The Blackboard

I gotta agree with Romm. Watts Up With That? is a terrible blog. But I’m looking forward to the denialist vote being split!

Sounds like Joe Romm’s in the denial phase.

I voting for whatever site toes the AGW party line the best. That’s the best blog and we should vote for it based on that.

Andrew ♫

Boris–

I’m a little surprised to discover Joe Romm thinks Climate Progress is a science blog. I thought it was mostly a political blog.

I am curious to see who wins. I’m also curious to see if voting requires filling out a captcha this year.

somebody seems to be mentioning consensus in the same sentence as science again! Can someone explain how you can have a scientific consensus when the the nature of a consensus is unscientific!

Then there’s the small matter of all scientists are nerds (myself included) and nerds never win popularity contests. therefor the looser of this blog competition must be the real winer!

Can we nominate Joe Romm for Best Crybaby blogger?

I’d nominate Joe Romm for poor sport award but I don’t even know who he is… and that don’t speeky very good for Joe

Hi Lucia,

Congrats, you scooped me! I had no idea…they don’t send out any email or post any comments to let us know that I’m aware of.

It is too bad that Joe Romm feels the way he does, but in the same spirit of sourpuss-ness, Tamino’s “Open Mind” wasn’t nominated either. This is mainly a popularity contest, so whomever gets the most votes is the winner, not the blog with the most peer reviewed science papers or the most use of LATEX.

So the title really should be: “most popular science blog”.

Last year was a mess, with some apparently post poll closing voting going on. Hopefully they have that fixed this year…as you pointed out, perhpas with a captcha system.

In any event, I’m surprised to be nominated. And, win or lose, it’s still all about how you play the game. Positive outlook and sportsmanship in giving everyone a fair chance is my view on how to run a blog.

- Anthony

I read all three of those blogs on a regular basis. I don’t read Joe Romm, and based on this, I’m not likely to start now. I really don’t like the bile that spews form some of these websites. I mean, I’m about as pro-evolution as a guy can be, but I don’t read Pharyngula; the hatred PZ Myers belched out during the voting last year made me question how objective a scientist he could be. That’s why I like this website; I think it’s the most objective climate blog I’m come across.

Good luck to all three blogs (and Bad Astronomy, too!), and maybe we’ll see Lucia on the list next year!

Doug–

I read WUWT, CA and RC too. Anthony is correct that these web polls are popularity contests. But, popularity is a measure of connecting with people and that’s a good thing.

Anthony– Well, at least you know now! I’m planning to remind people to vote for the favorite blog. There are other categories too– some look like a lot of fun.

I’m a little surprised to discover Joe Romm thinks Climate Progress is a science blog.

I haven’t read it too much, so I wouldn’t know. He does seem a bit bitter about a contest that means virtually nothing.

Looks like Uncommon Descent also got snubbed.

Joe often comments on Roger Pielke Jr. I’ve read that blog when Roger links it.

As far as I can tell, Joe’s posts are mostly about politics and policy. It touches on science, but if I were reviewing blogs for a “best science blog” I wouldn’t have called it a “science blog”.

Analogy time: If I read a blog discussing restaurants, I wouldn’t call it a “cooking” blog. I might call it a “food” blog. Anyway, maybe that’s just me. (Notice that the awards distinguish between “cartoon” and “humor”, as well as “science”, “technology”, “education” and “Medical/Health”. So, I don’t think I”m cutting it too fine. Some blogs just don’t fit any category. )

The whole thing means very little. Yes Joe sounds a bit bitter. If you read his blog, it seems his shorts are often in twist about something. I can’t always figure out his main point, but whatever it is, it’s obvious his emotions are very engaged.

Boris–
Now I googled and read Uncommon Descent. They have an… ehrm…”interesting” discussion of the Reynolds number.

In fluid dynamics there is Reynolds number, with which we must deal in aerospace R&D. What this basically says is that we cannot make small models of an aircraft flying at low altitudes and extrapolate this to large aircraft flying at high altitudes, or vice versa.

