This weblog awards contest has few people up in arms because WUWT is currently leading. Lucia points out some of the dynamics of silliness that go on related to it.
My take on it: it’s all simply fun, and the outcome affects nothing, heck there’s not even a prize except for a sidebar badge. But in the spirit of that fun, I thought I’d share some of my favs:
- Best Blog – I’m going with Huffington Post, for having the courage to run Harold Ambler’s essay on Al Gore
- Best Online Community – Our friend Jennifer Marohasy is in the running, she needs a little help
- Best Liberal Blog – I note that BigCityLib is not present, so I have no pick. Though given Wonkette’s lead, choice is irrelevant
- Best Conservative Blog – This is a tough one, as many of these have befriended WUWT. But I think I have no truer friend than Kate over at Small Dead Animals
- Best Celebrity Blogger – Hands down, Wil Wheaton, the rest are just noise
- Best Technology Blog – I like Engadget for this.
- Best European Blog – Not only for content, but for widgets, Luboš Motl and The Reference Frame
- Best Science Blog – Take your pick
Here are some categories that didn’t make it this year and my nominees:
Best tongue in cheek commenter: Steve Mosher
Best blog that is my inspiration: Steve McIntyre of Climate Audit
Best cheerleader: Gosh, there are so many. Roger Pielke Sr. has been stalwart as has been Joe D’Aleo. Evan Jones and John Goetz come to mind. So do Russ Steele and Gary Boden, and Leon B. and ‘jeez’, tough choices. But given all these choices….I think perhaps ‘smokey’ might be the winner here though.
Best angry blogger not nominated: Joe Romm of Climate Progress seems to be the clear winner, though Tamino is worthy of note
Best troll: TCO aka TCOisbanned
Best reason for me to stop blogging: my family that doesn’t get enough attention from me as it is
Best label from a detractor who is now belly up: “Reverend Anthony’s Screeching Mercury Monkeys” …from editor Tom Gascoyne of the Chico Beat, now history.
Best Silly Logo: Gary Boden’s rendition above
Best Orange Wiener Dog in a sidebar: Lucia’s the Blackboard
Your excitement shines thru your disclaimers. That’s if I translated you correctly, of course.
REPLY: I think you are confusing amusement with excitement, easily done. No Worries. – Anthony
How about “Best raving streetcorner lunatic”… that phy-atheist-weirdo guy would be my nomination, however the guy who stands on the corner near my office and yells at himself all day might be more likely to have dinner at my house.
Is there an “Arrogant SOB” award on the horizon anywhere? There are definitely some good potential nominations in the AGW world, including many defenders of the disproved theory.
Obviously, there is no such thing as “best” anything, since we all have different personalities and needs, but I’m very happy to see WUWT on top at the moment. I was dragged to church kicking and screaming for the first 16 years of my life, and I’m all full up with sermons… AGW people all remind me of traveling revivalists, town to town with a message of doom and despair, and only they have the solution to our problems…
OT, sort of…,
And, in the “another straw house gets blown over by sensible (although extremely belated) policymaking (shock horror)” category….,
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/health/article5462012.ece
We are now allowed to use mobile phones in hospitals. It has been “discovered” that they do not intefere with pacemakers, life support machines and other industrially shielded equipment.
The average Brit knew it was just lies but “What to do?”
From what I am reading over at solarcycle24 they have given a number to this new sunspot that popped up yesterday.
It doesn’t look like much of a sunspot to me, are they now giving anything no matter how small a number.
you may want to reconsider the rationale for that HuffyPo pick…
Huffington Post says skeptical article was a ‘slip-up’ – ‘Essay is gone from the site’s portal pages’
http://co2sceptics.com/news.php?id=2477
apprently the huffington post made a mistake and they state that the article was a crank and they shouldnt have posted the article apparently it is now gone!
I like the Climate Audit website, but I must admit the discussion gets a little too technical even for me and I have an engineering degree! I just don’t have the time to come up to speed with all of the terminology and statistical analysis techniques used on the site.
