Here I am, rooming with that space case, Phil Plait, and what should appear on the astronomy photo of the day but a cosmic cephalopod, a picture of Comet Holmes that has a resemblance to a cartoon octopus.
Perhaps this is a sign of reconciliation? That the savage enmity between two science blogs shall be soothed? That the ferocious competition between the best science blog on the web and the blog that tied with a junk science site shall be at an end? That disparate disciplines can find common ground in the beauty of the natural universe?
Naaah, I hope not. The rivalry is too much fun.
climateaudit.org rules. Examine the evidence yourself.
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Ha — noticed it first, nyah nyah.
:-)
PZ, tristero here. I’m in DC at the Americans United meeting at the Holiday Inn. Hope we can say hello.
t
I don’t know. It looks more like a shuttlecock to me.
Off-topic, but I didn’t start it.
Great idea! I, with absolutely no training in climate science beyond the weekly weather forecasts, can participate in a debate about extremely technical data and analyses – fortunately, I don’t have to contend with actual experts in that debate because they’ve reached a consensus already.
You obviously do like the rivalry to keep on stirring the pot like this!
So, you guys believe in a giant octopus in the sky? I’m not sure I can participate in this debate about extremely technical data and analyses – but fortunately, argument from authority works as well as it ever did. Those doubters who claim it might be a shuttlecock may be safely ignored. :)
I fault those who selected the list of nominees for best science blog for including a bullshit denialist blog. Might as well have a Bullshit Denialist blog award and be done with it.
Thanks for rejecting my friend request Phil. That Phil, he’s a good guy…
But I like it that you deny bullshit around here! Opposing the consensus of peer-reviewed theology, and all that. It’s good that Pharyngula was included, even if you do have a tendency towards robust language.
I’m surprised no-one is commenting that we finally got a photo of the monolith from 2001.
I’m surprised no-one is commenting that we finally got a photo of the monolith from 2001.
Now if only you and Brayton could have as much fun with your rivalry… (sigh)
Epistaxis, staunch the flow of bloody idiocy; you didn’t even look over there, did you? They are literate.
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My weekly dose of blatant, willful, ignorance. How do you look your mind’s eye in the eye, anyway, Epi?
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Epi, ignore Kim, she’s a serial troll (see the Stan Palmer and Kentucky posts).
woozy: That’s what I thought when I saw it.
And as for the celestial phenomenon, what’s the matter with you people? That’s not a cephalopod! It’s the Great Milky Way Moray, the most fearsome predator of our solar system and deadly enemy of cosmic cephalopods everywhere! And it’s turning in our direction!!
WOW! Man, oh man. I’ve heard and read plenty of people use the Galileo Gambit, but I’ve never seen someone go so far as to actually name themselves after it. That made my afternoon.
I prefer Pharyngula because I’m a born potty-mouth and I can say “shit” here without it getting asterisked out.
OT, looks like Pharygula’s blog can easily be understood by most at the high school level.
My blog is ranked Jr. High school so don’t feel so bad.
You’re rooming with him? Do you each sleep with one eye open?
You said it: *cartoon* octopus. I think that the heavens are merely mocking your avocation for the beasts. Maybe Phil put them up to it.
Dunno bout the octopus but I’m pretty sure I see the Virgin Mary’s graceful countenance in that comet. She was in my cornflakes too this morning….and I also saw her in the contents of my six month olds nappy (ok, diaper for you non-Antipodeans). She pops up all over my house.
And now, if there is a Hell I’ve firmly affixed my place in it.
Huh?
Well, Phil is an all-around good guy, and Ed, well, he sometimes comes across as a pompous, know-it-all jerk-off.
Peer reviewed theology is theology reviewed by other theologians, like peer reviewed science is science reviewed by other scientists. There are many different scraps of scriptures and theological speculations put forward, but they’re only accepted as orthodox if so pronounced by the Church hierarchy. To say doctrine is true because it has been confirmed by the Church, rather than arguing on its merits, is a similar sort of argument from authority you see. It’s only valid if you accept the authority as authoritative.
Creationism, in other words.
God, I hate explaining jokes! :)
I last observed this comet a few days ago, and thought it looked like a moon jelly instead. It was too light polluted to see the faint tendrils of comet tail in the picture above. What a bummer — I didn’t even get the phylum right.
Intelligently designed
Oh, I got the joke; it was just the strained premise that I was struggling with.
Oh, I know. There’s a difference between throwing a steak into the cage and throwing a worthless piece of gristle to watch the thing struggle with it. I hope my little diversion doesn’t bother any of the other guests too much.
What do you do when you want to figure out something for yourself, instead of just taking someone else’s opinion as your own?
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Surely an exhortation to examine the evidence is de rigueur on a science blog.
