Voting closed TODAY Jan 13 at 5PM Eastern, 2PM Pacific time.
Preliminary ending numbers are available here
Thanks to everyone who participated. The results won’t be final until reviewed by the judges/operators. Now back to our regularly scheduled programming. – Anthony
Our esteemed new Secretary of State said today that global warming “threatens our very existence.”
http://www.businessandmedia.org/articles/2009/20090113113744.aspx
Just checked the raw vote and it looks like you have won! Congratulations…what a nice honor after all your hard work and dedication. Yours is an inspirational story about what one man with a sense of curiosity can accomplish. May 2009 be an even better year for you Anthony.
Congratulations WUWT. Well done.
I first went onto the website after Chris Booker, Daily Telegraph, London, recommended it in several articles last May/June time. I have been on it nearly every day since then and look forward to seeing the lastest postings; every one is thought provoking.
One thing concerns me! 14150 votes only equals about 2000 people each voting 7 times as I did. Plus WUWT has only recently passed the one million hits mark of which I will account for 200/300. Add these 2 together and it means that there is a vast amount of uninformed people out there drifting through life believing the information given out by the powers that be.
Let’s try and change that. I encourage all devotees to use this upcoming award, not confirmed until Thursday, to tell people about WUWT and encourage them to go on WUWT and read, and understand, what is being done in their name.
Carry on the good work.
Sorry mate, end of a long day.
This should increase the readership. 🙂
evanjones (09:11:40) :
VOTE, ye swabs! And be puttin’ yer backs inter it!
My vote for the most witty comment on this thread goes to EvanJones.
Congratulations to Anthony, the moderators and all contributors for making this a genuinely excellent science site, which has deserved the accolade of Best Science Blog 2008.
Of course, my voting is a secret (nudge nudge, wink wink).
Whoot!
Last year it was a faked up tie because the AGW people cheated so hard. This year, not even close.
Thanks to Watts Up and Climate Audit and the rest of the skeptics sites AGW is going down. Soon enough that the loony policy prescriptions it leads to are, at least, being questioned.
We’re winning. (did anyone notice Real Climates rank?)
Thanks all.
BarryW:
Just a question. Has any catastrophic environmental prediction based on computer models been validated?
If you can get hold of a copy of “But Is It True? A Citizen’s Guide to Environmental Health and Safety Issues” by the late Prof. Aaron Wildavsky (Harvard UP 1995, ISBN 0-674-08923-5) (probably have to be 2nd hand by now) It make interesting reading concerning many scare stories and the subsequent proper science which came after the scare had gone.
—-
Guy:
This would tie in nicely to the thesis that the successors to a totalitarian ideology are using different strategies to achieve the same goal.
Interesting to note that Karl Marx himself, unlike his “followers,” was dead against imposition of revolution from above by violence, and I expect that would extend to lying to, cheating and swindling the public.
I reckon these people want to run the show whatever, and they have to get rid of excellence in order to do so simply because they can’t hack it.
Allan M
Actually the issue of depletion of “fossil fuels” (ie oil) is trivial. You can make all the synthetic oil you need very easily. The technology already exists, and some new developments undoubtedly will continue to improve the process. The current break even price to make synthetic oil competitive is around $80/bbl for fossil oil, depending on local economics of input energy, and raw materials for the process.
Since much of that cost is process energy, low cost renewable energy inputs would substantially improve the break even costs. In spite of that, it is cost competitive today with recent historical oil price peaks, which would become the norm as conventional fossil fuels became harder to recover.
All you need to do to make synthetic crude oil is take any material that contains a hydrocarbon component (plastic, paper, biowaste, coal, tree chips, garbage, slaughter house waste) put it in a pressure vessel and cook at high temperature with a little water, and pressure (500 degrees Fahrenheit and pressurized to 600 pounds per square inch. for 20 minutes. Out comes a synthetic crude comparable to a high quality crude oil.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_depolymerization
http://discovermagazine.com/2006/apr/anything-oil
http://www1.eere.energy.gov/biomass/pdfs/agricultural_waste.pdf
There is a new microwave process that is also being worked on to do the same thing.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn12141
Synthetic crude is the simple KISS principle solution to replacement of fossil fuels, along with the bio fuels like biodiesel and ethanol, we already have the means to totally replace our imported oil, all we need is the political and financial will to invest in the infrastructure to do it. If you provide the process energy from, solar, you have a simple way to store solar (or wind, tidal, hydroelectric ) energy in the form of a hydrocarbon fuel for use at a later date.