You think TCO is a troll? Just because he drops the “f” word in comments and/or provide tmi about his sexual preferences in comments? That makes him a troll? Who’d a thunk? 🙂
TCO left a frownie face at my blog post describing the “Troll Control” plugin I’m working on. The main functionality seem to be working. Some of the unnecessary tweaks may not be. (You can see his frownie here.
When completed, I suspect a number of bloggers using WP as a self hosted application will want to use the plugin. Oddly, sometimes just mentioning that a plugin exists enforces better behavior.
Well, it is not a surprise really. Joe Romm’s angry rant has been picked up by Grist, so it looks like we’ll have a flood of votes shortly to stamp out WUWT.
wattsupwiththat (08:27:25) :
got a link to that angry rant?
REPLY: here, cut and paste into browser:
climateprogress.org/2009/01/05/anthony-watts-up-with-that-anti-science-denier-website-weblog-awards/
Arianna Huffington herself read and accepted my article and directed her staff to post it. She was my primary, and only, contact at the Huffington Post.
I am on a very intense book deadline, but have told Arianna that I intend to respond to my detractors a couple of weeks from now.
It was difficult to see that the piece was taken down from the site when it was, by quite a margin, the most popular blogger piece at the time and also the most popular piece in the entire Green section. I suspect that Arianna received an unimaginable amount of flak, some of it from powerful people, over her decision to post the article.
I remain grateful for her courage — and encouragement.
lucia (08:22:48) :
You are nothing but a paid shill for Big Oil!
This response always cracks me up…if only it were true, the we’d at least receive a little financial benefit for engaging the eco-wacko lunatics! LOL
Best angry blogger not nominated: Joe Romm of Climate Progress seems to be the clear winner
I went there to check it out. I’m sure he did much better in the “best religious blog” category, though apparently didn’t make the top 10 there either… Maybe next year.
Interestingly enough, if you have the guts to read Joseph’s mewling and puking, he has a direct link to Harold’s article – which is still there. I suspect that the link at Huffington Post was the only thing that was removed.
Harold Ambler (08:30:51) :
Still there at huffington post:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/harold-ambler/mr-gore-apology-accepted_b_154982.html
Had to search for it on her site, but it’s there… Mike S.
Most spectacular dummy spit goes hands down to Climate Progress.
http://tinyurl.com/72etry
I suspect sour grapes is the reason for Ambler’s post being removed from Huffington’s blog. It appears WUWT is leading by quite a margin and Climate Audit is kicking RealClimate’s butt… hooray!!
Who knows, perhaps in a couple years WUWT will make it to being nominated as Best Blog!
And, as I mentioned elsewhere regarding that sunspeck…
“Leon Brozyna (03:37:46) :
The sun’s still spotless after 25 days. Last night’s sunspeck appears to have been a too short-lived event to be worthy of official notice.
In other news, I hear Hathaway has come out with a new forecast. Sure hope they can do an update on what’s now showing at SWPC’s graphs. They’re showing an embarrassing disconnect between the old forecast and the current situation.”
Yep, there is a new Hathaway prediction:
http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/images/ssn_predict_l.gif
re: that “climateprogress” link:
I will never, EVER understand how someone can be intelligent in one way, and absolutely retarded in another. Apparently, that kind of name-calling rant is what passes for “science” in their world.
Spectacular.
Yeah, I USED to believe in AGW. Yep, I did. I defended it just as strongly. Fortunately I wised up.
BEFORE voting for the Huffington post I suggest you read CO²science blog.
It seems Huffington have removed the offending article !!!!!
Don’t forget to vote today: click
I posted the following on the Climate Progress blog this morning:
You excoriate Watts as being “anti-scientific,” yet the wattsupwiththat blog site has several direct links on the side bar to fresh real data (including SOHO’s solar observatory and sea ice extent) and a resources page on the menu bar that has numerous links to official (government and academic) sites for atmospheric studies, climate anomalies data, temperature data, sea states (ENSO, PDO, etc.), solar data, weather station data, and others. This site (climateprogress) has none of that. Even links from this site to others that should have access to the raw data, don’t. For example, realclimate’s science links go to selected interpretations while skirting the original source data. Does the source data intimidate you or is it that you find these data irrelevant except through the prism of the IPCC?
