First, don’t panic – we are going to make this easy. Starting About November 7th/8th, commenting on WUWT will require you to be a registered user. Read on for the hows and whys.
For over 15 years, WUWT has been open to commenting by anyone. That had both good and bad aspects to it.
The good was obvious – anyone could immediately comment by simply placing their email address and name/handle into the comment box. The first comment required approval, after that comments went unfettered provided the commenter didn’t use any of the prohibited words or phrases that most platforms already flag as inappropriate.
The bad was not so obvious – and appeared mostly behind the scenes at the moderation level. Through the years we have fought with some nefarious people hell-bent on disrupting this forum doing things like using fake email addresses, spoofing other identities to get past moderation, (in particular, one well-known climate troll from Oregon has been caught and warned dozens of times, and is banned), and then we have the “bots” – which are getting worse daily.
A recent WUWT article noted this:
We are being spammed by an extremely clever and aggressive spambot.
The bot uses several techniques to spoof users but is trying a new one today.
Then there’s Twitter, which has millions of “bots” estimated to be somewhere between 5% (according to Pre-Elon Twitter) and as much as 20% by other estimates.
How many bots do we have on WUWT? Well, there could be dozens to hundreds. Some people, like “griff” act like bots, where they throw up some cryptic or inane comment, and then never respond to replies to it. But, we don’t really know a total bot count.
What we do know, is that it is getting worse, and as the climate alarmist establishment gets even more zealous, trying to make people believe there is a “climate crisis”, our workload to weed out false commentary from bots and other fakes has increased significantly.
When I started WUWT in 2006 the Internet was a different entity. Now, it’s a climate war zone, and we have to harden the fort against daily attacks. I’ll point out that almost any other website today that has user interaction requires registration – we are just late to the party.
As I first said, “we are going to make this easy.” Here’s how.
We have a process by which we are going to use some automation assistance to help our valid pre-existing users get registered. I don’t want to give the details, because that will tip our hand to the bots and the bullies. Let’s just say, you’ll be hearing more soon.
For reference, here are some WUWT statistics as of this writing:
- 475,929,091 Views
- 28,652 Posts
- 3,490,060 Comments
Thanks to all of you for making WUWT the most-viewed (and likely most-commented) climate related website in the world.
-Anthony
UPDATE: Some folks have jumped to erroneous conclusions about what registration here will require.
All that will be required is two items you supply now – a name/handle and and email address, and additionally, a password of your choosing.
Passwords are encrytped – only you will know it. – Anthony
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Just one comment on how you send out verification (etc) emails.
Try not to use one of the cheap email companies that either use, or mimic mailchimp.
That is used by just too many spam merchants, and it is pretty easy to detect and block.
I, and a lot of other people block email at the SMTP level simply by looking for specific patterns in the from: field of the SMTP envelope. Normally, that is supposed to be ghe sender’s email address. But MailChimp and others use something more like:
emailcampaignname-me=mydomain@spammerdomain
A simple scan of the from address in the SMTP wrapper for “=mydomain” followed by rejection, before they can even send the message eliminates 99% of spam email.
Just be sure that whatever email system you choose to use doesn’t do this, or a LOT of your verification emails will never be received.
No prob here…
Not a problem. Was inevitable.
Works for me…..
Happy to register. I have learned so much from these discussions. This site should be compulsory reading for school children, so they see both sides of the climate argument and learn to make their own assessments.
School children are reading now? My Lord, the teacher’s union will be outraged.
I’m OK with this.
Do you have to use your real name?
I was thinking about using
Bob Wire,
or Bud Weiser
or Luke Warm
I’ve been using the moniker Richard Greene.
My real name is Beau Vine.
Registering: no problem.
Long time reader/lurker; occasional commenter.
I know you all see me as a troll which I assure you I’m not. i don’t know how to make that clear other that to say I’m just looking to see what worries me the most be debunked so I can get these worries and all of this anxiety out of my head. Just trying to get ducks all in a row so I can enjoy my life. So I’m trying to politely ask if this http://www.geocities.ws/brijesh/paryavaran-climate-change/Climate-Plan-by-Sam-Carana.pdf can be debunked? People keep calling it accurate and spot on and say it’s the best info on abrupt climate change and that global extinction is about to happen. This terrifies me. Can someone prove this wrong because Sam Carana and Guy Mcpherson and what others say about them is destroying me and I’m just looking for help. So can arctic news be refuted?
Beer mat calculation mate:
Using only internationally recognised, factual data.
