After a year of mostly being on hiatus, I’m coming back to regular daily operations. As previously mentioned, there will be an announcement forthcoming related to that and to the larger news that enables me to spend much more time at WUWT than ever before. This will include some plans for expansion, as well as some significant changes about how we operate.
The biggest change is a new initiative with new partners, which I hope to be able to announce any day now. Just waiting on paperwork.
One change will affect our readers, and make for a better reading and commenting experience overall, and it will be starting this coming week.
One of the biggest problems we’ve had is with trolls that use fake names, fake emails, and fake connections (proxys) to threadbomb. One in particular in Oregon has bragged about it, one in Canada made threats, and I called the police on him.
And, it keeps happening; some people who are narcissistic mann-equins think they are entitled to do it, because they are holier-than-thou defenders of the planet or something. Some of these same people also impersonate other commenters here. We’ve stopped them all (at least we think we have). But, we need better tools to detect and stop this.
This coming week, WUWT will no longer be an open commenting system, it will require registration to comment. I’ll give 24 hours notice, and it will likely be next Monday. Many, many, websites that allow comments require this, and it has become clear to me, that we need to go that direction too. Doing so will help keep the quality of conversation elevated, and will only require a one-time registration that will take about two minutes to complete. It will stop the trolls, the impersonators, and the drive-bys and give us a tool for enforcing our commenting policy. It will also ease moderation duties.
Reading content will still be publicly available as I abhor paywalls, and I know you do too.
And there will be other changes, including better search, better commenting tools, and an expanded reference section drawing from the WUWT archives setup as a separate but complimentary website.
The new initiative with new partners will give us a big boost, plus help other climate skeptic websites too. The separate climate reference website in the works, so you don’t have to wade through the over 20,000 articles here.
The plan is simple: A rising tide lifts all boats, where the “boats” is climate skepticism worldwide. To that end, invite a friend to visit WUWT, and learn.
Now, a request.
During the last year, Charles Rotter aka Charles the Moderator, has been mostly keeping WUWT running with the help of guest authors, such as Eric Worrall, David Archibald, Bob Tisdale, Willis Eschenbach, David Middleton, Kip Hansen, and others. Charles did this so that I could get my own life and business back together, after several years of loss followed by the CampFire and all the mess that entailed.
I’d like to reward him, since he’s done this without any remuneration at all (despite persistent false claims we have “big oil” backing) and so I’d like to ask our readers to consider making a donation to WUWT, on his behalf for his year of solid work.
Thank you for your consideration.
If the button above does not work for you, try the one at the upper right on the sidebar.
Thank you, all of you. My sincerest best wishes for a happy and prosperous new year!
-Anthony
You need to sell DVD’s or USB’s that contain an archive of the entire site. This is also a safeguard to make sure the content is not vulnerable to the whims of the internet and so forth.
It would be an excellent source of income for the site as well. I would love to buy a copy of the entire site on DVD or USB.
We greatly look forward to this Anthony!
Happy New Year and Happy New Decade to You!
This is not a new decade! That doesn’t come til next year. Because the calendar had no year 0, no being less than 1 until the end of that year, it took all the way to the end of year 1 to complete the first year, it took all the way to the end of year 10 to complete the first decade, so the second decade didn’t start until the first day of year 11. And so it continues today, it will take all the way to the end of this year to complete the 201st decade, and the 202nd decade won’t begin until January 1 of next year.
A decade is simply a span of 10 years, so technically every year is/can be the start of a new decade (span of 10 years) you just need to specify what span of years the decade you are talking about covers. This happens to be a new decade that covers 2020 to 2029 (the years that begin with 202 aka the twenty twenties). Last year was a new decade that covers 2019 to 2028 (nothing really significant about that range of years, hence why nobody celebrated it as the beginning of a new decade). Next year will be a new decade that covers 2021 to 2030 (aka the 202nd decade of the Gregorian calendar, cause for more celebrations I’m sure).
should have read 203rd decade of the Gregorian Calendar. D’oh.
As Mosh would say:
Wrong
(And also because David likes to be annoyed)
2020 is the last year of the 202nd decade AD, not the 201st. The first decade anno Domini started on 1/1/1 and ended on 12/31/10, right?
