Hello Everyone,
I wish to offer my sincere thanks for your assistance and willingness for the help and ideas in putting together a presentation and appear on the WUWT-TV event. Much of this came from reader’s ideas and insight.
We had a few technical glitches, we had a couple of embarrassing moments, and we had some great fun as well. The only criticisms that seemed to be pervasive was that it “wasn’t as well presented as Al Gore’s”.
Nothing could be truer, and nothing could be more illustrative of the disparity between the well funded “haves” and “have nots”. The next time somebody points to the meme “you skeptics are funded by big oil/big coal/ big something” all you need to do is point to this first effort, and that should shut them up because the entire WUWT effort was begged, borrowed, and donated from people “just like you” to borrow that PBS label.
In the process, I learned what to do and what not to do, and how to make the next effort better when we have to work on a limited budget. I think we won on the science content though.
Hilariously, we see still things like this coming from Gore during the event that tout that “big oil and “big coal” connection they imagine: http://realitydrop.org/about.
The video is priceless:
So, lessons learned, but we pulled it off, and I owe all of you a debt of gratitude. I’ll work to get YouTube recordings up next week. For now I need to rest a bit. Posting will be light this weekend.
Again, my sincerest thanks to all who contributed, participated, and watched. A special thanks to WUWT reader John Whitman who made two 300 mile round trip drives, battled a software learning curve, and spent over a week of his time working to bring us the “did you know” and Josh intermission slides. Thanks to Josh too.
Best Regards,
Anthony Watts, and Kenji
P.S. suggestions are welcome for how to use/improve this new medium.
PPS. It seems much of Mr. Gore’s traffic may have been bot driven, see this analysis left in comments:
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Stephen Rasey
Submitted on 2012/11/16 at 2:54 pm
For fun, I was considering the proposition that each of the viewers of WUWT-TV and Gore-TV might belong to 1 of 2 populations:
X = population with a mean view time of 1 hr. (Watchers)
Y = population with a mean view time of T minutes. (Bots + thrashers)
Let T = average view time for the Y population.
Let TV = Total Views in 24 hours.
Let CV = Current Views average over 24 hr.
CV = X + Y
TV = 24* (X + Y*60/T)
Solution:
X = CV*(60/(60-T)) – TV*(T/(24*(60-T)))
Y = CV – X
TV(WUWT) = 16,690 (what I remembered seeing. I could be wrong.)
CV(WUWT) = 550 is my guess at an average in a range of 420-670 from personal observation. Until we have something better.
TV(Gore) = 15.7 million (from mfo 02:28 prev. thread) . I cannot confirm that, but Reg. Blank above reports about million at 2.25 hours, about 10% into it.
CV(Gore) = 9000 @ TV=300K, 1.5 hr;
= 11200 @ TV=500K, 1.9 hr.
= 12100 @ TV “close to a million” at 2.25 hr. from Reg. Blank above.
Shortly after this the CV counter was taken down. So we will have to guess this by exploring a range of possible values. An important constraint here is that the three observation points give a mean view time of only 3 minutes (approx.).
Frac_TV_X = Fraction of TV that can come from X population (1 hr mean) views.
Frac_TV_X = X*24/TV
First, WUWT-TV: (TV=16690, CV=550)
If T=0.16, X=550, Y=0.4, Frac_TV_X = 0.790
If T=1, X=548, Y=2, Frac_TV_X= 0.787
If T=10, X=521, Y=29, Frac_TV_X = 0.749
So 74-79% of the TV (total views) are coming from the population views with a mean 1 hr.
Now Gore-TV: (TV = 15.7 million)
If CV = 36000 (3 times highest known value)
If T=0.16; X=34347; Y=1653; Frac_TV_X=0.053
If T=1; X=25523; Y=10477; Frac_TV_X=0.039
If T=2; X=14684; Y=21316; Frac_TV_X=0.022
If T=3; X=3465; Y=32535; Frac_TV_X=0.005
T>4 is not possible.
If CV=24000, T=0.16; X=22315; Y=1685; Frac_TV_X=0.034
If CV=50000, T=0.16; X=48385; Y=1615; Frac_TV_X=0.074
If CV=100000, T=0.16; X=98518; Y=1482; Frac_TV_X=0.151
Note: T=0.16 represents a viewer that is opening the stream and shutting it down in a 10 second loop. With T=0.16, X = watchers, Y = ‘bots.’
Conclusion: X is tightly coupled with the estimate for CV. But the fraction of total views from 1-hr Watchers is illuminating. The Frac_TV_X (= 1hr people views / total views) is highest for high CV and low T. For CV = 36000 (3 time higher than any reported in the first two hours) only 5% of the total views were from “watchers”, 95% from bots. We have to use CV=100,000 (8 times higher than max observed), to reach a point where even 15% of total views could be from a population with a 1 hr mean view. At least 85% of total views were bots cycling every 10 seconds.
