Jeff over at the Air Vent has made up a multi question reader poll that I think pretty well probes the effectiveness of Real Climate and the people who run it. Once the leader in the Climate Blogosphere, they have now diminished behind skeptic blogs, including this one. Even Rant-a-minute-Romm (ClimateProgress) does better than RC.
The graph above done by Willis Eschenbach shows the Alexa ranking of many popular climate blogs, including RC.
Marc Morano’s Climate Depot is on par with RealClimate, which must really bite, given his “Mad Magazine approach” to Climate News. I expect he’ll surpass RC soon.
Jeff’s poll examines several questions about the effectiveness of RC and the way they treat readers. I thought the question about attitude towards readers was particularly insightful.
To participate in the poll, visit The Air Vent
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RealClimate.org = Post Normal Science = Garbage in/Garbage out
My comments were censored several times on RC, altough I tried to be very polite with them.
I’ve successfully posted a lengthy opinion piece right after the Climategate event in late November. Surprisingly, it was made public on the site and remained unchanged.
Here’s a couple of books that explain the psychology of the type of personalities that run Real Climate, etc. — presented in layman’s terms anybody can understand:
“The Liberal Mind: The Psychological Causes of Political Madness,” by Dr. Lyle Rossiter available for about $10 as a *.pdf download at: www. libertymind.com
I strongly encourage any & everyone with even the slightest inclination to ponder what makes that sort tick to read his book (one can skip right to Chapters 42-45 to get the essence of how they got the way they are).
“Know Your Enemy” the saying goes & you won’t find more or better insight than what’s availabe in “The Liberal Mind”!!!
Recommend adding
Dr. Roy Spencer ranked 266,816 at Alexa
Thanks for the link Anthony, the poll was actually one which surprised me. I didn’t expect such strong reactions to some of the questions. RC has a motive to sell climate science to the public, it needs a bit of a change in strategy if they want to be effective at it.
I made a comment on tAV that a visit to RC is like watching the movie Borat: I can only stomach 10 minutes at a time.
How about recommending one of the AGW blogs? RealClimate isn’t worth reading, but one of them has to be at least the best, and maybe even good.
mikael pihlström says:
May 3, 2010 at 1:25 pm
Enneagram says:
May 3, 2010 at 12:45 pm
Controversial issues and breakthroughs in science increase traffic, consensus is always boring….
__________________________________________________________________
mikael pihlström response:
Breakthroughs in science should preferably be published, not blogged around …
Advantage: RC
____________________________________________________________________
Breakthroughs in science should be discussed. That is why WUWT is a good place to come. We get to see the discussions often between very knowledgeable PhD’s, ask questions, make comments and most important LEARN.
Gail Combs says:
May 4, 2010 at 12:10 pm
mikael pihlström says:
May 3, 2010 at 1:25 pm
Enneagram says:
May 3, 2010 at 12:45 pm
Controversial issues and breakthroughs in science increase traffic, consensus is always boring….
_______________________________________________________
mikael pihlström response:
Breakthroughs in science should preferably be published, not blogged around …
Advantage: RC
___________________________________________________
“Breakthroughs in science should be discussed. That is why WUWT is a good place to come. We get to see the discussions often between very knowledgeable PhD’s, ask questions, make comments and most important LEARN.”
—–
I conceded that RC might be more boring than WUWT, but I think
the reason is that the posts (not the comments)are more information
oriented, written to a greater extent by practising scientists.
Scientific breakthroughs again, will only imperfectly reach WUWT,
because, let’s face it, you are isolated from mainstream science.
I see some interesting things here, but, mostly, I am sorry to
say so, you are confusing the issues and disinforming,
Those results just reflect the readership of The Air Vent.
“Standing alone with nuanced opinion is far more convincing than working as a consensus”
In that case scientists who agree that evolution happens are part of a blind consensus, even if they have a unique oinion on the theory of evolution.
Realclimate’s selective and misleading quoting of Knutson et al was the final straw for me. (http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v3/n3/abs/ngeo779.html)
They omitted the section “it remains uncertain whether past changes in tropical cyclone activity have exceeded the variability expected from natural causes” and just quoted this part: “…future projections based on theory and high-resolution dynamical models consistently indicate that greenhouse warming will cause the globally averaged intensity of tropical cyclones to shift towards stronger storms…”
Rather than admit there is no evidence of CO2 levels affecting cyclone activity, they went on to argue exactly the opposite! This confirmed that they are contemptuous of science, and are a simply political ideologues. Perhaps others are realizing this too.
Eric Rasmusen says:
May 4, 2010 at 11:17 am
How about recommending one of the AGW blogs? RealClimate isn’t worth reading, but one of them has to be at least the best, and maybe even good.
I have been visiting Science of Doom lately (after a heads up from Climate Audit). It is certainly no catastrophic AGW site, but presents the scientific evidence (in fair detail but for anyone to understand) in a straight forward way. It offers some criticism/correction of sceptical statements/queries/points of view, but in the nicest possible way. It is everything that RC pretends to be but is not.
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mojo says:
May 3, 2010 at 12:39 pm
Black text on a black background image? Is that really necessary?
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Mojo, I had the same problem. On Firefox 2, going to Tools/Options/Content/Colors and unchecking “allow pages to choose own colors” fixed it.