Anthony Watts (blogger): Difference between revisions

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==Controversial events==
In 2006, Lorraine Ann Blanton was arrested and accused of trying to extort money from Watts by threatening letter. Blanton allegedly threatened to tell the news media about an intimate relationship the two had had in the mid-1990s. Watts dated Blanton in 1996 and 1997.<ref>
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|title=Anthony Watts target of accused extortionist
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Revision as of 22:57, 20 November 2009

Template:Bio-notability

Anthony Watts
NationalityAmerican
WebsiteWatts Up With That?
SurfaceStations.org

Anthony Watts is an American broadcast meteorologist, editor of the blog, Watts Up With That?, owner of the weather graphics company ItWorks, and founder of the SurfaceStations.org project that documents the siting of weather stations across the United States. He is currently meteorologist for KPAY-AM radio.

Career

Watts became a television meteorologist in 1987 when he joined KHSL-TV, a CBS affiliate based in Chico, California. After working at KHSL for 17 years, he left in 2004 to became the radio meteorologist for KPAY-AM, a Fox News affiliate also based in Chico, California. Watts also operates several companies that make weather graphics systems for use on television broadcasts.[1]

He was briefly a candidate for a supervisor to represent Chico on the Butte County Board of Supervisors, but family pressures and a heavy workload at the school board left him unable to mount an effective campaign and he withdrew in favor of Steve Bertagna.[2]

View of climate change

Watts has a skeptical view of CO2-driven global warming theories. He has said that he had once "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.[3] He established the blog, Watts Up With That?, which is said to present "news and commentary on puzzling things in life, nature, science, weather, climate change, technology, and recent news".[1] In 2008, his blog won the internet voting-based "Best Science Blog" Weblog Award.[4]

SurfaceStations.org

In 2007 Watts launched the "SurfaceStations.org" 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". The project relies on volunteers to gather the data.[5] The method used is to attract volunteers of varying levels of expertise who undertake to 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.[6]

Soon after launching the project, when 40 or so of the 1221 USHCN climatological surface temperature monitoring stations had been surveyed, Watts stated that his preliminary findings raised doubts abount NOAA's temperature reporting. "I believe," he said, "we will be able to demonstrate that some of the global warming increase is not from CO2 but from localized changes in the temperature-measurement environment."[7] By 2009, the project had documented over 860 stations using over 650 volunteers.[8] In a report entitled Is the U.S. Surface Temperature Record Reliable?, published by the Heartland Institute which disclaims Watts' views as reflecting those of the Institute,[8] Watts concludes that "the errors in the [U.S. temperature] record exceed by a wide margin the purported rise in temperature...during the twentieth century."[8]

Jay Lawrimore, chief of the climate monitoring branch of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) has said that he was aware of Watts' work and invites anyone with expertise to contribute to the scientific process.[9] Elsewhere, he has stated that the evidence for human-driven warming remains robust, however.[10]

On July 6, 2009 the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration issued a preliminary report that charted data from 70 stations that SurfaceStations.org identified as 'good' or 'best' against the rest of the dataset surveyed at that time, and concluded, "clearly there is no indication from this analysis that poor station exposure has imparted a bias in the U.S. temperature trends."[11] Watts issued a rebuttal in which he asserted that the preliminary analysis excluded new data on quality of surface stations, and criticized the use of homogenized data from the stations, which in his view accounts for the creation of two nearly identical graphs.[12][13]

Controversial events

In 2006, Lorraine Ann Blanton was arrested and accused of trying to extort money from Watts by threatening letter. Blanton allegedly threatened to tell the news media about an intimate relationship the two had had in the mid-1990s. Watts dated Blanton in 1996 and 1997.[14]

References

  1. ^ a b Watts, Anthony. "About Watts Up With That?". Watts Up With That?. Retrieved 2009-02-09.
  2. ^ Indar, Josh (March 16, 2006). "One out, one in, one on". Sacramento News & Review. Retrieved 2009-10-13.
  3. ^ Watts, Anthony (March 27, 2008). "Gore to throw insults on 60 minutes". Watts Up With That?. Retrieved 2009-02-06.
  4. ^ "2008 Weblog Awards". Weblogawards.org. 2008.
  5. ^ Watts, Anthony. "About SurfaceStations.org". SurfaceStations.org. Retrieved 2009-03-06. Given such 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, it seemed that a grass roots network of volunteers could easily accomplish this task.
  6. ^ Climate Reference Network (CRN) — Site Handbook (PDF). CRN Series. NOAA/NESDIS. 2002. NOAA-CRN/OSD-2002-0002R0UD0. Retrieved 2009-09-30. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
  7. ^ Steigerwald, Bill (June 17, 2007). "Helping along global warming". Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.
  8. ^ a b c Watts, Anthony (2009). Is the U.S. Surface Temperature Record Reliable? (PDF). Chicago, IL: The Heartland Institute. ISBN 1-934791-26-6. {{cite book}}: Check |isbn= value: checksum (help)
  9. ^ Olsen, Ryan (August 30, 2007). "Scientists warm up to Watts' work". Chico Enterprise Record. Archived from the original on September 27, 2007. Retrieved 2009-02-05. I think any effort to better understand the observation system that's used to collect data and analyze it is helpful.
  10. ^ Revkin, Andrew C. (August 26, 2007). "Quarter-Degree Fix Fuels Climate Fight". New York Times. Retrieved 2009-04-02.
  11. ^ "Talking Points related to concerns about whether the U.S. temperature record is reliable" (PDF). NOAA Climate Services. July 6, 2009. Retrieved 2009-07-02.
  12. ^ Watts, Anthony (2009-06-29). "NCDC writes ghost "talking points" rebuttal to surfacestations project". Watts Up With That?. Retrieved 2009-07-09.
  13. ^ Watts, Anthony (July 31, 2009). "On Climate, Comedy, Copyrights, and Cinematography". Watts Up With That?. Retrieved 2009-07-31.
  14. ^ Aylworth, Roger H. (March 28, 2006). "Anthony Watts target of accused extortionist". Chico Enterprise Record. Retrieved 2009-10-13.

External links