User talk:William M. Connolley

I'm fairly busy in the Real World at the moment. Expect delays here... or not. But it's my excuse anyway...

---

You are welcome to leave messages here. I will reply here (rather than on, say, your user page). Conversely, if I've left a message on your talk page, I'm watching it, so please reply there.

If your messages are rude, wandering or repetitive I will likely edit them. If you want to leave such a message, put it on your talk page and leave me a note here & I'll go take a look. In general, I prefer to conduct my discussions in public. If you have a question for me, put it here (or on the article talk, or...) rather than via email. If I've blocked you for 3RR this applies particularly strongly: your arguments for unblock, unless for some odd reason particularly sensitive, should be made in public, on your talk page. See-also WMC:3RR.

In the dim and distant past were... /The archives. As of about 2006/06, I don't archive, just remove. Thats cos I realised I never looked in the archives.

Atmospheric circulation pic

Thanks for the pic you added to this article. It's very interesting, and I am intrigued by some of the anomalies it shows. Denni☯ 01:00, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

Hi Denni. Thanks! All part of my very very slow atmospheric dynamics project... more to come... slowly... William M. Connolley 22:09, 24 October 2005 (UTC).

RRS John Biscoe

I've justed created a stub for this article and found you'd already done the same for her successor, the James Clark Ross. Great!  Do you have (access to) a Commons/Wikipedia-compliant photo of the Biscoe that could be used? Apologies in advance if my search failed to turn one up.
Best wishes, David Kernow 15:22, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

I don't; I'll ask around a bit William M. Connolley 17:23, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. If no joy, or too much hassle, I'm hopeful one or other of the Antarctica websites with photos might give permission or adopt a Commons/Wikipedia-friendly licence. David Kernow 22:20, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

Trend Estimation with Auto-Correlated Data

William: This article you started is a great topic! I am just wondering if you have detailed information to add to the section about auto-correlated data. I am facing this problem now, and am trying to get information from papers and textbooks. --Roland 21:46, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

Ah well, IMHO what to do with auto-correlated data is an ongoing research topic. Top tip: divide the ndof by something like (1+ac1) (or is it ac1^2...) if the autocorr isn't too extreme. There is some formula like (1+ac1^2+ac2^2+...) if its strongly auto-correlated... but... its a bit of a mess, I think. Err, thats why I never expanded that bit. The von Zstorch and Zwiers book covers it, somewhat. William M. Connolley 22:54, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

I added a link to autoregressive moving average models JQ 23:17, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

Linda Hall editor

User:204.56.7.1 has been blocked four times in the last month for 3RR (once by you). He is now performing wholsale reversions without comment (see at Radio [1]) This user as you probably know, has a long history of refusing to collaborate. He ignored my talk page request. Any suggestions? --Blainster 20:33, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

My feeling is that 204. is Reddi. Reddi is limited to 1R per week. Establishing the connection past doubt is difficult; but the edit patterns are very similar. You could post a WP:RFCU. Or you could just list 204. on the 3RR page together with the note of Reddis arbcomm parole and see if that does any good. Or maybe I'll just block it... shall I? Oh go on, yes I will... William M. Connolley 21:37, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

My Reddimeter displays 8.5 on a scale from 0 to 10: Selection of topics. likes patents, likes templates. Only the tireless lamenting on article talk pages is missing. --Pjacobi 21:43, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

User:Reddi apparently back

... with another sockpuppet [2] KarlBunker 19:25, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Is there no stopping him? I've blocked that one; if he persists, will semi it William M. Connolley 19:28, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

And to think

..I knew you when. Why didn't you mention this?

• KNOW IT ALL - Can Wikipedia conquer expertise? KillerChihuahua^?!? 16:38, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

Oh dear. I did my best with them :-( William M. Connolley 17:31, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

WP:AN3

To William M. Connolley for the thankless job of maintaining WP:AN3. It is appreciated -- Samir धर्म 14:23, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

• The few times that I've dabbled in WP:ANI/3RR, I've tried to be fair, but I universally get hit with a barrage of malcontents on my talk page and others that send me threatening e-mails. I don't know why you continue to take care of this for us, but thank you for doing so, as I know that I wouldn't be able to last more than a day at it. Many thanks -- Samir धर्म 14:23, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Thank you :-) William M. Connolley 16:36, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

