Hello Everyone,
I wish to offer my sincere thanks for your assistance and willingness for the help and ideas in putting together a presentation and appear on the WUWT-TV event. Much of this came from reader’s ideas and insight.
We had a few technical glitches, we had a couple of embarrassing moments, and we had some great fun as well. The only criticisms that seemed to be pervasive was that it “wasn’t as well presented as Al Gore’s”.
Nothing could be truer, and nothing could be more illustrative of the disparity between the well funded “haves” and “have nots”. The next time somebody points to the meme “you skeptics are funded by big oil/big coal/ big something” all you need to do is point to this first effort, and that should shut them up because the entire WUWT effort was begged, borrowed, and donated from people “just like you” to borrow that PBS label.
In the process, I learned what to do and what not to do, and how to make the next effort better when we have to work on a limited budget. I think we won on the science content though.
Hilariously, we see still things like this coming from Gore during the event that tout that “big oil and “big coal” connection they imagine: http://realitydrop.org/about.
The video is priceless:
So, lessons learned, but we pulled it off, and I owe all of you a debt of gratitude. I’ll work to get YouTube recordings up next week. For now I need to rest a bit. Posting will be light this weekend.
Again, my sincerest thanks to all who contributed, participated, and watched. A special thanks to WUWT reader John Whitman who made two 300 mile round trip drives, battled a software learning curve, and spent over a week of his time working to bring us the “did you know” and Josh intermission slides. Thanks to Josh too.
Best Regards,
Anthony Watts, and Kenji
P.S. suggestions are welcome for how to use/improve this new medium.
PPS. It seems much of Mr. Gore’s traffic may have been bot driven, see this analysis left in comments:
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Stephen Rasey
Submitted on 2012/11/16 at 2:54 pm
For fun, I was considering the proposition that each of the viewers of WUWT-TV and Gore-TV might belong to 1 of 2 populations:
X = population with a mean view time of 1 hr. (Watchers)
Y = population with a mean view time of T minutes. (Bots + thrashers)
Let T = average view time for the Y population.
Let TV = Total Views in 24 hours.
Let CV = Current Views average over 24 hr.
CV = X + Y
TV = 24* (X + Y*60/T)
Solution:
X = CV*(60/(60-T)) – TV*(T/(24*(60-T)))
Y = CV – X
TV(WUWT) = 16,690 (what I remembered seeing. I could be wrong.)
CV(WUWT) = 550 is my guess at an average in a range of 420-670 from personal observation. Until we have something better.
TV(Gore) = 15.7 million (from mfo 02:28 prev. thread) . I cannot confirm that, but Reg. Blank above reports about million at 2.25 hours, about 10% into it.
CV(Gore) = 9000 @ TV=300K, 1.5 hr;
= 11200 @ TV=500K, 1.9 hr.
= 12100 @ TV “close to a million” at 2.25 hr. from Reg. Blank above.
Shortly after this the CV counter was taken down. So we will have to guess this by exploring a range of possible values. An important constraint here is that the three observation points give a mean view time of only 3 minutes (approx.).
Frac_TV_X = Fraction of TV that can come from X population (1 hr mean) views.
Frac_TV_X = X*24/TV
First, WUWT-TV: (TV=16690, CV=550)
If T=0.16, X=550, Y=0.4, Frac_TV_X = 0.790
If T=1, X=548, Y=2, Frac_TV_X= 0.787
If T=10, X=521, Y=29, Frac_TV_X = 0.749
So 74-79% of the TV (total views) are coming from the population views with a mean 1 hr.
Now Gore-TV: (TV = 15.7 million)
If CV = 36000 (3 times highest known value)
If T=0.16; X=34347; Y=1653; Frac_TV_X=0.053
If T=1; X=25523; Y=10477; Frac_TV_X=0.039
If T=2; X=14684; Y=21316; Frac_TV_X=0.022
If T=3; X=3465; Y=32535; Frac_TV_X=0.005
T>4 is not possible.
