General Announcement – 6 August 2023
Scroll to bottom for the update.
The Situation:
Recent reader comments have reminded us, once again, that in the WUWT Archives there are a lot of really good, even important, pieces that have unfortunately become buried in the “mists of time” – and are now only partially remembered. The majority of them are basic education on topics, basic explainers, and even many of the more general posts are just as timely today as they were when originally published – some even more timely now than then.
And while we have a “pretty good” search engine installed, it can often be hard for long-time readers to find that one particular post that they have in mind – they only remember that it was about “some certain subject” but not the one tagged at the top. There have been, after all, over 30,000 posts here since 2006 – averaging 33 per week for 17 years – averaging, long-term, 4 per day. [These are, admittedly, gross estimates from the basic total number but fairly accurate none the less.] In more recent times, we have tried to maintained a schedule calling for about 6 new original posts per day — a grueling demand on authors, editors, sys admins and moderators.
And, like your email account, as more and more new things pour in, the older things sink to the bottom of the page, the bottom of the stack, the bottom of the archive. Further and further down under the weight of the new.
This is unfortunate. WUWT attracts new readers every day. They haven’t had the opportunity to read the previous deeply explanatory posts on important topics. Long-time authors often allude to previous posts — “As I have explained many times….” — but authors just can’t link to ten past posts published over a period of years…and even if they did, most readers following the links would discover they have been assigned a week’s homework reading! And not all of the links would be of the same quality or value.
What We Propose:
The idea, still in its infancy, is to create a new section of the site that would appear in the navigation banner at the top—alongside of About, ClimateTV, Books, etc—named something-along-the-lines-of The Best of WUWT. That link would lead to a list of posts nominated by our readers as the most informative, most useful, most readable, most whatever you readers classify as “best”. These would be probably broken into categories by subject – Best Posts on Sea Level, Best Posts on Surface Temperature, etc.
As “Best” is a judgement call, who better to make those judgements than our readers.
The Rules:
There are no rules.
How to nominate:
Readers only need leave a comment and nominate posts for inclusion. The most useful way would be by URL. If not that then with the post Title (Headline).
Example:
This is a URL — https://wattsupwiththat.com/2021/06/01/anthony-on-livestream-what-climate-emergency/
The post title was: “Anthony on LiveStream – ‘What Climate Emergency?’
After that, you can try a post description, but we probably will not have the time or the energy to do the searching for you – so, make your nomination count: give us a URL or Title.
Hint: In recovering the URL for a WUWT post, it can also be useful to use one of the major web search engines which might find your favorite post with a search such as — “by Kip Hansen” Wasting Time WUWT which returns a recent post by that author on that subject as the first item on the list.
It would be helpful if you gave a short statement on why you are nominating a post: “I use this time and time again to show my students….”, “I found this post exceptionally educational.”, “Best primer on the topic I’ve ever seen.” You get the idea. Readers can also suggest a “section” in which the post might be included: “Global Average Surface Temperature”, “ENSO”, Climate Sensitivity”, and the like.
UPDATE:
Perhaps I should’a/could’a been clearer.
This is not a contest. We are NOT looking for the One Best post — we are looking for all of those many Best Posts out of the >30,000 posts in the archives.
Maybe I should have said “suggest” or “recommend for inclusion” – but nominate seemed more fun.
For you this means you don’t have to agonize over which post you think was the #1 Best – if you have any you really liked or really found useful, suggest them in comments – all of them that fit your idea of those that were the best.
You can suggest/recommend/nominate as many as you like –more is better.
Nominations Are Now Open!
– – – – –
Nick Stokes would be my nominee for poster of the year.
Yes in another category: the most sophistical.
Always good to get pure stupidity and malice out of the way as soon as possible.
I propose a special place on the site called
“The Mind-numbed Robots of Alarmist Trollery” where the comments with the all-time lowest vote count are listed as links
A kind of Hall of Shame that would be populated by would-be GOAT trolls like the Rusty Nail, Nitpick Nick, mosh, big oily boob, and our dearly departed griff.
now youre copying realclimate.
way to be original.
stick to spell checking comments, youve got the chops for that
What happened to griff? Did someone find the switch on his back that turned on his brain?
how do we nominate your comment
Bizarre !
Not for our resident troll.
“Bizarre”
Coming from you that really means something….. this is the guy who asked if Greta T was my mistress. Now that is BIIZZAARREE!!!!!!