Assuming increasing atmospheric CO2 is causing the planet to warm:
Atmospheric CO2 levels in 1850: ~280ppm (Vostok Ice Core).
Atmospheric CO2 levels in 2021: ~410ppm. (Mauna Loa)
410ppm minus 280ppm = 130ppm ÷ 171 years (2021 minus 1850) = 0.76ppm of which man is responsible for ~3% = ~0.02ppm.
That’s every human on the planet and every industrial process adding ~0.02ppm CO2 to the atmosphere per year on average. At that rate mankind’s CO2 contribution would take ~25,000 years to double which, the IPCC states, would cause around 2°C of temperature rise.
That’s ~0.0001°C increase per year for ~25,000 years.
*My only limitation here is schoolboy Arithmetic. If I have miscalculated those numbers I’m happy to be corrected.
The only ‘variable’ is 3% of mankind’s contribution. So substitute it for anything you want, even 50% gives us a 1,000 years or so before things get ‘catastrophic’. However, mankind is NOT emitting 50% of the planet’s atmospheric CO2.
As for sea level rise – firstly, move to higher ground, no big deal, it wouldn’t be a tsunami. Secondly, if all the sea ice in the world melted it wouldn’t affect SLR by one inch. In which case, being that the Antarctic and Greenland are land bound ice above sea level, how do warmer oceans access the ice thereon which is above sea level and exists at temperatures of at least -20°C.
As per my first calculation, it will take 25,000 years for mankind to raise atmospheric temperatures by 2°C so that can’t possibly melt the land bound ice.
And, most importantly, until climate alarmist’s can tell me precisely how many volcanoes, fissures and vents exist on the worlds seabed’s, and empirically measure their emissions for, say, the 30 years they claim determines the planet’s ‘warming profile’ they can STFU as far as I’m concerned.
Richard Greene will, as usual, disagree with me, quite rightly stating CO2 emissions from vegetation are naturally recycled and therefore mankind is 100% responsible for excess CO2, but he can’t account for what he doesn’t know, those pesky undersea emissions.
Beer mats are the source of every sensible hypothesis, envelopes are pretty good too.
Besides, as Mark Twain said “I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.”
I’m sorry, but man is responsible for at least 125ppm of the 130ppm increase. The other 97% is in balance and always has been. If you take all the oil, gas and coal that has been mined over the last 100 years and burn it, it would produce way more than a 130ppm increase.
Give me the numbers for undersea volcanic and fissure emissions and if they conform to the numbers I’m happy to agree.
Until then, like Richard Greene, you’re talking BS mate.
Nature is a net CO2 absorber. We know that because manmade CO2 emissions of roughly +200ppm exceed the +135ppm increase of atmospheric CO2 since 1850. I never talk BS, and I’m not your mate. I speak with facts, data and logic, plus a few lame jokes
Don’t flatter yourself Richard, I didn’t call you mate.
Inform me, factually, exactly how many volcanoes, vents and fissures lie on the seabed of the worlds seas and oceans.
The precise number please and the precise amount of CO2 each of them emits.
You might want to be prepared to revise that tomorrow as tectonic plates shift.
Do you have any evidence to support your belief that there has been a huge increase in underwater volcanoes in the last 150 years?
Beyond that, do you have an explanation of what huge previouisly unknown carbon sink just happened to open up at the same time mankind started burning fossil fuels and consumed all the extra CO2 we were producing so that it never ended up in the atmosphere?
Carbon, originally from carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, was gradually sequestered underground as oil, gas and coal. By burning these hydrocarbon fuels, we are recycling that carbon dioxide into the atmosphere
Humans added +200ppm CO2 emissions from burning fossil fuels and the CO2 level “just happened to” rise by +135ppm in the same time period. YOU have to explain why that +200ppm did NOT increase the atmospheric CO2 (where did it go?) and then explain what else would have caused the simultaneous +135ppm increase. You can never answer those questions with your alt-science claptrap
There is no evidence in the ice core record of over 500,000 years that underseas or land volcanoes were increasing the atmospheric CO2 level. The CO2 level fluctuated between 180ppm and 300ppm — no rising trend from volcanoes ever developed.
Today it is known that Antarctica is surrounded by underseas volcanoes. in fact, local areas of Antarctica have warming from nearby underseas volcanoes. But those volcanoes have not caused any increase of the average Antarctica temperature. Nor has the extra CO2 they released made Antarctica cooler — Antarctica has a temperature inversion, so rising CO2 levels should make the temperature there colder. In reality, the average temperature of Antarctica has barely changed since the 1970s.
