In case you hadn’t guessed by the title, the original band of mavericks who set up Cliscep did so in October 2015. At least, that was when they opened the door of the shop – these things don’t just automagically appear, after all. The authors who got in on the ground floor had to build the lift, for which Cliscep current authors and readers can be grateful.

2015, if any readers have forgotten, was the year that David Cameron won his majority in the UK general election in May, and when we had COP 21, in Paris, in December.

As you know, I like numbers, so what follows is a brief statistical rundown of Cliscep in the ten years since 2015. Others may have more worthwhile commentary and memories of the good ol’ days – I consider myself quite the tyro here, although I have probably been posting for nearly half Cliscep’s life.

Posts

The first public post here was by Geoff Chambers, announcing a meeting of Clisceppers to drink ale and name the Silly Cnut of the Year. It was followed by (up to October 4th, 2025) another 1,758 posts. Looking at the dashboard now I also see more than 100 draft posts – not sure what they are – one that is pending, and eight that are private (no, I can’t tell you what they contain).

The dashboard tells me that my own tally is 165 posts, which I cannot quite believe, as the jonny-come-lately that I am. Here is the breakdown of who has posted how many:

Geoff Chambers 349
Mark Hodgson 307
John Ridgway 197
Paul Matthews 184
Jit 165
Tony Thomas 138
Jaime Jessop 129
Brad Keyes 92
Richard Drake 70
Scepticus 45 (includes admin matters and guest posts by John Cullen and Andy West)
Mike Dombroski 37
thomaswfuller2 29
Ian Woolley 29
Robin Guenier 23
Alex Cull 20
John Shade 19
Alan Kendal 18
benpile 9
dwestonfront 6

Comments

Approved comments totalled 70,596 this morning. Mine add up to 2,757, but I can’t see an easy way to filter the 70k to create a hit parade of top commenters. Sorry about that.

Views

Here are the top ten posts of all time under the metric of views. Alas, I have not troubled the scorers, but the list features a good selection of our favourite Cliscep authors, past and present.

1. A feminist glaciology
2. Jordan Peterson on climate change
3. Climate scientists fiddling the data again and again…
4. Climate feedback rates Dellers’ latest effort…
5. September 2019 UK climate crisis update
6. The curious incident of the test that was negative…
7. New climate models – even more wrong
8. Climate scientists harassing women (asexually…)
9. Breaking: Mann quits climate science
10. It’s that time of year again

Peak Cliscep was December 2017, when there were 41.1k views in the month. Last month, we had 99k views, but probably 90% of those were robots. Here’s the last week:

Our friends in China often form the bulk of views these days. I hope they are training their A.I.s to be climate sceptical. Either that or they are closely monitoring those of us they think are crossing their scheme for global dominion. No doubt any opposition anywhere to the Uniparty approach to climate policy does not go down well in some quarters. Well, I wouldn’t worry about cheeky sparrows like Cliscep. Please. Devote your attention to the Telegraph, which reports today that the spying trial was scuppered by Labour ministers refusing to name China an enemy state. Anyway, I like China. Look at how safe people are, thanks to the government always knowing exactly where everyone is to the nearest metre.

[Does the bot understand irony?]

Subscribers

We are slowly gaining subscribers. Thank you to those who have joined us over the years. Recent subscribers often have a handle formed of a random adjective, a random adverb, and a random 10-digit hexadecimal, something along the lines of woodenindomitably12aef3490f. I rather prefer the good old days of a random adjective-noun pair like itchybadger or embarrassedcrustacean. At least the names made a tad of sense.
I know I speak for us all when I promise that only your front facing name will ever be seen in these pages, unless you choose to identify yourself. So, pseudonyms should feel safe to comment.

The Next Decade

I will remain, and I hope you will too. What will we do if sense takes hold in climate policy? I do not think we will run short of material any time soon. Rather, we will be short of the time needed to do justice to a vast and steadily bloating world of mad climate policy and apocalyptic hysteria. Notwithstanding beacons of hope such as the shattering of the climate consensus in UK politics.

The first Cliscep post was on the 19th of October. At least, it’s the first one I can find. So, I hope you’ll raise a wee dram on that date to celebrate the gadfly’s decade.

Thank you to all authors, commenters, and lurkers who have shared this digital space over the years.