Above is the raw, unadjusted numbers from WordPress for Watts Up With That? for the month of June 2008 reflecting the total page views.
I routinely find WUWT in the Top 4 WP blogs now according to WP’s ranking system. According to the wordpress.com home page, there are: 3,461,995 blogs with 140,221 new posts today as of this writing.
So I feel pretty good about that. You should too, as without our community of readers, it would be just another datapoint in the sea of 3.4 million blogs.
As well as being a great site, which I check out every day, is it also possible that the greater number of hits might reveal a trend towards more “scepticism” amongst the blogging public ?
Scepticism is, after all the only true scientific concensus.
Hmm, looks like a step function to me. Have you been irrigating the site? 😉
REPLY: Thanks, that made me LOL
Looking at the exponential rise in views (I’m a new viewer too), have you compared it to the global temperature? The views chart looks like a hockey stick! I could be causing worldwide web warming by viewing!
/sarcasm off
Couldn’t resist, sorry.
Anthony,
Every one of your posts is a must read. AND, the commenters bring me back multiple time per day to get their insights. Great work!
Man-made CO2 emissions continue to rise at alarming levels. Mr. Watts’ readership is increasing rapidly, showing the direct effects of excessive CO2 emissions on the blogosphere.
Congrats – even though you are, according to Hansen, helping to destroy the world! 🙂
I agree this is a great site, but some of the uptick (perhaps as much as 50% or more?) during the past month may be due to a poll you have been running (i.e., a singular event). So to the extent voters descended on your site en masse from other sites, they’ve all done your site a favor.
Thats how i found you through the WUWT top reads, and I’m glad i did as well. Have enjoyed your posts for the short time i have been reading them. Admitally a lot of it goes over my head but nonetheless keep up the good work.
So many numbers makes my head numb.
Solar cycles are suspiciously similar to planetary cycles;
Weather cycles are suspiciously similar to solar cycles;
Cooling as WOWT blog numbers heat up;
… but the only proofs are for global warming as no alternative mechanism exists to number twiddling by Hansen et al.
Seriously, I think it is both a testament to increased scepticism and Anthony’s work. Especially the most important, the weatherstation survey.
Hmm, looks like we need to ferret out the reasons for readership changes, it might help document the demise of AGW as a perceived threat. Peak readership might correlate with highest rate of public opinion change. Maybe mass media editorial stance too.
I wonder how much of the June increase was related to Hansen’s addresses at Washington and followup like the poll. It seems unlikely that the barycenter discussion would be that big a draw….
I for one, am proud to be a datapoint.
REPLY: The question is; what kind of datapoint are you? Fixed or floating point?
I confess, I’m partly to blame. I stop by several times a day to see what’s new.
Or is that Watt’s New ?
(I think I’m a null datapoint…)
Unadjusted numbers?
If you get Hansen to help, you will be able to cool the past and warm the present in order to prove that the exhalations of your visitors are over heating your servers.
I confess, I’m partly to blame. I stop by several times a day to see what’s new.
Huh? Who doesn’t?
Rev it UP!
Congratulations!
I find myself popping by several times a day.
There’s always something interesting going on here.
Now here’s my idea for a new feature at your site. How about:
“Lifestyles of the Rich and Alarmist”
We’d all love to see how the eco-high priests live and go about saving the planet. Some of us have seen Al Gore’s house, Madonna’s, DiCaprio, Kennedy’s, Travolta’s, Laurie David’s etc.
Maybe a little tabloid-like – but sure would be fun!
I take all the credit.~jeez
“Lifestyles of the Rich and Alarmist” Pierre Gosselin
This is a great idea! Americans understand hypocrisy well enough.
It might make it clearer, that in many cases, the alarmists want to save the planet only for themselves . Though I suspect many of them are just dupes and tools.
Here’s the deal:
1) You post great insights into the debate everyday
2) You allow people on both sides of the debate to comment freely
3) You allow people of all walks of life (non-scientists like me included) to read and learn, question and contribute in an open an informative way
and …. it becomes hugely popular!
Now why can’t our polticians behave like that instead of telling us the debate is over?
I remember being taught to keep an open mind – ‘it will stand you in good stead boy!’ – it still rings in my (now rather old) ears.
Antony – I do believe you have created something very special that might just help a few in the world of government understand that they still work to serve us.
Does WordPress measure only the number of people who actually visit your site or those who are subscribed? What about those of us who read about your posts in RSS readers, (BlogLines, NewsGator, etc.) but never actually visit the site?
REPLY: It measures any page view, RSS or otherwise. I even see hits from Google Reader.
Well, thank you to you, to have opened my eyes about the AGW scam !
K.