I didn’t say there had been a huge increase in undersea volcanic activity. I’m saying that we don’t know how many volcanoes, vents and fissures there are down there in the first place.
It wasn’t until 2018 that 91 volcanoes were discovered under the west Antarctic ice sheet. How did we miss them for 100+ years?
I don’t know what happened underwater when mankind started burning fossil fuels but more importantly, neither does anyone else.
Unless we can account for every source of emissions on the planet we are guessing at everything.
It doesn’t matter whether we know about the volcanoes or not. There had to be a huge increase in such activity if you are going to use them as a reason behind the increase in CO2 levels that started at the same time as humans burning fossil fuels in large amounts.
Just so. Your first sentence references the issue that always gets ducked.
The natural rebound from the little ice age would account for a good part of that 130ppm. CO2 has varied all over the place in geological history, usually trailing the temperature change.
The natural rebound from the little ice age might have accounted for about 5ppm, not much more.
Just how much CO2 would a 1C increase in ocean temperatures force from the oceans?
Baloney alert
A +1 degree C. increase of the average ocean temperature since 1850 might cause a release of +10ppm to +20ppm from the oceans per Henry’s Law.
That small CO2 release is already included in the statement that nature is a net CO2 absorber.
Historically, it takes 900 to a 1000 years before increases or decreases in temperature have significant impacts on atmospheric CO2 levels. It’s only been about 150 years since the bottom of the Little Ice Age. Much too soon for that to account for the increases atmospheric CO2 levels.
Frankly, I don’t care much where the increase in atmospheric CO2 is coming from
….. so long as it keeps coming.
And it will !
Thank you China, India, and soon Africa and other developing nations.
You should know whom to thank !
U.S. CO2 emissions are 15.52 tons per capita, while
India’s CO2 emissions are 1.91 tons against
World CO2 emissions at 4.79 tons. Efficient economical progress requires more emissions to provide basic electricity to Millions without it.
Just imagine the output from China and India as they gradually catch up! 🙂
“10ppm minus 280ppm = 130ppm ÷ 171 years (2021 minus 1850) = 0.76ppm of which man is responsible for ~3% = ~0.02ppm.”
Manmade CO2 emissions are responsible for 100% of the CO2 rise since 1850, which is almost +50%. If that CO2 caused all the global warming since then, which is only a worst case assumption, that was +1.2 degrees C. About +0.7 degrees C. was since 1975 — did you notice the warming since 1975? Were you harmed? No one was harmed. And with more CO2 in the air, plants grow better than ever.
Most of the warming since 1975 was at night during the colder months of the year, in colder climates. Think of warmer winter nights in Siberia. If you had lived in Siberia, that would have been good news.
The bottom line: Wrong predictions of climate doom for over 50 years, as the actual climate became more moderate and more pleasant. It is your choice on whether to believe climate reality or always wrong government climate predictions of doom.
PS: The claim that manmade CO2 is only 3% of total CO2 o is wrong. The correct answer is about 32.5%. I believe correcting climate science errors is the right thing to do, whether they are made by the coming climate crisis skeptics, like myself, or by the climate alarmists.
Horse Hockey! The natural rebound from the little ice age accounts for a good chunk of the rise!
No it doesn’t.
I stated that assuming CO2 caused all of the +1.2 degrees C. arming since 1850 was a worst case assumption.
The warming since the coldest decade of the little ice age (1690s) was in the +2 to +3 degrees C. range.
It is safe to assume manmade CO2 was NOT responsible for any of that post 1690s warming until after 1940. Because there were few CO2 emissions before the 1940s.
The temperature rise after 1940 was about +0.7 degrees C.
So we have good evidence that most of the +2 to +3 degree C. warming since the 1690s was natural, not manmade.
Wherever it came from, we could have already had snow here six weeks ago and I’m treasuring every moderate day because it could be our last.
Drop your 32.5% into my calculation instead of the 3% I cite and it still amounts to thousands of years before the planet can reach 2C higher than 1850 based on numbers the IPCC accept.
In the past, CO2 levels were over 5000 ppm and live thrived.
Anyone who claims that CO2 levels increasing by a few hundred ppm is going to cause a mass extinction clearly knows nothing about weather or biology.
Who are these people who call this trash “accurate”? Do they know what they are talking about, or are they just other people who will believe anything being said by someone who looks like a scientist?
