Guest post by WUWT moderator Mike Lorrey
One of the nice tools that alexa.com has is that it lets you compare multiple sites against each other. For those with competition of either economic or political nature, this is of high importance to gauge how well one is doing achieving one’s marketshare or mindshare goals, and how badly one’s competition is stumbling in delivering its message or attracting customers.
Today I did a four-way comparison between WUWT, Climate Progress and Real Climate, as well as Climateaudit.org, run by our good friend Steve McIntyre, going back through the entire traffic record that alexa has for these sites.
As you can see, there is a rather dramatic evolution over time.
Prior to the 2008 US Presidential election of Barack Obama, three of the four blogs were pretty well competitive (realclimate.org was always the least popular, indicating the general public got that this was an astroturfing site by climate alarmists who tolerated no dissent). Even though Steve McIntyre tended to be the most technical, he still attracted a competitive following. His television appearances and congressional testimony really helped his exposure even if the layman had difficulty avoiding the glaze-over on some of his blog content. After the election, when it became clear that climate change legislation was a top priority for this president, people clearly started educating themselves about it. Our Surfacestations.org project and the resulting report brought us additional attention in the major media. WUWT started clearly distinguishing itself as providing content that was understandable to the layman, did not talk down to the average bloke (like was typical at CP and RC) and did not regularly attack people based on their political leanings. Commentary from all directions was encouraged, with postings by non-skeptic scientists to provide a balanced view, and which only limited commentary when it came to personal attacks and off-topic thread hijacking (again, unlike CP and RC).
This resulted in our weblog award for 2008 as the number one science blog, beating out alarmist blogs, leading to much tooth gnashing by the warmist press.
Our popularity grew as we reported on the growing controversies over FOIA compliance, IPCC dissenting opinions, the dendro-wars, and the continuing spotlessness of the sun while arctic ice coverage recovered from its 2007 low, meeting our predictions and smashing the hopes of the AGW alarmists.
Then Climategate and the CRUtape Letters hit the blogosphere. The alexa stats clearly demonstrate who won the narrative with the public with a dramatic step change in the popularity of WUWT along with a crash of CP and RC after brief spurts. Similarly, climateaudit.org reached its highest ever rankings since the FOIA requests of Steve and friends were so central to the scandal. WUWT peaked several times into the top 10,000 websites globally.
As of this writing, WUWT is ranked #6 by Alexa in the world for Environmental websites, not just climate blog sites. We are higher ranked than the Environmental Working Group, WWF, National Wildlife Federation, Mother Earth News, The Sierra Club, The Nature Conservancy and The Environmental Defense Fund. We rank just behind The Oil Drum, the primary Peak Oil website.
While things have settled down a bit since climategate broke, we are seeing a recent spurt of activity due in part to Anthony’s speaking tour, where he has spoken to packed and enthusiastic crowds. As we add more reference pages on different topics, we expect to see more traffic grow as these references become additional traffic generators in their own right.
We should reach our 50 millionth website hit some time this coming week, a major milestone in the development of this site. Stay tuned for the announcement.
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(For example, see the lack of units on the vertical scale on the graph on the top of this post which prevents any reader from unambiguously understanding what the data show – as opposed to what the author says the data shows!)
An astute reader would notice that the graph is a screen capture from a third party tool. Maybe frank should email the makers of the tool.
Congratulations, Anthony. Well deserved.
Billy Liar says:
July 27, 2010 at 7:43 am
Unlike your spelling!
[/pedant off]
Carefully Billy, I think you have a double negative in your html.
[/pedant]
Been a fan of this site for some years and not been snipped yet.
It is the best and I do frequent other sites but this is the one, regards to the mods too.
Well done Mr. Watts and thank you for a little sanity in a mad world.
WUWT and CA became my favourite Internet stopoff points in 2008. And have never changed thusly. It’s such a joy to see excellence, integrity, and love of truth being their own rewards. No accident that coaching is about pursuing excellence – and realizing that real success comes from inner integrity.
But I do have a request.
Some day, our efforts here will bear fruit. Climate Science will reform. People will appreciate the importance of saying “sorry, I was wrong”. Michael Mann will be asked to admit his mistakes or leave. Politicians will come to understand the danger to democracy of runaway hysteria in science. Scientists will understand that a creative and productive Science absolutely needs disagreement and debate. Newspapers’ histrionic powers re science reporting will be curbed by legislation.
The whole thing proceeds by following integrity all the time.
We understand here the importance of good evidence clearly explained, of openness to all POV, courtesy, no ad homs, no appeals to authority, etc.
