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.
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Okay Okay. I’ve worked out how I screwed it up. Instead of 120 days I did 120 weeks. So maybe the 100k is a bit to much. Its just as well I’m not a climate scientist otherwise I’d have all sorts of “adjusted” graphs to show how I was right and you were wrong.
Goodbye Climategate, you’ll be missed. You did a great job.
>>Anthony, I think your comments are arrogant
I don’t, I think Anthony just created the context.
$100,000 has to be a joke right?
Tongue-in-cheek? Well, maybe you took it that way, but since we can’t see Anthony’s tongue in his cheek through the tubes I didn’t take it that way at all. But, let’s say for the sake of discussion that it is tongue-in-cheek. I still don’t see the point of this post. If my comment that Anthony’s remarks were “arrogant, inappropriate, and…” was too harsh, well, then I’d offer that his remarks amounted to childish preening and navel-gazing – and not up to the generally high standards of this otherwise fine blog. I like this blog, and I want it to succeed and remain as relevant as it has ever been, but this post is pretty much a pointless self-congratulating ego massage if you ask me.
And @John Whitman:
Was their any question that this is the biggest climate blog on the planet? Heck no. I don’t think too many readers here really need “kind reassurance” that WUWT is tops. It’s a well-known fact. So let’s keep it real, relevant, and go kick some alarmist butt – and quit with the navel-gazing.
Anthony is lucky that he has some good guys to help him out.I wonder why this man did not ask for volunteers to help him out?
I don’t know why you are criticising Anthony ALGORELIED.
He makes the point that compared to WUWT, climategate was a walk in the park.
It amazes me that Anthony can put so much time into this blog,and I am glad that he has google ads.
He didn’t give up when the going got tough,unlike some.
Ha ha!
I have just found THE Most Funniest Site!
I saw that climategate.com was a WordPress site, went to wordpress.com and searched for “climategate” to check if it was really gone…
And found http://wotsupwiththat.wordpress.com/ , titled “Wott’s Up With That?” (notice the spelling between URL and title is different).
Apparently it’s some sort of sarcastic spoof site, guy who runs it is apparently Ben Lawson and you can only find that out because that is the directory name in the URL that shows up when you mouse over some surfer dude’s pic on the site found under “Authors,” otherwise it’s completely anonymous. He posts “articles” almost as they appear here on WUWT (same or similar pics, different words) with commentary that appears to ALWAYS say “Anthony (or guest poster) Has It All Wrong!”
Just read what it says on the About page, first two paragraphs. (Don’t bother to click unless you really want to to give him hits, or are really really curious about just how silly this site can be.)
There is so much slanderous untruth right there (disclaimer: it might be, IANAL, but it looks like it to me), I Cannot Take It Seriously! It’s like The Onion, it is so blatantly obviously wrong that it must be an attempt at humor!
(…or this hypothetical “Ben Lawson” person is lashing out from deep denial over the crashing of The Church Of CAGW and the fall of St. Gore. Ah well, it’s still funny.)
Very first post was from only Jan 19, “Climategate: the CRUtape Papers”. He rips off the post titles exactly as found here, which makes comparisons between here and his version of “truth” easy. Ah heck, for “Accuracy of the climate station electronic sensors – not the best” he uses this image coming straight from WUWT! Astounding!
Dear Mr. Watts, the concerted attempts at ridiculing you have risen to new heights. They are dedicating an entire site to specifically and carefully mock only your site. Truly, your esteemed greatness in the fight for honest science is now undeniable. Absolutely, utterly, undeniably undeniable.
You have done well.
@ur momisugly Noelene (18:36:50)
The owner of Climategate.com did have someone to help him out, namely John O’Sullivan who was his most frequent contributor – as well as a couple of other contributors.
Noelene says:
You’re helping me make my point, Noelene. Anthony’s comments effectively dissed Climategate.com (a fellow skeptic blog) for being “a walk in the park” as you say. My blog, GORE LIED, is also “a walk in the park” by your standards. So what? The owner of Climategate.com and my blog don’t deserve and disrespect just because Anthony’s blog is rightfully the king of all climate blogs, alarmist or skeptic. We are all on the same team, and trying to make a contribution for honest science. Since Climategate.com is/was a fellow skeptic blog, if anything, Anthony should be sending a bouquet of flowers to the owner of Climategate.com’s.
Doc_Navy (08:44:07) — Enlightening. Thank you.
Jud (09:17:20) : Folks – for those without a sarcasm subroutine I think he is joking about the 100k….
