Just recently, RealClimate topped 500,000 visits (and well over a million page views) since starting in December 2004. And by happy coincidence, a present arrives in the form of RealClimate being selected for the “Science & Technology Web Awards 2005” by Scientific American, with the citation:
A refreshing antidote to the political and economic slants that commonly color and distort news coverage of topics like the greenhouse effect, air quality, natural disasters and global warming, Real Climate is a focused, objective blog written by scientists for a brainy community that likes its climate commentary served hot. Always precise and timely, the site’s resident meteorologists, geoscientists and oceanographers sound off on all news climatalogical, from tropical glacial retreat to “doubts about the advent of spring.”
You all deserve the award. This site is an invaluable resource.
Keep up the excellent work.
I’m delighted about this. There are times when all the prejudice, cynicism and sheer, wilful, anti-Enlightenment stupidity ‘out there’ threaten to overwhelm even my sweet nature. Many thanks for providing such a resource; lang may yer lum reek.
Congratulations on your “birthday” and award. It is richly reserved. You are a great resource for those of us who are trying both to understand more about climate science and to communicate this understanding to others!
You also fill a huge gap that existed whereby those whose goal was to muddy the waters were able to do so with almost noone to stop them. Sometimes scientists seem to believe that if they just put out good science, it will displace the bad misconceptions that others have put out there. However, I know that the literature on teaching physics shows that people are quite capable of maintaining an incorrect view even once they are told the correct view. For example, if you teach students Newton’s Laws, then even many of them who can use these laws to solve standard textbook problems will fail to correctly answer more qualitative questions correctly…falling back instead on their old Aristotlean preconceptions. It is necessary to directly confront the misconceptions and explain to them why they are wrong in order to displace these incorrect views. This, in my opinion, is one of the most valuable roles for realclimate to play.
I feel like I alone must have provided a healthy fraction of those 500,000 hits! Keep up the good work!
It’s hard to be happy when thousands of species are being threatened
by climate change, as described in the excerpt from “Melting Planet”.
“Climate change threatens the survival of thousands of species – a
threat unparalleled since the last ice age, which ended some 10,000
years ago. .. The vast majority, scientists will warn this week, are migratory
animals – sperm whales, polar bears, gazelles, garden birds and
turtles – whose survival depends on the intricate web of habitats,
food supplies and weather conditions which, for some species, can
stretch for 6,500 miles. Every link of that chain is slowly but
perceptibly altering.”
Melting Planet
By Andrew Buncombe in Anchorage and
Severin Carrell in London
Published: 02 October 2005
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/environment/article316604.ece
C O N G R A T U L A T I O N S!
Es una distincion muy merecida. Su blog es excelente y permite que muchos de nosotros tengamos acceso a informacion fundamental, de alto nivel, al dia.
[Response: Gracias! – gavin]
Way to go guys!
Though I usually find myself opposing RealClimate’s views and fans, it’s great to see your efforts have been recognized. To a long and fruitful conversation…
Happy Birthday, RC!
It has been a year since the arrival of one of (if not) the most needed websites on the planet. (I hate to sound religious here, but it’s as if the messiah has come to save us!)
Keep on with the good fight!
Félicitations ! Merci pour ce précieux travail qu’il faut absolument continuer.
Bon courage
Yves
Just when you think this site cant better, here is one more!! Congratulations guys..
Congratulations chaps, a very fine job indeed. It was a real joy to find this site, which has helped me to more easily discriminate between the science and the propoganda flying around out there. Keep up the excellent work.
My perception is that since your web opened, the climate skeptics and their allies have had much less success getting their distortions about newly published research into the public press.
I don’t know how to measure this impact–if it exists–but I suspect it would be a good masters-level project for someone in journalism, political science, or a similar field.
Congratulations and my very hearty thanks. DDV
Grattis!
Congratulations, well worth it!
Geochemist from Sweden
Congrats, and please do keep it up!
I am adding my congratulations.
I don’t know where you working scientists find the time to give us such a “meaty” blog. I hope you realize how important you are to us.
I am one of the many who drop by most days to see what RC has to say. Often I share your articles with a GW list that I maintain for folks in the GW communities of Maine and NE.
And a special thank you to Mike who has helped me to understand over the years.
Keep up the wonderful work.
D.
I am delighted about this award and I think it is richly deserved by all of you. RC is a very important resource for me. Thank you!
Keep up the excellent work.
Kirstin
Congradulations. You’re doing a marvelous job. I’m continually dumbfounded as to why people don’t jump on the “save the world from global warming” bandwagon. The evidence keeps getting stronger. You provide a most useful service in separating the accepted science from the flack on both sides, esp since I (for one) don’t have time or expertise to wade through science journals & need the plain-speak version.
Congrats to everyone at RC – the award is richly deserved.
It is my hope that one day the research described on your pages will be presumed to be honest and accurate by all who are now skeptics. Maybe then you can rename the site to ‘TheClimate’.
Congratulations. Those of us in democracies are all dependent upon the media(TV Radio or ‘Net) to provide us with accurate information upon which we can make an informed decision as voters. The activities of paid advocates distorting the truth on this issue is, quite simply, anti-democratic. And in many ways that’s worse than bad science.
I am very grateful for your effort. I hope it enables all concerned to be concerned and not to be panicked. The irritation of Mr. Joel Shore at students who slip back into Aristotelian thought when they finish text-book problems after Newton is familiar. It resembles mine when a text book used in highschool back in the 40’s discussed ether learnedly in its exposition of radio waves. The inertia of our species’ brains must certainly be a part of the planetary inertia affected by first order forcings. I am trying to chew slowly. for their savor, the crumbs from your high table.
Congratulations guys. You all do great work and it’s about time you were recognized for it.
One skeptic here, who would like to wish you a happy birthday!
The time/care you all put in is really appreciated.
Civil, clear, succinct, formidably well informed, and always relevant. Thank you.
Thanks for inspiring geography students like myself to furthur my studies and knowledge of climatic change. It is a relief to have solid knowledge, instead of non-credible sources publishing opinion.
Foreward,
Chrisotpher Mira
Umass Geosciences 2005
After reading the article, “The truth about global warming, in the Oct 09 issue of the Seattle Times, I’ve added this page to my list of favorite websites.
Congratulations and thank you in advance for your continued hard work in providing real facts about global warming and debunking theories that suggest this phenomenon is the biggest hoax of all time.
Let’s get the next 500,000 visitors well before the next birthday.
Happy Belated Birthday! I just discovered your site thanks to a link from Sandi Doughton’s article “The Truth About Global Warming” at the Seattle Times website. I’m in the process of writing a paper for school “Global Warming, Myth or Reality” showing both sides of the debate. Your site is a welcome breath of fresh unbiased “air”. You present the facts clearly and at the same time help the non-scientific person steer through the hype and misrepresented information. Thank you for your efforts. You should feel very proud of the impact you’re having by helping people to be “correctly” informed.