From the Facebook page of the Climategate.com operator:
Climategate is closing down
I am very sorry to bring you the news today that climategate.com is shutting down.
It started out as a minor little “hour a day” hobby last December after I purchased the domain name, and it turned into a monster of a site, causing me to work on it every spare hour of my day, every day. I just could no longer justify the time spent with literally pennies to a few dollars in ad revenue coming in a day. I do very much appreciate the generous donations some people made along the way, which helped with the expensive dedicated server the huge traffic required.
I spent many hours the last two weeks trying to find a solution to keeping the site going, either putting it on autopilot somehow or making a decent revenue stream off of it. I just could not do it. Believe me, I really tried.
It wasn’t fair to my family that I had my face buried in my computer all day and night. It felt like I was on a treadmill and could not get off. And I also owed it to my family to earn some income somewhere instead of just working on “the cause” all the time.
So, that’s what happened. Again, I’m really sorry.
Thank you all for everything.”
“This domain name had a web site with 570 posts, 6000 comments, a PR4 rating and Alexa rank of about 70,000, when I parked it on 3/11/10. I started the site in December 09. Just got burned out with such a popular site and had to move on to other things. The entire WordPress site is still on my server and will be saved for a buyer if they are interested.
First $100,000 takes it.
================
Heh. He doesn’t know the meaning of hard work.
WUWT:
2,639 Posts 310,303 Comments
Alexa rank:
* Alexa Traffic Rank: 13,680
* United States Flag Traffic Rank in US: 6,654
* Sites Linking In: 3,114
Now http://www.climate-gate.com
Do like Al Gore… merge!
The question is, how did the domain name get snapped up so quickly by apparent warmists as a renewable energy site?
But what about the zillions that Exxon must pay him?????
Doh
Bluehost, Dreamhost and other providers can host a site with that kind of visitor numbers quite easily for the $7 a month they charge.
As someone who searched for climategate.com, I’m glad someone thought of the idea before me, and certainly you did a better job than I would have!
Sorry to hear you are giving up, what happened to all that big-oil money we are supposed to get?
Intelligent people always asks for help when they need help, or so I’ve been told.
Proper greedy people earn their own money, the foul greedy ones asks for it just like that (sry but that’s what it looks like).
Hasn’t he been getting the cheques from BP and ExxonMobile, or the envelopes of cash from Halliburton?
I can’t stop laughing, but I have to say this, who asks for 100K for a site the seller him self says only makes bread crumbs and spare change?
Your contribution was much appreciated!
(Perhaps this will help expose the lie that “deniers/realists/skeptics/dissidents” are on Big Oil’s payroll.)
Very poor excuse. There was about one to two articles a day, the site could have been handed off to somebody that could have continued the site. I think there was a 100,000 reasons to beging the site in the first place and take advantage of the users building up the site. Greed.
Take care of your family! The world is ‘usually’ capable of taking care of itself and keeping the crazzies in check. When one door closes, another door opens. GBY&Y
$100,000 for a domain name in this economy?
100,000 would be a good investment for George Soros; he could use the site to spread some helpful information about how evil CO2 is. Maybe have Joe Romm at the controls.
Just goes to show how much Anthony has put into his site and the huge contribution he has made to exposing this AGW fraud. If it wasnt for McIntyre and Watts we would still be years off exposing the bad science involved. Of couse, if it wasnt for Real Climate we would have progressed even more slowly with less laughs.
Apparently he didn’t get his big oil/coal check:)
$100,000, ..man!, and we say that the IPCC is a bunch of crouks.
175$ p/posting… looks like when Mr Watt is selling , he’s hitting the jackpot.
Jee, seeya …i’m off , starting my own climateblog this minute.
I am sorry that any site stops, but family should come first.
Convicted felon George Soros handles transactions with many more zeroes than 100 grand. If the site retains a registration,it remains with it’s owner. I posted occasional comments. Joe Romm has a lot of posts with merely 2-3 comments. I suspect he works about 14 hour days. He is a control freak and deletes hundreds of comments.
Graham, the other guy who posted could have kept the site updated. Closing down the site and offering the content, user information & ip addresses and domain name to the highest alarmist bidder is cheap and nasty.
I could run that on a Pentium II machine.
I have a site that does 1 million PHP scripts per day (and 10 million images) that I used to run on a single core Celeron. And it pushes about 50 to 60 GB/day. Cost to run? $69 US a month.
This guy is an incompetent system administrator if he can’t run that site on a $69/mn box.
someone spider the site quick, and put it up somewhere else. If he wants to sell it, it is not for the content – which is sad.
when I looked at climategate.com in Holland I got a site in Dutch with windmills and Renewable energy on it!!!
Way too much for a site that would have a limited keyword space not already occupied by other sites.
Maybe worth about $1,000.
On a related topic, I just sent off a letter to USA Today about their article, “Questions about research slow climate change efforts” written by Brian Winter. Here’s the reprint. (it’s big.)
To: ‘accuracy@usatoday.com’
Subject: A little due diligence please.
Hello,
I am writing this in response to your article entitled “Questions about research slow climate change efforts” written by Brian Winter. I am assume this article relates to your front page article in the printed version of your paper that is on the stands today.
