Earlier this year I had mentioned that I had been blogging on Watts Up With That for over 10 years straight. Because of that I felt the need to take a sabbatical this summer, and I asked readers for some help in doing that. Many, many, people generously responded with offers of help, offers of visits and lodging, and many other things. I’m eternally grateful to all those who have stepped up to help to keep this website running during my absence, as well as those who made my rest and relaxation possible. We added a crop of new moderators who have kept comments flowing, and I thank you for what is essentially a thankless job. I want to give particular thanks to our own Charles the Moderator a.k.a. CTM, who has kept WUWT populated with stories while I took some much needed rest. I also want to give thanks to the many guest authors who have contributed stories and to our regular authors Eric Worrall and David Middleton who have regularly published stories here. If I’ve missed anyone, it’s not intentional.
Those of you that have been watching closely have noted that I have published a few stories this summer (when the mood struck me) as well as recently a series of stories for hurricanes Harvey and Irma, I also outlined the excellent adventure Charles and I had watching the total solar eclipse. I have to tell you that was truly the experience of a lifetime.
As of yesterday (Monday 10/2) I’m officially back and I feel good. I’m recharged and I have some fresh ideas that you’ll see taking place here on a regular basis. I also have a book in the works and another new project which I will outline at a future date that holds promise for putting climate modeling and climate modelers feet to the fire.Details on that will be forthcoming in a future post.
Amazon Deal: 44% off on Universal OBD II Scanner Car Engine Fault Code Reader
In the short term I’d like to ask our readers to take a moment to look at the sidebar and the advertisement for the Q-Lav. This is an invention marketing of our own Charles the moderator, and I’m running this ad as a favor to him in thanks for all he has done. If readers have a need for such a device I urge you to take a moment and purchase it. He also has a very special chocolate that prevents gastrointestinal distress for people that are sensitive to certain types of sugars. It’s called Crotter’s Best.
Some of the things that you’ll see in the coming weeks:
- Some site reorganization – for example some of the reference pages are getting a bit stale due to broken links, I will be working on those
- A new front page format – the current format does not keep stories front and center very long and as a result useful conversations often get pushed out of sight. A good example is the recent story on a random walk analysis of temperature data which has scrolled off the main page after just two days.
- In-line ads from Amazon.com – (an example is above) these will be fairly unobtrusive and will link to deals of the day and lightning deals, and of course things like Climate related Books. Dr. Roy Spencer’s recent success in publishing two eBooks on Climate and Hurricanes owe their success in no small part to WUWT readers. This is a no-additional-cost way for readers to support WUWT, as it nets small percentage of each Amazon purchase.
- Regular features will return – such as “quote of the week” and “climate craziness of the week” plus some new features.
- Comment submission improvement – some comments end up flagged that should not be, some tuning is needed to keep the flow going while weeding out junk comments or comments that violate site policy
Of course, I’m open to suggestions any of you might have for making WUWT better and more effective. Leave a comment if you have an idea.
Again, my sincere thanks to everyone for all of your help, let’s make the next 10 years is even better!
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From Langley, BC, Canada
Welcome back
Note:
On couple of occasions we discussed here detection of the gravitational waves generated by colliding black holes as observed by LIGO – Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory.
“STOCKHOLM/LONDON (Reuters) – Three U.S. scientists won the 2017 Nobel prize for physics on Tuesday for opening up a new era of astronomy by detecting gravitational waves, ripples in space and time as foreseen by Albert Einstein a century ago.
The work of Rainer Weiss, Barry Barish and Kip Thorne crowned half a century of experimental efforts by scientists and engineers.”
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-nobel-prize-physics/u-s-trio-win-nobel-for-finding-einsteins-gravitational-waves-idUSKCN1C80Y4
Congratulations to the laureates, not forgetting the rest of engineers who designed built and maintained the facility.
“Three U.S. scientists won the 2017 Nobel prize for physics on Tuesday for opening up a new era of astronomy by detecting gravitational waves, ripples in space and time as foreseen by Albert Einstein a century ago.”
A new era of astronomy sounds just like what they are creating. Very exciting! Black holes merging with other black holes and neutron stars, and revealing the secrets of the universe in the process, with these new gravity wave detectors.
Welcome back, Anthony. The people you put in charge in your absence did a very good job. Thanks to all of you for the most interesting website on the internet.
I’m not competent to comment on the three named individuals : (I believe three individuals is the max allowed), but the selection of the observation of Einsteinian Waves is certainly an achievement worthy of the Nobel Physics Prize. Perhaps one of the most important of recent years.
