Paper: Science and Environmental Communication on YouTube: Strategically Distorted Communications in Online Videos on Climate Change and Climate Engineering

[donsutherland1]

Abstract:

The online video-sharing website YouTube is extremely popular globally, also as a tool for information on science and environmental topics. However, only little is known about what kind of information users find when they are searching for information about climate science, climate change, and climate engineering on YouTube. This contribution presents results from an exploratory research project that investigates whether videos found on YouTube adhere to or challenge scientific consensus views. Ten search terms were employed to search for and analyze 200 videos about climate and climate modification topics, which are contested topics in online media. The online anonymization tool Tor has been used for the randomization of the sample and to avoid personalization of the results. A heuristic qualitative classification tool was set up to categorize the videos in the sample. Eighty-nine videos of the 200 videos in the sample are supporting scientific consensus views about anthropogenic climate change, and climate scientists are discussing climate topics with deniers of climate change in four videos in the sample. Unexpectedly, the majority of the videos in the sample (107 videos) supports worldviews that are opposing scientific consensus views: 16 videos deny anthropogenic climate change and 91 videos in the sample propagate straightforward conspiracy theories about climate engineering and climate change. Videos supporting the scientific mainstream view received only slightly more views (16,941,949 views in total) than those opposing the mainstream scientific position (16,939,655 views in total). Consequences for the public communication of climate change and climate engineering are discussed in the second part of the article. The research presented in this contribution is particularly interested in finding out more about strategically distorted communications about climate change and climate engineering in online environments and in critically analyzing them.

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcomm.2019.00036/full

[SENC]

All due respect.. 

 

Supreme Court of British Columbia dismisses Dr Michael Mann’s defamation lawsuit versus Canadian skeptic climatologist, Dr Tim Ball. Full legal costs are awarded to Dr Ball, the defendant in the case.

The Canadian court issued it’s final ruling in favor of the Dismissal motion that was filed in May 2019 by Dr Tim Ball’s libel lawyers.

The plaintiff Mann’s “hockey stick” graph, first published in 1998, was featured prominently in the U.N. 2001 climate report. The graph showed an “unprecedented” spike in global average temperature in the 20th Century after about 500 years of stability.

Skeptics have long claimed Mann’s graph was fraudulent.

https://principia-scientific.org/breaking-news-dr-tim-ball-defeats-michael-manns-climate-lawsuit/

As I have pointed out repeatedly in this column Mann's alleged "hockey stick" couldn't be reproduced without data and formulas he refused to hand over.  Mann sued Ball claiming that Ball had libeled him.

That appears to have been a grave error, as once in court Ball had every right to prove that his statement was not false and defamatory, with one of the defenses, of course, being that what he said was true.

So he filed for discovery and demanded Mann's data and formulas.

Mann refused to comply.

In fact, Mann refused to comply for eight years.  That's right -- this lawsuit has been going on for a long time.  Mann allegedly agreed to comply in 2017 and didn't.  Eventually the BC court (Canada) got tired of the games and entered a dismissal awarding fees and costs to Ball.

So let's recap this.

Mann has never turned over his data and formulas.

Mann has been asked for them repeatedly, and has refused.

Ball repeatedly called Mann out on this to a degree that Mann believed he had been libeled (defamed in writing) and sued.

This entitled Ball to Mann's source data and formulas, because the entirety of Mann's claim rested on Ball making a false and defamatory statement.  Truth is, in nearly all cases, an absolute defense to a libel suit.  The court agreed, and ordered Mann to turn it over.  He failed to do so, repeatedly, but to forestall a summary judgement agreed to turn the data over in 2017.   He again failed to do so and this time the court ran out of patience and told him to go suck eggs, not only dismissing his lawsuit but awarding fees and costs to the defense, which is not typically done unless the court finds that the suit was originally filed under vexatious or otherwise fraudulent pretense.

Mann has claimed he will appeal and that he didn't "really lose."  Losing a libel case and being ordered to pay the defendant's fees and costs is usually considered losing by most people, especially when the other side asserts truth as a defense to your suit, subpoenas your data which, if it indeed showed that you were libeled you would happily turn over as it would assure you of a win in court and you refuse to comply with the subpoena.

But, whether that's actually losing or not is something for you to decide.

The better question is why we have someone employed at a major US University who thinks they can thumb their nose at legal process and remain employed.  Further, one has to wonder whether the University is complicit or worse.

