Journalists covering climate change can expect to see more fur fly: So-called contrarians and the think tanks and politicians backing them will make much of the new Schulte study. Environmentalists and those generally convinced by the IPCC and other scientific organizations' analyses certainly will pooh-pooh the research.

For journalists wondering how and whether to report on the likely contretemps, a few key points might be instructive:

• The full Schulte work is likely to find its way to the public one way or another, and it could well become an increasing focus among pro- and con- climate change partisans.
• Remember that Oreskes's review of papers published in the ISI Web of Science database from 1993 to 2003 found none explicitly disagreeing with the 2001 IPCC Third Assessment Report that "most of the observed warming over the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations." Oreskes wrote at the time that "very few papers analyzed said anything explicit at all about the consensus position."
     No real surprise there. Astronomers don't write peer-reviewed reports saying they explicitly endorse the Sun’s rising in the east; they take it for granted. Earth scientists don't specifically say that they explicitly endorse plate tectonics.
• Schulte, in the reply to Oreskes posted on that same Science and Public Policy Institute website, listed a number of papers he said were in the original Oreskes study but which Schulte maintained disagree with the consensus position. But many of the publications in Schulte's list come from the now-retracted Peiser critique list, even repeating some of the same citation errors from Peiser’s work. The Schulte work does not cite Peiser as a source.
• Also worth considering: Most general circulation media, certainly including TV and most daily newspapers, are unlikely to ever cover the Schulte research in the first place. But reporters covering climate nonetheless can expect to hear about it from advocates for and against, and those impressions may well be reported at some level. Some experts on "framing" of important public policy issues might think it at least a partial victory for climate skeptics to see the Oreskes study criticized at all, even if the criticisms are generally dismissed. The theory here is that voicing criticisms of Oreskes's research diminishes public confidence in that research, even if the criticisms are judged to be unfounded.

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