I’m not Nick would be comfortable being your poster boy
Uhhh . . . the topic is to be nominations for “The Best Of”, not “The Worst Of”.
CO2 condensing at the South Pole ought to be included just because it was the worst of…
C ‘mon everyone, that was funny.
You two fit Lenin’s description of “useful idiots.”
propagandist of the year
I admire Mr. Stokes. Despite the heaps of ridicule he receives, whenever he posts something, he perseveres and does not go away. His contributions, as devil’s advocate, often hit a nerve and elicit cries of hysteria. He helps to keep the comments here lively and entertaining (maybe Antony Watts pays him, just for the fun).
In years past, Nick Stokes used to post thoughtful comments that, although never supportive of sceptical viewpoints, did keep attentive sceptics of Crisis Climate on their toes and increased the quality of the debate. He is mathematically skilled and generally employed this in debates on theoretical aspects.
He is now settled in to the more dismissive, non-numeric mode of his confreres in consensus climate. A likely reading of this is that he was feisty and sharp when the jury was still out on ‘imminent disaster climate’. With an unbroken streak of miserably failed major predictions on end-of-world disasters of sealevel rise, droughts, mass extinctions, unrelenting temperature rise, biblical floods and storms, climate ‘science’ cheerleaders for disaster, instead of accepting falsification of the meme, engaged in the holus bolus shifting of goalposts (1950 datum for measurement of change shoved blacktop 1850 and recent talk of 1750 when population was 1/10th of today’s!), jiggering of temperatures, cooking of data (e.g G.B. Reef death spiral https://www.science.org/content/article/star-marine-ecologist-committed-misconduct-university-says ), etc.
Would that be “poster” or “poster child”?
(And of what.)
PS I gave you a plus. It was humorous. It would have been more humorous if you nominated yourself! 😎
the mention of one mans names triggers more than a dozen replies?
yes if you judge best by “highest engagement” then Nick wins
hands down. none of you can best him, so you just throw mud
Story tip:
Repeat fusion ignition:
https://news.yahoo.com/us-scientists-repeat-fusion-power-195334524.html
Numbskull of the Year more like.
Nick always gives more value to WUWT than he gets.
i bet if you looked at posts that got the most comments Nick would be playing a role in driving engagement.
You all demand debate but when Nick shows up and gives you a tough time you all
resort to name calling piling on, and general nastiness.
none of you can actually engage him in good faith
“none of you can actually engage him in good faith”
Emulation, ±4 W/m² Long Wave Cloud Forcing Error, and Meaning
Wrong again, Steve.
Or educating him on the Calvin Cycle being linear wrt CO2.
Wrong again, Steve.
Are you two nitwits ever going to throw in the towel ??
“none of you can actually engage him in good faith” — What’s the logical fallacy that includes “all”, “none, “always,” etc.?
I do agree, however, that many, if not most, people here respond to Nick rather derisively.
OT comments like this are one reason I spend a lot less time here than I used to.. Comments used to add to the posts, now too many are knee-jerk content-free crap.
I think this was meant as ridicule. Nick Stokes often has valuable observations. I disagree with much of what he posts. I’ve noticed that when Nick posts a reply, it’s heavily downvoted, no matter how thoughtful or arguably true.
If I may be so bold, a good place to search for some of WUWT’s “best” is in the document I compiled and edited in 2016,
“The Battle for Science: WUWT, the First 10 Years.”
It was published on WUWT in the fall of 2016.
In it, I selected dozens of representative WUWT articles, effectively creating a condensed version of WUWT’s first 10 years.
Lots of commenters said that they found it helpful and fun reading.
I am happy to send a copy of it to anyone who emails me.
You won’t find a link to it on WUWT (apparently it was deemed unworthy of highlighting by WUWT)
except for the November?, 2016 WUWT article announcing it.
You could have linked to your article.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/11/17/wuwt-milestone-10-years/
And the doc.
https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2016/11/wuwt-the-battle-for-science-the-first-ten-years.pdf
Good stuff.
I’lll vote for the articles Janice wrote.
I still have a copy on my harddrive, from way back when, Janice. 🙂
Aw, Tom. 😊
That you want to is very encouraging. I have never succeeded in getting an article (not even the essay I entered in the contest in 2021 — Phil Salmon’s wasn’t,
either, so I’m not taking it personally) published on WUWT. The article about my edited anthology was written by Anthony.
Thanks, anyway!
Janice ==> Thank you, very useful!
Thank you!
Janice ==> Kind of illustrates the point of how hard it can be to find an old post….
