UPDATE: 3/17/12 Thanks to everyone for all the support, kind words, and well wishes. Today I found myself taking another long nap, and I awoke feeling much better than yesterday. Stress is an insidious thing, and until it catches up with you, you don’t realize what impact it has. – Anthony
It has been an exhausting month since Fakegate hit the scene, and tonight when I came home from work, I crashed hard, taking a nap. I even missed dinner. My children tried to wake me up apparently to no avail. At the moment I feel like I have a hangover.
Behind the scenes, I’m dealing with a lot of things related to WUWT and the legal fight building with the Pacific Institute and Gleick, plus other things. Today for example I’m wrestling with starting the blog all over again on another platform because my wordpress.com free hosting keeps messing under the hood with the production code and they’d broken something yet again (some readers can’t comment any more thanks to a new security feature) just after we got the mess with adwords fixed last week. So yeah, I’m pretty toasted all in all at the moment. Then I read this comment from a reader on the DeSmog Blog headed back to obscurity thread.
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Ally E. says:
I found WUWT barely a month before Fakegate happened. Prior to finding this site, I was a head-in-the-sand kind of person. I knew the whole fry-and-die alarmism was wrong, the claims were getting very stupid, as was the panic.
Getting fed up with ever increasing nonsense scare tactics, I pushed back from news outlets. I didn’t want to hear anymore. I also felt very alone. It was Ian Plimer’s “How to get expelled from school” that opened my eyes to the growing fight back to rational thinking. I bought the book (and there were only two left on the shelf, so I know it’s popular) and read it in a day.
Encouraged, I got online and found WUWT and others. I cannot express how wonderful it felt to learn that REAL scientists out there are practicing REAL science and presenting it properly.
Point is, for those years I had my head in the sand, I didn’t know just what a tangled mess this had all become. I didn’t know what a horrible world was developing right under our noses.
I come here every day. This is my home page. I love the science, I love the way it is presented and I love reading the comments and thoughts from so many very intelligent people. But I also devour any news on the political front. I crave and seek out every snippet of good news, and believe me, this is good news.
Anthony, I want to see these dastards go down. I came in at a most exciting time and I want to watch every step of the alarmists fall from grace. Thank you for providing the whole picture, the wide picture, science, politics and all.
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Thanks, Ally. That made my week.
i too read daily 15 hour work day checksperker nut worn kin !!!
Anthony
A quick $75 in the tip jar to help.
Paul
Anthony,
Keep up the good work – it is really making a difference and shows what real science is all about.
BTW if anybody wants to follow all the main blogs from one page – follow my link…
Being a bit Irish and with St. Patrick’s Day upon us, I will add this Irish toast:
“May the road rise to meet you,
May the wind be always at your back,
May the sun shine warm upon your face,
The rains fall soft upon your fields,
And until we meet again,
May God hold you
In the palm of his hand.”
http://thumbs.dreamstime.com/thumblarge_357/123290483458gZMl.jpg
Anthony,
Charles Jennens, Handel’s librettist has message for you:
As steals the morn upon the night,
And melts the shades away,
So Truth does Fancy’s charm dissolve,
And rising Reason puts to flight
The fumes that did the mind involve,
Restoring intellectual day.
Keep up the restoring of intellectual day.
Stephen a’Beckett
I have to echo the sentiments.
WUWT teaches as well as informs. Informed discussion of actual science … from the inkling of an idea to hard worn facts. Hey? Watts Up With That?
I read it every single day, morning and evening. Never comment, but enjoy the depth of content.
Relax a little.
Do you accept donations for running the blog, or is it just the surface station project?
Everyone thinks of changing the world, but few think of first changing themselves. What Ally wrote to Anthony Watts is a testament to the value of hard work, common sense and stubborn commitment to the truth.
It is said that diligence is the mother of good fortune. In the months and years to come, as the ideological war begun by others is ended by common sense; let us all never forget how we got here and what it takes to fight for the right to think and observe the laws of nature for ourselves without the need (or want) of others telling us what to think, feel and say because it happens to be politically or ideological ‘correct.’
