![Whambulance[1]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/whambulance1.gif?resize=300%2C300)
WUWT readers may recall that this blog and other popular skeptic blogs are in the running for the 2013 Bloggies in the Science category, as detailed here. Also, for the first time, the website “Skeptical Science” (operated by John Cook of Australia) was in the running, which is a measure of how much penetration they’ve made despite their very low traffic rankings.
I’ve been alerted to a hilarious change in the 2013 Bloggies contest status of SkS by a reader.
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Leo Hickman has a blog posting in the Guardian today about the ‘climate sceptics’ (whatever that is) ‘capturing’ the science and technology category. It reads like sour grapes.
There is this tidbit at the end of the article-
“Reflecting such concern, I have learned that Skeptical Science, who have never lobbied to be nominated and are the only non-climate sceptic blog on the Science shortlist, has now asked to be withdrawn from the shortlist due to its concerns about the legitimacy of the voting process.”
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LOL! Confirmed, see the center – “withdrawn by request” in this screencap today:
I suppose Mr. Cook also doesn’t support the democratic election process, where candidates put up signs, billboards, make radio and TV news appearances, make speeches, run newspaper and magazine advertisements, etc. all in the “vote for me” effort. It works for our USA political system, it works similarly in Australia, where Mr. Cook lives.
How odd that Mr. Cook thinks there’s a legitimacy issue here, when it simply models the Democratic political system of voting. The way the Bloggies system is setup, there’s one vote per email, and the user has to be real and answer the email for the vote to be legitimately recorded. Here are the rules:
- Any pages with dated entries that existed at some point during the year 2012 are eligible.
- Only one nomination ballot and one finalist ballot may be submitted per person.
- E-mail addresses are required to vote. You must use your own address and confirm the verification e-mail.
- If you verify a second ballot, your first one will be replaced.
- In the nomination phase:
- URLs are required.
- Your ballot must contain at least three unique nominees.
- Weblogs may be nominated for multiple categories.
- Nominees must suit the category they are placed in.
- Weblogs may win a category over multiple years a maximum of three times.
Source: http://2013.bloggi.es/#rules
If Mr. Cook can point out anywhere WUWT or any of the other contestants have violated the rules, now is the time to do so.
The Bloggies has over a decade of experience in dealing with vote stuffing, and they have a good system to prevent it. Even the bots Mr. Cook has designed (that make fake comments in response to other commenters) would likely not be able to make a dent in vote totals, Apparently, even the American Geophysical Union thinks Cooks’s bots making fake comments are an OK thing.
Climate-change deniers have nowhere to hide thanks to an ingenious piece of software that detects inaccurate statements on global warming that appear on the internet and delivers an automated response on Twitter citing peer- reviewed scientific evidence.
The so-called „Twitter-bot‟ is the brainchild of Australian webmaster John Cook and software developer Nigel Leck, and is part of an armoury of tools Cook has developed to rebut common myths and inaccuracies about climate change.
Source: AGU: http://blogs.agu.org/wildwildscience/2011/09/08/john-cook-at-skeptical-science-wins-eureka-prize/
Hickman in his article points out that
The system prevents scripts and voting multiple times. The e-mail verification is the first step, and any ballots that look like they might have been automated or collaborated are flagged for me to review manually. Most climate sceptic blog fans do follow the rules.
The Bloggies proprietor, Nikolai Nolan said in the Hickman interview:
I’m considering various resolutions. But it seems that science blogs would rather complain about the results than try to submit nominations themselves, so I’m not very motivated. No point in eliminating sceptic blogs from the category when there’s not much down the list to replace it with. I also need to keep in mind that fixing the Best Science or Technology category might cause climate sceptic blogs to migrate to another category.
Or, maybe, Mr. Cook thinks there is a conspiracy to win. After all, he and his psych sidekick Dr. Stephan Levandowsky are big on conspiracy theory studies as a tool to smear skeptics, quite certain that climate skeptics are mentally aberrant, even though they never gave the readers of this blog a chance to vote in their horridly self serving and skewed survey. Given that, I think a case could easily be made for psychological projection in Cook’s thinking. That flawed sampling of actual skeptic websites could be why Lewandowsky’s paper was recently pulled from publication by the scientific journal.
But I think that Mr. Cook realized that given his low numbers compared to WUWT and the other highly trafficked blogs, he just didn’t have a fighting chance, much like some candidates in a political election just don’t get penetration with the electorate. So, instead, he did the one thing he could do; he took his ball and went home, while complaining about “legitimacy” of the process without even trying himself.
I think his intent was to poison the results with his claims of “legitimacy”, even though it is just like any political election, and like any political election, there are checks in place to prevent vote stuffing. I predict that whoever wins the category, Cook and Lewandowsy will try to turn the award into some sort of political tool under the guise of science, just as they did with their bizarre “Moon Landing” paper that sampled Climate alarmist blogs, but not climate skeptic blogs, and the most visible skeptic blog, WUWT, was purposely excluded, because, in my opinion, they didn’t want that large sample, as it wouldn’t have given them answer they wanted.
But, this behavior is pretty much par for the course given the juvenile antics we’ve seen from the cartoonist turned conspiracy theory publisher and the whole crew at SkS, who have some pretty disturbing things to say.
Here is Glenn Tamblyn (Skeptical Science author/moderator) secretly conversing with his SkS pals on their off limits forum (which either got hacked or was left open by their own incompetence) and saying “we need a conspiracy to save humanity”. The Viet Cong comparison is a nice touch too. There’s talk of convening a “war council” too.
And this isn’t about science or personal careers and reputations any more. This is a fight for survival. Our civilisations survival. .. We need our own anonymous (or not so anonymous) donors, our own think tanks…. Our Monckton’s … Our assassins.
Anyone got Bill Gates’ private number, Warren Buffett, Richard Branson? Our ‘side’ has got to get professional, ASAP. We don’t need to blog. We need to network. Every single blog, organisation, movement is like a platoon in an army. ..This has a lot of similarities to the Vietnam War….And the skeptics are the Viet Cong… Not fighting like ‘Gentlemen’ at all. And the mainstream guys like Gleick don’t know how to deal with this. Queensberry Rules rather than biting and gouging.
