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	=== Challenging data from surface weather stations ===		=== Challenging data from surface weather stations ===
	In 2009 Watts authored a paper in which he argued that the surface temperature record in the United States was inaccurate and that the actual temperature was lower than reported. Using pictures and other information from over 650 volunteers participating through his website, Watts showed that many surface weather stations were situated near artificial heat sources such as pavement and air conditioners.<ref name=rough>{{cite book \|title=The Rough Guide to Climate Change \|author=Henson, Robert \|publisher=Penguin \|date=2 May 2011 \|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=IL4dZLYZjRwC}}</ref> Watts' report did not, however, compare data before and after the problematic sites were removed from consideration.<ref name=hockey/>		In 2009 Watts authored a paper in which he argued that the surface temperature record in the United States was inaccurate and that the actual temperature was lower than reported. Using pictures and other information from over 650 volunteers participating through his website, Watts showed that many surface weather stations were situated near artificial heat sources such as pavement and air conditioners.<ref name=rough>{{cite book \|title=The Rough Guide to Climate Change \|author=Henson, Robert \|publisher=Penguin \|date=2 May 2011 \|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=IL4dZLYZjRwC}}</ref> Watts' report did not, however, compare data before and after the problematic sites were removed from consideration.<ref name=hockey>{{cite book\|last1=Mann\|first1=Michael\|title=The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines\|date=Oct 1, 2013\|publisher=Columbia University Press\|page=27\|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=klerAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA72&lpg=PA72&dq=climate+change+denial+%22Watts+Up+With+That?%22&source=bl&ots=aoMW1oV8ME&sig=SD9FqHA5jVLJfGN5V2aX_VVxCjs&hl=en&sa=X&ei=VegFVeakKsWrNpajgIgI&ved=0CGMQ6AEwCQ#v=onepage&q=climate%20change%20denial%20%22Watts%20Up%20With%20That%3F%22&f=false}}</ref>

	Prompted by these findings, the ] (NOAA) investigated the matter. While acknowledging the suboptimal conditions of many stations, NOAA concluded that the overall effect was insubstantial. In addition, measurement bias was in the opposite direction of what was expected: stations that were considered poorly situated reported cooler temperatures due to instrument artifacts.<ref name=rough/>		Prompted by these findings, the ] (NOAA) investigated the matter. While acknowledging the suboptimal conditions of many stations, NOAA concluded that the overall effect was insubstantial. In addition, measurement bias was in the opposite direction of what was expected: stations that were considered poorly situated reported cooler temperatures due to instrument artifacts.<ref name=rough/>

Revision as of 20:31, 18 March 2015

For other people called Anthony Watts, see Anthony Watts.

Willard Anthony Watts
Anthony Watts speaking in Gold Coast, Australia, June 2010
Born	1958 (age 66–67)
Nationality	American
Website	Watts Up With That? SurfaceStations.org

Willard Anthony Watts (born 1958) is an American meteorologist (AMS seal holder, certification retired by AMS), president of IntelliWeather Inc., and founder of the Surface Stations Project, a volunteer initiative to document the set up and maintenance of weather stations across the United States. He is editor of the blog Watts Up With That?.

Education

Anthony Watts attended Purdue University. According to writer John Grant, there is no record of him graduating and he was at one time unwilling to discuss his education. He does not have a degree in climate science.

Career

Anthony Watts began his broadcast meteorology career in 1978 as an on-air meteorologist for WLFI-TV in Lafayette, Indiana and then joined KHSL-TV, a CBS affiliate based in Chico, California in 1987. He stopped using his first name "Willard" to avoid confusion with NBC's The Today Show weatherman Willard Scott. Watts temporarily resigned from KHSL in 2001 but was able to negotiate more personal time to use for his private business, ITWorks. In 2002 he left KHSL to devote his full-time to ITWorks. He returned to KHSL part-time in 2004. Watts has been the chief meteorologist for KPAY-AM, a Fox News affiliate based in Chico, California since 2002. In 2002, Watts won a Chico News & Review "Readers' Best Of" award for "Best Local Personality".

Watts has been the director and president of IntelliWeather Inc. since 2000, and the managing member of Zev2Go LLC, an electric vehicle company since 2008. Innovative Tech Works, Weathershop and ITWorks are all alternate business names for IntelliWeather.

