500 Posts

I wanted to mark the occasion of this, my 500^th post, with a bit of retrospective since I started posting on this blog on January 11, 2017.  I did something similar on July 29, 2021 when I reached 300 posts.

The goal in my blog is to describe environmental issues from a pragmatic viewpoint.  Pragmatic environmentalism is all about balancing the risks and benefits of both sides of issues.  Unfortunately, public perception is too often driven by scary one-sided sound bites that must be rebutted by getting into details.  I have tried to show the complicated “other” side of environmental issues that gets overlooked during policy discussions. My background as a scientist and my earlier responsibilities to provide technical comments on new or revised regulations means that I tend to get bogged down in technical details that are, too be kind, wonky.  I have tried to tone down the technical aspects but have not been entirely successful.

Although my posts cover a wide range of topics that interest me there are two primary topics covered.  At the time of my 300^th post, the Climate Act implementation process accounted for 109 articles.  Since then, 169 of the 200 latest published articles have addressed it for a total of 278 out of the 500 articles. I truly believe that the Climate Act “solution” will be far worse than the impacts of the problem they are trying to address and that does not consider the enormous costs.  I also have also written numerous articles on the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI).  This greenhouse gas control program is frequently described as a success but I have not been able to resist pointing out the flaws in that belief.

The final question I have asked myself is whether my obsession with this blog has been a success and to me success is having people read the blog.  According to the WordPress statistics, the views of the blog have been steadily increasing and there have been over 28,775 visitors.  There is an option for people to like a post and those have been going up.  Comments have been a bit of a disappointment especially because many of the comments are simply approvals of references to previous posts. 

So where are the people coming from to find the blog.  Very early on Judith Curry included this blog on her blogroll and a large percentage of the visitors visited since then.  Tom Shepstone started reposting my articles at his Natural Gas Now blog starting 12/28/18 and he has spread my message in many reposts.  My thanks to both of them for bringing visitors.

I have also done blog posts for Judith’s site and Watts Up With That and there usually is a flurry of visitors after those posts.  Francis Menton has posted blog articles on my articles about the CLCPA implementation process which get re-printed on Watts Up With That.  The comments on my work in those posts dwarf the responses on the blog itself and I am sure the total views were larger too.  Recently the editor of the GreenCarJournal contacted me and asked if I would like to share my perspective but that did not result in a spike of visitors.

Most gratifying is the occasional contact from people whose work I respect offering advice, encouragement, and praise.  I have also heard that there are industry people who follow the blog. 

Another measure of personal satisfaction are the contact emails.  I get pleasure whenever I get something like this:

We are soul brothers. My background is in the green industry – Horticulture, arboriculture, landscaping, etc. I got into the world of pesticides because I really was convinced all pesticides were bad. Guess what… they’re not. If you read the label and do as you’re supposed to…

I feel obligated to do our part to reduce pollution, and waste but there are many who don’t know or care to know what the trade-offs are. There are way too many pushing change without considering all the ramifications.

Keep preaching brother and if I can be of help at any point, give me a shout.

The blog statistics describe what visitors are reading.  It is not a good sign that nearly half the viewers look at the home page, about page or menu. It appears that many viewers see what the page is about and have no interest to continue on. The most popular article by far is one on the proposed rebuilding of Interstate 81 through Syracuse.  I presume that the title matched some trending internet search term and they ended up at the site. Early on I did a post on the Paris climate agreement costs that also got a lot of views. I suspect it is a source of frustration to the state that when searching for specific Climate Act items my posts generally turn up.

Finally, it is a source of amusement to me that people from all over the world have visited the site.  Someone has visited the site from every country that is highlighted in the following map.  I also have listed the number of visitors from the more popular countries below that.

In conclusion this has been a rewarding experience for me.  I devoutly believe that it is important to keep busy during retirement and this blog keeps me busy.  Just when I get discouraged and think about quitting, some insane proposal or article comes up that provides more than enough incentive to keep writing.  My thanks to everyone who has read my work.