I regularly get angry emails from people who are convinced that I’m single-handedly destroying the world with my opinion which is supposedly funded by “big oil” and the Koch brothers. Of course, having nothing else, that’s all part of the huge lie people like Dr. Mann likes to push, like this bit of libel over the weekend:
I’m dealing with Dr. Mann’s libel separately, but for the record I’ve never gotten a dime from the Koch brothers, or “big oil”, nor am I a “denier for hire”, and Dr. Mann knows this because he backed down from a similar claim in the past when challenged on it. Now, knowing that, he’s demonstrated malice, fulfilling one of the tests for libel.
That aside, and along the same lines, I recently got an email that included this claim:
“…your pathetic little attempt at pushing climate denialism isn’t working. Places like Real Climate and Skeptical Science are putting your little enterprise to shame.”
So, I thought I’d check and run some numbers to see if I’m shamed or not. Climateers often talk about their climate change cause being a “communications problem”. The numbers I’ve found seem to support that. Witness the new divergence problem:
These are rankings from Alexa.com Lower numbers are better, for example, Google is ranked #1.
It seems that it’s not just globally strong for WUWT, but in the USA too. WUWT is about 8 times more popular in the USA than “Skeptical Science” (SkS), and about 15 times more popular than Real Climate (RC). See the Rank in Country column three:
Look at the bounce rate under Engagement Metrics. Note that over 2/3rds of visitors to SkS don’t engage further. Note also the time on site. WUWT readers spend three times more reading than SkS and almost 9 times more than at RC.
Hmm, well since the email was sent anonymously (as most of the rants are), and I don’t know where the person was located, maybe they were talking about Australia where SkS is located? Maybe that’s where they are kicking our butt? Note column three, Rank in Country (AU):
Eh, guess not- the ratio holds. RC doesn’t even have enough traffic in AU to do a comparison.
Even with Dana Nuccitelli’s signing on with the Guardian and making sure that every time he bashes me and/or WUWT in his column he uses a [nofollow] tag or web citation link to prevent web traffic, it seems that he hasn’t succeeded in keeping WUWT down nor in significantly growing his audience on “Skeptical Science” in the USA or Australia.
Maybe it’s in the UK, where the Guardian is located. Surely SkS is beating me there with all that mass media driven Guardian backed firepower? Note column three, Rank in Country (GB):
Apparently not.
Let’s expand the comparison a bit. My subscription to Alexa allows me to run up to 10 comparisons. I identified what I think to be the most widely read websites on climate that aren’t mixed in with part of a larger organization, making tracking their stats impossible. This of course precludes places like “Climate Progress”, which are part of the larger “Think Progress” or the Guardian, which has many other departments.
While I wish I could run more than 10 on the same graph, here’s what I learned, again lower numbers are better:
Surprisingly, not only is WUWT leading the pack by a significant margin, it has now surpassed the newspaper “Grist” which has become something of a climate centric enterprise. They also have a paid staff.
Note also Al Gore’s “Climate Reality Project”, which is dead last. It appears that Gore’s million$ don’t translate into traffic. That’s some “reality drop” for him.
That bump that Climate Depot got in late July was from being featured on “The Drudge Report” by the way. Good show Marc Morano.
The metrics are also telling:
So to whoever wrote that email, thanks. It made me look deeper.
Truly, it looks like the climateers have a communications problem. People don’t seem to be engaging them like they used to. Personally I think people are seeing through it all, and angry, irrational, rants from people like Mike Mann don’t seem to be helping his cause at all. I can understand their cognitive dissonance though, because in the world where they exist, where everything is grant/funding driven, surely some former TV weather guy in Chico California and his collection of “flying monkeys” (in SkS parlance) can’t possibly be doing what he’s doing without some massive “big oil” funding behind it. Right? Surely the Koch brothers must be secretly paying for it, like Mann thinks. The truth is, WUWT exists on donations, some advertising revenue sharing managed by wordpress.com, and stamina. I couldn’t live on it, but I’m sure that won’t stop people like Dr. Mann from imagining all sorts of nefarious schemes, like his hilarious Christmas calendar episode.
I think that if I was not a broadcaster, I wouldn’t have the stamina to keep WUWT on the air. As a broadcaster, I learned long ago that dead air peppered with occasional feature rants doesn’t keep viewers coming back. It might work for awhile, but eventually people tire of it. That’s the lesson here. We can be thankful that we have so many examples of climate ugliness in the realm of the Climateers, because they drive people to the other side.