100% energy independence is possible today with existing processes, and with no fundamental breakthroughs required. We simply lack the initiative to begin a sustained long term program like Brazil did some 35 years ago to build out the infrastructure to provide energy from local resources.
Since every dollar invested locally in energy development rolls over about 6 times before it is tied up in long term assets, on a dollar for dollar basis we would make huge gains in our economy simply by replacing a large fraction of our current oil imports through locally developed energy sources.
It might take 50 years to do it much like our interstate highway system, but it is the only sensible “have it now” solution to off shore energy dependence.
Larry
nichole (08:44:14) :
and if science doesn’t work via consensus, how does it work now?
By searching for provable truths, then sharing them until the ‘consensus’ realizes it’s missed something. Arguing, haggling, heck, even shouting some times, like it always has. Plate tectonics, sterilization for surgery, even hand washing between patients, sun centered solar system, the list of revolutions against the consensus goes on and on. The consensus is often wrong, but never in doubt…
But you assume there is a consensus in climate science. There is no such thing. I have a small library of published works and books by scientists who dispute the AGW theory. Some 31,000 scientists signed a petition saying so.
creating jobs making solar panels? with unemployment 7% and rising record-breakingly fast, might not be a bad idea. certainly are a lot of customers for said panels, and america needs some damned exports.
First off, there is nothing even remotely record breaking about the rate of unemployment nor its first derivative. It was >25% in the Great Depression and rose faster. Even since then, I’ve seen worse. Yes, this is a significant recession, but it’s an ordinary garden variety one so far. (I’ve lived through several)
Your understanding of international business is a bit, er, thin. Here is a list of randomly selected stock tickers for solar stocks (from the sector list on a widely used charting service) with the country of their headquarters. These are all traded in the U.S. markets. Tickers with no address listing were eliminated. That usually indicates a start up with no real business.
Stock Symbol – Country
AKNS – USA
ASTI – USA
CSIQ – Canada
CSEHY – China
CSUN – China
ESLR – USA
FSLR – USA
JASO – China
LDK – China
SOL – China
SOLF – China
SPWRA – USA
STP – China
TSL – China
YGE – China
Notice a pattern? LOTS of China? We will not be given the world for our personal use as a captive export market. Not by a long shot.
Now I know a bit about semiconductor fab, having been a production planner for a semiconductor company for a while. Even the ones with USA headquarters will do a lot of their fabrication out of country. It’s just so much cheaper to do it overseas. Generally you keep a small operation in the USA so engineers can debug processes, but the big fab goes to the low labor cost markets. That would be China, India, Malaysia etc. FSLR, for example, has a facility in Malaysia. From their web site, per their manufacturing locations:
Malaysia
First Solar Malaysia Sdn. Bhd.
(Co. No. 758827-T)
8, Jalan Hi-Tech 3/3
Zon Industri Fasa 3,
Kulim Hi-Tech Park
09000, Kulim,
Kedah Darul Aman, Malaysia
Now, to be fair, they do have a fab in the USA and one in Germany. This indicates an intention to manufacture near the market of use. I.e. build where needed. I.e. USA fab is for USA demand, not export.
If you really think that we will generate significant export sales from a US fab of solar cells or panels, well, you will be sorely disappointed. The economics of production and distribution just don’t support that.
I am greatly in favor of solar and own stock in solar companies, but hold no fantasy of a US industrial renaissance based on the solar industry. We will get a small part of it, that is all, and it will largely be for domestic sales.
I’ll skip over your rather crude insults of the center of the country and several other things. No merit in them…
so maybe it’s not anthropogenic. so we should sit down and do nothing?
Yes. When you have no idea what causes something, it’s a bad idea to start monkeying with it. When you have no idea how it works internally, it’s even worse.
What if solar is the driver? What if we just fell into a solar funk with zero sunspots and a Maunder Minimum event brings with it a Little Ice Age. Kind of a dumb time to be enhancing the cooling. Now I don’t expect such a thing, but if you don’t know what’s happening, you can not prudently plan on it not happening.
try, and die, or not. do nothing, and die. fer sure.
And this indicates the other major flaw. The “doom and gloom end of life as we know it we’re destroying the planet” mind set. There is no evidence at all that the planet is being harmed in any way by CO2 or warming. None. There are many fantasy projections, but nothing real.
