Open thread – what could we do better?

Grant has an important point: it should be possible to reply to comments.

I thought wordpress DOT com allowed disqus/livefrye code/plugins as it pushed site loads away from their servers and onto the disqus/livefrye servers.

What Warren Bonesteel said, I agree

Forgive those who off topic. Often those posts are timely and tips and notes takes a long time to load with our small town Internet provider.

Could it be possible to number the comments? When I leave the site and come back a couple of hours later I find it difficult to return to where I left off. Numbering would help alleviate this problem.
Otherwise WUWT is terrific as it allows alternative opinions.

Encourage more alarmists to contribute empirical evidence of CAGW. Let’s stop belittling them, and spur them to share the evidence that they have, beyond models, that we are causing the world to warm, or change, or disrupt, or whatever the claim is. Woops, there I go belittling them again.

I have two things that “weigh on my mind” all the time, every time I come to Wattsupwiththat(TM).
Number 1. Is the seeming “dis-interest” in the concept that one really does not understand the heat balance of the Earth, unless one starts calculating the “heat content” of the Atmopshere, and..of course the oceans. (As a side bar, the FLAT heat content of the oceans, particularly the first 1000′, via the Argo bouys is very telling, that indeed there is NO SIGNIFICANT WARMING of either the Oceans or the atmosphere, WARMING MEANING AN UPWARD SHIFT OF THE HEAT CONTENT OF THE ATMOSPHERE, in absolute terms.) If this were tackled more directly, which of course…leads to the concept that watching shifts in the tropospheric “temperatures”, is very meaningless as a metric for the “heat balance” of the atmopshere, we’d be doing real “science” (and engineering) rather than allowing the “herd” to dictate reality for us.
Number 2. A vigorous pursuit of the actual “lines of code” for the atomspheric modeling programs.
There are plenty of us who have PROGRAMMED (I dislike the modern term, “coding”, it obscures things…but I do know Fortran, Cobol, C++, Java, Perl, Cold Fusion, even “machine language”)…enough to start looking at the wonderous (in their own minds) atmospheric codes.
I rather suspect, one of the reasons a lot of these places are keeping these things covert, has nothing to do with ownership, rights, obligations to financing agencies, etc. But rather, if they are open and above board with them….it will become transparent to the world how full of bugs, assumptions, and outright “stupid” errors they are and expose them to be fundementally useless exercises in futility. (But gosh, great things to keep your “grant funded, graduate slaves” working on, while you the “Perfesser”, live in luxury. (Note: Not a personal attack, but a more generic attack on the “academic clique” involved in the “climate change” money laundry scam…)
Clarity on both of these matters would vindicate WUWT for eternity, as far as I’m concerned.
Max

Well it’s an excellent site, but since you ask I’d say the number one thing is that WUWT does have a fairly high barrier to entry to casual and new followers (am I supposed to know who Lucia is?) A lot of cryptic abbreviations, a lot of inside-baseball references to various climate figures by one name with no identifier. For the cognoscenti, it’s fine to speak of Judith’s paper on TSI. But I assume you don’t want this site to only ever be of use to several thousand hard-core readers who have followed every post for years. There are any number of people I’d like to refer to various posts here, but so often the posts and their references are just too abstruse for the uninitiated. I don’t mean the science, and you can’t and shouldn’t dumb down the physics. But the presentation.
Related to the above is something that also touches on what Warren Bonesteel pleaded for: professionalism. It sounds insulting to imply that there’s anything amateurish about the site, but of course there is at times. Specifically the frequent cartoons which combine several flaws: the above-alluded-to tendency toward cryptic references to warmist and other figures that are now household names, the somewhat primitive humor that is employed, and the general air the cartoons gives the site of not being 100% serious.

There are so many things I love about WUWT, and so very little that needs changing. The only thing that annoys me and feel harms the quality of WUWT is the high number of comments on some articles that are not productive to the conversation. I’m talking about those comments where the poster feels they are being cute with some spiffy, clever one-liner that pokes fun at an Alarmist and/or idea. On some articles, over half the responses seem to be of this variety, and it detracts from the scientific nature of the site and the reading enjoyment of others.

Pamela Gray says:
June 15, 2014 at 9:18 am
On/topic: I agree with your first sentence :”I like it just the way it is.”
Off/topic: You are a teacher, but do not have children in school yourself. I can tell you that taking my children out of public school ( where there were 30-35 kids per teacher ) and moving them to a private school has transformed them into completely different children (now confident A students). Ill-supported, my ass.
In public school the motivation to label (especially boys) ADHD is funding driven, coupled with an overburdened teacher who could not possibly cope with 30-35 elementary school age children on his/her own. There is a systemic problem in the school system that you can ignore at North America’s peril. We are producing a generation of scientifically illiterate children.
In conclusion, there are many holes in the science of climate and weather and I am glad that Anthony allows all sorts of assertions to be presented, but you better bring your A-game. Post with certainty about ENSO, AMO, TSI, etc., where in reality we have no idea what truly drives these, and their global implications and resultant effects ( i.e.not enough data ).
It is clearly not Co2, but the suns effects have not yet been ruled out, despite what Pamela (Leif) tells you, because all the blanks have not been filled in.

You don’t need to change a thing. You need to solicit support for a movement that the informed public can contribute to to advance the truth on climate topics, This needs to be done with the same or greater fervor that those in opposition to that message enjoy. If this doesn’t happen, the logic of your position will continued to be steamrollered. Many news reporter are quick to link every event to global warming. How do you stop this? By a counter comment every time it happens.

