Al Gore’s “Climate Reality Project” was launched on July 12th with great media fanfare, lots of interviews, and press all over the planet. It is heralded by some of the faithful as Gore 2.0, the second coming.
Only one teensy little problem…on the week I cut back on blogging to work on my business, WUWT still beat Al in global daily reach on the day of the launch, and his trend has been downhill ever since.
It looks like Al is throwing a big expensive party, but nobody is staying beyond the first hour when the Hors d’oeuvre’s run out. Here’s another graph showing daily traffic rank.
Alexa doesn’t plot values below 100,000.
Reality bites manbearpig. My little blog with no big bucks funding from big green and a band of volunteers gets more traffic on the day of the great announcement from Al. Believe me, I was surprised as you are.
Yeah I know, defenders will chatter on about how Alexa is unreliable, blah, blah, but given the blip of press coverage we’ve seen and little follow on afterwards, the numbers do reflect what we see in practice.
Plot the data yourself here:
http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/climaterealityproject.org+wattsupwiththat.com
Maybe people are just tired of countdowns to doomsdays that don’t seem to happen.
I’m sure Al got no help from the May 21st end of the world countdown stupidity that never materialized while the world at large uttered a collective “told ya so!”.
There were hundreds of doomsday countdowns all over the web for that. Al has one too:
Al’s countdown message and track record isn’t that different from Harold Camping’s.
In fact, they don’t look that different while delivering their message in these two photos:
With Camping’s failure, rather than admit he’s just whacked and nobody but the gullible believed him, the date is pushed into the future. Al has the same problem, skepticism is on the rise, book sales are down, bookings for $175,000 a pop lectures are drying up, the Chicago Climate Exchange is dead, and Kyoto is effectively dead. Time for Gore 2.0.
But, nobody seems to be buying it now except the faithful. Will anyone actually care on September 14th?
“when the Hors d’oeuvre’s run out”
probably because what Al thought was an appetiser, turned out to be a load of Carp.
I think it’s actually worse for fat Albert than you suggest. When I read about his new initiative, on WUWT, I clicked the link to see what his web site looked like. I imagine that lots of regular visitors to WUWT did the same, so Al’s ‘spike’ of interest was probably mostly just us folks. Sorry Al, it isn’t going to work, ever.
As a non-US citizen, American politics is something of a mystery to me; the biggest part of the mystery is the amount of adulation visible on the faces of believers when they see their beloved Al Gore in the flesh. To me, he seems to be a pudgy, over-indulgent and not very believable huckster straight out of a 2nd-rate novel. Anyone who buys beach-front property then preaches cataclysmic sea-level rises obviously does not actually expect to be believed.
Just having followed the link to Al’s site I noticed there were three links with visitor numbers printed underneath.
The first link was “Watch the Video” with 111,000 views.
The second link was “Spread the Word” with 8,500 visits.
From these two figures we can calculate the Gullibility Ratio (GR):
GR=8,500/111,000 = 7.65%
I’m afraid I’m only calculating to 3 significant figures because I pressed the link and thus may have distorted the GR. Once in however Al would not let me go, the back button on my browser would not work so I just closed down the window and came back here only to find that Al will not let me re-enter his site! I guess he is sensitive about some of us gullible types and just where we are coming from!
Hmm lemme see what a google search for the date brings up.
Oh Yes! Al’s party makes it onto the bottom of page 1 of the results, a reference to it by a blogger.
She’s a psychotherapist.
Beating Al in the party date stakes we have the NEW! BEASTIE BOYS gigging at Yankee Stadium
“You gotta fight…. For your Right…. to PAAAAAARRRRRRTY!
Maybe Al could get a spot between the support act and the main event.
It’s a good day for Rockers, Metallica are gigging too.
Wonder if they’ll be doing their old standard “My Apocalypse” Al could hum along.
If you want something more sedate then there are some international chefs teaching salami making in New York at the Ballroom. Maybe they could make a novelty hockey stick salami for Al.
Hope the inevitable snow doesn’t prevent everyones partygoing. Have a good one.
I’ll be throwing a party of my own, bring some carbonifierous combustibles for the bonfire and some co2 pressurized beverages over.
Move over Al. While you were out counting your carbon beans that didn’t hatch, a new hysteria kid arrived on the block. It’s all about 2012, Elenin, Niburu, Planet X, etc.
Al…you have been replaced by “It came from Outer Space” stuff. Clean out your desk.
Question 1: About China? When I sat a uni unit ‘Earth in Crisis?’ When I was reading, I read that
China had uncontrolled surface coal fires, so bad, that they couldn’t be put out without billions
spent and the Indonesia forest fires that when uncontrolled for 4 years were caused by the same
problem. India also had the same problem too. China’s pollution caused enough to equalise all the trucks and cars exhausts in the US of A. In Australia we have a permanent ‘smoking mountain’ in NSW caused by coal seams burning. It’s a tourist attraction would you believe.
