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Closing and Reopening of Comments on Cartoon Thread

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A few visitors may have noticed The Blackboard auto-closes comments on posts older than 15 days. Normally, this causes no difficulties because discussion naturally dies before comments close. However, discussion was live on Cracked Journalists Haiku when comments auto-closed some time after 4:44 am Chicago time. (We know the time because Nick Stokes –awake in Australia– left a comment.) Because I use Ajay D’Souza’s Autoclose Plugin instead of WordPress’s default closing functionality, I was able to reopen comments just before 6:56 am Chicago time.

It should be little surprise that if I close comments, I have my reasons. There are several. The two major reasons are:

  • Closing comments decreases number of spam-bot attracting open forms, and consequently, the total number of “hits” to the script used to submit comments.
  • After a while, discussions on old threads tend to get repetitious with only two or three people sniping back and forth. I don’t think this adds value to the blog, and I don’t want to see all of those comments in my inbox.

That said, I sometimes do re-open comments however, I do so only if a) I know the reason for the request and b) I judge the reason to justify opening that specific thread. Otherwise, I prefer not to re-open threads; instead, I encourage people to post in a related thread. (FWIW: I maintain one perpetually open thread; it discusses an internet scam.)

I have recently been requested to open two threads. One was the “Cartoon” thread which was already open at the time I received the request. I declined the request to open a parallel thread on a post whose subject is related to the Cartoon thread.

This morning, I decided that I see no reason why the “Cartoon” thread needs to be kept open perpetually. Rather, I judge it should remain open only as long as conversation is active.

To facilitate this decision, I edited Ajay D’Souza’s plugin to only close comments on posts that are both older than 15 days and have no comments less than 7 days old. So, for those interested in commenting on the Cartoon thread: If I have not screwed up the arithmetic and use of “less than” and “greater than” in MySql, the Cartoon thread will remain open for at least 6 more days. After that, if conversation is stale, that thread will close itself.

I deem this sufficient time for the person who requested the thread remain open to craft the comment they wished to submit and for others who wish to comment on that information to respond.

29 thoughts on “Closing and Reopening of Comments on Cartoon Thread”

  2. I’m very sorry I have to go off topic today because that rotten Heidi Cullen that testified at the house meeting yesterday told some blatant lies.

    1. She claimed that some flood was an event that only occurs once every 1,000 years.
    2. She said warming from a doubling of co2 will cause temperature rise of 8 degrees.
    3. She said sea level will rise 3ft in the next 100 years
    4. My favorite, she said that record warm temperatures will be much more frequent in the near future, compared to record colds. She said the ratio between highs and lows would be 20:1

    This is a shameful outrage. That lady should have been dismissed from the testimony. Does anybody know if there is a way we can put pressure on that committee to have her testimony stricken from the record?

    Or perhaps, when the GOP takes over that committee, they could reverse the roles. Invite Lindzen back, invite Happer, Spencer and Syunchi Aksofu (probably spelled his name wrong) and lastly, Cullen the Clown. Lets see what happens when its 4 on 1 against her.

  3. Shoosh–

    Does anybody know if there is a way we can put pressure on that committee to have her testimony stricken from the record?

    I think the idea of whether testimony can be stricken from the record was discussed during discussion of the Wegman investigation. I suspect it will be discussed when WMU reports back. In the meantime: I have no idea how any testimony can be struck from the record of this sort.

  4. I also doubt that anything would be stricken, given that at least points 2 and 3 have a reasonable basis in the peer reviewed literature (unsure about 1 and 4). You may well disagree with her, but the best way to go about responding would be to write responses to the journal articles she cites rather than attack her testimony per se. After all, thats how science works 😛

  5. Zeke,

    I was a bit baffled by this comment at ScienceInsider during the hearing the other day:

    [Comment From Zeke Hausfather: ]
    Santer has certainly published a lot more on the subject than Michaels. Shame that in congressional testimony personal opinion is apparently on par with published results…

    Do you think Pat’s scientific views are based only on personal opinion?

    -Chip

  6. Zeke, I know that there are published studies about a possible 8 degrees of warming from a doubling of co2, however the majority of the scientists that support that statement do not believe that it will be that high. I think most of them predict around 4 degrees.

    Also, 3ft of sea level rise in the next 100 years…possible but again very unlikely. I do not think most scientists would support this calculation.

