Defending Science At the BA Blog (Of All Places!)
Life in various aspects means I can’t post as much as I wish, even if there’s quite a few loose threads that will surface here soon.
Anyway, in the meanwhile there are some signs of hope and despair in the comments section at this Bad Astronomer’s blog, where I am making a couple of points: (a) does Phil Plait believe people like astronaut / moonwalker / geologist / climate skeptic Harrison Schmitt is a “denier” and if so why doesn’t Phil tell the world about it and (b) how unscientific it is to call people “deniers” only because they don’t reach your exact conclusions (given the fact that science is a process, not a quiz show).
I have been said things and called names as usual, but that’s alright. As Gerry Spence would say, those unfortunate souls’ opinions would only matter if I cared. And I don’t 😎
The Unbearable Nakedness of CLIMATE CHANGE 
I think I will pass on visiting BA for the simple reason that we have only so much time to read.That visiting rational websites are numerous enough to read in.
If enough people avoid gutter quality blogs and forums,they will die away on their own.
That is why I have long avoided RealClimate,Desmog,and other trashy places,in the hope that they dry up and blow away.
Omni,
You should see some of the blue language that didn’t make it past the cutting room at WUWT, CA, and TRF (imagine how hard it was for me to offer language that would offend the ear of Lubos – I have a gift 😉 ).
Thanks for culling the offense rather then the total.
[papertiger – this not being the average AGW blog, I have removed excessive language from your text. maurizio]
Omni, three years or so ago, I first encountered BA during the Weblog Awards. He was in a dead heat with Steve Mcintyre’s Climate Audit for the Best Science Blog. At night before I turned off the machine Steve would be up a few hundred votes. The next afternoon BA would be up a few hundred. And it went on like that for about a couple weeks.
Then the final day of voting. Steve pulled out to his biggest lead of the contest, a couple thousand votes. When the polls closed BA had tightened the gap but not enough to win. CA by 1500 or so.
Then a funny thing happened. Post election ballots kept being added to Bad Astronomy even though the contest was over, eventually giving him a 5,000 vote lead. This was more votes then the contest had tallied on any single day, and they were all for BA. Suspicious? Oh hell yeah. Fraud for all the world to see.
Anybody with an ounce of personal integrity would have withdrawn and conceded the election.
But not Phil.
That sorry [.] insisted that Steve Mc had cheated the system in order to win during the actual election, then ran that line, supported by not a shread of evidence, to claim “since everybody cheated” why don’t we declare it a draw?
That was good enough for Steve (he didn’t really give a damn one way or the other – in fact I probably cared more then he did. For good reason. At that point in time Al Gore and the alarmists were riding the crest of their popularity, collecting acadamy awards and AAAS accolades left and right. Our poor skeptical community was struggling for some shred, any shred of legitimacy. Climate Audit collecting the best science blog was a rare and sorely needed boost.)
That’s Phil Plait’s character in a nutshell. He has none.
And you can see this lack of character on display any given day. Like in your example. Plait says, “And for you deniers who plague the comments of every blog post I make on this topic… … these posts by me are not politically driven.” What a load of horse manure.
I remember Phil exulting over the conviction of Scooter Libby a year after the decision was handed down. Not political?
He wouldn’t have the job with Discover Magazine if he wasn’t totally political or even semi skeptical.
His readers are interchangeable with denizens of Huffington Post, Atrios, or Daily Kos. They are so mind numbed, if Phil (their chosen authority figure) said “boogie men are living in your closet”, the regulars at BA would start sleeping with flashlights under their pillows.
They are a cut below Desmog readers.
If you like to be called names, be insulted by inferior minds, have your evidence ignored by troglodytes, who couldn’t (and/ or are doggedly determined not to, for political or fiduciary reasons) understand it even if they tried — well BA is the right place to go.
Knowing this, if you are still determined to joust with Phil Plait and crew, count me in.
Consider me your wingman.
[.] like Phil need to be taken down a peg…
Sometimes I forget that.
papertiger – no, I don’t think I need a wingman. But feel free to join 😎
And here’s a link to my 3-part analysis of the McIntyre/Plait Web awards saga, back in Nov 2007.
By the way…one of the blogs “in the making” is about the people that turn into Mr Hydes when talking about climate, and Phil is definitely one of them 😎