Climate Feedback is a site on which scientists grade articles about climate science. Not only do they provide comments, they also give a final grade, indicating the scientific credibility. For example, Chris Mooney’s article on what we’re doing to the Earth, was – unsurprisingly – graded as having a high/very-high scientific credibility. On the other hand, Ben Webster’s article on scientists are exaggerating threats to reefs and marine life, was – also unsurprisingly – graded as having a very low scientific credibility.
The reason I’m writing this is because they’re doing a campaign to try and raise some money. You can read more on Victor’s site. The same article was also posted on Dana Nuccitelli and John Abraham’s Guardian site. I think Climate Feedback does a very good job of commenting on, and grading, articles about climate science. If you feel like helping, the link to the funding campaign is here. It’s already doing pretty well.
...and Then There's Physics 
I had expected a highly critical piece how these evil scientists were destroying the freedom of the press. At least Germany’s worst “science” journalist, Axel Bojanowski, tried to connect Climate Feedback to government censorship.
I am also part of the Climate Feedback community and have annotated several journalistic articles when they made claims about climate data quality.
It is a very effective and easy way to combat misinformation for scientists. Just click on the text and add a short comment; Climate Feedback suggests the articles and will take care of spreading your contribution.
If you feel like helping and you are a publishing scientist, do consider to join. More than 100 scientists have already done so.
Excellent idea. Donation made.
Thanks for the push, done (was thinking about it) …
BBD, thank you very much.
Maybe we should mention that the funding will go to a science journalist who will, for example, help write summaries of the comments of the scientists. That is something our chair Emmanuel Vincent now does alone and is the main bottleneck for doing more reviews.
My work is only tangential to climate change so I doubt I’d be a useful member, but very happy to donate.
ATTP: Bravo!
Donated. I couldn’t resist the tee-shirt. It will annoy my Daily Mail reading near neighbours.
Spot the odd one out among the reviewers:
(Clue: All but one of the eighty or so reviewers are ‘hard’ scientists.)
Thanks for the reminder, chipped in and tweeted.
Stand with science t-shirt: 50$.
Annoying the neighbours: priceless.
Vinny
Unless you condone inadequate editorial standards in the media, you should contribute.
Wow. The conspiracy is even bigger than I thought!
Should I?
If I don’t, will I receive a condemnatory letter from a bunch of pensioners wearing bleached rabbit fur that they like to pretend is pure stoat?
And would that be a good or a bad thing in your opinion?
Keep dodging and your soul dies 🙂
Frank Vöhringer, Vinny?
Just to let those that need to know I am getting ‘Error establishing a database connection’ when trying to connect to Climate Feedback, it had been working recently.
Okay, I’ll let Victor know.
I have told Emmanuel Vincent, the chair of Climate Feedback. Bad timing.
Thanks. Unfortunate timing. Website overload? 🙂
Actually, seems to be working for me. Fixed already?
Works for me again also. With a Distributed Denial of Service filter placed in between.
That is what you get when you mess with creationists.
Victor: Is the T-shirt “one size fits all”? I did not see a size option when I donated yesterday.
John, I wondered the same. Have asked and you will get an email after the campaign to ask you for the size you want.
Victor
Was that a DDOS attack…?
Victor:
Thanks.
A distributed denial of service attack. When a large number of (hacked) computers send requests to an internet computer to overwhelm this computer and shut it down.
Clean coal and oil technology companies, racists and cranks will do a lot to prevent the population from hearing about our scientific understanding of climate change.
Sorry Victor, some confusion 🙂 – I know what a DDOS is – I was just asking if it had been confirmed that one had been targeted at the Climate Feedback server. If so, that would be disturbing.
Yes there was an attack. I have guessed it was an DDOS attack because of the filter I saw.
Thanks Victor. Certain of our ‘sceptical’ friends are showing their true colours, it seems.
A different, but equally important campaign is being launched in the US by Tom Stryer…
Democrats and climate hawks share a dilemma, and that dilemma is millennials.
Millennials — people born between 1980 and 2000, give or take, depending on your definition — are, in many ways, an incredibly attractive political target. There’s a lot of them, they lean Democrat, they are more concerned about climate change than older cohorts, and they absolutely love clean energy.
The problem is, too few of them vote. “Between 1964 and 2012,” writes Derek Thompson at the Atlantic, “youth voter turnout in presidential elections has fallen below 50 percent, and Baby Boomers now outvote their children’s generation by a stunning 30 percentage points.” It’s even worse in midterm elections.
Now, eco-billionaire Tom Steyer is going to put some of his money toward changing that. His Super PAC, NextGen Climate, is launching a $25 million “national campaign to register and mobilize young voters in seven key battleground states to help elect climate champions to the White House and the Senate this fall.”
Millennials love clean energy, fear climate change, and don’t vote. This campaign wants to change that. by David Roberts, Energy & Environment, Vox, Apr 30, 2016
The url for the David Roberts’ article cited in my previous post is:
http://www.vox.com/2016/4/30/11535004/millennials-climate-votes
BBD,
For the longest time I thought it was how Homer Simpson might complain about the old Microsoft operating system.
I think even Homer might have been moved to say ***k occasionally, back in the day of the DOS.
And nothing changes 🙂
Listen, I’ll not having anything bad said about DOS. I remember playing the best computer game ever on 8086 machines, running Dos 3.1.
On the subject of giving, who remembers Bob Gelof saying ‘give us your ****ing money’ at Live Aid in 1995?
I do.
But…
And it checks out: 1:21 in the video.
And that was the legendary Geldof **** in context. I’m devastated. Everything I thought I knew is tottering.
interesting the number of “citations needed”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Live_Aid
I knew not of this story, BBD, thank you. Pink lives.
Anders: Snipes is one I didn’t know of. If you’ll permit me to be a bit wistful, my late stepfather used to write text-based games for me on his miniframe in his own programming language. Pac-Man, Space Invaders and Pong clones are the ones I remember the best. Kids these days with their Voodoo Radeon mumbo jumbo have no appreciation for the good stuff.
Brandon,
Snipes was fun because it was multi-player. So, instead of doing our projects in the computing lab, we’ll all be sitting at our computers playing snipes.
I went for the t-shirt, plus an extra $50 — don’t need a “special badge”. The Community page is impressive — lots of established experts plus a diverse bunch of young up-and-comers. Good to see!
Vinny, Stephan Lewandowsky may not be a “hard” scientist, but his insights into the psychology of AGW-denial deserve wider recognition. His participation in Climate Feedback is entirely legitimate, not least because he’s in a position to debunk claims that AGW-deniers are legitimate skeptics. I can see why you might not be happy about that.
Anders, yes of course. Everyone knows computers are for playing games. That real work ever gets done on them is a happy accident.
Only 17 hours left in the campaign and 800$ short (3%).
Or you could also say we made the magic number 97%.
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/climate-feedback-a-guide-to-reliable-climate-news–2#/comments
More than 500 backers helped made it happen! Thank you all very much. Physics for the post, everyone else for their contributions. It is wonderful to see so many people appreciate the work we do, which so often looks pointless because the “debate” is not really about science. This helps me to stay motivated to keep going.
Happy to have helped.