I haven’t really been following the philosophical back and forths between here, collid-o-scope, and other places about this.
Of course it is natural to have expectations of a particular argument’s quality based on an authors reputation, but that expectation doesn’t extend very far when scientists have a chance to poke holes in other people’s methodology (which they absolutely love!!!). I went to a talk by Kerry Emanuel a few days ago, someone who commands enormous respect amongst the graduate students and atmospheric scientists in the audience, but that didn’t stop a number of them from criticizing segments of Emanuel’s presentation. That is what happens at science talks and in the peer-reviewed literature. The difference between that setting and the blog setting, however, is that in the scientific environment everyone has a very solid grasp of the basics (and even many of the technical details), and so we can intelligently dispute details. In the blog atmosphere, it is often rare that you can get so many people to even agree on undergraduate-level physics stuff. This is why, to be blunt, people who work exclusively within the blogosphere virtually never matter (sorry).
Of course, that reputation is different depending on the group you ask (if you ask the majority of bloggers about Mike Mann, then ask the majority of the climate science community, I suspect you will get radically different critiques of his work). The same can also be said of people like Anthony Watts or Pat Michaels, people who have zero relevancy in the academic community (and whom support arguments that are almost always wrong or misleading) and yet somehow manage to stir up a lot of attention on the internet.
Part of the expectation naturally evolves from the publication and contribution record from the speaker/writer. Isaac Held has made more contributions to climate science than almost anyone can hope to achieve, and (aside from some of the contributors at RC) has a publication record unparalleled on the climate blogosphere. His blog is also only dedicated to scientific topics, generally geared toward a graduate student or higher level audience, and thus receives an extremely small readership when compared to user-friendly “talking points” or summary articles. Of course, the flipside is that if Issac Held wrote the Ludecke article, he would attract an enormous amount of negative attention, and likely would have a large number of peers scratching their heads. Of course, the attention would dissipate quickly, as people have to move on with their life and focus on different developments– to the scientist, that is preaprin their next research article, writing a proposal, etc, and to the bloggers that is forming an opinion on the most up-to-date “topic of interest.” If a random person wrote the article, it would get cited on some blogs, and disappear in a week, with far less attention. Really, this is what will happen with the Ludecke article.
The arguments geared toward Judith Curry are no different than many of the ones geared toward her on a multitude of occasions. It boils down to many people thinking she has a different responsibility (based on her credentials) than she thinks she does. Her aim is to create an open forum for discussion, regardless of the quality of work that becomes the focus of that discussion. Others feel she has a responsibility to call out nonsense based on her position as an authority. I can understand that argument, but of course this is her blog, and she is free to do with it as she will…just as everyone is free to make up their mind about why she is doing it.