I’m busy with other things today, so an open thread is called for. I’m also asking readers to consider a question.
Topics from previous open threads are fair game, such as the poll on a climate skeptic society.
Some people have asked about threaded comments again. We’ve tried them before, and they weren’t popular…but maybe now that some other blogs have tried them (notably Judith Curry’s) perhaps people are more comfortable with the idea here.
The advantage of threaded comments is that replies to specific comments appear in context with them and it makes discussions easier because there is less scrolling involved. The disadvantage of threaded comments is that not everyone follows that convention, and some comments become orphans, way down at the bottom of the pile.
The difference is nested comments in context vs. one long linear string of comments.
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Of course the optimal approach would be to merge an NNTP news server into web commenting engine with some backend magic so that it isn’t apparent to anyone viewing the web page that the comments are stored using the NNTP protocol with piece of middleware that translates the comments for presentation by HTTP to the NNTP comment store. (Oh, and NNTP also makes a great back end engine for “ticketing” and trouble tracking systems, too).
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/05/04/open-thread-15/#comment-1628715
Lake: go back and vote again. Twice.
as a serial O/T-er, i voted “no”.
best advice ever: DON’T FEED THE TROLLS, under any circumstances.
variations of “Show Oldest | Newest first” for the comments works well on many sites.
2 PAGES: 3 May: LA Times: Evan Halper: Scientists race to develop farm animals to survive climate change
When a team of researchers from the University of Delaware traveled to Africa two years ago to search for exemplary chickens, they weren’t looking for plump thighs or delicious eggs.
They were seeking out birds that could survive a hotter planet…
He ( Carl Schmidt , Uni of Delaware) pulled out a map of the U.S. that climatologists at NASA recently gave him. There are yellow dots where the temperature spikes above 100 degrees more than 10 days a year. Near the Mason-Dixon line, where poultry is a big part of the economy, 100-degree days are rare. But by 2060, projections show lots of yellow dots…
http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-climate-chickens-20140504,0,2628316.story#axzz30nPCYTRn
doubt if the $4.7m is the only money involved:
High Plains Journal: ISU animal scientists to study heat stress in poultry
Iowa State University animal scientists are collaborating on a study of poultry genetics and management to help chickens deal with increased heat.
A $4.7 million grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agriculture and Food Research Initiative is funding the five-year project. Carl Schmidt, associate professor at the University of Delaware, leads the study with scientists from Iowa State, North Carolina State University, the University of Liverpool and Hy-Line International, the largest breeder of egg-laying chickens in the nation, based in Iowa.
http://www.hpj.com/archives/2011/jul11/jul11/0624HeatStressPoultrysr.cfm
Dr. Curry use to allow nesting 4 deep, but trimmed it back to just one level. But if you do a reply on an email of a comment, it still nests the comment right under the one you are responding to. So I vote yes. At least one level.
crosspatch @ur momisugly May 4, 2014 at 4:03 pm:
Your comment is #1628662.
theNeverKings, I wish I could say the same thing about DPReview. But I dislike the forum format over there. It’s awful and makes me feel cramped. So I never read them except if a Google search turns up a thread.
I’d like to suggest a character limit for comments. And once you’ve left a comment, you can’t leave another one until two other people have left comments.
Speaking of comments, I find it funny that, on average, Skeptical Science has an order of magnitude fewer comments than WUWT. Now, I’m not ready to ‘show my colours’ yet, but I’m seriously not impressed with the IPCC-led view of climate. Not at all. My BS detector is itching.
Skimming, it seemed to me there were many more NO comments, (with very strong arguments IMO) but then I was surprised to see the Yes votes outnumbered the no votes. I can hardly read the Curry site because of the arguments between the trolls who know how to comment on the first comment and thereby hog the space. Also hard to read Jo Nova and Climate Audit without having to scroll through the entire list every day to see where the new comments ended up. WUWT is the best as is, and should not change.
I decided to help the no voters.
