Frequent WUWT contributor Tom Fuller has decided to step away from blogging. His final post is below. Tom provided some greatly appreciated help in keeping WUWT humming while I dealt with family health issues, and so I owe him a huge debt of graditude. Tom the door is always open at WUWT should the itch to write strike. – Anthony
Good-bye to all that
Tom Fuller
This will be my final article on Examiner.com. Thank you all for your support and your criticism. You can help with a title for this…
To Kim and Lucia who both knew best
How thoughts like these should be expressed
Prologue
When I was real and life was a child
Proved moments of calm after decision
When life is most real, it most needs revision.
Farewell, friend and farewell, foe
The urban indications meant to orient a person to his time and place
And shakes the digitalis clocks that stop and start the city’s heart
With flash of time and Celsius
Deliver us
And penetrates the whitewashed box,
Providing whitewashed baseball scores
To heaven for analysis
Paralysis
From Pratt & Whitney’s lastest, last
Combined with tarmac’s snaky coils
Of heated air that won’t constrain
All attempts at legerdemain
For fear, for fear, it’ll disappear)
Santanas reaching desert ends
For we have story plots to tend
Depending on unceasing trends
In afternoon light it flashes and shines
We shiver in blue and pause in our labors
Willing the world to be perfectly still
I light up with a phosphor match
Have faced the winter’s evening charms
By slamming dope into their arms
That economy and grace
Evocative of thought or dance
The beauty of the human race!
Drugged hatred sleeping behind their eyes
Walk to the fantail saying ‘F*** it’
With Thai stick waving in the breeze
Obscuring all the increments
Of ancient briny measurements
From ancient mercury implements
They write the numbers as they please
The light goes gray and heavy with shock
The temperature guesses are scrawled in grease pencil
We shiver in blue and sprawl on the cases
Chapter 2 – The Debate
Forensic taste of paradox
Gazing at Wilde’s stars from gutters
And commenting with geniuses and nutters
With doom our given fate
As punishment for crimes
Against our poor tectonic plate
The gods themselves protest in vain
To undergrounds for dusty years
Composed of Bowery Grenadiers
And Canadian Mining Engineers
A winning streak and well-earned fame
We brought you health and wealth besides
We tell you now of rising tides
Demands that we examine it
‘If data aged like well-kept wine
Why must you then hide the decline?’
Reluctantly break from the huddle
Enlisting voiced vituperation
From corners of all grateful nations
Denying angles of repose
And thus was born our Blogistan
From Fourier to ‘Yes We Can’
The waters warmed, the waters rose
But not as much as it was feared
Enlightenment had not appeared
The Arctic ice, the Greenland Cap
The glacial peaks, the this, the that
It comes and goes and how ’bout that?
Scraping the iceberg’s stony face
The science is what science is
And we are who we are, we are
Watching Mauna Loa’s upward trace
Caught in the climate conundrum
Will we pay? or Will we drown?
Are they priests or are they clowns?
It’s warmer in the center of the town
Epilogue
And I really must be going
Emotions mixed but eyes firm fixed
Upon an East-bound Boeing
In 30 years I’ll know
Reflecting back unearthly light
Like clouds below, oh albedo
Or soaking up all heat in sight
But which is it to be?
Light for you or heat for me?
In 30 years I’ll know
Seeks new equibilibrium
As if it were a New Jerusalem
In 30 years I’ll know
I didn’t agree with a great deal of Tom’s opinions and ideas. I didn’t at all like that sometimes there seemed a thinly-veiled attempt to woo the skeptic whilst still pushing a green-energy position but… I did, and do enjoy his writing.
Tom is a man of belief and passion and is very able to put that across regardless of his readership. He’s willing to engage with people he knows full well will oppose what he says and for that I thank him for his past input and hope that he’ll come back to WUWT in the future with more of his musings.
Craig has said it well, love him or not, I’ve always read Toms posts.
I hope Tom does some independent writing and continues to post in WUWT.
Thank you Mr Fuller, it’s been a pleasure reading.