But most of all, thanks to my readers and volunteer moderators and contributors, because without all of you, WUWT wouldn’t be where it is.
expect more mannic mikey rants anthony.people of his mindset can never admit they were wrong. when the cAGW scare finally ends,i expect him to go into full meltdown.
to use a uk euphemism,i am skint,but if there is requirement for a legal fund,i will make a contribution.
i have no idea where your stamina comes from,please take care of your self,it may sound over dramatic,but the world really needs people like you at the moment. you receive more admiration and respect ,not only for your work,but your honesty,integrity and willingness to engage with anyone,than mann could ever hope to achieve .last time i looked there was no documented evidence of fraud on your part,and no one taking you to court as a result of failure to comply with a legitimate FOIA request.
you are an honest and sincere man,and THAT is what is reflected in the web traffic. as others have mentioned,many of the warmist sites actually have you to thank for the minimal amount of traffic they actually do receive, many skeptics use them to reinforce the belief that the warmists practise political science,and to get a laugh from time to time.
richardscourtney says:
October 15, 2013 at 2:54 am
“and this induced governments and journalists to question the nature of RC and its claims (they had followed E&E since McIntyre and MacKittrick first ‘broke Mann’s hockey stick’ with their E&E papers). ”
I don’t believe that. Gavin Schmidt and Stefan Rahmstorff, two important RC figures, are the pseudoscientists that the regimes installed to create the scare they needed. RC is a government front. Governments didn’t need to read E&E to know that they were a propaganda organization. They were designed to be one.
It is more likely that the AP & Reuters “journalists” just got the order to change their tactics, to not expose vulnerabilities by using flakey RC material.
DirkH:
re your post at October 15, 2013 at 3:41 am.
Believe whatever you want, but prior to Eschenbach’s paper nobody in the media and no government was saying the “RC material” was “flakey”.
If – as you say – the governments established RC to provide “flakey material” why would they stop using and promoting that material soon after Eschenbach published evidence which showed it was “flakey” unless it was because Eschenbach’s publication had ‘let the cat out of the bag’?
Who are you claiming gave “AP & Reuters” the “order” and why if it was not that Eschenbach’s publication had ‘let the cat out of the bag’?
Richard
Upon reading this thread, I realized I HAD to immediately make a $30 donation, so that I could now proclaim myself a mini-Koch brother. bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha!!!!
Fantastic work, Anthony! Your results reflect your effort and insights!
P.S. no one says what’s really wrong with RealClimate (and some other pro-agw blogs), and this is that it is just a LOUSY site! It is NOT visually appealing, it is not “entertaining to read”, the comments are all lets-pat-ourselves-on-the-back-and-use-a-lot-of-techno-talk-doing-it, and it is updated sporadically. Content aside, it’s just a rotten, boring blog. They should take some lessons from this place, but of course they’re too arrogant to even acknowledge the need.
Anthony, you’re just showing off, shame on you!
You already have the pre-eminent position in the only court that matters in the long term – the court of human opinion. I’d say use your time to build on that, rather than involving the legal profession. It’s a massive time suck, time that won’t be spent here, where you can have way more influence than any court decision can have. There’s only one of you, after all. Keep doing what you do best.
Michael Mann is an unrecoverable narcissist, he feeds on getting a reaction from people. Starve him of that, and the only way he can go is more extreme, until eventually only his most ardent supporters will follow him. It might be the slow way, but it’s the only way that’s going to permanently rid us of his rubbish. Thank you for doing what you do.
Great to read on climate change accurately, great tips on Alexa premium account. Well done.
As a long-time Heartland supporter I wanted to clear up a few misstatements. One, Koch never made a contribution for climate facts, the contribution was directed for a Health Care initiative. In addition to the Environment and Climate facts Heartland has two other major initiatives on its shoestring budget: consumer driven health care and educational choice. Also, Heartland never tried to debunk the harms for cigarette smoking, their arguement was that second-hand smoke (i.e. getting a whiff of smoke in a restaurant) was not as harmful as smoking 1-2 packs a day, the arguement used in banning public smoking in Illinois.
@Ossqss
That is an amazing video. Should be required watching in every high school. A breath of fresh air, and a great antidote to the rubbish we’re barraged with from the climate “scientists”
Sue for every cent he’s got..!
Anthony Watts says:
October 14, 2013 at 5:06 pm
Thanks for the reply. People have all sorts of reasons for dropping into or out of a conversation, and of course some of the more prominent commenters have continued long term. I wouldn’t encourage you to change your format.
richardscourtney says:
October 15, 2013 at 3:57 am
“Who are you claiming gave “AP & Reuters” the “order” and why if it was not that Eschenbach’s publication had ‘let the cat out of the bag’?”
As for Thomson Reuters: These days Arch-globalist Pascal Lamy is on the Board of trustees. He replaced Crispin Tickell (whom you know well).
Did you think these agencies were independent?
As for other media, just gather which editors of which newspapers attend the Bilderberg meeting; not to report about it, of course, but to get their orders.
