misinformation vs. real information?

Two words, "climate gate"

I think it's due most to the credibility of the article you're viewing and if the scientific claim is true, suggesting that it's evident global warming it occurring. Otherwise, people usually have bias opinions on subjects that they want to support and would favor a particular party.

The problem is, most peer reviewed journals are written so that those without a scientific background can't understand them. I just graduated a degree in environmental science and I can only understand about half of what's said in these articles. They are written by experts in the subjects for other experts to read. So those who haven't got this background have to rely on second hand information, which generally comes from the media who probably don't understand most of the articles either. (BTW this is not a criticism of the intelligence of media employees, but on the overcomplication of scientific literature). This is where sites such as skeptical science do a good job of trying to translate the science into laymans terms, but it doesn't compete with the masses of incorrect information that are out there.

And also, to Ottawa Mike, yes that is a great example of difficult to detect misinformation. Using data from a lack of hurricanes making landfall in the USA to conclude that there has been less hurricane activity in the world this year is one use of misinformation. I would like to avoid stereotypipng Americans as not knowing of the existence of the world beyond America but its so hard when they make it so easy.

i'm inquisitive approximately comparable-intercourse marriage. My brother is gay, and it replaced into no longer confusing for me to different than him for who he's. the undeniable fact that he likes different adult adult males did no longer result me emotionally or in any way. besides the shown fact that, my mom continues to be having a confusing time accepting him for who he's. She even calls gay human beings "fags", and says that my brother does not be attentive to what this is like too be in a relationship with a woman. She's cried some situations, and brings up this topic in many situations at social events. i detect this rather unacceptable for a parent to do. She's been doing this for a minimum of two years, she has a confusing time accepting fact. Like my dad plans on retiring in the bush, he likes fishing and searching ext. yet my mom nevertheless likes to think of they would be residing mutually in the city. Hah. decrease back on topic...... So i replaced into announcing i'm for gay marriage. i'm going at the beginning the entire faith concept. properly i'm atheist and the only faith that makes any sorta experience to me is Buddhism. This faith accepts human beings for who they are. besides the shown fact that Christianity does not settle for human beings who prefer the comparable gender. a faith shouldn't turn human beings against human beings or be sure what's morally good. human beings shouldn't take each little thing in the bible so literary. this is o.k. to have faith in the bible and that faith, yet do no longer enable it turn you right into a undesirable individual. some Christians are so rapid to choose human beings, and only enable it take over their lives. They carry onto their ideals so dearly. fact is gay all human beings is human beings too. If 2 human beings love one yet another adequate, they might desire to be in a position to marry one yet another. this is no longer suitable what persons think of. they might desire to easily legalize it already, there's no longer something incorrect with being gay. i think of this is often older people who are not accepting of them, in 15 years or so it's going to probable be legal.

Misinformation comes in many forms and is sometimes difficult to detect.

For example, one type of misinformation is biased or unbalanced reporting of facts and assessments. Since Hurricane Katrina in 2005, there has been fairly low hurricane activity. But you can bet your bottom dollar that if there were a few more Katrinas since then or hurricane activity picked up and perhaps set some records, that would be front page news.

As it turns out, there is currently a hurricane record. If we make it to December 4, 2011 without a major hurricane making US landfall (and this is almost certain), it will set an all-time record for the most days ever without a major hurricane hitting the US.

Do you think this will be news? It will be real information that is not reported. Is that considered misinformation? I'm going to guess that those who wish to ignore such "real information" are going to say NO. And if somebody does bring it up, expect them to be attacked as being in the pay of big oil and casting doubt on the global warming issue.

I looked at sheer volume. Google search on "global warming" gives 83 million results, "climate change" gives 126 million. Google Scholar search on the same terms gives 0.83 and 2.3 million respectively.

Most people, starting from whatever interested them in a subject, won't actually research it back to the scientist (mis)quoted and won't have the relevant background or inclination to let them figure out the science on their own. The stuff in the wider searches is mostly reporter's opinion of what was said, opinions of opinions, and commentator's opinion "inspired by" something said, repeated ad nauseum.

The scientists are essentially in agreement. If we assume that the wider search is an equal debate, misinformation by this measure is 25-50 times as common in the wider web as in the scientific community.

