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The paper investigates the reference corpus of a climate change contrarian report. We categorized the journal abstracts according to the endorsement positions on anthropogenic climate change. These results were contrasted by an in-text citation analysis. We focused here on the role of the papers included by the report editors concerning the mainstream claims around climate change. Our results showed moderate differences in the endorsement rates as well as in the sources of contrarian arguments considering the contrarian report in general and the presented journals specifically. These outcomes indicate differences among the journals regarding editorial practice, topic-dependency, and the home field advantage of some authors. Beyond the bibliometric data, our additional rhetorical analysis showed that language and wording are at least as important as the references backing the claims. The well-founded atmosphere of doubt in the climate skeptic report relies on two prevalent factors working together: relevant information accumulated on methodological uncertainties and findings that do not support mainstream knowledge claims (1); and solemn rhetoric supplemented with proper re-contextualization and reinterpretation (2). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Debate and controversy concerning the issue of climate change generally results in the hindering and obstruction of social and governmental action on this issue. This paper analyses the scientific background, i.e. the reference list of the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report 'The Physical Science Basis' and an alternative climate change report of a US think tank institute 'Climate Change Reconsidered II. Physical Science'. We compared these two reports to the antecedent reports from 2007 (IPCC AR4 WGI) and 2009 (Climate Change Reconsidered). For the purposes of the study, we developed a database containing all the references collected from the four reports. The bibliometric analysis focused on the distribution of references among peer reviewed scientific journals and the most frequently cited lead authors that created the basis for the evaluation of their different scientific emphasis. Our findings underline that there is still no convergence between the scientific literature of the IPCC and the contrarian reports; however, the remarkable quantitative development on both sides and the qualitative progress of the IPCC report allows us to draw somewhat surprising conclusions in the context of climate change science. Contrary to expectations, controversy is beneficial to the science of climate change as it fosters the review process on both sides of the debate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]