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Anthony Watts is a weather presenter for KPAY-AM radio, described as a 'Chief Meteorologist' by the radio station but listed as a retired Television Seal Holder by the American Meteorological Society. He publishes the Watts Up With That blog, owns ItWorks, a weather graphics company, and is founder of the SurfaceStations.org project which attempts to document the quality of weather stations.

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 was replaced by Kris Kuyper in 2004. He then 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.

View of climate change

Watts has a skeptical view of climate change theories. He has said that he had once "been fully engaged in the belief that CO2 was ... the root cause of the global warming problem" but that he later changed his thinking after learning more about the science. He established a blog "Watts Up With That?" that presents skeptical climate change news and opinion.

SurfaceStations.org

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. The project relies on volunteers to gather the data. The project has been publicly lauded by Stephen McIntyre and Roger A. Pielke Sr., the latter having described the effort as "very important". 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. He also said that in any case the evidence for human-driven warming remains robust. Watts still expects that the result of the SurfaceStations.org effort will be "to demonstrate that some of the global warming increase is not from CO2 but from localized changes in the temperature-measurement environment."

On July 6, 2009 the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration issued a report in question / answer format which provided:

Q: "Is there any question that surface temperatures in the United States have been rising rapidly during the last 50 years?"
A: "None at all."

It also stated that "Clearly there is no indication from this analysis that poor station exposure has imparted a bias in the U.S. temperature trends."

YouTube video take-down controversy

On July 26, 2009 a YouTube video that examined Watts' SurfaceStations.org project and its attempts to discredit NOAA temperature data for the USA was taken down due to a DMCA request initiated by Watts. When asked the reason for his actions, he replied, "I don’t care to discuss my reasons here as they are private and unrelated to this discussion. Google agreed that complaint was valid and removed the video." This statement is untrue as any claim of copyright infringement will result in automatic take-down until the claim is investigated. The video has subsequently been re-posted to YouTube.


References

  1. http://newstalk1290.wordpress.com/news-staff/
  2. http://www.ametsoc.org/memdir/seallist/get_listoftv.cfm List of AMS Television Seal Holders
  3. Anthony Watts. "About Watts Up With That?". Watts Up With That. Retrieved 06 February 2009. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)
  4. ^ Anthony Watts (27 March 2008). "Gore to throw insults on 60 minutes". Watts Up With That?. Retrieved 06 February 2009. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)
  5. Anthony Watts. "About SurfaceStations.org". SurfaceStations.org. Retrieved 06 February 2009. 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. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)
  6. Pielke, R.A. (01 June 2007). "More On Obtaining The Locations Of Global Historical Climate Network (GHCN) Sites". Climatesci.org. Retrieved 06 February 2009. This is a very important need for the climate science community, and you are encouraged to obtain this photographic documentation if you can, and also share with the new website under development by Anthony Watts...when his website is ready. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= and |date= (help)
  7. Pielke, R.A. (16 March 2007). "Request For Photographs Of GHCN sites - A Need For Documentation". Climatesci.org. Retrieved 16 March 2009.
  8. Ryan Olsen (30 August 2007). "Scientists warm up to Watts' work". Chico Enterprise Record. Archived from the original on 27 September 2007. Retrieved 06 February 2009. I think any effort to better understand the observation system that's used to collect data and analyze it is helpful. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)
  9. ANDREW C. REVKIN (26 August 2007). "Quarter-Degree Fix Fuels Climate Fight". New York Times. Retrieved 2 April 2009.
  10. Bill Steigerwald (17 June 2007). "Helping along global warming". Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. Retrieved 06 February 2009. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)
  11. NOAA (6 July 2009). "Is the U.S. Temperature Record Reliable?" (PDF). Retrieved 8 July 2009.
  12. Kevin Grandia (27 July 2009). "Climate Crock Anthony Watts Scrubs YouTube Video". DeSmogBlog. Retrieved 29 July 2009.
  13. Tim Lambert (29 July 2009). "Anthony Watts' abuse of the DMCA". Deltoid. Retrieved 29 July 2009.
  14. Anthony Watts (26 July 2007). "Lindzen on Climate Hysteria". WattsUpWithThat. Retrieved 29 July 2009.
  15. Kevin Grandia (28 July 2009). "Climate Crock of the Week: What's Up with Anthony Watts [take 2]". DeSmogBlog. Retrieved 29 July 2009.

External links

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