The Templeton Foundation

The Templeton Foundation used to provide grants for ID conferences and courses. According to The New York Times, Charles L. Harper Jr., senior vice president at the Templeton Foundation, later asked ID proponents to submit proposals for actual research. "They never came in," said Harper, and that while he was skeptical from the beginning, other foundation officials were initially intrigued and later grew disillusioned. "From the point of view of rigor and intellectual seriousness, the intelligent design people don't come out very well in our world of scientific review," he said. [3] The Templeton Foundation has since rejected the Discovery Institute's entreaties for more funding, Harper states. "They're political - that for us is problematic," and that while Discovery has "always claimed to be focused on the science," "what I see is much more focused on public policy, on public persuasion, on educational advocacy and so forth." [4]

I'd think that while individual members/beneficiaries of the Foundation's largess may embrace ID, the the Foundation itself is trying to distance itself from the ID movement, but keeping in mind that the Discovery Institute, the hub of the ID movement, actively tries to cultivate ambiguity around its own motives, actions and members with the aim of portraying ID as more substantial and more widely accepted than it actually is, as the Dover Trial ruling shows (it's worth reading). [5] FeloniousMonk 21:24, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. Thats interesting and useful William M. Connolley 21:26, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Improving the models

I find this to be a fascinating example of the improvement of weather models over time. Do you happen to know of any comparable quantitative metrics by which climate models can be seen to have improved over time? Dragons flight 07:06, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

Nice pic. The one I'm more used to seeing is the length-of-useful-forecast graph, which shows similar improvement. However... no I don't know comparable pics from climate models. The obvious problem would be that you can't do it year-on-year, climate models being far less frequent: the hadley center has arguably only had 3 model incarnations. They do have a "model index" which finds that hadgem1 is better than hadcm3, but I don't know if that was ever applied back to hadcm2, much less to other centres William M. Connolley 13:28, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

when you say 3 models, does that include or exclude improvements in spatial resolution as computing power has improved? Dragons flight 16:48, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

I meant hadcm2, hadcm3 and hadgem1. There are others, but it could get complex. Do you want to include atmos-only models? Those are the "official" releases, sort of. There are various experiments with different spatial res, but its not clear if those were meant to be improvements... William M. Connolley 17:27, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

Well at the moment I am just sort of curious about what is being labeled a "model". I could see the term being used to refer to either a set of coupled differential equations (which might then be implemented on a variety of different grid sizes), or to a specific implementation on a specific grid size. Do you ever take your differential systems, and leaving them as is, try to increase the number of grid elements through the use of more powerful computers? Dragons flight 17:40, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

Yes and no. "GCM" means the full set of code, on the whole. Ie, big set of PDEs and params on top. But also, in general, it means a specific config and setup. "hadcm3" means a given code version, plus given ancils (e.g. land sea mask), plus a given resolution. You *can* run it at, say, higher rez; but there is no guarantee that its better. But yes, I know there were various projects with higher rez versions... the problem is that because of the about grid^3-4 dependency, you can't run much higher rez, if the model is anywhere close to state-of-the-art William M. Connolley 22:52, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

Would you consider the edit below to be vandalism, exempt from 3RR?

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Landmark_Education&curid=113183&diff=91946832&oldid=91916187 Sm1969 07:57, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

Only marginally so, better dealt with by consensus of editors. Definitely not encyclopeadic, of course William M. Connolley 13:25, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

SPM

Can we give Summary for policymakers a decent burial? Or even an indecent one? Is there a protocol to follow, or can I just move the (very small amount of) useful information in the article somewhere else? It's been tagged for merger several months now. Raymond Arritt 04:23, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Don't forget what links to it... [6]

Gack. Is there no automagic way of taking care of such things? Raymond Arritt 22:28, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Well if you replaced it with a redirect to IPCC it would be transparent. I quite like the existence of a separate SPM page, myself William M. Connolley 22:35, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

I know I've given you one before, but...

		The Working Man's Barnstar
		For doing a task that makes me grind my teeth just thinking about it, this star is for you! Syrthiss 22:55, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Ah well, thanks even more :-) William M. Connolley 09:23, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

)

Just for amusement

AfDing articles on people can be quite interesting. This one for example: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Jules Siegel has written far more in the AfD debate than he ever did in the article he wrote about himself... He may well be notable but... --BozMo talk 20:20, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Hmm well. I don't think I'll vote William M. Connolley 20:57, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

No. But smile perhaps. He probably deserves to stay but the indignation is disproportionate to the point of entertaining--BozMo talk 21:28, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