Well, almost. We understand the importance of this in Climate Science. But there are other areas where I see those negatives still running unchecked here. I’ve just checked The Oil Drum. It only has warmist blogs in its blogroll, which doesn’t bode well. But I’m not convinced that Peak Oil is utterly mistaken. Blown up it may well be. It may well rest on a lot of bad science and political shenanigans. But I’m not convinced it’s all mistaken. I’d like to get engaged in informed debate between all POV. And I’ve seen enough different POV in comments here to believe that this might be possible.
I’ve seen far less balance with regard to other “fringe” topics mentioned here in passing. Take homeopathy. I’ve researched the subject and I know there is a lot of good evidence – and when it concerns people healing when they have failed for a considerable time to get healing any other way, I think this is important too. Of course there will be bad practitioners and quacks too. But that doesn’t justify tarring the good ones with the same brush. In homeopathy, and in many so-called “pseudosciences”, is a field totally parallel to Climate Science – a huge amount of good evidence to support it – but the establishment like Ben Goldacre sneers at it with half-truths just like Monbiot and Schmidt do to climate skeptics.
Enonym says:
“As for my self, I vist WUWT a few times each day, while I visit RC a few times each month. The reason I visit WUWT is to get a laugh, while I visit RC to get educated.”
Now THAT’s funny!
I admire what your site has done for the debate on observed Climate Variation and the constant scare stories which have been lapped up by the uncritical mass media. I visit WUWT as regularly as I can (I am always very busy and short of time) because the content is always informative, interesting and polite. I rank you as the top blog for the science alongside EUreferendum which is good on the politics of AGW.
frank says:
July 27, 2010 at 11:46 am
“[…](For example, see the lack of units on the vertical scale on the graph on the top of this post which prevents any reader from unambiguously understanding what the data show – as opposed to what the author says the data shows!)[…]”
The numbers on the vertical axis have the unit 1. So 5000 means 5000 * 1, equalling 5000. We call these numbers cardinal numbers. They are frequently used in a field of science called mathematics. Cardinal numbers are especially helpful when enumerating and sorting things.
A good example are pop charts. When somebody makes #1, what unit has the “1” in this case? Metric tonnes of records? No; it just means “more metric tonnes of records than #2 has sold”.
On November 17, 2006 the very first entry on WUWT was posted by Anthony. In the first post he asks if anyone has any “gee-whiz” questions they’d like to ask. Go and read it!
He’s got his answer!
I propose that on November 17th this year, WUWT’s fourth birthday, we ALL raise a glass of a suitable beverage, at a time that suits you in whichever time-zone you might reside, and wish this splendid site and the very, very hard-working people who give of their time to keep this place so hospitable and informative our heartiest congratulations and best wishes.
Then each and every WUWTer should go and hit the tip-jar for ten or so as a birthday present.
I also recommend to Anthony and the mods that on November 17th this year a dedicated page is put up for WUWTers to post their messages of felicitations and congratulations.
How many hits would that page get? A hundred? A thousand? More?
Any support for this proposal?
Jimmy Haigh says:
July 27, 2010 at 11:06 am
“idlex says:
July 27, 2010 at 10:31 am
“I thoroughly disapprove of the use of smileys. Shakespeare didn’t use them. And nor should anyone else. ;-)”
I bet he would have had they’d been invented.”
And he would have used 7334 speak mixed with C syntax: 2B||!2B. Notice that we can’t do a bitwise or here.
Enonym says: July 27, 2010 at 5:14 am
I would be careful to take the number of visitors as a quality indicator. As for my self, I vist WUWT a few times each day, while I visit RC a few times each month. The reason I visit WUWT is to get a laugh, while I visit RC to get educated. But as I said, that’s me. It’s probably different for a lot of people.
Being a regular at RC, it seems hypocritical of you to react in that fashion. The quoted readership above indicates that a significantly greater number of intelligent people vist[sic] this blog relative to RC, which coincidentally, defines a consensus. I thought that was all that mattered to your team.
But glad you could add some humor.
Phil M2. says:
July 27, 2010 at 1:13 pm
Oops! Gave away my total lack of experience writing html.
One can but learn; thanks.
Hey solar cooker guys,
doesn’t your solar cooker work with IR?? The backradiation should do it doncha know!!
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Stephen Brown says:
July 27, 2010 at 1:41 pm
Any support for this proposal?
Yes.
peakbear says:
July 27, 2010 at 5:54 am
“TJA says: July 27, 2010 at 5:34 am”
“There’s a “Peak Oil” website? Whodathunkit? Oh yeah, people who think that the ‘law’ of supply and demand is a primitive superstition.”
theoildrum.com is an excellent website with loads of contributions from top people all throughout the industry….