Hmmm….. That’s not what I’d say the Reynolds number basically says. Generally speaking, as long as the Mach number remains low, and the both test fluids are are Newtonian, and “high altitude” doesn’t mean we can’t treat the air as a fluid, we can determine the flight characteristics of larger aircraft, using relatively small models of aircraft.

Some practical difficulties arise due to matching Reynolds and Mach at the same time. But I’ll stop here. . .

WUWT has a nice layout and diverse content. And Watts is a sweet fellow. But it pulls lots of boners on the science: solar cylce misanalysis, paint screen experiment not finished (but trumpeted), citing individual site surveys but not doing JohnV style synthesis, cackling about air conditioners 30 feet from a sensor (without any HVAC style calculatiuon of impact or a measurement to justify the cackling) .

CA and RE would do better to call this out. WUWT is obviously a step below eighter of those two sites and a step below Open Mind or CA. All of y’all are a step below VC (top of my ranking now).

“Open Mind or RC” I meant.

Forum needs an edit button.

As an impartial observer/reader of all three blogs I must say that Climate Audit has the most scientific content with the least political undertone and self-righteousness. But it is odd that climate related blogs are the three top contenders. Where is all the other science? I guess climate is the most politically motivated/emotionally appealing subject in the today’s science blogosphere.

Lucia (re: Comment#7991)

I must have missed it, but where was Boris’ reference to Uncommon Descent? At any rate, as an old AE graduate, I agree with your thoughts on Reynolds number.

Perhaps another measure of a blogs ranking would be the priority we give to its access. I find that I normally come here first, followed by Climate Audit, then WUWT. My daily rounds also include both Pielke blogs, Junk Science, and Open Mind, where I tend to skim through most of the regular posters who seem to be Tamino sycophants with little new to say. For education with entertainment value, Lubos’ blog, and Briggs’ statistics blog are also great.

At present, I think that WUWT is worthy of this years award, because of its broad coverage and appeal, though the scientific and mathematical rigor is less than at CA and most particularly HERE.

I had never heard of Joe Romm before today, but I have never met anyone who thinks that some sort of monolithic “right wing” exists and must be stopped, who is anything other than utterly infantile.

Duane–
In (Comment#7989) Boris noticed Uncommon Descent was snubbed.

I agree with you that each person has their own favorite blog and visit in different orders.. Of those who visit, only a fraction will vote.

Based on Joe’s reaction, and some of the blog reactions last year, it also seems that the science blog category causes some people to foam at the mouth. If this were crafts, I doubt there would be bloggers encouraging people to vote for Monster Crochet to knock The Yarn Harlot and show the world that crochet was “better” than knitting by voting for crochet (or vice versa).

It looks like we read many of the same blogs.

Thanks for putting me first on your list.

Chris–

I think it’s inevitable that those scientific areas that touch on politics are more likely to have blogs in the first place, and they are more likely to attract readers. As fascinating as studying gastropods might be, how many people are going to want to blog about them everyday? How many others are going to rush in to read them every day? The same goes for most scientific fields.

Hi Lucia,

Wind tunnels work just fine.

I found a picture of an open jet tunnel that brought back memories. One of my first jobs was to make the chimneys out of brass tubing for this experiment.

http://www.flightglobal.com/pd.....00769.html

On most of the climate blogs I’ve looked at – pro or con warming – there are the few science-minded posters, and the majority “they’re so stupid” posters. Take out the drive-by kooks on either side, and these blogs would probably get far less traffic. I tend strongly towards skepticism, but the scientifically illiterate and ideologically inspired voters will no doubt decide who wins any award.

I do favor Lucia’s site for the occasional cookie recipes and knitting pictures. They keep things in a much-needed perspective.

Jorge–
Cool! Yes. Windtunnels work just fine.

I’ll put the link to the Uncommon Descent article on the Reynolds number etc.

