Conspiratory fascination versus public interest: the case of ‘climategate’

Anderegg and Goldsmith (2014 Environ. Res. Lett. 9 054005) use Google Trends to examine the impact of specific media events—the so-called ‘climategate’ imbroglio and the glacial-melt error in the IPCCʼs 2007 report—on public opinion regarding climate change. There has been an overall decline of public interest in climate change after 2007, accompanied by spikes of interest with a half-life of six days for these two media events. The brevity of public interest in ‘climategate’ stands in contrast to the continued and growing fascination of the ‘skeptic’ blogosphere with that event. These results document the assertion that conspiratory obsession by a small number of people should not be mistaken for general public interest.

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