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it isn't a "skeptical view", and we must avoid implying scientific skepticism. This isn't my preferred version, but it might work. Jzg, maybe we can discuss alternatives on talk?
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'''Watts Up With That?''' (or '''WUWT''') is a [[blog]] promoting a "skeptical view" of [[climate change]], widely characterised as [[climate change denial]]{{efn|Sources include:<ref name=denyingscience>{{cite book|title=Denying Science: Conspiracy Theories, Media Distortions, and the War Against Reality |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=anPotGg3tcUC |accessdate=May 2015 |author=John Grant |publisher=Prometheus Books |year=2011 |isbn=1616144009|quote=
'''Watts Up With That?''' (or '''WUWT''') is a [[blog]] dedicated to [[climate change denial|climate change skepticism or denial]]{{efn|Sources include:<ref name=denyingscience>{{cite book|title=Denying Science: Conspiracy Theories, Media Distortions, and the War Against Reality |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=anPotGg3tcUC |accessdate=May 2015 |author=John Grant |publisher=Prometheus Books |year=2011 |isbn=1616144009|quote=
* The blog Watts Up With That? is a notorious hotbed of irrational AGW denialism
* The blog Watts Up With That? is a notorious hotbed of irrational AGW denialism
* the massively trafficked denialist site Watts Up With That
* the massively trafficked denialist site Watts Up With That
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The blog predominantly discusses climate issues with a focus on [[anthropogenic climate change]], generally accommodating beliefs that are in opposition to the [[scientific consensus on climate change]]. Contributors include [[Christopher Monckton]] and [[Fred Singer]] as guest authors.<ref name="mediamatters">{{cite web|url=http://mediamatters.org/blog/2012/11/28/meet-the-climate-denial-machine/191545#watts |title=Meet The Climate Denial Machine |date=12 November 2012 |accessdate=May 2015}}</ref> In November 2009, the blog was one of the first websites to publish emails and documents from the [[Climatic Research Unit email controversy|Climatic Research Unit controversy]], and a driving force behind its coverage.<ref name=mediamatters />
The blog predominantly discusses climate issues with a focus on [[anthropogenic climate change]], generally accommodating beliefs that are in opposition to the [[scientific consensus on climate change]]. Contributors include [[Christopher Monckton]] and [[Fred Singer]] as guest authors.<ref name="mediamatters">{{cite web|url=http://mediamatters.org/blog/2012/11/28/meet-the-climate-denial-machine/191545#watts |title=Meet The Climate Denial Machine |date=12 November 2012 |accessdate=May 2015}}</ref> In November 2009, the blog was one of the first websites to publish emails and documents from the [[Climatic Research Unit email controversy|Climatic Research Unit controversy]], and a driving force behind its coverage.<ref name=mediamatters />


In the early months of 2010, it was suggested the site might be "the most read climate blog in the world,"<ref name="Pearce book" /> and is among the most influential in [[climate change denial]] blogs on the Internet.<ref name="hockeystick">{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=klerAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA72&lpg=PA72 |title=The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines |accessdate=May 2015 |page=72 |quote=a number of other amateur climate change denial bloggers have arrived on the scene. Most prominent among them is Anthony Watts...founder of the site "Watts Up with That?" which has overtaken climateaudit as the leading climate change denial blog. |isbn=0231152558 |publisher=Columbia University Press |year=2013 |author=Michael E. Mann}}</ref><ref name="Manne, Robert 22&ndash;29"/><ref name="oxfordhandbook"/><ref name="Springer Science &amp; Business Media"/>
In the early months of 2010, it was suggested the site might be "the most read climate blog in the world,"<ref name="Pearce book" /> and is among the most influential in [[climate change denial]] blogs on the Internet.<ref name="hockeystick">{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=klerAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA72&lpg=PA72 |title=The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines |accessdate=May 2015 |page=72 |quote=a number of other amateur climate change denial bloggers have arrived on the scene. Most prominent among them is Anthony Watts...founder of the site "Watts Up with That?" which has overtaken climateaudit as the leading climate change denial blog. |isbn=0231152558 |publisher=Columbia University Press |year=2013 |author=Michael E. Mann}}</ref>