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Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha…. That was a good laugh! A big cup of irony to go with my coffee. My day is starting out grand!
The streaks of tail on this comet look nothing like tentacles–they’re obviously a miraculous cosmic representation of Noodly Appendages. RAmen.
Well, as a chemist, my usual strategy is to do a literature search on the subject to become acquinted with the current state of understanding, and see how things are done in the field. I read up as much as I can, and examine the current body of work critically, and try to assess the validity of their conclusions as best I can. With that taken care of, if I have a particular question in mind, I draw up a hypothesis, design an experiment, run the experiment, collect data, analyze it, draw some conclusions, and assess my orignal hypothesis…
…Now, if the topic is related to areas in which I have some experience (materials science, analytical chemistry, and organic chemistry), I can do much of this work with some confidence; I know the instrumentation, I’ve studied the basic theory, I have a feeling for how much certainty there can be, and I know the general approaches taken so that I can participate actively. However, when I come across an area that’s really ouside of what I’m familiar with (e.g. things like applied nuclear engineering, deep sea marine biology, gauge theory, and paleoclimatology), where I lack the basic technical background and testing infrastructure to do much on my own, then I have to take a different approach. I still do the literature search as best I can, and I try to understand key concepts and assess current limits of understanding, but here I do need to take some things on authority — provided that there is reasonable consensus among the experts in the field. I do this with the understanding that the experts in the field did their homework and showed their work… but that they are still human, and that their authority is by no means absolute. All of us, regardless of our academic background and level of intelligence, are forced to do this many time every day; it’s not “ideal”, but that’s life…
…What I don’t do is find a group of rank amateurs who’s sole purpose of existence is to poke holes in other people’s work. If you start with a group of people with an explicit socio-political axe to grind and you get them all talking over their heads, you are NOT going to end up with a meaningful “audit”.
Tee, Hee. ‘Rank amateurs…..talking over their heads’. I don’t think you’ve examined the evidence yourself, either.
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Indeed. Then again, I’m not trolling other people’s websites, claiming that the overwhelming majority of the world’s climatologists are corrupt/incompetant doofuses, am I?
j.t.delaney,
You’re approach sounded a pretty good one, right up until the last paragraph. It’s fair enough to take the majority view of the specialists in an area you don’t work in as a default, and it is true that the only survey I know of indicated a few years ago that about 55% of climatologists support AGW to only 30% against. (I’m thinking of Von Storch’s paper here, reproduced at the Nature website. He’s officially pro-AGW by the way.) A consensus is weak evidence, but if you’ve got no dogs in the fight yourself, it’s probably OK. And if you want to say you believe in AGW on this basis and you’re not interested in discussing it, most decent sceptics wouldn’t object.
What triggers the trolls is jumping into such a controversy in an area you admittedly know little about and making judgements that one side is junk science, right wing, moronic, denialists, etc. Or, as you put it, a bunch of rank amateurs. If you go out of your way to insult people, and then keep on insulting them when they complain, what do you expect?
To give another example, there is a similar controversy between string theorists and the loop quantum gravity people. The string theorists think string theory is the only viable approach, that the LQG approach has been proven years ago not to have a chance of working, and that all the LQG people are borderline cranks trapped in the past and their work is a pointless waste of time. The LQG people think string theorists arrogant, and suggest they’re not the only game in town.
Now, it is arguably the “consensus” position in particle physics that a LQG blog would be “junk science”. I’ve seen some physicists describe it as such. They might be right, for all I can follow the maths. But if I were to find myself in competition against some quantum gravitationalists, I would not feel qualified to pass judgement on them. I would pass over the point in silence, or use some weasel words to avoid taking a definite position. If I made rude comments about them without being willing and able to back them up, knowing that people from those groups might well follow the contest links as I had, I wouldn’t be very surprised to find myself being invaded by annoyed quantum gravitationalists defending their honour.
Personally, I don’t think that as scientists you guys would have ever done that. The point is that, unlike particle physics, in this case the science has been politicised. It is the conventional wisdom of certain political groups that AGW scepticism is disreputable and thoroughly debunked, and you assumed it was perfectly reasonable in this case to say so. If I may say so, it was political prejudice and not a scientific judgement.
Well, what’s done is done. And now you’ve effectively just called the overwhelming majority of the world’s climate sceptics corrupt/incompetent doofuses. Many are inexpert, certainly. (And incidentally, I think CA’s position is that the Hockeystick team were not incompetent at climatology, nor initially corrupt, but that the particular branch of postgrad statistics needed to analyse this stuff was outside their area of expertise. Anyone can make errors. What they chose to do when the error was caught is another matter.) But there are quite a few of them who are professors at universities, geologists, physicists, chemists, engineers, and mathematicians – even some IPCC reviewers and authors. Without more than hearsay evidence, what’s the difference between saying it of us and saying it of them?
