Website feedback

UPDATE:

Thank you for all the help. I've made some more changes as a result of emails and comments here:

• The sidebar is now white. Some of you were finding the dark background hard to read and/or ugly. 
• The font has been made easier to read from what was there at first, and is bigger than the font on the old blog.
• New menu: There's a new menu. Until tomorrow, I'll leave it so it opens when you visit the page. However it's quite intrusive when it's open, so I'll only leave it like that for a short while, so you know it's there.  I hope in time, people will notice the little hamburger icon in the top right hand corner. Click on that and the menu will open and close. Click near the top of the open menu itself (it doesn't have to be right on the spot marked with an X) and it will close.
• Less white space: Not really, though it might seem that way. What I've done is adjusted the page so that on medium and higher resolution screens, such as you'll find on high end notebooks and with larger desktop monitors, the sidebar no longer sits right on the edge. The gap between the sidebar and the main articles is now a bit smaller. Smaller screens and lower resolutions can still enjoy maximum breathable space :)
• I've put the latest comments and the newest articles up the top of the sidebar. Just click on what you want and the panel will open up. It's the same content as it was on the old blog, but should now be easier to get to for most of you. 
• If on your screen the side bar is missing, it probably means you're looking at a very small screen (a small tablet or similar). The content of the sidebar is still there and accessible to you. It's just moved down the page under the main articles. You should be able to get to it easily by scrolling down the page. Or, if you know what you're looking for, use the main menu (click on the hamburger icon on the top right of the page). The sidebar items are listed under Blog Menu (the top item in the menu).

There are a few other things I've done, and I'll continue to make refinements over time, most of which you probably won't notice but I'll feel better for it :)

If there's something bugging you about the site, please let me know either by leaving a comment here, or by sending an email or tweet or even a comment at facebook . (The first three are better options. I don't really use Facebook except to let people know about blog articles).

Time to get back to the business of blogging and other important matters :)

Sou - 11:05 pm + 10 UTC, Thursday 29 June 2017

I'd be glad of any comments on the new website - speed of loading, ease of navigation, readability, colours, fonts, difficulties, complaints whatever.

It's a work in progress. (It's not been possible to test it fully before going live, because it's hosted on Google.) The old site was getting to the end of it's usability from a management perspective, but it did work.

If enough people find this new design doesn't work for them, I'll revert back to the old design. On the other hand, if you prefer this, I'll continue to do my best to overcome any drawbacks.

This is what the website should look like at the moment (I've updated the picture to show the changes as of now, 29 June in Australia). Click to enlarge.

Sou.

Atmospheric water vapour is a feedback (not forcing) - on Watts and Eschenbach #AGU16 poster

Willis Eschenbach has a poster at AGU16, to which Anthony Watts added his name. Anthony's now written a blog article about it (archived here). Actually, Anthony put his name first although I strongly suspect he doesn't have a clue what the poster is all about.

They haven't made the poster available on the AGU16 website, or not at the time of this article. It is downloadable on Anthony's blog at WUWT, here.  He's also made available what he calls "data and code". The file is 500 MB or so, therefore I won't be downloading it till I get home in 20 hours or so.

There are a few points I'll make:

• The poster is based on a couple of blog articles by Willis Eschenbach at WUWT, including the one I wrote about here.
• Willis Eschenbach still doesn't know the difference between a forcing and a feedback (more below). Nor does Anthony Watts.
• Their poster supports what real scientists tell us, that there's more water vapour in the air because of global warming.
• Most of the data they use is ocean only, not land.
• They seem happy to rely on RSS data, while disparaging it elsewhere.
• They seem happy with lots of data carefully collected and analysed by climate scientists, despite calling it fraudulent elsewhere, and despite WUWT-ers wanting to stop all research.

Leland Park has discovered seasons, day and night at WUWT

After various mundane articles about politics, sea level rise, and tips for deniers on how to reduce the scariness of global warming, there was another rather silly and simplistic article, this time by Leland Park (archived here). It would have been sweet, worthy of an eight-year-old's science essay, except that he mixed up cause and effect and didn't understand most of what he wrote. Worse still, at the bottom of his guest essay he wrote:

The negative feedback between solar levels and temperatures has always existed – but never noticed, officially. I, for one, will be interested to learn how quickly climate science can adapt CO2 theory to explain away its implications.

This is what Leland Park thinks was never noticed officially:

• The hottest time of the year is after, not on, the solstice
• The hottest time of the day is after, not at, noon.

Leland thinking he discovered this would astound even Dunning and Kruger. That Anthony Watts decided to publish his article won't astound anyone much.

Putting the foot to the floor - with Willis Eschenbach again

Yesterday I wrote about how Willis Eschenbach, a frequent contributor at Anthony Watts' denier blog WUWT, got his feedbacks and forcings all mixed up. I've been thinking more about where he went wrong. Willis used an analogy of a car with cruise control.

The external forces acting on the car are gravity and friction. Willis didn't mention those forces. The cruise control can kick in to oppose changes in these forces by introducing an opposing force of the engine. It can add fuel to increase or decrease the engine power, apply brakes to oppose the engine, and shift gears to increase or decrease the power of the engine. It will do this when it detects a change in speed. The change in speed trigger will only come about when there is a change in forcing.

On forcing and feedback with Willis Eschenbach

For a long time now (at least six years), Willis Eschenbach has been going on about governors, forcing and feedback. For a long time now (at least six years), the engineers at WUWT have been pointing out where Willis gets his terminology and concepts wrong. For a long time now, Willis hasn't listened to the experts.

Willis Eschenbach maintains, despite all evidence to the contrary, that climate doesn't change. He seems to think that every time a forcing is applied, it will be met with an equal and opposite force. Today he's arguing the same thing that he's argued time and time again.

As in the past, Willis gets quite a bit wrong (archived here):

• uses the analogy of cruise control (wrongly)
• confuses positive and negative feedback
• mistakes feedback for forcing.

This article is about some fundamental concepts in climate science, mainly for the benefit of people new to the subject. (You'd think deniers at WUWT, who've been writing about climate for years, would have grasped these concepts by now. But many of them, like Willis Eschenbach, haven't.)