..So, either Mother Nature deigns to give the world a terrifying wake up call. Or people like us have to build the greatest guerilla force in human history. Now. Because time is up…Someone needs to convene a council of war of the major environmental movements, blogs, institutes etc. In a smoke filled room (OK, an incense filled room) we need a conspiracy to save humanity.
[As quoted by Geoff Chambers in this Bishop Hill thread. http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2012/3/26/opengate-josh-158.html?currentPage=2#comments ]
Yes, I think we are dealing with Psychological projection on the part of Mr. Cook and SkS here, either that, or pure tribalism, where Mr. Cook couldn’t even stand to be in the same contest with climate skeptics.
Wow, what a coward. He knew he was going to get creamed.
Do this and Mr. Cook and all the GRANT chasers at our Universities, National research labs, NOAA, NASA, and the rest will be out of business as DC will have no money to give them.
http://articlevprojecttorestoreliberty.com/activity-page.html
Bots, no kidding! I can’t wait to play with one! Do they try to pass themselves off as humans, are they any good at it? LMAO that’s too funny!
Recursive fury, Twitter-bots, the Skeptical Viet Cong… ~sigh~ What will that mad genius come up with next? :>
Wow. Sour grapes indeed. I almost laughed myself right off mychair when Mr. Tamblyn went into his little manifesto about the treachery of us skeptics. He should investigate the folkson his side of the equation- the political left are the ones that have made that behaviour the SOP for their political opponents. They are the charachter assasins. Another case of pointing the finger when reality is that, they are the scoundrels. One day they are going to realize how wrong they have been and I hope the bitter pill is not too big for them to swallow. Or perhaps, more likely, they will never realize, sheep to the slaughter and all…
I will be voting for WUWT, although I certainly recommend JoNova andTallBloke when someone asks me for a good reference site to learn about the charade of CAGW.
Don’t you know that in the leftie world-view, denying them the chance to cheat is the same as cheating.
Ignorance runs amok at Schleptical Science. Remarkable.
Obviously Cook can not cope with reality unless it’s made up by someone like Levandowsky!
Much as you raise some valid points, Anthony, I think you’re reading too much into their motives.
On the basis that simple is usually better, I’d be inclined to put it down to the simple cowardice of the bully. If they can’t control it, they run away from it.
If the Bad Guys have got a Hot Bot, can’t the Good Guys create a Skep Bot?
I wonder if liberals’ constant complaints about how money is ‘corrupting’ the political process isn’t just a reflection of their distaste of having democracy sullied by all the proles having the same vote that they and their enlightened friends have. It just isn’t fair that someone who doesn’t agree with them should have the same rights. “Some animals are more equal than others.”
Perhaps Cook realizes that SkS is not a Science or Technology Weblog and he is using the “legitimacy” excuse to avoid having to admit that his blog is really a Fantasy/Conspiracy Weblog.
oldfossil says:
March 1, 2013 at 1:05 pm
If the Bad Guys have got a Hot Bot, can’t the Good Guys create a Skep Bot?
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I know! Just imagine it! It’ll be like Core Wars again, over the net!
I’m sorry, I’m still geeking out about this. Bots to spread the alarmist message…
If the rules are not, vote early, vote often and have the voting machine flip your opponents votes into support votes, then our friends do not want to play.
Hard to fake your support under normal rules.
Most Australian academics such as Cook are really disappointing. Many are second rate workers imported from USA,Canada, Britain, Ireland, Western and Eastern Europe where they have not been very successful.This explains the Lewandoskwis, Flanneries, Cooks ect, In fact Australian Higher Education is very poor with very few of their Universities now having any decent rankings. They used to quite good before Keating took over in the 80’s
They should still post the vote totals at the time of the SKS withdrawal just for reference.
Bwah, ha, haaaaaa! Chicken. Buck, buck, buwaaaack.
When you can’t successfully attack your opponents evidence, you attack the man…Well done John Cook. (sarcasm)
Its what happens when Cartoonists dabble in fields of science they know absolutely nothing about.
More like Simon Sheik of “Getup” refused to get involved to boost Cook’s tally, lest it reveal Getup’s own bot driven inflation of membership BEFORE the coming election in Australia. These guys live in their own self deluded power crafting worlds, backed by the worlds worst psychologist, or wacky tobaccy take your pick.
“We had to destroy the award in order to save it.”
I’m sorry. In the last blog entry about this subject, I jokingly said that I voted twice. Even though I put “just kidding” at the end, John Cook must have read it and thought I wasn’t joking. And then he thought that since I voted twice others must have as well and so the whole process is not legitimate.
…
Oh course, I am still joking. I doubt John Cook even read my post and if he did, I doubt he thought my post was serious. More than likely he knew he would be destroyed in the voting process. So instead of letting the situation play out, he attempts to change the narrative to make himself the victim. Also, I think this is his juvenile way of protesting. A skeptic blog will win the science award, which it would have done regardless of SkS was in there or not. In John Cook’s mind, these are not science blogs. So he doesn’t want anyone to be able to say “a skeptic blog beat yours in the science category”. I think he is protesting the Bloggies inclusion of what he considers anti-science in the science category. These sites are not anti-science, of course.
Hey, even when afforded the substantial advantage of competing against 4 skeptic sites where the skeptic vote is sure to be split four ways, Mr. Cook chickens out and goes home. And to think that even had SKS not won, it might of beaten out a skeptic site or two.
As for Cook’s pal Tamblynn saying:
“Not fighting like ‘Gentlemen’ at all. And the mainstream guys like Gleick don’t know how to deal with this. Queensberry Rules rather than biting and gouging.”
Since when do Gleick’s wire fraud and the Queensberry Rules equate?
Note sure why a web blog with very low traffic would be entered into such a contest anyway. But it does leave a clean sweep of skeptical global warming web-sites and that says a lot in 2013 about where this charade is going (and who the champions against it have been). Good luck WUWT.