Oh, I do not consider it to be a scam. I think most of the proponents believe most sincerely. I merely think they are in error. I would rather win them over to our side than merely pillory them for the benefit of a crowd.
Thank you, Anthony. I visit your site often. I think what makes your site a good one is that it is both informative and entertaining. You write well for the non-scientist without sacrificing quality. That is hard to come by. And your site’s visual appeal is nothing to sneeze at either. I like your use of graphics, the font, and general look. It’s inviting. And then you learn something useful concerning global warming: Is it real? Is it human caused? Are there other explanations that work better to explain the phenomena that is getting media attention? What are we not being told? And can you really believe science is conducted this way?
An open question,
Is there a way to see how much traffic TWC’s (the weather channel) Forecast Earth blog gets?
“Lifestyles of the Rich and Alarmist” is a great idea.
David Suzuki – two fancy homes.
http://stevejanke.com/archives/227584.php
“Lifestyles of the Rich and Alarmist”
I hope you don’t get too carried away with that, even though it might seem fun for a while. The unique thing here is the science and hard facts, things that make us think.
Tabloids, on the other hand, are everywhere.
I feel blog envy. . .
Congratulations!
I visit your site frequently. I am not a scientist and there are times I don’t understand all of the data and its interpretation. However, what I do understand is invaluable.
Thank you!
Anthony, thanks to you. Congratulations. Your work is important for all of us.
Very cool, since that’s how I read most posts. I only visit the actual site when posting a comment.
“…without our community of readers, it would be just another datapoint in the sea of 3.4 million blogs.
I believe that’s just the number of WordPress blogs, not the total number of blogs out there, which makes the numbers even more impressive.
Oops, the first paragraph was a quote, the other two were mine 🙁
Hey! I have an idea. “Lifestyles of the Rich and Alarmist” can be a monthly guest post by…. Lucia?
snicker, snicker…
Congrats!
It’s a well deserved reward for someone bringing such cool thought to an arena filled with such masses of hot air {AKA Gore & Hansen}.
My SWAG for June’s UAH and RSS anomalies
UAH ==> -0.025
RSS ==> 0.061
Why is it a SWAG rather than just a WAG? I used some statistical voodoo, which I’ll attempt to explain. My approach is to take the 1-year delta for 12 months of UAH daily data, averaged over the month, and correlate that with the 1-year delta for monthly UAH data and RSS data. This allows me to estimate UAH and RSS 1-year *DELTA* from UAH daily data. I then apply the estimated delta to last year’s temperature to get this year’s estimated temperature. Since UAH daily data for the last day of the previous month is available late evening of the 1st (Eastern Time), I can get the estimate out at that time.
The data available to me are…
1) The UAH daily temps at http://discover.itsc.uah.edu/amsutemps/data/amsu_daily_85N85S_chLT.r001.txt
2) The UAH monthly temps at http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/public/msu/t2lt/tltglhmam_5.2
3) The RSS monthly temps at ftp://ftp.ssmi.com/msu/monthly_time_series/rss_monthly_msu_amsu_channel_tlt_anomalies_land_and_ocean_v03_1.txt
I generated 12 rows of data of 1-year deltas, e.g.
1)* “Jan”
* Average of Jan 2008 UAH daily minus average of Jan 2007 UAH daily
* Jan 2008 UAH monthly minus Jan 2007 UAH monthly
* Jan 2008 RSS monthly minus Jan 2007 RSS monthly
etc, etc.
Note that for June onwards, I have to use 2007 values minus 2006 values, because 2008 values aren’t available yet.
To save yourself some work, select all the text *BELOW THE LINE* of asterisks below, save it to a .txt file, and import it as a text/CSV file. Cell A1 should read “Month”. Enter the following formulas…
Cell Formula
C15 =correl(C$2:C$13,$B$2:$B$13)
C16 =intercept(C$2:C$13,$B$2:$B$13)
C17 =slope(C$2:C$13,$B$2:$B$13)
Then extend-select C15:C17 and copy to D15:D17
C20 =C17*$B$20+C16
C21 =C19+C20
Then extend-select C20:C21 and copy to D20:D21
Correlation (C15 and D15) isn’t really necessary, but I’ve included it to see how well the linear fit works.
C19 and D19 are last year’s UAH and RSS anaomalies
B20 is the delta between this month’s UAH daily data and last month’s UAH daily data
C20 and D20 are ye olde “y = mx + b” equation, using the intercept and slope as calculated in rows 16 and 17.
Given last year’s value in row 19, and this year’s estimated delta in row 20,
adding them together gives this year’s estimated value in row 21.
