Another year, another weblog contest duped into including the widely discredited, anti-science and anti-scientist blog WattsUpWithThat.com as a finalist for “Best Science Blog.”
This time’s it’s the 11th annual Weblog Awards, “the 2011 Bloggies.” You can vote for one of the four real science blogs on the list — David Robertson, Boing Boing, Wired Science, or Women in Planetary Science — by clicking here.
I wouldn’t be surprised if WUWT wins, though. Of course the best science blog is being chosen in the most unscientific fashion possible — online voting (see “Memo to media: Enough with the online polls!“). And, as its right given such a gamable process, WUWT is shilling for votes far more than the two likeliest contenders, the high-traffic websites Boing Boing and Wired. Voting is complicated — after you cast your vote you have to scroll to the bottom and fill out a captcha and give them an e-mail address and then click on the link you get in your inbox.
I voted for Wired Science because I don’t really see BB as a science blog whereas Wired is consistently the top ranked science blog at Technorati based primarily on the quantity and quality of websites linking in. For whatever reason, Technorati puts me in the “Green” category where I am currently ranked number one, with an Authority of 995 out of 1000.
Anthony Watts does more than any person in the blogosphere to spread anti-scientific disinformation and smear climate scientists. Giving WUWT a best science blog award would be like giving the Edward R. Murrow award to Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh.
Watts spent most of 2010 twisting scientific data to persuade people that Arctic sea ice was going to recover sharply — #FAIL — and then he spent the couple of months absurdly asserting that he did no such thing (see Arctic Death Spiral 2010: Navy’s oceanographer tells Congress, “the volume of ice as of last September has never been lower”¦in the last several thousand years” Disinformers get it very wrong AND see Tamino eviscerate their laughable November revisionism here).
Watts has, perhaps more than any other leading anti-science blogger, viciously smeared climate scientists and others. On Memorial Day, for instance, Watts directly questioned the patriotism of both Tamino and Rabett (see “Peak readership for anti-science blogs?“) leading Tamino to write, “This just might be the most loathsome thing Watts has yet done with his blog.” But it wasn’t.
- Scientific American editors slam science deniers for misusing their unscientific online poll: SciAm “horrified” by “the co-opting of the poll” by users of “the well-known climate denier site, Watts Up With That”
- Purported eco-terrorist shot and killed by police: Shockingly, Anthony Watts stands behind his offensive post and comments.
- WattsUpWithThat breaks its own record for fastest overturning of a prediction by reality
- WattsUpWithThat hypes itself with most discredited web metric (hits!) and keeps smearing scientists while demanding others “dial back the rhetoric”
- Wattergate: Tamino debunks “just plain wrong” Anthony Watts.
- Watts not to love: New study finds the poor weather stations tend to have a slight COOL bias, not a warm one
- FoxNews, WattsUpWithThat push falsehood-filled Daily Mail article on global cooling that utterly misquotes, misrepresents work of Mojib Latif and NSIDC; Latif told me: “I don’t know what to do. They just make these things up.” NSIDC Director Serreze says it is “completely false.”
- Disinformers defend Foxgate email saying unequivocal warming of the climate should always be disputed: Discredited WattsUpWithThat blogger makes up more stuff
Long ago Watts was diagnosed as a victim of anti-science syndrome based on his decision to reprint approvingly a post that accused the scientific community broadly defined of deliberate fraud. Nothing has changed since except our understanding of global warming has gotten so strong that the National Academy of Science called it a “settled fact” even as WUWT has gotten more and more anti-scientific.
So vote for the real “Best Science Blog” but don’t be surprised if an unscientific process leads to an anti-science winner.
Previous in TP Climate Progress
Language Intelligence: Lessons on persuasion from Jesus, Shakespeare, Lincoln, and Lady Gaga
Money can buy a lot but not a livable climate.
I was a little perplexed by the short list of science blogs, none of which I heard of, except WTFUWT, so not science. I like Women in Planetary Science but it wouldn’t have broad appeal. I voted for Wired but unless their pushing their community to vote, the nonscience, nonsense blog will win.
