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=== Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST) === === Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST) ===
Leo Hickmam writes that Watts was consulted on the methodology of the ] study and had stated, "I'm prepared to accept whatever result they produce, even if it proves my premise wrong."<ref name=Hickman>{{cite news |author=Hickmam,Leo |date=July 29, 2012 |title=Climate change study forces sceptical scientists to change minds |url=http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/jul/29/climate-change-sceptics-change-mind |publisher=] |accessdate=2012-08-12}}</ref> Watts had furnished Muller's team with data accumulated by volunteers. "As a reflection of my increased confidence, I have provided them with my surfacestations.org dataset to allow them to use it to run a comparisons against their data."<ref>Watts, Anthony. , wattsupwiththat.com, March 6, 2011.</ref> Chair of the BEST group, Richard Muller, responded to Watts' concerns, "First, there were issues around station quality - Watts showed that some of the stations had poor quality. We studied that in great detail. Fortunately, we discovered that station quality does not affect the results. Even poor stations reflect temperature changes accurately."<ref name=Donald>{{cite new |author=Donald, Ros |date=August 3, 2012 |title='There's plenty of room for scepticism' – climate study author Richard Muller |url=http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2012/aug/03/scepticism-climate-study-richard-muller |publisher=] |accessdate=August 12, 2012}}</ref> Watts has since backed off his position, saying the study is of no value because its parts have not been peer reviewed, "When the science and peer review is finished, the results are likely to look different."<ref>{{cite news | author=Hardee, Howard | date=November 10, 2011 | url=http://www.newsreview.com/chico/climate-change-debate-touches-chico/content?oid=4406460 | title=Climate-change debate touches Chico | publisher=] | accessdate=2012-08-13}}</ref> He also remarked that much of the BEST data should be thrown out, "...there is no adjustment procedure in place to fix this, BEST tries to solve it, and I applaud them for the attempt. But without knowing the history of the station, even their methodology doesn't deal with it".<ref name=Kaplan/> Leo Hickmam writes that Watts was consulted on the methodology of the ] study and had stated, "I'm prepared to accept whatever result they produce, even if it proves my premise wrong."<ref name=Hickman>{{cite news |author=Hickmam,Leo |date=July 29, 2012 |title=Climate change study forces sceptical scientists to change minds |url=http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/jul/29/climate-change-sceptics-change-mind |publisher=] |accessdate=2012-08-12}}</ref> Chair of the BEST group, Richard Muller, responded to Watts' concerns, "First, there were issues around station quality - Watts showed that some of the stations had poor quality. We studied that in great detail. Fortunately, we discovered that station quality does not affect the results. Even poor stations reflect temperature changes accurately."<ref name=Donald>{{cite new |author=Donald, Ros |date=August 3, 2012 |title='There's plenty of room for scepticism' – climate study author Richard Muller |url=http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2012/aug/03/scepticism-climate-study-richard-muller |publisher=] |accessdate=August 12, 2012}}</ref> Watts has since backed off his position, saying the study is of no value because its parts have not been peer reviewed, "When the science and peer review is finished, the results are likely to look different."<ref>{{cite news | author=Hardee, Howard | date=November 10, 2011 | url=http://www.newsreview.com/chico/climate-change-debate-touches-chico/content?oid=4406460 | title=Climate-change debate touches Chico | publisher=] | accessdate=2012-08-13}}</ref> He also remarked that much of the BEST data should be thrown out, "...there is no adjustment procedure in place to fix this, BEST tries to solve it, and I applaud them for the attempt. But without knowing the history of the station, even their methodology doesn't deal with it".<ref name=Kaplan/>


=== Affiliation with Heartland Institute === === Affiliation with Heartland Institute ===

Revision as of 09:49, 14 August 2012

Willard Anthony Watts
Anthony Watts speaking in Gold Coast, Australia, June 2010
Born1958 (age 66–67)
NationalityAmerican
WebsiteWatts Up With That?
SurfaceStations.org

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

Early life and education

Anthony Watts grew up in Indiana, and stated that he attended Purdue University. At Purdue University he was trained as a broadcast meteorologist.

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 arranged by the organization, "The Climate Sceptics" to 18 locations around Australia.

View of climate change

Watts has a skeptical view of CO2-driven global warming. 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." In spite of his climate change skepticism, Watts says that he is "green in many ways."