Adam from Kansas is in 102° weather already? Geeeeezz… I been telling you guys for a long time it’s the 1930’s revisited. Big money invested in agricultural instruments months ago betting on the drought. Hope like heck we don’t have bad food price hikes/shortage.
I’m taking off work to place the siding on my home. The extremes have just messed it up.
This is crazy.
Threaded comments allow conversations rather than only replies. Three levels works well.
Lance Wallace says:
May 4, 2014 at 6:00 pm
Skimming, it seemed to me there were many more NO comments, (with very strong arguments IMO) but then I was surprised to see the Yes votes outnumbered the no votes.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
There’s more who just read than there are that vote, and there are more who vote than who participate. I suspect we’re hearing more from those who participate.
Here is a reminder of something we take for granted. There should be a thanks giving day for electricity. Here is a reminder of LIFE BEFORE ELECTRICITY. Yet Warmists are trying to wean us off the stuff via ELECTRICKERY. But first here is a night time satellite image of North Korea and South Korea. It seems as if the North Koreans like celebrating ‘Earth Hour’ every single hour, 24/7, 365 days of the year.
http://youtu.be/8HbzaOv8HZ0
I think threaded comments are best. It’s a lot easier, for me anyway, to follow and perhaps add to a specific discussion. But whatever you think is best is fine with me Anthony. Thanks for all your hard work.
4 May: Gulf News: Samihah Zaman/Binsal Abdul KaderGore optimistic about limiting climate change
79 countries already generate electricity from solar photovoltaics at grid parity
Abu Dhabi: The heat energy trapped by carbon emissions and pollutants across the globe every day is equal to exploding 400,000 nuclear bombs similar to the one dropped in Hiroshima during the Second World War, Al Gore, former US vice-president and chairman of the Climate Reality Project, said at the Abu Dhabi Ascent summit on Sunday.
Speaking at the opening session of the two-day high-level meeting attended by leaders from government, business and civil society across the world, Gore said that within six years, more than 80 per cent of the world population will have access to photovoltaic electricity at rates equal to or cheaper than the grid average price…
Drawing attention to devastating weather events caused by global warming, Gore pointed out that 90 million tonnes of heat-trapping pollutants are released into the air every 24 hours. As a result, last month (April) was the 350th month in a row when temperatures were consistently higher than the 20th century average.
“Extreme weather events [such as floods, typhoons, droughts, etc] are a signal from Mother Nature that the world has a fever. So we must stop using the atmosphere as an open sewer,” he added…
Moreover developing countries without the existing structures for conventional energies “leapfrog” in disseminating new energy sources.
“A lot of developing countries don’t have very good electricity structures. So new business models and financial arrangements are emerging,” he added…
http://gulfnews.com/news/gulf/uae/environment/gore-optimistic-about-limiting-climate-change-1.1328073
4 May: Clean Technica: Zachary Shahan: Al Gore’s Tremendous Presentation At Abu Dhabi Ascent (Exclusive Videos)
Al Gore’s presentation today at the opening ceremony of Abu Dhabi Ascent* was absolutely superb. But what else do you expect from a guy who runs a nonprofit focused on presenting global warming catastrophe and key global warming solutions to the general public? What else do you expect from a guy who won a Nobel Prize for a movie?…
I could write up a summary of the presentation, but that wouldn’t do it justice at all, so I’m going to force you to watch it if you want more info. Here’s the presentation spread across three videos (since YouTube won’t let me publish a video more than 10 minutes in length)…
(VIDEOS INCL 4TH FROM Q&A)
I spoke very briefly with Gore later in the day, but he told me that he was not doing press interviews. (Standard for Gore these days.)
Despite shrugging me aside, I still think Gore is one of the best if not the best communicator on the topic of climate change. His presentation today absolutely nailed it. Be sure to share with your friends and family!
http://cleantechnica.com/2014/05/04/al-gores-tremendous-presentation-abu-dhabi-ascent-exclusive-videos/
I hear the Europeans are worried about their level of dependence on Russian methane for their energy. This is strange to me because I thought the windmills and solar panels were viable and delivering their loads – loads of crock. I told you it was all about electrickery.