So as ” Particle Physics ” bows out; exit stage left, with Higgs Boson in hand, Gravitational Waves makes its appearance, to start a new era.
Just think about it; the ONLY emanations from the Physical Universe that can convey information of potential use to us (or just of interest) are Electromagnetic Radiation, and Gravitational Waves, those involving the only two infinite range forces we know of; the Coulomb Force (which blows) and the Gravitational Force (which sucks).
2017 is a year to mark on your calendar.
G
WELCOME BACK ANTHONY……………
/Salute
Thank you for running this site!
Suggestion: A llink/button to the bottom of the comment section.
I’ve been on an IPad these past few days, and swishing the fingers to get to the last comment gets to be tedious.
Or some one can tell me the short cut on an IPad.
My short Google search says no or jump through a flaming hoop to create some sort of a short cut with Java script.
I find it a bit clunky on my old iPad2, but you could try something like Dolphin Browser.
http://dolphin.com/download/
Welcome home!
Welcome back. The site is using an old template, seems a Magazine style theme would work better here. 😀
Great to have you back in the saddle at WUWT and recommend you do it more often. You had excellent caretakers while away. Enjoyed the eclipse posts very much.
Welcome back & thanks to all who keep this a sane scientific site….well 97% of the time !
Great to see you back and totally refreshed. The stand in team did a great job holding down the fort as it were.
Have to agree with you on the total eclipse. It was the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen in nature.
Welcome back Anthony, I hope you are going to book in a few weeks every year from now on. Take care.
Good to have you back. Looking forward to your book.
Glad you’re back!
Have you seen this?:
The anthropogenic contribution to the actual CO2 concentration is found to be 4.3%
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921818116304787
It’s good to have you back. I have one suggestion for the good of the blog.
I get turned off by inappropriate attack comments directed at some of the mainstream (i.e. consensus or pro-agw) commenters. IMHO, some of the very best comments come from guys like Nick Stokes and Steven Mosher. Much more often than not, their comments are met by outright hostility. From time to time hostility may be what is deserved, but not very often.
I don’t think many people here want this blog to become an echo chamber, but the best way to achieve that status is to continuously berate contrarian commenters. For one thing, this behavior is rude and uncivil. And another thing is that it lowers the quality of the discussion in attacking the commenter rather than challenging the statement.
Some may say that the commenter is asking for it because of something he/she said some time ago, or some other equally fallacious reason. I say that, even if there’s something to that, there’s a time to move on and try to treat people with respect. If people do not respond in kind, then I guess you try something else. But most of us know what is gratuitously hostile and will make a good faith attempt to respond graciously.
One of the problems with blogging is that anonymity often breeds lack of accountability. We feel we can say any old thing to people we never meet. I’ve done this myself but I’m trying to do better.
@scraft1
October 3, 2017 at 11:43 am : I have no interest in abusing them, but totally discount their honesty after their abuse of that fine scientist Judith Curry. That proved they are mere bought creatures. So anything they write is of no use, being intended to deceive. They may have deceived you…… Brett Keane (not a pseudomym)
I agree. Ivankinsman and Griff are perhaps the least objectionable warmist regulars we’ve had here since 2009 (when I started following the site), but are treated more harshly than their predecessors. Their comments shouldn’t be taken too personally—they are repeating the standard warmist “line”. This gives us an opportunity to rebut it that we wouldn’t otherwise have. To impress persons not yet on our side, we should not try to shout down such comments, but provide links to rebuttals, or anyway to at least summarize such rebuttals. Also, we should concede a point when they are right.
“Nick Stokes/ Steve Mosher”
Really ?
“In this post I take down the second part of Nick Stokes idiotic claim :
“Steven Goddard produces these plots, and they seem to circulate endlessly, with no attempt at fact-checking, or even sourcing. I try, but it’s wearing.
My source code has been out there for years. Nick has no excuse for his ignorance”
“The source code is ghcn.py. Nick can see exactly how the calculations are done. They are a simple numerical average of the USHCN monthly final minus the numerical average of the monthly raw temperatures, per year. Math doesn’t get any simpler than that. A third grader should be able to understand”
“Nick has no excuses for his ignorance or his ongoing attempts to misinform the public. Next time he or Mosher claim my work is not reproducible, tell them that they would need at least third grade math skills to accomplish that”
https://realclimatescience.com/2017/09/nick-stokes-busted/
https://realclimatescience.com/2017/09/nick-stokes-busted-part-2/
https://realclimatescience.com/2017/09/nick-stokes-busted-part-3/
“Really?”
