The term “conspiracy” is one of the most overused words in climate jargon. Just using the word conspiracy with a person has become a popular way to discredit those who question any of the facts presented by an official body. With so much information available there is only enough time to focus on things that interest you. People simply shut their minds off to unfamiliar topics at the mere mention of the word.
A conspiracy in law is a plan by two or more people to break the law in the future – per wikipedia.
A conspiracy as described by dictionary.com definition 1 is an evil, unlawful, treacherous, or surreptitious plan formulated in secret by two or more persons; plot.
But then there is definition 5 – any concurrence in action; combination in bringing about a given result.
The implication of Lewandowsky’s paper is that you cannot believe in a conspiracy and operate effectively in science. The paper was a blatant political attack to attempt to discredit those who disagree with both Lewandowsky’s childlike economic theory as well as his poor grasp of climate science. So he calls skeptics conspiracy theorists. Unfortunately we see everywhere, evidence of conspiracy per all definitions. Does the IPCC not conspire to expand awareness of their view of free market economics simultaneously with environmentalism. Of course it does, they have a whole section on economic impacts on the environment. Were there meetings between the government paid authors on how these messages should be conveyed? Of course. And if you are one who holds a different view of free market function than these government paid authors, does that planning seem to have a negative impact on the future of the human race and environment? It most certainly does in my opinion. In other words, the multi-author presentation of their preferred, message regarding free-market economics is both planned and negative in consequence.
I guess that makes me a conspiracy theorist – or does realist better describe the view?
A second issue though is that I took Lewandowsky’s survey over at WUWT for entertainment and couldn’t mark any of the conspiracies listed as things I believe. Most of them were complete nonsense, some of which I hadn’t even heard of. Others seem plausible but I don’t have enough knowledge on any of them to claim ‘belief’ at any level. In other words, I had straight negatives for all of his “conspiracy” answers. Aside from the now-obvious fake answers that Steve McIntyre and others identified, the types of conspiracy questions seem to give the study a little more credibility. However, due to the leading nature of the non-conspiracy oriented questions, I am certain that I would have dropped the survey part way in simply to avoid supporting the undisguised intent of the questions. In other words, it seems highly unlikely that the survey attracted many thoughtful climate skeptics.
Yesterday though, we found out from Steve McIntyre that the math of the study was bodged so badly that simple analysis REVERSES the conclusions of the paper.
If we weren’t so familiar with this sort of faked result from the catastrophic-warming-so-we-must-shut-down-our-economy advocates, you might not even believe it were true. At this time, I have no belief that Lewandowsky intends to be a scientist on the matter, but lets see if he offers appropriate retractions – starting with the title.
the Air Vent 
Yes, now they are making things up to not attack the science of the skeptics, but the skeptics themselves! They really have lost. And if not for the billions of dollars THEY got for promoting this fantasy, the issue long ago would have gone back to the academic halls of science.
Earth, the 3rd Electron from the Nucleus, Is in Its “Sphere of Influence”
http://omanuel.wordpress.com/about/#comment-1045
Serious students will want to consider Bohr’s 1915 discovery the Solar System has the same structure as atoms. [This discovery was recognized with a Nobel Prize in Physics in 1922.]
http://tinyurl.com/9vmcrh3
And the latest discovery by NASA’s Voyager:spacecraft
http://tinyurl.com/c5tbesm
Just as the atomic nucleus has a “sphere of influence” that extends out beyond the last electron, ~100,000 times the nuclear radius.
NASA found the Sun’s “sphere of influence” extends out beyond the last planet to the edge of the Solar System, ~10^5 times the solar radius.
Earth is completely engulfed, being only ~4% of the distance from the solar pulsar core to the outer edge of its “sphere of influence.”
We may recognize the presence of that powerful “sphere of influence” through experimentation, observation, measurements, meditation, prayer, scriptures or science fiction stories about “the force.”
Or be enslaved by those preaching the incompatibility of science and religion,
While converting government science into the most dogmatic form of religion !
Science corruption began with the United Nations formation on 24 Oct 1945 When foolish world leaders decided to be the “Higher Power” themselves.
The solar photosphere is only ~0.004% of the distance from the solar pulsar core to the outer edge of its “sphere of influence.” Deep-seated magnetic fields cause “sunspots” and massive “solar” eruptions so close to the pulsar.
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0407/feature1/index.html
http://www.springerlink.com/content/r2352635vv166363/
– Oliver K. Manuel
that simple analysis REVERSES the conclusions of the paper.
Well, no it doesn’t. SteveMc just deliberately selected the variables for which “warmists” were over-represented in SL’s “conspiracy-reduced” data, then carefully avoided any mention of the overall correlation values. Bonus: for most of these variables, warmists were already over-represented before the aggressive conspiracy-reduction!
Meanwhile, even in the processed data, the overall correlation between skepticism and conspiracy variables (excluding CYClimate) is highly signifiant, even after controlling for free-market variables. You know, the actual conclusions of the paper. Somehow this failed to make it into Steve’s post. I guess he was in a hurry?
Think I’m wrong? Well, why not have a look at the data yourself, instead of getting yourself Wegmanized by Steve’s “special” way with words?