I learnt my lesson at William Connolley a long time ago and now stay away William M. Connolley 21:42, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Hmm, yes. BTW I have some nice (low res) pics of the family of baby stoats which live in my garden which I might send you for your blog. They are very playful. --BozMo talk 21:50, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Delightful! I'm very jealous. Do send the pic. In return, I could start a stub about an ex-oilman turned charity exec. Err, or I could *not* start it in exchange... William M. Connolley 21:54, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Not. Okay, I will find some pics/small vid clips) on the other PC and email them, probably tomorrow. As for the threat... I have enough scientific publications to pass WP:BIO and not enough appetite for it to knit a baby gnat's sock "like I want a wart in the middle of my forehead" I think is the expression. We also boast some baby owls, bats in our attic, three varieties of deer, hares, rabbit and badgers in the garden but no pics yet. Glorious Suffolk. --BozMo talk 22:17, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

okay try http://catesfamily.org.uk/stoats.jpg and then in a couple of minutes stoatsclip.mov from the same place. First is 2M second is 6M. --BozMo talk 23:00, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Cute or what! I'm now insanely jealous. When I blog them, do you want (or unwant) attribution and/or copyright? William M. Connolley 23:07, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Any copyleft with attribution to my homepage would be kind (but I wouldn't insist). I notice Stoat has no picture and will put a cut jpg up there. I think the way that they bounce around in the movie is quite informative and if you can find a way to get that into Wikipedia format you are welcome to aswell. I don't have the tools. --BozMo talk 09:42, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

stoats again

Aha! The userbox on your userpage has the deleted stoat image in it. You could update the box with the new one. I'd do it if I could work out where these silly boxes live. --BozMo talk 14:38, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

The press

William,

I'm a reporter working on a story about Wikipedians that monitor pages that could be considered controversial or ideologically charged. I'm wondering if you'd be interested in talking a bit. You can get me here : matt.phillips@wsj.com.

And thanks,

Matt

Hi. Feel free to email me - the wiki mail works William M. Connolley 21:22, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Global warming question for William

Hi William, if you are reading this, could you spare a minute to answer a query on global warming? I am considering adding an article on the apparent retreat of polar ice on Mars. There are articles out there by scientists like this one for example 1 that claim this is evidence of increased solar radiation. There does seem to be agreement at Nasa as far as I have been able to discover on the internet that Mars polar caps have been retreating since close-up observations began with Viking. Do you know anything about this, can you comment? Do you think such an article would be useful? Thanks. MarkThomas 20:19, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

This is nothing to do with GW on earth, as the RC article makes clear, I would have hoped. I've edited thte page a little. There was similar text on the Mars page itself but it seems to have vanished William M. Connolley 21:21, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, "RC" article? Which page is that please? I guess my starting point is why climate scientists would assume that polar cap reduction on Mars automatically meant nothing in terms of Earth warming - agreed Mars does not have CO2-based warming but might it not be external evidence of increased solar radiation? MarkThomas 09:12, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Keep in mind, MarkThomas, most editors to an article are uneducated on the topic and often mistakenly make edits of other users that contain merit. This admin, in particular, is unfamiliar with many of Wikipedia's policies. ~ UBeR 23:18, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Pot. Kettle. Black. Raul654 02:23, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

I'm afraid I don't understand what these last two comments are about - can you elucidate please? Thanks. MarkThomas 09:12, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Lord knows what UBeR means. What *I* meant was Martian global warming which I thought you would have found... William M. Connolley 10:10, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

That's great, thanks William - actually couldn't find that in WP or from Google searches. Is the ringing conclusion on that page a POV? I find it puzzling that climate scientists seem so uninterested in this, since it appears to be external evidence of solar radiation increase devoid of earth-based variables. Is this something you've looked into and therefore have reasons to discount? Very little good quality stuff on the web about it outside of sceptic-mongers and Nasa seem not to be drawing conclusions. Just curious what the "view" is within the climate change community. MarkThomas 10:19, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Why would you look for evidence of solar radiation changes via an indirect proxy like Martian ice caps, when we have direct measurements since the satellite era, which show no trend? William M. Connolley 10:25, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Direct measurements of Mars climate you mean? Or Earth? MarkThomas 10:27, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Oh sorry, just twigged, presume you mean direct measurements of solar radiation? Is that quite right - I thought from casual reading of New Scientist over the years that solar radiation variability is hard to calculate accurately for various reasons and past measurements are not very reliable. MarkThomas 10:30, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