And wrong again because the fact that 2020 is the last year of the 202nd decade does not mean that it isn’t also the first year in the decade of the 2020s. The 2020s are the ten-year period starting on 1/1/2020, that contains the years matching the pattern 201x.
If you got married in 1990 would you not say that you had been married for three decades? A decade is any ten-year period. The period from 1/1/2006 through 12/31/2015 is also a decade. If you worked in a job from 5/6/78 until 5/5/88, you would have been in that job for a decade. Just as you can measure time in years, you can use decades as the unit of time. Some decades are an integer number times ten years later than the first decade of the first century that started on 1/1/1. Some decades do not line up that way.
Your way of thinking is like saying that water doesn’t freeze at 0C, it freezes at 32F.
Happy New Year & welcome to the Twenties!
Again, Anthony, thank you for all you do.
And thank you, Charles the Moderator.
For me, you two represent the best of America.
Commenting on WUWT is fun and comments are informative but it is preaching to the converted. Better to force alarmists to defend their positions in the comment sections of leftists rags. You get blocked a lot but it can be hilarious.
Nobody can be forced to defend their position. In addition to freedom of speech, most folks enjoy the freedom of thought as well. But hey, maybe the thought police can force both sides to defend their beliefs or lack thereof.
So, just out interest Steven.
I comment under a Mickey Mouse article in The Grunt (UK). No swearing or abuse, a simple critique of the piece. Immediately banned. All previous activity gone.
Your opinion?
(genuine criticism of this piece of non-sense https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jan/02/australia-your-country-is-burning-dangerous-climate-change-is-here-with-you-now)
3×2
Sorry I have to go with the Australian colloquialisms here, the person who wrote that article is an ignorant areshole! OK so I held back. I am so fed up with the lies that come from that rag of a newspaper. As I have written elsewhere on this post, the average number of fires between 2001 – 2007 in Australia was 54,000 per year! We have always had fires, they are made worse only by leftist idiots who won’t allow off season backburning. Under a Labor (left) government in 2003 an electricity company was fined large sums of money for ‘clearing’ the bush under high tension wires. When the inevitable bush fires swept through, guess where the animals went for refuge!
Correction, I actually meant ‘vernacular’ not ‘colloquialism’ and anyway I chickened out, not even sure if I spelt that one word correctly. How do you spell check swear words? Can you?
I wouldn’t even have a serious attempt at an Australian colloquial ‘comment’!
It was done here recently by a genius linguist, obviously 🙂 I could never compete.
It seems to be happening everywhere now. Since some weeks before the end of the year, *ALL* of my comments have not been posted at the Australian Sydney Morning Herald as I don’t follow the alarmist narrative.
My opinion.
The Guardian is a piece of shit. Mann does bad statistics. And you should have Zero expectation of having your comments accepted on ANY site. If you want to make an impact on the debate you should
1. read MORE science and less opinion pieces by anyone, especially Mann.
2. Choose a SINGLE AREA where you think you could come up to speed. I picked temperature records. Anthony picked Site surveys. Steve McIntyre picked proxies, Nic Lewis chose ECS. FOCUS is the only way an amateur can catch up and make an impact. Impact s is key
3. Publish, article, blog, book, whatever. leave a legacy others can BUILD ON. comments are not shit. I kick myself for wasting time on it (even now)
4. Engage policymakers, commenting on shit papers like the guardian is a waste of your potential.
“Steven Mosher January 2, 2020 at 6:14 am
2. Choose a SINGLE AREA where you think you could come up to speed.”
Physics and IR spectroscopy disproves the CAGW hypothesis without the need for proxies or adjusted temperature records.
“2. FOCUS is the only way an amateur can catch up and make an impact.”
SCIENCE usually catches up with AMATEURS. Newton, Faraday etc. Plenty of examples of that, such as plate tectonics.
Steven Mosher
January 2, 2020 at 6:14 am
I certainly don’t always agree with what you contribute to this site but these are very sensible comments…thanks.
Hey Mosher, did you know Tony Heller, the person you suggest should not be followed, actually did something productive in computing and received awards for his work? Your claim to fame is bitcoin mining and BEST?
If someone won’t defend their position, that’s pretty much an admission that even they know their positions are indefensible.
The success of Anthony and this site is really getting to steve.
