Anthony Watts

Willard Anthony Watts (born 1958) is a former broadcast meteorologist and prominent figure in the climate change denial movement. He is the editor of Watts Up With That?.

2000s

 * The global warming crowd is using all the surface data, including cities like L.A. to support their claim, and the data is flawed because it's influenced by human development. It's about asphalt, not the atmosphere.
 * No proof on global warming, Chico Enterprise-Record, June 10, 2003.


 * I'm betting on the sun's increased activity in the last century, and that CO2 doesn't matter much because its effect is overwhelmed by everything else in our atmosphere that also acts as a greenhouse gas, mostly water vapor.
 * The Chico Beat, norcalblogs.com, August 5, 2006.


 * I'm comfortable with my position because I see clear evidence that climate change is driven mainly by the sun.
 * I'm comfortable with my position, Chico Enterprise-Record, August 10, 2006.


 * CO2 is far from being the biggest greenhouse gas. Chloroflourocarbons (CFC's) commonly used as refrigerants [are] far worse. Of naturally created GHG's, Methane is 23 times more effective at warming the atmosphere than CO2. Nitrous Oxide is even worse at 296. So far no emergency legislation has been authored to eliminate the effect of cows or dental surgeons.
 * Anthropogenic Warming?, norcalblogs.com, 22 October, 2006.


 * The sun is still the number 1 factor in our energy balance. No matter how much people argue about CO2, they can't successfully explain the pre industrial revolution 900-1300AD Medieval Warming Period or the cold 1645-1715 AD Maunder Sunspot Minimum that coincided with European crop failure, famine and disease while linking it with our modern day issues with CO2 to climate change. Yet sunspots and solar cycles can and do explain both.
 * Anthropogenic Warming?, norcalblogs.com, 22 October, 2006.


 * If both Mars and Earth are experiencing global warming, then maybe there is a larger phenomenon going on in the Solar System that is causing their global climates to change, like changes in the Sun.
 * Global Warming on Mars?, wattsupwiththat.com, December 20, 2006.


 * It's all about the sun. Just take a look at the picture above and notice just how small earth is compared to the sun, or even a large solar flare. Anybody whom thinks the human race has more effect on our global energy balance than an active sun does is just deluding themselves.
 * Scientists Predict Large Solar Cycle Coming, wattsupwiththat.com, December 23, 2006.


 * Should a record setting year or string of them be cause for alarm? Personally I don't think so.
 * 2006 Hottest Year on Record – So what?, wattsupwiththat.com, January 10, 2007.


 * I've been saying this all along… the sun is the Big Kahuna of climate change on earth.
 * 1500 year solar cycle shows climate impacts, wattsupwiththat.com, January 19, 2007.


 * As I've always said, the sun is the "Big Kahuna" of climate change on Earth. Everything else is secondary, even though man's opinion of his own self importance in the scheme of things often dictates otherwise.
 * The Sun has a dimmer switch?, wattsupwiththat.com, February 6, 2007.


 * [T]he folks who would have you believe that our climate is driven by increasing CO2 and nothing else, will continue to ignore the sun, as it serves their agenda to do so.
 * The Sun has a dimmer switch?, wattsupwiththat.com, February 6, 2007.


 * The UK's Channel 4 premiered a 75-minute film titled, The Great Global Warming Swindle. Through interviews with prize-winning climate experts and others, this masterful documentary explains the origins of global warming alarmism; factually addresses claims of manmade global climate change; exposes the motivations of organizations, scientists and activists sounding the alarm; and explains why it's been extremely difficult, if not downright career killing, for scientists to question global warming orthodoxy publicly. While presenting hard facts, it is artfully done, making it watchable for the layman and scientist alike.
 * Chico Enterprise-Record, March 23, 2007.


 * The emphasis this week seems to be on the sun, and the fact that maybe its really the sun which has been driving climate change after all. That's what I've been saying for years, because its just unrealistic to ignore the largest and single most important contributor to our planets energy balance and to only focus on made-made CO2 and nothing else.
 * This week in Global Warming, wattsupwiththat.com, March 24, 2007.


 * So what's easier to believe as the cause of climate change? That a trace gas called CO2 that has increased on earth from about 280 PPM to 380 PPM in the last 100 years is the cause, or that the giant nuclear fireball a thousand times bigger than earth a mere 8 light-minutes away has been getting more active during the same period is the reason?
 * The Missing GW Link, wattsupwiththat.com, March 25, 2007.


 * I have to think that because NASA chose to co-author this paper [LaDochy et al., 2007] with researchers at California State University, that some of the statewide "global warming as man-made problem bias" crept into the thinking for the purpose of this paper, i.e. "we need another study to show that its getting hotter so action is justified".
 * California Heating Up, a new NASA/CSU study finds, but data questionable, wattsupwiththat.com, March 28, 2007.


