Blogs and the internet have been very useful to me.
I thought I was going to find out about Global Warming one afternoon and that would be the end of it. The differing shades of opinion I found on the internet convinced me that I should take more of an interest.
Blogs get the news long before the reqular media - sometimes months before. In the case of dissent about the consequences of AGW they are years ahead. It has made media interviews hard to stomach, though. You know what question they should be asking but, strangely, the super enquiring journos don't have the necessary understanding. Very frustrating.
Take the 97% of scientists meme, for instance. Without the internet I probably would not have read even one of those reports and I would believe in the figures just like lots of others.
The same with global temperatures. There are some here who will claim that the world is still warming while others say it is not. Without a source of data who do you believe? Now we can select a range of years from HADCRUT4 or RSS ourselves we know what the truth of the situation is.
Blogs are interesting because of the different personalities that frequent each. You can compare and contrast the viewpoints and you can listen to views from all over the world. Some sceptical blogs have many more scientists visiting them than you see here, some only have screaming zealots who don't seem to understand why some people value logic. Some live in an echo chamber where the faithful just talk to themselves.
Over time you accumulate a wealth of useful links.
Blogs are only as useful as the information they contain. When the information is wrong or misleading there is not much that can be learned from it. When the blog has factual information then it serves as a resource for others to learn from. Even the blogs that are based on the denial of AGW will have some factual information in them. The problem exists when the facts are distorted to reflect a political or ideological point of view instead of the information that the science itself tells us. I have found that there are far too many blogs ran by the marionettes of the fossil fuel industries to have any hope for those that have yet to learn how to separate the wheat from the chaff to be able to easily gain the scientific knowledge they would need to draw their own well reasoned conclusions concerning AGW. Of course, that is the real purpose for the marionettes to begin with. Always create doubt where no doubt should exist.
It is ok but people do not have time to read the climate change blogs. There are so many things which is scientist made it. suddenly they could know looking to that machine so it is useless in this condition.
It depends on how you use them. A blog is not a source. If it offers you ideas you should check it against the scientific research. If you find that it consistently distorts or lies about client research -- as WUWT does -- then you know you can ignore it. If on the other hand it is a credible blog like Judith Curry's then you might try to follow the threads with many credible contributors.
I like blogs that link to the specific studies that they refer to.
Just understand that most blogs are just editorial ranting.
A blog is only as good as the people who run it, there are several that actually are linked to science site that are very good and have considerable amounts of genuine science, sadly there are also the denier ones (which is I'm sure why you are posting this) these are run by organisations like Heartland and you won't find much that could be called science, subsets of these are sites like watts who does little to even try and hide his contempt for real science, try repeatedly to pull down science using flimsy set piece stories from a small range of the usual uninformed stable those like Steve Goddard, who has posted some real clangers over the years yet deniers seem to lap this stuff up, when most of it is utter BS.
I personally have caught watts lying about one of his preciousness temp data records, it was a mistake, but when I informed him of the mistake he didn't try to fix it he just removed the photo that showed he was wrong, then it became a lie, to me that is ample evidence of what the man is like.
There are about a dozen real blogs linked to real science sites, deniers have tried to counter this by creating hundreds (about one for each theory) many of them use much the same formula design, which tells me that are probably administered by the same person. Most of them seem to also cross share stories and one story in a denier blog that has a trail of sources that just lead back through other denier blogs is sadly also a common thing.
Why do deniers want to use blogs, we sadly that is also not hard to explain, they have no science site to use because they have virtually zero support in the science community, as much as they try to pretend otherwise. I have literally been waiting for years for any denier to tell me where are all these 30,000 scientist from the OISM petition, have they all been washing each other hair for the last decade and just to busy to attend any science conference anywhere in the world to make their voice heard, again, sadly the answer to that is easy, they have no voice because the vast bulk of them simply don't exist. If they did don't you think that Heartland would have asked then to do just this. This was painfully obvious at Heartlands own pretend climate conference, even at the first event (when they wanted a media splash) when the OISM petition had been around (with 30,000 names) for a number of years, Heartland could manage just 6 scientists at their own conference.
If you took away all blogs the science would be just fine, most science sites have their own info pages on AGW, take away deniers blogs and what do they have left, pretty much nothing, their entire campaign is based on BS from blogs, that's the 170 or so BS theories, which they have used so far (I'm sure more are to come)
For a good portion of wiki (as bruce suggests) the climate info is actually pretty good, for the simply reason deniers spent quite a bit of time trying to hack the pages and entering false info, so that wiki decided to lock most of the climate related pages, One I found had a fictional Spanish explorer, who it was claimed had sailed through the North West Passage in the 15th century, Which I reported to wiki (and got a very nice thank you email) when they deleted this fictional explorer.
I have never seen you link to any blog that I would consider are a positive force in the world. In other words the world would be a better place without them.
Some blogs are useful for finding original sources (papers).
I do like Jeff Masters blog.
To see the science, start with wikipedia, AGW and climate change, and controversy.
The blogs are useless and dangerous, since there is so much non -truth and anger on them.
Most (every Denier blog and a few naive environmentalist blogs) have no educational, social, or informational value other than as a means of reaching and influencing the greatest number of ignorant, paranoid, and confused people with the least effort.
No Denier blog has ever been envisioned, planned, or created with the intent to foster learning, present truthful and useful information, or to provide a forum for open discussion by informed adults. In fact, every Denier blog exists solely to spread disinformation, misinformation, and bad information to a demographic of voters who believe the world is constantly being attacked by disparate groups of imaginary beings, groups, and organizations.
Their success depends on reaching and cultivating an audience of people too stupid to know anything and too lazy to care - and it turns out that America has an abundance of stupid, hateful liars. The only difference between people like Sagebrush and a suicide bomber (other than Sage being a coward) is that Sage lives in a part of the world dominated by secular governments founded on the law of man. If people like Sage ever succeed in forcing their God and religion into our government, there will be whacked-off heads rolling down American streets from sea to shining sea.
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>>I have learned a lot of science by reading them, not necessary from them but by following up links, how can you say knowledge is bad.<<
Bad knowledge is bad – and that is all you have learned. For all the time you have spent here, it is remarkable how little you have learned about science and climate. In fact, I am not the only person who thinks you have become ever less informed over time.
Blogs are good at illustrating contradictions and alternative reasoning in arguments. The reason why so many AGW cultists are butthurt about blogs that dissent from the AGW religion is because the opinions are adequately sourced.
"Positive force for the world"
Translation: pushes leftist causes.
Blogs are a very good way for issues to be ironed out IMO. There are some like Skepticalscience that is too biased to waste my time with but these are gospels to alarmists.
in bringing the debate about climate change science to the general public in a way that they can understand, and decide for themselves.
Debate? Blogs should be about solutions. There is no debate about the reality of AGW.