==Projects==
==Projects==
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|work=[[Alexa Internet]]
|work=[[Alexa Internet]]
|accessdate=25 May 2015
|accessdate=25 May 2015
}}</ref> In February 2010 it was reported that WUWT receives more than two million visits per month.{{cn|date=March 2015}} [[Fred Pearce]], environmental writer and author, cited that number in his 2010 publication ''The Climate Files: The Battle for the Truth about Global Warming'' as indicating that "WUWT may be the most read climate blog in the world."<ref name="Pearce book">[[Fred Pearce|Pearce, Fred]], ''The Climate Files: The Battle for the Truth about Global Warming'', (2010) [[Guardian Books]], ISBN 978-0-85265-229-9, p. 165. In a brief note about Watts on p. XVI he called it "the world's most viewed climate website", in a note about WUWT on page XIX Pearce said "Perhaps the most visited climate website in the world."</ref> It was described by climatologist [[Michael E. Mann]] in ''[[The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars]]'' as "the leading [[climate change denial]] blog,"<ref name="hockeystick">{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=klerAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA72&lpg=PA72 |title=The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines |accessdate=May 2015 |page=72 |quote=a number of other amateur climate change denial bloggers have arrived on the scene. Most prominent among them is Anthony Watts...founder of the site "Watts Up with That?" which has overtaken climateaudit as the leading climate change denial blog. |isbn=0231152558 |publisher=Columbia University Press |year=2013 |author=Michael E. Mann}}</ref> having surpassed [[Climate Audit]] in popularity. In February 2010 [[Matt Ridley]] of ''[[The Spectator]]'' described WUWT as having "metamorphosed from a gathering place for lonely nutters to a three-million-hits-per-month online newspaper on climate full of fascinating articles by physicists, geologists, economists and statisticians".<ref name="Ridley Spectator">
}}</ref> In February 2010 it was reported that WUWT receives more than two million visits per month.{{cn|date=March 2015}} [[Fred Pearce]], environmental writer and author, cited that number in his 2010 publication ''The Climate Files: The Battle for the Truth about Global Warming'' as indicating that "WUWT may be the most read climate blog in the world."<ref name="Pearce book">[[Fred Pearce|Pearce, Fred]], ''The Climate Files: The Battle for the Truth about Global Warming'', (2010) [[Guardian Books]], ISBN 978-0-85265-229-9, p. 165. In a brief note about Watts on p. XVI he called it "the world's most viewed climate website", in a note about WUWT on page XIX Pearce said "Perhaps the most visited climate website in the world."</ref> It was described by climatologist [[Michael E. Mann]] in ''[[The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars]]'' as "the leading [[climate change denial]] blog,"{{efn|Sources include:<ref name=hockey>{{cite book |last1=Mann |first1=Michael |title=The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines |date=1 October 2013 |publisher=Columbia University Press |page=72, 222, 27 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=klerAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA72 |quote=Since then, a number of other amateur climate change denial bloggers have arrived on the scene. Most prominent among them is Anthony Watts, a meteorologist...and founder of the site "Watts Up with That?" which has overtaken climate audit as the leading climate change denial blog.}}</ref><ref name="Manne, Robert 22&ndash;29"/><ref name="oxfordhandbook"/><ref name="Springer Science &amp; Business Media"/>|name = denial}} having surpassed [[Climate Audit]] in popularity. In February 2010 [[Matt Ridley]] of ''[[The Spectator]]'' described WUWT as having "metamorphosed from a gathering place for lonely nutters to a three-million-hits-per-month online newspaper on climate full of fascinating articles by physicists, geologists, economists and statisticians".<ref name="Ridley Spectator">
{{cite news
{{cite news
| url = http://www.spectator.co.uk/features/5749853/the-global-warming-guerrillas/
| url = http://www.spectator.co.uk/features/5749853/the-global-warming-guerrillas/

Revision as of 22:48, 27 May 2015

Watts Up With That?
Type of site
Blog
Created byAnthony Watts
URLhttp://wattsupwiththat.com

Watts Up With That? (or WUWT) is a blog dedicated to climate change skepticism or denial[a] created in 2006 by Anthony Watts.[2][1] The tagline of the blog is "News and commentary on puzzling things in life, nature, science, weather, climate change, technology, and recent news."[6]

The blog predominantly discusses climate issues with a focus on anthropogenic climate change, generally accommodating beliefs that are in opposition to the scientific consensus on climate change. Contributors include Christopher Monckton and Fred Singer as guest authors.[7] In November 2009, the blog was one of the first websites to publish emails and documents from the Climatic Research Unit controversy, and a driving force behind its coverage.[7]

In the early months of 2010, it was suggested the site might be "the most read climate blog in the world,"[8] and is among the most influential in climate change denial blogs on the Internet.[9]

