Yesterday I had a feature article on print in the local newspaper Adresseavisen, dealing with NIMBYism. Warning: local content! You can read the article online here.

Yesterday I made a guest apperance in the radioshow “Uillustrert vitenskap” at the local station “Radio revolt”. The theme of the show was “disputed” science, particularly focusing on climate science.  I’ve listened to it, shivered in horror at some of the things I said, but my inner masochist still sort of wants to show it off. The show can be read about here, and listened to here.

…or you can watch this muppets re-enactment of queens bohemian rhapsody in stead:

This is pretty good. Trond Vivelstad, a member of the board in the organization “Klimarealistene” (The climate realists – wiki) has published a response on their website to an article I published in Dagbladet a few days ago. In the article I argued that Norwegian newspapers between 2002-2008 failed in their communication on the subject, feeding the readers with a combination of non-constructive skepticism and dramatic encounters with natural disasters (more in my last post).

The argument in Vivelstad’s response is basically that my claims are preposterous and that climate changes as an anthropogenic phenomenon is seldomly contested in Norwegian media. Let me answere the first part of his critique by offering some insights into how we reached our conclusions. We read, counted and categorized  a selection of about 450 printed newspaper-articles about climate changes from 10 Norwegian newspapers in the period 2002-2007. The trend is that scepticism plays a large role in around 30-50 percent of the stories dealing with the science of climate change throughout the period, allthough it should be noted that this tendency is weaker in 2007 than the previous years. This does not mean that sceptics throughout the period are portrayed in large stories about themselves, it merely implies that the arguments of the two camps are given more or less equal room in the columns of articles dealing with the science of climate change. Most stories, however, aren’t about the science of climate change at all, they simply deal with isolated incidents occuring in nature, which at some point is vaguely linked to the idea of climate changes, without framing it as an anthropogenic phenomenon  or natural variation. The research builds on an earlier study by Marianne Ryghaug, which was published in 2006 by Norsk medietidsskrift (The article is available online here). Today, in 2009 (without having counted I might add, so now I’m being just as speculative as Vivelstad) I think Vivelstad could be correct in his assesment; the media tends to frame climate changes as an anthropogenic phenomenon, and sceptics play a smaller part than they did just a few years ago. I for one, welcome this as a positive development – Vivelstad obviously does not.

This, however, is not all there is to his critique. He goes on to label me as an amateur for claiming that the serious scientific community has reached a consensus on climate changes, and offers an alternative [1]. To solidify his argument he asks:

When did you last see a large story in the newspapers about the Norwegian climate realists, about the Heartland institute-conference in New York or about the fact that in the USA alone there are more than 31 800 scientists (Almost a third of them holds PhD’s!) who disagrees with the hypotheses of the IPCC?

Let us begin with a closer look at the heartland institute, the international scientific alibi of Vivelstad’s argument (Note the institute’s mission: “to discover, develop, and promote free-market solutions to social and economic problems” . Also, their use of Milton Friedman’s portrait in their banner is quite revealing in terms of ideological position). In the clip below you can see how they market the conference recomended by Vivelstad:

As Vivelstad correctly points out, the heartland institute doesn’t appear much in Norwegain newspapers. The same goes for their conference. There are exceptions, however, like this article in Dagbladet, on how the institute is funded by Exxon Mobile, or this more or less in the same vein. This article in Aftenposten quite seriously deals with some of the arguments found in the institute’s various reports and publications. Although scarcely mentioned in Norwegian media, they have not escaped journalistic scrutiny. There are litterally hundreds of stories on them to be found in more or less respectable newspapers, most of them focusing on their links to big-oil (klick, klick, klick or klick. You get the picture, google for more). This source claims that the institute has received more than 47 million USD from traditional energy companies and right-wing foundations since 1985.

On an unrelated note it does not exactly stregthen their scientific credibility that they have a well-known track record as close partners with the tobacco industry (A relatively recent example from their website: Scientific Evidence Shows Secondhand Smoke Is No Danger). As far as Newspaper coverage goes, I think this institute have gone a long way in discrediting themselves as a possible source.