Note that there is no question of jurisdiction (despite the court being in Canada) because Mann was the one who sued originally and by doing so he consented to jurisdiction.

Why is the University open to question as to their complicity?  Because everywhere I've ever worked for other people all my work product is not solely mine; at best I have a joint interest with said employer if I negotiated that in advance of my employment and in most cases the employer owns it entirely because that is the state of employment law by default in the United States.

That is, if you employ me to write computer software to do "X" and I do, the entirety of the work product is yours, not mine.  I have no rights to it whatsoever unless, before I do the writing of the code, I negotiate something specifically covering that instance.

So tell me once again why the University didn't order Mann to comply or simply turn over the material itself?  Is there some "side agreement" here that the public doesn't know about?

I've pointed out multiple times that unlike Mann's "hockey stick" data, which he won't release nor will he release the formulas he used, there are other openly available data sets going back 50 or so years from satellite observations, and multiple other reconstructions going back much longer.  By definition all the other data sets are reconstructions of one sort or another simply because until the age of satellites we did not have 100% coverage of the planet on a consistent basis.

Further, as I pointed out here (and many previous times in these pages) while CO2 levels have increased materially since 1950 or thereabouts the rate of increase in temperature has not tracked same.  The "predictions" in the IPCC "reports" have not verified.  Therefore the projections are wrong -- period.

In addition it doesn't matter if I'm right or Mann is right.  That's because America, and indeed the entire western world, is not where the CO2 emission growth is coming from nor where it will come from in the future absent a genocidal wipe-out of people on a scale never before contemplated in the history of the planet.

Indeed there are roughly 1.3 billion humans without electrical power in their homes today with 300 million of them, more or less, in India alone.  Sub-Saharan Africa has some 40-odd percent of their people living without electricity and roughly half of the generation capacity of the entire region is in one place -- with 90% of that being coal-fired.

These people are not going to willingly submit to living in literal straw huts and crapping at the corner tree forever yet that is exactly the sort of "future" that climate alarmists demand of them.  What's even worse is that the screamers so-called "solutions" are all frauds; when you add up all the energy inputs to make a solar cell suddenly all that "free" sunlight isn't so free and you have to get that energy from somewhere.  The environmental destruction associated with so-called "green energy" is immense and has been intentionally offshored to keep it out of your sight but it cannot be eliminated.

I wonder how Greta will feel if and when she realizes she's been had -- and was nothing more than a cute face used to promote a scam.

Oh, and by the way -- the Amazon fires screamfest is a scam as well.  

Interestingly, when NASA released the satellite image on August 21, it noted that "it is not unusual to see fires in Brazil at this time of year due to high temperatures and low humidity. Time will tell if this year is a record breaking or just within normal limits."

But the fires are old-growth forest burning, being clear-cut for crops?

No.  Most of it is land that has already been cleared for agricultural use and is being burned to clear it of weeds and pests prior to being planted for the upcoming season.  It's normal in that part of world, in other words.

Are forests indeed being cleared in the Amazon?  Yes, but at materially lower rates than 20 years ago.  Like around half or less.  Further, no less an authority than Nature has reported that between the early 1980s and 2016 global tree canopy has increased, not decreased.

Gee, why would a bunch of people lie about something like this?  It wouldn't be both political animus and money, would it?

 

CREDITS TickerForum.. 

 

[donsutherland1]

21 hours ago, SENC said:

All due respect.. 

 

 

Do you have a copy of the Ball-Mann court decision? 

It seems from what was written above, the case was dismissed on procedural grounds and not the merits. Such rulings are not uncommon, as process is a critical element to rule of law. Indeed, as an example, the Supreme Court ruled on the Census case on the basis that the proper procedure/defensible argument (as opposed to a contrived one) had not been furnished in seeking to add a citizenship question to the Census.

FYI: Upon looking further into this decision, for which I can’t find the ruling, Mann’s attorney provided a different account:

https://mobile.twitter.com/MichaelEMann/status/1165677922872635392/photo/1

Looking further into the matter, Michael Mann's data and techniques are all available on his website:

http://www.meteo.psu.edu/holocene/public_html/Mann/tools/tools.php

The Judge's decision very likely had nothing to do with data. As of now (8/26/2019, 5 pm EDT), there's still no publication of that decision.