Anthony writes: “How odd that Mr. Cook thinks there’s a legitimacy issue here, when it simply models the Democratic political system of voting.”
True, but not the whole story. In the US system we generally have two candidates from two parties competing with each other. In this case there is (was) one warmist blog vis a vis four skeptical blogs, all four of which would have (presumably) split the skeptic vote four ways. What Cook was likely afraid of was coming in last, even if he was the only warmist candidate on that ballot. That would have been true humiliation yet more evidence that the so-called “consensus” is not all it’s cracked up to be.
He probably withdrew because he knew he had been put in the wrong category and hadn’t a chance of winning. If he’d been in the correct category – religion – he’d have won easily.
It’s very unfair for you to criticise the cartoonist Cook in this regard Anthony.
He’s entitled to feel aggrieved that nobody believes in his stupid crap.
I loved: “This has a lot of similarities to the Vietnam War….And the skeptics are the Viet Cong… Not fighting like ‘Gentlemen’ at all.”
I still remember the anti-war demonstrations of my college days,
“Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Min,
Viet-Cong are gonna win”
Guess who would have been leading the chants, Mr Cook and his friends with red bandanas on their heads and waving the Viet-Cong flag.
One of the reasons for the rise of the sceptic blogs is because Warmist sites like Guardian CIF cleanse sceptical comments and ban (remove accounts) from sceptics. It’s happened to me many times. A few years ago the climate CIF was lively and open, but today it is an echo chamber. Then they wonder why sceptic blogs dominate. Duh! or is it Doh!
It’s good to see Leo Hickman (Guardian piece writer) is paying attention. If you are reading this Leo your hidden agenda is doomed. The Guardian circulation is down the toilet. You will soon need to look for a worthwhile and honest job instead of spreading misinformation and propaganda. Monbiot will be close behind.
A very powerful rolling from top to bottom getting bigger as it goes like a snowball SMACKDOWN! Love it. Very much.
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/cook
cook, v.tr.
3. To alter or falsify so as to make a more favorable impression; doctor: e.g., “…disreputable accountants who were paid to cook the firm’s books.”
Really funny to see the SS crew wooing Warren Buffett. His BNSF trains are transporting the oil from the Bakken that otherwise would have gone through the Keystone XL pipeline that the useless idiots he funds helped block construction of.
Ask a greenie if they prefer an oil pipeline leak or an oil train derailment. If they say derailment they’re funded by Buffett.
“..So, either Mother Nature deigns to give the world a terrifying wake up call. Or people like us have to build the greatest guerilla force in human history. Now. Because time is up…Someone needs to convene a council of war of the major environmental movements, blogs, institutes etc. In a smoke filled room (OK, an incense filled room) we need a conspiracy to save humanity.”
Paranoia? Time is up alright, the temperature has stopped going up now, too.
This is not funny. Are the Glenn Tamblyn (Skeptical Science author/moderator) comments real? They meet the criteria for a terrorist organization.
http://www.nctc.gov/site/other/definitions.html
http://www.fbi.gov/albuquerque/about-us/what-we-investigate
He is often referred to as juvenile but I think Cook’s development was arrested at an earlier stage. His behaviour is much more in keeping with that of a precocious ten year old.
A sore loser even before the game started, his little chubby face all hot and huffy at the terrible injustice of it all!
What a treat.
To add injury to insult (or is it the other way around?)
Sun News BREAKING: US State Department has approved the Keystone XL pipeline plan as being environmentally sound.
http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/archives/free-ethical-oi-23.html
It’s sooooooooo ironic that Warmists accuse us of being anti-science / anti-climate and yet the “Best Science or Technology Weblog” is dominated by………….Skeptics. That is quite an achievement. Now, Skeptical Science pulls out. I wonder why? We have divide and rule and yet they pull out. There is a consensus and skeptics are a small, maverick rump with no kudos, it would have been a walkover. He, he.
Shrewd. Bloggers can now claim, when WUWT invariably wins, that “only denier blogs were even on the ballot”. Very shrewd.
I decided a month or so ago to only call the site ‘Cook’s blog’ because its official name is misleading, to say the least. No sense in helping Cook’s deception.
John
This Cook person needs to remember that when you point the fickle finger of fate at some body, three fingers are pointing back at you. He is the epitome of a herd follower showing fear and hatred of all things outside the herd. Basically a coward if not surrounded by the herd.
A sad indictment of much of our modern education system.
Doubtful News is also carrying the story in a particularly pro Sceptical Science piece. Apparently the those sceptical of AGW are not truly scientific and Sceptical Science is the true sceptical blog.
Cook has an article on huffpost green. The commenters are claiming the Lew paper has not been pulled.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-cook/conspiracy-theorists-respond_b_2676621.html?utm_source=Alert-blogger&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Email%2BNotifications
1) I have to chuckle that SkS is worried about the fairness of voting. Weren’t they involved in the Lewandowsky survey that permitted people to vote using proxy IPs like those from “Hide My Ass”?
2) I tried to vote 15 minutes ago. Waiting for email with link. waiting. waiting….
How long did other people’s emails take?
@Lucia, mine went to s p a m almost immediately, it you don’t find it there, try using an alternate email address to vote with.
How about we support changing the debate on the issue of C02 and AGW – to the real economy of the world – we must fix America first or none will recover and grow – America must do this project Read and learn how to Restore the engine of freedoms and capitalism . .
http://articlevprojecttorestoreliberty.com/
I was pretty disappointed to see Skepticalscience reach the nominations anyway, as in the first round I had (at someone else here’s witty suggestion) nominated it in the ‘Humorous Blog’ category.
“Climate-change deniers have nowhere to hide thanks to an ingenious piece of software that detects inaccurate statements on global warming that appear on the internet and delivers an automated response on Twitter citing peer- reviewed scientific evidence.”
