Whip Comes Down
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Climategate and the Life-Cycle of Nontroversy
It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. -- Macbeth
Nontroversy feeds on empty, twisted brains. In this case, a general unfamiliarity with the language of scientific banter allows the "climategate" nontroversy to overwhelm the consensus on global warming. That consensus is built on literally hundreds of thousands of studies at this point; and indeed, the stolen emails contain a wealth of proof that temperatures are rising. Yet the media stovepipe magnifies, even invents, discrepancies and minimizes evidence, even as the ice melts:
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqjO8rwB-GI&feature=player_embedded"]YouTube- Melting Trends: Arctic Ice Completely Gone by 2020?[/ame]
"Consensus" is the key word here. Nontroversy always aims to distort or destroy consensus. Birther sites and ACORN fantasies exist for the sole purpose of undermining the democratic consensus of last November's election; and insofar as they have convinced a majority of Republicans, they have succeeded.
So don't tell me that nontroversy doesn't matter. It really, really matters. We need to understand its biological processes.
Viral Stage: The emails were posted on climate denial sites first. Note that nontroversy never begins in a neutral forum; the wingnutosphere is always the platform for launch. It is the vector of viral memes. This achieves two objectives: (1) it produces the maximum spread of this "news" before anyone can rebut or debunk it, and (2) reinforces Teh Librul Media™ meme with every passing hour that CNN, ABC, CBS, the NYT, et al fail to screech in chorus.
There are two other notable facts about the Viral Stage. First is that it never really ends; the wingnutosphere continues to push nontroversy as fact long after it has died in other media. In fact, one might argue the wingnutosphere's main contribution isn't the origination, but the perpetuation of nontroversy.
An important aspect of this phenomenon is how the wingnutosphere orders any and all new information using the preset template of conspiracy -- what I call the Samsara of Wacky. Charles Johnson (ironically, a recidivist co-founder of Pajamas Media) made an informative post about this, which I now quote at length:
In the stolen climatologists’ email story, the latest claim making the rounds of the right wing blogs (originating at Britain’s right wing paper the Daily Mail) is that a BBC correspondent was sent the stolen emails a month before they were made public.
Sounds juicy, doesn’t it? So juicy that at least half a dozen right wing bloggers took the story and ran with it, ranting that the BBC covered up the stolen emails even though they knew about them over a month ago.
Just one little problem. The Daily Mail article was completely wrong.
Paul Hudson, the BBC correspondent in question, explains that he was asked to confirm the authenticity of one of the emails, sent on October 12th, that included quotes from previous emails...
Since many of the stolen emails released last week were written after October 12th, there’s no way that Hudson could have been sent the package at that time. The fact that neither the Daily Mail nor the numerous bloggers who posted about this false story even noticed this discrepancy is evidence of their increasingly desperate efforts to keep this bogus “scandal” in the news.
Sounds juicy, doesn’t it? So juicy that at least half a dozen right wing bloggers took the story and ran with it, ranting that the BBC covered up the stolen emails even though they knew about them over a month ago.
Just one little problem. The Daily Mail article was completely wrong.
Paul Hudson, the BBC correspondent in question, explains that he was asked to confirm the authenticity of one of the emails, sent on October 12th, that included quotes from previous emails...
Since many of the stolen emails released last week were written after October 12th, there’s no way that Hudson could have been sent the package at that time. The fact that neither the Daily Mail nor the numerous bloggers who posted about this false story even noticed this discrepancy is evidence of their increasingly desperate efforts to keep this bogus “scandal” in the news.
Read the rest of this fine work at: Matt Osborne: Climategate and the Life-Cycle of Nontroversy
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