I guess it's this 1 that I need to be reading, if I could get in! The precis seems to suggest that satellite-based measurements of solar radiation shows it decreasing to 1990 and then increasing since then. I don't see how this can be irrelevant to Mars and the Earth as you confidently claim on the Mars article. MarkThomas 10:37, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Your Science link is ab out *sfc* solar radiation. Why read New Scientist when you can read Solar variation? Yes there are problems piecing the data together, but far far smaller than those of using the martian polar caps as proxies, of course William M. Connolley 10:41, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Agreed Solar Radiation is an excellent article and I'm getting into it! Thanks for your input. I am still concerned by the apparent easy consensus that Mars reduction in polar ice is unrelated to the polar ice reduction on Earth, and why (since this takes out the variable of human involvement) this is not strongly indicative that recent global warming on earth might be a solar phenomenon, albeit exacerbated by anthropic activity. It appears superficially to be very compelling that the latter is true, given that Mars has no oceans (although there could of course be substantial subsurface water) and no active volcanoes, thin atmosphere, etc. Will read up on it more and see if I can make a useful edit on Mars Global Warming, which BTW might be better called "Mars Polar Cap Size Reduction"? MarkThomas 12:33, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

A lot of scientists, and non-scientists, would like to dismiss data that would be contrary to their hypotheses, such as the mongers at Global Warming. ~ UBeR 17:52, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

I'm not very interested in recycled auto-scepticism, I've found most of the "climate sceptics" appear to be confused or mistaken in various ways. As far as I can tell from the available information on the web, the Mars polar cap data does not appear to go back far enough to be really useful yet, but from the data available it does seem to show a warming trend and due to increased solar radiation. This also appears as far as I can tell to be dismissed by climate scientists. Not sure why yet, although there must be reasons. MarkThomas 18:01, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Which is why I recommend reading the RC article, which was written by an astronomer, and will point out the various reasons why it has no relevance to GW William M. Connolley 19:37, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Dr. Bill, if you have any expertise in UHI temperature measurements, comment on this thread here: http://tiny[remove me]url.com/2khz3c Raylopez99 22:22, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

Request block

Hi. 206.173.87.66 has repeatedly removed content from Congress of Racial Equality. A block is in order, I think. JQ 23:25, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Looks very occaisional to me. Are you sure? William M. Connolley 09:35, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

I'm pretty confident this is CORE (=the Innis family) trying to suppress criticism.JQ 10:58, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Islamophobia - user Netscott

Would you have a look at my comment on this user's talk page at some point? At some point, I may need another admin to have an objective look at what he is doing here. Unfortunately, I made a technical error a day or two ago, which no one else caught, and for which I am kicking myself. This stuffed up the formatting of the notes on the Islamophobia article. When I realised, I reverted to the last version before my error, with the aim of retracing my steps from that point. This seemed the simplest way to go. Most of the edits not made by me were just vandalism and reversions of vandalism, but there are also some other changes, all of which look like dubious PoV material that the article would be better without. Rather than adding back any specific material that he thought useful, Netscott has reverted to a version with the formatting errors.

I'm not asking you to do anything at the moment, but sorting this out might be difficult and I don't trust Netscott to be cooperative about it, given the nature of some of the material that he seems to want to protect. Obviously, I don't want to use any admin powers in my own interests if it does get nasty, so I'm just asking that you might at some future stage be available to have a look over the situation as an uninvolved admin. Metamagician3000 02:43, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

My only contention in this whole affair was the deceptive edit summary by Metamagician3000 of "self-revert" when in fact his revert was more than a mere self-revert. (→Netscott) 03:29, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

I certainly don't accept that there was any deception involved, but we seem to have settled our differences. :) Metamagician3000 04:48, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Yes, deceptive was too strong of a word a better word would have been misleading... William M. Connolley if you are interested in fully reading Metamagician3000 and my discussion have a look at this section of his talk page. Take it easy. (→Netscott) 05:06, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

If this is now settled, as it seems to be, I'll leave it William M. Connolley 09:36, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

your previous life.

You are active on a number of science entries where you make reference to your scientific credentials listed here.

You make a curious reference to a former life as a mathematician.

Could you clarify your position held at SEH Oxford ? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 90.144.113.77 (talk) 14:34, 13 February 2007 (UTC).