Projects

Watts's Surface Stations project, an analysis of terrestrial US weather stations, was often discussed on WUWT, but became dormant in 2012. In 2011, Watts claimed that siting differences revealed by the Surface Stations project showed higher than actual temperatures, which he called a warm bias. In conjunction with the Heartland Institute, he published a report on the project.[9] However, when his report was published, it indicated that his trends matched the previous results and did not show a bias, as claimed.[10] That conclusion was confirmed by other independent studies, including the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature Project, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which both found that the sites studied by Watts did not influence the finding of a warming trend.[9][11]

Temperature records

According to Christopher Booker, in 2007 WUWT readers alerted Stephen McIntyre to a discrepancy in temperature records published by the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) based on data from United States Historical Climate Network.[12] In August 2007, McIntyre notified GISS about the problematic numbers, which GISS acknowledged and promptly corrected. The change did not affect global temperature trends, but did have the marginal effect of changing the hottest year on record for the contiguous United States to 1934, rather than 1998 as had previously been shown.[13] In a formal acknowledgement, GISS stated that the minor data processing error had only affected the years after 2000, and noted that the contiguous United States represents only 1.6% of the Earth's surface. The result was a statistical tie between the years 1934, 1998 and 2005 as the warmest years to date for these U.S. states, with 1934 warmest by only around 0.01°C which was well within the margin of uncertainty.[14]

Involvement in the Climatic Research Unit email controversy

See also: Climatic Research Unit email controversy

In late 2009, an archive containing emails and other documents from the Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia was leaked to the public. WUWT was one of three blogs "sent links to the cache of CRU leaked material, via anonymous servers, on the same day, Tuesday 17 November".[15] On the morning of 17 November 2009 (California time), a link was posted anonymously on WUWT to a Russian server containing the CRU emails and documents. Charles Rotter, a moderator for WUWT, noticed the link and notified Watts. Rotter made a CD copy of the files which he gave to Steve Mosher to analyze. Mosher called some of the individuals named in the emails and confirmed that the emails were genuine. Mosher began posting the contents of the emails on other blogs, including Climate Audit. Shortly thereafter, still on 17 November, Watts gave Rotter permission to post the emails and files on WUWT. Because of WUWT's high traffic count, according to Fred Pearce of the Guardian, this was the catalyst which broke the story to the media.[16] In his blog for the Daily Telegraph, James Delingpole wrote that "Climategate", a term often used in the popular press to describe the controversy, was originally coined by a commenter in a post on WUWT.[17]

In an interview with the Financial Times, Watts said that his blog had become "busier than ever" after the incident and that traffic to the site had tripled. According to the same article, the total number of hits on the site since its launch had topped 37 million. [18]

A series of investigations into allegations raised by the incident found that there was no evidence of scientific misconduct,[19][20] still, public accusations resulting from the event continued for years.[21] The scientific consensus that global warming is occurring as a result of human activity remained unchanged throughout the investigations,[22] however, the reports may have decreased public confidence in the IPCC, and conclusively altered the Copenhagen negotiations that year.[23]

Reception

According to Alexa internet statistical analysis, What's Up With That? is ranked No. 11,231 in the U.S. and No. 22,823 world-wide.[24] In February 2010 it was reported that WUWT receives more than two million visits per month.[citation needed] Fred Pearce, environmental writer and author, cited that number in his 2010 publication The Climate Files: The Battle for the Truth about Global Warming as indicating that "WUWT may be the most read climate blog in the world."[8] It was described by climatologist Michael E. Mann in The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars as "the leading climate change denial blog,"[a] having surpassed Climate Audit in popularity. In February 2010 Matt Ridley of The Spectator described WUWT as having "metamorphosed from a gathering place for lonely nutters to a three-million-hits-per-month online newspaper on climate full of fascinating articles by physicists, geologists, economists and statisticians".[25]

On Fox News, climatologist Patrick J. Michaels described WUWT in April 2010 as part of a new group of emerging online publications, manned by serious scientists critical of world governments approach to climate change.[26]

Watts's blog has been criticized for inaccuracy. The Guardian columnist George Monbiot described WUWT as "highly partisan and untrustworthy".[27] 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."[28] In February 2010, Christopher Monckton published on WUWT his account of his "influence on Lady Thatcher's views about climate change during the 1980s", although his claims were contrary to Thatcher's own memoirs.[29]

Awards

WUWT was voted the "Best Science Blog" in the 2008 Weblog Awards.[30]

The Eureka Zone blog of The Times named Watts Up With That? as one of its 30 best science blogs, describing it as "one of the more entertainingly sceptic blogs".[31]

WUWT was voted best science blog in the Bloggies in 2011, 2012, and 2013, and weblog of the year in 2013.[32][33][34] The Bloggies founder acknowledged in 2013 that climate skeptic bloggers had influenced voting,[35] and discontinued the science category in 2014.[36] WUWT was then voted best group or community weblog in 2014 and weblog of the year in 2014.[36]

Wikiquote has quotations related to Watts Up With That?.

