2009 saw erosion of clarity on climate - Alarmist Andrew Freedman - Capital Weather Gang

In 2009, the climate scientists who are convinced that human activities are causing Earth to warm spent much of their time on the defensive. They worked to counter largely blog-based arguments that the world is actually cooling rather than warming, and defended against an effort that sought to discredit peer-reviewed climate research by stealing some scientists' personal emails and disseminating them online.
...
Climate scientists, journalists and politicians have been pondering what to make of the following dichotomy: as the science gets more definitive, public understanding of the problem and sense of urgency about solving it seems to be declining, at least among certain segments of the public, according to data from several polls during the past year.
...This year demonstrated that climate blogs drive the news cycle in a way they never have before. I suppose that as a blogger myself, that should be an exciting development.
...on the blogosphere, anything goes, including an ethos of do-it-yourself climate research.

Call it the 'WebMD-ification' of climate science, if you will. Increasingly, individuals with backgrounds in a wide variety of fields, ranging from statistics to electrical engineering, are taking to the Internet to conduct their own climate science research (or to poke holes in someone else's work, which, in theory, can be a valuable service in science) and share it with the world. Their efforts are making an impact. For example, popular climate skeptic blogs such as Climate Audit and wattsupwiththat were instrumental in pushing climategate into the mainstream press, while mainstream researchers' sites, such as RealClimate, were put on the defensive.

Tom Nelson: About me

I have a Masters of Science degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering.

Blowing hot air about Global Warming

We sent the Americans for Prosperity "global warming hoax" press release to Andrew Austin [but he's not even a climatologist!], associate professor of Social Change and Development and chair of the Sociology Department at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay. Here's what he thought of it:

"It's ironic that AFP calls their campaign the "Hot Air Tour," punctuated by that hot air balloon they promise to bring with them. They're not as clever as they think. What would motivate the vast majority of climate scientists to make up global warming? Are climate scientists a bunch of stealth Luddites conspiring to bring about the downfall of industrial capitalism? This must be the premise of AFP's argument. Given who butters their bread, it's far more likely that if any bias were present in the work of mainstream climate scientists that it would run in the opposite direction.

Heliogenic Climate Change: Little Ice Age coldest in Holocene, Holocene Optimum "several" degrees warmer than today