That thought was expressed in my house, too, Jud. Mebbe I jumped too soon…
Im not buying all the reasons cited as to why he took the site down. Its one thing to trail off on posting and bring in help with the moderation of comments, its another to precipitously take the whole thing down.
I think there is a bigger back-story going on there that we are not privy to. (My moneys on health issues or legal).
Shame, really. Hope it works out for him.
GORE LIED (20:46:58) :
We are all on the same team
Exactly.
Encouragement. Pass it on.
GORE LIED “We are all on the same team”
… I’m not!
Seriously, we are sceptics/scientists, because we think simple facts are far more important than the “team” and “we” are better than the climate forecasters because we see good criticism as the way to improvement in science!
So our strength is the fact we are not some sycophantic amorphous group seeking solace in the “team” who always agree with whatever nonsense we publish!
@ur momisugly Jud (09:17:20) :
“Folks – for those without a sarcasm subroutine I think he is joking about the 100k….”
Quite. My first reaction too. Get some irony guys.
Wow, I thought Big Oil was funding all these people remember that’s what the AGW believers keep saying, but look it’s just someone trying to get the truth out!
Here’s a debate on a relatively new forum that could do with some input from well informed independant thinkers…..
http://www.rationalskepticssociety.com/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=170
“It’s just like my chances of winning millions in the lottery. I either win or I don’t. That makes the odds 50/50, right? Either 2010 will be the hottest year ever or it won’t.
And you guys think Mann doesn’t understand statistics.”
I, for one, appreciate the sarcasm of this statement and I couldn’t really tell if anyone else caught this sublime bon mot.
Well done, John Galt, as well as choosing a login id from a character in Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged.” I read a hardcover edition back in 1990 and it has stuck with me to this day.
Best of luck to the climategate.com operator. But I thought all of us skeptics were on the payroll of big oil, Watts Up With That? As far as selling your site for $100k goes, you are going to need lots and lots of good luck in this depressed economy.
@Doc_Navy (08:44:07) :
“Finally, what “Climate data” is Michael Mann citing when you print his statement of, “there’s a better than 50-50 chance” that 2010 will be the hottest year ever.”
– – – – – – – – – –
It the same as when the weatherman predicts “50% chance of rain”. He can never be said to be wrong.
Duncan (12:30:53) :
I just checked rackspace cloud’s pricing. 22¢ per GB traffic adds up to a whole hell of a lot more than $60 per month on 60BG traffic a day, that’s without including the monthly base cost of the server ram and drive space. 60GB a month I could believe at that price, but not a day. When you’re pushing 60GB handling all those requests would be more than a P2 could handle anyway, never mind the additional requirements for running those “millions” of PHP scripts. Call me a skeptic, I just don’t believe Mr Rose’s claim about his “Pentium II” server.
sitevaluecheck puts a $9146 value on the site, so $100,000 seems way too much.
http://sitevaluecheck.com
What he could do is link to the most prominent articles of the last few months such as the wonderful commentary of the leaked CRU emails by Dr John P Costella, so that anyone landing on the climategate.com page would at least have something which could give them the background to the story.
There really is no excuse for this.
From the site cited:
A little overboard, don’t you think? No hyperbole, no exaggeration, no hobby horse to be ridden there – right? Ans all because some people within the state are failing (and knowingly avoiding) complying with the requirements of Wisconsin’s Livestock Premise Registration law?
BTW, for the uninformed the “noais” in nonais.org stands for “no <a href="http://www.aphis.usda.gov/traceability/"National Animal Identification System" (part of the USDA’s Animal Disease Traceability program) so, would you say they (noais) are an unbiased source of news or opinion on this subject?
How exactly does this tie in with the NWO (‘New World Order’ for the initiated)? I could ask, “What’s next, advocating avoidance of childhood vaccinations?”
Mods: She coat-racks it, I feel obliged to provide a bit of realistic balance …
.
.
Doc_Navy (08:44:07) :
Nice review. It certainly doesn’t hurt to complain about the obvious bias.
Archonix (11:48:37) :
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.
While the hardware provided is light years above what Mark was talking about a nice dual core 2.8 GHz dedicated server with 2TB of monthly transfer included is only $99/month currently.
http://www.theplanet.com/
“Okay Okay. I’ve worked out how I screwed it up. Instead of 120 days I did 120 weeks”
TerryS, please update your resume and arrive at NASA’s New York office for Monday morning, 9 am sharp. James Hansen and Al Gore would like to interview you for a data processing position that just opened up …