My belated condolences. I always enjoyed reading his posts and will miss his insight and wide ranging views. May hew…
We’ve come a long way
A word from Blackswan to the Pointman,
It’s almost ten years since you opened Pointy’s Place, the Bar & Grill where we all found a warm welcome, wonderfully eclectic music, good company, and some really interesting conversation. And now (your stats tell us) there have been one and a half MILLION visits through those batwing doors to join the buzzing crowd.
You once told us this blog was Pointman putting messages in bottles and tossing them into the tide for any of us to pick up and make of them what we will.
I think you’ve moved beyond that.
Today I think of you as a trawlerman in his little clinker hull fishing boat, venturing beyond the breakwater into the open sea. You gather up all the ideas, music, humour and points of interest you can find, bringing them back to port. Laid out on the jetty in wicker baskets and lobster pots, there’s always a juicy array of tidbits for our selection … so that we don’t have to go fishing in hostile waters for ourselves.
And a most satisfying feast it has proven to be.
High profile blogs with millions of page-views have bountiful subscription fees and donors, researchers, staff, a collaboration of story ideas and feature projects from some very creative minds – but Pointy’s has always been a unique one-man operation.
At this significant milestone, I’d just like to say Thank You … for the hundreds of hours of research you put in, for the hundreds more hours you spend pounding away at that old Remington typewriter of yours, for translating the incomprehensible nature of science and politics to laypeople like me, dramatic fiction that’s food for thought, and the many insights you bring.
Congratulations on some great work Pointy – you should know that it’s appreciated.
©Blackswan
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Thanks for all you have done Pointy. I too have been reading your work since near the beginning and and I always look forward to the next edition. All the best!
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Thanks for all the insights gained over the years. I too have been a reader since near the beginning in a couple of incarnations. I rarely comment but never fail to read. Thank you Pointy.
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I too thank you for all your efforts. I would add that Blackswan is indeed another very fine wordsmith.
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Congratulations on this milestone, and thanks for all the good work, Pointy. Always interesting to receive a considered opinion from time to time, amongst the everyday yelping and baying we get from the blogosphere.
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Yes – wonderful essays. Every time I read and enjoy one I am impatient for the next. Keeping pace with what is happening here and in the US is exciting Chinese Curse stuff. I was not a reader at the start but became aware through Pointman postings on WUWT. I send the essays to others just as keen to read them and I can’t be the only one to do that.
Oh, and thanks Blackswan for your brilliant postings too.
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A beacon of sanity in an internet awash with media and political insanity.
thank you
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This is the bit where I have to say some thank youse, and there’s simply no way you can do that without sounding like some cringingly bad Hollywood acceptance speech, but I will attempt that high fence and in the hope of speaking just from the heart, it’ll mean something above the banal.
First off, I thank Swanny for writing such a generous piece and as their friend GG observed, I’m not the only one who has a talented turn of phrase and me sailing out into unknown waters with a few things I consider treasure is all too accurate. I get out there into uncharted and dangerous seas and dive overboard to retrieve some baubles from the ocean floor. I’ve never been confident of ever making it back to the surface when my lungs are breaking for air. If you ever lose that edge, that feeling of being scared shitless, you should stop writing.
But in a larger sense, to borrow a phrase from Mr. Lincoln, I owe the Blackswan for nearly a decade’s worth of support. We’re both strong personalities with a certain clarity of vision which wasn’t acceptable a decade ago when the climate wars were in full swing and vicious at places like the Daily Telegraph when it was a decent newspaper, but the Blackswan never backed off the beliefs we both shared. In that ten years, we’ve occasionally fought like tigers, made our way through one or two hard valleys together because we didn’t need to exchange any bollocks words of comfort, it was unspoken because one of us was hurting, we were there for each other when it was needed and to hell with anything else, and it’d be a cold day in hell before I’d ever find a better fucking wingman watching my six.