WUWT is many things all at once, and I think, with the resources at hand, especially the hands of people, it does the best job that can be done. I’ve often said that I believe the time is right for WUWT to create a collateral, online, peer-reviewed (eek!) scientific blog-enterprise to publish new, or re-evaluated research on climate, and allow the peer review to occur withinthe published blog-journal in real-time (after initial review for basic soundness). Many times real science is expressed and theorized) in the comments and is often equally obscured by the colloquial and anecdotal commentary (for which I am no less guilty). There is a true and valid place for both, but it is the very devil to sort out for those of us who are technically trained but not presently topically engaged.
As others have said, it is frustrating to not have the time or opportunity to consolidate the collective wisdom that flows from a introduced topic. Other than a 36 hour day and infinite income, I don’t have an answer for this last point, other than to find a way to meaningfully segregate some of the science out of the discourse, as I previously suggsted.
To an extent, the parallelism already exists between WUWT and Climate Audit. I think the two of you (Anthony and Steve) together, along with the legions of allies out there, could create a new, third alternative that might form the foundation of a brand new means to communicate real science, out of reach of the agenda-prop.

Re: “5. I’d like to see more click-throughs on science articles.”
Although I can probably understand the abstract of a paper, I’m probably going to get lost in the details, because I’m not a scientist, don’t play on t.v., and I didn’t even stay at a Holiday Inn last night. But I do have plenty of opportunities to contest assertions made in pro-AGW articles. I don’t contest them for the sake of the author of the article — nothing is going to change their mind — but for the sake of other readers/posters. I’ve been able to do this because of what I have learned here from you, Bob Tisdale, and Joe Bastardi. So, thank you. I found a meteorology tutorial at the University of Illinois website that is basic but incomplete simply because it was built in 1999 and never updated. Anything I can get my hands on to help me understand more of what is in those papers is helpful.
As for “3. I’d like less name calling,” some of it is actually quite good, for example of Obama, “He is a pyromaniac in a field of straw men,” is funny and dead-on accurate. His speech at the commencement ceremony for UC Riverside June 15, 2014 at Angel’s Stadium was the Burning Man of rhetorical pretentiousness. So the shoe fits.
By the way, I composed this post in Word, which enabled me to check my spelling, grammar, and even run a couple of words through the thesaurus. I even compose my tweets in Word. I’ve saved myself some embarrassment that way.

When the ‘blog spawn’ like Hot Whopper make valid objections to WUWT, either engage them in debate, or admit they make some valid points. They are not always the enemy. Similarly with the CAGW advocates like Skeptical Science – don’t make fun of them, engage them in debate. Both sides (or both ends of the spectrum) can learn from each other, if they stop seeing each other as the enemy.
[Reply: Problem is, they will not debate in a fair, moderated forum. ~mod.]

I find comments are not conducive to back and forth debate. There is no option to reply to an existing comment and so no ‘thread’ facility showing point-counterpoint argument structure.
It would be really nice if comments could have more features:
– Ability to ‘reply’ with visual cues to indicated post/response/response.
– Ability to vote on comments and to have low ranked comments to collapsed to remove the noise.
The simplest way to do this would be to switch to Disqus comments which have many additional features as well. There may be other WordPress plugins that do the job to, but I think it would be hard to do better than Disqus.

if other commenting systems not allowed can the bbcode visuals be added to the comment box?
some of us know how to manually type

blockquote inside the tags

but others don’t.

Steve O says:
June 15, 2014 at 11:05 am
Some of greatest advocates for climate realism …
——-
Steve O’s term “climate realism” has a nice ring to it. Perhaps WUWT can embrace and support it. It’s not an extreme sounding term, communicates effectively what WUWT is all about, and projects a professional image.

I love that you allow those humorous one liners, two liners, sarcasm and the cartoons by Josh. Sometimes you just need that to get through a tough day. They make this a truly human site

I 2nd Harry Passfield’s June 15, 2014 at 8:56 am request for …. a screen “tab/button” that allows the user to “1 click” navigate to the bottom of a comment thread.
And ps to ….richardscourtney, …. I see no “tabs/buttons” for going to Responses to ………or at the bottom of the article for “jumping” to Leave a Reply.
And right you are, Harry, when you said this in your above post …..
“and that means, not expecting the user to ‘know’ how to use extraneous features to achieve an end result”.
Those who ASSUME their design is “user friendly” makes a really serious mistake.

Anthony, you have a great blog and I appreciate the hard work.
I have a request for assistance, for anyone who might know the answers.
I am looking at the issue of fossil fuel usage worldwide during the great depression (1929 – 1933), and comparing it to the time series of CO2 concentration in the atmosphere.
I am trying to find the best sources for CO2 concentration for the time period. From what I can tell, the warmists are using the ice core measurements from Etheridge et al (1996) that are available here on NASA’s GISS website:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/modelforce/ghgases/Fig1A.ext.txt
There is also this site:
http://www.biomind.de/realCO2/data.htm
I downloaded their spreadsheet, but it only gives a a few data points for the period I am interested in, and they come from several different sources.
Are there any other sources? Please correct me if I am wrong, but as far as I can tell, the warmists are only using the Etheridge data?

