Help wanted: Mr Bloggie is open to suggestions.

The outcome: The Bloggies have committed hari kari.

Tallbloke won the best European blog, GWPF won the best politics blog, ClimateAudit won the best topical blog, JoNova the lifetime achievement and WUWT a couple of equally ridiculous categories!

Sou 31 March 2014

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Yesterday I wrote about how I wrote to Mr Bloggie.  I was making the point that last year's infestation of Bloggie awards by climate science deniers has spread rapidly this year.

This year Anthony Watts is urging his fans to vote up climate denier blogs in seven categories.  (Last year they mostly flocked just to the now defunct science and technology category).

A problem needing a fix

Mr Bloggie (Nikolai) replied to my email and said that he is:

open to suggestions of what can be done to fix this.

The process at the moment is described on the Bloggie website here.  It's a fairly simple two-step process that currently involves no input from experts.

I can't think of any sure-fire simple fixes off the top of my head.  More fundamental changes would work, but that would change the nature of the Bloggies.  Things like disqualification or independent vetting before announcing finalists, with stricter criteria for entry into each category.  It's too easy to game the system when it's purely based on popular vote at every step in the process.

Ideas wanted

I know that Greg Laden and others offered Mr Bloggie some suggestions last year, when the situation became so ludicrous that the only finalists in the science and technology category were climate science deniers.

So put on your thinking caps and give Mr Bloggie a hand!

Dear Mr Bloggie...

Fourteen years ago someone thought up a bright idea of giving publicity to blogs through a popularity contest.  The contest had a catchy title, the Bloggies.  It worked for a while.  However over the years, the contest has been hijacked by right-wingers and science deniers.  Last year was the final year of a science/technical blog category because the only finalists were climate-science denying blogs.  The Bloggies became a laughing stock at best and have now sunk to irrelevance.

This year Anthony Watts is urging everyone to make the Bloggies an even bigger joke and even less relevant than they were last year (archived here).

Here's an email I sent to Mr Bloggie, host of the Bloggie Awards AKA Awards for Best Climate Science Denying and Conspiracy Theorising Blogs.

Dear Mr Bloggie (I cannot imagine a woman being so foolish :D)

I've looked through your categories and finalists and see that once again you've selected a disproportionate number of right wing science denying blogs focused on climate science denial. They have infected a range of categories, mostly bearing no relation to the subject matter of the denier blogs.

I suggest you just replace all the categories with just three to reflect the preponderance of finalists:

• Most popular anti-science webblog (climate science)
• Most popular conspiracy theory webblog (climate science) 
• Most popular climate science denying webblog

You can then advertise them on wattsupwiththat and be done with it.  

Actually, you don't have to.  Anthony Watts has done it for you.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/03/04/get-out-the-vote-climate-makes-another-strong-showing-in-the-2014-bloggies/

It looks as if you didn't learn anything from last year's fiasco.  All you've done is disperse the denier blogs across more categories.

Sou.

For the context, here are Anthony Watts' recommendations in bold italics (archived here):

Lifetime Achievement

Small Dead Animals
The Pioneer Woman
Jezebel
JoNova (Jo has quite a body of detailed work)
Family on Bikes

Best Group or Community Weblog

Watts Up With That? (one category WUWT has not won yet)
Blunt Moms
Bonbon Break
Small Dead Animals
Go Adventure Mom

Best Topical Weblog (formerly best sci/tech category)

Wreck of the Week
Doubtful News
CaptainAwkward .com
Climate Audit (no contest)
JoNova

Best Weblog About Politics

Occupy Wall Street
Polite on Society
Small Dead Animals
The Global Warming Policy Foundation (very complete and up to date daily)
American Thinker

Best Canadian Weblog

Savoir Faire Abroad
Three Chickens and a Boat
Small Dead Animals (much more Canadian content than CA this year)
Climate Audit
Family Adventures in the Canadian Rockies

Best European Weblog

Tallbloke’s Talkshop
Chasing the Donkey
Lost in Cheeseland
Invading Holland
The Nomad Mom Diary

Weblog of the Year

JoNova
No Frakking Consensus (Donna has worked very very hard this year on the IPCC)
Quirky Chrissy
Travel Geek Magazine
The Modern Nomad
Watts Up With That?

Don't cheat - ha ha ha

Oh, and while Anthony has learnt how to game the contest, he's urging people not to game the contest, writing at the end of his instructions, given in immense detail (because he knows a lot of his readers are a bit slow):

 9. Spread the word! Twitter, Facebook, mailing lists, friends, comments on other blogs, and most importantly, if you run a blog, I’d welcome a posting on this topic.

10. Remember, while winning is fun, the way you play the game is just as important. Don’t cheat. Don’t encourage cheating, and simply let the chips fall where they may. May the best weblogs win.

There you go, Anthony.  I should be back in your good books now.  I run a blog and I've done a posting on this topic :)


PS If you wonder why I've done a posting on this irrelevant topic, it's because WUWT and other denier blogs are tediously boring at the moment - so there's not much material for HW.

The Curious Tale of Anthony Watts and His Dog

UPDATED: Update added at the end of this article.

Today I came across a post by Anthony Watts who some readers know from his blog, WUWT.

The Part about Anthony's Dog

Anthony's apparently been surreptitiously supporting the Union of Concerned Scientists by pretending he's a dog (if I've got that right).  Anyway, he used his dog's name to subscribe, maybe thinking he needed to hide his true identity in case UCS didn't accept fake skeptics as members.