Steve McIntyre is merely “playing” with Lewandowsky’s junk data to demonstrate the absurdity of the Lewandowsky paper’s title, methods and conclusions. Toto, are you implying that there is some academic worth in the Lewandowsky paper or are you just trying to score points against McIntyre?
Toto,
The plot in question is a percentage of warmists vs skeptics not an absolute number. Your complaints are silly unless you care to elaborate.
BTW, I have already downloaded the data. Imported it into R and processed it through a number of interesting results. None of this was associated with Steve’s code by the way, it was all on my own. I’m fighting with Lewandowsky on a clear issue of Libel against me so critiquing his crap is a secondary issue.
The fact is that most skeptics who hang around this blog are very much science oriented. We’re just people who try to see the picture with clarity and nobody here seems to misinterpret what the data says. Yes, I am a free-market meanie who thinks you lefties are off the wall on politics, but that doesn’t preclude a reasoned interpretation of result. Lewie’s study is a piece of crap.
BTW, 10 months ago this blog would have generated more replies by itself than reports from all of Lewie’s advocacy blogs put together. I write that because the response rate was so hideously bad that normal people were NOT interested in joining in. That tells me that the questions were interpreted exactly as I wrote. Extreme left nonsense with a pre-determined intent.
Yes, I do think you are very wrong.
The correlation between the 10 conspiracies (excluding the Roswell pair) and the CO2 factor is a whopping 0.12 – explaining 1.44% of the variablity of the CO2 factor’s variation. This is of no practical significance even though it is barely statistically significant> because of the very large sample size.
By the way, if you remove the responses suggested in Lew’s post, this drops to .06 which explains on 0.36%. If you read Lewandowsky’s explanation, he does not address this at all but misdirects to his conspiracy ideation latent factor.
You should do your own calculations…
Toto we not only think you’re wrong, we know you’re wrong.
I’ll note the same propensity for slinking off on your part when you’ve made an error that most of your compatriots, including good ole Eli, demonstrate. You guys have one set of standards for people you disagree with, another for yourselves.
To error is humane, to admit error well… is human, but it takes a bigger spine.
Anyone calling Lewandowsky a Scientist for this “piece of work” is stretching things a bit too far. I may not be able to give you a definition of garbage science, but I know it when I see it. This is garbage science. All in an effort to call climate “skeptics” deniers??? A complete waste of time for everyone involved. I would love to be paid for producing crap like this; it’s a good gig he has going. And I wonder why he didn’t add “Elvis is alive!” to his list of conspiracies. I would have bit on that one!
Actually Dfbaskwill, adding Elvis is alive would have served as a rather good internal control. If the questionnaire had included a conspiracy that was either non-existent or so far from reality so as to put one in the crayon only club ‘out-liners’ and ‘fakers’ could have been identified.
Some sort of ‘Fluoride in water causes low sperm counts’ (which I think I just invented) or the “Queen of England is a lizard alien” (as in David Ike) would have been very useful
Apparently, LewLew wants to argue that the many skeptics from NASA’s space program, including some who walked on the moon, don’t believe that the moon landings were real.
Jeff,
Lewandowsky is really not even a half useful idiot,
But, apparently he receives Au$ 1.7m to make this junk up, what is clear to me is that he has no real imagination, his recent effort was schoolboy-like in it’s naivete and vacant design – realist around the world should be insulted – “is that the best that you can do”?
For that sort of money, WA and Joolya’s green loons and CAGW advocates – should really be getting better value for their Australian dollars.
Lewlew, get another day job lad.
And don’t forget one other thing, in order to even have a reason to conduct such a survey, Lewandowsky must cite other ‘psychoanalysis’ of skeptic scientists that are enslaved to the unsupportable premise that such skeptics are corrupt, and each of those other analysts only have one highly questionable source to support that accusation. See how this works and try it yourself for any others making that accusation: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/09/11/the-other-problem-with-the-lewandowsky-paper-and-similar-skeptic-motivation-analysis-core-premise-off-the-rails-about-fossil-fuel-industry-corruption-accusation/#comment-1076717
I’ve only seen it mentioned a few times, but the believer crowd has been pushing the grand “big oil/fossil fuel/tobacco” funding angle since I can remember. This is, quite frankly, one big conspiracy! Funny that.
Mark
And it runs through the entire AGW issue from near the start up to the present, centering around what appears to be a central group of enviro activists…. and Al Gore: “Fakegate Opens a Door: More than meets the eye in the Heartland controversy” http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/02/fakegate_opens_a_door.html
What I find funny is that the conspiracy questions in the survey all regard conspiracies that the AGW, “pro science” crowd, believes the skeptic “anti-science” crowd holds near and dear. Their intended confusion is introduced in order to blur the line of demarcation between “science” and “government control”.
For example, the real question people who think there was a conspiracy to hide the smoking and cancer should be asking: if it is so bad, why is it not now illegal? In other words, since they have now achieved the “scientific” recognition of the horrors of tobacco as a cancer causing agent, why not apply the same remedies proposed for CO2 generation – banning?
Anonymous above was me.