Viveland’s next concern is about the 31 800 scientists who oppose the conclusions reached by among others the IPCC. Although he does not make it explicit, I believe he’s talking about the so-called “Oregon Petition“, which is also cited at the “climate realists” website. The petition was funded by the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, incidentally one of the sponsors of the 2008 Heartland Institute conference in New York.

Under this header people who claim to be scientists lend credibility to the following text:

We urge the United States government to reject the global warming agreement that was written in Kyoto, Japan in December, 1997, and any other similar proposals. The proposed limits on greenhouse gases would harm the environment, hinder the advance of science and technology, and damage the health and welfare of mankind.

There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gasses is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth.

Circulated with this petition is an article, which have appeared in various forms since the petition first saw the light of day. On the current website of the petition, this article is portrayed as being a “summary of peer-reviewed research” on the subject (full article). In the past, earlier versions of this paper has been heavily criticized for copying the style of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, appearing as a copy of a peer reviewed article. In fact, the article had never been published, and had definently never passed any peer review. The current edition of the paper has, however, been published. The Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons accepted it and published it in 2007. This journal, however, is a particular type of journal. It is not listed in the major literature databases of MEDLINE/PubMed or the ISI Web of Science. More importantly, it  is notoriously known for publishing articles with little value except for the outrageousness of their claims. For instance articles published in this forum has claimed that a “gay lifestyle” shortens life expectancy with 20 years, that there is a link between abortion and breast cancer, that HIV does not cause AIDS, and that “humanists” have conspired to replace the “creation religion of Jehovah” with evolution. Considering the sciencetific excellence and rigor of the paper, it does seem a bit strange that the authors settled for publication in a fifth-division medical journal like this.

None the less, the number 31 800 signing on to this thing sounds impressive, and as Vivelstad points out, roughly 9000 of these report holding PhD’s. It should be noted, however, that the accuracy of this list seems slim considering it’s inclusion of rather suspect names like “Dr. Geri Halliwell” (spice up your life…), “Dr. Michael J. Fox”, “Redwine, Ph.D” along with a number of corporate names). Just as interesting, however, is the fact that as many as 12 000 report holding BA’s, around 7000 claim to hold a masters degree, and roughly 2000 are medical doctors. In other words the term “scientist” seems to be stretched here. In 2001 Scientific American did a rough extrapolation at a time when around 17 000 “scientists” had signed the petition. They concluded :

“the petition supporters include a core of about 200 climate researchers; a respectable number, though rather a small fraction of the climatological community“.

There are obvious methodological problems tied to reaching this number, but at least it points to the problem of playing the numbers-game with scientists [2] (A game the IPCC has been more than willing to play, I might add, perhaps they would have been wiser to not do so). A more credible approach to the numbers-game is found in the by now relatively famous article by Naomi Oreskes in Science (2004) where she reviews 928 abstracts of peer reviewed  scientific articles in the period 1993-2003 from journals listed in the ISI database. Searching for the term “climate change” she found no articles arguing against the anthropogenic hypothesis, and with this as a backdrop she rather famously (at least in some circles) declared that we had reached “scientific consensus” on climate change [3].

Now, to wrap up my response to Vivelstad:

• In stories dealing with climate changes and the science of climate changes in Norwegian newspapers between 2002-2007 sceptics held a prominent position. This is highly tangible, observable and countable.
• The credibility of the actors you base your arguments on is, to be kind, low. The heartland institute have collaborated with the tobacco industry for years and is leaning towards big-oil and right-wing market fundamentalists for funding. They are an ideologically motivated gropup, and their conference should be considered with this in mind.
• The petition signed by 31 800 “scientists” should be approached with caution and scepticism. There are issues of credibiliy tied also to this. It is the result of a politically motivated mobilization and have little weight compared to decades of peer-reviewed research piling up to establish scientific consensus.

