Category Archives: Self-promotion

A cool 50 million

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“A cool 50 million“. Anthony Watts is very pleased with his web statistics. He wants you to think that “hits” mean something. In fact “hits” are a widely discredited, much like everything else Anthony shouts as proof against Global Warming. Hint: each time a web page loads every image, as well as many other items, counts as a hit. Anthony’s pages typically have at least 30 graphics each.

Wikipedia says that hits are “an inaccurate measure of a website’s popularity or web traffic.”

About.com says “Don’t use the term hits unless you want people to know you don’t know much about Web analytics or Web measurement.”

We touched on this a few days ago when denialist/internet genius Mike Lorrey tried to explain that feverish clicking meant the world was beating a path to Anthony’s door. Physicist Joe Romm, whom Anthony considers a deadly rival with his Climate Progress website, schools Anthony on the subject (again) better than I can, so just drop over for an enlightening chuckle. Anthony claims he’s “beating” Joe, but somehow Joe has 50 million hits in 2010 alone.

As usual when Anthony is trying to boast he likes to interrupt his character assassination and general polemics to make grand statements like “I’m really growing tired of the vociferous and voluminous name calling and people bashing, on both sides. It’s palpable.” Oh. My. God. You know what’s “palpable” Anthony? Your hypocrisy. You both encourage and participate in the ugliness.

I’m honored…I think

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“I’m honored…I think“. Here’s another funny one from Anthony Watts. Virginia Heffernan has naïvely written in the New York Times about a controversy over disguised advertising on ScienceBlogs, which she claims “has become Fox News for the religion-baiting, peak-oil crowd”. Sounds like a someone’s got a nice fact-free agenda… She also makes a rather loose suggestion about some ‘sensible’ science websites:

For science that’s accessible but credible, steer clear of polarizing hatefests like atheist or eco-apocalypse blogs. Instead, check out scientificamerican.com, discovermagazine.com and Anthony Watts’s blog, Watts Up With That?

Anthony loves the credibility bump, even though Scientific America is ‘dead to him’ for it’s awful, corrupt, lying support of the Global Warming orthodoxy (so are most natural history museums). Too bad Heffernan makes a very explicit retraction of her endorsement of Watts Up With That?:

One regret: the Watts blog. Virtually everyone who emailed me pointed out that it’s as axe-grinding as anything out there. I linked to it because has a lively voice; it’s detail-oriented and seemingly not snide; and, above all, it has some beautiful images I’d never seen before. I’m a stranger to the debates on science blogs, so I frankly didn’t recognize the weatherspeak on the blog as “denialist”; I didn’t even know about denialism. I’m don’t endorse the views on the Watts blog, and I’m extremely sorry the recommendation seemed ideological.

Anthony of course considers this proof that Heffernan succumbed to intellectual bullying from those nasty, hateful, lying scientists. Or is he just disappointed that a gullible newcomer with the correct political perspective has slipped through his fingers?

Tim Lambert over at Deltoid has a good overview: Post-modernism rides again at the New York Times.

Step Changes in Science Blog Climate

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“Step Changes in Science Blog Climate“. This is an amusing exercise in boasting and wish-fulfillment from Watts Up With That “moderator” Mike Lorrey. Apparently the dubious web statistics generated by Alexa prove that WUWT is the best place on the internet for “science”. Why? Because obsessive denialists click madly on Anthony’s posts, shouting over each other and at people who don’t share their views. Also WUWT’s website is designed to amplify “clicks”.

WUWT attracts clicks like flies are attracted to... honey.

Mike compares WUWT’s “traffic” to RealClimate.org (boo! hiss! “always the least popular, indicating the general public got that this was an astroturfing site by climate alarmists who tolerated no dissent”), Climate Progress (boo! hiss! “talk[s] down to the average bloke”) and Climateaudit.org (yea!). According to Mike, WUWT was the place where “Commentary from all directions was encouraged, with postings by non-skeptic scientists to provide a balanced view”.

He first notes a jump in WUWT’s traffic with the election of Nigerian crypto-communist Barack Obama and ascribes this to an instantaneous public hunger for information about climate policy and not libertarian conspiracy theorists needing a place to vent. Yeah, right.

Next he points out the jump when ClimateGate broke, which in his mind shows that WUWT “won the narrative with the public”. Funny, to me it looked like a frenzied attempt by the usual small group of denialists to talk themselves into believing that the molehill was a MOUNTAIN!!!!!!! They’re still at it, but with less enthusiasm now that every single outrage has been disproved.

A recent modest blip in traffic is apparently “due in part to Anthony’s speaking tour, where he has spoken to packed and enthusiastic crowds”. Nothing to do with a wash of half-hearted denialist mutterings in response to the final dismissal of the false Climategate allegations, right? By the way, my understanding is that the Grand Tour was more like this.

Mike, WUWT is the talk-radio version of science. A fire-hose of bullshit, lapped up by people seeking confirmation of their prejudices. You’ve got an audience alright, but I wouldn’t want to sit beside them on a long flight.

Desperately seeking swelter

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“Desperately seeking swelter“. Anthony Watts has found a Telegraph column by denialist pontificator Christopher Booker that pulls the old “black is white” trick. Somehow the record hot weather across the northern hemisphere is “risibly desperate” effort by “believers in global warming to hold the line for their religion”. Sure it’s hot now, but apparently any hot weather at any time in the past is unshakeable proof that hot weather now can’t be due to Global Warming. You’ll have to talk me through that one, Chris.

