Recently, this blog passed a few milestones that I thought would be worth sharing with readers. For all of our critics and the vitriol all they throw our way, I challenge any of them to find a climate related blog that even comes close to the level of readership we enjoy here. We recently passed 300 million views and 2 million approved comments (more on that later).Here are screen grabs from the WUWT dashboard showing the numbers:
We also recently passed 40,000 email subscribers.
Given these events, I thought it might be time to refresh some of our readers on the most contentious part of operating this blog and that is the comments section. One of the downsides of being number one is that you’re also the biggest target. And being the biggest target we have a plethora of “anonymous cowards” who try to post comments here that are either wildly off-topic, inappropriate, angry, hateful, or otherwise uncivil. Some of the serial offenders use fake IDs, fake e-mail addresses, and even fake IP addresses to try to get their unwelcome point of view or hate-mongering across.
Because of that I’ve had to implement a strong filter to catch a lot of these people so that such inappropriate comments are not published. Occasionally some get through but fortunately readers tend to point them out and they get deleted by moderators or myself because they don’t adhere to site policy. This would be a good opportunity for all readers to review the site policy which you can view here.
Some of our critics say that we should allow for some of the other points of view to be discussed here such as barycentrism, atmospheric pressure theories, chemtrails, electric universe, geo-engineering theories, etc. etc. etc. In the earlier days we did some of that, and quite frankly a lot of that stuff proved to be nothing more than nonsense, and turned into food fights in the comment section. Been there, done that, not going to do it again. There are other venues and blogs to discuss those things, feel free to go there but don’t ask for them to be discussed here or make comments about those topics. They will be deleted. I don’t allow those topics here for the same reason I don’t share my home with a honey-badger; it’s not productive, it’s noisy, and somebody gets hurt in the end. And like a honey-badger meme, I just don’t care. 😉
For those of you that have wondered why some comments may disappear that contain what you seem to think are very innocuous words, this is the reason; some of the most persistent fake commenters use particular word combinations or phrases that are part of their writing style that we have identified, and sometimes regular commenters fall into that trap accidentally. Bear in mind that each comment is reviewed and if it meets the site policy it will be published. Occasionally there are some comments that may not fit into the categories defined by the site policy but don’t get published. That’s why we have a clause for “on an event basis” to cover such instances. There’s no need to e-mail us to say my comment disappeared! We will find it and recover it if it meets site policy, if you don’t see it after a few hours, you can consider it out of bound for site policy.
There is also no need to keep posting the same identical comment dozens of times hoping that if you just keep trying it will somehow get through. All that does is just create extra work for the moderation staff to clean out duplicate comments. Speaking of extra work, we cannot move comments between threads if you somehow accidentally commented on the wrong thread, and generally we don’t have time to edit people’s comments when they request such things. It would be better if you would just post a new comment directly below it saying the previous comment had an error and fix it, or just simply repost the appropriate comment in the appropriate thread.
Some of our critics say that we should publish all comments because otherwise we’re engaging in censorship. To that I say, bollocks. We wouldn’t have reached 2 million comments in my opinion if this blog allowed a Wild West policy for commentators, and I think the success speaks for itself in the numbers. I challenge any other blog that covers climate to show me their numbers.
I’d also like to make a note about e-mail subscribers. We don’t have a management tool for e-mail subscribers because the entire system is run by WordPress.com and it is designed to be self maintaining by the end-user. Therefore if you want to unsubscribe you have to do that yourself. Each e-mail that comes from each blog post contains a link that will allow you to unsubscribe if you look carefully.
Finally, I’d like to mention that occasionally some of the ads here cause some readers problems due to the ads injecting inappropriate code or badly formed code. Over the past year I have worked very closely with WordPress.com to help them weed out some of the advertisers that have done stupid things with their ads like injecting code that causes the scrolling the jump right back to the ad every 5 seconds. Largely as a result of complaints from our readers about these problems and due to the efforts I put into troubleshooting and relaying the information to WordPress.com staff, I’m happy to announce that about two months ago they implemented a “predatory code filter” that weeds out these kinds of advertiser tricks. I’m happy to report that since this has been done the number of complaints I received has dropped to near zero.
That said, I still occasionally get complaints from readers about pages being slow or pages not loading completely, etc. a lot of this has to do with browsers and the state of the computer hosting their web browser. I have noted a common theme in many complaints like this which is: fear of upgrade. The Internet is an evolving animal and if you don’t keep your web browser updated and most importantly your computer updated you may find that you get left behind at the back of the herd. For those that are interested, I consider the best browser for viewing this website is Chrome with at least 4 GB of memory and processor that’s running at least 1.5 GHz. About two years ago Firefox was my browser of choice but it had become buggy and unstable and I abandoned it. If you are still using Firefox you might want to consider downloading Chrome for a better experience.