” tteclod says:
June 15, 2014 at 11:33 am
Here’s another one: thread the comments. Even my site manages that trick.”
Threaded comments, aka comment nesting, was tried here once. It was an decided nightmare. Multiple conversations ensued with no chance of cohesion to the main topic. A single thread forces (ok, “encourages”) commenters to attempt continuity on the thread topic, albeit ocasionally unsuccessful. This site collects far too many comments to make threading useful. It is possible to create a parallel blog to which topics with more than the usual dialogue could be carried over to and allowed to run their course. Call it WUWT Redux or some such thing. Be willing to step up as a moderator… 🙂

Mike Mangan says:
June 15, 2014 at 9:51 am
More boobies! Works for the Daily Caller, eh?
Here’s proof boobies do come here. 😉

Warren Bonesteel says:
June 15, 2014 at 8:50 am
In your articles, don’t trash talk anyone. Ever. Don’t just be professional. Set the standard for professionalism.
====================================================================
Anth@ny’s summary provides everything I want to see. Although after clearing my computer, and all the cached web pages, I still got that silly gamer web site taking over Safari and I have never played an on site game – and my computer is password protected so I know it wasn’t my kids.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++
1. I would like to be able to search commenter’s names. Some folks make great comments and leave fantastic references. Sometimes I find them hard to find again. However, I now copy them and put them in a searchable file.
2. I like the site as it is and I am constantly amazed at the number of articles and speed at which people like Willis, Bob Tisdale RGB, Jimbo and others provide articles and defences that would take me days to find or even write a short note on. I have many years of math, physics, chemistry, geology, hydrology, meteorology(some), microbiology, …. that I have long forgotten about. Sometimes I go back to a page several time to get through the information as I am getting on and I don’t read/absorb things as quickly as I used to. I think I have hundreds of bookmarked pages and something like 800 short articles I have written based on WUWT that I have prepared and left on my computer for my grandchildren to read when I die.
3. I like the fact that many different views are presented here about climate and weather – and other sciences. I would would welcome warmist views, if only readers here could avoid acting like trolls. Even in what we might consider “wrong” headed thinking, there can be good commentary. The excellent presentation by Dr. Lindzen showed that the IPCC has many take aways. I didn’t read AR5 but I did read AR3 and 4 cover to cover and noticed the disharmony between the actual science and the Summary for Policy Makers. The people here who point out these things are doing a service to the world. I am happy to read Mosher’s reasonable posts, but it is easy to ignore the “drive bys” he posts. Lots of smart people here with odd senses of humour, even me, so tolerance is the word and move on to the next post.
4. Per Warren (June 15, 2014 at 8:50 am) and many others (and I may have been guilty) – no need to be snarky with anyone. It actually takes something away from the commenter and probably achieves the objective of the person being snarked.
5. Don’t feed the trolls. You can’t argue with people who quote DeSmog, you are wasting your breath and diverting your valuable time you could apply to more positive things like reading someone’s hard work that you may not agree with (Lief, Vuc, etc)
6. Accept that the world warms and cools and prepare to adapt, no need to fight or argue about 10th’s, or 100th’s of a degree or direction. ( Where I live the annual variation is 70 – 80 degrees C)
7. Accept that the whole Climate Change thing has been politicized and corporatized – politicians and corporations will try to use it for profit. Be a watch dog, but don’t get angry. When you get angry, they win. Write letters. Provide references you found here and other places. At some point, they will get it.
8. Never forget that we might be wrong. I have looked at/plotted lots of temperature and precipitation (rain and snow) information for areas in Canada and the NW States that I am interested in. Sometimes they show warming, sometimes cooling, sometimes nothing, sometimes more precip, sometimes less. There is a signal there that looks an awful lot like ENSO but it probably isn’t that important. Look at the graph Dr Lindzen did for Boston. Not exactly scary no matter which way the trend is.
9. Look at the policy of your professional organizations and express your opinion. I am in the process of letting my membership in The Association of Professional Engineers and Geophysicists of British Columbia lapse due to their Position Paper on Climate Change that REQUIRES that we consider the impact of INCREASING temperatures, rain, drought AND CARBON TAXES in our designs. It used to be BEST PRACTICES but apparently the legal beagles in BC decided that it MUST be addressed. They may be right, but after looking at up to 100 years of data for a number of locations, I would not use CLIMATE MODEL they propose we use. The real data actually gives more extremes than the models from what I have seen so far. It would be interesting to see how many people are affected by the policies of the organizations they belong to. Being retired, I can say things I could not say when I was active, so I understand why people post anonymously, but still I think it would be telling to have some articles on organizational policies.
Thank you to everyone who posts, trolls and all, as there are take aways from everything.
Apologies for the rambling post and thanks for the education.

I enjoy this site as it provides me with information that isn’t available in the echo chamber sites.
Thanks for all your hard work. You make a difference.
Suggestions for improvement:
1. Maybe see if you can get scienceofdoom to pop in once every couple of weeks or so to do some Climate Science Basics 101 series of articles on the science. His site has a great deal of excellent content and I think we all could learn a lot. Maybe Nic Lewis can co-write? I find both of these individuals articles very readable.
2. Resist the urge to write articles taunting Dr. Mann. Stick to the science as much as possible.
3. Avoid voice-of-Gavin style inline comments. It’s very off-putting and the reason I completely avoid RealClimate these days. I know Nick Stokes can push your buttons sometimes, but Lucia seems to handle it a lot better on the Blackboard.
I’d really like to see 1) if you could get scienceofdoom to agree to it. I think fostering a learning environment would really help to get rid of a lot of the misunderstandings.

Oh yeah , kids just called – Happy Father’s Day to y’all. 😍

UCI. I GIVE UP!

Hey, I love the blog, it has great resources and has started doing its’ own science – which is where it will really come into its own. A few suggestions…
1. As noted above, the alphabet soup is really intimidating for a newbie. My first 6 months were spent with an open wiki page beside the blog page… I am of the determined sort, I have a degree in chemistry and physics so I got throught it. The 90% would not.
2. Why not have a feature where you host and post science? Some fearless few have tried in the past to get constructive feedback on papers in process and they took a lot of abuse for it. Those types of papers and input need more encouragement. You have a host of retired experts who could provide sage advice without the abuse. Either team them up in the background or have more agressive control of the comments allowed for those types of papers/features.
3. My strongest suggestion is some kind of positive feature – where increasing warming has been good for bio-diversity, good for crop growth, good for greening the sahara, good for whale food supply in the arctic, good for human health, etc. You will not get a flood of comments, but the readers will take and use that info more readily and more widely than any or all of the deconstructive arguments.