  8. Chip,

    Pat’s opinions on aerosol forcings (and calculations using such forcings) haven’t shown up anywhere in the literature that I’ve seen. Perhaps I’m mistaken, and I’ll be happy to retract my (admittedly written somewhat in haste) statement if so.

    Shooshmon,

    7 F (she actually says 7 F in the presentation) is pretty close to median predicted 2100 warming under the A1B scenario in the last IPCC report. As far as sea level goes, there is plenty of uncertainty, but the last 5 or 6 papers published on the subject all have 3 feet around the mean expected sea level rise. See http://www.nature.com/climate/2010/1004/pdf/climate.2010.29.pdf for example.

    I do agree with Mosh that using F instead of C is confusing. On the flip side, most of the American public has no clue what units C really entail.

  10. Zeke,

    My point is that you don’t need to have published something in order for you to have scientific knowledge about it (rather than personal opinion). Lucia has a lot of scientific knowledge about comparing observed trends with projected ones, even though, I don’t think she has published on it (although perhaps not for lack of trying :^)

    Plus, I don’t recall Pat talking much about aerosols, but I may be forgetting something.

    -Chip

  11. Chip,

    I agree to some extent, though publishing sets a reasonably high bar to weed out arguments that might not be well-thought-through. By aerosols I meant Judith’s point over on her blog that by including black carbon, he should have included aerosol forcing as well. The point has been debated ad nausium over there, but I would still argue that something so controversial (GHGs being responsible for < half modern warming) would be better put up to the scrutiny of peer review prior to being told to our representatives as fact.

    Also, in regards to Pat's testimony, do you really think that the results of the online Scientific American poll are representative of anything apart from who can marshal the most votes via blogs? 😛

  12. Dr. Shoo,

    Reality misses you dearly. Please call or write.

    Meh–that wasn’t nice. I’m sorry. But, yes, Heidi Cullen appears right on the things I’ve looked at

  13. Zeke,
    .
    Always the politician, Ramsdorf shades his statements to the very edge of the truth. He says “Since the beginning of satellite measurements, sea level has risen about 80 per cent faster, at 3.4 millimetres per year… ”
    .
    Well, no, the real figure is closer to 3.0 mm per year and Ramsdorf knows it (http://sealevel.colorado.edu/current/sl_ib_ns_global.jpg). The trend shows absolutely no sign of acceleration since 1993… but why quibble over a mere 11% overstatement of the truth when somebody has a political agenda to push?
    .
    Wiki is kind enough to give us this graph of the 20th century sea level, with the recent satellite data rise pasted on top: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Recent_Sea_Level_Rise.png. Gee, looks like the tide gauge data shows quite a lot of variation over 15 year periods…. maybe the recent rise is not proof of impending flooding of the West Side Highway in New York after all.
    .
    Ramsdorf’s review is crap. Wait 20 years and see how wrong he is; I can’t wait that long, since I will likely be dead.

  14. SteveF,

    If Ramsdorf’s review is crap, I’d suggest writing a rebuttal and trying to get it published. Or at least look into it in detail. You will find that the 3 feet number that multiple recent papers have roughly centered on is not based on a linear extrapolation of the current trend; rather, its based on projected future warming coupled with models of dynamic ice sheet processes. They certainly could be wrong, but the best way to advance the field is to show why they are wrong.

  15. Zeke,
    .
    “You will find that the 3 feet number that multiple recent papers have roughly centered on is not based on a linear extrapolation of the current trend; rather, its based on projected future warming coupled with models of dynamic ice sheet processes.”
    .
    I had already read the paper, but thanks for that explanation, since I’m often so confused by such complicated issues as non-linear dynamic processes. I suggest you read the Ramsdorf review again, this time for political content. Please note the careful use of weasel words… alarming projections offered, but each couched in words that allow future escape… so that if the sea level rise is extreme, he is right, if it is modest, he is right, in between, right again. Like most of Ramsdorf’s work, it is shameless political propaganda. Like I said before, it is crap. The IPCC AR4 number is likely to be much closer to correct.
    .
    If I bothered to write a rebuttal, it would not get published, and we both know that. If I remember right Zeke, you are still very young, and you plan to go into climate research. That means you will (we all hope) still be around long enough to see the dire projections proven wrong. I hope your memory remains sharp enough in your old age to remember the climate lunacies promoted in the early part of the century.

  17. I may as well add Zeke, that Morner has claimed there has been tampering with sea levels graphs (IPCC is one of them). You don’t seem to understand that this largely a war between scientists, and you also don’t seem to understand that scientists like Lindzen and Morner are much much smarter than their colleagues.