While this site weighs heavily in the field of ad hominem smearing of those who raise valid and reasonable questions about the underlying basis for anthropogenic warming claims, the Watts site weighs equally as heavily on the source data and the underlying analysis of that data. On balance, I would say the Watts site does not deserve your label “anti-science.”
[Copied, no comment]
another ASS from Germany Says:
Huumh, some of my teachers may spin in their grave now.
Personally: I had:
Math: A-
Physics: A
Chemics: A
History: A
English: D (did improve that in the last 40 years)
German: B
Sports: D-
Religion: E (a born roman catholic, but was too critical, did too often
refer to historical (scientific) datas/sources, did have some ancestors in the history science).
I have to confess, I was in the AGW bloc until ‘03, but -IMHO- datas did not support it anymore, since then.
So, I am an ASS. Strange, in my job I’m – famous/feared – for my distaste for people taking assumptions w/o a good clause/good datas/good research/good science/good reason.
Hmmmm, Dear Sir, may I have the liberty to diagnose a different
syndrome?
It’s the BeAgressiveToAllWhoIgnoresMyPersonalFearsSyndrome –
or BATAWIIPF -Syndrome.
Personally, I don’t fear to be disproofed. But I can’t rule out to be wrong.
But then, let’s do it on the way of science. Not on the way to diagnose on somebody else psychic insanity. That has been done too much in history.
Science is like freedom.
You allways have to fight for both,
because they allways are inseperately.
re: Klausb (10:22:08) — oops, forgot to add source:
climateprogress.org/2009/01/05/anthony-watts-up-with-that-anti-science-denier-website-weblog-awards/#comment-26448
…the January 7th, 2009 at 1:14 pm – comment
Well Pearl and Aggie had me over looking at Climate Progress.
A more glaring example of the pot calling the kettle black I have never seen. Using actual data and application of scientific method is classidied as Anti science syndrome.
Meanwhile anyone who questions even the worst of the climate change panic mongers is dismissed as using long disproven denier talking points; I noticed however there was no mention of how any of these them were disproven. We all know of course that being disoproven to them means Tamino or someone like him said “nuh-uh”.
If there was a flat earther pseudo science catagory I think Climate Progress would have a shot
Wondering Aloud (10:41:26) :
hey now…i just asked for a link…that’s all! LOL
Best blog (OK, my favorite): http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/
Mark C: They AGW folks are shooting themselves in the foot if they call specks spots. It will end up looking like the cooling effect of decreasing solar activity is even stronger than it is !
I like Anthony’s blog a great deal but I see it more as a news blog than a science blog. However, for pioneering work his surface stations .org is far better than anything produced at realclimate.
For sheer technical/scientific excellence and totallt crucial AGW busting you cannot beat climateaudit. Sorry Anthony, but I will say that the first blog I read when I sit at my PC is yours, followed by icecap followed by co2science finishing at climateaudit because it takes me some time to get my old head around the discussions.
Keep up the good work, please
Just read Lucia’s post on the subject of the weblogs. Got quite a laugh out of those silly suggestions that were found and posted on how to cheat. Just scrubbing cookies is sooooo lame. You’ve also got to ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** and *****.
{You didn’t think I’d actually tell you how to cheat, did you?} Even a volatile ISP address won’t be enough to cut it. ’nuff said.
sorry, should be co2sceptics
It’s a shame ClimateAudit has only 11% of the vote up to now.
I was hoping substance would count for more.
stephen richards (11:26:31) :
LOL…that’s my routine as well! although i do go to CO2Science from time to time as well.
While we are on the subject of, ahem, clarity, integrity and scientific openness –
You though it was difficult to get a single employee to divulge their secrets whilst NASA were merely an arm of the Pentagon….,
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/01/05/obama_nasa_military_chumship_thoughts/
If they merge I would expect charges to be brought against anyone so much as enquiring the wrong way about records and such.