Watts Up With That?

Watts established the blog, Watts Up With That? (WUWT?) in 2006. The blog focuses on the global warming controversy, in particular, Watts 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 the internet voting-based "Best Science Blog" Wizbang Weblog Award.

Surface Stations

In 2007, Watts launched the Surface Stations project, whose mission is to create a publicly available database of photographs of weather stations, along with their metadata, in response to what he described as, "a massive failure of bureaucracy to perform something so simple as taking some photographs and making some measurements and notes of a few to a few dozen weather stations in each state". Watts informed radio and television host Glenn Beck that he began the undertaking, wondering if the composition of weather shelter paint had "made a difference" to thermometer readings and, consequently, the U.S. temperature record. The project relies on volunteers to gather the data. Volunteers estimate the siting, usage and other conditions of weather stations in NOAA's Historical Climatology Network (USHCN) and grade them for their compliance with the standards published in the organization's Climate Reference Network Site Handbook.

By 2009, the project had documented more than 860 stations using more over 650 volunteers. In a report entitled Is the U.S. Surface Temperature Record Reliable?, published by the Heartland Institute, Watts concluded that "the errors in the record exceed by a wide margin the purported rise in temperature during the twentieth century." Watts also suggested that the adjustments made by scientists to the raw data tended to expand the problems caused by the siting issue.

In response to Watts' report, researchers at the National Climatic Data Center analyzed the temperature trends derived from stations that Watts had identified as poorly sited and compared these data with stations Watts had identified as well-sited. Their paper, titled "On the reliability of the U.S. Surface Temperature Record" was published in the Journal of Geophysical Research - Atmospheres in 2010. The researchers concluded that average temperature trends were not artificially inflated by station site quality, however they did find, "a mean bias associated with poor exposure sites relative to good exposure sites". This bias was apparently due to the data adjustments Watts had criticized but was contrary to the assumption (based on the photographic and eyewitness evidence gathered in Watts report) of artificial warming. In fact, the poorly sited stations showed a significant artificial cool trend in maximum temperatures. The researchers noted, "instrument changes have led to an artificial negative (“cool”) bias in maximum temperatures and only a slight positive (“warm”) bias in minimum temperatures....his bias is consistent with previously documented changes associated with the widespread conversion to electronic sensors in the USHCN during the last 25 years." Watts, who had compiled data from 80% of the National Climate Data Center's weather station network, rebuffed this study by noting that the analysis was conducted using data from only 43% of the stations and argued that a more complete data set would furnish different results.

Working with climatologists (including John Christy and Roger A. Pielke, Sr.), Watts conducted further analyses of temperature trends reported by weather stations. Using data from 82.5% of the North American surface stations, they found, "Temperature trend estimates vary according to site classification, with poor siting leading to an overestimate of minimum temperature trends and an underestimate of maximum temperature trends, resulting in particular in a substantial difference in estimates of the diurnal temperature range trends." While, overall mean temperature trends were found to be nearly identical between poorly sited and well-sited stations, "The opposite-signed differences of maximum and minimum temperature trends are similar in magnitude, so that the overall mean temperature trends are nearly identical across site classifications."

Watts has continued his analyses of the Surface Station Project data, and has made available on his blog site a "pre-print draft discussion paper", intended for submission to a journal. The draft, titled An area and distance weighted analysis of the impacts of station exposure on the U.S. Historical Climatology Network temperatures and temperature trends, was announced in a press release posted on WUWT on July 29, 2012. Jeremy Kaplan reported that Watts claimed that his results show the planet warming at just 0.155 degrees Celsius per decade, rather than the 0.309 C per decade cited by the government. Graham Lloyd said that according to Watts, the new analysis shows reported 1979-2008 US temperature trends had been spuriously doubled and more than 92% of the over-estimation was due to erroneous upward adjustments by NOAA of well-sited stations. Andrew Revkin noted that Steven McIntyre said he was puzzled about being listed as a co-author of the paper, and pointed out that it contradicted the satellite temperature record that Watts had previously accepted.

Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST)

Leo Hickmam writes that Watts was consulted on the methodology of the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST) study and had stated, "I'm prepared to accept whatever result they produce, even if it proves my premise wrong." Chair of the BEST group, Richard Muller, responded to Watts' concerns, "First, there were issues around station quality - Watts showed that some of the stations had poor quality. We studied that in great detail. Fortunately, we discovered that station quality does not affect the results. Even poor stations reflect temperature changes accurately." Watts has since backed off his position, saying the study is of no value because its parts have not been peer reviewed, "When the science and peer review is finished, the results are likely to look different." He also remarked that much of the BEST data should be thrown out, "...there is no adjustment procedure in place to fix this, BEST tries to solve it, and I applaud them for the attempt. But without knowing the history of the station, even their methodology doesn't deal with it".

Affiliation with Heartland Institute

The Heartland Institute published Watts' initial 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 leaked from the Heartland Institute and made public in February of 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."

See also

Selected publications

Articles

Peer-Reviewed Papers

References

  1. ^ "Anthony Watts, Meteorologist". KHSL-TV. Archived from the original on March 6, 2001. Retrieved 2012-07-09.
  2. "School board shakeup". Chico News & Review. October 31, 2002. Retrieved 2012-07-08.
  3. Appell, David (July 29, 2009). "Stumbling Over Data: Mistakes Fuel Climate-Warming Skeptics". Scientific American. Retrieved 2012-07-08.
  4. Blake, Heidi (February 15, 2010). "UN global warming data skewed by heat from planes and buildings". UK: The Daily Telegraph.
  5. "List of AMS Television Seal Holders". American Meteorological Society. Retrieved 2010-05-13. {{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |1= (help)
  6. ^ "INTELLIWEATHER INC". Secretary of State of Nevada. Retrieved 2012-07-09.
  7. "Watts Up With That?". Retrieved 2012-07-09.
  8. Steigerwald, Bill (April 22, 2009). "Talking Climate Change With Anthony Watts". SitNews. Retrieved 2012-07-09.
  9. Aylworth, Roger H. (March 1, 2006). "Supervisorial candidates share thoughts". Chico Enterprise-Record. {{cite news}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help)
  10. ^ Tuchinsky, Evan (December 6, 2007). "Watts, me worry?". Chico News & Review. Retrieved 2012-07-09.
  11. Meier-Johnson, Pat (July 21, 2012). "Search for Energy Efficient Servers Leads Ex-Weatherman to Build-a-Blade". SOA World Magazine. Retrieved 2012-08-05.
  12. ^ Watts, Anthony (2009). Is the U.S. Surface Temperature Record Reliable? (PDF). Heartland Institute. ISBN 1934791266. Retrieved 2009-11-24. {{cite book}}: Check |isbn= value: checksum (help)
  13. Gascoyne, Tom (September 6, 2001). "Forecast: Less Anthony Watts?". Chico News & Review. Retrieved 2012-07-09.
  14. Smith, Laura (January 31, 2002). "Forecast: No more Watts for KHSL". Chico News & Review. Retrieved 2012-07-09.
  15. Angel, Devanie (June 17, 2004). "Everybody's business". Chico News & Review. Retrieved 2012-07-09.
  16. "Anthony Watts: Chief Meteorologist". KPAY-AM. Retrieved 2012-07-09.
  17. "KPAY 1290: Contact". KPAY-AM. Retrieved 2012-07-09.
  18. "Feature Story Readers' Best of Chico 2002". News & Review. 9.19.02. Retrieved August 8, 2012. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= and |year= / |date= mismatch (help)
  19. "ZEV2GO, LLC". Secretary of State of Nevada. Retrieved 2012-07-09.
  20. "Zev2Go YouTube Page". YouTube. Retrieved 2012-07-09.
  21. "IntelliWeather". Better Business Bureau. Retrieved 2012-07-09.
  22. "Chico Unified School District: Board of Education". Chico Unified School District. Archived from the original on April 25, 2003. Retrieved 2012-07-09.
  23. "November 5, 2002 General Election Results". Butte County Election Office. Retrieved 2002-07-09.
  24. "November 7, 2006 General Election Results". Butte County Election Office. Retrieved 2002-07-09.
