From The Legend of the Titanic at RealClimate (bold mine):
However, if the notion that information makes little impact is correct, one may wonder what the point would be in having a debate about climate change, and why certain organisations would put so much efforts into denial, as described in books such as Heat is on, Climate Cover-up, Republican war on science, Merchants of doubt, and The Hockeystick and Climate Wars. Why then, would there be such things as ‘the Heartland Institute’, ‘NIPCC’, climateaudit, WUWT, climatedepot, and FoS, if they had no effect? And indeed, the IPCC reports and the reports from the National Academy of Sciences? One could even ask whether the effort that we have put into RealClimate has been in vain.
Look at the data, then you be the judge:
From Alexa.com – note that the lower number for traffic rank is better
(Google is traffic rank #1 for example)
Source for comparisons: http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/wattsupwiththat.com+realclimate.org#
Seems like an order of magnitude slam dunk to me, RC can’t even get out of the grass at greater than 100,000 traffic rank…they aren’t even being tracked anymore. Here’s the last 6 months:
Source: http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/realclimate.org#
Rasmus goes on to say at RC:
What do I think? Public opinion is changed not by big events as such, but by the public interpretation of those events. Whether a major event like hurricane Katrina or the Moscow heat wave changes attitudes towards climate change is determined by people’s interpretation of this event, and whether they draw a connection to climate change – though not necessarily directly. I see this as a major reason why organisations such as the Heartland are fighting their PR battle by claiming that such events are all natural and have nothing to do with emissions.
The similarity between these organisations and the Titanic legend is that there was a widespread misconception that it could not sink (and hence it’s fame) and now organisations like the Heartland make dismissive claims about any connection between big events and climate change. However, new and emerging science is suggesting that there may indeed be some connections between global warming and heat waves and between trends in mean precipitation and more extreme rainfall.
This is a good time to remind readers and the few remaining RC denizens of why Rasmus Benestad is clueless on the “emerging science” of severe weather = climate change:
We just finished our STAR tests here, and one question asked which of the choices can cause the temperatures on earth to rise. The correct answer was burning more fossil fuels.
I already told my students that was the answer they’d want if that question should happen to be on the test, but I’ve already told them the truth, too.
Jim Owen says:
May 3, 2012 at 9:38 am
As always, the left/alarmist denizens are entirely clueless about history.
JIm,
While I agree with the gist of your comment, please try to steer clear of the “lefty alarmist” / “right wing sceptic” stereotype. As a solidly left-wing (in fact, borderline communist) sceptic I don’t exactly find it offensive but I do see it as damaging to the “reasonableness” of our position. I’ve learnt over the years that one thing that’s guaranteed to annoy people is to be forcibly categorised according to one attribute, whether that’s skin colour, religeous beliefs or position in a debate and have assumptions made about their entire personalit as a result.
As the rational side of this debate we should be accepting that scepticism isn’t a political trait, any more than it’s a gender or ethnic one, and leaving the other side to continue forcing people into ill-fitting pigeon-holes 🙂
@martinbrumby, Real Climate is not funded with taxpayer money.
When Mann and
Schmidt created RealClimate they sought to blunt the Sceptics from telling the truth about the climate. Thanks to the Internet they weren’t able to monopolize climate science. Climategate I and II plus Fakegate emails were exposed to the world and the nefarious deceit these clowns tried to perpetrate on the world.
question…
Why would a traffic rank in another region be so substantially different than in the USA. I presume google is used everywhere and that most people have the same habits regardless of locale… That is everyone wants to download music, check the weather, do banking, etc.
So why would WUWT be so popular in New Zealand but ranked lower in the USA? It is a sociological puzzle to me.
New Zealand is a western society…. they bank, dance, buy cars….What’s Up with That anyway?
Surely a science historian could come forward now to compare and contrast past science scandals and group think enforcement tactics and how they unraveled. This is an opportunity on the scale of This Time Its Different by Reinhart and Rogoff on the history of sovereign debt crises. Or, where oh where is the intricate research of Robert Caro in looking at the parallels of LBJ’s rise to power. We need you now!
I agree with Chas…the true analogy would be between CAGW and the Titanic, not skeptics and the Titanic.
CAGW was the ship that could not be sunk, they had the “consensus” and the science was settled. Then one night the WUWT data iceberg appeared and gashed a giant hole their wonderful CAGW ship. Some of the crew and passengers bailed out quickly and saved themselves, however, “the band” (Hansen, Mann, Jones, Tenebreth, etc.) played on, lulling many into a false sense of security. The ship is sinking and they don’t even know it.
Tom Deutsch says:
May 3, 2012 at 10:10 am
@martinbrumby, Real Climate is not funded with taxpayer money.