Pierre Gosselin (11:35:19) :
I think part of the issue with Climate Audit is that run-of-the-mill dolts like me have a hard time getting to the meat of what Steve is driving at a lot of the time.
=================
on the topic of anti-science…I guess anti-science is now defined as science that is based on data and observations and not irrelevant computer models!
Anthony
UAH is out on Dr Specer’s new site. It’s down to 0.18
OT
Dirk Maxeiner provided the following link:
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/kary_mullis_on_what_scientists_do.html
If you got 30 mins., worth the watch!
Jennifer Marohasy is incredible.
Educated, qualified, and not kow towing to AGW promoters.
Harold Ambler’s post at HuffPo, and the class with which he has posted here, shows better than possibly anything I have yet seen how bereft of integrity, ideas, or serious ability the AGW community has become.
And the e-mail chain that is linked off of Jennifer’s webiste, where AGW defenders directly manipulate the BBC news, should be chilling to all who care about freedom of thought.
oops sorry. 🙂
Harold Ambler (08:30:51) :
“Arianna Huffington herself read and accepted my article and directed her staff to post it. She was my primary, and only, contact at the Huffington Post”.
It’s a disgrace.
What’s happened to the fundamental right of FREEDOM OF PRESS?
So I am an ASS now? Wow, I have a title! God still loves me! Jesus rode an ass on palm Sunday!
It appears the contest organizer’s efforts to prevent ballot stuffing is so far successful… WUWT is still leading by a wide margin and Climate Audit is still kicking RealClimate’s butt… 🙂
Climate Audit has some very heavy statistics and math posts which would tend to overwhelm the non-statistical readers.
Re: “Best label from a detractor who is now belly up: “Reverend Anthony’s Screeching Mercury Monkeys” …from editor Tom Gascoyne of the Chico Beat, now history.”
Schadenfreude, as one contributor to this blog has already noted, is not a very pretty human emotion. Nevertheless, my enthusiasm over the demise of Gascoyne’s publication cannot be suppressed. I only wish I had been able to put together at least one lampooning parody of it (“The Chico Bleat”) before it sank beneath the waves.
But you can’t say Tom is down on the count. Evidently he is still toxic enough to maintain a position at KCHO, the local PBS affiliate. He is likely, and probably should be, a permanent fixture of Chico culture, if only to serve as an example.
“..I think part of the issue with Climate Audit is that run-of-the-mill dolts like me have a hard time getting to the meat of what Steve is driving at a lot of the time…”
The problem is that Steve is now doing real science at the top level, and kicking ass in conferences. But that kind of thing is deeply technical, and hard for most bloggers to understand or appreciate. You could say that he has risen above blogging…
Anthony is also doing science, but less complex and much more accessible – pictures of weather stations and pie charts are easier to understand. That’s probably why he got more starter votes – in a way it’s a comparative insult!
I think that we all feel that a vote for Anthony is also a proxy vote for Steve, but we can’t split our numbers. All the Real Climate crowd have already given up on trying to push their blog, and are advising everyone to vote for Pharyngula, purely to stop ‘the deniers’. This means that to win, we need to be better than the voters from TWO other blogs, so we really will need every point.
Spread the word!
Aargh I would bevotin’ for yer lassie, but you have not put up a photo of one of dem mermaid dugong thingies in years.
Wot a centrefold for ol tars at sea for decades.
Instead we get birdies and bloody spiders.
OOps too much rum, wrong site lol.
I think RC would win in the best Science Fiction category Blog if there was one
Yes, please vote: click
It couldn’t be easier, and you can vote once every 24 hours.
Thanks!
Ah aint nobody’s stinkin’ cheeleader
jeez aka charles the moderator
(go anthony!)
stephen richards : the UAH graph shows a down-tick but the label is+0.18. Am I missing something? e.g. brains?
Thanks
Jack
Pierre G said “It’s a shame ClimateAudit has only 11% of the vote up to now.
I was hoping substance would count for more.”
I agree, but WUWT is more readily understandable even by those of us with technical degrees.