Understand that I am aware that “Climate Change” is a complicated subject, but gentlemen (and ladies), before you commit to print an article of this magnitude a little due diligence is required. The article above has so many “errors of omission” that anyone who is even vaguely educated on the subject of “Climate Change” or “AGW” can see the Pro-AGW tilt in the author’s writing. Below are some examples of your inaccurate reporting.
Regarding Dr. Michael Mann’s “life work” and “Climategate”, Your quote,
“it’s the fact that his life’s work — the effort to stop global warming — has been under siege since last fall. That’s when Mann suddenly found himself in the middle of the so-called “climategate” scandal, in which more than 1,000 e-mails among top climate scientists — including Mann — were obtained illegally by hackers and published on the Internet.”
First, no one actually KNOWS the method by which the “Climategate” emails came to the public attention. Stating that they were “obtained illegally by hackers” is complete and utter SPECULATION on the part of the author. There is just as much evidence, if not more, that the emails were leaked by an insider at East Anglia University or the CRU (thus making the whole thing subject to “Whistleblower laws”), and that put’s a completely different light on the whole defense of the “Climategate” emails being “illegally hacked”, doesn’t it?
Second, a more accurate description of Mann’s “Life work” would be his decade long fight to validate his THRICE debunked “Hockey stick” Paper, known in the Climate academia as MBH 98/99. This paper, which purports to prove that the Medieval Warm Period and the “Little Ice Age” (1) Never existed, and (2) if they did, they were regional and insignificant; as well as trying to purport that recent global temperature rise is “Unprecedented” within the last THOUSAND years, was the ~**SHOWCASE**~ item in both the IPCC TAR (3rd Assessment report), and Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” movie. This paper was initially debunked by McIntyre and McKittrick in “Corrections to the Mann et. al. (1998)” and their results were summarily upheld by a Congressional Investigation known as “The Wegman Report” led by Edward Wegman, chair of the National Academy of Sciences’ (NAS) Committee on Applied and Theoretical Statistics, and National Research Council report “Surface Temperature Reconstructions for the Last 2,000 Years” by Gerald North, chairman of the National Research Council. The IPCC quietly removed all references to MBH 98/99 from their 3rd assessment report afterward and subsequently is rarely ever cited in academia or scientific works. (Although, it still makes regular appearances in Pro-AGW propaganda.)
There have been a number of “independent” papers published in an effort to bolster MBH 98/99, but they all suffer from the SAME problems. 1. Most of these supporting papers were written by Co-Authors of MBH 98/99 therefore they aren’t really “independent”. 2. ALL of the supporting papers use the exact same bad data as MBH 98/99 and the same poor statistical methods that were suspect in the first place to produce the “Hockey stick” shape. In fact, two of the papers have become infamous for the unethical way they were published and their inclusion into the IPCC 4th AR IN VIOLATION of the IPCCs own policies. (Read about it here: http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2008/8/11/caspar-and-the-jesus-paper.html)
On a side note, a number of the findings of the Wegman Report that have been criticized by other AGW media mouthpieces (Specifically Realclimate.org) have been proven to be TRUE by the “Climategate” emails. In particular are the findings of:
-A social network of authorships in temperature reconstruction is described of at least 43 authors with direct ties to Mann by virtue of having coauthored papers with him. The findings from this analysis suggest that authors in the area of paleoclimate studies are closely connected and thus ‘independent studies’ may not be as independent as they might appear on the surface.
-It is important to note the isolation of the paleoclimate community; even though its members rely heavily on statistical methods they do not seem to interact with the statistical community. Additionally, the Wegman team judged that the sharing of research materials, data, and results was done haphazardly and begrudgingly.
Next, The “Climategate” emails not only show “some of the scientists sharing doubts”, and “questioning the work of other researchers and refusing to share data with the public”… They are prima facie evidence that CRIMINAL acts of FOIA avoidance and evasion were committed, up to and including the DESTRUCTION OF PUBLIC FUNDED DATA rather than releasing it to those asking for it, and that completely unprofessional and UNETHICAL methods were used to obscure, censor, and “Hide” (their words, not mine) observed data that was in direct conflict with their purported findings of rapid global temperature rise. They also implicate Michael Mann in the commission of those same acts here in the US, we shall see what happens with the current (and still ongoing) investigation of Michael Mann at Penn State. Contrary to what the AGW spin machine has said, the investigation is still underway.
Also, the article fails to mention which IPCC report it is talking about when it says, “In the most notorious error, the IPCC report said global warming could cause glaciers in the Himalayas to melt by 2035. The purportedly impending disaster was cited repeatedly by environmental groups and politicians at the Copenhagen summit…” In the previous paragraph Michael Mann is talking about his work being included in the IPCC TAR (3rd assessment report) and Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth”, the very next paragraph the “notorious error” mentioned resides in the IPCC 4th AR. This distinction is important because the “most notorious error” in the IPCC TAR ~IS~ the inclusion of Michael Mann’s work… The “Hockey Stick”. In regards to the IPCC 4th AR, the article fails to mention WHY the Himalayan error is so “notorious”. It is “notorious” because it is documented that the IPCC Chairman, Dr Rajendra K Pachauri KNEW about this error for ~MONTHS~ prior to the Copenhagen summit, and not only did he not disclose it, he went on record and publicly ridiculed the scientists who brought it to his attention as “practitioners of Voodoo science.” This is in addition to the fact that -again- in VIOLATION of the IPCC’s own rules and standards, the 4th AR contains dozens of citations and references to non-scientific, non-peer reviewed, and activist organization sponsored papers in an effort to “make the science match the message.” All the while, as was proven to be the case in the “Climategate” emails, scientific papers that were skeptical of, or contained conclusions that were in opposition to the standard Pro-AGW/IPCC party line were being intentionally obstructed from being published and/or included in the IPCC 4th AR by “Top Climate Scientists” of which includes Jones and Mann.
