I know you’ll be as shocked as I am to learn that social media has failed to bridge the gap. Actually, though, they buried the lede:
…tweeters with climate sceptic views are no more likely to post offensive comments than those who accept the basics of climate science.
Sceptics have long been accused of trolling, but Williams said the study indicated their minority status meant they were just more likely to interact with users they disagreed with.
“We found a lot of negativity, but when you crunch the numbers you find out they are no more likely to be negative than anyone else,” he said.
“There is a popular perception that sceptics must be irrational or unreasonable but this study doesn’t support that at all.”
You don’t say.
My theory is the alarmists just have thinner skin.
Yep, wanna find yourself dog-piled, if not outright banned, on Ars or a Gawker site? Express doubt in AGW orthodoxy.
I can confirm this with Ars Technica. I got 24 hour banned for posting what I recall was three skeptical posts in a “climate change” story. The posts were deleted.
Mother Jones is fun too. In one exchange I was misidentified and threatened by one commenter, and accused repeatedly of being a Koch-bot by another.
All I’d done was mention Tom Steyer.
I’d say “skeptics” are far less likely to go to the ugly extremes that the believers do. To my knowledge, no “skeptic” has ever called for the death penalty for believers.
I liked ARS, was a paying member, but the stupid got too deep for me and I left about 12 years ago and haven’t looked back.
I think I have been back three times and that was only due to link trough’s.
When Ars is discussing tech or general science it’s fairly good; as soon as they touch on anything the least bit political (Net Neutrality, Ellen Pao, AGW) though, all objectivity goes out the window and they turn into the raving fanatics they accuse everyone else of being.
Gizmodo, being a Gawker site, has the same problem. Check out this gushing hagiography of Hillary’s “brilliant” new logo.