I think the “prize” to be won in this contest is more visibility. If WUWT comes out on top, or even close, it should pull in some more readers. The more people that see the content here, the more the ranks of the skeptics will grow.
Vote early, vote often.
REPLY: Just don’t cheat, the contest rules allow voting once a day. – Anthony
philw1776 (15:17:28) :
i agree very much. i have a degree in Chemical Engineering and Climate Audit is hard for me to understand at times!
Regarding the climateprogress.org piece,
I don’t think WUWT is anti-science.
Rather, it is anti-bad-science.
The way their piece on CP reads doesn’t help their case, either. It’s like, “what? People think the science could be wrong? They think the scientific institutions could be wrong? They think the establishment could be wrong?? How ludicrous! Who are these people who could think such insane thoughts!”
It appears they lost their common sense. How could all those scientists and learned institutions possibly get it wrong? Um, human minds, faced with highly complex system, never before understood…
If all it took to solve problems was to get lots of bright minds together, form committees, gain unanimous support from institutions, make policies, and make computer models, we’d have cured cancer a long time ago.
“It seems Huffington have removed the offending article !!!!!”
Not surprising since she seemed to originally post it in an odd way. She didn’t link to it on the main page and posted it under 8 more recent articles so it would likely go unseen.
Apparently the side of her bread with the butter on it got upset.
I ain’t got a degree in nuthin’, but I understand what “statistically insignificant” means!
new nsidc report is out
http://nsidc.com/arcticseaicenews/
Hey Anthony,
Much thanks for suggesting my blog is worthy of a vote or two – and yes I am currently trailing by rather a large margin!
And, yes, if any of your readers would like to support a blog that tries to take an evidence-based approach to environmental issues in this fun popularity contest then they can vote for me here:
http://2008.weblogawards.org/polls/best-online-community/
PS Congratulations on your huge lead in the Science section – in my opinion well deserved!
Well, Anthony, you are up by over 1200 votes as of the time of this comment. I, voted for you twice now and am going to vote for Climate Audit. If it beats Pharyngula as well as Watts Up With That, the angry rants will be priceless.
Oh, and congrats Jennifer: you are now in second place. May you win as well.
You are nothing but a paid shill for Big Oil!
Well, no. But I’d like to be. Yoo-Hoo! Big Oil? Want a prime shill? I come cheap!
re: Jennifer Marohasy (17:01:49)
Thank you for nice words, you were #3 on my list.
Personally, I vote for WUWT, but too, my personal count is:
every vote for WUWT is a hidden vote for CA and a hidden vote for You.
Thank you, Jennnifer
Allways pleasant to be your
KlausB
@REPLY: Just don’t cheat, the contest rules allow voting once a day. – Anthony
I agree, you don’t need that.
KlausB – FYI Jennifer’s blog is in another category, so you need not worry about voting splits.
Here is the link to Jennifer’s category:
http://2008.weblogawards.org/polls/best-online-community/
Jennifer writes with style and moderates with grace. So give her a boost please.
– Anthony
I don’t know…that Michael Jackson fan forum is awfully tempting.
Oops, Thank you for correcting me, Anthony
Done it.
Oops again, Anthony …
Purge : done it
Replace it by: I did it
I allways have some difficulties with languages, especially when I have English in one
browser window, try to read Russian language in another – I’m not good on that –
and my youngest son is complaining to me in German, parallely.
Jennifer, the leader in your category (Strobist) is a flickr photography blog.
(off camera flash)
It probably should have been placed in the Photography Blog category.
Being the chairman of GOTDV (get out the dead vote) and DDDTV (don’t disenfranchise dead voter), I’ll make sure they will vote every day. Just like in any election.
I was reading some of the comments at RC, pardon me if I giggle at the excuses for them getting less than 5% of the vote… awwwwwwww… I’m gonna send Gavin a box of tissue.