One only has to look at the number or arguments which skepticalscience.com debunks (173 and counting, see link below) to get an idea about the misinformation.

<<is there a relation between where the article comes from and how valid its claims are?>>

There certainly is. Many who claim to be 'skeptics' strangely enough drop all their skepticism and never ever bother to check the sources of the arguments against global warming which they eagerly adopt as their own and copy-and-paste all over the internet, including here.

Science is not done via articles but via peer-reviewed scientific literature. Not surprisingly, many 'skeptics' never ever publish in scientific literature for the simple reason that their 'papers' get rejected for poor quality (meaning its absolute BS) so they resort to writing 'opinion pieces' which look like peer-reviewed papers which get widely published at denial sites without any questions asked.

<<does it refine the debate on global warming or keep it at a stand-still?>>

It's sole objective is to keep it at a stand-still. Many, many fake grass roots organizations have been set up over the years by the oil industry and others which stand to see their benefits reduced should AGW related policies be adopted. And all these organizations do is spread disinformation among an often uninformed audience, many of whom have a political bias. Look at the site exxonsecrets.org to get an idea of the web of disinformation funded by Exxon alone over the past few years.

Despite many of the disinformation having been debunked ages ago, those claims are often still repeated which indicates just how successful the disinformation campaign has been.

<<i mean scientific, peer-reviewed, published articles vs non-peer-reviewed, incorrect, and misinforming articles.>>

This is so annoying. While the Deniers are wrong and put out garbage attacking legitimate science on global warming, "peer review" is not synonymous with legitimate, and non-peer review is not synonymous with junk. You are not being pro-science, you are being anti-science and pro-authoritarian.

This will come as a big surprise to you and many others here, but almost all important thinks in science, at least physics, were NOT peer reviewed, and indeed they would not have passed peer review.

Often Non-Deniers will say things like "people at prestigious institutions" and "peer review" and you are manifesting obedience to authority and ignorance of scientific history.

In most cases look at the sources people use so called 'alarmists' tend ti use science site and quote original sources like NASA, NOAA or NSIDC or USGS

Deniers tend to wander off into the twilight world of blogs, denier websites run by mostly none scientists like Watt or Mockingtone etc or get their prime arguments from the UK gutter press.

Case in point the often repeated denier catch cry "the disproved hockeystick graph"

Sorry but this statement is simply not true and unless deniers have some severe learning difficulty they know it's not true.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11646-climat...

Another is their claim that there was a scientific consensus of cooling in the 1970's they also repeat this one regularly, again simply not true and as the papers published in the 70's are still out there for all to read another easily disproved denier lie. As ask a denier to post their evidence and all you get is the same tired old link to one story in the popular press.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11643-climat...

You will probably get lots of rants about communists, conspiracies and greens but amongst the ranting no real answer will be supplied.

The current info on climate change is on the other hand informative and well supported.

http://climate.nasa.gov/

http://nsidc.org/

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/2011/10

http://hvo.wr.usgs.gov/volcanowatch/2007/07_02_15....

http://www.usgs.gov/global_change/glaciers/repeat_...

Tilli: You say that you "just graduated a degree in environmental science" and that "I can only understand about half of what's said in these articles" I find it interesting that someone with your claimed qualification is not familiar with the 'conclusion' section found in almost all peer reviewed papers which sums up the findings of the paper, in pretty plain English, Scientists have most certainly made their views publicly known in a number of arena's and for their trouble they have been called liars, cheats and frauds even had death threats, a little sad given the denier movement seems to base much of it's case on the rants of an English Lord (with a Nazi fixation) who has no scientific training at all and a TV weather man with a similar lack of scientific training, some denier claim he is a meteorologist, as far as I am aware he is not, he does not claim that qualification in his own websites info page.

Your looking at a process that can be circumvented, manipulated, abused, and consist of unsubstantiated matter.http://www.forbes.com/sites/patrickmichaels/2011/0...

But then who would ever dream that life would be fair?

> I think gringo is trying to say those that are (unconvinced) opposed to those that are.

Fun Fact: the issue of "is global warming man-caused" is politically motivated that the science around it is no long objective by any means. Why is it that the solution to "man-caused global warming" is a new tax?