Patience can sometimes be bitter, but its fruit is sweet.
go man
I found your site about 3 months ago after my feeling that something wasn’t quite right about CAGW claims. We need you. Please, please take a break. At least 2 weeks, one to wind down and one to recharge the batteries. It would be an utter disaster if you burned out.
Anthony
The only tip jar I could find is the Surface Stations Tip Jar, which I’ve just hit with $250, BUT please feel free to use the money on yourself, like a relaxing meal with the wife and kids.
I have been following WUWT for 5 years and have never donated. Sorry for being a bludger*
WUWT is my homepage and my favourite website. I visit a minimum of twice a day.
Thanks for all your hard, honest work.
C’mon people hit that Tip Jar!
*bludger – Aussie slang for someone who happily takes and doesn’t give anything back.
You know Anthony if you were only willing to turn to the Dark Side, you could probably find any number of well funded PR firms to handle all those pesky details for you. Wouldn’t it be nice if we all really could have the Koch brothers on speed dial. But kidding aside, don’t be reticent about posting an open thread and taking some time for yourself and your family. The pace of posts lately has been so quick that my old eyes can’t keep up anyway. Despite appearances this mess won’t be going away anytime soon so we all need to pace ourselves for the long haul. Know that you and your family are in our thoughts and prayers daily and i wish I could find words adequate to express how much I appreciate the man killing effort you have put into this site. You truly are more deserving of a Nobel Peace prize than any recent recipient. I’d let you have mine, but since it didn’t come with any medal or money and the list of recent awardees has made any prestige associated with it mostly negative you probably wouldn’t want it. At any rate, take whatever time you need to keep yourself rejuvenated, we’ll be here when you get back.
Ditto. Except a couple years earlier.
Anthony, I was the science guy for a couple years on a popular blog. It does wear one down. You have the politicized dolts, the professional money guys, the academics on the gravy train, and the simply dis-honest against you. And the real mathematicians, statisticians, scientists, economists, etc. all afraid because they have a house payment to make or a complicated paper they want to publish in a journal (a single publisher controls over a hundred titles, i don’t think many realize that) that may not conform to the party line.
However, it may have been worthwhile. As you have seen.
WUWT has been my favorite web site for years now. Thanks to you, I can discuss the climate mess with my physicist son and not get beaten down. Anthony, do take the time you need for yourself and family. We need you, and you will last longer if you spare yourself a little.
I am a long time browser of this site and this is my first post.
I feel exactly the same as AllyE. It scares me that there are so many drones out there who accept what they are told without any question. I was fortunate to be brought up in a school environment that taught me the skill of critical analysis and not to necessarily accept things on face value. Of course this was 45 years ago and things appear to have changed markedly in education.
What ever happened to scientific skeptisism. We now live in a world of activist scientists who seem to have forgotten that science is never settled. Worse, they don’t even want to listen to theory or postulates outside of their own narrow view.
Keep up the good work Anthony, there are many people out there like me who are an avid viewer of your site but don’t actually participate in the forum.
k1w1
Have experienced burnout with a 24/7 business so understand that you want to do so much but the body cries out “stop”. Rest is best. All your friends here care about you very much.
I hit the WUWT tip jar again for this post. Hopefully what little I can give helps make a difference.
http://www.surfacestations.org/donate.htm
Please donate!
As to you Mr. Watts, I have shredded the occasional NorthWest neo-hippie with facts I’ve gleaned from your site. Otherwise, I would not have been so prepared.
In the Ozark Mountains streams and rivers the smallmouths will smash a Rapala Minnow lure hard now. These are strong fish that absolutely go ape when hooked. Or better still, a Storm Thundercore Minner. I was badly out fished by a woman who was using the only Storm Minner I had in the box. She out fished me so badly that day and it got down right difficult to take, so I hunted around and now have dozens of them. Sadly, Storm doesn’t make them any more. Glad I stocked up on them before they were all gone.
Come on over to the Ozarks anytime you are ready to get away and I’ll put you on some big browns. If you don’t mind being blindfolded until I get you to the best places to fish.
I don’t know if the book is too hot off the presses, but I went to Amazon.com and tried to see if it was available. All I got was the below message.