If CV=24000, T=0.16; X=22315; Y=1685; Frac_TV_X=0.034
If CV=50000, T=0.16; X=48385; Y=1615; Frac_TV_X=0.074
If CV=100000, T=0.16; X=98518; Y=1482; Frac_TV_X=0.151
Note: T=0.16 represents a viewer that is opening the stream and shutting it down in a 10 second loop. With T=0.16, X = watchers, Y = ‘bots.’
Conclusion: X is tightly coupled with the estimate for CV. But the fraction of total views from 1-hr Watchers is illuminating. The Frac_TV_X (= 1hr people views / total views) is highest for high CV and low T. For CV = 36000 (3 time higher than any reported in the first two hours) only 5% of the total views were from “watchers”, 95% from bots. We have to use CV=100,000 (8 times higher than max observed), to reach a point where even 15% of total views could be from a population with a 1 hr mean view. At least 85% of total views were bots cycling every 10 seconds.
Thank you for providing WUWT-TV 🙂
I see from the above video that Big Al is looking for useful idiots to cut and paste for him.
It was interesting to watch how trolls would appear just before powerful segments. Like they knew they had to distract rather than rebut. I had a lot of fun watching them consume themselves. Even more watching that bloviating block-head colose get smaked down repeatedly.
A very, very fine first effort Mr Watts. You did us all proud yet again. I already miss WUWT-TV terribly.
The sleeker it is, the most detached it is from real life and real people. Remember the story of “Quiz Show”.
It was an honour to be one of your guests.
(My first reply got lost in the internet fog.)
I just wanted to also say thanks.
And, if my first comment did get lost, I want to encourage you to accept/solicit funding from anyone, including “big oil”. There is no disgrace in getting the TRUTH out. All you have to do is disclose any “questionable” funding, and you pull ahead of the CAGWers, including IPCC.
Great job, and GO FOR IT!
Content, content, content. To an audience hip to the Internet your ’embarrassing moments’ were SOP. Your content was fabulous. Thank you.
“Spread Truth. Destroy Denial”
Gore is the Jimmy Swaggart of climate.
Destroy denial. Impossible. Gore is keeping it alive.
What Scandal? CIA Hard At Work Exposing Security Risks of “Climate Phenomena” http://www.judicialwatch.org/blog/2012/11/what-scandal-cia-hard-at-work-exposing-security-risks-of-climate-phenomena/
Looks like Attackwatch ?
I watched about 4 hours of it, and look forward to watching on youtube parts that I missed. The only problem for me was the loudness of some of the ads, which are beyond your control.
Thanks Anthony, you did well setting this up. (Although the occasional sound dropouts were disconcerting.) I watched the first couple of hours, and a little more the next morning (Ross McKitrick and the start of Lindzen’s segment). Hoping that you’ll soon put online some of the segments I missed due to work.
Anthony you have it wrong: it Is all of us who own you a debt of gratitude. I could only catch bits an pieces of it because my employer expects me to actually do my job, so I really look forward to viewing the presentations in full when they are available on youtube.
What a fantastic concept pulling this together! Please enjoy your well-earned reset.
For “reset” above please substitute “rest”. Or maybe “reset” is the right word. Whatever …
Funniest moment:
Complimenting Donna Laframboise on her “mud slinging” abilities. First time you ever made me laugh. 🙂
I watched as much of your program as time allowed and look forward to seeing much more. It was very well done with limited resources. Reasonable people can distinguish truth told simply from nonsense spouted in million dollar presentations. And Kenji delightfully demonstrated the rational person’s attitude towards the Gorython: z z z z z z z .
Would be great to have a dvd set with the entire thing!
What I saw – first 3+ hours – I enjoyed. What surprised me was that my wife was getting into the audio as she early decorated the Christmas tree (artificial). Maybe we’ve started a new tradition in our family – watching and listening to WUWT-TV while we decorate the Christmas tree.
Thanks for the memories Anthony!
Clay
I watched about sixteen hours of it, though some of that included ‘watching’ it on my cell with my eyes closed, laying in bed. Couldn’t sit at the computer any more, but didn’t want to miss some of the great segments. I did notice a few things that you probably know about, but since I haven’t seen anyone else mention them, here goes:
1. It seemed as though when the presenter tried to change pages, or hovered their mouse over (the lower part of their screen maybe?) that annoying control pop up would come on. The one with the stop and volume buttons. Then, their sound would cut out until it dropped down again. I thought at first that it was on my computer, but several times it happened when my mouse wasn’t moving. So, maybe their control button needs to be approached from a direction that doesn’t trigger the control popup. Did anyone else notice this?
