everything already, we’d really be wasting our grant. To repeat - I’ve posed them as questions for a reason. The blog shouldn’t be read as a final or definitive research outcome from the project, as I’ve mentioned previously.
Please forget I even wrote paragraph 3 (which was an aside, and not relevant in this blog). Now:
“Of course, if we had the answers to everything already, we’d really be wasting our grant. To repeat - I’ve posed them as questions for a reason. The blog shouldn’t be read as a final or definitive research outcome from the project, as I’ve mentioned previously.”
This retort is precisely the issue I’m trying to get you to see. To have ‘the answers to everything’ means you’ve had a question that you’ve answered. I’m not expecting a research outcome here, but what is the direction of your research?
Let me put my point in another way.
Your 2nd last paragraph is attempting to explain the reason for your observation of this particular blog. Would I be correct in assuming that you came up with these questions after you read the blog?
And unfortunately, this 2nd-last paragraph now generates even more questions:
“Diminishing deference” - is it diminishing, or was it always down? How do you know? Is it specific to Graham’s blog?
“changing relations” - what is the relation between the media listed?
“the way debate ranges across a range” - what are the parameters that define your debate range? How does wiki differ from a blog? (isn’t web-media a narrow range?)
Let me suggest this: It appears as though you are collecting data (reading blogs) and then coming up with questions that you hope the data will answer (Look up now “inductive reasoning”). Sure, the research questions need to come from somewhere, but if you want to discover anything from them, you need to attempt to answer them by collecting data (blogs). Give your work some direction - it doesn’t have to be blind data-trawling.
For example: “After reading many blogs, it appears as though deference to authority is diminishing in online public debate on global warming. This can be seen from the *lets suppose* increase in negative attacks by Graham on experts *insert nice plot of Graham-attacks vs time*, and also by other bloggers such as A, B, C *more plots*. This *may/maynot* be seen in other MSM media, such as D, E, F *another plots*”
Do you see the difference? Now you’re showing evolution of debate, rather than simply pondering.
I hope this helps. Regards,
Karlis.