As you may have noted, the rate at which I have posted new stories in the last couple of days has tapered off, and likely will remain at a lowered rate in the immediate future.
The reason is twofold:
1) Like many people in this country, I’m getting hit economically. My weather business needs my attention more than ever to keep it running and my family supported. The volume of email alone I get daily asking for advice, files, help with research etc. since starting the blog is overwhelming as it is. Often I find WUWT creeping into my business hours, and this can’t continue under the current economic situation. Thus I’m limiting my interaction to late nights and weekends.
2) I’ve realized that WUWT, while important in it’s own right, being now the number one climate related blog (in terms of traffic) on the web has also become a hungry monster for my time. So, what time I have had in the last few days has been focused on the surfacestations project. I’m making a push to get a majority of stations (my goal is at least 75%) surveyed so that a dataset with a better spatial distribution of stations exists. Right now we still have some big holes in it, particularly in Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Kentucky, Alabama, and Mississippi.
Getting stations surveyed and this project database more complete is a much better use of my available spare time than moderating some of the daily philosophical arguments and news items of this blog. I hope my team of crack moderators will be able to fill in the gap and continue to offer postings of relevant stories while I focus on this.
John Goetz and Denise Norris have made some really valuable story contributions to this readership, as has Evan Jones. I hope they’ll be able to continue.
Some folks have commented that becuase I’ve posted my “How not to measure temperature…” series, that I’m only focused on finding the badly sited stations. While they are a dime a dozen and often visually entertaining, actually what we want to find are the BEST stations. Those are the CRN1 and 2 rated stations. Having a large and well distributed sample size of the best stations will help definitively answer the question about how much bias may exist as a result of the contribution of badly sited stations. Since the majorty of sttaions surveyed so far seem to be CRN 3,4,5 with CRN1,2 making up only 12% of the total surveyed stations thus far, it is important to increase the sample size.
So while WUWT will continue to have news and science items of interest, my focus will be getting surveys done, so we’ll see more items on the surfacestations project.
On a related note, I wish to sincerely thank all those that have generously donated to the surfacestations.org project to offset travel expenses. Thanks to that, recently I was able to complete all of the state of Nevada USHCN stations.
If you want to help, signup to help survey some stations. at www.surfacestations.org
Also look for some updated survey instructions soon. Thank you all for your help and consideration
– Anthony
Putting ads everywhere on this blog might not be the answer. It will distract people from the real issues but mostly you could end up with ads that might create problems for the seriousness of the articles/dicussions.
From what you were saying, it is not really a question of money, but rather the lack of time… as there is only 24h in a day 🙁
You know very well that this site is getting more hits than ever and this is growing as we are starting to see WUWT on other websites and even the news now.
So, what you will need most likely are people willing to put the time in for you. Lots of good and smart people would be willing to help I am sure to maintain and make this blog grow with the trend. Start building your volunteer team.
It is more important to get the reality news out to the people than to see this site slow down and eventually shut down… because as you know, if there are not new stories regularly, people will start looking elsewhere.
I’m in Cnetral OK and would love to volunteer some time and gas to cause! Let me know what I can do to help…
Best site on the web….
Anthony, do you have an updated version of the xls file showing the
stations and their ratings?
REPLY: I’m working on catching up with that, way behind. Lots of time involved checking and double checking involved to make sure the correct station was surveyed, etc. – Anthony
Anthony, your blog is great, we need it and I have learned a lot from it too. Take care of your family, and we will all keep faithfully reading and waiting for new information. A local club in my town had a speaker come in who was de-bunking all the energy myths. The true information is now in the hands of scientists like yourself and the truth-seekers in blogland, especially now since mainstream media has fallen for and chosen only to report the myths. It may be that the “truth” is going underground…I wouldn’t be surprised.
Anthony,
Until I began reading your blog I had no idea how flawed the data set was. I always just assumed the AGW crowd was using a natural cyclical temperature maximum to promote their agenda. It never occurred to me they were actually fudging the numbers.
I have since begun to read everything I can on AGW, solar activity (or lack there of), and non anthropogenic sources of atmospheric carbon. I now recommended your site to everyone with whom I converse about ‘global warming’ or ‘climate change’.
We are all feeling the effects of the current economic condition: as someone recently said “this is worse than getting a divorce; I’ve lost half my net worth and I still have my wife!”
Until now, I have been freeloading all of this great content. I won’t miss the $20 donation, but I hope that enough other people will feel the same way and can help you stay afloat (even the AGW acolytes who come on to debate the point).