Do you really think you've been polite enough to ask questions like that? I don't William M. Connolley 15:07, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Flags in twin cities

I would inform you that user:Mais Oui! has repeated the behaviour you denounced in Vancouver (see his talk). I denounced him as 3RR page, and I'm mumbling if he even canvassed one to support him in his lost cause. Bye and good work. --Attilios 15:12, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Global Cooling

I am interested in, and think you may be one of the better resources on Global Cooling. Do you have a partial list of scientists or prominent non-scientists who were on the global cooling band wagon? -- Tony of Race to the Right 20:43, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

I wouldn't agree with your description; but you'll find a link to my site at global cooling readily enough William M. Connolley 22:46, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Martian global warming

Did you intentionally delete the AfD and merge templates? Raymond Arritt 19:20, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Oops, thanks... William M. Connolley 19:29, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Dishonest Deletion of Martian global warming

It is dishonest of you to delete 95% of the article on the pretext of objecting to five words. I have deleted these five words - please stop censoring the rest of the article.

You had said: Rameses added this back in. I can see no evidence for it. There appear to be one data point: a 3-martian-summer trend of the ice caps. "Evidence has started to accumulate" must imply more than one such observation; and to justify the "global" tag these would have to be at least quasi-global.

But you actually deleted virtually the whole article - this is censorship and your weak disguise of this is not going to work. -- Rameses 21:42, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Oh good - I'm glad we've made a start to agreement. On with the rest! William M. Connolley 21:44, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

I second whatever point was made against Dr. Bill and censorship. Wasn't Dr. Bill himself censored by Wiki a few years ago for censorship? Who'se censoring the censors? Who'se watching the watchers? I speak as a friend of Wiki and a financial backer. Raylopez99 14:17, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Whatever point was made? That sounds dangerous and rather stupid to me. And your memory is defective or at least highly selective. --Stephan Schulz 14:28, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Page move

Hi William, thanks for taking care of moving List of scientists opposing global warming consensus back after Ed Poor's changes. It looks like the talk page has not been moved back though -- it redirects to Talk:List of scientists who dispute the anthropogenic global warming theory. Thanks! --Nethgirb 01:46, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Sorry to bother you, Guettarda has now taken care of this --Nethgirb 04:57, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

thought you would be interested to ask him a few questions

- Interview with Art Robinson, Prof of Chemistry of the Oregon Petition Sunday 1-3pm CST on Race to the right. click here to listen online and Click Here for the Race to the Right website. Feel free to call in at the number listed at the Race to the Right website for the phone number. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Zeeboid (talk • contribs) 00:59, 18 February 2007 (UTC).

Too bad you could not call in, we would have welcomed your comments, as it would have been great to hear from both sides, as Tony and I try to do whenever possible. We will be broadcasting some more on this topic, and would welcome your call on the air. No one from Wikipedia, in fact, took up our offer to call in Sunday... You could say that we had a "consensus" that the Science behind supporting man caused Global Warming is a fallacy... --Zeeboid 04:48, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Oh yes, something that came up during the web cast... the Image listed under the Global Warming section for 1995-2004 mean temperatures reads as:

Mean surface temperature anomalies during the period 1995 to 2004 with respect to the average temperatures from 1940 to 1980

our questions that came up were:

1. How is it fair to compare a 40 year time span with a 9 year time span? 2. Wouldn't the average temperature be lowered using a broader range of 40 years? 3. What about the time between 1980-1995? There is no listing of temperature data here. 4. what about the recorded temperatures before 1940? The way it reads you could als make the argument for Global Warming using the following:

Between the hours of 12:01am-7:00am the average temperature was 45 degrease. then from 2:00pm-3:00pm the average temperature was 96 degrease. This is proof that the earth is rapidly warming.

5. Where does the data of the Earth warming without man's intervention play into the climate models of today? 6. How did man cause the Climate Optimum? 7. If Glaciers are receding from Greenland, Who is to say its a bad thing? The Vikings, as you well know, lived on Greenland while it was Green, and prospered there for a few hundred years, only to be killed off by Global Cooling while entering the little ice age. 8. Do you have data on the average Earth Temperature throughout history (from core samples and what not) to compare it to today's temperature to see if what we are experiencing now for temp is even "normal"?