Don’t Panic! We have a hundred years at least to sort out what is really happening (the computer models are deliberately made to ‘run fast’ to encourage folks to panic into early action. Neither a prudent nor a moral behaviour, but there it is, none the less.)
I’ve lived through 40 years of so of “we’re all gonna die” that I can remember and projections of planetary doom Real Soon Now. Guess what? The world is a better place now that it was 40 years ago. It has been consistently improving. There is no doom. You can let go of the gloom.
So I’d suggest that you have a nice cup of tea, sit back and calmly study the science yourself. Nothing bad will happen for the length of my life, nor that of my children. Plenty of time to get it right.
And during that time we can use the money that would have been squandered tilting with windmills to do really useful things, like cure malaria, teach folks to micro-farm more efficiently, provide education to the 3rd world, build and distribute Rocket Stoves (or similar fuel efficient minimalist stoves) to save the 3rd world forests, and build more aquaculture ponds so the oceans can be saved from over fishing.
Oh, and building some coal to liquids (CTL) factories so we can stop sending trillions of dollars to folks who want to kill us would be good too. It would even let us stop spending a few trillion dollars on military operations to defend the oil routes. Frankly, this is, IMHO, the single most valuable thing we could do to help America. Stop shoveling the dollars out of the country and stop sending our family and friends to fight in foreign lands. The technology is well proven. Sasol, the South African Synthetic Oil Company (ticker SSL) has been doing it for South Africa for decades.
America could be completely free of foreign oil before the end of Obama’s second term if CTLs were made a priority. Go the solar / wind route, and thanks to the vehicle fleet not turning over in less than 15 years, you will guarantee that we continue to fund terrorists with oil money and then spend trillions to go police the world to clean up after them. Your choice…
Congratulations – if a bit late. Keep up the good work; I’ve learnt more science from here in the past six months than I have in the past sixty years!
I endorse Steve Brown’s brief comment which seems to me to sum up just what those of us who felt uneasy about AGW but hadn’t the science to argue the case feel about it now,
Pete S — Yes, I get the reference to the Sun! How about the other one: If the Warm-mongers win, will the last person to leave the planet please turn off the lights!
Congratulations to Anthony. I don’t comment here very often but I read this blog (as well as Climate Audit and ICECAP) all the time. All credit to last year’s winner Steven McIntyre as well for helping to lift the veil on the AGW myth. Hopefully there will be victory for the sceptics before too long and integrity shall finally be restored to climate science.
nichole (09:43:50) :
we get power now by 1) digging up oil 2) shipping it to a refinery 3) refining it 4) shipping it to the power plant 5) generating the power 6) transmitting the power to the consumer. much more efficient would be 1) generating the power and consuming it in the same place with a solar panel. see?
We don’t ‘dig up oil’ we pump it. Oil is not used in power plants, it is used largely for transportation liquid fuels. (Power plant fuels are almost exclusively coal, nuclear, and natural gas).
You can not replace gasoline and Diesel liquid fuels with solar without changing the entire vehicle fleet to electric vehicles and that would take at least 15 years if we were already doing it, and we are not.
the difference between “all” and “most” is not significant enough, IMO.
So you would be equally happy if your doctor said “I got ALL of the cancer out” vs. “I got most of the cancer out”? OK…
I’m sorry nichole, but you clearly have not a clue about where energy comes from, how it is used, and the technical limits to change (thus the consequences of the actions you propose are also opaque to you). Please spend a while looking into where different energy flows go in our economy. You have much to learn.
By the way, whilst on the topic of wikipedia being innaccurate regarding global warming, I would encourage you all to try to improve this article, which is blatantly alarmist, exaggerated and innaccurate.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_global_warming
Examples of the alarmism include this sentence:
“Climate changes characterized as global warming are leading to large-scale irreversible effects at continental and global scales. The likelihood and magnitude of the effects are observed and predicted to be increasing and accelerating.”
and this:
“Scenarios studied by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predict that global warming will continue and get worse much faster than was expected even in their last report.”
This is an edit that I made a while back that was reverted:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Effects_of_global_warming&diff=prev&oldid=251291938
I think you may have done it, well done fingers crossed for the all clear!
atb
Belated congratulations Anthony! I know the official announcement hasn’t been made yet, but I believe the site is the winner. Well deserved, too!