Here is David Shukman forgetting that he has been part instrumental in the whole CAGW pain and now talks about real energy sources such as shale. David and his fellow Warmists led these foolish politicians down this foolish path and now they are in a panic. Nothing like no gas to wake these fools up.
Great Lakes Ice Cover lead Chilly Summer: Video: http://iceagenow.info/2014/05/great-lakes-ice-cover-lead-chilly-summer-video/#comment-190627
I voted no on threading.
JudithCurry started with 6 thread levels. It was difficult to know what was new and unread.
lately she reduced it to three levels (main line and two replies). That is more readable, but not necessarily the best. But the conclusion is that more levels is not necessarily better.
WUWT has evolved its own threading policy by referring to comments explicitly. So an interleaved threading is possible to follow.
But the biggest difference is that WUWT has 3 to 6 main posts per day. This already breaks discussion into a focused discussion. After one day, only those people interested in a main line discussion are checking back and continuing to contribute.
WUWT has passed 1 million comments. You must be doing something right. Do not change unless the change is obviously for the better.
yea, another believer sees the light. as a former believer myself, i say welcome to the CAGW sceptic world:
4 May: WSJ: Caleb S. Rossiter: Sacrificing Africa for Climate Change
Western policies seem more interested in carbon-dioxide levels than in life expectancy
Every year environmental groups celebrate a night when institutions in developed countries (including my own university) turn off their lights as a protest against fossil fuels. They say their goal is to get America and Europe to look from space like Africa: dark, because of minimal energy use.
But that is the opposite of what’s desired by Africans I know. They want Africa at night to look like the developed world, with lights in every little village and with healthy people, living longer lives, sitting by those lights. Real years added to real lives should trump the minimal impact that African carbon emissions could have on a theoretical catastrophe.
I’ve spent my life on the foreign-policy left. I opposed the Vietnam War, U.S. intervention in Central America in the 1980s and our invasion of Iraq. I have headed a group trying to block U.S. arms and training for “friendly” dictators, and I have written books about how U.S. policy in the developing world is neocolonial…
But I oppose my allies’ well-meaning campaign for “climate justice.” More than 230 organizations, including Africa Action and Oxfam, want industrialized countries to pay “reparations” to African governments for droughts, rising sea levels and other alleged results of what Ugandan strongman Yoweri Museveni calls “climate aggression.” And I oppose the campaign even more for trying to deny to Africans the reliable electricity—and thus the economic development and extended years of life—that fossil fuels can bring.
The left wants to stop industrialization—even if the hypothesis of catastrophic, man-made global warming is false. John Feffer, my colleague at the Institute for Policy Studies, wrote in the Dec. 8, 2009, Huffington Post that “even if the mercury weren’t rising” we should bring “the developing world into the postindustrial age in a sustainable manner.” He sees the “climate crisis [as] precisely the giant lever with which we can, following Archimedes, move the world in a greener, more equitable direction.”
I started to suspect that the climate-change data were dubious a decade ago while teaching statistics***…
Where is the justice for Africans when universities divest from energy companies and thus weaken their ability to explore for resources in Africa? Where is the justice when the U.S. discourages World Bank funding for electricity-generation projects in Africa that involve fossil fuels, and when the European Union places a “global warming” tax on cargo flights importing perishable African goods? Even if the wildest claims about the current impact of fossil fuels on the environment and the models predicting the future impact all prove true and accurate, Africa should be exempted from global restraints as it seeks to modernize…
(Mr. Rossiter directs the American Exceptionalism Media Project. He is an adjunct professor at American University and an associate fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies.)