‘Nobody can be forced to defend their position. In addition to freedom of speech, most folks enjoy the freedom of thought as well. But hey, maybe the thought police can force both sides to defend their beliefs or lack thereof.’
Wow – you sure don’t pay attention to the rhetoric and ACTIONS on your side of the fence do you?
BTW – the ‘thought-police’ are all yours.
“Better to force alarmists to defend their positions in the comment sections of leftists rags. You get blocked a lot but it can be hilarious.”
Being blocked precludes forcing alarmists to defend their postions. If the alarmist websites allowed free comments, I would be spending all my time there challenging them to produce even one bit of evidence demonstrating that CO2 is doing anything detrimental to humans.
But you can bet those censors on the alarmist sites and their alarmist readers also read WUWT. They have to if they want to keep up with the latest arguments and developments. So commenting on WUWT reaches many places.
And the challenge to produce even one piece of evidence showing CO2 is detrimental is seen by a lot of alarmists and a lot of alarmist climate scientists, and you can bet your bottom dollar that if they had that shred of evidence they would be over here crowing about it. You never hear them crowing, though. We know the reason why.
Tried to contribute but just a simple credit card payment. Please consider dropping the pal requirement…also why did an auto fill of a wrong phone number area code 202 occur? Never experienced that before. Temporarily cancelled donation.
One of the most important points about the new WUWT:
“Reading content will still be publicly available…”
Posters having to register shouldn’t be an issue unless WUWT uses some obscure platform since most insure personal information remains private except to the Host Administrators for verification purposes.
If it keeps active topics “on top”, it will be a welcomed process for most of us.
IMHO
I’m sorry but this is just a test to see if I can make comments. I used to comment frequently but I faded away because others were already saying what I wanted to say.
I have no problem with my real name being attached to what I say.
Having been called an anonymous coward here in the past, I have little sympathy for those who want to avoid the consequences of having their name attached to what they believe.
You have no problem with people getting fired for commenting on skeptic sites?
Yes, there are good reasons for some people to remain anonymous. The political opposition are a very nasty lot.
Amazon announces a policy of firing those people who openly oppose it’s environmental policies.
https://www.seattletimes.com/business/amazon-threatens-to-fire-workers-who-are-outspoken-on-its-environmental-policies/
I’ve thrown in a few dollars just now. It’s not much, and I wish it could be more, as he deserves it. All of you do. Thanks for the great site and Happy New Year to Anthony Watts and crew!
Good to have you back Anthony.
Just as an aside … Banned from the UK Grunt for criticising everyone’s favourite ‘scientist’ …
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jan/02/australia-your-country-is-burning-dangerous-climate-change-is-here-with-you-now
Banned for suggesting he might be wrong and they might all be living in an echo chamber?
Well, now I can no longer comment at The Grunt, I’m off to The Smiths on youtube and voting Boris or Trump
I don’t comment often, but I do often find comments I like and find myself looking for the upvote button. I hope the changes allow for upvoting comments. Either way, thank you for your website and your service.
Such as …
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eubgWMwSD0k
Old but unbeatable Manchester music. (for Phill in California)
Anthony/Charles and all who contribute to the WUWT output, thank you for maintaining the sanity of sceptics.
The growing realisation, across the world is, the climate alarmists are not just wrong, but are now dangerously wrong. We have to continue questioning authority, conventions and challenging consensus at every opportunity. That is the role of science.
I am encouraged, by conversations I have had in the past year with several young people who are starting to question what they have been told by their, on message climate crisis teachers.
The sad part is, they always say,they could not possibly speak openly or say the things they say to me in their peer group, because they would be immediately ostracised or worse.
The open society we all grew up in, where individual opinion was welcomed has gone. The teaching profession (is it even a profession any longer?) now promotes group think rather than individual views. This is probably the most regressive and limiting feature of “modern society”.
Keep up the great work. I will continue to support and will pass on the existence of the WUWT site, to as many others as I can.
Happy New Year to everyone. 🙂
Well this is my last post: I don’t trust this site with my real data.
Nor do I think a censored echo chamber with opposing views moderated out does anything for the discussion of real issues around climate.