As regards Real Climate I’d be all up for a debate if they would even vaguely have one. It really does portray itself as a group of adolescent bullying school boys…
___________________________________________________________
A very good review of both sites. The Oildrum had some very good coverage of the oil spill before anyone else did. It is worth a visit now and again, unlike Real Climate. “A group of adolescent bullying school boys”… AND these are the people who want to dictate how we run our lies AURGHhhh!
Congratulations Anthony, I have learned a lot here.
I have never visited the Climate Progress site and, just for giggles, thought I would.
I followed their link to “An illustrated guide to the latest climate science” and, far from being a balanced view of the subject, there was only a plethora of papers stating
“catastrophic”, “worse that we thought”, “unprecedented”, “seminal”, “hottest on record”, “North Pole ice free”, etc scare stories.
One reference supposedly confirming “…global warming is driving melting at extraordinary rates…” is “Another one bites the dust, literally: Bolivia’s 18,000 year-old Chacaltaya glacier is gone”. That CP article states:
Like the Wicked Witch of the West, the world is melting — and fast.
The University of Zurich’s World Glacier Monitoring Service reported earlier this year, “The new data continues the global trend in accelerated ice loss over the past few decades.” The rate of ice loss is twice as fast as a decade ago. “The main thing that we can do to stop this is reduce greenhouse gases” said Michael Zemp, a researcher at the University of Zurich’s Department of Geography.
Looking for other references to this glacier I found http://www.inesad.edu.bo/mmblog/mm_20090323.htm from the Institute for Advanced Development Studies in Bolivia. This is an article titled “Reconciling melting glaciers and falling temperatures in the Bolivian highlands
By Lykke E. Andersen*, La Paz, 23 March 2009.” and refutes the idea that the loss of the Chacaltaya glacier is due to global warming and states:
“Bolivia’s rapidly diminishing Chacaltaya glacier has been widely used as a symbol of Anthropogenic Global Warming (1). However, it is an unfortunate choice of symbol, because the retreat of this specific glacier is demonstrably not due to increasing temperatures caused by CO2 emissions.”
It was also interesting to note the Institutes mission statement includes:
“The vast majority of development research is carried out in northern countries by researchers who, for the most part, have only an academic understanding of the real obstacles that face people in developing countries, and whose main purpose of the research is to get articles published in top journals.
The Institute for Advanced Development Studies was created in order to facilitate independent development research by researchers from developing countries who live with the problems of underdevelopment every single day and thus are better positioned to prioritize and propose viable solutions to the problems. ”
I don’t think I’ll be visiting Climate Progress again in the foreseeable future and I now regret adding to their visitor hit counter.
bob says:
July 27, 2010 at 6:47 am
How often does WUWT link to peer reviewed journal articles as compared to RC?
The answer to that question will tell you which site does the better job of educating its visitors.
________________________________________________
I suggest you read the peer reviewed articles by Scott Armstrong, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School at: list
Especially read :
171. J. Scott Armstrong (1980), Bafflegab Pays, Psychology Today, 12
173. J. Scott Armstrong (1980), Advocacy as a Scientific Strategy: The Mitroff Myth, Academy of Management Review, 5, 509-511
174. J. Scott Armstrong (1980), The Seer-Sucker Theory: The Value of Experts in Forecasting, Technology Review, June/July, 16-24
“..Armstrong, who is the editor of a new research publication called the Journal of Forecasting, offered the advice in a serious, scholarly article last month in the journal’s first issue….
If you want to publish an article in some scientific or medical journal, here is some unusual advice from Scott Armstrong, a professor of marketing at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School: Choose an unimportant topic. Agree with existing beliefs. Use convoluted methods. Withhold some of your data. And write the whole thing in stilted, obtuse prose. …
“Papers with surprising results are especially important for adding significantly to what is known. Presumably, the editors of journals want to publish important papers,” Armstrong said. “On the other hand, they are concerned that the journal might look foolish — and so they reject many of the important papers.”
For young academics who wish to be published in such journals, Armstrong said, “the factors that would seem to be a deadly combination would be choosing an important problem and obtaining surprising results.” Plain Prose: It’s Seldom Seen in Journals
In other words, if you want mediocre science on unimportant topics stated in bafflegab then stick to peer reviewed science, because you will have to look elsewhere for cutting edge science.
Really, Mr. Watts, with all due respect, does your Alexa rating really mean what you think it means?