And your evidence is that something I said has pushed Tony Heller into his usual incoherent ranting. Just look at two items in that. I said that people circulate these graphs with no attempt at fact-checking. So his response is that he posts code, and so I am ignorant. But the point would then be, do those who circulate the graphs ever run Heller’s code? I’m betting no-one does.
And as for this
” They are a simple numerical average of the USHCN monthly final minus the numerical average of the monthly raw temperatures, per year. Math doesn’t get any simpler than that. A third grader should be able to understand”
It’s simple, and just wrong. There were (USHCN has been obsolete for years) 1218 stations in the final set. There were a varying number, usually somewhere around 900, in the raw set. He subtracts the average absolute temperatures, and says the result is due to adjustment. But they are different sets. The 900 raw stations may just, on average, be warmer or cooler places than the 1218 final. If there is inhomogeneity (lat, altitude etc) you either have to use the same set, or carefully correct for the difference. Else you get things like the Goddard spike.
then go to the website comment. I think his CV puts him far above you.
I think Part three beautifully debunks the GISS data.
Though Nick is good for a laugh-
“You are pathetic,Nick since the link I provided answered your questions. The very chart you whine about is right there on the GISS webpage. Tony showed both 2001 and 2005 webpages in his post with links to them”
richard,
You seem to have no capacity to put a coherent argument of your own. You can only quote incoherence from others.
It is clear Nick never read Tony’s posts about you, since you said several things completely wrong about what Tony actually said. You also are avoiding his criticism posts about you,not a single post from you there.
Meanwhile that “Goddard spike” blog post, has Tony thanking them for pointing it out:
” stevengoddard
May 10, 2014 at 7:59 am
Anthony,
Thanks for the explanation of what caused the spike.
The simplest approach of averaging all final minus all raw per year which I took shows the average adjustment per station year. More likely the adjustments should go the other direction due to UHI, which has been measured by the NWS as 8F in Phoenix and 4F in NYC.”
How come YOU left this part out?
You are destroying your credibility every time you do that.
sunsettommy – I quoted you – sorry I didn’t use attribute to you.
I agree with scraft1. I think the cogent responses to Griff and Nick Stokes are some of the best parts of WUWT. They make me feel that I’m not in an echo chamber, but learning from smart men and women and becoming a better advocate for the skeptical position. Attacking warmists personally serves no purpose.
Are you suggesting that the echo chamber shouldn’t repeatedly insult people that are able to see past the rhetoric?
Note that I’m not going to mention Al Gore out of respect for you sentiments.
Do you ask the same thing for Skeptics on the Alarmist sites?
That Alarmist comments appear at all puts WUWT far ahead of the curve.
Yes, indeed! #(:))
The best is yet to come.
Dear Anthony,
A suggestion (written publicly to hopefully get some affirming or negating comments to give you an idea of whether this is “just Janice’s thing” or not):
WUWT has improved over the course of 10 years in many ways, but in one way it has deteriorated over the past 2 years or so. The bricks of the site are still present (though there seem to be an awful lot of squishy, too-much-lukewarm-water-in-the-mixture, ones this year….. (ahem)), i.e., lots of good science articles. There is, nevertheless, something missing. That something is you. WUWT was a great website when your warm, witty, generous, personality shone throughout its pages. WUWT is still a good website, but, I wish it were GREAT again (smile).
We enthusiastically contributed to send our shining star to the AGW (I mistype that all the time — and left it this time, lololol) meeting last December, eagerly looking forward to a few “our man in the street” reports or, at least, a summary. Not. One. Word. We never heard how your paper presentation went. We never heard anything about that conference at all. Okay. You had your reasons. Then, this summer, you went on a well-deserved, lovely, sabbatical, again enthusiastically supported by us WUWTers. While you thanked us nicely, there was no fun journaling/summary of “My Summer Vacation” — as you did when you travelled to Australia years ago,
(http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/06/25/travel-notes-from-my-australian-tour/ )
The mortar that holds the bricks of WUWT together, making it not “just a pile of nice bricks,” but a lovely structure, a shelter, a place where people enjoy sitting down and talking awhile is the warmth and courtesy provided by sharing yourself in articles like this:
(http://wattsupwiththat.com/2007/03/16/trains/ )
Okay. I think you get the idea. WUWT will continue to be a good site (if the bulk of the articles don’t slip and slide any farther down the muddy slope of the lukewarm swamp (AHEM! 🙂 ).