As always, I thank you the reader for making the success of WUWT possible. I also thank the many moderators and guest contributors that keep this blog running smoothly and make the wide variety of content available here.
My best regards to all – Anthony Watts
[note: about 10 minutes after publication, a number of typos were corrected that came from voice recognition dictation imperfections]
Congratulations on 10 years of hosting the site. It’s been a long strange trip I’m sure.
I took this posting’s opportunity to open and review the site rules link. I think it unfortunate that you exclude Scientifica Principia, Sky Dragons, etc. from the discussion. Feynman wouldn’t. RGHE is as bogus as cold fusion and it is long past time to duke it out. If all they’ve got is IR sensors pointed at the sky, supposedly measuring “back” radiation, then they’ve got nothing. Open a thread dedicated to the defense/rebuttal of RGHE.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/what-greenhouse-nicholas-schroeder
http://writerbeat.com/articles/14306-Greenhouse—We-don-t-need-no-stinkin-greenhouse-Warning-science-ahead-
http://writerbeat.com/articles/15582-To-be-33C-or-not-to-be-33C
Marohasy doesn’t buy it, BioCabinet doesn’t buy it, hockeyschtick doesn’t buy it. Both ACS tool kit and Spence Weart say RGHE is a poor analogy, that it doesn’t describe how the atmosphere works, it doesn’t even describe how a real greenhouse works. Spencer says it’s the physical enclosure that traps convection that keeps it warm, not some kind of RGHE thermal diode. (I have a kewl garage experiment that demonstrates the power of convection. Send me your E-mail for a copy of the write up.)
Convection is the primary method that moves energy from the surface, water vapor takes over in the atmosphere, CO2/RGHE is barely a footnote. Even the surface temperature of Venus can be explained without RGHE.
*********
Mark Twain observed, “The trouble with most of us is that we know too much that ain’t so.”
Adding to the “Δ33C without an atmosphere” (see attached) that completely ain’t so is the example of Venus.
Venus, we are told, has an atmosphere that is almost pure carbon dioxide and an extremely high surface temperature, 750 K, and this is allegedly due to the radiative greenhouse effect, RGHE. But the only apparent defense is, “Well, WHAT else could it BE?!”
Well, what follows is the else it could be.
Venus is half the distance to the sun so its average solar constant/irradiance is twice as intense as that of earth, 2,615 W/m^2 as opposed to 1,368 W/m^2.
But the albedo of Venus is 0.77 compared to 0.31 for the Earth or Venus 601.5 net ASR (absorbed solar radiation) W/m^2 compared to Earth 943.9 net ASR W/m^2.
The Venusian atmosphere is 250 km thick as opposed to Earth at 100 km. Picture how hot you would get stacking 2.5 more blankets on your bed. RGHE’s got jack to do with it, it’s all Q = U A dT.
The thermal conductivity of carbon dioxide is about half that of air, 0.0146 W/m-K as opposed to 0.0240 W/m-K so it takes twice the dT/m to move the same kJ from surface to ToA (top of atmosphere, 100 km, 62 miles).
Put the higher irradiance & albedo (lower Q = lower dT), thickness (greater thickness increases dT) and conductivity (lower conductivity raises dT) all together: 601.5/943.9 * 250/100 * 0.0240/0.0146 = 2.61.
So, Q = U A dT suggests that the Venusian dT would be 2.61 times greater than that of Earth. If the surface of the Earth is 15C/288K and ToA is effectively 0K then Earth dT = 288K. Venus dT would be 2.61 * 288 K = 748.8 K surface temperature. No S-B BB RGHE hocus pocus need apply.
Simplest explanation for the observation.
Nick Schroeder, BSME, PE
I tried to imagine a world without WUWT.
It wasn’t very nice.
Congrats Anthony and to all of those who help make this site what it is today. Hope it will continue….
I just discovered WUWT 4-5 months ago and is a great website for lay people such as myself to understand the multi disciplinary subjects required to truthfully begin to understand natural climate change vs. the AGHW speculation that humans are now the main driver of climatic systems. Obviously, history will record what really happened with past, present and future climate and really what causes what. We are just at the beginning of this epic quest, but I think the lesson here is that there must be a truthful and civil debate on all matters relating to understanding this very complex subject and so far for the most part, it appears this web site has accomplished just that: a civil discussion on all of these crucially important subjects.