A decent likeable character who has produced readable and intelligent articles which one may not always agree with but are always thought provoking. That is how debate should be. The blogosphere will be poorer for you leaving.
Strength to your mind and arm. Best of luck.
Thank you, Thomas for your contributions. Enjoyed them and the responses they prompted each and every time. We all wish you well!
Tom, I have always appreciated your efforts and have enjoyed reading your posts.
My estimation of Tom Fuller went up after his recent comments on Judith curry’s site.
I wish him well.
Good poem too.
Craig said it for me, great first post. Despite our differences over the science, Tom was always good natured. I enjoyed reading his book, The Crutape Letters, too.
Best wishes Tom Fuller. May the wind be always at your back — and may it be a warm wind. 🙂
Tom,
Not a dry eye in the house. Good luck for the future & remember the parable of the prodigal son 😉
Tom, you’ll be missed.
Gets confusing when people post logical answers that go against your beliefs, don’t it.
Hope you take this time to sort it all out.
Thanks again
Tom Fuller,
“You can check out (from WUWT) any time you like, but you can never leave.”
With my apologies to the Eagles.
Tom, take care & good luck. I hope to meet you in person one day! We can continue our glorious arguments over libations.
John
I think the the muses of poetry captivated Tom, but..No!, I think he has been struck down by the lightning of truth in this epoch of “Apocalypse (Greek: Ἀποκάλυψις Apokálypsis; “lifting of the veil” or “revelation”) is a disclosure of something hidden from the majority of mankind in an era dominated by falsehood and misconception,…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apocalypse
So, we shall wait until his next poem or…revelation?
I’ve appreciated Tom’s input here, at C-a-s and at Judith’s sites in recent months. I’d be sad to lose his incisive input. Though he’s withdrawn from Examiner, I hope that when he’s had some “me-time”, he’ll feel inspired to interject on those blogs again.
I suspect that being placed on moderation at Keith’s site was something of a catalyst for Tom. I won’t make a call whether Tom was wrong or right to be indignant, or if Keith was over-zealous in his placing Tom in the “sin-bin”, but certainly I don’t feel that the net result has benefited the balance at C-a-s. Losing Tom as a contributor, on any level, is a grave loss indeed.
Thanks for some interesting and controversial posts here on WUWT. The debate about climate is open again and the dogma of the pro-CAGW camp has been leavened with some sceptical common sense.
Here’s wishing you well, Tom, whatever the future brings.
Vogons are described as the writers of “the third worst poetry in the universe”. They are employed as the galactic government’s bureaucrats. Have you got a job with the UN Tom?
Right up there with Frost! Tom, be sure to pop back by from time to time. Your writings and topics always seemed to encourage lively discussions! Thanks much,
James
Cheers, Tom and fare thee well.
Your articles here have stimulated some splendid debates and made a lot of people think a lot harder than they had done before you prodded them. Thanks for input, it has been much appreciated. As others have already said, it is such reasoned debate that enlightens us all.
Like Sully Sullenberger, you are a brave man. Thank you for all you have done.
Scott Covert.
I for one, though I disagree, will miss your dialogue with WUWT-and all of us
expert/layman/hangers-on that populate this blog. Good luck, sir,and good hunting….
Well done Tom. I appreciate your hard work, civility and willingness to take it on the chin.
Thanks, all!
Just to be clear, I got a real job at a real company (I’ve been working for myself for 3 years), and I just won’t have the time to do the research needed for posting. Or good commenting, for that matter. So it’s back to lurking for me–unless Michael Tobis gets too crazy…
Tom,
Your rime reads true – there is no albatross around your neck.
Enjoy the rest of the wedding.
Godspeed, Mr. Fuller.
Mr. Fuller, I can’t say I agreed with much of what you write or wrote, but I’m glad you did write it. And thank you, Anthony, for providing the platform for those writings.
I hope you (Mr. Fuller) find some engineers in your path, and take the time to talk to them.
Personally, I wish you all the best.