Thanks again to you and all your helpers,
to all the people that appeared on the program as well!
I look forward to seeing some of the segments I missed on youtube.
The cast was impressive, pretty much a who is who on the unconvinced scientists & sceptic side.
I hope you can persuade the missing notables to show up on your next show and perhaps get someone from the high positive feedback camp to present their case and/or participate in a panel discussion.
You did a great job as presenter/moderator (impressive stamina, Gore-TV had a new presenter every hour when I looked). Switching from Gore-TVs very professional production and their emotional propaganda on the “big oil funded lying, cheating evil denial machine” back to WUWW-TV was hilarious at times. If you are well funded you hide it well.
With the exception of John Coleman (he can teach you a few things 🙂 ) the lineup I watched looked like academic presentations. No fancy animations, no fancy music, no flashy “MTV-production” adapted to viewers with attention span disorder, no high on emotional appeal image/message melodramatic propaganda.
Just facts, theories and arguments, the input that help you decide what you think is right.
Just what I want.
Look forward to your next production.
Time zone, old age and general deterioration meant I couldn’t catch as much I wanted. The bits I saw, as mentioned by others, included some great stuff but technology drop-outs hindered the flow. Simple things that will, no doubt, disappear with time.
I like Tallbloke’s idea of a regular spot on a monthly basis, maybe focussing on one or two key points that would allow a deeper investigation of those points. Any chance of a ‘conference call’ type interaction with the scientists? Risky, I realise, for obvious reasons but it would offer the warmists a chance to fight their corner in open debate. Going from their avoidance of such openness, in the past, it might be worth offering them the chance. Refusal would be telling?
Anywho, my best wishes for future events.
Stephen Rasey says:
November 16, 2012 at 8:20 pm
…. Your graphs show remakable flatness in view rate (people entering the stream) over the hour 22:00 to 23:00. Is that real? if so, it is a sign of bots at work. Why should just as many people be tuning in at 22:13 as as 21:58? If it is people who want to tune in, we should see spikes in the view counter in the minutes before the hour and maybe half hour.
________________________________________
That sounds about right. There should be clusters around the hour and 1/2 hour marks.
As another commenter said removing the viewer counts may have been to keep you from seeing the remarkable flatness of the curve during the entire 24 hour period. It also seems to me that it happened shortly after your comment in real time that you were keeping track.
Smells like week old fish. We already know these folks play dirty and there are billions or more at stake.
Roger Knights says:
November 16, 2012 at 8:57 pm
I see that http://www.realitydrop.org monitors the web for climate-related discussions and uses software to suggest ripostes to contrarians’ comments for warmists to drop into online conversations in real time. It’s like John Cook’s software bot, but more advanced. The concept is slick. Our side should do the same. (Get us a grant!)
____________________________________
No, this is an underhanded trick of the snake-oil salesman. WUWT has a big enough readership we do not have to resort to “protesters for hire”. (I saw on the net recently it is $14/hr, they are getting cheap. In the early 1980’s it was $10, an hour)
Congratulations – excellent stuff anf great reference material. Unlike others I like the fact that it was clear that individuals presented from home or office as opposed to something slick like normal TV. Also the ads were relevant to me (Dubai and Spain Portugal), so the ad company did a good job too
“TV(Gore) = 15.7 million (from mfo 02:28 prev. thread) . I cannot confirm that, but Reg. Blank above reports about million at 2.25 hours, about 10% into it.”
“”””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””
I can’t apologize enough Anthony for not providing a link and failing to confirm the figure.
The link is:
http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/climate-weather/stories/what-if-climate-change-doubters-held-a-debate-and-nobody-came#comments-1120180
Personally I’m very skeptical of it as no evidence of the figure was provided by the writer. The first comment though is very interesting:
“You do realize one is a count of how many times the page has been loaded or refreshed and the other is a “current” viewer tally? I have watched parts of both and at the beginning Gore’s broadcast showed both total viewers and current viewers but at some point the removed the current viewers display.While both had the current viewers tally displayed the WUWT channel consistently had ~75% of the viewership of the Gore presentation. This post is utterly inaccurate and pointless and unless you really are just trying to misinform it should be reworked or removed.”
From the little I saw of the Gory weather = Gory climate nonsense I’m surprised anyone could watch it for more than a minute. WUWT TV was brilliant considering how difficult it is to do what you achieved, a live TV program with worldwide interviews. Even the 24 hour live news channels have dozens of problems every day.
I suspect that some of the interviews you did, when available on YouTube, could easily go viral. A link to your YouTube on the side bar would be a great help.
Is this analysis from the same guy who “unskewed” the polls?
Wasn’t there also some doubt about the number of viewers for ALGORE in last years dog & pony show?
I woke up early and started streaming on my iPhone as I made my morning coffe. Then I had it streaming several times throughout the day. I really enjoyed the show. Congratulations on pulling it off!