I think you’ll get a kick out of their discussion of compressible flow too. Evidently, after passing through a compression wave, “The innocent air molecules are struck by the wing structure with no warning, and the fluid properties of the air become much more solid-like.”

Huh? Would this have happened to guilty air molecules too? Or do they manage to avoid the wing structure and/or take on more jello like properties?

I’m pretty sure who ever writes that knows very little about fluid mechanics. After all, there are sooooo many good examples of hazards in linear extrapolation in fluid mechanics (or heat transfer). They either didn’t know the good examples or explained whatever they meant to explain very poorly.

Want a very good example of non-linear behavior in fluid dynamics? Lift on an airfoil increases almost linearly with increasing angle at small angles of attack. Then, suddenly, at some particular angle of attach, lift no longer increases, the wing stalls (meaning lift drops to zero.) Plane can fall out of the sky. Whoops!

Of course, those who understand fluid dynamics know this is all due to those guilty air molecules who just don’t want to stay in contact with airfoil, and so create the Union of Boundary Layer Molecules, and detach from the surface of the wing. Bad air molecules. Bad, bad air molecules!

Watts seems to me to have made a substantial contribution to science (in the sense of “observation” or “expansion of knowledge”) in his creation of a database of meteorological reporting points with pictures,

Or perhaps some regard that as ’stuff we already knew and did not need to discuss or consider”?

Pharyngula isn’t much scientific either – its militant left-lib-atheist pontificating is totally unreadable for me. They cultivate the same sort of openness to other views and polite discourse as RC or Tamino .
When I want to read something about evolution or specifically human evolution, I go for Razib’s Gene Expression.

One thing I’ve noticed is the vehemence directed at those who critique the data or methodology of the AGW True Believers. Interestingly enough, neither Steve M nor Anthony Watts is in the denier camp (to my knowledge), but because they point out flaws in the AGW dogma they are assumed to be such. I’d like to follow some of the things on Tamino or RC but I can’t stand the snarky rhetoric.

Lucia,

This link seems to work.

http://www.uncommondescent.com.....apolation/

I think the point about being careful about extrapolation is a fair one but clearly the author seems to have most of this example A about face, to use a technical metaphor.

I think that lift/drag ratios versus angle of attack were well known for most chords a long time ago. I used to read through the graphs in my lunchtime.

Just before I left NPL I was involved in a project where we were going to make models out of solid CO2, cooled to liquid nitrogen temperature. The plan was to throw this rapidly into a high Mach number, high temperature wind tunnel and measure the heat transfer by observing the sublimation/ablation.

I don’t think anything came of this idea. Probably just as well, now that we know CO2 is a poison!

MarkB: I agree with your view. The attaboy crowd can get tiresome, from left or right. VC has few attaboyers and a minimum of teeth-gnashing posts. That’s why it is the best kaffeeklatsch of a blog on the net. (there are forums that are good though.)

Not Even Wrong (http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/) should have been nominated. It is an anti-srtring theory blog. Drives Lubos Motl crazy and he has shown himself as very immateur versus NEW. Now even the popular opinion is turning against stringers, given it’s non-falsfiability. I find it ironic that Lubos is anti-AGW, but doesn’t acknwledge how silly his own work is in a Popperian sense.

MarkB–
Yes. Climate blog of all stripes attract their share of “the other side is stupid” commenters.

TCO — I love VC too.

What is “VC”, unless you are interested in venture capital?

I’m glad I didn’t say anything bad about Anthony before he showed up. He was very gracious. If some here aren’t feeling just a little foolish, they must be very young or very unfeeling.

Duane-

VC is The Volokh Conspiracy. It’s a multi-author law blog that leans libertarian. It’s been running for a long time. In addition to having interesting lead bloggers, it has accumulated a very interesting set of commenters.

I know both Eli and TCO visit it fairly regularly and comment. So do I.

Though TCO evidently loves that blog, he was chastised and told to behave– on a thread that was about people misbehaving in comments threads.

