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In late 2009, an [[Climatic Research Unit documents|archive containing emails and other documents]] from the [[Climate Research Unit]] of the [[University of East Anglia]] were [[Climatic Research Unit hacking incident|leaked]] to the public. ''[[The Guardian]]'' reported that 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".<ref>[http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/04/climate-change-email-hacking-leaks Detectives question climate change scientist over email leaks]</ref>
In late 2009, an [[Climatic Research Unit documents|archive containing emails and other documents]] from the [[Climate Research Unit]] of the [[University of East Anglia]] were [[Climatic Research Unit hacking incident|leaked]] to the public. ''[[The Guardian]]'' reported that 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".<ref>[http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/04/climate-change-email-hacking-leaks Detectives question climate change scientist over email leaks]</ref>


In an interview with the ''[[Financial Times]]'', Watts reported 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 [[Hit (internet)|hits]] on the site since its launch had topped 37 million.<ref>{{cite web | url=http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a6c0411c-2adf-11df-886b-00144feabdc0.html |title=E-mail leaks that clouded climate issue}}</ref><ref>{{cite web | url=http://www.thefinancialexpress-bd.com/more.php?news_id=94838 | title=Politicising and scare tactics cloud the issue}}</ref>
In an interview with the ''[[Financial Times]]'', Watts reported 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 [[Hit (internet)|hits]] on the site since its launch had topped 37 million.<ref>{{cite web | url=http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a6c0411c-2adf-11df-886b-00144feabdc0.html |title=E-mail leaks that clouded climate issue}}</ref><ref>{{cite web | url=http://www.thefinancialexpress-bd.com/more.php?news_id=94838 | title=Politicising and scare tactics cloud the issue}}</ref>

[[James Delingpole]], writing in his ''[[Daily Telegraph]]'' blog, said that the name "Climategate" was coined by a WUWT commenter called "Bulldust".<ref>{{cite web | url=http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100018246/climategate-how-the-greatest-scientific-scandal-of-our-generation-got-its-name/ | title=Climategate: how the 'greatest scientific scandal of our generation' got its name}}"The person who really coined it was a commenter called “Bulldust” on the Watts Up With That site." </ref>


==Comments and Criticism==
==Comments and Criticism==

Revision as of 21:14, 13 April 2010

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

Watts Up With That (WUWT for short) is a group blog set up in November, 2006 by former broadcast weather presenter Anthony Watts which concentrates on the global warming controversy from a skeptical perspective. The blog was reported by the Sunday Times in 2010 as receiving "more than two million readers each month".[1] In 2010, The Times monthly science magazine Eureka named WUWT one of the top 30 science blogs, calling it "one of the more entertainingly sceptic blogs,"[2] and in 2008 it won best science blog in The Weblog Awards (Bloggies).[3] [4]

The tagline of the blog is "News and commentary on puzzling things in life, nature, science, weather, climate change, technology, and recent news".

Contributors

  • Basil Copeland
  • Steve Goddard
  • John Goetz
  • Indur Goklany
  • Jeff Id
  • Bill Illis
  • Evan Jones
  • Frank Lansner
  • Denise Norris
  • Bob Tisdale
  • Anthony Watts

Temperature records project

Anthony Watts uses the blog to discuss and promote other work, most significantly his analysis of terrestrial US weather stations, sometimes referred to by its domain, surfacestations.org. Occasional mentions are made of his Urban heat island transect project which is dedicated to measuring the actual urban heat island effect in major cities as well as his Stevenson screen paint experiment which is testing whether a little noted changeover from whitewash to latex paints could have caused a heretofore unrecognized warming bias during the 20th century as whitewashed screens were replaced with latex painted ones.

According to journalist Christopher Booker in his book The Real Global Warming Disaster, in 2007 WUWT and its readers found that a significant number of weather stations used to capture temperature records were located in the US, giving the US a disproportionate impact on global temperature reports. During the study, according to Booker, WUWT and Stephen McIntyre found that selected temperature records published by the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) based on data from United States Historical Climate Network appeared to be in error, causing GISS to mistakenly label 1998 as the hottest year on record. In August 2007, McIntyre alerted GISS to the problematic numbers, which GISS corrected immediately. As a result, the hottest year on record was changed to 1934 and four of the hottest years on record were changed from the 1990s and 2000s to the 1930s. In response, GISS director James Hansen stated that the temperature differences were slight and of little significance.[5]

Involvement in "Climategate" controversy

In late 2009, an archive containing emails and other documents from the Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia were leaked to the public. The Guardian reported that 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".[6]

In an interview with the Financial Times, Watts reported 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.[7][8]

Comments and Criticism

Matt Ridley, writing in The Spectator, said of WUWT that it has "...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".[9]

Environmental writer George Monbiot described WUWT as being "highly partisan and untrustworthy" in his blog at The Guardian. [10]

Leo Hickman, at The Guardian's Environment blog, wrote that Watts "risks polluting his legitimate scepticism about the scientific processes and methodologies underpinning climate science with his accompanying politicised commentary."[11]

References

  1. ^ Amy Turner (February 28, 2010). "Richard Dawkins' pro-am clash in the boffins' blogosphere". The Times. Retrieved Sunday, Apr 04 2010. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)
  2. ^ Micheal Moran (02/03/2010). "Eureka's Top 30 Science Blogs". The Times. Retrieved Sunday, Apr 04 2010. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= and |date= (help)
  3. ^ Kevin Aylward (January 15, 2009). "The 2008 Weblog Awards Winners". weblogawards. Retrieved Sunday, Apr 04 2010. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)
  4. ^ Kevin Grandia (January 13, 2009). "Will the Real Science Please Stand Up? -- Global Warming Denier Site Set to be Crowned the "Best Science Blog"". Retrieved Sunday, Apr 04 2010. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)
  5. ^ Booker, Christopher (2009). The Real Global Warming Disaster. Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd. ISBN 1441110526. pp. 198-199; Irish Independent. "Have you got Green fatigue?", Dublin: September 26, 2007. pg. 1; Easley, Paula, "Despite predictions, sky is not falling", Anchorage Daily News. Anchorage, Alaska: November 10, 2007. pg. B.4.
  6. ^ Detectives question climate change scientist over email leaks
  7. ^ "E-mail leaks that clouded climate issue".
  8. ^ "Politicising and scare tactics cloud the issue".
  9. ^ "The global warming guerrillas".
  10. ^ How to disprove Christopher Booker in 26 seconds, George Monbiot's blog, 15 May 2009.
  11. ^ Academic attempts to take the hot air out of climate science debate, Leo Hickman, The Guardian Environment Blog, 24 February 2010. In the passage quoted, Hickman hyperlinks Watts to the WUWT blog.
  • surfacestations.org, an online database of photographs and evaluations of weather stations, founded in 2007 by Anthony Watts.
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