As to the statements made by former senator Wirth, “It’s not a fair fight,” Wirth says. “The IPCC is just a tiny secretariat next to this giant denier machine…” let me make this extremely clear:
THERE IS ~NO~ SUCH THING AS A “MONOLITHIC”, “GIANT” or, “BIG OIL FUNDED” “DENIER MACHINE”. It simply does NOT exist, no matter how much the Pro-AGW supporters wish it did. Next time you hear someone like Joe Romm, James Hansen, Phil Jones, Michael Mann, Stephen Schneider, Gavin Schmidt, or Al Gore talk about this “Denier machine”, ask them to get SPECIFIC. Who is this “Denier machine”? Exxon? The same company that last year gave $200 MILLION to Stanford University’s Climate Change program? (This would be 10x the amount of funds commonly quoted by AGW figureheads that “Skeptic” think tanks have supposedly received from Exxon over the last ~20 YEARS~.)
Finally, what “Climate data” is Michael Mann citing when you print his statement of, “there’s a better than 50-50 chance” that 2010 will be the hottest year ever. That, more than any political statement, could refocus the debate…”? He’s certainly not citing the World Meteorological Organization, or MetHadley, or NASA, or NOAA, or NSIDC because ALL of these organizations at one time or another, have publicly gone on record as saying that global temperatures will remain stable or even cool over the next 10-15 years, possibly more.
Due Dilligence, please.
V/r,
(Redacted)
Who knows if I’ll get a response… Prolly not.
Doc
O/T Good news from another battle front. It seems a Wisconsin judge actually upheld an Amish Farmer’s Constitutional rights. Maybe American farmers will continue to be allowed to continue to farm and provide cheap food for all of us. However we expect a switch to another line of attack.
“Clark Co. Judge Rules in Favor of Amish in Premises ID Case
Wisconsin Ag Connection – 03/10/2010
A decision has finally been made in the highly anticipated case in which the State of Wisconsin was trying to sue an Amish man for not following Wisconsin’s Livestock Premise Registration law. On Tuesday, Clark County Circuit Court Judge Jon Counsell ruled that Emanuel Miller Jr. of Loyal does have a ‘religious right’ to be exempt from the law, which requires anyone who keeps, houses, or co-mingles livestock to register their premises with the state.”
The State of course will appeal the decision. http://nonais.org/2010/03/11/wi-judge-kills-premise-id/
:
Awww, come on guys – are you saying for £100K, you *wouldn’t*?
@dearieme (07:45:14) :
But what about the zillions that Exxon must pay him?????
I am loling/rolling on the floor here… that was perfect.
So where are those “Big Oil” folks I keep hearing about.
Perhaps, Climategate.com can apply for NSF funding.
Folks – for those without a sarcasm subroutine I think he is joking about the 100k….
It was a great site and will be missed. I checked it every day. Good luck!
Well, that explains all the WIndmills of You Mind hooey I saw when I went there yesterday.
Thanks for the update, Anthony.
Doc_Navy (08:44:07) :
On a related topic, I just sent off a letter to USA Today about…
————
Reply:
Great letter, Doc! I just wish USA would publish it. I’m afraid they probalby just circular-filed it.
hehe, why does google only give me climate guadalajuara when I type c..l..i..m…?
Who invented this internet thing anyways? Al Gore?
1DandyTroll (07:50:49) :
The sites been running for 120 days, from his description he’s been putting in a lot of time and effort so lets assume its 4 hours a day 7 days a week (he has to also earn money from a proper job). That means he put in 3360 hours of effort into the site. If he’s selling it for $100,000 then that is less than $30 per hour and excludes any running costs. A professional IT contractor who works for themselves will charge anything from $60 to $200 per hour. The $100,000 price tag is cheap and represents a reasonable return for the effort he’s put in.
Really sorry to hear you close – thought it was a great site – so much on there in such a short time. Great work.
Ref – Mark Rose (08:29:55) :
“I could run that on a Pentium II machine.
“I have a site that does 1 million PHP scripts per day (and 10 million images) that I used to run on a single core Celeron. And it pushes about 50 to 60 GB/day. Cost to run? $69 US a month.
“This guy is an incompetent system administrator if he can’t run that site on a $69/mn box.”
______________________
You sure know a lot about the ‘system’. It seems you could have run his ‘system’ for him and saved him a lot of time and money. Shame isn’t it? Life’s a beach.
Maybe you will help some other hero some day.
Anthony,
Please tell us you kept the domain?
Chuckle !!!
We know who the big dog is here !!!
Keep up the great work Anthony (and staff)
I guess that it’s insanity to talk about $100,000 if the website produces $0.50 a day or so and the revenue is guaranteed to drop as the keyword becomes less “current”.