On Mac’s. Command/F works the same as Ctrl/F At least on mine.

I’m a lawyer and graduate engineer who has been following your site for fifteen years, stayed pretty much in the background. My career for thirty five years is in persuading one side to accept my viewpoint, and attacking the logic of the other, and I have cross examined many experts in that time whose ‘expert’ opinion sounded logical, but didn’t hold up.
Thanks in part to your website, I have yet to lose a debate when the issue was whether its a fact that: Global warming materially exists, and man materially causes it through carbon emissions, and man can stop it. Once I prove its not a fact at all, then I ask why it isn’t reasonable for any critical thinker to question it….why do you ridicule critical thinkers when it turns out you were just proven wrong…..and that’s where the real issue seems to surface for most of the AGW crowd…”well it doesn’t hurt to get off fossil fuels”, or some version of the Precautionary Principle….first, they don’t realize they just lost the ‘debate’ on the ‘consensus’ not being a fact, but second, the real tipping point for most alarmists is that it should be obvious that its worth the risk to try and do whatever we can to get off fossil fuels (they usually are anti fossil fuel crowd from the beginning, as either dirty or a finite resource). This is their comfort fallback for their view.
So, in my view, the precautionary principle is why my AGW friends can’t get out of their rigid absolutist nearly preconceived views….and there needs to be as much a debate attacking the Precautionary Principle. (I have lost some debates over the years where I was arguing an issue the judge wasn’t really interested in).
I’m suggesting a topic at the top of your page dedicated to contributions to a debate on the Precautionary Principle. I explain to many that ‘burning our food supply’ (corn into ethanol) caused the very hunger and riots in certain part of the world around 2005 when corn and grain prices shot up as surplus corn and grain was used up when the EU mandated ethanol….and later backed off….the very starvation and riots that the global warmists predicted would occur years from now if we didn’t do something was being caused.
Either way, from my debates, its clear others are in denial about the science, and that often is evidence there is something deeper driving them, no matter how much logic is out there against the certainty of their position….and I think it is not only their predisposition to dislike fossil fuels, capitalism, or want worldwide wealth redistribution…..its also what they always fall back on to make them feel comfortable…the Precautionary Principle.
When climategate hit, anyone who was fearfull before that the science showed the world might come to an end due to global warming….should have been somewhat relieved that maybe the world wasn’t going to boil after all. But the response was the opposite, they wanted the earth to be at risk, were defending the indefensible, and weren’t pleased at all that maybe the ‘asteroid would pass us by’ so to speak. They doubled down, they needed the earth to be at risk. While that shows to me an agenda, they still use the Precautionary Principle as the last logical basis for extreme action.
While I doubt they would follow too much logic there either if they have an agenda (after all, if you dislike fossil fuels, you will love AGW and you need the earth to be at risk), my point is that the Precautionary Principle is the real issue that justifies their view, and its an issue that doesn’t get the attention it needs….in my view.
Short of that, the only thing we can hope for is worldwide temperatures dropping over time. Too many scientists, etc., are invested in their viewpoint to admit they might be wrong before that happens.
Would like to see you add this topic to your homepage with more visibility and input.
Thanks, your site does a great service to all.

Keep moderation light (as it currently is).

bruce:

I’m a lawyer and graduate engineer who has been following your site for fifteen years

And time-traveler? WUWT began on 17th November 2006, exactly three years before Climategate broke. This means I share a birthday with both. But following the site for fifteen years goes beyond the call of duty, even for a lawyer.

As others, if you can “number” each comment, I can pick up where I left off soooo much easier.
Otherwise, Thanks !

Have a full RSS feed available. Or at least do something better than the first N words. I also usually use a tablet, and it is a pain to have to switch, especially when the intro is something like “I was reading this interesting article on another website and thought I would share it here. I personally know the author, and I think he does a fine job of demonstrating …”.
I asked earlier and was told that having things like greek letters or something else crashed other feed readers, so to insure the small number won’t crash only the first few sentences are included. And I assume whatever they are reading on might be fixed or there would be alternative feed readers (feedly and feedspot don’t seem to crash).
Although I use a tablet, I usually have it set to the desktop site, so I have to load all the links, ads, sidebars, comments, pictures, and that can be slow. Sometimes the article doesn’t prove to be as interesting, and I could have seen that from a little more context. I’m probably missing some good stuff that I just don’t want to wait for the extra page-load time to find out.
If it is a matter of price, maybe kickstarter or indegogo or something similar would show if people would contribute for improvements.
But please consider a full article RSS feed.

Could you invite experts to provide explanatory articles as a separate section?
I am sure readers can think of many topics where authoritative explanations would help inform arguments but, as an example to start with, could someone provide a rigorous explanation of the effect of increased CO2 on temperatures of the troposphere and the surface of the earth. I have read the IPPC reports, I have read many climate physics text books, I have read various posts on WUWT, but still can’t say what is supposed to be happening. [I would prefer not to be fobbed off with MODTRAN, as I don’t know how this program works and handles energy transfer, relaxation, re-radiation, and effects of convection.] In particular how much of the effect of CO2 increase causes warming of the atmosphere (through relaxation of vibrational and rotational energy excitations to molecular kinetic energy) and how much warming of the surface (through re-radiation)? How much does convection contribute? The oft-quoted Kiehl and Trenberth paper (Kiehl, J. T. and Trenberth, K. E., 1997. Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc. , 78, 197-208) lacks any semblence of rigour and could be read as saying “we don’t understand the energy balance”, which is rather odd given how often it is quoted. Isn’t warming due to increase in CO2 the basis of the “anthropogenic global warming” proposition? If so, perhaps you could invite academics who believe this to give their explanations? Michael Mann, for example, as he seems to be a supporter of your site.
My academic background is post-graduate quantum physics so I am looking for a rigorous explanation, though I would welcome layman explanations (e.g. is the atmosphere akin to layers of half-silvered mirrors reflecting energy back to the surface or is it like a blanket that soaks up the infra-red emitted by the surface and warms the troposphere). One lay view, though, that could be readily disposed of is that the atmosphere with CO2 isn’t like a greenhouse.

as far as the quality of info on site, I don’t think it can get any better.
its a good balance of science and plain talk.