Jim
This site has grown tremendously. Sorry you don’t approve of much of the content, but a great many obviously do. And a great part of the power “How Not to Measure Temperatures” is the repetition, itself. It is repeated over and over and over. That’s the point. I think I can speak for the vast majority here when I say I read them with great eagerness and actively look forward to them.
And yes, there is considerable absurdity involved in the issue. And a lot of politics. That has become part and parcel to the “secular” discussion. And this can hardly be attributed to the skeptical side of the argument.
Can you accept ads on your site? You could make WUWT a money-maker instead of a time-taker.
Reply: not with the current hosting setup ~ charles the moderator
Now hold on here – all you self-appointed preachers and experts on manners.
1. I made a donation awhile back.
2. I can recall bad manners from the other side, but I’m not gonna bring up the details.
3. I took the time to give my opinion and critique on how to rationalise this website. Maybe it’s worth nothing, but this website also got it for nothing.
Just trying to help.
4. It is Anthony himself who said “Surveying stations…is much better use of my available spare time than moderating some of the daily philosophical arguments and news items of this blog.” I AGREE! There’s been enough chaff, as implied by Anthony here himself. Anecdotes aint gonna move the ball an inch.
5. This is business. If people can’t take a little critique in running a business, then they should join a union, or get a government job.
6. I run a business too, and there are times when you can say things, and times you should not. Believe me, saying things here isn’t going to affect my future a single bit. So I say what I want. I shoot straight, and the consequences be damned. If people want to whimper about it – not my problem.
7. I donate to several good causes every year. But I can’t donate to everybody. There are people out there with little to eat or nothing to wear. I think Anthony is resourceful enough to get his own funds without having to take handouts.
Other desparate people would be far better served with donations.
8. I use my real name here. You want my phone number too?
9. Finally, if people don’t want me taking the contents of this website for free, then the contents shouldn’t be offered for free.
Honestly speaking, I think Anthony ought to make this a subscription website. $50 a year! I’d still be here. What about the rest of you?
If you have something else to say to me, then at least use your real full name.
Now, I hope I didn’t hurt anyone’s feelings. If so:
http://www.ccacc.ca/
Evan jones:
Sure it’s interesting, but aren’t these stations posted at the surface stations website?
Like I say, Evan, I only said what I’d like to see changed. It’s my single opinion. Of course it’s not going to match everyone’s preferences.
Readers should just take it or leave it, and please spare all the moral haughtiness and lectures on manners.
I paid my dues this year. So let me speak my mind.
And Evan,
I could give a rat’s butt about disappointing you. I’m not here to seek your good graces. Who are you, anyway?
Don’t get me wrong – but think about how you sound. Or is it rule here that I’m not allowed to disappoint certain people?
May I, from acros the Atlantic, join in the general chorus of tributes to what Anthony (and his ever-growing phalanx of expert readers) has achieved with WUWT in the past two years, On an issue of world importance it has become a site of world importance. When nine days ago, thanks to WUWT, I devoted my weekly column in the London Sunday Telegraph to Dr Hansen’s confusion over the October temperature figires this was linked by so many websites across the planet that it now tops the list as the ‘Most viewed’ comment item on my paper’s website for the entire year. That is a small measure of just how much interest is now building up in the sceptical end of the AGW debate (some ‘consensus’). We are all in Anthony’s debt. May he not run into any of his own, and manage to keep us posted on key issues when he can.
I was going to make a post about being disappointed, but facetiousness often falls flat online.
Evan, Pierre, you know you are both valuable participants here.
~ nuff said.
Anthony,
1. You need to have 2-3 Associate Editors to take the load off you with clear direction of the stories you want posted.
2. You need to add Google Adsense Ads to your page. With the amount of traffic you get, you can then justify working on it once you start to see the profits.
I am 100% Anthony.
Anthony, it is clear that you have a very large following of individuals who care deeply about you and your site and the science such that we all want to give you advice to keep you the way we want you. Whatever you need to do is fine with me. I will subscribe $10.00 per month — an annual subscription amount to a quality journal — to keep WUWT going. I hope others will join me. An effort can begin in a volunteer mode, but then perhaps the business of life must take over. I would enjoy ads for books on all the varieties of science about weather, climate, and earth’s history of change in this regard, but I imagine your reward would just be pennies.
Michael Bently said a profound truth — enjoy your kids every single day; they grow up too fast.
And Pierre is a grouch — I’m glad he softened a little.
“CodeTech (10:02:38) :
Hey, we’re building a community here!”
I believe that is the important thing at this site. It fosters collaboration. It provides a vehicle for average people to get involved. People can ask questions and often someone else around here knows the answer or at least has an opinion if they don’t know the answer. There is a certain synergy with this site that is rarely found but of tremendous value.