Notes

  1. ^ a b Sources include:[1][2][3][4][5] Cite error: The named reference "denial" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).

References

  1. ^ a b John Grant (2011). Denying Science: Conspiracy Theories, Media Distortions, and the War Against Reality. Prometheus Books. ISBN 1616144009. Retrieved May 2015. * The blog Watts Up With That? is a notorious hotbed of irrational AGW denialism
    • the massively trafficked denialist site Watts Up With That
    • Watts is best known for his very heavily trafficked blog Watts Up With That?, began in 2006, which provides not just a megaphone for himself but a rallying ground for other AGW deniers. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); line feed character in |quote= at position 81 (help)
  2. ^ a b c Mann, Michael (1 October 2013). The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines. Columbia University Press. pp. 27, 72, 222. Since then, a number of other amateur climate change denial bloggers have arrived on the scene. Most prominent among them is Anthony Watts, a meteorologist...and founder of the site "Watts Up with That?" which has overtaken climate audit as the leading climate change denial blog. Cite error: The named reference "hockey" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
  3. ^ a b Manne, Robert (August 2012). "A dark victory: How vested interests defeated climate science". The Monthly: 22–29. More importantly, it was becoming clear that the most effective denialist media weapon was not the newspapers or television but the internet. A number of influential websites, like Watts Up With That?, Climate Skeptic and Climate Depot, were established.
  4. ^ a b Dunlap, Riley E.; McCright, Aaron M. (2011). Dryzek, John S.; Norgaard, Richard B.; Schlosberg, David (eds.). The Oxford Handbook of Climate Change and Society. Oxford University Press. p. 153. ISBN 0199566607. In recent years these conservative media outlets have been supplemented (and to some degree supplanted) by the conservative blogosphere, and numerous blogs now constitute a vital element of the denial machine...the most popular North American blogs are run by a retired TV meteorologist (wattsupwiththat.com)...Having this powerful, pervasive, and multifaceted media apparatus at its service provides the denial machine with a highly effective means of spreading its message.
  5. ^ a b Farmer, G. Thomas; Cook, John (2013). Climate Change Science: A Modern Synthesis: Volume 1-The Physical Climate. Springer Science & Business Media. One of the highest trafficked climate blogs is wattsupwiththat.com, a website that publishes climate misinformation on a daily basis.
  6. ^ Watts, Anthony. "About – Watts Up With That?". Retrieved 27 July 2010.
  7. ^ a b "Meet The Climate Denial Machine". 12 November 2012. Retrieved May 2015. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)
  8. ^ a b Pearce, Fred, The Climate Files: The Battle for the Truth about Global Warming, (2010) Guardian Books, ISBN 978-0-85265-229-9, p. 165. In a brief note about Watts on p. XVI he called it "the world's most viewed climate website", in a note about WUWT on page XIX Pearce said "Perhaps the most visited climate website in the world."
  9. ^ a b c Michael E. Mann (2013). The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines. Columbia University Press. p. 72. ISBN 0231152558. Retrieved May 2015. a number of other amateur climate change denial bloggers have arrived on the scene. Most prominent among them is Anthony Watts...founder of the site "Watts Up with That?" which has overtaken climateaudit as the leading climate change denial blog. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)
  10. ^ "Anthony Watts contradicted by Watts et al". Retrieved May 2015. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)
  11. ^ "Watts, Surface Stations, and BEST". Retrieved May 2015. Watts ignores how scientists handle the data: using strong statistical techniques to remove bias. A study using Watts' own data - Menne 2010 - found that station exposure does not play an obvious role in temperature trends, the same conclusion reached by a team including Watts in a later paper, Fall et al 2011... independent studies have shown that the sites studied by Watts and his volunteers do not affect the finding of a real global warming trend. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)
  12. ^ Christopher Booker (16 December 2009). The Real Global Warming Disaster: Is the Obsession with 'climate Change' Turning Out to be the Most Costly Scientific Blunder in History?. A&C Black. pp. 198–199. ISBN 978-1-4411-1052-7.
  13. ^ Gramling, Carolyn (August 16, 2007). "Error in NASA climate data sparks debate". Geotimes. American Geological Institute. Retrieved 10 September 2010.
