FRANKE JAMES

Who will Battle the Climate Deniers? We tell all — From Washington to Warsaw, Mumbai to Melbourne…

by Franke James

Since my Fighting-the-Climate-Deniers Quiz launched September 21st on Grist.org (followed by ThinkProgress, DeSmogBlog, and my website) the quiz has been taken more than 3,346 times. Wow! And the numbers just keep going UP (See counter below) thanks to people like you who are spreading the word, and blogging about it too.

But I wondered… Just where are these courageous climate fighters located?

Finding the answer called for teamwork. So, my programming-savvy partner, Billiam James, (who luckily has created many maps tracking air quality and smog alerts for the Ontario Ministry of Environment), stepped in. He crunched the numbers, converted the IP addresses of players to geo-locations and plotted them on a Google map. (For the privacy advocates out there: To ensure anonymity, the quiz results are aggregated. The geo-locations are then randomized by a variable distance of up to 5 miles. Additionally, the IP addresses are not being published.)

And VOILA…

The Quiz Results Map: How many climate deniers could you fight off?

See the Full Screen Map

So, what do the results tell us?

Lots and lots of people around the world are ready and willing to fight off the denialists! The map shows that the quiz has spread to every state in the US, most parts of Canada and every continent in the world (except Antarctica). While the quiz is mainly for entertainment purposes, (and we strongly suspect that some people may have taken the quiz multiple times, and given different responses just to “test” the scoring system) we can see that there is tonnes of enthusiasm for fighting off climate deniers! We are not alone.

From Athens to Amsterdam, Mumbai to Melbourne, Paris to Perth… there are lots of courageous climate fighters out there. Ready and willing to use their verbal judo skills to flip Denialist’s arguments flat on the floor. Here are the official stats:

Quiz Title: Denialist Quiz Summary
Number of questions: 10
Number of submissions: 3672
Average Score: 36.25

If you hover over the dots you can see scores for a particular area. The dark green colour is for the higher scores, while the brown dots represent low scores.

The quiz was inspired by Michael Mann’s book, The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars. His book whacked me on the head and said “Wake up! We are in a climate war.”

It made me think: What will the world be like if the fossil fuel industry wins the climate war? It also made me wonder what it’s like to be under attack from hordes of “climate denialists” as Mann was. (Although I must say, I do have some experience fighting off the Oil-drunk Harper Government…)

But can a humorous quiz actually change people’s behaviours? Well… here’s feedback I received from a player, Richard Rainford, who knows something about fighting…

“I enjoyed the quiz. I hope I would be that brave in real life…
This game really makes you think — and I like that.”

Credits and Links

“Who will Battle the Climate Deniers?” writing and illustration by Franke James
Quiz Results Map: Design and programming Billiam James

Take the Quiz: How many climate deniers could you fight off?

Quiz on DeSmogBlog
Quiz on ThinkProgress
Quiz on Grist
Quiz on FrankeJames.com

ForestEthics reviews the Quiz: Climate quiz from environmental activist and artist, Franke James

Lloyd Alter on Treehugger features the Quiz: How Many Climate Deniers Can You Fight Off?

“How many climate denialist attackers could you fight off?” Quiz ©2012 Franke James
Inspiration for this zany quiz came from Matthew Inman, The Oatmeal.
Quiz Programming: Billiam James

Amazon Link: The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars

Who will Battle the Climate Deniers? ©2012 Franke James

61 Responses: 3 Comments and 58 Tweets

  • gregladen says:
    September 28, 2012 at 6:25 pm

    OK, I just checked. My IP address does not even resolve to the state I live in.

  • Franke James says:
    September 28, 2012 at 7:39 pm

    Greg,

    In some cases an ISP will have an IP with a totally different location — as in your case.

    Franke

  • gregladen says:
    September 28, 2012 at 8:25 pm

    My comment was an addendum to a previous comment I had made that I think was rejected because I failed to identify a picture of an iPhone as a camera…

    But anyway, yes, I think my IP address is one of many for a large cable company that would resolve to be one of their corporate data processing centers, or whatever. Which is good, because it gives a false impression of where we are all actually located, which significantly enhances our chance of success when carrying out these battles.

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