BA declared a draw and dropped the issue, and I think that was the right decision.
I can’t speak for anyone else, of course, but I suspect the trolls will die down faster if you don’t keep on poking them.
Yeah, in the USA.
And why do you still talk about the hockey stick? Have you read the relevant articles (just search for “hockey stick”) on realclimate.org?
Yeah, in the USA.
And why do you still talk about the hockey stick? Have you read the relevant articles (just search for “hockey stick”) on realclimate.org?
You obviously do like the rivalry to keep on stirring the pot like this!
What part of “The rivalry is too much fun” don’t you understand? And he was talking about rivalry with BA, not with CA. But once a stupid troll always a stupid troll, eh?
Now, it is arguably the “consensus” position in particle physics that a LQG blog would be “junk science”.
Arguable by a lying troll. Are you actually claiming that string theory is the consensus view among physicists? There isn’t a single proponent of string theory who asserts that string theory has been demonstrated. Your analogy is dishonest, ignorant, and stupid.
I suspect the trolls will die down faster if you don’t keep on poking them.
Do you honestly think that you’re going to blackmail PZ into no longer (accurately) referring to CA as junk science by threatening to troll his blog every time he does? Are you that stupid?
Surely an exhortation to examine the evidence is de rigueur on a science blog.
Tell us again that Stan Palmer was right, Kim — that thr’s n scnc hr.
“And why do you still talk about the hockey stick? Have you read the relevant articles (just search for “hockey stick”) on realclimate.org?”
Yes.
“What part of “The rivalry is too much fun” don’t you understand?”
I understood. That was the joke.
“Arguable by a lying troll. Are you actually claiming that string theory is the consensus view among physicists? There isn’t a single proponent of string theory who asserts that string theory has been demonstrated. Your analogy is dishonest, ignorant, and stupid.”
Lies by an ignorant and arrogant bigot. I did not say string theory was a consensus, so that is a direct lie. Nor did I say any of them would claim string theory to have been demonstrated, so that’s another lie. None of them would assert it had been “demonstrated”, because as yet there are many problems and gaps to be resolved, just like there are in AGW. But there is more evidence to support the idea than there is for AGW. Your so-called refutation is illogical, prejudiced, and insulting.
“Do you honestly think that you’re going to blackmail PZ into no longer (accurately) referring to CA as junk science by threatening to troll his blog every time he does? Are you that stupid?”
Nope. I’m just going to reappear and tell him he’s wrong every time he does. Because he is.
“I couldn’t care less.”
Doesn’t sound like it.
“You see, you came here, and after this week’s antics, I guaruntee I won’t be going there, period.”
Fair enough. I didn’t ask you to. I would only ask that you gather evidence if you’re going to assert such opinions.
“I didn’t go “out of my way”; CA sent…”
That’s a lie. CA sent no one. In fact, I rather think McIntyre disapproves of this sort of thing. And I don’t even comment there, either.
“a swarm of gibbering trolls who posted hundreds of unwelcomed, disruptive posts”
The initial posts were not disruptive, but simply challenged in polite terms the false and insulting assertions made by the blog owner. Rather than consider the evidence rationally, the response was simply to pour on more invective, which led eventually to the hundreds of posts. Cause and effect.
And most of the “gibbering” seemed to be on your side, as I recall.
“on a blog that I visit everday, causing the signal-to-noise ratio to drop precipitously, sucking all the fun out of an otherwise very pleasurable daily ritual.”
I sympathise with your pain. But it takes half a second to spot where they are, and avoid them. You don’t have to comment. You don’t have to add your own little jabs. Any post where PZ makes snide comments, skip it. There’s plenty more of interest.
“You’re sadly mistaken if you think folks should be expected to quietly lay back and enjoy it.”
I don’t. Did you expect us to quietly lay back and enjoy it? You think that you can just call people “rank amateurs”, even though some of them are or have been university professors (like McKitrick, or Pielke, or Idso, or Lindzen, or Christy), but other people are not allowed to complain if you do?
Richard Lindzen, for example, is Professor of Meteorology at MIT, was lead author for a chapter of the third IPCC report and a contributor to one in the second, and has over two hundred books and papers in climate science. He’s won awards from the American Meteorological Society and the American Geophysical Union. He’s a member of the NRC board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate. He also doesn’t believe in AGW, and would, I think, thoroughly endorse CA’s science. I’m jolly impressed that you can think of such a person as a “rank amateur”. And you are professor of climatology where?
I’m saying that if you insult people you are liable to get trouble. You are free to insult us. We are free to come and complain about it.
Well, at least the dumbass learned how to spell “Galileo”…