Two suggestions: Better marketing of the site and a more structured approach to SEO (Search Engine Optimization for those who struggle with TLA’s )
I discovered years ago that this was going to be my primary source of climate information for all the reasons stated by previous commentators and by the quality of most of your posts. But my discovery of your site was more of an accident of search engine logic than by design. You posted an article regarding how far down in the list WUWT is on a Google search illustrated this fact some time ago. A coherent approach to SEO would go a long ways toward that improving your placement.
Related to that is your method of titling pages. Others have commented on this but I will have a go at it as well. You titles all seem to be written by technicians, for technicians. Wordy, rambling and descriptive all apply to most f them. Any newspaper editor can tell you that a good title will determine if your article is being read or used to wrap fish. I am assuming that you want to increase your numbers of new readers and I think you should consider the visual impact of the page titles more than you currently do.
I and I suspect most of the people who have commented on this post, will always read the articles, irregardless of the title as we are dedicated followers based on years of really good articles. It’s the new-to-your-site prospective readers who would be better served by the change.
Oh, and numbered, threaded comments would assist me. I sometimes wonder if I learn more from the post or the comments. But, there are some individuals (you know who you are) that spend more time dropping troll bait than adding to the discussion. Would be nice to be able to collapse and hide these self-absorbed little micro-dramas while I search for the pearls and nuggets of knowledge and good-hearted humor the comments so often contain.
Thanks for asking for the input and keep up the good work.
Brian

Crowd source “Education Files” that address the major points of CAGW debate and create a WUWT RePublic Library here for them.
The idea is to create an easily accessible resource pool of Power Point based presentation files for AGW education purposes.
1. These should be Power Point presentations from contributors here, that may provide high level overviews of the AGW topic and/or separate PP pitches on major points, details, and related topics.
2. They can be summaries of articles presented at WUWT, but condensed and formatted in Power Point for easy access and use by any WUWT participant for class room or civic organization education purposes.
3. They should be understandable by a high school senior level of comprehension, with references appended for related discussion articles here on WUWT and/or publish research papers.
4. Access inside the library would be ‘read/copy’, but not ‘write’. Files would be open for modifications when copied to personal computers.
5. If a common template and/or guidelines for the presentations is desirable, it should be available for download from the library.
I know there are quite a few readers/participants here that have their own ‘Education Files’ already!
If we can get them in a condensed version, common presentation format, organized, and located in a ‘WUWT RePublic Library’, it can be a very powerful resource for educating friends, family, and civic groups we all work with. The common resource files means we would all have access to good presentations that could be shared directly with a civic group or easily tailored to address a more narrow topic that is in vogue at any given time.
Thanks for ‘asking’…. and keep on doing what you do sooooo well, A!
Best regards,
Mac

I think it’s counterproductive to call someone an anonymous coward without requiring real names (not that you could even enforce it). If one person is an anonymous coward because they disagree with you and don’t use their real name, then everyone who doesn’t use their real name, agreeable or not, are also anonymous cowards.
As with the funding argument, either their statement has merit on its own, or it doesn’t. Whether or not they use their real name is irrelevant.

richardscourtney says:
June 15, 2014 at 3:57 pm
This is a statement of your opinion and it is as valid as all other opinions.

Ditto

However, its merit depends on context. If an anonymous person makes a derogatory personal remark from behind the shield of anonymity then he/she/they/it is an anonymous coward unless they demonstrate their willingness to come out from behind the shield. Such personal remarks by such anonymous cowards are commonly made against Lord Monckton; e.g. untrue claims that he is not a real Lord. And the fact that the provider of the personal remark is an anonymous coward is pertinent to consideration of all comments by the coward.

Then perhaps that comment shouldn’t be allowed, since it would be off topic (unless the topic is about the derogatory remark).
But, plenty of people in here in support of WUWT often call others names or make derogatory remarks, under the cowl of anonymity. If it doesn’t go both ways then it’s just a stick to beat those with whom you do not agree.

Revive the critical rationalist philosophy of Karl Popper which has been expelled from the mainstream of academic philosophy due to serial misreading. http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=rafe+champion

Hi Anthony,
Most of the minor points that I might have suggested are covered better above. Not feeding the trolls or hopelessly confused is a good idea as is maintaining a degree of professionalism in spite of provocation.
I do find comments often difficult to follow both here and at Climate Etc. for reasons that have been discussed above. Is it possible to have the best of both worlds, i.e. nested replies to comments that remain collapsed threads unless opened by a reader (e.g. See Replies button)? This would allow people to carry-on a derivative conversation (or flame war) without interrupting the general flow of comments, but allow the option of closely associating replies with comments.
In general, errors or confusions in postings seem to be quickly pounced on by knowledgeable commentators, but I don’t think this is true of much of the ecological/biological silliness that you bring to our attention. Often these postings get some essential aspect wrong and the comments tend towards ridicule as opposed to addressing the scientific flaws. It is true that many of these are so bad that they deserve the ridicule; but still, it would be better if they were presented with the scientific flaws exposed to comment, not the superficial aspects. I think you could use the help of a biological reviewer to run these by first – Jim Steele seems excellent.