I would like to point out that The Reference Frame (Czech Republic) is listed under, Best European Blog (Non UK). If you have a second or two and know the blog please vote here:-
http://2008.weblogawards.org/polls/best-european-blog/
For those not familiar with the blog see below.
http://motls.blogspot.com/
I encouraged Steve to come out strongly for WUWT, but he’s had the flu hence been rather quiet lately. Its all the snow he’s been shovelling since Al Gore came to Toronto.
Lubos, yer kickin; it! I put in a vote for you and for JenM.
Yes Lubos Motl’s Reference Frame is a real treat – I recommend f.ex to read one of the last posts about “Thermodynamics and Gravity” .
Especially enjoyable if you are also in the QFT (Quantum Field Theory) on top of the climate matters 🙂
Definitely excellent reads by one of the best theoretical physicists out there .
Gets my vote as well as the vote of everybody who really likes physics .
(http://motls.blogspot.com/)
To win the best conservative blog, is that supposed to be a positive achievement? Just kidding!
Though I’m a great Steve fan, and really appreciate what he was doing in those dark days when he stood ALONE for what was right against the might of the entire world’s scientific establishment (pause for Battle of Britain theme tune), I will be pushing WUWT for tactical reasons. I think that Steve has won his battle, and the work that now needs to be done is ‘mopping up’.
I will, however, switch to CA if it looks as if RC are going to beat it. That would indicate that the RC crowd have given up on pushing Pharangula(?) and gone back to the easier task of overhauling a site we are not voting for, in order to retrieve some bragging rights.
Whatever happens in this race, RC are not going to do well….
“I agree, but WUWT is more readily understandable even by those of us with technical degrees.”
And Anthony is more tolerant of warts and feral upbringing, more personable and friendly.
PearlandAggie (08:40:55) :
lucia (08:22:48) :
You are nothing but a paid shill for Big Oil!
This response always cracks me up…if only it were true, the we’d at least receive a little financial benefit for engaging the eco-wacko lunatics! LOL
It also shows little understanding of the politics of oil… the Big Oil guys are now tepidly endorsing the AGW agenda since it will force their major competitor, Big Coal, to produce the volumes of CO2 that the oil companies need to get enhanced oil recovery from old oil fields.
Nothing like getting your competitors to pay you to take a product you desperately need… Big Oil will be laughing all the way to the bank over carbon sequestration… bet they can even get carbon credits for it too!
I agree, TomVonk, and it appears that most others do, too: Lubos’ site is in the lead.
And thanx for helping out, old construction worker: (22:06:51)
It’s perfectly legitimate to vote once every 24 hours. It’s easy, too: click
Every vote for this site gets a plenary indulgence, and 100,000 free carbon offsets.
But wait, there’s more! The first 50 people who vote get 200,000 offsets. The economy is down, so we’re having a 2 for 1 sale! Operators are standing by.
Stefan (16:27:45) :
If all it took to solve problems was to get lots of bright minds together, form committees, gain unanimous support from institutions, make policies, and make computer models, we’d have cured cancer a long time ago.
Hey, it worked fine for all the financial engineering that went into mortgage derivative products!!! And now it’s working even better for the bailout!
/sarkoff>
Every vote for this site gets a plenary indulgence, and 100,000 free carbon offsets.
Alas, CarbonCreditKillers is no more…
You had to donate money to that site, but in return they would sell you Carbon DEBITS. That meant they would CUT A TREE DOWN for every 5$ or so. It’s true – they really would! Furthermore, they would cut trees down even if you didn’t pay….They are no longer on the net, but you can see their pages on the WayBack machine:
http://web.archive.org/web/20070719140340/http://www.carboncreditkillers.com/
Dodgy Geezer (02:47:15) :
I will, however, switch to CA if it looks as if RC are going to beat it. That would indicate that the RC crowd have given up on pushing Pharangula(?) and gone back to the easier task of overhauling a site we are not voting for, in order to retrieve some bragging rights.
My thinking too. I’m not usually a tactical voting kinda bloke, but since I have this many to play with…
“..I’m not usually a tactical voting kinda bloke, but since I have this many to play with…”
On a straight vote for ‘which blog does the best science?’, I would vote for Steve every time. He is doing top-level science, and deserves a Nobel for supporting the scientific principle, in my view.