[1] Alright – I wrote that science had “no doubt”, admittedly a tad on the tabloid side of things, researchers are allways in some kind of doubt, aren’t they? In their fourth assessment report the IPCC, for example, on many points indicate between an 80-100% likelihood of their assessments being correct (see box 1.1 for an explanation on the likelihood terminology). The proceedings of the recent congresss in Copenhagen concludes that “Recent observations confirm that, given high rates of observed emissions, the worst-case IPCC scenario trajectories (or even worse) are
being realised…” (Click for more).

[2] See for example “Project Steve” for a related example on how ridiculous (and fun) these things can get.

[3] She did not, however, claim that this consensus in any way represented the “truth”, she simply identified the consensus as an observable phenomenon in peer reviewed sciene on the subject. She writes: “The scientific consensus might, of course, be wrong. If the history of science teaches anything, it is humility, and no one can be faulted for failing to act on what is not known“

Yesterday the tabloid newspaper Dagbladet printed[1] a small article by me[2], dealing with how Norwegian newspapers have reported on the climate crisis and the science of climate change over the last few years.

My argument in the text is basically that Norwegian newspapers in the period 2002-2008 have failed in their communication on the subject, feeding it’s readership with a combination of non-constructive skepticism and dramatic encounters with natural disasters. Meanwhile they have neglected to report on potential action-strategies for individuals and the lack of concrete action by Norwegian politicians. Compared to the coverage in our favourite country of comparison, Sweden, this is striking – the swedish newspapers have frequently reported on these matters throughout the period.

What could explain the differences? And more importantly, what implications could this have for the general debate and future Norwegian policies? I can only speculate, of course. On the first point – perhaphs it is difficult to sell criticism of a practice that has, after all, made us filthy ritch, whereas this is easier in Sweden? On the second point – I think the Norwegian debate has been more colored by the so called “sceptics” than the case has been in Sweden, making the very existence of anthropogenic climate changes a question of debate, rather than finding a way forward to “solve” the matter. In terms of policy I guess this could cause some delay in important decisions, as well as giving lifesupport to a certain populist party (whose name we shall not speak).

[1] Yes, printed. Hope they eventually publish it online as well, not much 2.0 communication going on in the printed paper.

[2] Well, I have written it, but this was a seriously cut-down (and thus somewhat tabloid) edition of it. The editors did a failry decent job keeping the point intact, though…

Lately I’ve been working on an article with one of my advisers where we compare media coverage of the climate crisis in Norwegian and Swedish newspapers over two periods (2002-2005 and 2007). The article is to a large extent based on past research by my adviser where she does the same routine, with only Norwegian articles, and for only the first period (which is not so strange, since it was published in 2006). In terms of methods we decided on a sort of quasi-quantitative approach, reading vast amounts of newspaper texts, but not really quantifying and counting anything  per-se. Bummer. Because after writing a draft of the paper before Christmas, my other adviser convinced us both that our argument would be infinitely more convincing if we could quantify what we had found in graphs and numbers.

Basically our results indicated that there was a big difference in the way newspapers covered the climate crisis in Norway and Sweden. The Swedish focused on consensus, the Norwegians focused on scientific disagreement and conflict. The Swedish focused on personal strategies and ways of coping with climate change, while little coverage of this type was found in Norway. In the second period There was a shift towards more system-oriented coverage and the political way forward. We portray the different ways of staging the climate crisis as different dramas.

In retrospect I guess we could have foreseen the comments on how concrete quantifiable no-nonsense numbers would improve our point. And so I started re-reading while counting the Swedish articles, which is my main task on this thing (I had already scribbled a bunch of hand-written notes on the articles so it didn’t take that long). A good thing, though, is that I got confirmation about the quality of our qualitative “gut feeling”. I mean; as this diagram clearly shows (God, that makes me confident of a statement) we were right all along:

Notice the yellow bar in 2007 that wasn’t there in 2005? Object to that, why don’t you? Sorry about the Excel-uglyness and pardon my Norwegian (if it’s even possible to make out what is written down there). And that is only a little bit of what can be done with the numbers, ofcourse. Putting this graph next to a graph of the Norwegian articles? How could annyone possibly dispute our arguments.