 * Our earth is warmed by a gigantic nuclear fireball, millions of times the mass of earth and a mere 8.5 light-minutes away. One hundred and nine Earths would be required to fit across the Sun's disk, and its interior could hold over 1.3 million Earths. ... You can't just ignore that kind of power. Though it seems some prefer to, since it muddles the results they seek.
 * It's the Sun, stupid, wattsupwiththat.com, April 6, 2007.


 * James Carville used to remind Clinton during the '92 campaign that "its the economy, stupid". I say that on the subject of Global Warming: "its the SUN, stupid".
 * It's the Sun, stupid, wattsupwiththat.com, April 6, 2007.


 * It's been warmer than today's climate in the past, much warmer. It has been colder than this climate in the past, much colder. We know this for a fact. We know that this happens with or without our activities. ... So why do we insist that we are the ones causing it when for over half a million years it happened several times and we’ve only had this supposedly evil earth killing CO2 belching technology a mere speck of that time? Because, many believe global warming is real and there are people in our political world who want the masses to hand over power over their lives to them, so they say "let us handle it". To make that transition easier, they trot out this false premise, that we are totally responsible for natural occurrences in the long span of our planetary history.
 * The adapability of man to his climate, wattsupwiththat.com, April 7, 2007.


 * When we look at the Anthropogenic Global Warming argument, it seems on the surface that we are completely full of ourselves and yet at the same time terribly dubious, sometimes completely without hope, and utterly given to embracing our own fallibility as a cause célèbre. We show no faith in ourselves by accepting this idea that we’ve caused Global Warming and still none in the idea that we can stop it. These are hollow beliefs put forth to enrich the power of the few whom offer us the way to salvation.
 * The adapability of man to his climate, wattsupwiththat.com, April 7, 2007.


 * Often we lose sight of our place in the universe, some never knew at all just how miniscule we humans are compared to everything else.
 * Galactic Perspective, wattsupwiththat.com, May 4 2007.


 * So we have three planets now with a warming trend; Earth, Mars, and Neptune. That's not an insignificant coincidence.
 * Global Warming on Neptune, wattsupwiththat.com, May 15, 2007.


 * In my opinion, the premise of CO2 burial seems absurd not only because of the lack of supporting evidence for certain climate change, but also due to it's lack of foresight as to the effects of the burial scheme.
 * Carbon dioxide burial reaches a milestone, wattsupwiththat.com, July 6, 2008.


 * You know, for as much as we humans think we really have control over our planet, nature tends to remind us from time to time that we are just flyspecks in the vastness of space and energy.
 * >The Big Blast, wattsupwiththat.com, September 29, 2007.


 * Why would a committee award such a prestigious prize right on the heels of his documentary [An Inconvenient Truth] being proven inaccurate and prone to exaggerations?
 * Et tu, Gorus?, October 12, 2007.


 * To me, the fact that the suns magnetic field is linked more closely to earth now lends credence to theories like that of Henrik Svensmark, which points to an extraterrestrial driver of climate change, cosmic rays which form cloud nuclei in our atmosphere, modulated by solar variance.
 * From AGU – the cause of Aurora Borealis and TSI questions, wattsupwiththat.com, December 15, 2007.


 * I'm not sure the "remarkable Arctic warmth" is real, especially since the disappearance of arctic sea ice during that time has been linked not to warmer temperatures, but to wind patterns by other researchers at NASA.
 * 3 of 4 global metrics show nearly flat temperature anomaly in the last decade, wattsupwiththat.com, March 8 2008.


 * The vanity held by many of us puny humans tends to bolster a belief that we control our own destiny within the universe, or are even masters of our own climate control. Recent events such as the PDO shift remind us that the slow but powerful forces of nature remain in control.
 * A reminder to us flyspecks on an elephant's butt, wattsupwiththat.com, May 7, 2008.


 * The Surface Stations site has been up two days now, and I’m getting hundreds of registrations across the country from people wanting to get involved in the grass roots effort to photograph, measure, catalog and contribute to the database of weather stations. I’m getting inquires from Congress, Policy think tanks, and bloggers worldwide... I’ve been invited to submit a research paper, and I’m having a lot of fun too. Now I know why I lost the school board election, it was to give me time to do this. Everything happens for a reason.
 * My summer project – a national weather station audit, wattsupwiththat.com, June 6 2007.


 * There's a tendency to view ourselves, our endeavors, and our accomplishments as the pinnacle. Yet, compared to whats in our solar system, whats in our galaxy, and whats in our universe, we are but a mere speck in the vastness of time, space, mass, and energy.
 * Some Planetary Perspective, wattsupwiththat.com, June 7, 2008.