  14. ^ "Global temperature trends: 2007 summation". Goddard Institute for Space Studies. NASA. Retrieved 15 September 2010.
  15. ^ David Leigh, Charles Arthur and Rob Evans (4 February 2010). "Detectives question climate change scientist over email leaks". The Guardian. Retrieved 26 May 2015.
  16. ^ Fred Pearce, "Search for hacker may lead police back to East Anglia's climate research unit", The Guardian, 9 February 2010.
  17. ^ "Climategate: how the 'greatest scientific scandal of our generation' got its name". The Daily Telegraph. London. November 29, 2009."The person who really coined it was a commenter called "Bulldust" on the Watts Up With That site."
  18. ^ Harvey, Fiona (8 March 2010). "E-mail leaks that clouded climate issue". Financial Times. Retrieved 15 September 2010.
  19. ^ Efstathiou Jr, Jim (22 Aug 2011). "No 'Research Misconduct' by Climate-Change Scientist, U.S. Says". Bloomberg.com. Retrieved 26 May 2015.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link)
  20. ^ The eight major investigations covered by secondary sources include: House of Commons Science and Technology Committee (UK); Independent Climate Change Review (UK); International Science Assessment Panel (UK); Pennsylvania State University first panel and second panel (US); United States Environmental Protection Agency (US); Department of Commerce (US); National Science Foundation (US)
  21. ^ Anders Hansen, Robert Cox (2015). The Routledge Handbook of Environment and Communication. Routledge. p. 172. ISBN 1134521316. In 2009, an unknown party acquired a large cache of private emails between climate scientists...and published them online. Cherry-picking quotes in order to make the scientists appear as though they were discussing data manipulation, bloggers such as Watts whipped up a pseudo-scandal that reverberated for years despite the fact that a series of nine investigations in the U.S. and the U.K. cleared the scientists of any wrongdoing.
  22. ^ Biello, David (Feb., 2010). "Negating 'Climategate'". Scientific American. (302):2. 16. ISSN 00368733. "In fact, nothing in the stolen material undermines the scientific consensus that climate change is happening and that humans are to blame"; See also: Lubchenco, Jane (2 December 2009) House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming (House Select Committee). "The Administration's View on the State of Climate Science". House Hearing, 111 Congress. U.S. Government Printing Office. "...the e-mails really do nothing to undermine the very strong scientific consensus and the independent scientific analyses of thousands of scientists around the world that tell us that the Earth is warming and that the warming is largely a result of human activities." As quoted in the report published by Office of Inspector General.
  23. ^ Jonas Anshelm, Martin Hultman (2014). Discourses of Global Climate Change: Apocalyptic Framing and Political Antagonisms. Routledge. p. 154. ISBN 1317671066.
  24. ^ "Alexa Site Information: Watts Up With That?". Alexa Internet. Retrieved 25 May 2015.
  25. ^ Matt Ridley (3 February 2010). "The global warming guerrillas". The Spectator. Retrieved 11 March 2010.
  26. ^ Koprowski, Gene J (April 28, 2010). "EXCLUSIVE: Citizen's Group Plans Extensive Audit of U.N. Climate Report". Fox News. Retrieved 3 May 2010.
  27. ^ George Monbiot (15 May 2009). "How to disprove Christopher Booker in 26 seconds". The Guardian. Retrieved 11 April 2010.
  28. ^ Leo Hickman (24 February 2010). Academic attempts to take the hot air out of climate science debate "Academic attempts to take the hot air out of climate science debate". The Guardian. Retrieved 3 April 2010. {{cite news}}: Check |url= value (help)
  29. ^ Bob Ward (22 June 2010). "Thatcher becomes latest recruit in Monckton's climate sceptic campaign". The Guardian. Retrieved 31 July 2010.
  30. ^ "The 2008 Weblog Awards Winners". The Weblog Awards. 15 January 2009. Retrieved 16 September 2010.
  31. ^ Moran, Michael (3 February 2010). "Eureka's Top 30 Science Blogs". The Times Online. Archived from the original on 15 August 2010. Retrieved 16 September 2010. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
  32. ^ Watts, Anthony. "WUWT – Voted Best Science Blog in the 2011 Bloggies". WHUT.
  33. ^ "The 2012 Bloggies". Retrieved 10 April 2013.
  34. ^ "The 2013 Bloggies". Retrieved 10 April 2013.
  35. ^ Hickman, Leo (1 March 2013). "Climate sceptics 'capture' the Bloggies' science category". The Guardian environment blog. Retrieved 5 February 2015. {{cite web}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |work= (help)
  36. ^ a b "The 2014 Bloggies". Retrieved 5 February 2015.

External links

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