108 – A big number in some contexts, small in others. Magnitude is in the eye of the beholder.

It looks like we hit that number sometime around 7:45-7:46 AM PST today. Unfortunately the WordPress Blog stats widget seems to update only every 15 minutes or so (probably to minimize server CPU cycles) so it looks like we’ve missed the actual clickover. It went from 99,999,962 at 7:45AM PST to 100,004,397 views just after 8AM PST.

First I want to say, thanks. Second this really is no big deal. The only reason is is notable is that no other blog dedicated to climate science has announced reaching such a milestone, and contenders like Real Climate haven’t even come close.

In honesty, let me say that WUWT probably passed the 108 mark sometime in the last two days, because in the first year of my blog, it was on the servers of the Chico Enterprise Record (where it started in 2006) and that first year of traffic data (~100,000 views) was lost when I switched to wordpress.com in October 2007 because that server couldn’t handle the load nor provide the features I needed, so the newspaper graciously let me move to a better platform. WUWT is still listed under the ChicoER umbrella at www.norcalblogs.com.

Christopher Monckton muses in his recent guest post Hurrah for 8 orders of magnitude!:

“And it is hard work, 24/7, 366 days a year.”

Well yes, but being a broadcaster trained me to be like this. Before there was blogging, there was me on television, working nights, weekends, some holidays, and sometimes into the wee hours of the morning covering severe weather outbreaks. Blogging has one benefit not found on TV; I don’t have to wear a suit and makeup. But, it does seem like second nature to me.

Ric Werme has chosen a selection of WUWT classics, and offers them in his WUWT Index Page. I’ve repeated them below.

WUWT Classics

Here are some posts that deserve to used as reference works, not just as comment-du-jour. The real reference is usually elsewhere, but a lot of us heard it first here.

Guest poster Willis Eschenbach always comes up with fascinating posts. Even his autobiographical posts are remarkable. He’s collected An Index to Willis’s Writings up to May 2011 and deserves this special entry here.

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I’d like to add one of my own favorites to the classics list, since I worked harder on this post than any other. It took weeks of hunting down equipment, long hours of patience in replication, and hundreds of dollars to produce:

Replicating Al Gore’s Climate 101 video experiment shows that his “high school physics” could never work as advertised

Bill Nye was annoyed enough to respond, if you can call this a response. It seems rather science-free compared to what I offered. Heh.

Speaking of responses, it appears that from the Climategate 2 emails, WUWT has been putting a burr in the saddle of the team. E.M. Smith (Chiefio) points out all the emails where I or the blog have been discussed. I’m surprised there were so many.

I suppose that if this blog were not effective, I wouldn’t be attacked so much by defenders of the team, such as the juvenile activist/scientist Peter Gleick (with his B.S. award) and the tree and pig whisperer, James Lenfestney. They seem like burned out 60’s hippies, because they certainly don’t act like professionals. You just have to laugh. I liked this kid’s take on it, who is experiencing similar things. Remember on August 19th 2011, when I reported on the science project for putting solar cells in a tree like arrangement? Novel idea – arrange solar panels like Nature designed it. It seems the kid has made some people angry. From the New York Times story on him this week:

A new way of collecting solar energy has polarized scientists around the world and ignited fierce debate on the Internet, where the innovator in question has been called everything from an alien to the agent of a global conspiracy.

Sound familiar? We skeptics get that a lot. Here’s his response:

He got some constructive advice, said Aidan’s mother, Maureen. “Then there were people who were just—” “Haters,” Aidan chimed in with a grin.

That’s a great attitude! Yep, haters. WUWT and I have collected a lot of those too. Somehow these haters (and you know who you are) think that by spreading hate, I’ll change my way of thinking and doing things. Nope, it only strengthens my resolve.

As much as I’m denigrated for running this blog, the fact that I’m writing this today, and that I gain new friends worldwide every day, reminds me of a famous line:

Thanks to everyone who makes this community special, from the volunteer moderators, to the regulars and passers by, down to the trolls, and on the bottom, the haters. Thanks to Josh too, who provided the title graphic (from a suggestion by Barry Woods) as a surprise. I’m turning that into a commemorative coffee cup which I’ll offer soon.

Thanks are due Steve McIntyre and the late John L. Daly, who both set the standard, and slogged on for years in obscurity before climate skepticism became a mainstream issue. I’d like to thank Dr. Roger Pielke Senior, for his encouragements too.

I leave you with a video that shows just how much trouble climate change is, in fact, after watching this video it could be argued that it is “worse than we thought”.

107

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