Stephan Lewandowsky has identified the 4 remaining bloggers that he asked to post a link to his survey about climate denialism and conspiracy theories (paper here).
They are:
- Dr Roger Pielke Jr (he replied to the initial contact)
- Mr Marc Morano (of Climatedepot; he replied to the initial contact)
- Dr Roy Spencer (no reply)
- Mr Robert Ferguson (of the Science and Public Policy Institute, no reply)
It will be noted that all 4 have publically stated during the last few days/weeks that they were not contacted…
Why would the people who were contacted publically fail to acknowledge this fact?
Several hypotheses could be entertained but I prefer to settle for the simplest explanation.
It’s called “human error.” It simply means the 4 bloggers couldn’t find the email, didn’t know what to search for, or their inboxes were corrupted by a move into another building, to name but a few possibilities.
The only fly in the ointment in that hypothesis is that I provided search keys and exact dates and times of some correspondence.
As much fun as having a bunch people attempt to discredit a study linking climate denialism to other conspiracy theories by claiming that the study itself is part of a conspiracy, some apologies are in order.
For the record Planet3.0 did post a link to Lewandowsky’s survey.
Quoth Lucia Liljegren:
and
I think that this whole four blogs business is a side issue, and it’s a clear indicator of how the opposition operates. But “amnesia” is clearly far too strong, as is, apparently “publicly stating they were never contacted”. I’m getting concerned that Stephan is overreaching and this may backfire in the end. This has been a great victory in the PR space against the naysayer crowd, but to the extent that it is overstated it’s not a good thing.
Lewandowsky did state that he blamed human error rather than malice. Had he blamed malice I think it would have been going too far.
Roger completely forgot he’d replied to an email concerning a climate attitudes survey, even -after- hearing about this?
A memory cue like a 10-ton weight failed to elicit recall? That’s amnesia.
Meanwhile McIntyre is so busy obsessively riffling through other people’s email that he didn’t have time to read his own, it seems. So no amnesia there, something else.
Why in the world would we trust any of these cranks on their own say so? Without exception their main activity is refracting truth to the point of inversion.
Amending my last remark: Roger Pielke Jr. refracts truth to a tiny and hopefully innocuous and unremarkable dot but does not invert it.