I can’t see China doing anything significant as they the US of A and Canada are not renewing their Kyoto agreement. The Chinese are one of the biggest economies in the world now, and they know which part of ‘their bread is buttered’. Personally I would rather with a big ? trust them over climate change than Al Gore et al.
How many of the hits to climate reality project . com came for Wattsupwiththat.com? I went and had a look and a laugh. I would think several other people did too.
bushbunny says: (July 18, 2011 at 2:39 am )
“In Australia we have a permanent ‘smoking mountain’ in NSW caused by coal seams burning. It’s a tourist attraction would you believe.”
Mt. Wingen has an interesting history (aside from the fact it has been burning for 6000 years). The local Australian aboriginals considered the waters in a creek below it had healing powers — so did my uncle Mandy, who bought the rights to market products derived from it in liquid, ointment and soap form. It was Wingenia when he bought it, but he changed the name to Silfazone.
The whole family grew up with liberal applications of the liquid (in particular) on any and all wounds and cuts (as did the family animals). The sting was crazy wild; but the wounds always healed without scars. It was in fact quite a remarkable product.
Mandy fenced the top of the mountain, then began extracting an ore which congealed in the various firey openings — whilst the fence became a favourite perch for birds on whichever was the downwind side on the day. They fluffled their feathers; to rid themselves of lice, we believed.
Much, much more; but I guess it’s history now…
.
He uses Appeals to Emotion, Appeals to Authority, and Ad Hominem arguments. Only the hardcore Faithful are still taken in by that. His sell-by date has long past. He’s a loser selling a losing product. It’s embarrassing to watch.
Typo in my note above. The new name was Sulfazone (not Silfaone).
Oh for an Ozram…Light you can see by…
ANH says:
July 18, 2011 at 12:14 am
I think it’s actually worse for fat Albert than you suggest. When I read about his new initiative, on WUWT, I clicked the link to see what his web site looked like. I imagine that lots of regular visitors to WUWT did the same, so Al’s ‘spike’ of interest was probably mostly just us folks. Sorry Al, it isn’t going to work, ever.
Heh, truly informative stats can be cruel. You can imagine Al’s excitement when he saw the hit count, and then the crushing feeling when he saw the name at the top of the referrers list.
“when the Hors d’oeuvre’s run out”
In Al Bore’s case, it should be when the whores run out.
If he was selling soap powder he would have bombed through lack of committment?
LOL. that’s all this site has done. I watched it twice, and quite honestly the video had little impact on me or my dogs.
You guys are showing your age. The “new normal” (/gag) metric is how many social media “friends”, “followers” and “likes” they get. The Climate Reality page on Facebook has over 32k followers, so far. Not sure about Twitter.
Chris D.
You have a point, however, given the budgets these groups have at their disposal, a quick advertising campaign could buy that many “likes” in a few hours. Probably costs less than a dollar a piece. Watching for growth outside the low-hanging fruit demographic will be interesting.
Australian climate change minister given a hiding by Alan Jones.
http://www.2gb.com/index2.php?option=com_newsmanager&task=view&id=9419#.TiP-ztvj0CM.email
went to Google trends and used climate reality project as a search term and got the message
“Your terms – climate reality project – do not have enough search volume to show graphs.”
pretty much says it all
Thanks for the info on the “tip jar.” I think people who donate need to be perfectly clear on what they are donating to. Giving to a specific project is one thing but I think you need steady contributions. I for one would like a clear way to chip in on a easy, steady bases.
What part of “you are worth it” is not understood?
The premier Libertarian event of the year is scheduled for September 15 – 18.
Algorepig schedules his event for September 14. Probably just a coincidence, right?
Each time a significant Ron Paul presidential campaign event takes place, watch the “news” which is reported by the dying lying lame-stream media. Where is the Republican front-runner coverage? What happened? What about Ron?
http://www.lpac2011.com/
That has some ring of truth to it. However, if people are not reading your content but simply friending you… well how meaningful is that? Friending/Following just isn’t as telling as visits and clickthroughs in terms of how much your content is appreciated.
Sounds like snake oil to me.
[snip] Al reminds me of the shepherd boy who kept crying “wolf” – no body believes [snip] Al now.
Sorry to depress you but Al Gore still has fertile ground to grow his ideas. My son has been fighting a lonely losing battle in his Geography class at school about AGW. He directed his teacher to WUWT and said the usual things like the ice caps aren’t melting away, the sea is not rising at an increased rate and polar bears are not dying off.
However he is up against the whole class, gets shouted down a lot and (get this) gets accused of being a communist. The teacher noted that WUWT must be “one of those web sites that fakes their data”.
Ain’t edumakashun wonderful?
Not possible. Not even with elevator shoes. I gather he’s actually about 5’7″, but claims 6’1″. Which is a pretty telling analogy for all his other claims.
Take-away line: “The polls say you’re underestimating the intelligence of the electorate.”
LOL