Sullivan had honed his reputation and voice over the course of a long sojourn in the blogging trenches. But he took to blogging like a child to cheddar goldfish crackers. From the beginning, he seemed to love the ability to write shortform, which he often said was unpolished. The style and substance of that magazine in his era had come under considerable attack in recent weeks.
Sullivan was out front defending it, and the timing does look a little suspect. He begins by comparing the modes of formal writing with blogging, citing, for example, that blogging requires no revision or editing and is based upon the feelings of the writer in the moment.
He also reveals the consequences of these methods of blogging through the form of personal reader feedback. Sullivan makes the point through his comparison of the two methods of writing that blogging seeks not to replace formal writing, but to become part of an alliance with the older counterpart, ultimately forming the base to more effective writing in general.
Blogging is basically free writing in a public domain. Formal writing instruction constantly reminds us that one of the first steps in achieving effective writing in the formal sense is the need for unrestricted brainstorming. Blogging is exactly that, just spread out over a period of time. The fragments of blogging act as a map for recurring ideas or themes, which the writer then synthesizes down into their main claim.
One of the main factors of writing is delivery to the audience. Along with that, one of the main fears of writing deals with not effectively translating ideas across to the audience. Yes, I did find the Squash entertaining, informative, inspiring, and a great lighthearted diversion. It told us you are serious about anything you do. I like to play slow-pitch ball the same way. Indeed there are places you can get one freely. Some people here are heavy responders and others only chime in occasionally.
Still others hang back almost all the time. I blog have three of them but spend most of my time reading the work of my betters. I mostly lurk and follow the arguments. Dave, I lurk here four and five times per day. Anthony Watts and Pielke Jr. I blurt out when commenters claim to be defending science but use ad hominem or appeal to authority arguments when they should be introducing empirical evidence. Quarling with trolls, however, can turn you into a troll and distract from the main point.
Sites like this can make science better, but it requires a new set of ethics… or perhaps a re-commitment to an old set of ethics: a humble commitment to empiricism, openness and honesty. The readers of these blogs need to commit themselves to these principles as well and learn when to keep their mouths shut. Anthony Watts seems to be having thoughts along these lines even as we speak.
We need to keep in mind that Hansen, Mann and Steig are in fact working at the cutting edge of their field trying to develop a methodology to answer questions that are really of interest to all of us. The work of people like Steve M. If it is, so be it.
Albert Einstein, after all, was just a patent office clerk, right? Fairly put. I think what has happened is that the peer reviewed model for scientific integrity has collapsed as the political dynamic has invaded the scientific — and none more so than in the case of climate science. Its beyond dispute that the peer review model had been under considerable strain for some time, with some respected scientists referring to it as a form of censorship antithetical to the scientific method.
Its easy to see these sorts of things happening but very difficult to stop. Even after that, there were people claiming that the fall after March was a temporary correction and that people should pile in and buy these stocks as they would go even higher. Speaking at the American Science conference in Chicago, Prof Field said fresh data showed greenhouse gas emissions between and increased far more rapidly than expected.
Of course, during that time no global warming has occurred. It then ends with two pieces of risible antiscience:. Prof Field says that a warming planet will dry out forests in tropical areas making them much more likely to suffer from wildfires. Now all of this parallels very well the stock market cycle of boom and bust, except this market is a market of ideas or memes with massive public policy implications.
People were never surer than in March that the falls in the market were temporary and that their investments could not possibly be wrong. Sociologically this is a fascinating time which is why I read Benny Peiser, a social scientist, and what he has to say on CCNet. Do you or does anyone have a link to what he actually said? It seems awfully unequivocal given recent measurements of surface temperatures, satellite temperatures and ocean heat content.
The fun thing is that BBC will make these sorts of crappy articles without attribution to where they came from — which makes it worse than then blogosphere in that regard. Must be the season for evaluation of blogs. Anthony Watts is asking people to think about issues in relation to his blog.
There is an issue with repetitive argumentation in relation to certain issues. The subject is important, but the argumentation itself is not. But it does become all too predictable. That is boring but it is also a waste of time for the moderator and the reader both as it too often devolves into a but fight.