But this is for ‘the best science blog’. I’m not sure what that is, but popularity probably enters into it, and then we have the tactics. If you look around, all the categories have blogs which ‘drop out’ and then ask their supporters tio vote for some other blog. It’s simple game theory applied to multiple-preference voting. The tactics can either be positive – “I’m not going to win, but my friend might..” or negative – “I’m not going to win, but I’ll sure as hell stop …”.
RC supporters are going to push Pharangula – a good anti-intelligent-design site, because it looks like having the best chance of unseating WUWT. If it falters, and another one grows, they will switch their allegiance to that. I suspect that if WUWT looks unbeatable, they will go back to voting for RC, and try to push it past CA, so I am watching for such a move, and will adopt my voting accordingly.
Fun tactics might involve RC switching back to voting RC for a while to draw people into supporting CA, then plunging on Pharangula in the last few days. It’s simple game theory.
Jennifer Marohasy (17:01:49) :
“Hey Anthony,
Much thanks for suggesting my blog is worthy of a vote or two – and yes I am currently trailing by rather a large margin!
And, yes, if any of your readers would like to support a blog that tries to take an evidence-based approach to environmental issues in this fun popularity contest then they can vote for me here:
http://2008.weblogawards.org/polls/best-online-community/
PS Congratulations on your huge lead in the Science section – in my opinion well deserved!”
Jeniffer,
I’ve visited your blog on a regular basis.
Love your work and I’m voting for you too.
Hope more WUWT readers and posters find the way to your blog and vote as well.
Keep up the good work
Anthony, gonna withdraw your vote for Huffington post. Seems she wouldn’t have posted Harold Ambler’s post. Don’t know if link will work , I’m bad with linking stuff.
http://newsbusters.org/user/26
Brent in Calgary
Arianna: Hey, sorry for publishing material that was skeptical about global warming
OT but amusing…
The ticker WTS brings up Watts Industries, Inc
They are a maker of valves, water control systems, filtration and code compliance products. I have no opinion on them. Just find it fun that there is a Watts Industries at all… Any relation? (They are on the other coast…)
You both care about making things work right, filtering out the crud, getting the sewage gone, and compliance with accepted standards 😉
No relation
Smokey (05:13:42)
Thanks for the link.
That gave me a series of quiet chuckles.
I went and had a look at the competition, Pharyngula:
A sore throat for sure, but science?
Here are the categories of the first page:
Kooks (1)
creationism(4)
weirdness (3)
Godlessness(2)
Books(1)
Humor(2)
Religion(1)
Politics(1)
Is it considered science because it is on the web page scienceblogs.com?
@Anna V
Umm… I think that Pharyngula is primarily an anti-Intelligent Design site. And hence in the business of ‘exposing kooks’ of all kinds.
Since I tend to believe in evolution rather than science as specified by the Bible, I would tend to support Pharyngula’s aim, but I don’t think they actually DO very much science. That’s not a knocking statement – there’s no reason why they should – but if you’re used to CA or WUWT you will have a rather sophisticated idea of what a science blog is.
I must admit, my idea of a good evolution/intelligent design site is http://www.evcforum.net/ . Take a look at the ‘Dates and Dating’ section there, and learn what a Uranium Halo is all about….
I found this blog through ” weblog awards contest”.
Surely they made mistake for the category. This is conservative blog against liberal conspiracies.
Welcome aboard, Fido.
Actually, this site simply asks questions that some folks [eg: UN/IPCC, GISS, NOAA, etc.] seem very reluctant to answer. Despite that reluctance, we’re getting some answers here, as the 7+ million hits and numerous comments attest.
If you have questions, this is the place to ask them.
WUWT has a two thousand vote lead over second place… yahoo! And Climate Audit has a nearly 3:1 lead over RealClimate… double yahoo!!
Hey guys,
Please move this back up to the top.