Watts was a member of the Chico, California school board from 2002 to 2006. In 2006, he was briefly a candidate for county supervisor, to represent Chico on the Butte County Board of Supervisors, but withdrew his candidacy due to family and workload concerns.

In 2010, Watts went on a speaking tour to 18 locations around Australia.

View of climate change

Watts believes that anthropogenic CO₂-driven global warming plays a much smaller part than the Sun in causing climatic change. He has said that in 1990 he had "been fully engaged in the belief that CO₂ was indeed the root cause of the global warming problem," but that he later changed his thinking after learning more about the science and "found it to be lacking." Watts more recently expressed his position as: "Now I'm in the camp of we have some global warming. No doubt about it, but it may not be as bad as we originally thought because there are other contributing factors." He further avers that what most bothers him about scientists and others who claim global warming is serious, is that, "They want to change policy. They want to apply taxes and these kinds of things may not be the actual solution for making a change to our society." Watts is a signatory to The Heartland Institute's Manhattan Declaration which calls on world leaders to "reject the views expressed by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change" and abandon "all taxes, regulations, and other interventions intended to reduce emissions of CO₂". In spite of his climate change skepticism, Watts says that he is "green in many ways", mainly to get the United States "disengaged from Middle East Oil."

Watts Up With That?

Watts established the blog, Watts Up With That? (WUWT?) in 2006. The blog focuses on the global warming controversy, and in particular on Watts's skepticism about the role of humans in global warming. Fred Pearce has described WUWT? as the "world's most viewed climate website". In 2008, WUWT? won an internet voting-based Wizbang Weblog Award for the "Best Science Blog". The Wizbang Weblog Awards are billed as the conservative response to the Bloggies, which are also internet voting-based, and which WUWT? has also won. In 2011, 2012 and 2013, WUWT? took first place in the Bloggies Best Science Weblog category, and in 2013 won overall best blog, beating Pintester, The Bloggers, Cowardly Feminist, People I Want to Punch in the Throat and Marriage Confessions.

Watts's blog has been criticized for inaccuracy. The Guardian columnist George Monbiot described WUWT as "highly partisan and untrustworthy". Leo Hickman, at The Guardian's Environment Blog, also criticized Watts's blog, stating that Watts "risks polluting his legitimate scepticism about the scientific processes and methodologies underpinning climate science with his accompanying politicised commentary." Canadian environmental activist David Suzuki prefers other sources for climate information: "There are many credible sources of information, and they aren't blog sites run by weathermen like Anthony Watts".

Challenging data from surface weather stations

In 2009 Watts authored a paper in which he argued that the surface temperature record in the United States was inaccurate and that the actual temperature was lower than reported. Using pictures and other information from over 650 volunteers participating through his website, Watts showed that many surface weather stations were situated near artificial heat sources such as pavement and air conditioners. Watts' report did not, however, compare data before and after the problematic sites were removed from consideration.

Prompted by these findings, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) investigated the matter. While acknowledging the suboptimal conditions of many stations, NOAA concluded that the overall effect was insubstantial. In addition, measurement bias was in the opposite direction of what was expected: stations that were considered poorly situated reported cooler temperatures due to instrument artifacts.

In 2012 the Berkeley Earth Science Temperature project (BEST) released a paper confirming previous results that surface temperature is rising. Richard Muller, founder of BEST, directly addressed Watts' concern about the condition of weather stations, saying, "we discovered that station quality does not affect the results. Even poor stations reflect temperature changes accurately."

Affiliation with Heartland Institute

The Heartland Institute published Watts' preliminary report on weather station data, titled Is the U.S. Surface Temperature Record Reliable?. Watts has been featured as a speaker at Heartland Institute's International Conference on Climate Change, for which he acknowledges receiving payment.

Documents obtained from the Heartland Institute and made public in February 2012 reveal that the Institute had agreed to help Watts raise $88,000 to set up a website, "devoted to accessing the new temperature data from NOAA's web site and converting them into easy-to-understand graphs that can be easily found and understood by weathermen and the general interested public." The documents state that $44,000 had already been pledged by an anonymous donor, and the Institute would seek to raise the rest. Watts explained the funding by stating, "Heartland simply helped me find a donor for funding a special project having to do with presenting some new NOAA surface data in a public friendly graphical form, something NOAA themselves is not doing, but should be. I approached them in the fall of 2011 asking for help, on this project not the other way around." and added, "They do not regularly fund me nor my WUWT website, I take no salary from them of any kind."