Beyond that, what’s this nonsense about abrupt climate change? The climate has warmed by about 1C since the bottom of the Little Ice Age, which was the coldest period on the planet since the last glacial ended. Other than that there has been no “climate change”.
Including the small warming over the last 150 years, the world has been cooling since the end of the Holocene Optimum some 5000 years ago. The floods and fires that have occurred in recent years, despite the hype from the media, are nothing out of the ordinary.
wrong place
Carana’s “plan” projected half a billion climate deaths per year by 2022. That has clearly been proven wrong. Why believe any of his other claims are more accurate?
There is a plan to address this.
Is that Anthony WATTSon in the background?
There is some resemblance but I do not know from where Bob (creator of this piece) is taking his inspiration.
The falsehoods start in the first sentences.
Glaciers and snowmelt are still revealing plants covered by ice during the LIA.
The plain fact about the Arctic is that for most of the Holocene, those glaciers did not exist and the tundra was thawed.
Their claims for immense quantities of Arctic carbon being released comes across as nonsense. Methane is a very short lived greenhouse gas. Bacteria turning carbon into CO₂ is a natural process and will revert to the natural process it was before it was covered with snow.
Any claims for ‘global warming’ in the Arctic must be equally applied to the Antarctic.
They’re not, as the alleged plan demonstrates.
I also note their charts are far off the mark in data and years.
It is willfully fraudulent to compare 1800 temperatures to any modern global temperature.
Or to pretend anomalies are a proper global temperature measurement for a very thinly spread series of temperature stations in urban, rural, sea level, high altitude, high latitude, low latitude locations.
Ending charts in 2016 is cherry picking at it’s worst.
There are charts with sea ice estimate well predating the satellite era. All based upon ships and explorers actually visiting the Arctic and taking measurements.
There is more than enough in the paper for you to search and rebut every one of their alarmist claims, one by one and proving to yourself the hidden truths of the matter.
At this point in time, we are 30-40 years past the beginning of this alarmism spate. To date, not one alarmist prediction has come true.
Not loss of Arctic sea ice!Not loss of animal species!Not loss of snow!Not loss of cooler days!No increases to heat waves!No increases to droughts!A huge increase of animals destined by alarmists to be already extinct!Huge increases in food abundance driving levels of starving people to the smallest numbersever, in spite of immense increases of population!No increase in dangerous storms!No increase in tornadoes!No increase in hurricanes or hurricane strength!Polar bear population increase that is stunning! As well as the populations of seals, walruses, whales, etc. etc.In 1989, James Hansen predicted that parts of New York would be flooded by sea level rise. It never happened!Since then, there is no increase in the rate of sea level rise, in spite of many alarmist claims for increased glacier melt…etc. etc. etc.
I do so miss the Maldives.
Why!?
Because most islands in the Maldives have grown larger?
/sarc
The real problems for human existence are coming from the implementation of “climate action” nonsense.
Those actions are badly affecting all western nations , causing major issues with survival due to the destruction of energy, gas, petrol, diesel, and food supplies.
There is actually nothing untoward happening with the global climate. Temperatures are very much on the cool side compared to the last 10,000 years, barely a degree or so above the coldest period in that time span. Holocene optimum was at least 3-4C warmer.
Arctic sea ice is in the top 5-10% of extent of the last 10,000 years, recovered slightly from the extreme highs of the LIA and 1979. It is following the expected cycle of the AMO, it has been levelish, way above the Holocene norm, for 10-15 years now, and will probably start climbing again in the next few years as the AMO turns downwards.
All other climate data shows basically NOTHING happening with the global climate at all.
Droughts, floods, heat, hurricanes, cyclones are all pretty much steady or on the low side of “normal”
Basically everything in that pfd is a load of anti-science speculative NONSENSE and BS. !
I’m convinced that every genuine environmental disaster of the last 25 years is a result of government policy.
You either stand up in the Climate wars and take the risk or you let them win.
===============
In a war, better to keep your head down while firing at the enemy.
I’m in. I’ve been here since from the beginning. Glad to see trolls gone.
With you all the way Anthony. It is an absolute privilege to take part in the debates, access the knowledge base and be a part of this global community.
Glad to hear this . I’m on s m data bases and lists , due to my years working for government contractors, being on another will not make a difference.
Sorry it has come to this, but I do understand.
Endeavor to Persevere!
Anthony,
You have a fantastic website where people can share their ideas and criticisms. That will continue regardless, I have no doubt.
