Despite Claims to the Contrary, Populartechnology.net Is a Denier Site

Back in February, the thinly-veiled denier site populartechnology.net posted an update to its attempted takedown of the pro-AGW consensus findings of studies like Oreskes 2004, and Cook et al 2013.

A few members of the scientific community apparently sung the praises of what the site admits is not a scientifically-rigorous effort but merely a cherry-picked list of papers it really, really likes (in the rebuttal section, it says, "The list is a resource not a scientific argument. The purpose of the list is to show that peer-reviewed papers exist that support skeptic arguments and to be used as a resource to locate these papers."), for instance...

"Wow, the list is pretty impressive ...It's Oreskes done right."

- Luboš Motl, Ph.D. Theoretical Physicist

And the blog post even includes a seeming endorsement from John Cook himself, and then goes on to label him as a "cartoonist," which a lot of deniers really, really like to do.

"I do confess a degree of fascination with Poptech's list..."

- John Cook, Cartoonist at Skeptical Science

One might assume after posting these two bellyaching rebuttals to criticisms of the list...

Criticism: Authors on the list are not scientists.

Rebuttal: Just like the WGII and WGIII sections of the IPCC reports, peer-reviewed papers from social scientists and policy analysts are included in the list.

Criticism: Authors on the list are not climate scientists.

Rebuttal: Climate science is a very broad discipline that includes scientists from a variety of backgrounds.

...that the site could at least attribute to Cook his proper credentials: the Climate Communication Fellow for the Global Change Institute at the University of Queensland.

But since the full quote was not even posted I guess I'm asking for a bit much, eh?

Anyway, curiosity got the better of me, so I decided to do my own parsing/analysis of poptech's study list. My Java code is here, if you are interested, and these are the results.

Before I get into explaining my take on the results, let me first address further diaper-wetting protests in the rebuttal section of the poptech post...

Criticism: Papers on the list are outdated.

Rebuttal: The age of any scientific paper is irrelevant. Using this argument would mean dismissing Svante Arrhenius's 1896 paper "On the influence of carbonic acid in the air upon the temperature of the ground" and the basis for greenhouse theory.

That's swell and all, poptech, but, see, the problem is Oreske 2004, and Cook et al 2013, two studies with which you apparently aspire to compare and contrast your own, based on the quotes you included above your list, did not look further back than 1991. Had they done so, papers like Arrhenius's would have been tallied on their side, mmmmkay? So if you wish to do as they have done but with your anti-AGW blinders firmly in place so only the papers you like get selected, unlike the more open-minded approach of the other two studies, well, at the very least honor the same publication date range they did.

Criticism: Most of the papers come from a small amount of authors.

Rebuttal: Cherry picking the most prolific authors as representative of the entire list is misleading.

This honestly made me laugh out loud. So lemme see if I got this straight...an admittedly non-scientific, cherry-picked list of denier-friendly studies that everyone in the deniosphere still insists on crowing about and waving around as "representative" of peer-reviewed publications in the climatology field isn't misleading. Nope, it's only pointing out the frequency of the names of usual denier suspects on that list that's misleading.

Oooooooookkkkkaaaaaaayyyyyyy then.

Here are the highlights of what my Java code spit out:

The number of studies published before 1991 = 119
The number of studies published during and after 1991 = 1368
The total number of studies = 1487

The author credit tally...
Sherwood B. Idso 76 credits.
John R. Christy 43 credits.
Richard S. Lindzen 35 credits.
Nicola Scafetta 27 credits.
Robert G. Currie 27 credits.
Patrick J. Michaels 26 credits.
Robert C. Balling Jr. 26 credits.
Bruce A. Kimball 26 credits.
Roy W. Spencer 24 credits.
Ross McKitrick 23 credits.
David H. Douglass 22 credits.
Henrik Svensmark 19 credits.
Willie H. Soon 19 credits.
Craig Loehle 19 credits.
Nils-Axel Morner 17 credits.
Paul C. Knappenberger 16 credits.
O. M. Raspopov 16 credits.
Indur M. Goklany 16 credits.

119 papers were published before 1991, so they get tossed out on principle. And I mean, Jaezuz Fooking Cheeeeroist, if the US military made a set of most-wanted denier playing cards, you're looking at the royal end of each suit. Click on some of the links if you wish to find out why.

And one final dope slap for poptech. This crap ain't fooling anyone.

Criticism: Popular Technology.net is an AGW "denier" website.

Rebuttal: This is a dishonest ad hominem as we believe there is a scientific hypothesis called anthropogenic global warming (AGW).

Cute and everything, poptech, but your rebuttal is as dishonest as creationists calling evolution a "theory." What you won't admit for some curious and cowardly reason is that you don't believe AGW is an established scientific fact like evolution. Nice try, but I'm afraid the verbal escape route you just tried to set up for yourself here has been dynamited and permanently closed off. Gee, sorry about that.