OK OK OK…. Taxpayer funded nutty projects like Global Warming, and Solar Power and Wind Mills and all that eco religion nonsense, promoted at various web site, funded or not by more taxpayer money is doomed to failure since the entire premise upon which the web sites operate is doomed to failure.
OK Better..???
So… Because you get more traffic you’re right? It may comfort you, but it’s not science.
Anthony: The RC-Titanic Header is perfect–your best post header to date.
I cannot give any scientist of any age better advice than this: the intensity of the conviction that a hypothesis is true has no bearing on whether it is true or not.
— Sir Peter B. Medawar, Biologist
martinbrumby
ANY organization stuffed with goverment money is bound to fail. See Solendra[sp?].
Gavin is a public employee and it is apparently a large part of his day job to monitor and post at RC.
Let me get a quick-fix going on that first paragraph:
However, if the notion that information makes little impact is correct, one may wonder what the point would be in having a debate about climate change, and why certain organisations would put so much efforts into mindless panic, public disinformation, slander and character assassination, as described in books such as “The Delinquent Teenager Who Was Mistaken for the World’s Top Climate Scientist; ClimateGate The CruTape Letters, The Resilient Earth, The Inconvenient Skeptic, The Hockey Stick Illusion, Don’t Sell Your Coat, and many others (sorry if I missed any – I’m not at home and can’t look up at my bookshelf!).
Chris Reynolds says:
May 3, 2012 at 10:23 am
So… Because you get more traffic you’re right? It may comfort you, but it’s not science.
====
Wrong way to look at it. WUWT gets more traffic because the science IS discussed, new research IS argued over, old science IS challenged and / or supported, and people are not screened out for having a different opinion of what the World is doing. People such as you, in fact.
surreal climate gets less traffic because their entire argument consists of Snark.
– I thought comedy was dead, but then I realised the BBC has sneaked in the NEW Monty Python : Harrabin, Black & Shukman & their North American sidekicks Hansen, Mann & Gleick (AKA the Joker) + the Australian Flannery wearing the big clown prediction shoes…oh and there’s a whole posse of Hacktivist sidekicks led by Monbiot “If the story fits my dogma, then I won’t check the facts, just churn it !”
…. if they all sink on RC Titantic ..who will there be left to laugh at ?
It takes but one counter example to an hypothesis to send the whole theory to the graveyard – unless it is CAGW and the demonization of CO2, then it can be wrong as often as needed since it doesn’t make predictions, just projections.. (ok this probably doesn’t need it, but let me add /sarc)
“Ice berg, what ice berg? Thanks to fossil fuel CO2, children in the future will be lucky to ever see an ice berg!…..So goodnight, Ladies and Gentlemen, this is your Captain, James Hansen, r.c., signing off.”
Jenn Oates says:
May 3, 2012 at 10:09 am
Be careful. I would hate to see you lose your position because of your views. The paradigm has shifted on the internet, but proponents of AGW are still in positions of power. Perhaps even a zealot parent could do your career some tangible harm. I urge caution, and it is a very sad academic state of affairs to have to do so.
As an aside and to stay on topic, I would suggest that the ONLY traffic RC gets is due to WUWT?. That gives me a three mile smile.
Interesting philosophical question Rasmus raises: Does the CAGW alarmist propaganda have little impact on changing minds and if so, what’s the point of RC?
Katrina? Katrina? Oh yeah I remember now, that was that levee failure back in 2005 from a Cat 3. There’s an example of a REAL human caused disaster, unlike GW.
Early on, I visited “Real” (haha!) Climate a few times. It was immediately obvious from their venom-filled, spittle-spewing, diatribal drivel that their arguments were entirely based on fallacy instead of science. I seldom returned to sample their PC web-a-tronic Ipecac™. WUWT sank their Bismarck.
Mark Twain wrote a short story that highlited the slow speed of communication in the late 1800’s titled “Cecil Rhodes and the Shark” wherein a fisherman catches a shark in Australia that had swallowed a man in possession of a newspaper. The paper carried a story about the war that had just been declared in Europe. This news had not yet reached Australia and the man made out very well in the wool market.
“One could even ask whether the effort that we have put into RealClimate has been in vain.” Oh, I wouldn’t go that far. It did manage, at least for a while, to give the appearance of offering science, and of fooling the more naive and less bright. It was a good effort. Go ahead and give yourselves at RC and other pseudoscientific sites like the hilariously-named “SkepticalScience”, DeSmogBlog and others a big round of applause. You deserve it.
Paul Westhaver says:
May 3, 2012 at 10:15 am
question…
My hypothesis is, the better the education system in a given country the higher the WUWT rank. See Thailand.
My daughter sent me this cartoon which is perhaps on topic.