The problem is — how to keep the free flow of ideas and discussion whilst at the same time censoring out repetitive, unproductive argument. There are some pearls of wisdom in their for any blogger. That idea spoke to me a long time ago when I first started. Having done TV for 25 years, blogging seemed much like my daily weather broadcast. As Kohl Piersen points out in 5, I am reevaluating how I work at it.
The difference between doing TV and running a blog is the audience interaction. Interactive TV was tried, but never caught on. IMHO, the key to a successful blog is promoting expression of ideas without the hurling of fruits and vegetables. It must be remembered, though, that all successful blogs are agenda-driven.
That may be a personal agenda or a broader public agenda. If a blog is inaugurated merely for fun or curiosity, it will inevitably fail. Climate Audit, to my mind, is driven by your quest to ferret out the truth and to uncover scientific error, whether accidental or intentional. Whilst you may have your own views on the broader AGW argument, you try hard not to let them influence the debate that goes on here. Often, and sometimes infuriatingly! Naturally, skeptics like me, I admit!
You come across as seeker of truth, whether such revelation supports the AGW bandwagon or not. Climate Audit does what it says on the tin! My initial comment, that all blogs are agenda-driven, naturally draws a comparison between CA and RC. Surely, its nomenclature should suggest a similar mission?
Real science must surely be science that can freely be subjected to audit — and the result, whether favourable or not, must be acknowledged. Thanks, Steve. That was absolutely fun to read. Peer review will never again enjoy the undeserved awe among the public and even scientists that it used to.
There is one aspect not mentioned in the Sullivan article that is the key reason why I encouraged Steve to start blogging using WordPress: instant rebuttal. It seemed to me in late that the key problem in climate science was that Hockey Team were using the media, print and internet to get almost pre-buttal to what became MM05a and b.
The journals were no help, they were much too slow and not very helpful. The print media and some internet media were in the thrall of the Hockey Team. The Team had just launched a very slick weblog of its own but with bizarre and heavily pre-censored comments as it still does today. Steve needed an outlet to get his message out unfiltered and blogging it seemed to me provided that outlet.
Sullivan is certainly right about blogging becoming a game changer in journalism. We also watched the launch of SurfaceStations. Steve M. This correspondence between writers and some climate scientists raises a very provocative point. In the sciences, right or wrong is not a matter of personal opinion, but matters of falsifiable theory and replicable fact that are entirely indifferent to personal prejudices, feelings, and expectations.
Literary writers, however, produce virtually nothing except opinions. Every novelist is writing an opinion about life and behavior. Every art critic is expressing a personal view of art and artist. Every literary critic, polemicist, and political writer is expressing nothing but personal views and opinions of some subject matter. Every negative criticism is easily taken as a personal insult.
And, of course, every positive criticism as a personal compliment at best, sycophancy at worst. Every discussion point is already strongly filtered by theory and data over which I have little control. All the meaning in my data is derived from theory, not from me. All I do is interpret the theory correctly, with respect to my data, or not. Being wrong is tough to swallow, sometimes, but being honestly wrong is an honorable estate in science.
With discerned mistakes comes advance. They are behaving like literary scholars, rather than like scientists. Criticism is met with hostility and scorn, in just the way an insecure person defends a personal and subjective opinion. The scornful and rejectionist attitude endemic in climate science appears to be the response of a subjectivist literary elite. It may be evidence of a nagging personal insecurity that the field rests upon a negotiated subjective convention rather than on an objective base of replicable fact and falsifiable theory.
After all, in science demonstration is everything, and confidence in a result is to have a demonstration in hand, Critics are met confidently — even eagerly. Not so in climate science. In a negotiated convention, climate meaning becomes asserted literary rather than demonstrated scientific. When the theory is not falsifiable and the data are muzzy, argument is not in terms of theory but of viewpoint.
Criticism becomes a personal attack rather than a culling of impersonal discordance. Polemics and the politics of gotcha, dissent suppression, and personal triumph reign.