Hi Janice,
I was going to look for that and mention it but had the foresight to think you would do so.
It is amazing to me that it was that long ago. Time flies, and all that.
I didn’t find WUWT until fall of 2008 when the phone company got DSL out to my rural location. I did go back and read some of the pre-2008 posts.
WUWT is a National/World treasure.
Hi! 😊 Thank you, so much, for the affirmation.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/11/10/the-dirty-secrets-inside-the-black-box-climate-models
This is an excellent, easy-to-understand, and succinct article about how climate models work, and their weaknesses. This one should be at the forefront of a Climate Modeling section.
I will certainly poke about on my hard drive for some gems. There are plenty on loads of topics.
Knee jerk reaction is that some pieces by Anthony himself (notably on temperature measurements and siting standards) are essential. Loads of others but perhaps Willis might take the biscuit with his fascinating, original and beautifully written pieces.
In fact, it would be great to have the cream of the cream published in a book.
Why we cannot compare thermometer measurement with proxies as an argument for the current rate of warming.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/03/29/past-and-present-warming-a-temporal-resolution-issue/
I’d nominate any of Willis’ tales of the South Pacific, eg Crime and Punishment
Nick ==> Gotta list the ones you consider best..
I’m too modest 🙁
Now that’s funny. a31b7338f4ed121738fda3d6b0ba1aba4f8b2e5cfe90163ff04e016b7bbae80b.jpg (594×466) (quickmeme.com)
It’s good that he can take the mickey out of himself.
Thanks, Kip, excellent plan. And thanks for all of your good work.
I’m gonna propose my overview of what WUWT is and isn’t, entitled “A New Year’s Look At WUWT“.
If you haven’t read it, please do.
w.
This is a terrific idea – thanks in advance.
This is easy, as it’s a post I requested, but Willis needs to update it, because “everything is different now”.
/Sarc
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2021/04/25/wheres-the-emergency/
The ultimate compendium of alarmist bullshit
Happily seconded!
Was about to post that as a nomination, figured I’d scroll through comments one more time to see if anyone beat me to it and I had been!
“Happily seconded!”
Thirded !
Make it 5 votes
Six. ( And counting I guess. )
This would get my vote as well
I would add a couple of other posts by Willis, like his three (is it only three?) “green impossibilities posts.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2021/04/16/us-green-impossibilities/
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2021/01/27/bright-green-impossibilities/
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2021/06/17/bright-green-californian-impossibilities/
There are a number of posts on this website that are frankly beyond my ability to understand, but there are many posts, like the one’s being nominated here that are easily understood by the average layperson like me.
Also,
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2021/05/10/the-performance-of-uk-weather-dependent-renewables-2002-2020/
and
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/10/05/a-few-graphs-say-it-all-for-weather-dependent-renewables-2/
I am sure I could find many other posts re: the practicality, or more accurately, the unnecessary, costly and absurd idea that we can replace fossil fuels with unreliables, but these stand out for me. Frankly, I think these types of posts are potentially more effective than arguing the science given that, relatively speaking, so few people have the scientific chops to understand much of the discussion – and that includes me – but these posts are easily digestible by all but the most ardent believers who seem to think that if we can control co2, we can control the climate, which is essentially what the entire narrative boils down to.
One last quote by Willis that I frequently steal:
“The climate is arguably the most complex system that humans have tried to model. It has no less than six major subsystems—the ocean, atmosphere, lithosphere, cryosphere, biosphere, and electrosphere. None of these subsystems is well understood on its own, and we have only spotty, gap-filled rough measurements of each of them. Each of them has its own internal cycles, mechanisms, phenomena, resonances, and feedbacks. Each one of the subsystems interacts with every one of the others. There are important phenomena occurring at all time scales from nanoseconds to millions of years, and at all spatial scales from nanometers to planet-wide. Finally, there are both internal and external forcings of unknown extent and effect. For example, how does the solar wind affect the biosphere? Not only that, but we’ve only been at the project for a few decades. Our models are … well … to be generous I’d call them Tinkertoy representations of real-world complexity”.
But, yeah, co2 is the control knob, right?
Only thing we know in addition, courtesy of the Le Châtelier Principle, is, if any part of this super system is perturbed by any change (say, for example temperature change) all the other components of each interlocked subsystem reacts in such a way as to to resist the perturbing change and the final result is is a very much reduced change in T°C.