Europe, as a slave continent of the American Empire, is very well controlled.
I wonder whether Dr. Michael Mann has Tweeted about the following organisations and individuals? “Do as I say, and not as I do.” LOL.
Furthermore………..
Dana Nuccitelli – Guardian environmental contributor & works for Tetra Tech oil and gas services company.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/07/22/dana-nuccitellis-vested-interest-oil-and-gas/
Tetra Tech Expands Services to Shale Oil Market with Rooney Engineering Acquisition
PASADENA, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Jun. 6, 2012– Tetra Tech, Inc. (NASDAQ:TTEK) announced today that it has acquired Rooney Engineering, Inc. (REI), an oil and gas pipeline planning and engineering firm based in Colorado.
http://www.tetratech.com/press-releases/tetra-tech-expands-services-to-shale-oil-market-with-rooney-engineering-acquisition.html
****************************
On 20 April 2002 Dr. Rajendra K. Pachauri was elected Chairman of the IPCC.
In 2005 Pachauri set up a residual oil extraction technology company called Glorioil while still head of the IPCC. Glorioil advised and gave technical assistance to big oil companies on extracting residual oil from fields which would otherwise have been abandoned. Pachauri was one of its advisors too.
Glorioil (now Glori Energy based in Houston, Texas)
Great blog, great energy, keep up the good work.
I have run a model on the increase in predicted traffic over the coming years to the various websites you have mentioned. I am 95% certain, that the Warmists’ blogs are going to overtake your traffic within the next century. There maybe a pause, or temporary reduction in their traffic at the moment but that can be explained by ‘o’shane he tup take’. When the traffic returns, it will do so with great vengeance and ferocity.
Surely my model must be right? I’m very very confident and the fact it does not match observations is surely irrelevant. It’s the new scientific method.
Mann’s latest tweets
Michael E. Mann @MichaelEMann 6m
Via The @Guardian: #AnthonyWatts “*acknowledged* [Koch-funded] Heartland was helping him with $90,000”: http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/feb/15/leak-exposes-heartland-institute-climate … #PatheticHack
5:36 AM – 15 Oct 13
Michael E. Mann @MichaelEMann 10m
#KochBrothers -> HeartlandInstitute (http://www.salon.com/2013/02/01/koch_brothers_donated_big_to_alec_heartland_institute/ …)
HeartlandInst -> #AnthonyWatts 88K (http://www.desmogblog.com/anthony-watts )
#DenierForHire
5:32 AM – 15 Oct 13
Stay strong, Anthony. Thanks for all you do.
Here is Dr. Rendrand K. Pachauri sitting as one of the advisors of Glorioil. Courtesy of the WayBack Machine.
http://web.archive.org/web/20070125222652/http://www.glorioil.com/people.htm
Here is GloriOil’s introduction page back in 2007.
Even Warmists are beginning to see the light.
There is one problem with WUWT: It is as addicting as the computer games my children used to play (and some still do). I am spending too much time reading the blogs and the commentary and that goes at the expense of reading some good novels. Also my garden needs some upkeep which is am inclined to neglect.
Ad hominem logical fallacies continue to unimpress.
Could Mann do with anger management? cf Ephesians 4:26
Otherwise he reaps the consequences – Revelation 18:2
¿Pursued by paid paladins of the fossil fuel industry is he?
Michael Mann manufactured that mythological martyr meme. And did an amateur job of it. Pitiable.
Instead of wasting funds on initiating lawsuits he really should hire some celebrated Hollywood screenwriters to manufacture a professionally crafted martyr myth. Or he should at least read up on Joseph Campbell ‘s work on the mono-myth.
John
i’m afraid it’s par for the course, Mr Watts.
I’ve been accused of taking money from big tobacco once, when the truth is that I worked in cancer research for 10 years!!
There is clearly a ‘party line’ that if you say certain things to certain people that you ‘are in the pay of big oil, big tobacco or big something else’.
Sue him to hell and back.
Why don’t you suggest he spend his incarceration in the Sahara desert?
As that’s going to get unbelievably hot, he’ll be petrified.
You never know, if it gets cooler, maybe he’ll repent??!!
Over on NRO I once debated a young alarmist. When I posted a link to WUWT, he declared that Anthony was to be ignored because he was just a TV meterologist.
A few hours later, as proof of the “consensus”, he posted an article that he found in the journal of the IEEE.
Let’s see, meterologists know nothing about science, but electrical engineers do?
Ooh… Looks like Mikey didn’t like his little junket to Iceland being criticized.
Aren’t the Koch brothers private citizens? If they are, it’s nobody’s business what they do w/their money. Same w/private companies like Exxon, Mobil, etc, etc, etc.
Citizens should obviously be concerned w/what their taxpayer money is used for, not private money. This is so basic….