The evidence for human caused climate change continues to stack up: sea ice, arctic temperatures, extreme weather…. etc
The polar bears are in trouble – no amount of posting misleading evidence based on no research will change that. The UAH temp figures are manipulated nonsense. The likes of Willie Soon are a shame to science. DDT was never banned for fighting malaria and is a hazard to the environment. Wind turbines are not killing birds in quantity – just check for extrapolation of Altamont figures (a special case) nationally or internationally to see the nonsense of figures quoted. Renewables work and don’t bankrupt or cause power outages, there are no masses of abandoned wind turbines appearing, there definitely isn’t a new ice age, a solar minimum would barely dent temp rises and Monckton is the modern equivalent of the guy who invented perpetual motion
Follow the fossil fuel money…
I’ll miss the jokes – you guys have an excellent sense of humour… also the interesting rage of science articles Anthony has presented and in particular David Middleton’s articulate and detailed writing on energy.
Meanwhile you should all go read the Berkley Earth findings… and stop reading/reposting the Guardian, it will help your blood pressure.
So long – and thanks for all the fish!
(You were put into moderation for NUMEROUS good reasons over 6 months ago, yet after 4,715 comments and MY continued approving your often stupid and ignorant comments out of the Trash Bin, you diss the blog owner, the moderators and the participants in the thread. Please stay away this time, after all this is your second or third time you said you were leaving and never coming back, maybe you should get a permanent banning the next time you show up?) SUNMOD
Griff,
We already have your data, and I already know who you are. The new registration system won’t change a thing.
Buh bye!
Long departing monologues speak greatly to self aggrandizing with a hint of desperation to find acceptance, so it seems. I’ve never understood why people who intend to leave think that their parting words make any more of an impact than any other words they might have posted. Why not just leave, and say nothing? — that’s what I’d do.
I’ll miss him, his comments were allways a source of a good laugh 😀
And his knowledge of Germany in general and Berlin in particular is unbeatable 😀
Hey Griff, remember your “death spiral” arctic ice predictions that were also made by a postie by the handle “Tony McLeod”? He had the courage to bet on his opinion/prediction, the bet was if he was wrong, he’d leave WUWT for good. He, as well as you, was wrong, very very wrong however, he kept his word and left WUWT. Shame you haven’t kept yours about leaving. Regarding Berkley Earth, that’s about as good as the Australian BoM’s blatantly adjusted ACORN-SAT1 dataset and the even more, comically, adjusted ACORN-SAT2 dataset that makes a mockery of “climate science” and the AGW hypothesis.
Your comments have been entertaining for me, especially when you bleat on about Australia and Africa, where you have never been to any country in particular Kenya, which shows you haven’t a clue.
Well this is my last post
Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.
Is this griff’s second or third “last post”?
His “last post” …. until his next post obviously.
“Well this is my last post: I don’t trust this site with my real data.”
We already know who you are Mr. Griffin. Yet nothing bad happened to you, now did it. Methinks you demonize too much.
Registration equals censorship????
Well, it makes it easier to block the trolls, so from a troll’s point of view it does.
Wow! Give Griff credit for making the most wrong statements in a single thread!
He may have gotten that “last post” thing right though.
/grin
Self-serving as always.
Anonymous bloggers here might wish to reconsider and decide to use their real names, as I have always done.
Circumstances have changed. There was a time when retribution against “deniers” was swift, vicious and policed. Now, many more people know how this damages fine ideas like freedom of expression. The word police have become more disliked as their methods are exposed in public.
Now is the time to challenge these thought police, to expose them and to win again and again until they lose the will. Such challenge still has costs, but it also has rewards.
Anthony Watts, Charles Rotter, Richard Lindzen, Roy Spencer, Christopher Monckton, Judith Curry, Kip Hansen, Steve McIntyre, Nic Lewis, to name just a few people who sometimes are judged as climate change sceptics, use their real names. Their words are more credible because their work and publications can be found as normal, without the need to decode the pen name. There are other good reasons to out oneself. Give it a thought and help turn the tide with positive action.
Geoff S
“Anonymous bloggers here might wish to reconsider and decide to use their real names, as I have always done.”