One possibility: Real Climate is an “astroturfing site by climate alarmists who tolerated no dissent,” and therefore the general public flocks to more reasonable, more scientific and better informed sites such as this one.
Another possibility: stoked by mob mentality, our post-Cold-War-paranoia of government, the overall jitters that affects cultures during times of economic recession, and a concerted smear campaign by people with only a secondary understanding of the science, the public is attracted to blogs which give them easy answers to complex problems and provide fall guys (Michael Mann, Jim Hansen, take your pick) to blame for large-scale weather phenomenon in the real world. We’ve seen this kind of human phenomena of crowd manipulation also…we all know where.
Science is not necessarily predicated on Internet ratings in the first place, and it’s somewhat ironic that the “consensus means nothing crowd” is now touting its Alexa rating.
REPLY: Ask Mr. Lorrey, who posted this story – Anthony
Bruce Cobb says:
“Surely, by “examine the science” you must mean “get educated”. That’s the trouble with Alarmists; they can’t (or won’t) think for themselves, and that is sad.”
No I don’t mean that and surely you are not putting words in my mouth or misunderstanding me.
I am already educated and can think for myself and have no preconcieved notions of what is happening in the world.
I have first hand knowledge that the carbon to oxygen double bond absorbs in the infared, I don’t have to take someones word for it.
John H. says”
“Was that Pre or Post ‘The Teams’ redefinition of Peer Review”
I wasn’t aware that the team had redefined Peer Review.
and “But you do have their permission, they were released by an insider ;)”
I may have that ‘insiders permission” but I don’t have Mann’s and the rest, but then I would like an objective and representative sample of the CRU’s emails rather than a biased selection.
But then, really those emails are as relevant today as MBH98 is. I mean there is more trouble coming every day.
I mean MBH98 is obsolete and the emails don’t really have much data.
And I still haven’t read them, only what both sides say about them.
For hro001,
If you don’t like what gets published in the so called peer reviewed journals, feel free to do research and publish.
It is a human system after all, and bound not to be perfect.
If some have trouble getting published, well maybe they need to do better science.
Jason,
Of course RC is one sided, as science is not a courtroom nor journalism.
Latimer Alder says:
“And there is strong circumstantial and anecdotal evidence that the process within the small world of ‘climate science’ has fallen victim to groupthink.”
Even if the evidence is strong, it is still circumstantial and anecdotal, and not worth posting on any blog.
Oh wait, you didn’t post any evidence, just a mild assertation that there was.
You must be a groupthing groupie.
****”Ask Mr. Lorrey, who posted this story”
Okay.
REPLY: snip ask minus the ugly, or don’t ask at all. – Anthony
That second screen capture contains a classic:
Former meteorologist and weather expert Anthony Watts maintains this site, skeptical of the man… [Mann]
Well, I thought it was funny.
Re: Gail’s list of “peer reviewed” articles –
Not one is from a science journal. Not one is about climate science. The author is a business prof. The articles date back to 1980. It is not clear that any of them are “serious academic articles.”
It is readily evident why the skeptic’s disdain peer review – they have none.
Skeptical sciences comes from the blogosphere where anyone can publish anything they want and call it “science.”
Oh yes, there’s Lindzen…someone will certainly trot him out here in a minute.
Stephen Brown says:
July 27, 2010 at 1:41 pm
On November 17, 2006 the very first entry on WUWT was posted by Anthony….
I also recommend to Anthony and the mods that on November 17th this year a dedicated page is put up for WUWTers to post their messages of felicitations and congratulations.
How many hits would that page get? A hundred? A thousand? More?
Any support for this proposal?
________________________________________________________________________
Sounds like a good idea but it might be hard on Anthony and the MODs
Enonym says:
July 27, 2010 at 5:14 am
“…while I visit RC to get educated.”
Surely some mistake. I’m certain you meant “indoctrinated” – thesaurus malfunction perhaps?
bob says:
July 27, 2010 at 3:43 pm
I am already educated and can think for myself and have no preconcieved notions of what is happening in the world.
You’ll pardon my skepticism. You do seem to have preconceived, and misguided ideas as to the overall importance of whether peer-reviewed means the science is valid. You do seem to have preconceived notions about the value and scientific validity inherent in “consensus science”, showing an unwillingness to examine or question in any way said science, borne out by your admiration of RC which doesn’t allow that anyway.
I have first hand knowledge that the carbon to oxygen double bond absorbs in the infared, I don’t have to take someones word for it.
Congratulations. No one here denies that C02 is a greenhouse gas. Maybe there’s hope for you after all. Stick around, and you might actually learn something, despite your preconceived notions.