After spending far too much time over the years dealing with Doug Cotton’s brand of physics (both directly and indirectly through the many people who ask me about his views), I have decided to suspend comments on my blog.

I want to emphasize that my decision is in large part due to the influence he has had on others, and how those people have magnified the problem. I’m all for new ways of looking at physics, but when one can so easily refute his views (e.g. with a simple hand-held infrared thermometer), it is clear that he is immune to evidence.

If Doug wants to continue to spread his views, he has the freedom to do that in other ways; I dont have to be party to it.

Doug routinely hijacks threads to spread his message. He has been banned elsewhere, but there is really no way to prevent him from posting. I’ve tried blocking IP addresses (he uses proxy servers from all over the world), screen names (he has an infinite number to choose from), keywords, and key phrases. He pretends to be other people who support his views. (Out of 4 reviews of his e-book on Amazon, two are by him, one pretending to be someone else. The other two reviews are 1-star.)

I could require new commenters to be approved by me, but he could easily post something innocuous to get approval. Then nothing will have changed…except that I would then have the additional task of approving new commenters a few times a day.

A few scientists have suggested to me they think Doug is actually paid by Soros or Steyer to waste our time, but I find that to be a little far-fetched.

I simply do not have the time anymore; my blog has been a public service separate from my job responsibilities. I sometimes wish we skeptics had a George Soros or a Tom Steyer to bankroll our blog efforts.

As it is, when John Christy and I are gone, the UAH global temperature dataset might well die with us; young researchers risk their careers by involving themselves with what is considered to be skeptic-friendly science.

Most of those familiar with my blog simply ignore Doug. But there are always new people who engage him, which is what keeps him going. Then, I get asked the same questions, over and over, about his theory that the atmospheric temperature profile is just the result of gravity, and that there is no atmospheric greenhouse effect that can be affected by our carbon dioxide emissions.

Unfortunately, I have too much going on in my life right now to babysit the blog comments section, so I am going to just shut them down.

Too bad.

UPDATE: DJC has attempted to post 25 comments since I shut down commenting 23 hrs ago. This is very curious behavior.