You need to actually read some of the wiki articles on climate change. Start from the GW page and read up on the various temperature pages. This would answer many of your questions. Try to do it without assuming that the people that wrote it were fools William M. Connolley 12:06, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Yep, this info we were unable to clearly get from Wikipedia or most other sources. there is too much Debate about them... which is why I asked you. to get your opinion.--Zeeboid 13:16, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Hey, while you are at it, there's a reception year class in Suffolk interested: you could come and explain it all too. I hear one of them thought global warming might not be right. On the other hand you could just decide that as contributors to a NPOV encyclopaedia we do just that and don't get put on a soapbox where we don't belong... :) --BozMo talk 16:01, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Fortunatly for those of us on a soapbox, the discussion areas like this are not an actual wikipedia article. These questions are relevent, however, as they relate to several Wikipedia topics that have been edited by all of us.--Zeeboid 16:58, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

OK, on the grounds of you being sensible at Oregon Petition - thank you - I'll answer

1. Doesn't really matter. You want to see the pattern of change over time. It could have been 1940-50 minus 1995-2005; using a longer reference period gives less background noise
2. Well, you will get the average for 40-80. Which will be lower than 60-80. The point of that pic is not to show the degree of warming - the time graph does that - but the pattern; which is best served by having a signal big enough to see
3. Don't understand
4. First part: global data gets more sparse the further you go back. If you tried to use 1900-1940 as a ref period then large parts of Antarctica and the southern oceans would be blank. Second part: obviously not; thats the daily cycle; you can't use the seasonal cycle or weather either
5. People run GCMs for thouands of model years and find them stable (if they are well built). This indicates that there must be some component of external forcing to the variability observed before the pre-industrial. Volcanoes and solar are popular explanations for this.
6. You appear to be under the impression that GW means we have to implicate humans in all climate change. That is not so.
7. People who care about sea level rise.
8. See ice core I guess - this covers all human history

William M. Connolley 21:33, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Global Warming

Dear Mr Connolly,

As an administrator please can you explain the WP:NPOV policy. E.g. If I were to write an article about Jesus, would I be bound to mention that some people maintain that this was not a historical fugure? If e.g. I were to write an article about evolution, would I e.g. be bound to include the view held by some that evolution does not occur?

I really would value your comments because I am currently having great difficulty ensuring that Wikipedia fulfils its prime directive of ensuring a Neutral Point of View. I may e.g. misunderstand the policy, if I do please explain, e.g. does it apply to all articles in WIkipedia or only some?

Mike 23:47, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Who is this Mr Connolly? Meanwhile, I advise you to cut the leading questions and join the talk at GWC where the inclusion of Peak Oil is being debated. As far as NPOV is concerned... you'll have noticed that none of the "usual skeptics" are weighing in on your side. You might like to ponder why William M. Connolley 23:50, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Help with McKhan forwarding his own views on the artcle Al-Ahbash

The user:McKhan has constantly reverted any edit that does not fit with what he personally thinks should be on the article. And IIRC, he was even blocked for this several times, still now, he continues to revert edits by everyone who seem to oppose his idea of what AlAhbash are. Aswell as reverting any edits to accurately place sources for the huge claimes that are already on the page. McKhan is constantly revert the page to his favored version, reguardless of what everyone else says, and he does this based on his own interpertation of the rules. Being a meber of the group in the article in question, i can tell you the page is very incomplete and not very accurate. And nearly every attempt by me or any other member to edit the page, is useualy resulting in a revert war, which 110% of the time, involves McKhan, and only McKhan. this user seems to believe he owns the page and that he can change what ever he wants. i think something should be done about this. Because it hinders the development of the page, and is simply unfair to the subject of the article, when proper information about it is not allowed to be presented. Not to mention that it seems very out of the spirit of wiki to allow one user complete domiance over one article, esp one labeled as contraversial. If anything can be done, please respond on my talk page. IP7564144211 05:51, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Um indeed. You both in an edit war and I made an edit, you reverted it, if a reveret war happened, it was because of you. is unreasonable. Talk more and revert less; and use WP:DR if that fails William M. Connolley 09:34, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Truce

OK M.Connolley, you clearly don't sleep - I was hoping to make progress before you came and reverted every improvement - on the other hand I would not want to use such tactics on you if you really are working to improve the global warming controversy (which I'll assume)

If we both edit this article at the same time it won't work unless we can agree to disagree. I've made some fairly drastic changes last night to put some structure in the article, I would now like to fill out some detail about the various different scenarios of fossil fuel usage that are in vogue. Can you tell me what you are doing so we don't work at cross purposes. Mike 09:50, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Who is M. Connolley? Your attitude is arrogant and unhelpful. As is clear from the talk - which you have explcitly refused to join - anything but a brief mention of peak oil is considered unreasonable. You are reminded of WP:3RR (again) William M. Connolley 09:54, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Apologies William. I would very much appreciate it if you would join in with those trying to find consensus. The atmosphere is a lot better when we all try to work together rather than fight each other. If I have upset you in the past then clearly I apologise - I may have size 12 boots and sometimes step on peoples toes. Please be assurred that I respect your point of view even when I don't agree with it - please come back and help improve the articleMike 19:38, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Honoured...