That's right, Anthony pretended to be his dog! He thinks it's hilarious that UCS accepted his subscription in his dog's name (Kenji).  Others will no doubt be bemused by the lengths to which he felt he had to go in order to 'spy' on the highly secretive (not!) UCS.

(Some of you may even call to mind Anthony's ongoing outrage at Dr Gleick pretending to be a human being with Heartland Institute.  Dog impersonations are okay but human impersonations are not.  The other difference being that the UCS is completely open, while the Heartland Institute is a very secretive organisation.)

And Now the Curious Tale

Anthony claims something the UCS wrote isn't true, while in the same article posting more than ample evidence showing that what the UCS wrote was spot on.  (Yes, if you thought Anthony was a bit odd for pretending to be his dog, what follows is even more odd.)

Enter The Union of Concerned Scientists

Watts claims this statement from the Union of Concerned Scientists is 'completely false'.  He underlined said statement in red so his readers would understand to what he is referring:

So, let's see.  Did Fox News lead in with the headline: "New Research Shows Wind Farms Cause Global Warming" or not?

Enter Fox Nation

We don't have to go to Fox News to find out, but you can if you like by clicking here.  Anthony kindly posts a screenshot of their article:

Let's examine these two statements more closely.  Maybe Watts found a letter changed somewhere:

UCS: New Research Shows Wind Farms Cause Global Warming
FOX: New Research Shows Wind Farms Cause Global Warming

Seriously?  Identical.  Even to the capitalization.

Enter Reuters

Now so far, Anthony seems oblivious to what it was that so amused/amazed/appalled The Union of Concerned Scientists.  He attempts to shift the blame, saying it wasn't Fox's fault, it was Reuters fault.

Watts is saying that all Fox did was publish an article by Reuters.

Two questions immediately arise:

1. Does Fox publish anything no matter how silly just because it arrived from one of their syndicated news providers?
2. Did the Reuters article say: New Research Shows Wind Farms Cause Global Warming.

I don't know the answer to the first question.  But it sure doesn't seem very responsible for a major international news media network to publish whatever anyone sends them no matter how absurd.

The answer to the second question meant going across to the Reuters website.  Here is their article, which has the following headline:

Okay, let's line them up again just to make sure we're not seeing things:

UCS: New Research Shows Wind Farms Cause Global Warming
FOX: New Research Shows Wind Farms Cause Global Warming
Reuters: Wind Farms may have warming effect: research

UCS accurately quoted the ridiculous headline from Fox.  Reuters had a completely different headline.

Just in case you are wondering if Reuters changed their headline at some stage, here is a link to their article using Wayback Machine.  (Watts also provides the headline from The Telegraph, which was equally misleading but different from that of Fox: "Wind farms can cause climate change, finds new study".)

What did Watts not Spot?

For starters, Anthony did not point out that Fox made up their own headline.  But as you'll have figured out already, Watts missed a much more fundamental point.

Why is the Union of Concerned Scientists amazed, amused and appalled?

Well, the research did NOT find that wind farms 'cause global warming'.  The research found that wind farms have a local warming effect.

Anthony even posts the abstract of the research paper in question, but still hasn't twigged why the Union of Concerned Scientists scoffed at the Fox News headline.

Here is the relevant part of the abstract as shown on WUWT.  Anthony even bolded the sentence about local (not global) warming "over wind farms relative to nearby non-wind-farm regions":

The World's Most Visited Anti-Science Website and Winner of the Bloggies Lifetime Achievement Award

And @bloggies wonders why science blogs have no interest in sharing a platform with their 'lifetime achievement winner' WUWT?

Give the dog a bone...

Update:

As of now the blog article referred to above attracted 74 comments, of which I read only one that may possibly have alerted Anthony to his error, but Anthony deleted it mysteriously saying (in reference to this? Surely he doesn't want to draw attention to one of his other deficiencies):

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Greg Laden says:February 27, 2013 at 8:10 am[snip - no comments from you - re pending issues - Anthony]

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Summarising for people who are unfamiliar with the context, what this example illustrates quite neatly is:

1) Double standards

In Watts world, he can fake his own identity (posing as a dog!), but if someone else does so much as use an on-line identity (eg Sou), Watts calls them "anonymous cowards" at best or effectively calls for them to be flogged drawn and quartered.

What is even more ridiculous is that Watts felt he needed to fake his identity at all - as if he thinks there is a 4,000 strong inner UCS sanctum that operates in secrecy. (The Union of Concerned Scientists doesn't set criteria for membership AFAIK. Anyone can join, even a someone posing as a dog! I don't know if they boot people out for any reason.  Most organisations have some base criteria.)

Makes you wonder what sort of circles Watts usually inhabits?  (Such weird thinking is consistent with the notion that almost ALL the scientists, journalists, politicians and the majority of the general public are part of a decades long conspiracy to deceive the few remaining science deniers, and that climate science is a 'hoax'.)  

2) Cognitive difficulties - critical reading and arithmetic in particular

Watts didn't pick up on 'global' vs 'local'. Watts may not even know that there is a difference between a local effect and a global effect. That would go some way to explaining his ongoing obsession with individual surface stations long after it's been proven time and time again that individual stations being out balances out once they are aggregated.  (This includes a paper that listed Watts himself as one of the authors.  Seems that comprehending the findings of a paper is not a pre-requisite for being listed as an author.)