If the person did it for the money, then the AGW movement is the most likely to buy such a domain, for propagandistic reasons. In that case, I would consider the guy who sold them the domain a traitor, and I would find it reasonable to see him or her on the same electric chair as Al Gore because it’s really the same kind of mentality – mentality of abusing the science for the money.
Scratch that- I didn’t read the rest of the article.
@Doc_Navy (08:44:07) :
It’s just like my chances of winning millions in the lottery. I either win or I don’t. That makes the odds 50/50, right? Either 2010 will be the hottest year ever or it won’t.
And you guys think Mann doesn’t understand statistics.
So, $100,000 for 3 months of “hard” work. Not a bad return.
TerryS (09:25:58),
The proper way to value a business is by its anticipated future revenue stream. The time invested is irrelevant.
No offence, but no one forced you to buy that domain name and run that site. If hosting is too much for you, then just host it on a blogger.com site just like wattsupwiththat.com so you don’t need to worry about traffic costs. Otherwise donate it to someone who will make good use of it to raise people’s awareness about the climate lies.
Chances are someone is going to pay him the asked for $100k and replace it with Pro-AGW “debunking”.
I seem to vaguely recall an anti-cult website that was sued into the dirt by the Church of Scientology that is now owned by them and, again if I recall correct, now explains to visitors how the CoS is not a cult.
Call my cynical, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Fenton Communications already has their checkbook out.
I really don’t understand why this posting on WUWT was even highlighted, followed by Anthony’s commentary. First, it’s not great publicity for the “cause,” and it seems like a chance for WUWT to plug their own stats. Again. Seems like WUWT must be having a slow news day to gloat, yes, it comes across as gloating, over the demise of another skeptical website.
Speaking of Alexa rankings and such, WUWT readers may be interested in the following two new articles on Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watts_Up_With_That
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DeSmogBlog
Note that if you go to the Alexa site you can generate graphs to compare the stats of these two. Its funny to see, IMHO. You can also add in climateaudit.org and realclimate.org for the full picture.
If you have any interest in how Wikipedia’s coverage of the AGW debate comes to be, simply follow the talk page discussions for the above two blogs. They should give you a micro-view into the machinations that occur there.
There’s also a mini-debate happening on the talk page of Jimbo Wales (one of the co-founders of Wikipedia) concerning the treatment of the biographies of the climate change skeptics vs. the AGW disciples: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Jimbo_wales
When Anthony last posted about William Connolley’s biography on Wikipedia I got the idea to create a blog dedicated to helping the average Joe and Jane get some idea of how the Wikipedia pages got to be such a mess. You can find this at: http://pediawatch.wordpress.com/
A few of the regular Wikipedia editors and I will be making occasional comments there for those with a passing interest in how Wikipedia covers the whole Climate Change debate. This will likely be a low traffic blog so the best way to follow along would be to simply add it to your favorite news readers and occasionally some tidbit will pop up.
Don’t know if i can trust the website i will be referring to, but apparantly he bought the domain-name in december for $10,099
http://domainnamewire.com/2009/12/07/climategate-com-domain-name-sells/
I agree that family comes first, but for the cause of that website he could have made a different decesion when selling, for example ask the initial cost as the price.
I think the domain is worth more if its active.
Juggling, you can always drop the rubber ball of work, it will bounce back eventually, but never drop the glass balls of family, friends or health.
I sense it is perhaps “the end of the beginning” with so much achieved and so much yet to do. Who knows what another cold winter will bring, another retreat from Moscow..or wherever the next “Copenhagen” will be held.
KBO
There is interesting work being done on
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/
right up your street Anthony.
Re: Smokey (09:54:43) :
I was responding to a comment by 1DandyTroll that implied the operator of climategate was being “foul greedy” for asking for $100,000. Asking for $30 per hour for your time and effort isn’t foul or greedy. The $100,000 price tag probably doesn’t represent the value of the business but it is a reasonable valuation of the time and effort put in.
Good move from the Big oil, to lauch a site and to close it b/c of insufficient funding 😉
In Holland we (still) have http://climategate.nl/
Ref – Doc_Navy (08:44:07) :
“THERE IS ~NO~ SUCH THING AS A “MONOLITHIC”, “GIANT” or, “BIG OIL FUNDED” “DENIER MACHINE”. It simply does NOT exist, no matter how much the Pro-AGW supporters wish it did. …”
_________________________
Hay Doc, ya really need to tone it down a little, I can tell from the word count that your pulse is rising. And really, you don’t want to talk too much about all da kicks in da backs us tea-tottelers have been gettin from da Big Oil mob. Skuttlebutt has it that the louder we complain about da price a gas, the more greenbacks Gore’s ambulance chaseing friends think we got stashed in the mattresses. You don’t want those poor SS folks and T-Agents losin any sleep bustin down our hatches do ya? After all, they’s family, our own flesh n blood. Take care Doc;-)
Give the poor guy a break! Anthony and a few others might have the moral authority to criticize this guy’s throwing in the towel, but most of you have no idea of the personal cost demanded of such an endeavor. He at least did more than chirp away on other people’s sites whenever he found it convenient.
It just gets kookier.
Lovelock now says once evil CO2 has rescued the planet!!
http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/162506/How-carbon-gases-have-saved-us-from-a-new-ice-age-
H/T Climate Depot
The author at climategate.com is very welcome to contribute now and then at http://www.hidethedecline.eu – when there is time 🙂
K.R. Frank
TerryS (09:25:58) :
Your math is wrong. 4 hours a day for 120 days is 480 hours, not 3360.