However, I am a bit worried that some of the articles (and comment section) tends to be now slipping into another sinister form of denialism (since USA election) into what the skeptics had originally said about the alarmists, that the fix was in for CO2 being the main culprit driving climate. Now it seems many essays and comments tend to just say that all renewable energy is bad, and nothing ever was wrong with fossil fuels. That is a disappointing turn of events, since in the long term view even if carbon based fuels don’t have much to with climate change, when fossil fuel price increases begin to cause major conflict with the global economy, then we squandered more time and resources in not finding replacements for fossil fuels. While fossil fuels will dominate our energy mix for decades to come, in the long term scheme of things, fossil fuels will diminish just as whale oil did 150 years ago. And that future economic turmoil may dwarf any real global warming/climate change that may or may not have ever happened. I believe this future fact is the 800 pound gorilla in the room and so far, not even discussed.
I just hope that this space will not become its own antithesis, and the mob will rule over future forms of solving energy and climate adaptation to the only thing we really know for sure, that the climate has and is always changing.
Keep up the good work Mr. Watts!
@ur momisugly Ron Williams,
“sinister form of denialism”,… you ain’t seen nuthin yet 🙂
Ron Williams March 13, 2017 at 11:00 am
The first step in any solution is correctly identifying and articulating the real problem.
It’s not just fossil fuels, but any hydrocarbon/carbon based fuel that produces CO2.
Yes, fossil fuels will run short at some time in the future, or so we’ve been hearing for decades now, and that projected date just keeps receding further into the future.
So what, exactly, is the real problem? An energy marketplace distorted by elitist hallucinations about how the earth should be? What fuels we should use? When? Where? At what “reasonable” price?
Or should US gasoline prices cease being subsidized by the blood of our Marines in Fallujah?
Recommended reading: “The True Flag” by Stephen Kinzer
Congratulations, and thanks! As soon I read Al Gore’s book years ago, I realised that we were being fed propaganda.
Ian Plimer’s ‘Heaven and Earth’ and Robert Carter’s ‘Climate – the Counter Consensus’ were the books I read next – a breath of fresh air with a grip on reality.
It didn’t take me long to realise what the website ‘Skeptical Science’ was peddling either – selectively ignoring valid points I’d made, not to mention a sneering and condescending attitude to those who saw things differently.
What a contrast WUWT is – well done.
Carbon 500:
Hear, hear!!!!
WUTW has been truly a “light in the firmament” …. the ‘firmament’ being the darkness of intellectual dishonesty, political pandering, promoting fake-science as Gospel, ‘sinecurism’ in pursuit of public-funding, Charlatanism and snake-oil salesmanship.
Yes, it has.
And, oddly enough, the longest burning light bulb in the world (only turned off a few times for brief periods), was first turned on in 1901. It’s still burning….and its filament is made of CARBON.
(I’d tell you where it is but those who voted for Governor Moonbeam would protest it or try to break it.)
Congratulations, Anthony. When it’s all done and dusted I reckon this site will go down in the records as a key factor in busting the climate scam.
Aaaaand a Special Thanks to DeSmogBlog et al for it’s unwitting contribution to Anthony Watts’ success.
That’ll learn ya.
+1, thumbs-up, liked, commented & subscribed (to several articles at least, hehe).
Many thanks, tanto amore, e mucha suerte. Ganbatte ne!
Accusation of censorship of your blog by you is a typical free-luncher scam, they want you to pay to publicize their notions. Of course neo-Marxists, which most climate alarmists are, will claim that you have money and they don’t (It’s Marxist presumptions of fixed-pie economics and drive-to-the-bottom ethics, which are based on denial of the human mind).
I’m reading WUWT about 4 years now. I have found it to be a truly great and diverse resource. I’m Irish and in absolute despair about the media in this country. This website (despite the forays into annoying topics like Catholic bashing or Brexit) is a fantastically refreshing and open website of ideas and viewpoints (diametrically the opposite of the Irish and Western media generally). It gives me great hope for the future where I had previously been in despair. A completely random list of some things this website has introduced me to in that period that come to mind are:
Adam Curtiss’s documentaries (they’re fantastic)
Thomas Nagle’s Mind and Cosmos
Hillary Clinton’s serious illness that the media were hiding (what else are they hiding?)
The statistical language R (I now use it at work)
Bayesian data analysis
J Haidt’s The Righteous Mind (I think that was from here but might have been a link to a link to a link..)
And many many others that don’t come to mind now…
I have had orders more intellectual stimulation from this site than I have had from the Irish (and sometimes British) media after following it for over 40 years. Well done and thank you many times over. Keep up the good work and the excellent (EXCELLENT!!) moderating.