One for the Scientific Community

I thought you might appreciate seeing this.

I received it from my brother who is founding president of the International Christian Technologists Association.

Right now, the 2007 Best Weblog Contest is going on. Ten blogs in each of a number of categories. One category is science.

An underdog blog is the mouthpiece for a guy who, on his own dime, is working hard to see better scientific work done on the challenge of climate change. Leslie and I [that's my brother and his wife--JAH] have enjoyed helping a bit in our spare time.

Last year's contest (in the science arena) was won by 4000 votes -- and voters are allowed to vote every 24 hours for a week. (The last day of voting is Nov 7... it's already well under way.)

The great blog: http://www.climateaudit.org/

The vote: http://2007.weblogawards.org/polls/best-science-blog-1.php

Climate Audit is by Steve McIntyre -- the guy who demonstrated errors in the "hockey stick" graph for Global Warming -- a graph created using such bad math that almost *any* data set -- even plain noise! -- will generate hockey sticks. (Steve also proved that the NASA scientist (Mann) at fault KNEW his method was bad: Mann denied he had done a particular statistical test for spurious data... yet Steve discovered Mann had an analysis hidden away in a "CENSORED" folder...with exactly the analysis Mann denied having done!)

Steve is also the guy who recently proved errors in NASA's "revisionist" temperature history, forcing them to update their data. (Yes -- today is not warmer because it was measured warmer. Today is "warmer" because they keep revising OLD temperatures DOWNWARD. I'm not kidding.)

And,

Steve is the guy who keeps highlighting unbelievable practices among climate scientists. Practices that, despite the nasty things said about him, are slowly but surely causing the rest of the scientific community to wake up. For example, this is an actual quote, in print, from a leading climate scientist:

...this does not mean that one could not improve a chronology by reducing the number of series used if the purpose of removing samples is to enhance a desired signal. The ability to pick and choose which samples to use is an advantage unique to dendroclimatology.

Oh, yes: these guys literally believe that data that doesn't fit their hypothesis can be TOSSED OUT! (Earliest post on the theme: http://www.climateaudit.org/?m=200509 -- search for "A quote from Esper." It's been used more often since then, and picked up elsewhere.)

THAT is actually one key reason Leslie and I helped collect new data up near Pike's Peak.

The claim has been consistently made that Trees tell a temperature story of global warming. And that it's too hard, too expensive for the Boulderites to go back up and update the data (last collected in 1984.) Yet we'd been hearing rumors that maybe all was not well. So, based on Steve's Starbucks hypothesis (can a team start at Starbucks in the morning, collect tree ring samples and be back in time for dinner?), we went on our adventure. And proved his hypothesis right.

Photo Gallery, by the way: http://picasaweb.google.com/Almagre.Bristlecones.2007

Some of the story (google Almagre climate audit and you'll get more than you want to know)... http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=2189

Anyway. Once more: please go to http://2007.weblogawards.org/polls/best-science-blog-1.php and vote for Climate Audit for "Best Science Blog."