A “bot” that does rebuttals? No. A “bot” that delivers boiler plate. Just what a propagandist thinks of first and foremost. If it delivered rebuttals it would have higher consciousness including scientific understanding, would it not? Cook would have invented a human consciousness. Alarmists are dumb as rocks.
As an environmental scientist, I get bombarded with pseudo science in the form of blatant global warming nonsense on a daily basis. I have turned to Wattsupwiththat. In order to see some real unembellished facts. Sure, you get some clearly biased stuff and some political commentary, but any moderately intelligent person can sort through that. On balance I’d prefer to be honestly skeptical than roll over on this one.
Magnificent post, Anthony. A really fine, fine example of writing.
mikemUK says:
March 1, 2013 at 3:01 pm
Good choice. I wanted to nominate it in the “Best Propaganda” category along with Huff Post and some others. Maybe next year.
The Bloggies final round turned out to be the most favourable possible for SkS – four sceptic sites splitting the sceptics’ votes, one mainstream site collecting all the mainstream votes.
“Our Monckton’s”
… Maybe some English lessons …
The cowardice of bullies.
I can offer another Cook example. My book used a single image from SkS. Finally got his express written permission after several months by pointing out that he had reproduced it from UK Met without attribution and with annotations, while I would attribute it to SkS. Gladly did so, since the reason the SkS image was preferred was simple. Emphasized things even UK Met did not.
Two points.
Typical leftists do not believe in competition, everyone should get first place.
Vote stuffing, like what happens when a critical review of Michael Mann’s book shows up on Amazon? The dislike votes come out of the wood work like cockroaches when the lights go out.
“..So, either Mother Nature deigns to give the world a terrifying wake up call. Or people like us have to build the greatest guerilla [sic] force in human history. Now. Because time is up”
So if the planet doesn’t go Donkey Kong, we have to. Brilliant.
John Cook writes:
“Climate-change deniers have nowhere to hide…”
Hide? Hide?? HIDE?!?
Skeptics love nothing more than debate, because the alarmist crowd cannot explain why Planet Earth is contradicting their narrative.
So, Cook: Bring. It. ON!
– – – – – – – –
alcheson,
That is a good idea.
Anthony, what do you think about requesting The Bloggies proprietor, Nikolai Nolan, to post that info on Cook’s vote total at his withdrawal? Maybe do it when the winners are announced?
John
Keith,
The physical threats are snowballing:
The New Abolitionists: Global Warming Is The Great Moral Crisis Of Our Time
By Joe Romm on Feb 27, 2013 at 8:12 pm
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/02/27/1645971/the-new-abolitionists-global-warming-is-the-great-moral-crisis-of-our-time/
Some abolitionists were very violent and had to be suppressed by the state. I hope DHS is watching.
There is a vacancy down under for a Cook!
The last one took Harry S Truman’s advice and acted upon it!
Before I gave up on commenting on the Guardian climate CIF (after numerous bans) I realised it was best to provide only peer reviewed research. This I did. It got me banned faster, no kidding. It is they who ‘deny’ the science. Monbiot was very easy to knock down because he pulled facts right out of his asssss.
Even the concept of a ‘twitter-bot’ that responds to information one person deems to be “incorrect” reveals the depth of the anti-democratic thought processes emanating from this person. Rather than stimulate open and honest debate, and allow each contributor to make their contribution, leaving it to the readers to judge and comment, they seek to colour each comment they do not agree with…where’s the integrity in that?
Cook “cooks up” commenting bots?
I wonder if that’s one of his that’s making the rounds here on WUWT, posts as “Phobos”. Drowns out the conversation with a large quantity of comments, but quality and content of all of them are very low.
Since John Cook, SkepSci, and bots are all mentioned at once in the article, of course the bot will not comment at this one to avoid drawing suspicion.
Anthony Watts says: “@Lucia, mine went to s p a m almost immediately, it you don’t find it there, try using an alternate email address to vote with.”
I waited a day, then used the comment form on the Bloggies website to query. I got a reply that my ballot had been manually processed successfully. Using an alternate address could look suspicious.
– – – – – – –
lucia liljegren,
After you vote you see this message on The Bloggies’ web page:
So if you don’t get their confirmation email in your inbox or in your spam box in 24 hrs they say contact them.
I voted ~1 hour ago and have not received an email.
John
if the was worried about the legitimacy of the voting process.Why not withdraw days ago instead of leaving util now.SKS a bunch of cowards lead by a bully and bad loser
Looks like Revkin might have pissed off the wrong people…
NYT Green Blog canceled.
http://www.cjr.org/the_observatory/new_york_times_cancels_green_e.php
This is cool, because the only nomination with “sceptical” (or its US misspelling) in the title is that one, so his slimey two-faced scheming underhanded scummy decision to misapropriate the term in an attempt to gull people has spectacularly backfired. AGW leaning under-informed by-standers would think if the only one called “skeptical;” is out, the others must be “orthodox”, then visit to see them…exactly what he hoped to achieve by attempting to lure the sceptical-leaning under informed by-standers to his site, except he has now scored that goal for his opponents! Hilarious.
cook is a moronic shill and deserves no recognition, no discussion or even a fleeting momentary thought whatsoever…..end of…..
Those who wage the celebrity performance battle rather than science know that any survey that shows them to be a minority hurts. That’s why they pulled out.
The McKibben-ists are all image. Their “40,000” at the protest rally the other week? Hardly, but he numbers count in the face-maintaining game they play, like Gore’s robo-viewers for his second Save-the-Planet-a-Thon (dropping the unique viewer tag gave him perhaps 6X as many apparent viewers).
Too bad they couldn’t have been left in, on the basis that the Awards are about “us”, and not “them”, what WE think is important, not what they think is important.
Like an election.
John Whitman says:
“How long did other people’s emails take?”
Mine took about ten seconds.
Not to be mean or sarcastic, Anthony,but psychological projection??? Don’t you need a functionnal,EKG registering brain for this event to accour?
Just a thought. If it’s a climate reaction bot, it will have standard phrases plugged into it, even if linking into shortened twitter links? Could someone (beyond my capability, sorry) deploy one that recognises the bot, and posts an instant reposte of a boringly consistent sceptical position?