… which just proves once again how much WUWT rocks!
Monbiot:
“There goes my life’s work.”
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/geraldwarner/100029281/climategate-george-monbiot-despairs-of-the-agw-cause-there-goes-my-lifes-work/
Climategate is shut down? But I thought you were on the big-oil-big-coal payroll? That’s what the greenie people said. You’re rich.
On the plus side, James “Before this century is over, billions of us will die and the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in the Arctic” Lovelock appears to have reversed his views on Global Warming:
http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/162506/How-carbon-gases-have-saved-us-from-a-new-ice-age-
Too bad someone from the “well-funded” skeptic machine didn’t just put him on salary.
@GoRight,
Wow.. look at that! Wouldn’t you know it, the dynamic duo of William Connolley and Kim Dabblestien Petersen are back in action. These two are all OVER the editing and discussion pages for WUWT and DSB.
You’d think that after Connolley got his hand slapped for Wikipedia violations, he’d tone the partisan editing down… guess not.
Doc
Come on people……
The “First $100,000 takes it.” is a joke, for heaven’s sake!
@ Doc Navy
Good job. I never read that rag, but my husband still subscribes. But as I lay it on the table that headline and picture grabbed me and I skimmed the first few paragraphs. I almost threw it away before my husband got home.
Thank you for taking the time to refute the garbage they allowed that author to spew across the nation’s breakfast tables.
I hope you’ll let us know if you get a response. I can’t bring myself to open it to look for your response in the letters to the editor columns.
INSUBORDINATION ALERT!
Anthony, I think your comments are arrogant, inappropriate, and tarnishes the well-earned reputation of your blog as a place with cutting-edge relevant material that is not found elsewhere in the skeptic blogosphere. Your response to the Climategate.com’s traffic numbers are something that you and your moderators could have snickered about in private without actually posting on the web. You don’t even bother to acknowledge their contribution to the AGW debate. A little humility goes a long ways.
As the owner of a small skeptic blog that will likely never have as much reach or influence as yours does, I truly appreciate Climatgate.com’s contribution to the debate however big or small it was, as well as the rest of the skeptic community. I think that Climategate.com deserves some recognition for what they did contribute, rather than some cheap comparative braggadocio from you.
Other than these types of posts, please keep doing what you do!
There is much trickery on the internet.
Especially these days,
Biggest threat to US national security, apparently.
The internet, that is.
BEWARE.
RE:TerryS
Assuming you are right about 4 hours a day over 120 days, that equals 480 hours, not 3360.
Mark Rose (08:29:55) :
Show me an upstream provider that will let anyone push 60GB a day for that price and I’ll eat my hat. Unless you’re running b3ta.com or one of the chans you’re talking out of your rear end.
I think it was a case of the owner buying something that he had strong feeling about.
One of those cases, in my opinion, where it may have been a mistake to mix the heart and business. It’s sad, because it was somehwere I could clear my head of my frustrations and also hammer away at the AGW mob who couldn’t resist posting.
It’s not something I could take on for health reasons, though I have set up my own place http://climateofreason.blogspot.com/ not that I care if anyone visits. It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve ‘bayed at the moon’ just for the good of my sanity.
I may arrange it in a form debunking various of the myths promulgated ad nauseam by warmists – methans, bio-fuel, cloud reflectors (sloar panels to be people outside the UK) and propellors (wind turbines) – and adding updating the info as I go along, because it was always frustrating to repeat stuff.
Some info such as Obama saying he would dump bio-fuel and concerns about the dangers of sequestration are not something to dump and move on.
A website that pre-dates climategate.com and is still alive and well is http://www.NewsWatchCanada.ca/climategate.html
This Canadian site has many climategate and global warming-related links and according to an email exchange with its editor, welcomes all climate-related links by email. The editor adds at least two or three climategate links per day, and sometimes many more. These links are added both at this dedicated webpage and on the site’s main news page at http://www.NewsWatchCanada.ca, which covers world and national news from a Canadian perspective. The editor’s email address is at the bottom of the webpage… This article is linked there.
@TerryS ‘The sites been running for 120 days,’
blah blah blah, if you think it’s such a good investment, then by all means go ahead and buy it!?! Yes? No?
Thought so.
And besides it doesn’t matter if a person works 48 hours for every 24 hours 7 days a week, when it can take one stellar person 5 minutes per month to do the same, i.e. the time spent almost never justify the price.
Damn you Scott B, I thought I was going to be the first smart ass to point that out!
UNRELATED:
Notice that Cryosphere Today is showing global sea ice extent anomaly at zero.
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/global.daily.ice.area.withtrend.jpg
Nothing really unusual about that, except we are apparently just past the peak of a moderately strong El Nino:
http://www.cpc.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/lanina/enso_evolution-status-fcsts-web.pdf
While warmests will likely use the satellite record, which does reflect the El Nino warming:
(http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/UAH_LT_1979_thru_Feb_10.jpg)
as an indication of AGW, at least they can not point to the current sea ice as an indicator. Even the big drop in the North Polar ice a few years ago is becoming more of a problem for them as it continues to recover.