Navigating and Browser shortcuts for Firefox, Mac and Windows:
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/keyboard-shortcuts-perform-firefox-tasks-quickly

My first suggestion is to create a page called “THE BASICS” as a drop-down menu. Under this would be:
• WHAT WE KNOW
This page states the basics about the climate that sceptics and warmists agree on (no dragon slayers – they are like walking through honey).
• WHAT WAS PROJECTED / WHAT IS OBSERVED?
Give the IPCC temperature projections at each report and compare to observations. Also sea level rise, Antarctica sea ice extent, thermal expansion, water vapour etc. Followed by a short explanation of the scientific method for the layman.
This should turn any rational Warmist who does not have a hidden agenda.

“3. I’d like less name calling. The temptation is great, and I myself sometimes fall victim to that temptation. I’ll do better to lead by example in any comments I make.” A. Watts
Is this the same; “anybody that does not believe in the “greenhouse effect” is the “real denier”” Anthony Watts ?
I’ve been called a denier (by the host), a lunatic, and caricatured with long pointy teeth and knobs on my head at this blog (nice artwork Josh, but you captured my “bad” side). All for just presenting an alternative hypothesis about the “GHE”. Said “GHE” is STILL just a hypothesis, nothing more. A computer model that mimics a hypothesized effect IS NOT PROOF. And my “understanding” of radiative physics has been dismissed by the host; “they don’t understand radiative physics”, yet my customers pay “big bucks” for my understanding of radiative physics.
Anthony has a fine blog, but it might just be enhanced even further if it allowed for the possibility that the “experts” and the “textbooks” might just be wrong WRT the “GHE”. It has happened before, i.e. ulcers, lobotomies, plate tectonics, etc. etc.
If folks want to believe that a MINUSCULE amount of gases in the atmosphere are driving/controlling/forcing the temperature of the MASSIVE oceans into compliance, so be it. But the results are in, almost two decades with no warming while “GHG’s” are steadily increasing. What’s that I smell, seems like coffee……
Cheers, Kevin

Oldseadog says:
June 15, 2014 at 8:52 am
Regarding “can’t change No. 3″, advertisements, since I cleared my cookies and browser and started using DuckDuckGo, instead of Yahoo, via Firefox, I haven’t had any ads following my browsing behaviour.

I don’t understand advertisers. Just how many times are you going to buy the same kettle in one year? They seem to be obsessed with adverts based on past behaviour. Think about this for one second. You browse the web and see a nice smartphone. You buy the phone. You then look for chicken seasoning, and you keep getting ads for smartphones. Ads for chicken seasoning would perhaps do better. Yet this is what the Google guys are pushing.

Greenpeace employee gambles in forex markets, loses €3.8 million in donations
Read more at http://www.maxkeiser.com/2014/06/greenpeace-employee-gambles-in-forex-markets-loses-e3-8-million-in-donations/#w8fC7qUOEI3wQFpq.99

15 June: Bhaskar India: Ashish Pandey: Centre serves notice to Greenpeace; NGO responds to ‘leaked’ IB report
Greenpeace responds to various accusations and the ‘leaked’ IB Report that alleges it and other NGOs in the country for receiving foreign donations to hamper India’s economic growth…
http://daily.bhaskar.com/article-ht/NAT-TOP-ngos-come-under-scanner-centre-serves-notice-greenpeace-responds-to-leaked-ib-re-4647901-PHO.html
4 pages: .pdf: Greeenpeace: Response to leaked IB Report
6.Why is Greenpeace anti–‐coal when India has no choice but to burn coal for electricity, power shortages,
RE (renewables) is too expensive etc.
GREENPEACE: Climate change is the biggest threat mankind has ever faced, and the science of climate change is clear…
http://www.greenpeace.org/india/Global/india/greenpeace_response_to_leaked_ib_report.pdf

NAME-CALLING is essential to the discussion. It triggers their mistakes (Peter Glieck). This is a WAR and not friendly chatter. If you don’t understand this then we have lost already.
It is NOT only about the science. It NEVER has been only about the science. See Warmists’ agendas on your energy bills and infrastructure.
What it’s about is Warmists setting up co2 regulations, markets, making money, getting awards as quickly as possible before it turns cold. That’s it.

Late to this party, but I have a suggestion that might interest a lot of readers:
How about a periodic, say weekly, debate, on important climatology controversies, or any other interesting science question?
You would pick a topic (say, “Is there any actual empirical evidence for anthropogenic global warming?” or [thinking of an article in the Atlantic that I posted in Tips & Notes] “Is the Himalayan region really suffering from ‘global warming’, leading to glacier melt and instability?”), then invite an expert from each side to present his case (with links and references), followed up by two or three rebuttals each; then open the thread up to reader comments.
It is often said here that CAGW proponents “Will not debate.” Well, let’s give them the opportunity!
Obviously it take more work, which is the last thing you need, but perhaps it could be delegated.
Oh, and I’d like to see more posts on other science topics, besides climatology.
Otherwise, WUWT is my favorite blog; my only problem is finding the time to keep up with the flow of new posts (threatening to become a torrent!) and the often fascinating Comment threads. I think numbering the comments would help finding one’s place when returning, and I would love to see a Format box for Comments, but I understand the free WordPress doesn’t offer the latter—and the former, too?
/Mr Lynn

Arno Arrak says:
June 15, 2014 at 6:34 pm
Get rid of that annoying “Enter your comment here” message that appears on top of my writing and covers it up so I can’t see what I am doing.