Attorney General Lynch Looks Into Prosecuting ‘Climate Change Deniers’
https://www.dailysignal.com/2016/03/10/attorney-general-lynch-looking-into-prosecuting-climate-change-deniers/
US Attorney General: We’ve ‘Discussed’ Prosecuting Climate Change Deniers
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2016/03/10/us-attorney-general-we-may-prosecute-climate-change-deniers/
16 Democrat AGs Begin Inquisition Against ‘Climate Change Disbelievers’
https://www.dailysignal.com/2016/04/04/16-democrat-ags-begin-inquisition-against-climate-change-disbelievers/
Those news reports are from 2016. Nothing happened so far as I am aware (but I am not a US resident so ignorant of localised US events ).
Didn’t someone once say : ” the only thing we have to fear is…fear itself ”
(BTW I am having to relinquish my old Win7 PC , so when registering the ip address will be different to current one).
mikewaite, something happened a little bit later that year that you might have heard about called the Presidential election. The anointed successor who would have followed along with the previous administration’s ideas and either kept Lynch as AG or replaced her with someone of the same view, failed to win. Instead, an Washington outsider who expressed skepticism of the CAGW narrative was elected President. So AG Lynch was out of a job and her replacement wasn’t of the same mind in regards to “prosecuting deniers”. Depending on who wins the election this year could determine if we get another AG like Lynch or not and thus whether something will happen along those lines or not.
Authorities like to compile lists of people for political reasons. Electronic “vacuuming” of information that can later be accessed in violation of constitutional protections is another concern. Any challenge to the orthodoxy is viewed as an act of hostility. Freedom of speech does not really exist. Prejudice is commonplace. The climate change orthodoxy is a juggernaut that tolerates no dissent. Politics leadership is subject to change. There are many reasons for concern. It is not a frivolous concern.
Did they ever define what a “Climate Change Denier” is?
I think, Colin, we just have to assume it is someone who does not “believe” the same as them.
That seems to be the historical commonality, Spanish inquisition, national socialists in ’30s Germany, Maoists and Remainers in the UK. It is a belief structure every time which is no problem at all until the government of your country of residence adopts that belief structure into its legal framework. Then, to quote St Greta, you might find yourself up against the wall. As an aside, a Scandinavian friend has informed me the the phrase “stood up against the wall” has exactly the same connotations in Swedish as it does in English.
Circumstances have changed.
Not really. Cancel culture is still alive and kicking. If someone fears their livelihood could be affected by an irate SJW attempting to get them fired or threaten their family, I for one won’t blame them for wishing to remain anonymous.
I will probably not register.
I’m still sorry about using words like e—–. Added to your workload, didn’t mean that.
It’s been long time to use less time on climate change, so this might be a good thing. Thanks Anthony and others, especially thanks to Charles for his humour and Willis for his interesting takes.
I wish you happy 2020!
Hugs: I will probably not register.
Sorry to hear that. You’ll be missed.
John Endicott
January 2, 2020 at 10:29 am
Yes, I agree…hang in there Hugs…don’t walk away – your comments are generally interesting and useful.
One feature I’d love, love, love to see on WUWT is a permanent link to WUWT’s top ten (or even top 5) best arguments that dispels the CO2 GW hoax. For the purposes of readers who wish to concisely arm themselves when arguing against alarmists. These ranked arguments would always reflect the best data and would be accompanied by references if ever needed.
The beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
“There is no beauty better than intellect.”
Prophet Muhammad (pbuh)
+1
What took you so long?
Excellent idea. Now less ads and more donations.
Thanks to all!
Anthony, please make separations between those articles that are working in the scientific method and those that are pure ideology furthering scientific fraud. Today there are too many of the latter. I continue to come here for the good science and intelligent commentators, but these – linkable articles/reports – are in the minority. I hope a new style and format brings changes.
Welcome back, Anthony. Thanks for the hard work, Charles the Moderator. Thanks to all the faithful scientists and followers of science who comment here. Happy New Year.
What’s with postings from different sources, phone and computer and possible different IPs ?
You tell me Krishna Gans, what is with it? With registration, you can use all those different sources to access this site as the *same* account (you simply log in with the username/password you created at registration). That’s a good thing, surely (I know, I know. don’t call you surely).
Currently, you can, in theory, post under one name from your phone, another name from your work computer, and another name from your home PC, etc and, because they’re all different IP addresses the mods wouldn’t necessarily catch all your sock puppets. which is great if you’re a troll, not so great for those who have to deal with the trolls.
Donation to CTM made. Thanks, Charles – and Anthony.