    If you watched the house hearing, you would have noticed that Dr. Cicerone did not even understand the point Lindzen was making to him about physics, which was very simplistic and expectable from a shill like Cicerone.

  18. “This tree, which I showed in the documentary, is interesting.
    This is a prison island, and when people left the island,
    from the ’50s, it was a marker for them, when they saw this
    tree alone out there, they said, “Ah, freedom!” They were allowed
    back. And there have been writings and talks about this.
    I knew that this tree was in that terrible position already in the
    1950s. So the slightest rise, and it would have been gone.
    I used it in my writings and for television. You know what
    happened? There came an Australian sea-level team, which
    was for the IPCC and against me. Then the students pulled down the tree by hand! They destroyed the evidence. What
    kind of people are those?”-Nils Axel Morner

    Zeke and Boris? I very much hope you will concede to being woefully wrong and condemn this shameful attempt to distort scientific facts.

  19. Are we talking about this Nils-Axel Mörner? 🙂
    .
    More seriously, the non-Shooshmons of the world might find some interest in ”Comment on “Estimating future sea level change from past records” by Nils-Axel Mörner”, Nerem et al., Global and Planetary Change, 55(4), pp358-360, February 2007.

  20. PS: the response by Mörner to this comment (Global and Planetary Change, 62(3-4), p. 219-220, 2008) is also worth its weight in quatloos.

  21. On November 23rd, 2010 at 8:48 am, Dr. Shooshmon, phd. said:
    If you watched the house hearing, you would have noticed that Dr. Cicerone did not even understand the point Lindzen was making to him about physics, which was very simplistic and expectable from a shill like Cicerone.
    ——
    Was Lindzen explaining why second-hand smoke ….. COUGH ….. GASP …. ain’t so bad ?

  22. “I’d suggest writing a rebuttal and trying to get it published.”

    Zeke,

    After a few years of reading suggestions from Global Warming Salesmen such as yourself, of how you’d prefer other people share information, it gets to be like Lucy asking Charlie Brown if he wants try and kick the football again, assuring him she won’t pull it away this time. 😉

    I mean seriously, doesn’t there come a point where the repetition of this suggestion just gets boring… even for Lucy? I mean, does it still get a chuckle after the 1000th time?

    Andrew

  23. Toto,

    I have no idea what that link you provided means at all. Putting a packet of sugar under a cup and then not finding it…that’s exactly the type of stupid thing you would post and then somehow equate it to discrediting the man. Also, I don’t need to read your nifty little reference. The question is how much will sea level rise in the next 100 years and he predicts 10cm. Or you can take Carl Wunsch statement which I will paraphrase “blah blah blah, sadly we may not have enough data to estimate sea level.” Either way Toto, you need to tap those ruby red slippers and get back to Kansas. On a sidenote, it was unfortunately revealed today that the wizard refused to give the scarecrow a brain.

  24. I wonder how many other scientists we can now discredit based on the new “sugar under the cup” test. Toto, please inform me who else couldn’t find the sugar so I know who not to listen to.

  25. Toto,

    Let me ask you about the flood that only happens once every 1,000 years. I predict that there is going to be another flood sometime before I die, do you concur with my prediction?

  26. Max,

    Your an idiot if you think second hand smoke significantly raises your risk for cancer in your everyday life. Now, keep in mind what I just said. I’m not talking about somebody blowing smoke right into someone’s face, because that isn’t what happens in the real world. Smoking is a cultural tradition, but don’t worry Max there is a way to avoid second hand smoke. Move. Walk away from someone smoking and chances are you won’t even inhale any of it. For the record, genetics are much more important in determining life span than all other factors. This is why some of the longest living humans have smoked and still lived well into their hundreds. Since you wanna play the hack and slash discredit game, you should be consistent and deny global warming. After all, Enron came up with cap and steal, with the BIG OIL GIANT BP in cahoots. Whoops, Max only see things through his rosy colored monacle.

  28. On November 24th, 2010 at 8:40 am, dr. shooshmon, phd.
    Max,
    Your an idiot if you think second hand smoke significantly raises your risk for cancer in your everyday life….
    ——
    Some people think I’m an idiot for smoking rope and eating lead paint chips, but I been doing it since I waz 5, and my grandpa lived to be 91.

    The think I don’t like about second-hand smoke is when I ask them for a cigarette, they run from me.

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