As soon as I type one letter, the message disappears. I’m using Safari; maybe it’s different with other browsers.
/Mr Lynn

for anything related to the most ambitious fraud every perpetrated on humanity in history, evar- this is the place for early warning notice of troop movements.
i’m ready to credit mr watts and wuwt with being the single biggest reason we aren’t yet being taxed for breathing.
what else i like?
i’ll read anything written by messrs steele, ball, brown, willis, moncton – they are also attractions.
i very much respect and appreciate the tone of the place- and thanks to the moderators who keep things going smoothly with clarity of purpose.
so i have no changes to suggest, but please, sir- can i have some more?

Richard Drake,
You are correct, and I knew just after I hit the post button that I had erred in combining this with a previous site. I followed this subject closely for fifteen years…. but the first few were clearly with another site similar to this, and this one has had my attention so long I did do a little time traveling. Thanks.
Bruce

1. Numbered comments would be helpful.
2. The climate blogosphere is chaotic, a virtual Wild West frontier territory. Watts Up With That (WUWT), along with Climate Audit (CA), do the best job possible of managing to stay sane, reasonable and friendly in such stormy circumstances. Steady as she goes.

Change little, the essence of this site is the ethics and personal decency that Anthony Watts and the moderators live by.
Numbered comments might help follow some cross commenting on high traffic comments.
But the way you conduct yourselves here, has earned my repeat and seems to resonate with most visitors.
As noted above, we could do our bit, by donating a little more frequently.
Which I will sign off to do.

Steven Mosher says;
Perhaps one thing to do is to read the typical post and then predict what you will see in the commments.
9 times out of 10 the comments fall into the same canned responses. Nobody is thinking they are just reacting.
one way to get people thinking again is to present them with a mystery. Curious folks will try to figure it out
lazy folks want it all laid out so they can make their canned response.
————————————————————————————–
So, in 90% of threads, 100% of responses are canned and devoid of thought?
It’s not clear what happens in the other 10%, but research suggests that the curious folks only comment in these threads.
Cryptic comments that create mystery will stimulate the curious (who were not afflicted with thoughtlessness) but will not affect the lazy folks. Thus, this would only be effective in the 10% of threads that are commented on by curious folks.
The aim of getting people thinking again is not achieved.

Help. My comments about moderation are awaiting moderation!

You are doing a good job, Anthony. Having built several self-hosted and WP.com web sites, I understand what you are talking about. I, too, have complained to WordPress.com staff about the lack of editing features for those that comment on an article. But, you know that story
I would like for you to consider changing themes to a news-like theme. One reader calls it a magazine theme. It would make reading the blog a lot easier. Right now, you have that block at the top of the string of articles showing several titles, but a News theme could eliminate the need for that.
Thanks for running a great blog. I always make WUWT the first and last blog to read every day, You just can’t tell when a really good article will be published.

@richardscourtney, re Lord Monckton (again): you are conflating two different concepts here, namely (a) that of being a hereditary peer of the UK (by virtue of one or one’s ancestor holding Letters Patent from the Crown, often as from many centuries ago) and (b) that of being entitled to sit in the upper legislative chamber of the UK Parliament. They were once the same, but under the House of Lords Act 1999 are now different: Lord Monckton is of course a hereditary peer but is not today a member of the House of Lords. (Compare this, for example with the case of Matt Ridley who actually is a member of the House of Lords, but chooses not to keep on referring to himself as Viscount Ridley).
I suggest the UK population must be entitled to know with certainty who is, and who is not, entitled to partake in any capacity in any legislation binding within the UK. Lord Monckton is not so entitled – though I have never myself seen his peerage doubted in these pages.
And (although Anthony has my full name, as from my email address) I choose to abbreviate my full name here because, although my statements above are both legally and factually correct, they appear not to be relished in some quarters. Anthony is of course the host of this excellent, multiple award-winning blog/journal, and I am quite content to leave to his discretion whether he chooses to publish this (or any other) comment of mine. I would just add that requiring full names to be published inevitably carries a “argument from authority” risk – part of the joy of this blog/journal is that one’s arguments are considered on their own merits, whatever they might be – and if unmeritorious are often raucously dismissed!
And as this is technically a “what could we do better at WUWT” open thread, may I respectfully just ask one thing – if anything were to happen to you, Anthony, would this blog just go off air, or is there an established succession? We would miss you terribly …

I still Like Likes.
It’s real nice to get a bunch Likes for your comment, and it provides feedback, and may give you a better sense of what could be effective as far as arguments and so forth.
Why not try it but just eliminate Dislikes? I think that was the main objection before, that people disliked getting Dislikes. But everybody likes getting Likes.

The best thing about this site are 1) it distills the AGW scientific debate into terms any layman can follow and understand and 2) it notes examples of acedemic/scientific fraud by climatologists and universities. Keep doing that and I don’t care about the rest.

Mosh: Sure, CtM is a hero, as are all of his ilk.

I haven’t read the comments above so my apology if this idea has already been mentioned. WUWT often posts controversial articles, essays and research papers authored by climate scientists who fervently believe in AGW or human caused climate change. The many skeptic readers of WUWT waste no time criticising “shredding” the content. I would like see the author(s) formally invited to join the debate/discussion and given an opportunity to offer their rebuttal. I raised this idea many years ago however at that time Anthony or maybe a Mod suggested there was too much extra work involved. I understand this however I also believe that direct contribution from the Authors to the debate would add a nice roundness or balance to the discussion taking place. This balance is also sadly lacking at warmest blogs and so would add another point of difference for readers of WUWT. No?

Like a lot of others an end to the name calling and save the sarcasm for the Friday Funny…..
Personally I would not give Christopher Monckton such prominence because of his style – I would ask him to tone down his language and simply keep to the facts – I think because he is a caricature of an upper class Brit people don’t see beyond that and the good stuff from what he writes is often lost – I think it unfortunate that the world is like this but he does like to play along like it was some public school jape – often I feel he does more harm than good by presenting himself as a spokesperson for those of us who don’t believe that man is pushing the climate beyond its natural cycles.