I liked it wasn’t super polished and slick like Algore’s superfund(ed) mess.
Thanks Anthony,
You’re a gracious host, and I enjoyed several segments of programing including the last hour Watts et al power point presentation.
Great work Anthony. It will be interesting to see the fate of your surface station work. Enjoyed all of the presentations. except Mosher’s. I am perplexed why he continues to call himself a “lukewarmer”, which I view as a cowardly position. Let’s stipulate everything Mosher says about CO2, then what you are left with (and he agrees), is sensitivity/feedbacks. So, for a 2x of CO2 we anticipate anywhere from 1-6 degrees C. I suppose a Lukewarmer would predict 3.5 degrees C. Let us see Mosher really defend this number. I would enjoy listening to his reasoned response defending the lukewarmer position.
Loved it particular john kehr segment,when you look at it rhe way he has, the whoes alarmism is just that alarmism…. for profit.Well done can’t wait for the next WUWT broadcast .
[snip]
[snip]
The “Reality Drop” thing will result in people cutting and pasting comments onto sites such as this one. (They “win points” by doing so.) It should be easy enough to indentify such cutting and pasting, as no original writing is involved. Perhaps it would be wise to lable them as being “Reality Drop Cut and Paste #6,” or some such thing. It will demonstrate that the person who is contributing the comment is not thinking for themselves, but is merely a parrot.
I have often been corrected on this site, and at times the people correcting me have been less than polite. However I never mind it, because it is through such exchanges that my mind grows. Hopefully my replies have the same effect.
However to “Cut and Paste” is not to respond point by point to a person. It is to give the same answer over and over, ignoring the nuances. Rather than an exchange of ideas it is a wall that blocks the free exchange of ideas.
The sound quality was low for the guests and it was a bit disorganized. And I loved every minute I got to watch. Unfortunately I was only able to catch maybe 45 mins total. Can’t wait for YouTube.
A big thanks to Anthony, the guests, and the community!
(In the KUSI segment, Petersen said they discovered a ‘cooling bias’ in the MMTS that had to be ‘adjusted’. In your segment you pointed out that the MMTS was just more accurate and it was the Stevensen Screens that tended to darken and peal paint with age and warm. Thus the ‘adjust all history cooler’ of GHCN to ‘…
/////////////////////////////////////////////////////
KUSI?
MMTS?
GHCN?
What would be really useful for a lay person like myself would be a glossary of acronyms and commonly used terms in climate science. Does one exist? Or…
REPLY: http://wattsupwiththat.com/resources/glossary/
The wonderful thing for me was all the names turned into faces, into real persons and characters. If some of them where not that slick in presenting themselves, it showed the authenticity the more. The best TV-format I can think of. The signal should be clear enough from the noise, ok, but that is all that is needed. That is just a technicality that will improve anyhow.
Reality Drop? They should re-brand it “Reality Droop… Here To Hide The Decline”
/snark
Some interesting comments throughout –
A couple of my own – Live television (streaming video) is wayyyyy different than patching together pre-recorded edited and rehearsed video segments. Anthony did a great first effort using patchwork video equipment and letting the guests do THEIR thing THEIR way, and stitching together the overall result with his questions and comments.
Anthony wasn’t afraid of mis-steps or technical issues, but moved ahead. On the other hand a well financed, slick presentation is what the masses consume – and they are Al’s bread and butter. (or circuses if you prefer)
Take the learnings Anthony, but an excellent first effort and pat on the back.
Mike Bentley
Anthony, may I add my congratulations to those of everyone else. You undertook a project which was very ambitious and you pulled it off. You deserve a well-earned rest. IMO the work which you are doing is hugely important for the future of mankind. BTW thanks to your other half. She must be a very tolerant and understanding lady. I hope she appreciates the significance of what you are doing and is suitably proud.
I caught 3-4 hours and look forward to the Youtube recordings of the rest. For me, the strength of the presentations lay in the “matter of fact” reasonableness of your contributors, the almost complete absence of hype. I found that I learned something new even from those contributors whose books/articles I have read. I was particularly interested in the session with Dr Sebastian Luning as I previously knew little of his work. I will certainly be getting Die Kalte Sonne when it appears in English translation.
Can I suggest to people who can afford it to do like I did and hit the donate button? Hit it hard. If we want more excellence like this, we have to support these folks.
Mark and two Cats says:
November 16, 2012 at 7:11 pm
“btw: Kenji was cute, but next time, for the sake of intellectual gravitas – get some cats.
:)”
But, for professionalism, they would need to cats which/(who) are members of The Union of Concerned Scientists.
I thought you did a great job. The content was very informative and fact based on WUWT. Al Gore’s was disjointed, based mainly on feelings rather than any science.
Good job Mr. W.
Watched ~ 3 hours and it was really impressive! Looking forward to seeing it all on U-tube.
Plenty of big THANKS to You all – especially Anthony!
Brgds from Sweden
/TJ