An interesting “science” face-off yesterday, with a vote for the “Best Science Blog” on the web rapidly devolving into a partisan battle over Global Warming. Popular science blogger P.Z. Myers urged his readers to all vote for a particular blog (BadAstronomy.com), which was the highest-placed challenger to an anti-anthropogenic Global Warming blog leading the poll. From Cognitive Daily:
…Several influential political blogs are advocating voting for a denialist website (“Climate Audit“) to win the award. Climate Audit is a pseudoscience blog that promotes political ideas as “science.” Bad Astronomy has a slim lead, but Climate Audit is gaining. Even if you’re not a fan of astronomy, you should still vote for this blog (a great blog, by the way). It’s the best chance for a genuine science blog to win the award.
The voting has now finished, and somehow a dead-heat was announced (I think due to shenanigans from both sides). It’s rather surreal, to see science blogs urging readers to manipulate the vote because they want to outdo an allegedly non-scientific blog. As one commenter wrote, “You are skewing the results of the poll in order to protect good science, which is supremely ironic.”
Reading through the various blog posts – and regardless of who is correct – it seems Climate Audit is a little better at civil discussion and “winning the hearts and minds” of readers. After voting had closed, CA congratulated Bad Astronomy and the other blogs up for voting, and offered these comments:
I hope that readers of each blog will take the opportunity of this introduction to visit the other site; I’ve added a link to Bad Astronomy in my very short blogroll.
Like many issues, the voting seems to have divided on left-right lines. While I realize that much of my support has come from right-wing sources, I don’t think that the analysis that’s done here is anything that should either comfort right-wing people or offend left-wing people.
Personally, I can’t say I’ve read enough to offer an opinion either way – and I suspect that is the case with most people. But let’s trot out a completely unscientific poll here on TDG and ask for your current thoughts on Global Warming. I realise this is rather a hot-button topic, so please – keep it civil. And try and reach some moral high ground by not arguing on behalf of your political allegiances, but on the data you see…