Being right means nothing if we lose. Because of your dedicated efforts you have achieved the status of skeptic leader and “With great power comes great responsibility”! All of the leading skeptics and their websites are beacons of scientific truth and integrity but mostly unfunded, isolated, disjointed and uncoordinated when compared the green juggernaut of government, press, industry and Wall Street pushing this scam.
I would like to see you occasionally tap into the many logical, scientific and ethical minds who comment here and brainstorm about political action! What steps can people can take beyond being right in a blog/article comment section.
Honestly a vast majority of the population doesn’t know or understand even 1% of the information that is available about climate change and we will never convince most of them to spend the enormous amount of time it takes to figure out that the whole thing is the greatest scam in world history. All we have now is an uneasy uninformed public gradually turning away from this scam because of a plateau in the weather and some major mistakes by the climate change scam artists. Eventually we WILL have another very hot summer or a major hurricane and the green juggernaut will quickly seize the advantage once again and our fickle public will read the screaming headlines and drift back into believing and supporting the scam once again. Only this time the liars and thieves are close enough to victory with the Obama/EPA fanatics in power that they will probably win and we will watch the global suffering, chaos and death that will result from carbon markets infecting and destroying what’s left of the global economy…and the UN will finally possess the political Holy Grail; unelected, unaccountable, unlimited, uninterruptible funding.
We need to strike now while the enemy is weak! “Unite the clans”! (Braveheart reference…couldn’t resist!) We need a skeptics strategy for final victory and that means getting involved beyond winning insignificant personal debates.
I get email every week from OFA, WWF, EDF…etc. and the rest of the green syndicate. They are unified in their message and continuing to rake in the funds and energize their base into political action. They have a long-term winning strategy and we need one ASAP but it must begin with the skeptic leaders because there is nobody else positioned to lead.
My personal strategy idea; all skeptics and the blogs/websites that they run should unite on the debate topic. Even the uninformed masses can understand the simplicity of victory when the skeptics want to debate and the warmists run and hide. The fact that skeptics win every debate is just a bonus and every debate that we skeptics view will make us more informed and stronger for our own debates. If we had a chorus of every skeptic screaming on every website, every microphone, signs at every political gathering, letters and phone calls to elected representatives about debate, debate, debate…we will be pushing the warmists into a no win situation.
Debate…they lose.
Don’t debate…they lose.
It’s a winning strategy.
My 2 cents.

I second TonyB’s suggestion of developing a section of reviewed high quality posts. Many of the components already exist here, and the review that ideas are subject to here is far more exacting than the typical periodical’s review. It would be useful if such a section were open to writings of both skeptics and warmists. MacIntyre, Curry, JoNova, and others also offer some serious contributions from time to time, so there may be ways to cooperate on something like this.
And, by the way, for those who would like to see numbered comments, note that Tony’s comment is actually numbered as follows:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/06/15/open-thread-what-could-we-do-better/#comment-1663114
The number is embedded in the date that accompanies each comment, as in, for example:
>>climatereason says:
>>June 16, 2014 at 1:29 am
Perhaps it is possible to offer a way for the reader so inclined to toggle visible comment numbers.

Just one suggestion: On the Sea Ice Page, the graphic for the current ice coverage is compared to the same date in 2007. This was created when 2007 was the lowest extent ever. Now it’s 2012. Please change the 2007 date to 2012. Why compare to the second-lowest extent ever?
And a comment regarding Freerepublic.com and their comment threading advocated by another poster: While the comment threading they use is quite helpful and functional, please don’t adopt any of their other practices. The comments on Free Republic have degenerated over the years to the point that they are nearly worthless, although the site itself is a good source for web articles that have a conservative bent. Your moderators are to be congratulated, as I believe that they, along with your insistence on good standards, are the key to maintaining a useful comment system.

Steven Mosher says:
June 15, 2014 at 10:58 pm
“err no. go back to square one.”
What you probably meant to say at square one is not what you said.
Perhaps an illustration of your other point that curious people have lapses into laziness.
Supercilious sniping seldom staunches the stream of silly statements.

frankly I dont see how willis or Leif put up with the comments they get. generally speaking if one wants to have an in depth science discussion there are only two places that dont tolerate crap from commenters and stay on point: lucia and CA. every other place is not conducive to discussion. Look at the lengths willis has to go to to keep people on topic. Look at the way one of the worlds top solar scientists is treated here.

Translation: commentators here are too stupid for him because he is such a “genius” and people need to stop disagreeing with his position on climate change or he will go where the luke warmer echo chamber is.
I love the over-inflation of Leif’s importance simply because he agrees with him on climate change.

Perhaps it makes no sense and there may be no benefit as I see it but I wish WUWT would occasionally (more often) critique some of the random alarmist’s pieces in our newspapers.
The authors and commenters would then get the hefty dose of reality they deserve and give the regular folks some better understanding of the dubious nature of the climate team.
Here’s are a couple of recent examples. One from a state climatologist and another by other officials.
http://www.gazettetimes.com/news/local/climate-scientist-describes-hotter-drier-oregon/article_3c8f4d90-e220-11e3-b306-001a4bcf887a.html
http://www.oregonlive.com/opinion/index.ssf/2014/06/now_is_the_time_for_aggressive.html

***
I can’t offer comment editing post facto, to do that I either need to spend $500/month to use the WordPress Enterprise feature (which I tried on invitation and decided it was not worth the price tag) or run on a self-hosted server.
***
$6000 a yr?!? Yes, you were right — not worth it. Maybe $60 a yr would be…
Can WordPress put a simple number on each reply? Could simplify referencing — ex: reply to comment #x (yeah, I know there’s other copy link/paste ways to do that)