 * And finally we have this, this discovery that Earth's magnetic field can be ripped open and our atmosphere laid bare to the solar wind, much like Mars. Magnetism is underrated in the grand scheme of things, in my opinion. We'd do well to pay more attention to magnetic trends in our corner of the universe and what effects it has on Earthly climate.
 * Earth's Magnetic Field Has Massive Breach – scientists baffled, wattsupwiththat.com, December 16, 2008.


 * Of course we all know that the human race has historically done better during warm periods. While we've seen a slight warming in the last century, we've also seen a worldwide improvement in the human condition. Warm – what's not to like?
 * The Deadliest U.S. Natural Hazard: Extreme Cold December 18, 2008.


 * That the climate has always changed. It has never been static. In the past it has seen extremes hotter and colder than what we experience today. So change is normal.
 * Talking Climate Change with Anthony Watts, townhall.com, Apr 20, 2009.


 * I would say that the polar ice has disappeared in the past. Certainly there seems to be evidence of past climate situations where we may have had virtually no or none during the summertime. In the immediate future, however, I don't think we are going to see that. In fact, we're going through a rebound right now.
 * Talking Climate Change with Anthony Watts townhall.com, Apr 20, 2009.


 * Name calling and labeling does nothing but lower your own level of discourse, when you have no other facts to present, which is why alarmists often resort to name calling and labeling.
 * Quote of the week #8 – Monbiot: "looks like I’ve boobed", wattsupwiththat.com, May 17, 2009.


 * Climate Change Reconsidered, the 2009 report of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC), is the report on global warming the United Nations' climate panel should have written – but didn't.
 * A response to the IPCC, wattsupwiththat.com, June 3, 2009.


 * This goes back to the reason why alarmists abandoned the "global warming" term in favor of climate change. They can play this bait and switch, showing changes in climate (which always exist) and then blaming them on CO2. But there is no mechanism ever proposed by anyone where CO2 can change the climate directly without going through the intermediate step of warming. If climate is changing but we are not seeing warming, then the change can't be due to CO2.
 * Just where are those grid killing tornadoes anyway?, wattsupwiththat.com, June 17, 2009.

2010s

 * I would say this boils down to a war between the haves and the have-nots. The haves are the people that are getting all the funding. They're getting millions and millions of dollars of funding. The skeptics, we get scraps, we do things on our own. I funded most of the project on my own. And so who should you trust? People that are being paid for an opinion, paid for an output, versus someone who is not being paid for an output, and I think that's the question.
 * Tom Minchin. Anthony Watts interviewed, Quadrant magazine, June 30, 2010.


 * The warming propaganda machine has lost its momentum and is desperate to get it back. They want to silence Lord Monckton and remove him from the field.  To that end they'll say anything. ...  Yet when granted a fair forum for debate, it is Monckton who triumphs.
 * Target: Monckton, wattsupwiththat.com, August 12, 2010.


 * Global warming had become essentially a business in its own right. There are NGOs, there are organizations, there are whole divisions of universities that have set up to study this, this factor, and so there's lots of money involved and then so I think that there's a tendency to want to keep that going and not really look at what might be different.
 * Climate Change Skeptic Says Global Warming Crowd Oversells Its Message, pbs.org, September 17, 2012.


 * "Global warming" suggests a steady linear increase in temperature, but since that isn't happening, proponents have shifted to the more universal term "climate change," which can be liberally applied to just about anything observable in the atmosphere.
 * Climate Change without Catastrophe: Interview with Anthony Watts, oilprice.com, 11 March, 2013.

Quotes about Anthony Watts

 * Watts has his critics who take issue with his stance on global warming. He acknowledges a warming trend, but believes humans have only had a slight impact. He points to the sun and the tremendous amount of energy it kicks out as having a far greater role in Earth's heating and cooling.
 * Ryan Olson, Watts' up? Spotlight shines on local weatherman's latest research, Chico Enterprise Record, 2007.


 * While many believe humans are leading contributors to global warming, Watts has theorized the sun may play a bigger role. He said the data deserves a second look, especially because of the large amount of money involved.
 * Ryan Olson, Scientists warm up to Watts' work, Chico Enterprise Record, 2007.


 * A careful, honest man of science, all [Anthony] Watts would say for sure was that his findings and all the strange cold-weather events of this winter prove only one thing so far -- that "Mother Nature is still in control of things, not us."
 * Cool News About Global Warming, townhall.com, Mar 04, 2008.


 * The indefatigable Anthony Watts, having noticed that the raw data for many individual stations in the GISS dataset had been "processed" so as to turn a century of actual cooling into a century of spurious warming, wondered whether the "processed" data itself had been altered over time with the aim of producing an ever-higher apparent (but bogus) rate of "global warming" over the 20th century. He found that this was indeed the case.
 * Lord Christopher Monckton, Climategate: Caught Green-Handed!, SPPI, November 30, 2009.