John Whitman….mine was there in my inbox before I even left Bloggies to check.
Easy to figure out what Cook’s “concerns about the legitimacy of the voting process” are. He’s afraid it will be legitimate.
I hadn’t received my email after 36 hours. Nikolai fixed my vote confirmation pronto.
Hey, I voted before sKs decided their small playgroup didn’t like open to the public sandboxes utilizing the democratic process. Does that still count as voting against sKs?
Maybe we can get a ‘before’ sKs bolted tally?
March 1, 2013 at 2:51 pm | John Whitman says:
————————-
I refer to it as the “climate comics” … multiple interpretations.
And speaking of the Bloggies, I am soooooooo upset,mad,angry, and other socially unacceptable feelngs that Small Dead Animals can’t be in the running.(Okay,so she won a few) .Know I will be a good little Canuck,and apoligize for the above(NOT). My patriotism won’t let me. And go Anthony! See,you can be a patriot for more then one,heh.
Cook has a sad habit of deleting any sort of statement he doesn’t agree with. This is just another attempt to delete the statement made by the results. He knows darn well that the results would show that his posterior got booted.
Mine has not arrived after many days.
[Reply: If you email them on the form provided they will fix it. — mod.]
I still remember the anti-war demonstrations of my college days,
“Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Min,
Viet-Cong are gonna win”
To which I reply (in defense of LBJ):
Jacques! Jacques! Jacques Chirac!
How many kids did you starve in Iraq?
John Cook is known as the feeble minded gasbag who runs the “unreliable” site SkS which has to flee from fair competition with critics. He masters propaganda techniques and flees from any situation which does not allow him to employ his own propaganda.
In addition to the vile project of the SkS spam-bot, there is the vile project between SkS and Al Gore’s “Reality Drop” to bombard media sites with spammy links. Even this highly sympathetic account wonders whether the spam-hordes approach of getting no-nothing humans to “Reality Drop” (sic) links without understanding or intelligent discussion is really good for their CAUSE:
John Cook chickens out for the same reason that climate alarmists run and hide out from any fair, moderated debates: on a level playing field they always lose.
Now this may sound strange coming from me, a person who has long term contempt for Cook’s Blog. I think it is anti-integrity and has hostility toward open and clear dialog in the scientific pursuit of climate knowledge.
But after I saw John Cook and several of his associates speak at the 2012 AGU Fall Meeting in SF, I had just one thought. Pity. I was embarrassed for them and him in particular.
Has anyone else had this kind of reaction to seeing them live and in action?
John
Go Home says:
March 1, 2013 at 3:11 pm
Two points.
Typical leftists do not believe in competition, everyone should get first place.
_________________
And in reality they all end up in last place.
This doesn’t seem to cause any cognitive dissonance with our friends. Oh the ironing.
Eliza says:
March 1, 2013 at 1:18 pm
“Most Australian academics such as Cook are really disappointing. Many are second rate workers imported from USA,Canada, Britain, Ireland, Western and Eastern Europe where they have not been very successful.This explains the Lewandoskwis, Flanneries, Cooks ect, In fact Australian Higher Education is very poor with very few of their Universities now having any decent rankings. They used to quite good before Keating took over in the 80′s”
Good point. I always wondered where those failures went. Thanks for the update from the front line.
Jeez, a man who can support the polling methods and subsequent conclusion drawing of Lewandowsky should be able to support damn near ANYTHING!
John, here’s what you do to show the world your inner Lewandowsky. Make your right hand into a fist. Now extend the index finger straight out. Now extend the thumb in the perpendicular. Hold hand against forehead. See, you’re making an ‘L’ for the world to see. Now take a picture. Post it on facebook. Tweet a link to the picture. Finally, go home and brag about your bold picture, add a few snarky statements about deniers, morons, and WUWT on your blog. That’ll show ’em.
How did SkS get to be in the running in the first place? It doesn’t make sense to me, I thought they had to be nominated enopugh to be in the top five – what happened to all the OTHER science blogs?
Bots. Can bots bump up the nominations??? We know that SkS has low stats, and we know Cook has bots. Does bots = nominations??? Just asking.
FergalR says:
March 1, 2013 at 2:14 pm
“It’s very unfair for you to criticise the cartoonist Cook in this regard Anthony.
He’s entitled to feel aggrieved that nobody believes in his stupid crap.”
No, he’s a typical Aussie. Throws a tantrum every time he loses because the other side cheated.
It all goes back to a team lead by one Douglas Jardine in 1932. (I know the American readers will not understand this, but the Auddies and the Brits will!!
Mr. Crook, er, Kook, I mean Cook, does not like the rules no more!
lucia liljegren (@lucialiljegren) says:
March 1, 2013 at 2:58 pm
…I tried to vote 15 minutes ago. Waiting for email with link. waiting. waiting….
How long did other people’s emails take?
*
Mine took several hours. In fact, I gave up checking for it after about 3 hours but it was there when I checked again next morning. I’m in Australia, that shouldn’t make any difference, but it may have.
“And the skeptics are the Viet Cong” – The alarmists are aware that the VC won aren’t they?
That is one very strange but weirdly accurate way to look at it.
So let me get this straight. A small bunch of scientifically illiterate Climate Change Ds who are the modern equivalent of the flat earth society who are up against 97% of the worlds scientists are somehow outvoting them! I think if they want to get a convincing idea of who is popular in the blogosphere, you can look at the traffic. Indeed, someone with as little traffic as SkS is highly suspect to be on the list at all. Especially since the people and associates who run their blog have been engaged in psychological warfare, conspiracy, dishonesty and manufacturing statistical data for a scientific journal – they’ve had more experience at dishonest tricks than the others on the ballots. I’m pleased that such an organization can’t muster the support to get on the board despite sympathetic support of the AGW activists. Hmm it would seem that their numbers have dwindled considerably in recent years.