I have total trust in the Blackswan, and that’s an extremely rare commodity in my experience
If you’re reading this, I thank you because I wasn’t sure you existed, but formal logic does have certain things to recommend it, which is probably why it’s no longer taught. You were a hypothetical I posited ten years ago who could beat the 38 seconds attention span. It was that logic proposition. If you can enumerate all the logical possibilities and eliminate them one by one, and there’s only one left, then that possibility is a reality. One point five million page impressions later, I’m pretty sure you are a reality.
There’s a thing you do when you feel like a voice in the wilderness, and perhaps there’s an element of despair in it which I felt at the time. In the end, you walk into in and don’t look behind you because you expect nobody is following after you. It’s not worldwide or uniform, but I can feel so many people walking into the wilderness these days and glancing over their shoulder and being shocked at how many people are doing exactly the same.
I feel honoured to be in such company. Heroes and heroines, every damn bloody one of you.
The Point.
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Up until the last comment I was just going to add “……and so say all of us.”
But then that was not enough. But then what would be?
Thank you Pointy – most sincerely.
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Thankyou Pointman. I enjoy reading your stuff and the comments of Blackswan. Well done to have kept going.
A lot of us in Aus are feeling somewhat heartened by the election result last Saturday although I don’t suppose we are out of the woods yet. It’s good to see that more Aussies than we had supposed came out of the woodwork to show what they really feel.
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I just hope Canadians have the intelligence of the Aussies in the upcoming election in October.
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Another Aussie here to back up every word of praise for your hard grind Pointy. I think you strike a chord with us down here because we won’t put up with any bullshit.
Here’s to another 10 years of your great insights.
Cheers
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Thanks from me. I found this space years ago and look forward to each week’s posting.
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Good, good work. From the early climate writing, the beautifully observed German nights, of family, friends and whatever has crossed your mind.
I enjoy and look forward to it.
Thank you.
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Congratulations Pointy. I can do no more than echo and endorse the wonderful words of Swanny, whose warm and rewarding friendship I also came to enjoy as a result of your blog, It has been my great privilege and a highlight of my life to either meet and/or correspond with so many interesting people in the blogosphere. Long may you continue to entertain and inform us.
Cheers H/B 33
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You deserve all the good fortune in this Irish blessing:
“May the road rise up to meet you.
May the wind be always at your back.
May the sun shine warm upon your face;
the rains fall soft upon your fields and until we meet again,
may God hold you in the palm of His hand.”
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Re that picture on the side of Neuscwanstein castle.
I had a mate who had a wonderful picture of it, this was over 40 years ago and we’ve lost touch. He was a very good photographer and trekked 7 km. around the valley through the fog and was there just as the fog moved, so his picture showed the castle apparently floating on a cloud. 10 seconds later the fog covered up the castle and he trekked the 7 km. back.
And he was on his honeymoon and she went with him. And yes, he was Irish.
Seems they are a determined race.
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Indeed.
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I would like to echo Blackswan’s congratulations on nearly 10 years of ‘keeping the bastards honest” Pointman. [snip].
After years of feeling like a voice in the wilderness calling out alarmist propaganda it has been a pleasure to read your well researched and insightful articles on science and politics which have given us a real sense of purpose and hope for the future.
Being a Queenslander right now after we shut the gate on the ruinous greens/labour climate policies in our Australian Federal Elections gives a feeling of accomplishment and was well worth all the letters to local papers explaining why CO2 is not a pollutant, subsidised wind and solar energy is expensive and unreliable and the Great Barrier Reef is not dying.
Keep up the good work restoring our faith in science and common sense.
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Always thoughtful perspective.
Leaves me craving for more.
Well done.
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[snip] Your articles have been an inspiration to me to keep writing the truth in reply to unscientific dogmatism and I hope you continue your blogging. I’m a retired land and engineering surveyor who specialised in tunnel and bridge surveys where accuracy was paramount and I can be a bit crass when it comes to reading between the lines.
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