If you want it to be GREAT, however, you’ll have to put “you” back into it. The “human interest” element is missing, now. It will (likely has) cost you readers. And you may just think that’s just fine!
Just my two cents (and something I’ve been thinking about for many months, now).
Your WUWT friend,
Janice
I’d have to agree, the content has, since Anthony has been away, been okay and appreciated but , in my opinion, has been too opinion led. It has had more the feel of some of our warmist friends sites without the scientific rigor that I expect in WUWT. As a consequence I’ve found myself less inclined to read the articles or to skim read, whereas before I would sit myself down with a nice cup of tea and see how many articles, with comments, I could get through!
Great to have you back and no disrespect meant to any of the contributors!
Noted. Those omissions are due to exhaustion, though I could have sworn I wrote up how our 2016 AGU presentation went. I distinctly recall posting photos and text of RSS scientist Carl Mears as he stopped by our poster and discussed it’s merits….
Thanks for responding, Anthony! 🙂
Well, lol, if so, that just goes to show how completely FORGETTABLE Mears is. Bwah, ha, ha, ha, ha!
WUWT has slowly become a place where ANY article that would appear to be anti-AGW gets featured, without review. Even the flawed ones don’t get taken down. I agree that we need more rigor, and less reliance on opinion articles.
Welcome back!
Anthony, welcome back. After your well deserved rest from blogging and opportunity for reflection, I would be very interested to hear your thoughts on the whole global warming/climate change story. You have seen countless claims, lies and arguments in all sorts of directions over many years. What do you conclude or take away from that experience? What are your words of wisdom, conclusions, predictions and recommendations?
I would be fascinated by that and I know you would be quite forceful in your comments.
However, I realise that this site also tries to be even handed and offers a forum for most, if not all, points of view. What I am suggesting may be counter productive. You may not wish to proceed in that direction. If I were in your position I would have to think seriously about the suggestion.
Nevertheless, it would be interesting for your audience and perhaps for you, too but I respect your judgement on this. Keep up the good work.
For advertising your audience might click on short infomercials. If a company has a video that explains why their product or service is better or there is something new about it and provides a link, your audience might click it if they believe there is something to learn. (no auto play) Why some advertisers think it is good to make potential customers angry with them I will never understand.
A few months (or years) back you stated a desire to create a reference section with products from the USA Climate Reference Network. I had the same idea and went ahead and created a set of products available here:
https://atmos.washington.edu/marka/crn
For instance, here is the Sept 2017 summary for the entire USA48 domain using all 114 sites:
https://atmos.washington.edu/marka/crn/usa48/201709.usa48.txt
You will see the USA48 domain averaged +0.1 F above “normal” for the month of Sept 2017.
Anthony, if you are interested in collaborating on this, let me know. Thanks for all you have done these past 10 years.
In this moment I am literally ecstatic.
Anthony is back AND there are MORE ADVERTS.
WOOHOO !!!!
and as a bonus there is an opportunity for my bottom to be cleaner than ever (thanks ctm – sorry to hear them on the other side calling you WUWTs resident asshole expert, a trifle rude I reckon but whether better or worse than “den1er” may be debateable).
QLav bears a remarkable similarity to a piece of kit we had in the labs in the 1980’s which was used by the lab tec’s to clean the test tubes and flasks, usually with IPA. We called it the squeegy bottle. Good luck with it, Charles, I gotta support invention.
Anthony – Looking forward to seeing the new tweaks to the site and your own posts. There is rarely a day I don’t look at WUWT and feel I must say something. The readership here is certainly a broad church. My only suggestion is that you open up the discussions to consideration of alternative theories (e.g. gravito-thermal). We promise to talk about them nicely and not be rude to one another (honest).
Thank….but…Heard those promises before. They inevitably devolve into a food-fight.
Some people have no understanding of how to carry out a proper scientific discussion, great shame. Mind you some of the existing content here does get a bit “messy” at times. I agree with a previous commenter that we should all try to be more polite even to the pro AGW contributors like Nick S or Steve M . There really is no need for any of us to be rude or insulting (even if provoked), just point out the errors and repeat the correct science where appropriate.
Anthony,
It is a real relief that you are fit and well back at the head of your blog. Not to say that the moderators didn’t do their job, they did an excellent job, especially CTM, by keeping us awake with a lot of good stories, but the main spirit was absent. Back again now with fresh ideas… A very heartly welcome from my beer, “french” fries, chocolates and waffles country…
Ferdinand
Welcome back Anthony!