How To Run A Skeptic Blog (part 1)

Step 1. Enter the URL http://www.sciencedaily.com/news/earth_climate/climate/ into your browser and hit GO

Step 2. Read each headline in turn - what does it say?

Something is cooling
Doesn't matter what is cooling. It might be an ocean, a country, or even another planet.

For example this article fits:
Water Temperature in the Subtropical Atlantic Falls Due to Wind Action

Copy the image and some of the text from the article into your blog. The text doesn't matter too much, the title is important though. Use your own title, something suitably trite that gets the message across like "What happened to Global Warming?". Add a quick comment to the end of the post, again something pretty mundane that the slower readers can enjoy. Perhaps a passing reference to the hockey stick being the wrong way up or something about hiding a decline. You get the idea.

Your post is ready.

Something that overturns previous understanding
It doesn't even have to be about climate. For example this article fits:
Dinosaurs Survived Mass Extinction by 700,000 Years, Fossil Find Suggests
University of Alberta researchers determined that a fossilized dinosaur bone found in New Mexico confounds the long established paradigm that the age of dinosaurs ended between 65.5 and 66 million years ago.

Copy paste that bit into your blog and any other parts that fit the idea that those clumsy scientists keep getting everything wrong:

Heaman and his colleagues believe if their new uranium-lead dating technique bears out on more fossil samples then the KT extinction paradigm and the end of the dinosaurs will have to be revised.

Choose your own title. Again something trite like "So much for Consensus!" or "So much for Science!". End the post with a comment that lightly insults scientists for not understanding anything and praises laypeople for understanding more. Or perhaps even write a one line put down of a specific Climate Scientist you don't like today.

Anything about ice growing, sea level falling or the rate of change slowing down
This article fits:
'Hidden Plumbing' Helps Slow Greenland Ice Flow: Hotter Summers May Actually Slow Down Flow of Glaciers

Copy paste the beginning of the article:
Hotter summers may not be as catastrophic for the Greenland ice sheet as previously feared and may actually slow down the flow of glaciers, according to new research.

Choose your own title. Something like "Scientists Admit Greenland Ice Sheet is Stable" or perhaps "Warming From Rising CO2 To Prevent Glacier Melt" or even "CO2 Taxes Will Melt Glaciers Say Scientists"

Don't post anything else. Your target audience will only read the title, take a cursory glance at the extracts you have chosen (as if they need to check) and then they will scroll down to the comments to write something about Al Gore.

Here is a real world example:
ScienceDaily: Debris on Certain Himalayan Glaciers May Prevent Melting

The Telegraph reported that story, but in true 'interpreting the interpreters' fashion they elected to use their own enhanced title to emphasize skepticism:
Telegraph: Himalayan glaciers not melting because of climate change, report finds

What about articles that don't fit?
Ah you mean articles like the top four articles that appear in the climate section of ScienceDaily today:

Warming North Atlantic Water Tied to Heating Arctic
More Frequent Drought Likely in Eastern Africa
Mass Extinction Linked to Ancient Climate Change, New Details Reveal
Climatic Fluctuations in Last 2,500 Years Linked to Social Upheavals

Yes most ScienceDaily articles don't fit, try to ignore them. They literally go away after a few weeks. That said if your blog is popular you might have to post some of these stories to appear neutral. Try to find an angle on them that works (I'll post an example for the next post) and always describe them in a condescending manner. Present the scientists behind the cooling studies as respected authorities and the scientists behind the warming studies as pure bastards.

Conclusion

Today we learned how to write a skeptical blog post in 3 minutes. Remember running a successful skeptic blog is all about quantity, not quality. That's where blogs like realclimate.org go wrong. They spend too long thinking and not enough time typing. If you only publish a post once every month how will your blog ever get a high visitor count, aka impact rating? The best climate blogs post at least 10 posts a day. That way all your mistakes fade into the past really quick while at the same time sticking in people's minds.

Still don't understand? Well imagine a climate scientist giving a slow boring lecture about how molecules work. Everyone is falling asleep and then suddenly in bursts an exciting character with wild eyes who screams "LIES, ITS ALL LIES!". Who gets your attention? I for one would like to know why he has wild eyes, what truths can he tell me about the PDO and Solar Cycling?