As the El Nino fades, satellite temperatures drop and the Northern ice fades more slowly this spring, what in the world will they have to talk about?
“The sites been running for 120 days, from his description he’s been putting in a lot of time and effort so lets assume its 4 hours a day 7 days a week (he has to also earn money from a proper job). That means he put in 3360 hours of effort into the si”
Duh? 120 days x 4 = 480 hours. Your 3,000 or so hours was a x 7 error. Been taking lessons from Keith, Michael, Phil, Jim, Joe, Al and Rajendra…?
From here:
…and going down.
Of course, at least +/-25% error bar has to be attached to that.
P.S. WUWT according to them is 193k and going up. 🙂
Too bad. One less site posting articles almost exclusively from Alex Jones. This is probably better for the skeptics position.
Hate to bring this guy bad news, but the site isn’t worth $100k with stats like that. Maybe $20k, but mostly because of the strong URL.
@Archonix Rackspace Cloud, Media Temple for starters
Ref – Richard Gilbert (11:43:58) :
RE:TerryS
“Assuming you are right about 4 hours a day over 120 days, that equals 480 hours, not 3360.”
________________
Sorry, it depends on what it “FEELS” like –
3360 days at 480 hours a day and 120 days without eating.
Don’t knock til ya tried it!
The owner states he purchased the domain name. Is it known how much he paid for it? If he paid anything for it he’s out the money.
If he gives me the domain I’ll invite him to my birthday party on Friday. Last bid.
I am disappointed that such an interesting site has closed. I looked at it quite often and was impressed with the content. But family life (and earning a living) must come first. Best wishes
Taylor
Here is another BIG OIL Site;
No, I dont think so. I have a feeling its the little guy again, doing their part for mankind;
Lots of nice videos! Enjoy!
http://climateclips.com/about
From that site;
Lao Tzu from the 6th century BCE said:
“Those who have knowledge, don’t predict. Those who predict, don’t have knowledge”.
hehe.
Never visited it, but nudges me to hit the WUWT tip jar when next I’m able.
1DandyTroll (07:54:44) :
I can’t stop laughing, but I have to say this, who asks for 100K for a site the seller him self says only makes bread crumbs and spare change?
—-
I kinda took that as a joke, myself! As in “I’ll be happy to sell you my 1995 Pontiac Grand Am for a million smackers!”
First offer of $1 million US gets it.
Tell you what, I’ll take over management of the site and split revenues with you. I’ll bet I can make it generate a lot more revenue. Any site with mere google adsense running on it should be able to make $60 per 100k hits. I’ve gotten that rate with sites with very low Alexa rankings and only 150k hits per month.
$100,000. That just the labor on a engine change on Al Gore’s GulfStream.
Right = Cash. See, Al gore was ‘right’ and you guys are out of business!
(the truth however, is priceless and unbuyable)
Best wishes.
From the financials and activity levels presented, I think the valuation model should be studied for what a realistic valuation should be.
I was not aware of the site, but it sounds like it was an interesting startup.
all the best,
GORE LIED (11:21:41) :
Agree. I started a skeptic site 7 years ago and ran it for a few years with the hopes of attracting some of you scientists out there to speak up, even if anonymously. What I discovered was that most of you were too chickens**** to oppose the so-called “consensus” at the time, so I shut it down. Maybe that just makes me a loudmouth, but at least I had the cojones to stand up to this nonsense.
“Doesn’t know the meaning of hard work”? And you know this…..how? Whoever this guy is, at least give him some credit for trying. I know how it is with family & kids, there’s only so many hours in a day. There was really no need for this post.
@AEGeneral ‘Maybe that just makes me a loudmouth, but at least I had the cojones to stand up to this nonsense.’
H8 to break it to ya, but you’re either just a normal person that didn’t have anything to loose, or one crazy mofo that got really lucky. :-()
Kidding aside a lot of people actually depend on income pretty much as long as they go along with the whole charade. And it doesn’t seem to matter to the climate communists that everyone knows it’s a charade, just look at Jones and Mann, outwardly besides the cracks they’re still acting like they’re on top of things…. who like uses 60’s defensive argumentation techniques today any way when people readily have the all the information at a clicks notice? lol they’re their own undoing, and it’s so hilarious because they’re all Dr doom and gloom and chaos or other evil self appointed so called rocket scientist and what not.
“GORE LIED (11:21:41) :
[…]
Anthony, I think your comments are arrogant, inappropriate, and ”
Some people are a little short in the humor department it seems… i took Anthony’s comment as tongue-in-cheek…
Do the people attacking here think, just, maybe the 100 grand thing was a joke….
“Katabasis (11:01:26) :
On the plus side, James “Before this century is over, billions of us will die and the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in the Arctic” Lovelock appears to have reversed his views on Global Warming:
http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/162506/How-carbon-gases-have-saved-us-from-a-new-ice-age-
”
That was really painful to read. I guess Lovelock would describe a thermostat as “effectively alive”. What a nutty nutcase of a nutter. He makes Ehrlich look sane.
Shows how important it is to keep clicking on those adverts on the sites you like. Make it a regular habit.
$100,000 for your site!!!! What about the cause? You are greedy and half-hearted about what you intended to achieve.
Re: Pascvaks (12:33:54) :
How the hell did I get that so wrong!!!!