The only way that Skeptical Science could win the Best Science Blog award would be if all the other sceptic blogs were removed from contention after having won lifetime achievement awards for winning three times.
DCA says:
March 1, 2013 at 2:55 pm
“Cook has an article on huffpost green. The commenters are claiming the Lew paper has not been pulled.”
Good work Cook/HuffPo. I want the Lew paper to get maximum publicity. If enough Americans read the Lew paper, it alone could end the CAGW scam now and forever.
And – speaking of Skeptical Science traffic – I bet they would be annoyed and surprised at how much of their traffic is generated by the occasional actual skeptic (and by definition any actual person with a scientific approach to the acquisition of knowledge is by nature a skeptic) that wanders over for entertainment purposes.
I know I did it ONE time.
What a deceptive name along with deceptive posts. It was entertaining during my about hour long single time visit. It was very refreshing to return to the actual scientifically oriented sites that allow a much more open and free flow of information.
On a side note, when I voted the confirmation email was received immediately but it was in my gmail spam folder. If someone’s email is automatically deleting spam, this could be the reason they never see the automated voting confirmation response.
My gmail on my thunderbird email client side does not see spam. I have to pop to the web based email to see my rolling 30 days of spam. So when I read about the voting procedures, I went right away to my web mail client instead of thunderbird to look for it and there it was.
Just one other thought – that earth changing event to break everything loose is going to happen and that’s an end to the stable temps and an actual decline. As we go off from the solar max we might indeed see some world wide cooling. Not the earth changing event they are dreaming about.
Might be a good time to invest in some mental institutional stock because this will drive them truly nuts.
Or, they’ll just change the rules and blame man for the dangerous cooling like was happening in the 70s!
Cook withdrew Skeptical Science not because he was afraid of losing — but because he was afraid of coming in dead last — with a huge separation between Skeptical Science and the fourth place finisher.
Eugene WR Gallun
I got ridiculed at Sks for posting the comment that interglacial periods were warmer than glacial periods and the evidence suggests the current interglacial is the coldest of the last 4 or 5. I got banned and I’ve never been back to that, comic (IMHO), site.
David Jones “No, he’s a typical Aussie. Throws a tantrum every time he loses because the other side cheated.”
It all goes back to a team lead by one Douglas Jardine in 1932.”
Fair suck of the sav David. Typical Aussies do not throw tantrums. I expect our Labor (yes the lefties spell their party without a ‘u’!) PM to throw a beauty in September, but she is not a typical Aussie.
btw We treated Harold Larwood better than the poms did after 1932 – we accepted him as an immigrant: the poms wouldn’t even give him another game of cricket!
Sorry mods for being OT but some things other than false science cannot go uncorrected.
I wonder, could one of Cook’s bot programs have gotten his site nominated in the first place?
“Rod says:
March 1, 2013 at 9:13 pm”
I am so looking forward to September. Because I am not a citizen of Aus yet, I have not been able to vote (The Govn’t still take my tax dollars tho). This year, that all changes. Incidentally, our (Worst?) PM, Ms. Gillard, was originally from Barry, in Wales, UK. Barry Island is where old boilers (Locomotives) go to get scrapped.
SKS = “Sore Loser”. How pathetic! Only useful idiots go there.
Make sure you vote for WUWT.
Anthony Scalzi says:
March 1, 2013 at 8:16 pm
“…The only way that Skeptical Science could win the Best Science Blog award would be if all the other sceptic blogs were removed from contention after having won lifetime achievement awards for winning three times…”
Maybe that’s their intent – have their “followers” shift their votes to WUWT, giving Anthony his third win (and removing him from future contention).
Then they think they can run the field for a few years.
Actually, the rules DO stink.
The best is the best, not the best of those who weren’t best for three years.
The three year rule should be abolished.
And Patrick enjoy Australia. A pom I once worked with assured me that it is the best place in the world.
..So, either Mother Nature deigns to give the world a terrifying wake up call. Or people like us have to build the greatest guerilla force in human history. Now. Because time is up…Someone needs to convene a council of war of the major environmental movements, blogs, institutes etc. In a smoke filled room (OK, an incense filled room) we need a conspiracy to save humanity.
Or instead, we could just let the scientific process work. But admittedly that does lack the drama of a bat-sh_t crazy Alarmist comparing this to Vietnam.
TRM March 1 2013 at 7.32 pm
TRM says’ and the skeptics are the Viet Cong The Alarmists are aware that the Viet Cong won aren’t they?’
Actually the leadership of the Viet Cong were shot when the North took over.I am not sure that the Alarmist’s are all that aware.It however does not auger well for them if they blindly follow.
Tram says…Thanks Tram ‘Up the Aussies, Oi Oi Oi.’
Just because Professor Flannery is misguided about climate does not make him an incompetent.He may well be a good and dedicated evolutionary biologist.
Australia has a far more effective climate skeptic population than Europe or the USA, judging by the way the political debate has sharply turned.It was Professor Plimer’s book that I waded through that opened my eyes to the Paleoclimate,the probability that the climate was undergoing warming, as was that of all the planets,and that CO2 measurement , temperature measurement and predictive models must be continually looked at for bias.
This book is full of annoying errors of editing which would be apparent to anyone.
Despite this when I read the scientific rebuttal given by a leading Australian academic, it mainly pointed to the editing mistakes,not the substance of debate.
At this point I realized that there was no proper debate in Australia and the ‘debate’ was ideological.
The debate has been focused in the media and won by talkback radio, where the ruling coalition
of ALP Green refuses to appear.
This has been apparent where commuters stuck in long lines of traffic listen to Monkton, Plimer and others explain the science and politics on radio.
Australia has been a refreshing place to be a part of.
I do not want in any way to burden you all with our almost eight month election campaign.
Everyone is just waiting to vote out this dysfunctional government.People have stopped talking about politics in private conversation, its got so bad.
This is the same Mr. Cook ‘that had no issues with ‘gaming ‘ Amazon book reviews and changing others peoples word to make them fit his view on SS. So he has zero right to any moral high ground .