...to share the top spot with you here. Looks like Raymond and User:KimDabelsteinPetersen will be next. --Stephan Schulz 15:35, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Its a bit feeble though, isn't it? I was hoping for something along the revenge-of-the-toilets that the aetherometrists did. Now that was fun! William M. Connolley 15:43, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

I missed that. Did any useful links survive? But give Tony some time - maybe next he'll find out I dissed the OISM, and will make a really devastating entry in his collection ("Schulz thinks the opinion of the Royal society has more weight than the Oregon Institute" or something like that...)!--Stephan Schulz 16:03, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

He's nearly exhausted the limits of any reasonable ability to WP:AGF. I don't know Wikipedia's policy on attempts to manipulate WP like this, so I've entered a query at WP:ANI. Raymond Arritt 16:30, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

FWIW I think this offwiki material counts as a form of stalking. --BozMo talk 17:14, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

It probably does (hope you're getting better, BTW) but at the moment is too incompetent to be worth worrying about. When they can spell my name I'll start quivering William M. Connolley 17:18, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Plus call you "Dr". Its only that and an "e" which prevent you turning into Billy Connolly so I'm not surprised you object. But seriously I think they are seriously violating Wikipedia:Harrassment and even if you are robust enough not to be bothered, it will upset others and we'd save a lot of time with a community ban. --BozMo talk 18:05, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

What did I do to deserve last place? --Nethgirb 20:11, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

DPeterson case

I am watching this scenario because I want to comment on an RfC and present an outside view. That's why I am wondering if you are aware that it is not yet clear whether Mihai is merely edit-warring. There is an ongoing RfC for user conduct of Mihai cortaje, filed by DPeterson. On this RfC Mihai should have the possibility to comment so I wonder if it is ok to block him during that time? Were you aware of the RfC? DPeterson has left long statements and accusations on this RfC this morning on Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Mihai cartoaje, Mihai hasn't got a chance to answer. And he has a hard stance anyway, since DPeterson seems to be operating six sockpuppets (of which only four have been operated during the past four weeks). All of them have passed the so-called 100-rule, so they are legitimate (one user has tried and filed a request for checkuser on him before). I am not entirely sure if all the people who work on Schizophrenia and other mental illness pages are aware of the sockpuppets, who are trying to make mihai look like a vandal. I have hinted at the sockpuppets several times and people just seem to ignore it like the infamous elefant in the room (that is: ignore it totally, not even deny it it is there). From what I have seen Mihai cartoaje tries to engage in a discussion, but DPeterson (and socks) does not respond, he just seeks 'dispute resolution' without there ever being a discussion as in 'let's find out what the facts are'. Mihai has a case in his claiming schizophrenia is pov, but it is a weak one. And he must be under terrible stress. --Grace E. Dougle 20:41, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

I didn't look into the details. However many socks are around, or not, Mihai needs to avoid edit warring. If DP is using socks this needs to be investigated via WP:RFCU if appropriate. Mihai only has an 8h block so will be able to answer the RFC soon enough William M. Connolley 21:39, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Climatic or Climate change (or neither!)

If I am writing about a phenomenon in Mars' climate which may be local or global (or nen-existant but that's another debate) would calling it climatic change be more correct than climate change, which sounds more global as that's the context I usually here it in - or is there no difference in meaning? sbandrews 21:09, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

I wouldn't really distinguish them William M. Connolley 21:40, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

ok, cool, then is it correct to use 'climate change' when talking about local climate change? sbandrews 21:48, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Thoughts

Hi William -- you seem to be pretty well regarded around here, so I thought I'd ask you for a little perspective on the 3RR violation I just reported against Jayjg. I believe it was a valid report, but very shortly after, SlimVirgin declared it a "No Violation." This leaves a few questions: 1. Will this prevent others from looking at the case? 2. Is there anything I could or should do about that? and 3. Am I wasting my time? I don't actually even want Jay blocked, because I can't see how it will help our ability to edit the same pages in the future. Nevertheless, reporting in this case seemed somewhat necessary, to get some sort of intervention. Any thoughts? Best, Mackan79 21:53, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