Anthony and Mod Team,
Thanks for the reassurance that WUWT is doing well. That is how I took your words at the end of the post about WUWT performance compared to Climategate.com.
I did not see any arrogance in the words, just kind reassurance to your readers.
Live Long And Prosper.
John
Okay Okay. I’ve worked out how I screwed it up. Instead of 120 days I did 120 weeks. So maybe the 100k is a bit to much. Its just as well I’m not a climate scientist otherwise I’d have all sorts of “adjusted” graphs to show how I was right and you were wrong.
Goodbye Climategate, you’ll be missed. You did a great job.
>>Anthony, I think your comments are arrogant
I don’t, I think Anthony just created the context.
$100,000 has to be a joke right?
Tongue-in-cheek? Well, maybe you took it that way, but since we can’t see Anthony’s tongue in his cheek through the tubes I didn’t take it that way at all. But, let’s say for the sake of discussion that it is tongue-in-cheek. I still don’t see the point of this post. If my comment that Anthony’s remarks were “arrogant, inappropriate, and…” was too harsh, well, then I’d offer that his remarks amounted to childish preening and navel-gazing – and not up to the generally high standards of this otherwise fine blog. I like this blog, and I want it to succeed and remain as relevant as it has ever been, but this post is pretty much a pointless self-congratulating ego massage if you ask me.
And @John Whitman:
Was their any question that this is the biggest climate blog on the planet? Heck no. I don’t think too many readers here really need “kind reassurance” that WUWT is tops. It’s a well-known fact. So let’s keep it real, relevant, and go kick some alarmist butt – and quit with the navel-gazing.
Anthony is lucky that he has some good guys to help him out.I wonder why this man did not ask for volunteers to help him out?
I don’t know why you are criticising Anthony ALGORELIED.
He makes the point that compared to WUWT, climategate was a walk in the park.
It amazes me that Anthony can put so much time into this blog,and I am glad that he has google ads.
He didn’t give up when the going got tough,unlike some.
Ha ha!
I have just found THE Most Funniest Site!
I saw that climategate.com was a WordPress site, went to wordpress.com and searched for “climategate” to check if it was really gone…
And found http://wotsupwiththat.wordpress.com/ , titled “Wott’s Up With That?” (notice the spelling between URL and title is different).
Apparently it’s some sort of sarcastic spoof site, guy who runs it is apparently Ben Lawson and you can only find that out because that is the directory name in the URL that shows up when you mouse over some surfer dude’s pic on the site found under “Authors,” otherwise it’s completely anonymous. He posts “articles” almost as they appear here on WUWT (same or similar pics, different words) with commentary that appears to ALWAYS say “Anthony (or guest poster) Has It All Wrong!”
Just read what it says on the About page, first two paragraphs. (Don’t bother to click unless you really want to to give him hits, or are really really curious about just how silly this site can be.)
There is so much slanderous untruth right there (disclaimer: it might be, IANAL, but it looks like it to me), I Cannot Take It Seriously! It’s like The Onion, it is so blatantly obviously wrong that it must be an attempt at humor!
(…or this hypothetical “Ben Lawson” person is lashing out from deep denial over the crashing of The Church Of CAGW and the fall of St. Gore. Ah well, it’s still funny.)
Very first post was from only Jan 19, “Climategate: the CRUtape Papers”. He rips off the post titles exactly as found here, which makes comparisons between here and his version of “truth” easy. Ah heck, for “Accuracy of the climate station electronic sensors – not the best” he uses this image coming straight from WUWT! Astounding!
Dear Mr. Watts, the concerted attempts at ridiculing you have risen to new heights. They are dedicating an entire site to specifically and carefully mock only your site. Truly, your esteemed greatness in the fight for honest science is now undeniable. Absolutely, utterly, undeniably undeniable.
You have done well.
@ Noelene (18:36:50)
The owner of Climategate.com did have someone to help him out, namely John O’Sullivan who was his most frequent contributor – as well as a couple of other contributors.
Noelene says:
You’re helping me make my point, Noelene. Anthony’s comments effectively dissed Climategate.com (a fellow skeptic blog) for being “a walk in the park” as you say. My blog, GORE LIED, is also “a walk in the park” by your standards. So what? The owner of Climategate.com and my blog don’t deserve and disrespect just because Anthony’s blog is rightfully the king of all climate blogs, alarmist or skeptic. We are all on the same team, and trying to make a contribution for honest science. Since Climategate.com is/was a fellow skeptic blog, if anything, Anthony should be sending a bouquet of flowers to the owner of Climategate.com’s.
Doc_Navy (08:44:07) — Enlightening. Thank you.
Jud (09:17:20) : Folks – for those without a sarcasm subroutine I think he is joking about the 100k….
That thought was expressed in my house, too, Jud. Mebbe I jumped too soon…
Im not buying all the reasons cited as to why he took the site down. Its one thing to trail off on posting and bring in help with the moderation of comments, its another to precipitously take the whole thing down.
I think there is a bigger back-story going on there that we are not privy to. (My moneys on health issues or legal).
Shame, really. Hope it works out for him.
GORE LIED (20:46:58) :
We are all on the same team
Exactly.
Encouragement. Pass it on.
GORE LIED “We are all on the same team”
… I’m not!
Seriously, we are sceptics/scientists, because we think simple facts are far more important than the “team” and “we” are better than the climate forecasters because we see good criticism as the way to improvement in science!