The good news is while AGW proponents are wasting all their time and effort looking for ‘conspiracy’ they are failing to notice way it is ‘the cause ‘ is turning the public off , so are unlikely to do anything about it .
My observation of people;
– Liars think most people lie
– Honest people think most people are honest
– Thieves think most people steal
– Trusting people think most people trustworthy
– etc
Think about what you say and do, and don’t be surprised that Cook thinks what he thinks
Cook’s losing it in more ways than one and it sounds like he is fit to be tied. These types are unhinged and easily trounced in discussions since their premise for most of their jive is based on alarmist, fantasized pseudo-science and psychobabble. A local city paper used to have many articles about global warming and green fanasty-based new world Utopian drivel. Over the last few years many commenters at the city paper’s online forums have soundly countered the global warming lies and eco-lies with facts and reasoned arguments and cited peer-reviewed research.
People like Cook have no reasoned or rational arguments [bots or no bots] and fall on their faces when confronted. They become irrational, attack skeptical commenters and fall apart. The city paper has gone from constant global warming, eco-end of world alarmism to almost no articles anymore. The few that have appeared recently have actually begun to have some merit and balance. Surprise, surprise! Alarmists acting like spoiled, petulant children just don’t stand a chance when their balloons are popped just as fast as they’re raised and others grow weary of the hype and game. I’ve been accused of being a [bot] at that site once or twice and regard that as a sign of their desperation.
Eliza said: “In fact Australian Higher Education is very poor with very few of their Universities now having any decent rankings. ”
In fact with a population of about 20 million, Australia in 2012 has 7 positions in the world wide top 100 university ranking : ( http://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings/world-university-rankings ), representing almost all of the major universities likely to be offering sufficiently wide a range of courses at both the teaching and research levels to even have a chance at ranking. With one third of one percent of the world’s population Australia represents 7% of the 100 best universities, starting at number 24.
Look in a wide range of fields and you will find Australian scientists contributing the fundamental research on which entire disciplines are later built – wi-fi, penicilin, smart plastics, gene-shears, silex, X-ray crystallography; to name just a few. Australia is notoriously poor at translating its pure research into applied products, tending instead to sell it or give it away to the US or UK where they later pretend to have invented it. There are, however, many items on which many depend that are completely Australian inventoions : bionic-ear, combine-havester, electronic pacemaker, black-box flight recorder, self-constructing tower crane, etc. – oh, and google maps.
I could go on but I think you get the drift. While there are some ratbags in Australian Academia, by far the majority of scientitists and engineers, at least, are of an outstanding standard, and the country’s universities punch considerably above their weight.
I think your comment is not supported by the facts.
Regards
Darkstone
I’m not sure if Cook and his stable of creative writers were on the scene three years ago – but, if they were, they certainly didn’t register on the Webbie monitor.
There was a (big fail of)
campaigndiscussion via Facebook to get both WUWT and CA disqualified from the categories in which they’d been nominated.I’d like to provide a source for the above “discussion”. Well, actually, I can: http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=185779101778&topic=11095 But, unfortunately what worked then does not work now on FB. However, the remnants that I happened to capture at the time can be found at:
AGW alarmists: slow learners damning selves with own words
As an aside, when I had posted on this year’s skeptic sweep at Bishop Hill, one commenter had wryly noted:
But in light of deep-green-heart-on-sleeve Hickman’s considerably less than stellar record of objectivity and/or investigative skills (viz his “reporting” on Gleickgate, and his involvement/reporting in l’affaire Tallbloke), I’d much prefer to hear directly from Bloggies proprietor, Nikolai Nolan than trust anything purportedly contained in a Hickman “interview”.
Any Journo’s out there willing to find out how Cook , “Earns his daily bread?”
beesaman says:
March 1, 2013 at 1:03 pm
Obviously Cook can not cope with reality unless it’s made up by someone like Levandowsky!
Thanks beesaman, the shortest and most concise explanation.
mojo says:
March 1, 2013 at 1:35 pm
“We had to destroy the award in order to save it.”
exactly
Patrick says:
March 1, 2013 at 9:10 pm
I got ridiculed at Sks for posting the comment that interglacial periods were warmer than glacial periods and the evidence suggests the current interglacial is the coldest of the last 4 or 5. I got banned and I’ve never been back to that, comic (IMHO), site.
Guys, I like your comments. So much better to read human comments! Reading about the bots, maybe this is why arguing with an alarmist brings such illogical answers. Either they are bots or think like bots. They go round in circles.
Why they retired? They know they cannot win. Who would ever endorse that blog after having made the experience Patrick here describes?
Keeping an alarmist face without heavily moderating the blog does not seem to work.
They’ve painted themselves in the corner:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/09/25/a-modest-proposal-to-skeptical-science/
they do not realise the signs of time:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/07/13/friday-funny-bonus-the-company-you-keep/
they support a special kind of climate-olympics:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/08/10/friday-funny-climate-olympics/
they prefer to close the eyes to reality, even if we would like to help:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/09/20/not-quite-friday-funny/
they also know the state of alarm:
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2013/2/17/curtain-call-josh-204.html
we heard confessions:
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2013/2/3/zickfeld-folly-josh-199.html
green fizzics do not help, real physics do:
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2012/7/6/green-fizzics-josh-174.html
we know the evidence:
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2012/5/2/cartoon-the-cartoon-josh-164.html
we can connect the dots:
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2012/4/20/connect-the-dots-josh-163.html
fantasies are brought back to earth:
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2012/4/11/medallion-man-josh-161.html
there are good reasons to be cheerful:
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2012/4/2/optimistography-josh-159.html
so come down from your high perch:
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2012/3/26/opengate-josh-158.html
Hey it was fun to collect all these 😀 enjoy!
Check this library for Constitutional research and America History. It is large and it is free no ads, no cookies, no debate just solid sources and free books.
http://articlevprojecttorestoreliberty.com/activity-page.html
With the sceptic vote already so divide, between four excellent candidates mr Cooke must have felt that winning as the only pro CAGW nominee would be an unworthy win. Or was he just scared he couldn’t beat an already 4 way divided vote ?
