In case you’ve never heard of it, the web magazine “Grist” is sort of like a Pravda version of the Whole Earth Catalog. They have a staff, a budget, and a swanky downtown office.
Last year it was chief climate attack dog David Roberts leaving whose most famous bit of work was Nuremberg style trials for climate skeptics. His reason was “burnout”. I guess I can see why.
Now, it’s a guy who finally realized his commute of hundreds of miles each week was hypocritcal. Kudos to him for finally waking up. Andrew Revkin writes:
Scott Rosenberg, a pioneering Web journalist and author of “Say Everything,” a history of blogging (if that isn’t an oxymoron), is stepping down after two and a half years leading the blog flow at the green website Grist. In his farewell post, Rosenberg explains that his weekly commutes from his Bay Area home to Seattle weren’t sustainable.
There’s another factor; Grist isn’t growing. In fact when an annoying little blog like this one can beat them in many web metrics, you have to wonder if maybe Rosenberg actually sees the writing on the wall:
Source: Alexa.com Looks like another divergence problem.
As always, lower traffic rank numbers are better, for example, Google is rated as 1. Note the 72% bounce rate and time on site. Mashable notes that:
“On the Internet, a high bounce rate is the kiss of death”
Of course, content might have something to do with it, like today’s featured story on spoons.
You have to wonder how they figure a gas leak explosion is relevant to the “climate and energy” category, unless maybe they just want to blame evil natural gas for the entire problem and be done with it.
I have to wonder why an Internet based Blog media company needs to have an editor that commutes to a brick and mortar office.
Well, they can always gin up the media numbers with some rant journalism just before selling the operation to some oil emirate seeking access to the U.S. market. Right Al?
An environmental activist commuted weekly from SanFran to Seattle. For 2+ years.
And they wonder why we don’t take them seriously?
Hand washing plastic spoons is much more sustainable. I hardly ever use the dishwasher for that.
I know the host is much too humble, but I could read a post of WUWT trouncing an alarmist website every day.
Rats. Ship. Sinking.
“Of course, content might have something to do with it, like today’s featured story on spoons.”
Holy crap, how stimulating. Next week, the sequel for the which the whole world waits breathlessly, an expose on forks and knives..
http://www.google.co.uk/trends/explore#q=grist.org
http://www.google.co.uk/trends/explore#q=wattsupwiththat
http://www.google.co.uk/trends/explore#q=grist.org
It’s quite a step down from Nuremburg trials to biodegradable spoons. As for those deaths from natural gas, blame the cities and their inability to maintain infrastructure. How many deaths due
to freezing in Philadelphia every year? Seems out of sync with global warming. How many deaths from electrical shocks?
You can only sustain speculative climate and environmental alarmism for so long. Eventually the data wins.
The current generation of climate doomsayers (like Grist bloggers) are going to have to find a new line of work for the next 30 years as the planet cools in a reversion to mean. Good thing for them the Blue states are raising the minimum wage so that their new career in fast food services, i.e. a burger flipping gig, will pay more.
“You have to wonder how they figure a gas leak explosion is relevant to the “climate and energy” category, unless maybe they just want to blame evil natural gas for the entire problem and be done with it.”
Of course that’s what it is. Demonize EVERY facet of the opposition regardless how obtuse the connection.
Biodegradable spoon means they get eaten by microbes, right?
Maybe cooking them would be better; but the plastic probably doesn’t take that too kindly.
Well, irradiating them with a neutron source should leave them intact.
People don’t like websites that hate people. Doh.
dccowboy says:
I have to wonder why an Internet based Blog media company needs to have an editor that commutes to a brick and mortar office.
======
Girlfriend.
Breakup = Job done.
(I’ve seen it before…sad to say)
– – – – – – –
Well, there wasn’t and there isn’t a debate at ‘Grist’, only a unilateral exaggeration beyond facts and an alarmist monologue without critique.
And ground grain looks more explanatory of what they do . . . . as in using it to cook up some activist support for CAGW.
John
“In fact when an annoying little blog like this one can beat them in many web metrics”
How do they compare to http://www.hampsterdance.com?
omnologos says:
People don’t like websites that hate people. Doh.
—
The majority don’t, but there’s a sizable minority who do. They are the same people who run and fund extremist environmental and animal rights groups. Here are a few quotes from these people:
Phasing out the human race will solve every problem on earth, social and environmental.
— Dave Forman (founder of Earth First!)
If I were reincarnated, I would wish to be returned to Earth as a killer virus to lower human population levels.
— Prince Phillip, World Wildlife Fund
Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that about?
— Maurice Strong, U.N. environmental leader and IPCC creator
“Say everything” sounds a bit like verbal diarrhea. (UK spelling has an “o” in it.)
Hum, the chart shows a cooling trend.
Also, the chart shows a Sept-Oct peak. That would be just before the polar vortexes hit the numbers and excuses start to fly that it was more evidence of global warming. Nah, there couldn’t be a connection?
How many times would one have to wash and reuse biodegradable spoons to offset the carbon emitted in a 1600 mile round trip every week?
When climate sanity returns and the post-mortems and finger pointing is underway, it will be interesting reading the articles from people who currently cannot accept that unfunded skeptics blogs could outperform the supported blogs and other media.
In the meantime, keep up the good work.
It took him this long to realize he was just another hypocrite? If he made the drive once a week for 2.5 years then he drove 209,820 miles in order to go chastise “deniers” for not being environmentally friendly and living a sustainable lifestyle.
Downsizing human resources is almost always step one to mitigate financial bleeding especially when there is failure by staff to meet an owner’s expectations of a magazine’s intellectual achievement/effectiveness. The least productive go first.
‘Grist’ is doing what?
The stated reason for this person’s leaving should be viewed a little skeptically.