************************************
“Month”,”UAH_daily”,”UAH”,”RSS”
“Jan”,-0.540927956989322,-0.64,-0.629
“Feb”,-0.34973313343329,-0.43,-0.4
“Mar”,-0.288862365591399,-0.314,-0.316
“Apr”,-0.149213793103456,-0.229,-0.236
“May”,-0.195764516128975,-0.379,-0.315
“Jun”,0.209333333333348,0.049,0.043
“Jul”,0.249645161290289,0.049,0.065
“Aug”,0.143665591397905,0.03,0.078
“Sep”,0.0130333333333397,-0.073,-0.08
“Oct”,-0.136212903225783,-0.11,-0.089
“Nov”,-0.0217666666666787,-0.079,-0.11
“Dec”,-0.106274790919997,-0.194,-0.218
,,,
“Correlation”,,,
“y-intercept”,,,
“slope”,,,
,,,
“Last year”,,0.203,0.28
“Deltas”,-0.1374,,
“Projected”,,,
Congrats Anthony,
I wonder if the “crash party” by th AGW crowd on your Hansen poll had a significant effect? In any event I think it’s great that such an excellent and informative blog is getting such a wide readership…..and if the Hansen crowd helped then the irony is just delicious!!!
WOW! I need to start blogging about climate change.
Without wishing to put a damper on these remarkable statistics you may be being affected by the AVG checking system
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/06/13/avg_scanner_skews_web_traffic_numbers/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/06/26/avg_disguises_fake_traffic_as_ie6/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/07/02/linkscanner_fake_traffic_temporary_fix/
REPLY: Well,there is a test for that, and here it is, follow this link.
If the AVG scanner was affecting WUWT significantly, we’d see similar jumps at other climate sites too. The other wordpress site has been flat while WUWT has grown. Realclimate.org and Climateaudit.org both have longer histories, more entries, and more linkage to other websites than mine due to their longer existence. They don’t show similar increases.
I am pleased to see that your increase is backed up by other methods – this is a really good result.
As an aside I am surprised that the discerning viewers who look at this site let an Alexa toolbar anywhere near their computers.
Wow! I’m jelous!!! I only have aroung 479 hits!!
But then again, both my blogs are not even a month old. But still, I envy you 🙂
Hello! I’m revising a textbook and am trying to sketch out how engineers are using blogs. Yours is a great example. May I include a screen shot of yours?
— David
REPLY: Certainly
Congratulations, Anthony, from the Great White North. Thank you for your hard work, honesty, integrity, and for fostering an environment in which we may discuss and learn from the information you post.
This is great and good. Most importantly, it happen because of the quality of your work. Quantity of quality post == I got to show at least once a day. Then when the comments get going good — I may pop in every thirty minutes or so the entire evening.
Wish I was knowledgeable enough to contribute and I am grateful that you and commenters go the extra mile to be understood by the laity. This blog and its readers substantiate my commonsense and provides references and facts with which to debate my peers.
Thank you Anthony. Thank you one and all.
Carsten Arholm,
The issue here is CREDIBILITY. We’ve got people claiming, based on “scientific data”, that we humans with our 9to5 bust-our-a$$ jobs and lifestyles are pushing the earth into an abyss. Yet, these scientific messengers and alarmists are living high on the hog, and go atround admonishing the rest of us because we’re trying to make our ends meet.
In my view this is an important argument. Can we believe the messengers of doom and gloom when we see they themsleves are leaving huge carbon craters?
I don’t see Al Gore walking barefoot like David Carradine in Kung Fu to put out his message.
Dear Anthony,
Hypocrisy is an issue. A big issue!
Why not feature one: “Lifestyles of the Rich and Alarmist” per week?
Where the following are described:
1. residence
2. travel habits
3. companies they may own
4. luxuries they enjoy like pools, yachts, planes etc.
If these guys are living green, then I want to see how. Maybe we can all learn something from them.
I’m not saying this has to be the main thrust of your website. I’m just saying it could be a very entertaining and EYE-POPPING side feature once a week.
I think you’d make serious waves…especially with the duped followers of these charlatans. Eventually they’d get the message.
REPLY: Surely! I’ll just get funds from my massive travel budget, fly the world, and knock on doors. I’m sure they’ll let me take pictures! 😉 Seriously, no. I don’t have time for that sort of rubbish.
“Rubbish”? “Knocking on doors and taking pictures”
Thanks for the positive feedback, Anthony.
I must say I’m a bit taken aback by your sarcasm.
If you don’t like ideas…then at least say so – diplomatically. Thank you.
Pierre Gosselin
REPLY: My apologies, it was late and my mood yesterday was a bit dour. Better today. Practically though, I just don’t have the time to pursue such a thing.
Apology accepted. Thanks
I certainly can imagine you’ve got more than enough to do, and recognise the idea doesn’t fit with the mission of this website.
Maybe someone else will go with it.
Great Website as always!