I did use Anthony’s clear instructions to fill out my form. You will get an email back if you did it correctly.
“For whatever reason, Technorati puts me in the “Green” category ”
In May 2006, Technorati teamed up with the PR agency Edelman. The deal earned a lot of criticism, both on principle and as a result of Edelman’s 2006 fake blog scandals. Edelman and Technorati officially ended the deal in December 2006. That month, Oliver Reichenstein pointed out that the so-called “State of the Blogosphere” was more of a PR-tool and money maker for Edelman and Technorati than a reliable source, explaining in particular: a) why Technorati/Edelman’s claim that “31% of the blogs are written in Japanese” was “bogus”, and b) where the financial profit for the involved parties was in this.[8]
Since its relaunch in 2009, there have been a range of complaints from Technorati users about issues such as the basic blog search not working for many months or problems with the blog claiming process. It appears that as late as November 2010 several of these issues have not been addressed. Technorati also appears to have stopped responding to these issues.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technorati
From the Discussion page
The Technorati ranking system is completely bogus. The myspace blogs of Dane Cook, Tila Tequila, and Tom are not ranked. Their #1 blog (Engadget) gets about 2-3 comments per entry compared to thousands for Tila Tequila and Jeffrey Star (both singers). They ranked the Google help blog but didn’t rank Tom, who probably has millions of readers for his blog.
If you follow to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edelman_%28firm%29
You learn
Noteworthy Clients = Royal Dutch Shell
Yawn…
The Bloggies have been around since 2001 – in Internet time that makes them ineffectual grey-haired old-timers. They know how the voting game works…and they really lose cred.
I’m sure many of us feel inclined not to take the trouble and vote. We must acknowledge we are in a street fight. We must use guerilla tactics to respond to the deniers.
If we don’t have a proper fight, the result will be Watts gaining credibility with a ‘BEST SCIENCE BLOG 2011′ medal on his home page. We can’t let this happen.
I urge EVERYBODY to go out there and VOTE FOR WIRED, so as not to smear out the votes over three blogs tied for second.
I’m really sorry for these other blogs but we’ve got a planet to save here.
Raspberry award.
Dr. Romm – Joe – I recommend that you create your own Climate Hawk Climate Science Blog Award ASAP. Your nominees will be listed in a link on Climate Progress with their url, maybe an author photo, stats on their readership numbers & a brief paragraph of your description of their contribution to understanding the big picture.
You want this list & descriptions to be a resource for people across the country, especially teachers. Voting TBD – would not be by anonymous online poll. How about – the winner has the greatest number of sincere recommendations in the form of a 25-words-or-less testimonial. Teachers could assign this list to a class & ask them for their thoughtful preferences & why?
Winner[s] receive a Climate Hawk pin – and more. TBD.
BTW – there will be no worst list. While it is very important to remain aware of the crocodiles in the water, at some critical point you switch to: “What you put your attention on grows.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/18/house-votes-to-block-epa-_n_825259.html
House Votes to Block EPA from Regulating Greenhouse Gases
“Republicans hate regulation s because their masters at the Chamber of Commerce and Koch Industries have directed them to eliminate regulation s so corporatio ns can enjoy higher profits. If one were to believe the Chamber of Commerce, Democrats create new regulation s for the sole purpose of breaking corporatio ns by setting standards and rules with no scientific data and no specific reason other than to steal profits from business. Republican s never point out that regulation s are created to protect consumers, the environment, and public safety from unscrupulo us business owners who would ki*ll Americans for higher profits if they could escape prosecutio n. Even with regulation s in place, many corporations and industries find loopholes around the rules or ignore them entirely to meet production schedules or make higher profits.”
http://ww .politicus usa.com/en/regula te-conservatism
sorry that link has spaces, should be:
http://www.politicususa.com/en/regulate-conservatism
Apparently Koch’s Party is a threat to the National Security of the entire World.