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303380004579521791400395288?mg=reno64-wsj&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10001424052702303380004579521791400395288.html
Jimmy Haigh. says: May 4, 2014 at 1:15 pm
“Why not have tab sort of thing like Windows Explore or Outlook where posts can be sorted on time, subject name, commenter name…”
Here is a version of that.
A comittee is not leadership. Comittee leadership will be still making a decision when the position is over run.
Mr. Watts is the leader as long as he makes that choice.
Leader you are, just do it.
I voted no. My local newspaper (Seattle Times) recently went to threaded comments. I find the numerous indents, or o/t sniping at one sentence in the second indent, or replies to every indent, disjointed. Could be one of those left brain/right brain things, I guess.
Can’t be sure, but it appears there are fewer commenters on ST articles, and some of the longtime handles seem to be MIA. But then, their whole website has been more like HuffPo these days. Go pour a cup of coffee while the page loads.
Reconsidered and went back to change unsure to “no” after reading above comments – unfortunately the poll will not override the original vote. While I like JoNova’s threading and the quick I.D. of habitual trolls who try to divert and clog up serious threads. The trolling on Judith Curry’s site ruins the site for many who visit to actually participate in sensible scientific discussions, and frustrating to those that want to learn more.
WUWT says, “Topics from previous open threads are fair game, such as the poll on a climate skeptic society.”
I will tell you the real reason I am not very supportive of a new skeptic society. It is because too many people here have embraced the idea that our grid can suddenly convert to nuclear, whether thorium or not. Thorium technology is being sold by the American labs to the Chinese, and only one plant is going online in India so far.
The strike prices for new nuclear plants are for 3 times the going rate of electricity in the UK; so that is a clue that nuclear is a guaranteed exponential rise in power prices, which our family cannot pay for. Politicians also have simply unilaterally shut down plants over safety concerns even when they are running fine – was a tsunami going to hit Germany, really? Not only that, if the UK is any example, a foreign country could likely build many of the planned nuclear plants. I do not think many skeptics understand the economics of broken window fallacy, and the extraordinary, compounding, spiraling and careening expense of destroying coal plants just to replace them with nuclear.
By the way, co2 is only one of the ghgases. The others are nitrous oxide from crops, and methane from cattle. This goes largely unremarked, and progressive scientists are all of one mind to destroy agriculture, and ranchers – along with refrigerants, and of course power generation and personal transportation. So I think so far, simply basing a new group on co2 mainly is an exercise in futility. Sustainability activists are heartless global empire workers, treacherously selling their own countries’ resources and power, and the federal bribe money is now flowing into all the states to accept sustainability policies (as shown by the adoption of the federal Common Core educational system by the states – sight unseen – for funding). So co2 is only a fraction of the sustainability program.
RT
The Hockey Stick has already been discredited. To quote Richard Muller:
“This improper normalization procedure tends to emphasize any data that do have the hockey stick shape, and to suppress all data that do not. To demonstrate this effect, McIntyre and McKitrick created some meaningless test data that had, on average, no trends… When McIntyre and McKitrick fed these random data into the Mann procedure, out popped a hockey stick shape!”
“The net result: the principal component will have a hockey stick shape even if most of the data do not.”
http://www.technologyreview.com/news/403256/global-warming-bombshell/
Don’t believe the PAGES 2K report. First, it is flawed because it splices two incompatible data sets: paleoclimate reconstruction and thermometer measurement. If you use tree rings, you should also tree rings in the 20th century. Not different methods in different time periods. Second, the author is Stefan Rahmstorf, a notorious AGW activist known for ad hominem attacks on skeptics. Third, the sponsor of the study is IGBP, an organization committed to AGW.
ps, like ganddad said, if its not broke do not stop to fix it
dig the next post hole and the fence will get done
I call your attention to two recent studies published in Nature science journal that say:
1) CO2 is good for agriculture
http://www.nature.com/news/co2-makes-growing-seasons-longer-1.15081
2) Ethanol burning causes ozone pollution
http://www.nature.com/news/ethanol-fuels-ozone-pollution-1.15111