So our strength is the fact we are not some sycophantic amorphous group seeking solace in the “team” who always agree with whatever nonsense we publish!
@ Jud (09:17:20) :
“Folks – for those without a sarcasm subroutine I think he is joking about the 100k….”
Quite. My first reaction too. Get some irony guys.
Wow, I thought Big Oil was funding all these people remember that’s what the AGW believers keep saying, but look it’s just someone trying to get the truth out!
Here’s a debate on a relatively new forum that could do with some input from well informed independant thinkers…..
http://www.rationalskepticssociety.com/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=170
“It’s just like my chances of winning millions in the lottery. I either win or I don’t. That makes the odds 50/50, right? Either 2010 will be the hottest year ever or it won’t.
And you guys think Mann doesn’t understand statistics.”
I, for one, appreciate the sarcasm of this statement and I couldn’t really tell if anyone else caught this sublime bon mot.
Well done, John Galt, as well as choosing a login id from a character in Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged.” I read a hardcover edition back in 1990 and it has stuck with me to this day.
Best of luck to the climategate.com operator. But I thought all of us skeptics were on the payroll of big oil, Watts Up With That? As far as selling your site for $100k goes, you are going to need lots and lots of good luck in this depressed economy.
@Doc_Navy (08:44:07) :
“Finally, what “Climate data” is Michael Mann citing when you print his statement of, “there’s a better than 50-50 chance” that 2010 will be the hottest year ever.”
– – – – – – – – – –
It the same as when the weatherman predicts “50% chance of rain”. He can never be said to be wrong.
Duncan (12:30:53) :
I just checked rackspace cloud’s pricing. 22¢ per GB traffic adds up to a whole hell of a lot more than $60 per month on 60BG traffic a day, that’s without including the monthly base cost of the server ram and drive space. 60GB a month I could believe at that price, but not a day. When you’re pushing 60GB handling all those requests would be more than a P2 could handle anyway, never mind the additional requirements for running those “millions” of PHP scripts. Call me a skeptic, I just don’t believe Mr Rose’s claim about his “Pentium II” server.
sitevaluecheck puts a $9146 value on the site, so $100,000 seems way too much.
http://sitevaluecheck.com
What he could do is link to the most prominent articles of the last few months such as the wonderful commentary of the leaked CRU emails by Dr John P Costella, so that anyone landing on the climategate.com page would at least have something which could give them the background to the story.
There really is no excuse for this.
From the site cited:
A little overboard, don’t you think? No hyperbole, no exaggeration, no hobby horse to be ridden there – right? Ans all because some people within the state are failing (and knowingly avoiding) complying with the requirements of Wisconsin’s Livestock Premise Registration law?
BTW, for the uninformed the “noais” in nonais.org stands for “no <a href="http://www.aphis.usda.gov/traceability/"National Animal Identification System" (part of the USDA’s Animal Disease Traceability program) so, would you say they (noais) are an unbiased source of news or opinion on this subject?
How exactly does this tie in with the NWO (‘New World Order’ for the initiated)? I could ask, “What’s next, advocating avoidance of childhood vaccinations?”
Mods: She coat-racks it, I feel obliged to provide a bit of realistic balance …
.
.
Doc_Navy (08:44:07) :
Nice review. It certainly doesn’t hurt to complain about the obvious bias.
Archonix (11:48:37) :
Mark Rose (08:29:55) :
Show me an upstream provider that will let anyone push 60GB a day for that price and I’ll eat my hat. Unless you’re running b3ta.com or one of the chans you’re talking out of your rear end.
While the hardware provided is light years above what Mark was talking about a nice dual core 2.8 GHz dedicated server with 2TB of monthly transfer included is only $99/month currently.
http://www.theplanet.com/
“Okay Okay. I’ve worked out how I screwed it up. Instead of 120 days I did 120 weeks”
TerryS, please update your resume and arrive at NASA’s New York office for Monday morning, 9 am sharp. James Hansen and Al Gore would like to interview you for a data processing position that just opened up …
A brand used to be the one and only requirement for identification, and beef and horses were the only products it was stamped on. Range cattle mixed with his and her herds and roamed open grazing land, thus needed to be separated by herd owner at round-up time. The brand allowed exactly that to happen. In addition, these animals had just one owner through their lifetime and were then shipped to slaughter.
That is not how it works these days.
Meat animals and beasts of burden may have several owners, sometimes all at once and sometimes serially. In addition, feedlot practices force us to record all owners. Why? So that disease can be traced to its proper source and addressed. Trust me, under current “finishing” practices, ID regulation is probably a necessary evil of a modern world.
In a way, animal ID is a way to track the whereabouts of a national security threat, that of animal disease that can rapidly infiltrate and harm both animals and humans. It isn’t the animal we need to track, it is the disease organism that hitches a ride on the only train in town.
My post on agriculture ID was in response to Gail Combs (08:47:49).
$100,000? Why, that would only take 100 scientists. And a much better return than paperspace advertising.
http://www.knowyourplanetcom/climate-data/
Hosting is so cheap and competitive nowerdays, it doesn’t matter how much traffic you have, I’m sure you could’ve kept it up there, even if you don’t post that often, bloody hell. With all that content and that domain name I would’ve PAID YOU to keep it going!