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
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!
@ur momisugly 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!