I would need a very good reason to review SV (and indeed K)'s decision. In this case, the two consecutive edits definitely count as one, so yes: you are wasting your time. Sorry William M. Connolley 22:24, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Alright. I guess my reason would be that it seems strange for an admin with close ties to the reported editor to declare no violation within 16 minutes of the report ([7] vs [8]), based on a judgment call under the policy, when even under the best case scenario Jay reverted 5 times in less than 29 hours. In any case, thanks for the response. Mackan79 22:51, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

User notice: temporary 3RR block - Alansohn

Re: your mail. You feel unjustly treated; perhaps fairly enough. The short answer is: don't break 3RR if you don't want to be blocked. A longer answer is: admins don't have time to wade through all the details of particular cases. Who is "vandalising" or not is often unclear. In any event, simply reverting your changes back in because you are right is just a recipe for endless edit war. You need to go into WP:DR in cases like this William M. Connolley 09:52, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

• It would have taken about 30 seconds to look at the initial edits to see what the situation was and to make an informed judgment. The case was laid out for you and described in detail as to where the issues were. I stepped backed, stopped editing, followed every element of the WP:DR process you advocate as the solution, asking for information regarding the user's issues, inviting the individual to accept a WP:Third opinion and WP:RfM, to have him refuse every time. I encourage you to read the email and review the article history to justify that stopping editing and following the WP:DR process to the letter gets the same arbitrary punishment as doing nothing. Alansohn 12:20, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

No: you didn't step back and stop editing and follow DR, because you broke 3RR William M. Connolley 12:33, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

Removing a tag improperly applied is not a 3RR violation. After 3RR issues were raised, I stepped backed, stopped editing, followed every element of the WP:DR process you advocate as the solution, asking for information regarding the user's issues, inviting the individual to accept a WP:Third opinion and WP:RfM, to have him refuse every time. If you are unable to take the time to read the material in question, can you please point me to an individual or process that will be able to act appropriately in this matter. Alansohn 12:40, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

Removing a tag improperly applied is not a 3RR violation - no, removing tags does count towards 3RR; deciding if they are "improper" is hard. And no, the blocks are not arbitrary. As to what you should do next... it depends how much you care about that page. Unless you've gone through RFC and RFA then I doubt you've exhausted DR William M. Connolley 13:25, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

If the process for RFC and RFA is as dysfunctional as the 3RR process, I'll skip it. It seems that there are other individuals with 3RR issues, and I will allow you to attend to them. Thanks anyway. Alansohn 20:02, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

As you discovered, 3RR is really quite functional. RFC and RFA are far less functional :-) William M. Connolley 20:06, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

• Actually, what I've discovered is that the 3RR process is wielded as a rather blunt instrument. Many of the comments posted here and the many emails I've received seem to confirm that. If RfC and RfA are even less functional, we're all in for it. :-( Alansohn 00:33, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

User notice: temporary 3RR block - Dannyg3332

What is your problem with the Michael Stipe image I've been attempting to properly replace ? For someone busy in the real world you certainly seem like you've got nothing better to do.....Dannyg3332 19:47, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

I have no problem with the image: I rather like it. The problem is with you breaking 3RR William M. Connolley 19:53, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

So, would you kindly advise me on why the image was removed ? It wasn't even replaced with another. I was simply restoring it and as such being blocked in anyway seems rather ludicrous. BTW, thanks for your compliment....Dannyg3332 19:59, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

I have no idea why it was being removed. Thats not my problem (said Werner von Braun...): I'm only enforcing 3RR. You need to talk to whoever is removing it William M. Connolley 20:05, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

So you obviously have nothing better to do.......GAFLDannyg3332 20:07, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

It seems to be being deleted because you have failed to give an adequate copyright permission for Wikipedia to use it. As for "something better to do" my favourite reply is the one given by the caretaker sweeping the floor at St Paul's when under construction "I am helping Sir Christopher Wren build a Cathedral". Without good hygiene Wikipedia would collapse: its worthy work. --BozMo talk 20:30, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

French lessons

Texte à apprendre par coeur:

1. Veuillez avoir l'amabilité de ne pas nourrir les trolls. (Anonymous)

2. N'interrompez jamais un ennemi qui est en train de faire une erreur. (Napoléon Bonaparte)

3. On répond aux imbéciles par le silence. (Proverbe)

Full marks get you a beer at EGU. Raymond Arritt 03:19, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

Merci... William M. Connolley 09:58, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

Small review

Sorry for disturbance, but I noted that you are running 3RR board too, I would like to ask you to review this case. I just need to know if there was 3RR violation or not. Original admin of this case is not against additional review. Thank you, William M. Connolley, in advance, M.K. 10:45, 25 February 2007 (UTC)