After a good run of almost 3 years SkepticTV will sadly cease to exist (I was the broadcast technician for them). The past 3 years were extremely fun and eventful with our show, the many guests we’ve had, and us appearing as guests on other shows. We also made a difference through the fundraisers we held.
But unfortunately a lot of us had trouble finding the time for keeping the show, website, and our social media accounts running. It takes a lot more time to run a 2 hour live show about scepticism than most people realize. Most of us also have their our own projects, jobs, education, and other real life obligations competing for time. As it wasn’t fair to burden those that still had some time with the sole responsibility to keep SkepticTV running the decision was made to discontinue the show.
After a good run of almost 3 years SkepticTV will sadly cease to exist. The past 3 years were extremely fun and eventful with our show, the many guests we’ve had, and us appearing as guests on other shows. We also made a difference through the fundraisers we held.
But unfortunately a lot of us had trouble finding the time for keeping the show, website, and our social media accounts running. It takes a lot more time to run a show about scepticism than most people realize. Most of us also have their our own projects, jobs, education, and other real life obligations competing for time. As it wasn’t fair to burden those that still had some time with the sole responsibility to keep SkepticTV running the decision was made to discontinue the show.
The website Watts Up With That run by Anthony Watts always was a website that uses conspiracy theories to support their argument that global warming isn’t a cause for concern. They try to keep what they publish on the website somewhat scientific, but that’s just a thin layer. That they are a conspiracy theory website sometimes becomes very obvious.
For both my website and YouTube channel I have some very strict moderation rules. For both the rules say you need to stay civil, you answer questions when asked, provide citations (or give them when asked), don’t make claims that are demonstrably wrong, don’t spam, and the comment has to be on-topic. If the comment you place doesn’t abide by those rules you will either get a warning from me or if it crosses the line too much I’ll just remove it.
Repeated violations will lead to me banning you on my YouTube channel or my website. With the intermediate step on my website that all comments from you will go into my moderation queue before they appear. These rules are quite strict compared to what is the norm on most websites, but I’ve found them to be necessary.
When I just had started writing for this website and creating my videos I was very lenient towards commenters. Everyone could say anything in whichever way they wanted. This almost always resulted in very unpleasant and unproductive exchanges. My frustration with people not engaging me in an honest and civil way was what lead to me creating the rules that I now have.
Continue reading The Perfect Example For Why I Moderate My Comment Sections
The time of year has again arrived in The Netherlands that we’re looking forward to our annual Sinterklaas tradition. Especially the children are looking forward to the arrival of Sinterklaas as this means candy and presents. What’s not to like about that when you’re a child?
For us adults it’s fun to see all this as we remember how it was for us when we were little. Every adult also knows someone who has helped as a Zwarte Piet or Sinterklaas. These are roles that are taken very seriously as we have fond memories of this tradition. Especially of Zwarte Piet who always was fun to be around, especially as that was the person you could get candy from (they often carry really big bags filled with candy).
Continue reading The Dutch And Zwarte Piet (Black Pete)
This time I can thank Wotts for making me notice some content that was being pushed on social media by one of the usual misinformers. It was a tweet sent from the official CFACT twitter account stating “Politics always “manages” science at the IPCC“.
CFACT, short for Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, is a conservative organisation that spreads the usual incorrect claims about environmental issues and global warming. Though they claim to infuse “the environmental debate with a balanced perspective on environmental stewardship”. According to their about page (archived here) they to do this with the help of “an influential and impressive scientific advisory board” which contains Christopher Monckton (archived here).
A lot of familiar names like Sallie Baliunas, Craig T. Idso, Patrick J. Michaels, and Willie Soon advice CFACT on environmental issues and policy matters. Which doesn’t bode well for the accuracy of the materials spread by CFACT.
Continue reading CFACT’s Factless Attack On The IPCC
Anthony Watts is very fond of using Alexa statistics for showing how popular his blog is. Especially when he can use it to show that his blog is more popular than websites that spread good information on climate science.
But the problem is that Alexa uses indirect measurements to give an estimate for how much a website is visited. This makes Alexa traffic statistics basically worthless if you’re trying to do any serious analysis of visitor numbers to websites. You just don’t use it as you will almost always get something that isn’t remotely close to reality (although some businesses do use this data).
On social media there’s never a dull moment with all the interesting and fun things that are shared on it. Also never a shortage of misinformation that’s being bounced around in your preferred ideological echo chamber.
You can trust on Fox News for misrepresenting climate science or the science behind environmental issues in general. They are one of the media outlets that are burdened with most of the blame on misinforming the U.S. public on these matters. What they say almost always has no bearing whatsoever on what is in the scientific literature.
Often the misinformation they spread is in the form of what is called false balance. This is the balancing of one position with another so that they don’t seem to be biased towards one particular position. And yes this is a deliberate tactic by them to sow confusion on global warming.
Trying to engage ‘climate sceptics’, or so-called sceptics as I prefer to call them, in a fact based discussion is often quite frustrating. Not because you might not convince them to your own position, but because simple basic facts are dismissed. This prevents you from having a factual discussion on how we might want to react towards the changes we are causing in our planet’s climate.
After a good run of almost 3 years SkepticTV will sadly cease to exist (I was the broadcast technician for them). The past 3 years were extremely fun and eventful with our show, the many guests we’ve had, and us appearing as guests on other shows. We also made a difference through the fundraisers we held.
The website Watts Up With That run by Anthony Watts always was a website that uses conspiracy theories to support their argument that global warming isn’t a cause for concern. They try to keep what they publish on the website somewhat scientific, but that’s just a thin layer. That they are a conspiracy theory website sometimes becomes very obvious.
This time I can thank Wotts for making me notice some content that was being pushed on social media by one of the usual misinformers. It was a tweet sent from the official CFACT twitter account stating “
Anthony Watts is very fond of using Alexa statistics for showing how popular his blog is. Especially when he can use it to show that his blog is more popular than websites that spread good information on climate science.
You can trust on Fox News for misrepresenting climate science or the science behind environmental issues in general. They are one of the media outlets that are burdened with most of the blame on misinforming the U.S. public on these matters. What they say almost always has no bearing whatsoever on what is in the scientific literature.