Your search “Ian Plimer how to get expelled from school” did not match any products.
Thanks Anthony for everything. This AGW alarmism / Lysenkoism was driving me crazy because it was so obviously false. 4C & .59 M sea rise in 100 years is supposed to destroy us, really? This site has reassured me that others could see the madness… and show me how to fight it.
This is the only site where I use my real name. I do so proudly.
“It is a rare and wondrous thing to find in another that world which should be a better place. But if you live your life cognizant of the fact that you are but a visitor in the lives of those you touch, with the right to be courteous, understanding, benevolent, then you create that world along the paths that you tread..” ’05
There is something orwellian about the relentless alarmist message. I subscribe to the Australian (part of the “hate” media) out of hope I will get something intelligent and today one has Steketee getting stuck into Bob Carter. Apparantly Carter is not overly concerned about CO2 levels of 390 ppm, so Steketee establishes that it is a problem by quoting a BOM-Csiro report, ie appeal to authority, without having the ability to present the essential facts of why it is a problem, except that it is a matter of scientific opinion that the increase in Co2 has caused significant warming.
OK an environmental reporter should report what scientists think. Why not ask simple questions such as:
1) How come there was cooling from 1945 to 1970 or so, warming from about 1970 to 2000, then a flattenning out, while the CO2 is apparently an extremely steady increase. Effect should be correlated with cause.
2) Why are the hansen/IPCC projections simply garbage.
3) Why is the warming in the 20th century focused on countries with extremely suspect temperature measurements.
4) How is Mann’s garbage tree-ring science not simply rejected out of hand. We know from many historical facts that climate varied significantly in the past.
The skeptics have raised many questions that are simply ignored by the alarmists and also by environmental reporters on major newspapers. The reporters know that if they ask relevant questions they will develop career-threatening reputations. Its OK to be hated by the right. They will still listen if you have something intelligent to say. However the other side has no mercy.
Anthony I started reading your blog quite a few years ago. I came in looking for something…and that something was a place to find truth. We kept hearing the world would end. That the sea’s would rise and the weather would become out of control. And I kept thinking we why do we have such vanity?
What you have inspired is an army of people that think. We look into the facts to find the truth and that is wonderful.
Thank you!!
Dude
Ally,
I was around when the Montreal protocol removed some of the most efficient refrigerants on the market: R11, 12 and 502 and later 22. This may mean nothing to most of the people here but I felt like you. Alone. They claimed that they were destroying the ozone layer and increasing the green house gas effect. No proof was given that anyone in the industry would blow a charge intentionally. Scant evidence was given about the scientific claims of impending doom. Many jumped at the chance to present at conferences on how this would save the earth. Nobody challenged these people and commercial refrigeration depended on these refrigerants. As a result Allied Signal and Dupont made a killing with HCFC, Aziotropes and the like. These were less efficient meaning they required more energy to provide the same heat transfer. That meant higher power bills and and much more pollution as a result. The consumer suffered.
The same nefarious hucksters are still at it. Selling us windmill farms that go idle when the tax syrup runs out. Selling us photo voltaic arrays that have negative cash flows even with 85% incentives. Selling us Electric Vehicles that get a range of 30 miles if you dare use the heater on your journey home. Tidal power, compressed air energy storage devices, algae, ethanol, bio gas and bio fuels that have no potential for sustainable production beyond a de minimis amount. All under the guise of saving the planet. But this time it is different. People are doing the math and demanding answers and accountability.
In short, I join you Ally in your appreciation. I want to thank not only Mr. Watts but all the generous people that take time to post on this site. It is the best review of all the climate science out there. Most of the people here can be hard hitting on the science. Damn how I love reading those comments and what an education. I don’t feel alone anymore and after reading hundreds of scientific articles I challenge the hucksters, frauds and wannabe’s peddling this Anthropogenic Catastrophic Global Warming Scam. The stakes are just too high this time around to do nothing.
Ally, I don’t know what your background is, (I am a mechanical engineer) but I can assure you it doesn’t require a whole lot of critical thinking skills to get acclimated here. Just time. curiosity and the giving nature of the science minded people that frequent this site.
Chris G.