Cook’s Blog is a minor part of a broad ideological movement***. His blog is, however, a simple condensed example of the movement’s failed strategies.
Cook’s blog does not allow open dialog on the fundamentally flawed IPCC assessments. That is a losing strategy. It makes them look like a scientifically isolated / closed cult.
Cook’s blog is willingly endorsing the Mann maneuver. The Mann maneuver is to consider critics of alarming AGW by CO2 as enemies of science and bad people. Mann has imagined there is a plot against him as a supporter of alarming AGW by CO2. {his book is proof of him thinking that, read it} The Mann Maneuver is perceived by a neutral observer as paranoia. Bad strategy of Cook to endorse the Mann maneuver, its kooky.
Cook’s blog thinks the most essential scientific dialog on climate science is taking place in government institutions, scientific associations and academia. It is using those as authority in support of a conclusion of alarming AGW by CO2. That strategy is not based on what science has as its primary root; science evolves from original thought by an individual. It cannot be controlled by government, scientific associations and academia; therefore they lack the ability to keep control of their message of alarming AGW by CO2; individuals thwart them consistently. Individual based scientific resistance to ‘authoritative’ views of science is not futile! ¡Viva!
Cook’s blog, finally, lacks a benevolent sense of human nature. His blog comes across as malevolent. I think they subconsciously choose that as a strategic means to scare people into action. That restricts the blog to viewers out of touch with both the wonders of the novel developing scientific possibilities and the joys of human nature. Cook’s blog is now viewed as a bunch of reactionaries defending doom.
*** the broad ideological movement is a modern variant of the result of Platonic/Kantian elements of dual reality and dual epistemology. : ) discuss that at another time.
John
Last year SKS insiders forum talked about this too. They hoped to make it to the final 5. They also thought that “with so many d***** blogs on that list, they would split the d******* vote. And that would be an advantage to SKS.
They also discussed a boycott and asking the competition to rename it to “most popular” instead of “best”: “If we do make the list, perhaps we could ask them to rename the award accordingly, or that our name be withdrawn from consideration. It’s not much skin off our back because WUWT has so many readers, it’s probably going to win again anyway, as sickening as that is.”
Vote for WUWT… vote often!!! Oh, wait…
Whenever Glenn Beck releases a new book, it rockets to #1. So often so, that the NY Times bloggers pushed to put him and other popular conservative writers in a category all their own, and to remove them from the overall #1 listings. It was embarrassing to their progressive friends.
I have so far made three atttempts to vote but have yet to receive a confirmation email.
Read all about Mr Cook and the glorious Amazon reviews for Michael Mann,
http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2012/9/7/michael-mann-and-skepticalscience-well-orchestrated.html
it now sounds as if Amazon.com could go live w/ kindle version as soon as Jan 31st, so Amazon reviewers should be lined up and ready to go then if at all possible. WIll provide any further updates when I have more info. My publisher is urging reviewer-writers not to write blog reviews then (they have a later rollout schedule in mind for blog reviews), but it is ok to submit Amazon reviews then—and as we know, it will be important to do this quickly once Amazon opens their reviews to offset efforts of deniers. Again, its (sic) looking like this will be *Jan 31st* and we should operate under that assumption!
I have not received the email, and the first three captchas were unreadable. I give up.
[Reply: Never give up! ~ mod.]
Recently while not feeling well and waiting to go into hospital I strayed on to http://climatecrocks.com/. Well they keep sending me emails promoting their latet posting and I did have nothing better to do and the site was not what you would call intellectually challenging. After you read your way through yet another posting predicting the end of the world by Tursday week it was obvious what their consensus view was, if we can’t persuade people we are always right we will force them by any means to tow the line, i.e. extreme eco-fascist. They love SkS, wikipedia and even Al Gore (see the latest post, well actually don’t it’s too silly). So not are these guys dangerously dillusional, but just plain dangerous. I have a vision of them siting around a windmill somewhere in oregon, cleaning their assult weapons and planning to make Al Gore the king of the universe. Fortunately they are just a few, their site has little traffic and from now on even less as I will not be going there.
Anthony doesn’t need bots to vote. Or even individuals to vote more than once. The readership of WUWT is, IIRC, orders of magnitude larger than that of SkS.
Here’s an interesting coincidence.
Up until just a day or so ago the Internet Archive Wayback Machine
http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.skepticalscience.com/
had links to Skeptical Science for February 2013. Now they are gone.
SkS suffers so badly from a syndrome named for them.
Skeptical Science Syndrome. The syndrome results in ignoring empirical data in favor of modeled data.
Climate models, in a scientific venue, are used to tease out potential variations IF CO2 changes. The parameters are static in those models.
When a normal Chaotic event happens, the models have no way of dealing with such.
Mr. Cooks site is a political site. It is most definitely NOT a science site. One could go there for a daily does of politics if one was inclined. However, one would never go there for scientific information.
I am sure Mr. Cook asked his site to be taken out of the running was because it was put in the wrong category. He knows that it is a political site, and by having it removed is only being honest about it.
These catastrophists are a very weird bunch.
On reading the Guardian article, did Cook ask to go or did the Bloggies ask them to shove off?
The money quote was ,”this year one of them used a bunch of disposable email addresses to nominate themselves” most sites have played by the rules,one did not.
Possible that this fits the MO of the fake sceptics at SS?
I refuse to use SkS,for these people, that defiles a perfectly useful tool.
Three days after voting, I got my email confirmation this morning from Nikolai Nolan himself, after emailing an inquiry about the lack of it. Could be his system is overwhelmed with responses…
Quite right, Eliza. Australian academics like Cook, Flannery and Lewandowsky are just rent-seekers. Many Universities are now full of unsuccessful second-raters from overseas sources. This explains why Australian Higher Education is very poor these days and that the Universities are now just diploma and degree factories. They used to quite good thirty to forty years ago. Now they are just hollow vessels sounding off.