John
Grist is a victim of the lack of GRIST (global rise in surface temperatures). GRIST was for decades one of the commonly understood meanings of phrases like “greenhouse effect” or “global warming”. Now those phrases have been “reframed” to include (immeasurable) rise in deep ocean temperature or to mean surface temperature that would have been, if not for unforeseen volcanism/ solar variability/ leprechauns / take your pick.
WUWT says, “Of course, content might have something to do with it, like today’s featured story on spoons.”
“Wish you could ferilize crops with pee? Urine luck.”
This is an admission that the organic-only, “sustainable” agriculture policies are in fact causing and supporting the disgusting practice of using human waste to fertilize food crops. While the term “organic” specifies that no human waste was used for labeling purposes, the math for organic farming does not work. The tons of well-aged manure for midseason application alone are prohibitive. There isn’t enough horse and cow manure to support organic only farming reforms. Without chemical fertilzers, any one can do the math. It will force these practices because the soil will not support high yield crops. Period.
So tell the next self-righteous Boomer who is issuing organic fat wahs for the rest of us to follow, to go p**** in his own Wheaties.
“Rosenberg explains that his weekly commutes from his Bay Area home to Seattle weren’t sustainable.”
Translation:
His car is getting old and the tires are worn.
” michael hart says:
March 13, 2014 at 10:14 am
“Say everything” sounds a bit like verbal diarrhea. (UK spelling has an “o” in it.)
,”
Diarrhea-O ?
Dia-Or-rhea ?
DO-arrhea ?
O’diarrhea ?
Just wondering.
http://grist.org/article/so-long-and-thanks-for-all-the-tree-lobsters/
He speaks of a “climate crisis”. I wonder what he thinks he is seeing, just routine bad weather? Does he know we are in a hurricane and tornado drought?
============================================================
Well, at least “Global Warming” was good for something…..
Most people hate being preached to and talked down to by rabid environMentalists.
@RobRoy and @Michael Hart: The UK way of spelling it is diarrhoea. Not unlike onomatopoeia.
Personally, I always enjoyed Grist. Some of their true environmental stuff was good (like an opposition to Palm Oil, which I agree with). Some was just silly. And their “climate change” stuff was laugh out loud, and good for a few posts a week. Especially from David Roberts and the Greenie Pig.
Alas, they really started going off the rails once David left. And become, unsurprisingly, intolerant of opposing views. I was banned. Even though half my comments were in support of environmental issues, and the other half respectfully challenged them on “climate change”.
Treehugger has gone the same route. Nutbaggery.
Just had a look at their site by following a link from yours. Got bored after about three seconds and left. I hope that doesn’t reflect badly in their statistics…
Zeke, besides manures, organic gardening makes use also of decayed plant matter, known as compost. Yet the question remains open in regards to the proportion of food which can be grown this way.
Power Grab says:
” March 13, 2014 at 3:22 pm
@RobRoy and @Michael Hart: The UK way of spelling it is diarrhoea. Not unlike onomatopoeia.”
Since I’m having so much fun here…and you mentioned it…forgive me – it’s friday here-payday to boot.
Onomatopoeia
©John Prine
Forty-five minutes
Forty-five cents
Sixty-five agents sitting on a fence
Singing, hey brother
Look what we got for you
We’re gonna rope off an area
And put on a show
From the Canadian border
Down to Mexico
It might be the most
Potentially gross
Thing that we could possibly do
Yeah, little buddy gonna get your chance
Make them pubescents all wet their pants
We’ll record it live
And that’s no jive.
Hold it! Stop it! No! No! No! No!
Bang! went the pistol.
Crash! went the window.
Ouch! went the son of a gun.
Onomatopoeia
I don’t wanna see ya
Speaking in a foreign tongue.
Knock! Knock! Hello!
Can I come in?
Gee, that was a wonderful show!
Oh, you haven’t gone on yet?
Well, how was I supposed to know?
Hey! We got a great date
It’s really downtown
We’re gonna get the Grand Canyon
To do the sound
It’s a boxing ring
But it might be the thing
To really put you in the dough
Listen little brother, don’t ya get us wrong
Why we even know the words to your song
Just say I do
And we’ll lay it on you
You! You! And me! Me! Me!
Bang! went the pistol
Crash! Went the window
Ouch! Went the son of a gun
Onomatopoeia
I don’t want to see ya
Speaking in a foreign tongue.
March 13, 2014 at 10:13 am | Louis says:
Didn’t he also want to be a tampon or something ? He already is a tampon.
Maybe all these ‘human haters’ could do us a favour and extinguish themselves and their followers so that they don’t have to bothered with us humans … I’m sure that the spaceship following in the tail of the next comet would stop by to pick them up.
Streetcred @ March 13, 2014 at 8:32 pm
No, that was Prince Charles in a phone conversation with Camilla, while married to Diane.
Grister David Roberts must be America’s equivalent of Tim Flannery, who has a degree in Mammalogy. Savid Roberts seems to also have a post-graduate study in Alarmism as well. Tim Flannery never got as far as saying that the Earth will roast at 180 degrees F by year 2300. That requires extra brass face.
Dave Roberts is a complete asshole. I tried once to have a rational and fact based discussion of climate on his blog, and he decided to turn every one of my posts into unintelligible random letters, explaining that he felt obligated to do so, “because people are dying right now due to climate change”. That whole website deserves to go belly up.
“Soy everything”?
SurelyTofu you jest.I laughed out loud when he said he was going to write a book and he had never attempted fiction. He’s been writing for a climate alarmism website for 10 years! Surely, just once in those past 10 years………
Sorry, one more. He’s giving up smoking and drinking and then attempting to write a book?
Good luck with that, surely they are prerequisites.