This is sort of a community workshop where people can come and help out on a project but it is also kind of like the place with the pickle barrel and a checker board where people can stop in and share news, banter opinions, etc.
Mr. Watts has started something really great here but he also has his “day job” to tend to. That is understandable, particularly today with the economic uncertainties of late. Lets not muck the place up too much.
The body of work here, for that is what it is, is deep and broad. It grows organically, succours the newly awakened and sharpens the regulars’ tools. Between those poles it is also a record of a multitude, shifting from one phase to another, awakened to the possibility that our governments, representatives and scientists are human, that we can be fooled by them, but we may be empowered to penetrate that fog. With a little help from our friends.
This blog is destiny waiting to happen. The impetus is yet ponderous but we shall see Watt we shall see. As this NH winter progresses more and more will become sceptical of CO2 as Eschaton. A storm is coming.
If there were merely one post a week many people would visit the back catalogue, to be presented with the spectrum of human climate science, from hilarity to obscurity, and to see and perhaps perform further forensic investigation into physics, the universe and mad scientists.
It is a reflection of the owner, long may he prosper, that visitors find here a haven of sanity, brotherhood and restraint to which I could direct even my daughters for guidance, in the safe knowledge that they will encounter no profanity, no vulgarity and little inanity such is the diligence and judgement of Anthony and the Mods. They may also become enlightened and invigorated by the variety of positions taken, personalities displayed and argument enjoyed herein.
To a clement future. Thank you, already.
All,
I did a little spread sheet work comparing The list of stations used by GISS
and the List of sites visited by Surface stations. While the latter list is not presently current, I found this. GISS uses nightlights to classify sites as
Rural or Not Rural ( small town and urban) I looked for the following:
1. sites that have not been surveyed ( or had the survey results posted)
2. sites that were RURAL according to nightlights. I found 133 such sites.
These would be great sites to visit.
A. To test whether or not nightlights “works” as a proxy for no UHI
B. To potentially increase the number of CRN1 sites in the database. Without more CRN1 and CRN2 sites, a statistical analysis is more difficult.
I’ve mailed Anthony the list in excel.
Also, GISS use MORE than USHCN, there are about 1200 or so USHCN sites
in the station list for GISSTEMP, and about 700 or so other stations.
I have a list of these as well sorted by nightlights.
Pierre,
“Honestly speaking, I think Anthony ought to make this a subscription website. $50 a year! I’d still be here. What about the rest of you?
If you have something else to say to me, then at least use your real full name.”
Ok…I’m confused. You don’t want to donate, but you’d gladly pay a subscription.
Have I got that about right? ;*)
And frankly, I donate to several causes as well…local food pantries, etc…but I honestly believe that WUWT does much more important work. So if I donate to other causes, I can certainly donate here.
Consider my $50 membership paid, btw.
JimB (as in Butler…cuz I guess that’s important now?)
Pierre, If I have offended you please accept my apologies.
We are all entitled to our opinions.
I have removed the statement to which you object.
George – Loved the physics-cosmology post, very entertaining to us science types
Steven Mosher – are there any sites in SE NH, NE MA or SE Maine that I could survey?
philwilson12@ur momisugly
comcast dot net
PhilW.
by my notes which come from the last update 4/08
USHCN=177174
GHCN=42572619006
RIPOGENUS DAM ME
45.88 -69.18
MMS ID= 10268
DAM OUTSIDE AND 28.0 MI WNW OF PO AT MILLINOCKET, ME
MAX-MIN THERMOMETERS
45.88333 -69.18333
Nightlights = 1.
Also, Eastport, which is rural but has nightlights = 2
Anthony is sending me an updated list. I’ll try to update my list ASAP.
And as Anthony has noticed, I have not been posting much recently as well, for similar reasons. A lot of folks around me lost their jobs in the past couple of weeks, but somehow I survived the cut. Fortunately, their good work did not go away. On top of that, I coach high school sports in the fall and winter, so I have had little thought time outside of work.
I do have a list of “interesting things to look at” and I am hoping to go through that during the holiday lull. Maybe I will find something worth posting 🙂
PhilW. Bethleham NH.
I have over 500 on my “must visit” list. these are sites that rate as
nightlights = DARK(1) or nightlights=DIM(2). there are around 130
nightlights =1 sites that have not been surveyed and over 370 nightlights=2 sites that have not been visited. Lot’s of rural and small town sites that need visiting.
Hey… I just bought a USB TEMPERATURE DATA LOGGER… As an IT guy it should come in pretty handy! Thanks Anthony for all that you do.