  25. Indar, Josh (March 16, 2006). "One out, one in, one on". Chico News & Review. Retrieved 2009-10-13.
  26. AAP (June 10, 2010). "Climate sceptic to tour". The Weekly Times. Retrieved 2012-07-09.
  27. Watts, Anthony (March 27, 2008). "Gore to throw insults on 60 minutes". Watts Up With That?. Retrieved 2009-02-06.
  28. ^ Pearce, Fred (2010). The Climate Files: The Battle for the Truth about Global Warming. Guardian Books. p. XVI. ISBN 0852652291.
  29. "The 2008 Weblog Awards - Best Science Blog". Wizbang. 2008. Retrieved 2012-07-09.
  30. Madrigal, Alexis (2007-11-09). "Dueling Sites Top Conservative Run Weblog Awards". Wired.
  31. ^ Watts, Anthony. "About SurfaceStations.org". Retrieved 2009-03-06.
  32. Olson, Ryan (June 29, 2007). "Watts' up? Spotlight shines on local weatherman's latest research". Oroville Mercury-Register. Retrieved 2012-08-10.
  33. "Inconvenient Thermometers". Mercury Radio Arts. March 3, 2008. Retrieved 2012-08-10.
  34. Climate Reference Network (CRN) - Site Information Handbook (PDF). CRN Series. NOAA/NESDIS. 2002. NOAA-CRN/OSD-2002-0002R0UD0. Retrieved 2009-09-30. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
  35. ^ Menne, Matthew J. (2010). "On the reliability of the U.S. surface temperature record" (PDF). J. Geophys. Res. 115: D11108. doi:10.1029/2009JD013094. In summary, we find no evidence that the CONUS average temperature trends are inflated due to poor station siting...The reason why station exposure does not play an obvious role in temperature trends probably warrants further investigation. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
  36. The Rough Guide to Climate Change. Rough Guides. 2006. ISBN 978-1843537113.
  37. Abrams, Joseph (February 26, 2010). "U.S. Climate Data Compromised by Sensors' Proximity to Heat Sources, Critics Say". Fox News. Retrieved 2012-08-10.
  38. ^ Fall, Souleymane (2011). "Analysis of the impacts of station exposure on the U.S. Historical Climatology Network temperatures and temperature trends" (PDF). Journal of Geophysical Research. 116 (D14120). doi:10.1029/2010JD015146. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
  39. Watts, Anthony (July 29, 2012). "U.S. Temperature trends show a spurious doubling due to NOAA station siting problems and post measurement adjustments" (Press release). Retrieved 2012-08-11.
  40. ^ Kaplan, Jeremy A. (July 30, 2012). "Weather station temperature claims are overheated, report claims". Fox News. Retrieved 2012-08-11.
  41. Lloyd, Graham (August 02, 2012). "Data on global warming 'adjusted". The Australian. Retrieved 2012-08-11. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  42. A Closer Look at Climate Studies Promoted Before Publication - NYTimes.com
  43. Hickmam,Leo (July 29, 2012). "Climate change study forces sceptical scientists to change minds". The Guardian. Retrieved 2012-08-12.
  44. Donald, Ros (August 3, 2012). "'There's plenty of room for scepticism' – climate study author Richard Muller". The Guardian. Retrieved August 12, 2012.
  45. Hardee, Howard (November 10, 2011). "Climate-change debate touches Chico". Chico News & Review. Retrieved 2012-08-13.
  46. ^ Gascoyne, Tom (February 23, 2012). "Leaked documents hit home Climate-change scandal has a local connection". Chico News & Review. Retrieved August 8, 2012.
  47. "2012 Fundraising Plan" (PDF). The Heartland Institute. January 15, 2012. Retrieved 2012-07-15.
  48. Hickman, Leo (February 15, 2012). "Climate sceptics – who gets paid what?". The Guardian. Retrieved 2012-02-15.
  49. Watts, Anthony (February 15, 2012). "Some notes on the Heartland Leak". Watts Up With That?. Retrieved 2012-02-23.
  50. ^ Hickman, Leo (February 15, 2012). "Leaked Heartland Institute documents pull back curtain on climate scepticism". The Guardian. Retrieved 2012-08-10.
  51. Burleigh, Nina (February 17, 2012). "Secret papers turn up heat on global-warming deniers". Salon. Retrieved 2012-08-10.
  52. Goldenberg, Suzanne (February 14, 2012). "Leak exposes how Heartland Institute works to undermine climate science". The Guardian. Retrieved 2012-08-10.

External links

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