TCO also suggested there ARE software things one could think up to get commenters to behave. However, he didn’t reveal what those things might be.

Duanne: Volokh Conspiracy (some brainy motherfukkaz there)

Lucia: (re knitting flame wars) I trolled an embroidery forum that my gf showed me, saying that Danish style is better than homestyle. (not sure the exact names of the styles, but one is more classical and the other more kitschy.) So anyhow, it is possible. although rather unusual.

TCO– Yes. It is entirely possible to troll craft sites. I don’t know anything about embroidery. Flamewars on knitting list serves are not at all rare. I could tell you stories! (Some readers will notice the afghan and slippers I am knitting use a yarn called “Red Heart”. Many flame wars have erupted over this yarn. )

I claim but little fame;
Banned by PZ Myers
And Joe Romm.
=================

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The iron feeds algae, which blooms and sucks up damaging carbon dioxide (CO2), then sinks, locking away the harmful greenhouse gas for hundreds of years…

read more –>
http://hernadi-key.blogspot.com

They banned you? I dislike banning people.

But, I’m perfecting a plugin to deal with trolls without banning them. I plan to release it next month, but I need to get the time stamps straightened out, and create a user interface. I think many bloggers will like the plugin!

It seems to me if you want good observational science with good discussion and little politics, then it’s WUWT. If you want good analytical science with good discussion and little politics, then it’s CA. If you want politicised science with heavily censored and biased discussion, then it’s RealClimate.

It’s a no-brainer – a toss-up between WUWT and CA.

By the way, for us foreigners, who is Joe Romm? Some kind of politico with a big chip on his shoulder?

My choice is CA. I love Anthony and this blog as well, but Steve seems to have the most rigorous discussions and less of the drive-by shootings and food fights. Pielke, Sr. is a regular stop as well, but the threads are limited and that’s where I find the most interesting expansion of the concepts.

I find Joe Romm’s reaction comical. You’re right, it’s not a science blog but a policy activist blog. It would get my vote for best comedy bog. Kiss his butt and you’re allowed in, otherwise you’re a flat-earth denialist bent on destroying the earth. RC would be OK if they weren’t so arrogant and had a rational discussion of counter points. Their circular arguments never cease to amaze me.

When I was a kid, my (foreign) great grandmother used to knit me sweaters. I never liked them as the styles were like from european peasants. And they were too plain. So (after a few years), I finally asked for what I wanted. Something modern with some patterns of colors and texture.

I didn’t really think she knew how to do that, though, so I felt a little bad about asking. But after enough Christmases go by, you finally say something. There were years and years of Old Spice aftershave, when I don’t use anything!

Anyhow, when I got the sweater that year it was stunning. She totally knew all those tricks! I just had to ask! (I have a friend who says you should do the same thing with sex, but I’ve found that I don’t really have any special needs in intercourse.)

Oh…and Lucia acrylic is not as good as wool. It’s ok that you use it though as you have such a heart for knitting. Let me know if you need me to buy you some real wool–I can afford it.

Just keep it in a separate tub. Mustn’t let the classes mix. Red Heart needs to know it’s place. At the back of the bus. In the lower levels of the Titanic.

*raises Drambuie*

http://thelumpysweater.wordpre.....ic-debate/

(damn there are a lot of knitting blogs!)

Philip B “8304 Joe Romm is an ex-Dep-Sec of Energy IIRC in the Clinton administration. I read many, many blogs/sites daily in maintaining http://globalwarmingclearinghouse.blogspot.com and Climate Progress, Romm’s blog, is the only one I no longer reference. I do not want unsuspecting searchers subjected to his abuse and/or ridicule.