@Lubos Motl
Re: ‘Reference Frame’ as Best European Blog
You’ve already received my daily vote and will continue to do so until voting is closed. You have a well-grounded perspective on both the political as well as the scientific issues of the day. Well done, and I wish you continued success, health, and clear thinking. You are an asset to planet earth, sir!
Dodgy Geezer (09:59:19) :
@Anna V
Umm… I think that Pharyngula is primarily an anti-Intelligent Design site. And hence in the business of ‘exposing kooks’ of all kinds.
Since I tend to believe in evolution rather than science as specified by the Bible, I would tend to support Pharyngula’s aim, but I don’t think they actually DO very much science.
I’m not so keen on the ‘anti-intelligent design’ folks for the same reason that I’m not keen on the AGW folks. They refuse to consider that they might have missed something. (Please, hold the rock throwing till the end!) ANY disagreement with them is met with immediate ridicule. Not exactly science-like in my book.
I’m not a religious person (basically I’m a hard core science nut), and doubt that ‘God’, whatever they are (if anything) created me. At the same time, the intelligent design basic thesis says maybe something with brains had a hand in it all. To me, this would include, oh, space aliens. While I think seeing UFO’s mostly means you ought to get a better brand of hooch, I can’t rule out ‘visitations’ over the last few billion years. It’s a big universe.
There are some fascinating oddities in our history that fit the ‘space aliens made us’ thesis (including a written history from mesopotamia in [a lot] BC that specifically references the ‘goddess’ from space that did the genetic manipulation.) If we forbid even asking the question, then we can never get the answer to “Is there anything to it?” and we risk not really understanding our history. Yes, it’s probably just a myth, but can’t I at least ask the question without ridicule?
One other minor point. Somewhere I have a fascinating book by a guy who manages to reconcile the Genesis account with known science in many ways. The most fascinating bit was he asked: What if we are looking at the clock from the wrong end? Time dilation has happened.
If we started at compressed time at the big bang, then golly, each big bang scale day matches the events in our known scientific view just dandy, from ‘let there be light’ to heaven and earth to creation of life. We have forgotten that 7 days of creation might be several billion of our present days, viewed from this end of dilated time… Both science and The Bible could be right and the folks who get 6k years by mumbo jumbo numerology wrong.
(I know I’m not doing this justice, but I loaned the book to someone so I can’t dig it out to get the proper description… nor title / author / ISBN. I think it may be this one: http://www.amazon.com/Genesis-Big-Bang-Discovery-Harmony/dp/0553354132 )
Can you really show that there was never a visitation from an E.T. doing a Ph.D. project on upgrading primitive critters on an uninteresting planet? Can you really say with certainty that Genesis isn’t just a garbled version of the science (we’ve now figured out) taught by a visiting E.T. Peace Corp Volunteer but mangled in transmission by a primitive understanding of things like time dilation, evolution, and nuclear physics? Do you forbid asking the questions?
My point? IMHO, Science is about being able to ask ANY question, and having an open mind about what the answer might be while searching for evidence. Religion is about believing your answer must be right and forbidding certain questions. By that measure the anti-I.D. folks and the Rabid Religious are cut from the same cloth. Neither is really science. Nor a science blog.
I must admit, my idea of a good evolution/intelligent design site is http://www.evcforum.net/ . Take a look at the ‘Dates and Dating’ section there, and learn what a Uranium Halo is all about….
Rather interesting. Though I must admit I had expected Dates and Dating to be a social meeting place or advice on whom to go out with 😉 Sometimes I’m a bit slow… I was pleasantly surprised to discover it was about geologic age determination. Chagrinned, but at least now I know that both science and religion have halos 8-0
Fido is an appropriate name for someone who holds to the AGW orthodoxy.
Fido is from the latin root for “faithful”.
Don’t be a lap dog for the AGW elite!
Notes on a post I just dropped on RC: (since you won’t see it there.)
“Maybe the votes for the “best science blog” are going through some sort of “RC moderation filter” – that might explain why half your votes aren’t showing up.
Kinda like why this comment won’t show up…”
People prefer WUWT ten to one over RealClimate!! 🙂