Congratulations, even if for second place, which seems unlikely. No matter any award, I continue my “subscription” (contribution) to one of the most excellent blogs on the internet. When I see a number like 449 comments, I gulp, but try to skim most of them because of the value of so many. For example, I am grateful to Allan M, hotrod, and E M Smith above for new information for my rapidly expanding files. Thanks much, Anthony Watts.
i consider the true believer to be a different species and will therefore not mate with them. i don’t breed that far afield.
i voted for neurologica, btw. once. multiple voting is stupid.
and you all insist on spewing facts at me when i told you i don’t care about that. i’m under the impression that climate science is immensely complicated. even the professionals can’t predict the weather tomorrow with 100% accuracy. i doubt i can purport to do so with casual study of some crap i read on the interwebs. i further doubt that i can purport to predict several orders of magnitude beyond tomorrow. i would say anyone who does so is arrogant to the extreme.
so, yes, you all get a gold star. nichole = unwashed masses. i’m not a climate scientist. damn, you found me out. i only said it a gazillion times. srsly. that’s why i don’t say if global warming is anthropogenic or not. i say neither as i’m not qualified to comment on the subject and neither are most of you.
what i am qualified to comment on is people, as i am one of them and i know a couple, too. scientific debates do not belong in the public forum. you all point out some sweet exceptions to the rule that you found, stole one from lothar with the plate tectonics thing. wow, you figured it out! rules aren’t writ in stone! you are giving ammunition to the low information voter who doesn’t want to conserve for a reason i’ve yet to fathom. ~snip~ i believe education is the cornerstone of america, and anyone who is against it is unpatriotic. this country was the first to institute public schools. unfortunately, it has gone downhill from there. the news media is already broadcasting the controversy that doesn’t really exist because that’s what the unwashed masses love – a good scientist deathmatch! but there isn’t too much of a controversy except you people keep egging it on. loose lips sink ships.
the public attitude is correct, even if maybe for the wrong reason. we need to diversify our sources of energy. we’ve needed to do that for a long time now, but it wasn’t politically viable until now. stop ruining it.
that’s why i troll you 😛
@alex, here’s a new reference for you to use in your battles with the Wikicult!
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601100&sid=aXm16yRTS344
“Greenland’s Rapid Glacier Retreat May Stall, Scientists Say”
Benjamin P. (16:50:57):
I am very curious, if it is all some great energy control conspiracy, what is the end game? What do these folks want to gain? I was talking to one of my students who was sure that it was a conspiracy as well.
“What is the agenda of the conspirators and what do they hope to gain?” I asked. He had no answer.
Perhaps you have an answer for me?
The simple answer is, your student was incorrect. There is no conspiracy; none is required. The AGW alarmists love the “conspiracy” angle, as it makes for a very good straw man. The AGW bandwagon is huge, and holds many, with varying interests and agendas. Guy (18:40:22) spoke of the Greens and their agenda, but there are many others on the AGW bandwagon who benefit monetarily, whose careers are dependent on it, or who use it for political gain, including environmental groups, some “scientists”, and of course, the MSM (alarmism sells). Many, if not most on the AGW bandwagon have little, if any actual scientific knowledge of the issues, relying primarily on the IPCC, and on the “consensus” argument. But, there’s a problem. The wheels of the bandwagon are falling off. Those who are smart, and are able to, are jumping off, because when this thing comes crashing down, the fallout will be huge.
J. Peden (19:46:33) :
man, what gives? why should I have to justify anything? i don’t see you getting on anyone else because for these things. just relax and enjoy the commentary…
as an aside, i do my best to ensure that my spelling is correct as the inadvertent misspelling of a word can sometimes convey a different meaning.
I really enjoy reading the comments. EM Smith great comments among many others. Anthony, GREAT JOB on the unofficial win. You and your team deserve so much credit for the hard work, wonderful attitude, and great readable science. I’ve learned so much from you on both science and web decorum.
I felt like the precinct committee officer in the get-out-the-vote campaign here in the silicon valley. It was all in good fun.
There’s a difference between “need” and “can”.
Anything else you think we “need” to be doing?
Whatever happened to needing to end world hunger and poverty?
Whatever happened to needing to educate women throughout the world (progress begins in the home with the mother) ?
Whatever happened to needing to reduce the spread of AIDS?
Whatever happened to needing to end wars?
Whatever happened to needing to provide for the elderly as the birth rates decrease?
Whatever happened to needing to stop nuclear proliferation?
Whatever happened to needing the UN to actually work?
This is the major irritation about environmentalists: they champion their pet cause and grab all the attention whilst denying all other issues as in any way being more important.
i second the accolades for EM Smith.