BTW, Lucia, yours and Jennifer Marohasy’s are a couple of the better blogs around. I do agree with the others about WUWT, Climate Science, Prometheus and CA. I am surprised that there is no mention of Bob Tisdale’s, Climate Observations, http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/ Jeff Id’s, The Air Vent, http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/ David Stockwell’s Niche Modeling http://landshape.org/enm/ and Maurizio Morabito’s, The Unbearable Nakedness of CLIMATE CHANGE, http://omniclimate.wordpress.com/ (extra points given for the name.)

All have some very interesting insights into the science and politics of CC/AGW.

Lucia, my comment got flagged by the spam checker. It had too many URLs. Please take a look and see if it fits your policy.

Tks
CoRev

CoRev–
I’ve beenfiddling with spam filter settings. Your comment got trapped but is now released.

CoRev (Comment#8047)

“BTW, Lucia, yours and Jennifer Marohasy’s are a couple of the better blogs around.”

I don’t know if you know but Jennifer Marohasy is nominated under Best Online Community.

http://2008.weblogawards.org/p.....community/

Martin–
I didn’t know! I only looked at the “Best Science Blogs”.

So, I guess that makes 5 climate blogs nominated– but spread over 3 categories.

lucia (Comment#8056)

“So, I guess that makes 5 climate blogs nominated– but spread over 3 categories.”

Hmmm! So what is the third category that lists a climate/science blog and what blog? You know what a nosey parker I am.

The Reference Frame is nominated for Best European Blog”

“I’m a little surprised to discover Joe Romm thinks Climate Progress is a science blog. ”

I’m more than a little surprised. Every time I’ve gone there to try to guide the discussion in the direction of climate issues, their response has always been, “Oh, we’ve already discussed and closed that subject”. Basically meaning that all there was to do was fawn over whatever political AGW issue they were currently supporting and sing with the choir.

Lucia, don’t you and I have some kind of cookie bet that we should be able to resolve once the December global surface temp numbers come out. I’ll have to see if I can find the old thread where we made it. One of us should be eating home baked pastery before the month is over.

Tilo–
Not only do I have a cookie bet, but I have to catch up on cookie baking for other bets!

Okay, Lucia, I found ours. It looks like this:

Lucia
“So, I say in December when the data come out, we calculate the OLS trend based on the six months from June-Nov. for GISS only and for the three groups you used in your graph at Anthony’s blog.

* If the trend for GISS comes out lower than the average of the three groups, you bake me a dozen cookies.
* If the trend GISS trend is higher, I bake you a dozen cookies.
* In the event of an absolute tie… we send cookies to an agreed on third party.”

Turns out that we could have resolved this one in December. I’ll see if I can find the time to update my data and chart this stuff in the next few days. You can do the same. Then we can see what’s cooking. I guess this bet is basically to see if Hansen’s already large divergence would continue to increase over the period.

I bet you’re getting close Lucia. Thanks for the great posts and hard work.

“Yes some people have e-mailed me to express their dismay that I didn’t make the finalist list. I confessed to being a tad pissed off for about an hour.”

This guy’s pretty full of himself.

[...] to be nominated for this. In fact I found out about it from gary Boden in an email by way of Lucia. The contest organizers didn’t notify me [...]

I nominated myself for the Truly Better Than The Best Science Blogger Award. Voting started at 22:09GMT on Jan 6, 2009 and ended at 22:10GMT on Jan 6, 2009. Given the unanimous decision by the single voter (using the pseudonym “MM”) not to assign me any Award, I will have to nominate me again next year, same day, same time. Life can be too tough to bear, sometimes.

MM– Congratulations on the award. Is there a logo you can add to your sidebar?

I think we need awards like those at statefairs. Everyone gets a ribbon. Only one person gets “Grand Champion”, but tons of people get first prize!

oops…sorry, Lucia. Perhaps I wasn’t clear. That single voter decided I did NOT deserve any award. Go figure!

I’ll try to talk him into giving me a ribbon, though. Perhaps when I’ll see him and a razor in a couple of days’ time…

That is silly to list TRF as a Euro blog. It is a science blog (but like most blogs includes some personal interests of the author). But science is the core.