My first thought was that the reaction of climate scientists was based on a small fraternity of closely interconnected individuals who are not used to criticism or argument re: Wegman social networking. The invitation to an upcoming symposium leads with this remarkable statement:. Pat, I think as a generalization that what you say has merit. Some seemingly come to contribute to the technical knowledge base here and then inevitably get sidetracked into the more subjective topics mentioned above or just disappear.
My main interest in CA is the peer reviewed paper analyses and reviews that are undertaken here and it is in this activity that I see having climate scientists and particularly those that might defend a paper or have a countervailing POV contributing to those discussions as a major positive development.
What has been disappointing is that this seldom happens and most notably because when the scientists arrive they allow a true contributor learns quickly how to either ignore provocations or quickly put them away themselves to be sidetracked. I do find it curious and disappointing that a number of climate scientists seem to come here to discuss personalities and policies and let us know that they do not like what they see — to the detriment of discussing ideas. I think in a number of cases the scolding scientist comes in a role as a policy advocate and not as a scientist.
It appears to me that they would otherwise prefer to handle scientific exchange with peer review and forego the exchanges of blogging that Andrew Sullivan and many of us see as a positive attribute. It also provides a forum for readers to express opinions to the world. Those reader opinions influence the preception of the blog, too. Blogs on this subject are inevitably going to be viewed as being on one side or the other of the political divide.
Just as political partisans have a tendency to stereotype opponents, blogs get stereotyped too. If a blog is perceived as a skeptic blog, alarmists are often going to attribute to it all the aspects they attribute to other blogs they see on the skeptic side of the fence. When alarmist scientists participate in politics, they have to expect that they are going to be on the receiving end of politics as well.
And given the policy implications, the quality of their science must meet far higher standards. As Steve has pointed out, society demands that the science involved in public offerings undergo stringent audits. The science involved in bringing new drugs to market must meet the most stringent standards for replication and review.
Alarmists scientists are advocating in the political arena for policies which will have impacts which dwarf those of a securites offering or a new drug.
But neither do the policy makers. A defective drug brings relatively quick consequences that feed back into the political system.
For example, they are planning to release Asian oysters into the Chesapeake Bay, because the oyster harvest has been reduced due to decimation of the oyster population. Yet, stopping the pollution of the Bay is beyond them.
This point goes right to the heart of the matter, Stan. In typical cases, science is never involved in public offerings. Involved in public offerings is engineering, backed up by science. Public policy proceeds with engineering quality studies, in which all the manufacturing details have been worked out and all the tunings, tweaks, and adjustments have been examined, understood, and justified within bounded engineering models.
The engineering models use as much physics chemistry, biology, genetics as they can do, but after that there are the empirical rules and complex engineering studies elegant kludges to meet the specification standards and solve the production problems that the available science cannot address or has not addressed.
Climate science is virtually unique in having been levered into public policy; and that without the strength to support any of the necessary engineering. It has been forced forward in a very inappropriate way. Public policy demands climate engineering. But climate science has been forwarded as though it were climate engineering, and all the while it is not developed enough to even start supporting the as-yet entirely non-existent field of climate engineering.
The huge fight about AGW turns on this point. The science used to back human endeavor is always incomplete. So we use engineering for the specifications and crucial details. It works very well. Policy-advocate climate scientists have invited critical review because they have abused their science.
They have forced it into an arena where science does not belong; all because in their activist passion they have decided that they know the answer without having the knowledge.
Precocious knowledge is called revelation. But this, plus the above indefensible mistake, perhaps explains the thin skins of the AGW activist cadre. There must be a saying about confidence battening on ignorance. At some point you realize that the time the blogger spends snipping your comments or running the zamboni through the thread is a waste of his time, time that is better spent on substance. So even mohpit learns to behave. I believe most? If they ever relinquish their stranglehold on the field, their replacements are likely to be a lot more amenable to instant criticism.
Very informative. It resonates. I am currently far from qualified to blog on a topic. For example, I no longer bother with printed-paper media or on-air television for news. I remember first grappling with what to put on my blog. As I have never set up a blog, I wondered what he would say about motivation. One can form an impression that a person with a special interest, seeking to become more wise, can do so very quickly by blogging. Ideas, angles, perspectives, data come flowing in from a variety of sources.
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