Let’s name two examples easily understood of the plethora of changes that come into play for illustration: if you heat the atmosphere by any means, it expands, which is a cooling reaction. If you add CO2 to the atmosphere, it fuels photosynthesis and carbonate shell production, increasing the mass of the biosphere (actually these changes are also endothermic, so CO2 here has a cooling effect), reducing the CO2 added. At the same time, enthalpy changes and others complete the job of attenuating the warming. The Bose equation is fine for woofers and tweeters, but fir climate models, not so much!
I have an article on WUWT on the subject of the Le Châtelier Principle, but cant find it myself. Physicists don’t seem to be aware of this magical principle. Maybe it might fit in to the selection for some.
Realistically, if the top post doesn’t end up as something by WE then I’m calling it fake news.
Always well written, readable and informative.
Gold star
Those of us who consider that WUWT has for years played an important part in keeping climate sciences from straying too far might consider one on the Anthony Watts articles on the quality/compliance of weather stations to be part of the WUWT success and hence a top candidate.
Geoff S
I have been a regular reader for 15+ years. There have been scads of great essays, but my memory bank account is overdrawn. One recent essay was ab fab, just my cup of tea, and I wish it to be placed on the Greatest Hits roster, please.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/08/02/a-brief-history-of-climate-from-prehistory-to-the-imaginary-crisis-of-the-21st-century/
Warmer is better. Hooray for AGW, if it exists.
Good pure science stuff is great. But when it comes to engaging non-scientists, young people, adversaries, etc, there is nothing more powerful than such things as history, visual things that are immediately understandable and carry with them their own single interpretation that leaves no doubt to its meaning. We dont5use these powerful tools often enough.
1) Crisis Global Warming promoters make statements like ‘It hasn’t been this warm in in the last 800,000 yrs. One look at the picture of the 4000yr old Tuktoyaktuk tree stump, a rooted relic from the past that stands just outside the village of that name on the NW Canadian Arctic coast refutes the lie for any viewer. Today’s treeline lies 100km south of Tuk and a white spruce of this girth (the same species as the relic) lies a few hundred km further south of the treeline.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/04/12/inconvenient-stumps/
Invoking Arctic Amplification, it i clear that 4000yrs ago Tuk must have been 6°C to 8°C warmer than now, and the the global anomaly 3 to 4°C warmer. There are numerous examples of this around the circumpolar region in Canada, Russia, Greenland, Scandinavia
I have several examples like Tuk to settle at a glance in the mind of any viewer how much warmer was the MWP.
2) I also have historic references that are are irrefutable evidence of the severity and extent of the LIA. Did you know that when the British occupied Manhattan during the revolution, Washington sent a squad of soldiers to secret out a number of cannons hidden in a warehouse unknown to the British. They rolled them out onto the ice and along the ice all the way to New Jersey!
There is a plethora of historic references from which an untrained reader can easily correctly interpret the truth. A lot of help would be needed to put together a history and natural history category. I was going to pur a book together but at 85, I’m using up my time and energy on other projects.
I think those are excellent ideas.
I like that “inconvenient stumps” education aid. 🙂
Seconded!
This one is easy for me. In 2009 I’d already been reading WUWT for about a year and already grown to appreciate WE. When I pored over his thermostat hypothesis, it truly began to make sense. The visualizations WE is able to produce in this readers imagination is truly appreciated, and this paper, I believe was his first (of many more) bullseye.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/06/14/the-thermostat-hypothesis/
Thank you, Willis, for your contribution to thought, observation, knowledge, and common sense.
My father, Richard S Courtney, once wrote a post here about geoengineering.
The commenters completely misunderstood it. He was arguing that merely researching geoengineering enables politicians to avoid costly changes to fundamental infrastructure (e.g. windfarms) as the new technology will come later.
Of course, many people couldn’t get their head round the idea of researching something without intending to do it. They are probably still baffled by nuclear fusion research.
Can’t find the article but think it needs a reappraisal (nepotistically).
This one?
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/08/17/stopping-climate-change/
Nick ==> Thanks, you bet me to it!
Thank you.
Thank you for bringing it up it is one of the few times I repeatedly commented to help readers realize they are misunderstanding what R. Courtney wrote but alas the thread didn’t do well.
Story tip. https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/05/01/a-story-of-co2-data-manipulation/
This is a good one. Simple “bullet point” summary of the issues
Judith Curry Climate Change in 15 Minutes
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2021/09/04/climate-change-in-15-minutes/
As mentioned, pretty much anything from WE.