Keep it up.
The internet is full of those who can only be described as a disease.
For certain reasons, sad as they are, this is one of the only sites where I don’t post openly under my own full name.
Because of the cancer these bots are.
What ever you do to control it I support. There are far worse sites than this.
Another opinion site decided to suspend commenting, which gives the victory to cancer as their goal is to shut down debate. And to me in most cases the comments generated can be more interesting than the original story.
Fight the power, keep it going
Registration sounds like a good idea. One issue I deal with is linking to peer reviewed literature. Those who recognize me know that I’m generous with peer reviewed citations. This gets me moderated often. I have to commend the moderators because to my knowledge all of my posts have been approved. Thank you guys for your hard work.
One idea I have wondered about is to treat DOI citations differently. If you’re a registered user would it be possible to allow a reasonable number of DOI citations per post. I’m not sure what would be considered “reasonable”, but something higher than the 3 or so URL count limit we have today. I understand the necessity for a low URL count limit, but perhaps DOIs can be treated preferentially since they are used to link to scientific works and offer at least some level of spam protection already.
Just reply to your own post to include additional links, and stop blabbering.
It’s a very reasonable suggestion.
My suggestion to stop blabbering?
ha ha
Aloha Anthony,
Hurricane Iselle disintegrates before landfall in Hawaii2014 › 08 › 08 › hurricane-iselle-disintegrates-before-landfall-in-hawaii
Story submitted by reader “upcountrywater” who lives in Hawaii.
Just wondering, and thanks again for posting my little story…K
It’s a sad time for our country when sites, like this one, that tell the truth with scientific investigation, have to be defensive against the “misinformation” army. But sites that spew false narratives that claim to be “official” are protected. I do hope the conclusions of the writers in the last paragraph(s), at the end of the articles, don’t become parsed.
I read the comments below, i find Griff’s comments to be sad.
He has been posting mostly BS forever and yet he is still here.
I was banned from the CBC for politely stating I disagree with the source of warning over the last 200 years.
Griff, this site IS science, it’s sad that you cannot see it.
Science is open debate.
The left is anti-science, their sites define it.
Sorry to see you go if you actually go. You may even learn something one day if you stay.
It’s never too late.
The grifter posts mainly “consensus science” to remind us that what government bureaucrats are paid to say about the climate, and climate reality, are two different subjects.
griff teaches us that people in his religion can not have their minds changed by facts, data and logic, because their beliefs were never created by facts, data and logic in the first place.
griff allows us to know our opposition.
Do you propose that all coming climate crisis believers be banned from this website? That would make the comments more pleasant for us, but not more honest.
….
I’m not a bot – I amnot Griff!
It used to be Griff, now it’s griff.
Subtlety matters.
Same bloke, not a bot, just a clown.
I still believe that there is more than one griff.
The style of writing changes too much from week to week for it to be just one person.
Registering is a good idea since it will help keep the alarmists at bay to a certain degree, particularly when most of them try to ignore, omit and distort the facts that bring the climate debate back to reality. Their favorite tactic is to cite predictions of what “might” occur by 2030, 2050 and 2100 if governments, businesses, industries and consumers don’t take drastic action and to try to convince us that these predictions are incontrovertible facts.
Predictions based on erroneous fantasy models that have the accuracy and spread of buckshot fired at the side of a barn…..
.. and still missing the barn completely !
Soon the registered alarmists will be trying to ignore, omit and distort the facts. So what will have changed?
What does labeling posters add to the quality of information here? The latest popular label seems to be “alarmist”. In a way, it mirrors the evolution, or better put – degeneration of the term “global warming” to the more inclusive and elusive “climate change” which encompasses just about anything scary, from cold snaps to heat waves, floods and droughts, etc..
Apparently anyone is an alarmist who’s alarmed by anything the person calling “alarmist” does not himself find alarming. Where’s the science or even the sense in that? It’s on the intellectual level of pre-schoolers calling each other names.
Yet disparaging labels have been regulary applied here on posters in lieu of reasoned and/or fact based critiques. Commie, leftist, socialist are certainly three favourites. Democrats, urbanites, hippies, greens, and evironmentalists are up there too. These are terms that any self-respecting moderator on a forum that pretends to be about science should sanction relentlessly. But I see no sign of that.
I’m in
Never really had much to say.
But as a moderator on an unrelated topic board, fully understand your concerns. As you are probably aware, moon-bats are everywhere.