Anthony Watts

Willard Anthony Watts (Anthony Watts) is a blogger, weathercaster and non-scientist, paid AGW denier who runs the website wattsupwiththat.com. He does not have a university qualification and has no climate credentials other than being a radio weather announcer. His website is parodied and debunked at the website wottsupwiththat.com Watts is on the payroll of the Heartland Institute, which itself is funded by polluting industries.

Education
Watts attended Purdue University from 1975 to 1982 but left without graduating. A number of direct queries to Watts to find out if he graduated from college were rebuffed, but a direct query to Purdue revealed that he did not obtain a degree from the university.

Career
Watts began his broadcasting career, in 1978 in Lafayette, Indiana.

Watts still works as a weatherman at KPAY 1290 AM radio in Chico, California.

Political advocacy
Watts is involved with the Butte County Republican Party, providing technical assistance and maintaining the website and domain registration. ,

Credentials held
Watts held an American Meteorological Society Seal of Approval (a discontinued credential that does not require a bachelor's or higher degree in atmospheric science or meteorology from an accredited college/university) with a status of "retired".

Credentials not held
Some online lists incorrectly refer to Watts as "AMS Certified", but this is incorrect; the American Meteorological Society reserves its "AMS Certified" designation for its Certified Broadcast Meteorologists and Certified Consulting Meteorologists , and Watts posesses neither certification. ,

About-face on BEST project results
The "BEST" (Berkeley Earth Surface Temperatures) study, under lead scientist (and former skeptic) Richard Muller, was sponsored by institutions that had previously supported the denial of the standard interpretation of the climate data. But when the BEST results came out, they confirmed the previous results that the Earth is warming.

Watts had initially declared (about BEST) that "I’m prepared to accept whatever result they produce, even if it proves my premise wrong." But when the results came out he changed his position and his site published numerous attacks against Muller and the BEST study.

Claims of a temp. trend bias
In 2007, Watts founded SurfaceStations.org, to collect information on weather stations that are part of the United States Historical Climatological Network (USHCN) and Global Historical Climatological Network (GHCN). Watts believed that, with the information collected via the website, "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." ,.

Said Watts: "The vast majority of [the biases found] are warm biases, and even such things as people thinking a tree might in fact keep the temperature cooler doesn't really end up that way."

Analyses in scientific papers: no temp. trend bias
Results of analyzing the SurfaceStations data did not match Watts's expectations; a NOAA analysis of the Surface Stations data showed "no indication from this analysis that poor station exposure has imparted a bias in the U.S. temperature trends."
 * Independent analysis, Menne et al 2010 show no temp. trend bias

A scientific paper on the SurfaceStations project, coauthored by Watts (who did statistical calculations), came to the same conclusion as the Menne et al. paper, completely refuting one of Watts's main arguments.
 * Watts paper 2011 shows no temp trend bias

Attempted takedown of YouTube video critique
In July 2009 Watts objected to a YouTube video critiquing his sceptic claims, claiming copyright infringement, and had it taken down. .

"The video has since been reviewed by a number of US copyright experts and ... there appears to be nothing that could be construed as anything but fair use", said Kevin Grandia shortly thereafter.
 * Video deemed fair use, restored

"In accordance with established YouTube guidelines", Video creator Peter Sinclair reported, "I filed a "counternotice", affirming, "under penalty of perjury, that I have a good faith belief that the material was removed or disabled as a result of a mistake or misidentification of the material to be removed or disabled." "

YouTube subsequently restored the video.

Op-ed writing
In October 2010 the Christian Science Monitor published an op-ed by Watts likening climate contrarian Hal Lewis's resignation from the American Physical Society to Martin Luther. . The American Physical Society strenuously disagreed, saying "In light of the significant settled aspects of the science, APS totally rejects Dr. Lewis’ claim that global warming is a “scam” and a “pseudoscientific fraud.”", ,

"Leipzig Declaration" signatory
Anthony Watts is listed as a signatory on the "Leipzig Declaration", which said "there does not exist today a general scientific consensus about the importance of greenhouse warming from rising levels of carbon dioxide. In fact, most climate specialists now agree that actual observations from both weather satellites and balloon-borne radiosondes show no current warming whatsoever."

The signers of the Declaration are described as "climate scientists", although they include 25 weather presenters. An attempt to contact the declaration's 33 European signers found that 4 of them could not be located, 12 denied ever having signed, and some had not even heard of the Leipzig Declaration. Those who verified signing included a medical doctor, a nuclear scientist, and an entomologist. After discounting the signers whose credentials were inflated, irrelevant, false, or unverifiable, only 20 of the names on the list had any scientific connection with the study of climate change, and some of those names were known to have obtained grants from the oil and fuel industry, including the German coal industry and the government of Kuwait (a major oil exporter).

Speaking
Watts was a speaker at the International Conference on Climate Change (2009) organized by the Heartland Institute think tank. Watts is also listed as a speaker for the Heartland Institute's June 2009 Third International Conference on Climate Change.

Businesses
In 1987, Watts founded ItWorks, which "supplies custom weather stations, Internet servers, weather graphics content, and broadcast video equipment." ; it is also known as IntelliWeather.

Watts is listed as the Managing Member of ZEV2Go, seller of an NEV-type electric car.

Related SourceWatch articles

 * Global warming skeptics
 * Heartland Institute
 * Leipzig Declaration
 * International Conference on Climate Change (2009)
 * SourceWatch:Project:Creating Articles on Sponsors and Speakers at The 2008 International Conference on Climate Change

External resources

 * WattsUpWithThat.com, Anthony Watts' personal blog, which often addresses climate change

External articles

 * DeSmogBlog — Watts Up With the Internet? Motivated Bias on Climate Skeptic Blogs