Storing Energy. Watts Up With That
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2021/06/15/storing-energy/
and this one on Energy Storage as well
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2021/05/29/why-is-energy-so-difficult-to-store-why-is-stored-energy-so-difficult-to-use/
One bit of “Google fu” I learned a while back is to add a suffix like “… site:wattsupwiththat.com” to limit searches to a specific website.
I know it also works with DuckDuckGo (DDG) and Bing, and am guessing that many other search engines will now include the same option for “compatibility / ease of use / it just works” reasons.
Mark ==> Thanks for the tip! Also, Googling anything with “Anthony Watts” takes you to nothing but anti-Anthony junk.
A sad commentary on the state of media suppression of information.
don’t use googgle if you can
try Luxxle
it can be customized as you use it as well
good luck
https://luxxle.com/
Here’s a good book for doing accurate Google searches. You can zero right into where you want to go using these techniques.
https://www.amazon.com/Google-Hacking-Penetration-Testers-Johnny/dp/0128029641
I suggest almost anything by Dr Robert Brown who commented as rgbatduke.
His comments and explanations were often deeply satisfying.
For example:
Dr. Paul Bain Responds to Critics of Use of “Denier” Term • Watts Up With That?
Regards,
John.
jdj ==> Yes and he wrote several pieces about weather, climate and chaos as well. He went on to other interests after a while.
Absolutely agree.
Dr. Brown was a star from the fairly early days.
I remember Monckton, atypically, getting his knickers in the twist with the rgbatduke name!
Fully agree. I have pasted whole chunks of comments by him and retained them. Really good stuff. His commenting moniker was rgbatduke for anyone who wants to search for them.
This one was elevated from a comment to a post: The original comment was 13 June 2013
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/06/18/the-ensemble-of-models-is-completely-meaningless-statistically/
I’ve been keeping notes for over 18 years and it now runs to 250000 words – and I reference Wattsupwiththat 557 times.- I never realised it was so many.
Since I include anything I consider a useful reference that narrows down from 60 odd thousand down by 90%.
It also shows how valuable Wattsupwiththat is as a resource.
Even if I narrowed it down to one choice in every chapter heading it would still be about 50 or so choices – but I’ll have a crack at it if you are interested.
But just about everything written by Willis is in there.
Chasmsteed ==> Nice sentiment — but “nearly everything” leaves us where we are now! Can you pick half a dozen? We are not looking for “the one!” this is not a contest — we are just trying to narrow down the field a bit…
I would have no problem with fifty suggestions.
I nominate the following essay:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/04/14/hypothesis-radical-greens-are-the-great-killers-of-our-age/
Primarily because it demonstrates the true impetus behind the greens and now climate clown cult narrative. Which is one of pure evil, based upon the leaders/founders statements and by their fruits ye shall know them.
Since the radical green movement has killed more people than Stalin, Hitler and Mao et al combined, it has a truly evil and frightening track record. Those who have swallowed the kool-aid should rethink their support for such an overtly evil and misanthropic cult following.
They are not trying to save the earth, they are trying to destroy humanity or a large proportion thereof. YOU are the CARBON they want to get rid of!
Quote from the essay: “For radical greens, it was never about the environment – the environment was a smokescreen for their extreme-left totalitarian political objectives.”
Anthony’s CO2 jar experiment. It was meant to discount Bill Nye’s demonstration of CO2 warming, ended showing that CO2 can’t do what is claimed.
The experiment has the below picture showing that CO2 doesn’t cause warming and satisfies Dr. Feynman’s quote about your theory https://www.azquotes.com/quote/95369
Here is that picture.
I would nominate an Andy May article:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/03/25/uah-vs-rss/
Excerpt:
“In every comparison, both globally and for the tropics, the UAH satellite temperature record correlated to the radiosondes best. In addition, the UAH global temperature trend is lower than the trends of the other datasets from 1979 to 2015 globally and for the tropics. The radiosonde data is not perfect, it has erroneous data as well, but it is independent of the satellite records and provides a neutral, unbiased check on the various methods of processing the satellite data. There is no such check for the various surface temperature datasets, they all share the same data and mostly use the same methods to process it.:
end excerpt
Perhaps making the archives into sections, indexed etc might be a way to go
Is there a librarian in the house?
strativarius ==> Yes, once wqe have enough inout from readers, the new site section would be itself divided by topic.
Good news, Kip
I think a comprehensive ‘library’ to consult would be a formidable tool. And it would be difficult to ignore – except for the media.