What does Booker offer in support of his shifty argument? Well he does mention “expert analysis on Watts Up With That, the US science blog”.

ROTFLMAO (for libertarian retirees hunched over their 286’s, that’s txt for “rolling on the floor laughing my ass off”).

Oh, by the way Booker in the past has been delighted to claim that cold winter weather is proof that there’s no Global Warming…

Reports from the Guardian Climategate Debate

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Reports from the Guardian Climategate Debate: Surprise, surprise. In Anthony Watts’ report of the debate on the Climategate false controversy hosted by the Guardian newspaper, climate scientists are “devious” and “appallingly bad” but denialist Steven McIntyre, who spoke from behind a lectern to give him more ‘authority’, gets “the largest applause”.

Here’s a different view of the panel’s performance:

  • Prof. Davies said the CRU has learned about the need for public engagement in the scientific discussion.
  • Steve McIntyre sidestepped the challenge that “any competent individual could reproduce a temperature series from publicly accessible data”. Slippery as always, but an embarrassing exposure of his grandiose claims.
  • Bob Watson said the reviews had high integrity and robust conclusions, accused the media of getting carried away with “skeptic” allegations.
  • Doug Keenan claimed that “bogus fraudulent research is rife throughout science.” and “AGW is a fraud.” Clinging to his paranoid denialist views I guess.
  • Fred Pearce, looking for a way to climb back down from his gullible reporting, called the  saga is more a tragedy than a conspiracy and said that the CRU inquiries were well conducted.

Nothing like getting the spin in as fast as possible… Three inquiries (four if you count the tangential Penn State inquiry) completely clear the CRU climate scientists of any deception and yet the volume and fervor of the denialist accusations of “whitewash” and conspiracy simply rises.

The louder you say it the righter you are Anthony?

McIntyre and McKitrick to receive award

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“McIntyre and McKitrick to receive award“. What, they’re getting a “Nobel pin” too? Naw, it’s just the partisan right-wing Competitive Enterprise Institute “think tank” giving their foot-soldiers a bit of tin and calling it the “Julian Simon Memorial Award”. Julian Simon was a mediocre, but libertarian, economist…

Denialists are desperate for recognition, even if they have to fake it. Personally, I think M&M’s recognition should be missing a week of recesses for failing to play nicely.

Perfect place for a thermometer in Oz

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“Perfect place for a thermometer in Oz“. Australia’s local cranks are an intense bunch, which means a warm, if tiny, welcome for visitor Anthony Watts’ obsessive ignorance. What deep new knowledge has Anthony gained from his international travels?

Well Anthony can always find a weather station to complain about and there will always be reports of “cold weather” somewhere. Also the Australian government, for presumably contemptible bureaucratic reasons, hates deceased American photographer Ansel Adams (commercial photographers need permission and must pay a fee to photograph in Commonwealth reserves, aka national parks).

ICCC Conference day 1 – Chicken of the Sea and BBC

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“ICCC Conference day 1 – Chicken of the Sea and BBC“. Anthony Watts is sharing witticisms with his fellow Denialists at the Heartland Institute’s mock conference.

He does however have a complaint about a disorganized TV interview conducted by a BBC crew. He refused to sign their waiver when he noticed as clause affirming that his statements were made with “honesty and factual accuracy”.

Anthony’s not that stupid!

Where the !@#$% is Svalbard?

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“Where the !@#$% is Svalbard?” Willis Eschenbach posts his 2006 “paper” printed in the discredited journal Energy & Environment. Willis was trying to nit-pick the weather-station records for Svalbard Norway, and didn’t like the way he was treated (to my eye he was a simply making a pest of himself). The best he could do was gnaw a tiny bit on the probability that the post by Michael Mann & Phil Jones assigned to the Svalbard 2006 spring temperatures.

His “paper” really boils down to a rant against the climatologists at Real Climate. It’s full of unsupported speculation, irrelevant “he said, she said” passages and claims of blog comment censorship and unfair treatment. Now it’s updated with praise of Anthony Watts’ website as a shining(!) example of good scientific blogging.

Thanks for the chuckle, but what a sad example of the crap that Energy & Environment was publishing then.

The Climate Crash of 2009

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“The Climate Crash of 2009“. Anthony Watts points us to denialist Pierre Gosselin’s website called “NoTricksZone“. Naturally the page Anthony especially likes is reporting on how “leading scientists and professors are calling for a completely new direction in climate policy“. Naturally this is denialist bullshit, “tricks” from top to bottom.

“The Hartwell Paper, A new direction for climate policy after the crash of 2009” is published by the Institute for Science, Innovation & Society, part of Oxford University’s Saïd Business School. The Institute opposes the Kyoto Protocol, thinks we can adapt to climate change anyway, and considers “Climategate” a real ethical issue. The authors, mainly economists, sociologists and industry representatives, include rabid denialist Roger Pielke Jr. Effectively the Hartwell Paper advocates reducing or dropping proposed carbon taxes and crossing our fingers that non-carbon energy sources become cost-competitive.

Yeah, that’ll work.