Legislators Flee The State.. GOP Sends State Troopers After Dem Leader.. Protesting Teachers Swamp State Capitol.. Conservative Rally Planned.. Obama Sends Support.. Advice From Texas: ‘Call Your Spouses For Conjugal Visits’.. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/
Greedy Republicans paid by reckless fossil fuel interests cause chaos and threaten the survival of the Human Species.
The best what peopel can do now is hit the streets and demand REASON and the retirement of the Boehner gang.
I wouldn’t put to much into this. Anyone that reads WTFUWT for 2 minutes realizes its a political site. And anyone that took high school science can figure out its pseudo science. As clearly stated this is a liberal site. But at least the blogs aren’t just made up crap.
VOTED.
What, did they forget about Answers in Genesis, or even better, Time Cube?
You know, the real scientific heavyweights.
The reason I will not vote is because I see no benefit in giving this organization my Name and email address. ‘nuf said.
Anyone who has seen Anthony Watts on Fox should realize that the man is
made for a Saturday Night Live or Daily Show parody. I crack up just watching the straight stuff he does on TV.
If anyone wants to take this on, I’ve also got a treasure trove of personal emails from Anthony. When it’s time for a laugh, I like to revisit them. I won’t quote from them or reprint them, because they are so bizarre that it’s almost like putting a photo of someone in a clown suit on the internet. Even he doesn’t deserve that.
Ignorance is bliss.
Joe, when you have a chance, I’d be curious to get your take on the renewed sunspot activity, and what effect this might have on the years ahead (when combined with anthropogenic forcings, of course).
I agree with PurpleOzone that this was an odd choice of blogs, and not just WUWT.
I might add…I thought it was accepted that solar luminosity / sunspots had SOME small effect on the climate. (I don’t mean those deniers who want to but ALL the blame on the sun). But upon further reading it appears this is unsettled?
This is the same reality in which ketchup is a vegetable.
I can’t vote there because that place is in the wrong category, it should be in the ‘Best blog lying to exploited middle class religious fundamentalists’-category along with a couple more sites I do not mention.
Watts blog is only beaten by Goddards blog when it comes to anti- science content.
I agree with Artful Dodger!
How about Best Science Fiction Blog?
Regarding sunspots- Somewhere I read that when sunspots are plentiful the sun emits significantly more ultraviolet, which is absorbed in the stratosphere (the ozone layer), which warms that layer, which changes the wind patterns around the North pole, which in turn affects things like snow cover. So, even though the total change in irradiance is very small, it has a magnified effect. I don’t recall where I read this, I’d like to hear from more knowlegeable folk.
Solar variance =0.1%
300 degrees K times .001 = 0.3 degrees K = maximum climate change from solar variance. Climate change = 1.4 degrees K so far.
1.4>0.3
The sun isn’t doing it.
Woops! GW so far is 0.8 K, which is still larger than 0.3 K from solar variation.
The sun isn’t doing it.
WUWT claims to be more open to dissenters, than RC and pro AGW sites, but it seems to me this is false, based on my experience. My posts are never insulting to anyone, and always factual. About 1/3 of my posts are rejected without a trace, or appear totally snipped with a nasty ad hominem comment by Mr Watts.
Contradicting the proposition that McIntyre showed conclusively that the Hockey Stick was trash, or that calls for the auditing of the Australian and New Zealand is apparently out of bounds. Also one can’t question whether the new Berkeley climate data base is really needed.
I haven’t bothered to do a survey, but it is my impression that about 5% of the posts at most dissent from Watt’s point of view. We used to see post by legitimate scientists in the past, but they have vanished in the past few months.
eadler, that’s why some are recording everything they attempt to send down there. in case there is some legal disputes with the site later on.
I am surprised when any organization attempts to use web-site hits or popularity polls to justify the validity of their content. I suppose these statistics would be of some value to people wishing to advertise on a high-hit site. On a related note, I still wonder who buys those super-market tabloids still spinning tails about: UFOs, Loch Ness Monster, Abominable Snowman, etc. Let’s hope we never learn the popularity stats of those publications then start taking that stuff seriously :-)