2. Many of the text parts of the graphs weren’t readable, they were too small, even on the desktop. Maybe there is a minimum size that the presenters could shoot for next time. Since this isn’t a power point being displayed on a big wall screen, but rather the opposite, that needs to be considered.
Such new and innovative technology always needs tweaks, but the overall program was interesting, thought provoking, and well done. You did a great job, as did everyone who presented and who helped in the background. Kenji, of course, was irresistible. The adverts were amazingly annoying, and if there is a reasonable amount of money that we could donate towards that would limit or remove them next time, please let us know. 🙂
(applauding) WELL DONE!! Now get some sleep!
Anthony,
Por nada. I felt honored.
Take care.
John
It is worth reiterating that in order to be REAL – you must certainly appear to be REAL. No amount of slick presentation, smart graphics, glitchless production, etc will make it seem more real than seeing real people doing real things, in real time! I can’t impress upon you the importance of this in terms of making an audience see you for what you are (WUWT I mean) it gives a far more direct and acceptable view to the ordinary person. Honestly, you and everyone involved should be duly proud. This is the kind of stuff that folk can relate too. I even think that such presentation ‘techniques’ (if I can dare call them that) would make difficult scientific principles easier to grasp for ordinary folk. think of good teachers, they are good because they bring their students ‘in’ to their subject and bring realism to the subject matter….the aloof IPCC type scientists rely on the PR machine behind them. You guys (and gals)have your passion and honesty behind you – and that is worth far more than Gores slick efforts!
TrueNorthist says about the WUWT-TV trolls: “Like they knew they had to distract rather than rebut.”
I will agree. As I wrote in my post today:
I don’t recall any questions [about my presentation] on the “Social Stream”. But of course there were the usual distracting nonsensical comments by trolls. Examples:
-“typical denier cherrypick”,
-“el ninos dont increases the heat content of the entire ocean! read the levitus papers on this”,
-“Tisdale’s work rests upon the unsupported assertion that La Nina creates heat. No mechanism given qed magic”, and
-“levitus et al puts all of this away.”
See:
http://bobtisdale.wordpress.com/2012/11/16/the-natural-warming-of-the-global-oceans-videos-parts-1-2/
Mr. Watts,
Many thanks for the nascent WUWT-TV. I hope it will become a constant part of your blogging activities from now on but let me point one thing. You are “a media man” so you have to know the TV rules. In short, you must pay attention to:
1. background – 100% white glowing monitor screen in the back of you and your 100% BLACK sweater or something like that – had created contrast (tonal range) not easily achievable in professional cameras… 😉
2. Mehr licht! Most of your guests were kept in the darkness (global dimming?). Two small table lamps from left and right would suffice. In other words WUWT-TV broadcasts were too dark.
3. Both you and your guests must keep you heads/mouths at the mikes! Turning heads left and right is tantamount to breaking inviolable TV Commandments!
And last but not least. Ask Linux IT nerds for help in keeping the tech rig 100% up. You do not have to be skilled at everything. Be a mentor or a Manager, let the tech works being done by someone else. 🙂 Be on the screen but as an anchor, not a chief engineer. 😉
Have a nice, peaceful and relaxing weekend.
My best regards
I watched for about 6 hours and could not sleep that night my brain was so active I could not shut it down! Thank you Anthony for WUWT… and yes xxcolose did his best with the material he had to work with… which was easily debunked with the rest of us using honesty as a weapon.
@Mark S: Yes it’s refreshing that someone with Donna Laframbois’ credentials chimed in. She holds a degree in women’s studies, and her writing has often supported organizations such as fathers’ rights groups… as well as pointing out that the IPCC AR4 used selective one sided peer review efforts.
Thank you again, Anthony. I look forward to watching the parts I missed when they become available. Regarding that Reality Drop thing, if Dr. Einstein were alive today he would be commenting here with “If I were wrong, one [Tweet] would be enough.”