The blog that broke created the Fakegate story, only to have it blow up in their faces when skeptics fingered Peter Gleick as the culprit, forcing him to admit that he’d been the one to steal the documents from Heartland, has had its 15 minutes of fame, and is now headed back into Internet obscurity.
On the graph below, one can clearly see the traffic spikes of Feb14th, when the story broke was first marketed, and Feb 2s1st when Gleick confessed made his limited hangout. Since then it’s been downhill for DeSmog.
Alexa global traffic rank for DeSmog and WUWT, lower number is better (for example Google is #1)
If found this graph at 3 months also very telling:
That’s what is known as a “dead cat bounce”. Even more cowbell Chris Mooney articles don’t seem to be helping DeSmog.
After this fiasco, I hope David Suzuki starts to wonder why he’s (allegedly) funding those guys. I’m guessing that there will be another traffic spike for DeSmog in the not too distant future, when indictments and lawsuits are handed out.
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Anthony, with all due respect, somewhere in cyberland there is probably a real “David Susuki” who does not deserve to have his name tarnished by association with DeSmearBlog!
OTOH, David Suzuki deserves every opprobrium under the sun.
REPLY: Typo fixed, -A
Log scale. Are you trying to hide their insignificance, Anthony? 😉
REPLY: No, just trying to get them on the page. – Anthony
Hello…………….. is your scale right side up?
woops…………… It is sorry. I was thinking count not rank.
the not too distance future, when indictments and lawsuits are handed out.
_______________________
Please do tell, seems some insider information?
Maybe desmog blog will hide the decline?It will be a travesty if they can’t.Mind your back Anthony,next time ben santer sees you,he may be tempted to beat the crap out of you.PMSL
This blog is going sideways with it’s concentration on the Heartland Institute documents. OK so Peter Gleik acted dishonourably, but what effect is this having on the international debate on anthropogenic climate change? Probably not a lot. Can you get back to focussing on articles that deal with the scientific aspects of climate change and spend less energy on irrelevant side issues?
After this article you may well be that last person who saw their blog alive…
Ian of Fremantle says:
March 15, 2012 at 10:13 pm
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Sorry to disagree Ian. I personally find this whole episode fascinating and would like to continue to have it followed closely by WUWT. There is no other news source where I can get this information.
And there is plenty of science to go around. Most of the articles do focus on the science.
Whatsupwiththat.com may have been responsible for the spike in traffic at desmogblog.com. I never went there before WUWT pointed me too it.
Goes to show that the average Jill/Joe has a good BS detector?
Ian of Fremantle says:
March 15, 2012 at 10:13 pm
Sideways? Looking at the alexa rank, yes it is. WUWT is maintaining a very healthy position in the top 15000 to 25000 websites worldwide. That in itself is a very impressive statistic.
I was looking at the Alexa data and I saw that Honduras loves this website, with this website being 382nd there, compared to about 18000 everywhere else. Does anybody know why.
Alex Stephens says:
March 15, 2012 at 10:54 pm
“I was looking at the Alexa data and I saw that Honduras loves this website, with this website being 382nd there, compared to about 18000 everywhere else. Does anybody know why.”
One Honduran was interested in the Gleick affair.
(Not wanting to denigrate Hondurans – but it seems most of them don’t have stable electricity supply, and even less will be online)
Ian of Fremantle says:
March 15, 2012 at 10:13 pm
“This blog is going sideways with it’s concentration on the Heartland Institute documents.”
You forgot to mention that you’ve been reading WUWT for years, but now you don’t know whether it’s still as good as it used to be; that’s a standard necessity for concern troll posts.
“DeSmog Blog headed back to obscurity”
—————————————————-
Climatepoetic justiceI’ve seen repeated claims that WUWT “trolls” are invading a blog here or there…..
Will they blame WUWT trolls for their demise because we didn’t visit??
On the Honduran connection….Makes one wonder if there isn’t a bot that links through a proxy in Honduras that keeps their count up?
Bernd Felsche says:
March 15, 2012 at 9:40 pm
Log scale. Are you trying to hide their insignificance, Anthony? 😉
REPLY: No, just trying to get them on the page. – Anthony
;0) now that comment made my morning Anthony many thanks!!
A well as today. 😉
Why don’t Warmists realise that one of the reasons why sceptical blogs do so well is because there is no free debate in the media and the media are biased. When you try to supress contradictory evidence then people start to become suspicious and look for themselves as the media has largely failed in its duty. They (Warmists and media) are helping to SPREAD scepticism IMHO.
One more thing, I think that one of the reasons why Gleick went so far as to carry out wire fraud was because he (like others) was convinced that sceptics are successful because they are a well funded denialist machine. They thought they found their smoking gun with funding from Heartland for Anthony Watts for a computer based temperature project which would be open to the general project and any scientist. No funding for WUWT. In the meantime they probably inadvertently sent us large numbers of people who may turn from Warmist to sceptic. 😉
Dirk H 11.26 pm. Yes, I have been reading WUWT (and Real Climate and Climate Audit and Open Mind) for a long time. A criticism doesn’t make one a troll and it is a typical ad hominem one routinely sees on Real Climate and Open Mind. I had thought posters on WUWT were moving above that sort of approach but from your post it appears my optimism was ill founded
Once again, better traffic rank does not make WUWT right and DeSmog wrong. I think it’s more matter of supply and demand – there’s so much warmist information on the net, in media and everywhere that nobody needs to check it up anymore despite the fact that every average Joe in the world believes in global warming. WUWT provides low profile commodity to specialized group of customers, that’s what makes the difference. And that group is large enough and hopefully growing.
Sometime in the future hopefully the ideas presented here on WUWT will become widespread and people will start taking them for granted. What will happen then? WUWT rank will go down where ranks of sites you are laughing at now are. At the time of victory WUWT will be no more needed.
Think about it.
Good riddance to bad rubbish
Jimbo says:
“One more thing, I think that one of the reasons why Gleick went so far as to carry out wire fraud was because he (like others) was convinced that sceptics are successful because they are a well funded denialist machine. “
Looks to me like they are still convinced that sceptics are successful because there is a well funded denialist machine even though the evidence is overwelmingly against it. Gleick even repeats the meme in his confession of obtaining documents that disprove the meme. Kinda makes one wonder if they have any ability to draw a rational conclusion from evidence at all.
Bernd Felsche says: March 15, 2012 at 9:40 pm
Log scale. Are you trying to hide their insignificance, Anthony? 😉
REPLY: No, just trying to get them on the page. – Anthony
That says it all! (Funniest exchange all year!).
Anthony has to change the scale … not as the warmists do to exclude the information and exaggerate their case … but to include the other side, even if it means giving them more significance than they deserve.