Jan E Christoffersen
January 2, 2020 at 8:55 am
Ditto your comments.
Happy New Year, Jan.
Thanks for the all your hard work CTM, and welcome back Anthony – Pittance sent
Dymuniadau gorau am y Flwyddyn Newydd. Iechyd Da!
A blwyddyn newydd dda i chi hefyd fy ffrind
Diolch yn fawr iawn 😊
Best of luck! I may not sign up to comment. While my comments are always very much in the range of normal science, culture, or policy talk, I am worried that the government has the power and ability to collaborate with Google, and whomever else, to take a comment as a suggestion of a problem person, and begin surveillance and investigation of that person.
They have already done that to President Trump. Some of us know the story. May do not yet know. They had massive, surrounding surveillance on him. Following “Patriot Act,” they faked the case that someone affiliated with his campaign was in cahoots with Russians to mess in our presidential election, and this opened the legal door to make their surveillance of Trump and others legal. Secret but legal.
Now, from the whistleblower fiasco, as well as this FISA Court shenanigans, we know that the government 1. has the ability to carry out a lot of surveillance based on little or no/faked info, 2. to go far beyond the original mandate (i.e., Manafort getting in trouble for activities that pre-dated Trump running), 3. there is little or no way for regular oversight of all of this to be carried out, so we little people have no redress or control over our own government, which purportedly only exists to serve us.
Other situations show most of this to be valid. The government eventually declared that they were misguided in hassling the Bundys, and the government eventually declared that it had weaponized the IRS to specifically hassle Tea Party groups. –These two examples are not my opinion, but are now a matter of record.
Being registered somewhere just makes that all the more tempting to the government. Create it and they will come.
I have contributed in my own little way to the amazing benefit of this site. It is a cultural force and a cultural phenomenon. I have contributed the concepts and history concerning the Marxist influence in our culture and politics, the trend of Progressives to want to control, via eugenics and other abortion policies as well as “family planning” / population control policies who does and does not give birth. As I and others, such as “Gail,” have covered these related totalitarian efforts, this has helped people see how Prog politics exploits “Science” and the scientific community. Many have been illuminated to this in these past dozen years since I first began reading and commenting.
I have also thrown out this observation that the concept of “covariance” between two variables requires each variable to go both up and down (we must have observations of the phenomenon both zigging and zaggin), and that we cannot statistically or mathematical-modeling-ly assess “covariance” if one of two variables is monotonic. CO2 is monotonic: in modern times, in current observations, we have not observed it going up and down, aside from seasonal variation. We therefore cannot examine covariance, using our mathematical modeling and statistics, between CO2 and any other suspected causally related variable.
[CO2 proxies from ice cores do have CO2 going both up and down, and the estimates of global temp also go up and down, thus suiting a “covariance” analysis; however, these measures are observed after the fact which inherently allows biases to be involved.]
There are many critiques of the mathematical modeling of CAGW. I have read MBH1998 (and its corregendum), and I find it to be slippery and to have too much method without enough thoroughness to be acceptable for peer review; I would have not accepted it for publication. Others have gone to great lengths to critque this mathematical claim of CAGW support, and that is valuable. This point I have, about “covariance” analyses requiring variability across time in both variables is essential, is foundational, but is actually hardly in any stats textbook and has not been in the discussions of the measurement/analytic foundations of CAGW support. I hope it will be one day, but there is plenty to kill the math-based CAGW “proofs” without this covariance issue being invoked.
I hope I have contributed to this cultural melange, as well as benefited.
WUWT is among the best handful of sites ever on the internet. [Also, the post, AW, about you getting hearing corrections is one of the best things ever posted in the internet. Willis’ various musings are pretty darn great, as well.]
Best of luck, Anthony and Crew! I will keep reading.
I have been reading and posting at WUWT for about 12 years, told off once (Thanks CTM). It’s my go-to source of sanity for interesting articles covering all subjects.
Looking forward to the new WUWT look and feel. I have donated once or twice however, I am unable to do so at this time. I am hoping for some good news after the 6th with a job opportunity. If not, then I don’t know…
Good luck with the job Patrick and a Happy and Prosperous New Year!
Thank you. And to you too. 2020 cannot possibly be as bad, for many reasons, as 2019 has been.