Q. How did WUWT get started?
A. WUWT started out in 2006 as a broad-interest science blog under the umbrella of the Chico Enterprise-Record newspaper’s “NorCalBlogs.” I started blogging there because I wanted to explore and do some experiments with “gee whiz” things. For a while it was general science and tech interest, catering mainly to local readers, but in the spring of 2007 that changed. One of the 2007 experiments was something I’d wondered about since college in 1976, when I was charged with setting up a remote weather station for Purdue University as a student assistant to the meteorology department (I was later hired full-time as a staff member). When I assembled the Stevenson Screen shelter, I was shocked to find whitewash coming off in my hands, and even more shocked to discover that it was still the standard coating for all U.S. Weather Bureau shelters. I later learned that around 1979 the standard was switched to latex paint. I’d always wondered what that did to the shelters’ temperature characteristics, but never investigated it until I started blogging. In spring 2007 I did some paint experiments to test the differences, and while inspecting local NOAA weather stations to check their paint, I discovered oddities in station siting at nearby Chico and Marysville. That made me realize there was an even bigger issue with station siting, one that eclipsed the paint issue, and it led to the surfacestations.org project, which drew international interest. In late 2007, to handle the traffic and get better blogging features, WUWT moved from the newspaper’s server to WordPress.com. It is now a self-hosted WordPress site on Pressable.
Q. Why do you blog?
A. I’ve been a TV and radio broadcaster since 1974, when I helped my high school set up a student radio station. In 1978 I began doing television at WLFI-TV in West Lafayette, Indiana, while working in the Purdue Meteorology Department as a meteorological technician, and later worked at KHSL-TV in Chico, California, from 1987 to 2002. For many years I also did daily radio broadcasts on Newstalk 1290 in Chico. Broadcasting and blogging seem much alike to me. Both require you to be always “on,” and both require you to keep an audience interested. I see blogging as a natural extension of broadcasting in a different medium. The best part is that I can do it from anywhere, anytime. I don’t have to put on a suit and tie, do makeup, or be in a studio. Blogging also allows more freedom than TV or radio, because there are no time constraints and presentations can be far more detailed.
I also blog because it is interesting, mentally challenging, and lets me meet new and interesting people. Before blogging, I had few contacts outside my local sphere. Now I have friends and associates worldwide.
Now that WUWT has become one of the most viewed (and arguably the best-known) websites in the world on climate issues, I feel a sense of duty to keep people informed, and to make known what I see as the untold story of the climate debate from the skeptic side.
Q. Were you always a climate skeptic?
A. No. In June 1988 I remember watching the newsfeed at KHSL-TV of Dr. James Hansen’s address before Congress about CO2 and its effects, and his message that we as a nation had to do something about it. That moved me, and I thought we needed to do something. I wondered what I could do, and in 1990 I came up with an idea that combined my emerging talents in computer graphics for television weather with doing something about the global warming problem. I approached the National Arbor Day Foundation in Lincoln, Nebraska, with an idea to provide TV weathercasters nationwide with a series of computer graphics slides and animations that would tell the global warming story and explain how planting trees could help offset CO2. Then-president John Rosenow gave me the green light, and production was put into motion. With the help of CBS Newsfeed’s Steven Ackerman, the presentation was sent via their satellite newsfeed to all CBS affiliate stations, and through an announcement on the AP newswire, non-CBS stations were told how to tune in and capture the feed. The program ran on TV stations during weathercasts in the week leading up to Earth Day 1990 and was dubbed “Arbor Day Weather Week.” 174 TV stations participated, and about 250,000 trees were planted as a result (according to the National Arbor Day Foundation’s logged requests for free Colorado Blue Spruce seedlings). The program was repeated in 1991.
Clearly, I was fully engaged in the idea that global warming was a serious problem. It wasn’t until the mid-1990s that I began to question it. My questioning started with a professional friendship with Jim Goodridge, the former State Climatologist of California, who had retired to Chico. He showed me some of his investigations into California’s temperature and precipitation records that didn’t quite add up to some of the warming claims I was reading about. In a short essay published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society in 1996, Mr. Goodridge showed that warming rates in California counties varied with population. When I saw this graph from his BAMS paper, that was the moment I really began to question whether the observed surface warming was a signal of CO2 or an artifact of UHI and population growth.
Q. How often are new posts published?
A. Typically about 5–8 per day on weekdays. On weekends, typically 2–4, sometimes along with an “open thread” where people can talk about any topic.
Q. What’s a typical blogging day for you?
A. I typically scan the news, RSS feeds and email each morning around 6:30 AM Pacific, and publish one or two posts right after that. I then schedule other posts to publish automatically later in the day. Some of these are news items or guest essays submitted by the community. I typically write another post around lunchtime, one in the late afternoon, one in the early evening, and schedule one or two to publish late at night, around midnight to 3 AM, for people in Europe to read.
Q. Are you funded by the fossil fuel industry?
A. No. One of the funniest episodes of the “you are in the pay of big oil” meme WUWT often gets accused of came in December 2012, when our volunteer community cartoonist “Josh” in the UK collected some of his artwork into a calendar. He offered WUWT a version for the US as well, and I had to come up with a way to print them and sell them to readers. I chose Costco’s calendar service because they could print and drop-ship them, so I never had to touch them.
For fun, and since it was Christmas time, I sent a few calendars to some well-known climate activists: Gavin Schmidt, Peter Gleick, Dana Nuccitelli and the infamous Dr. Michael Mann. Dr. Mann had apparently never seen Costco before (there isn’t one in State College, PA, where he lived at the time) and on receiving the free calendar got the hilarious idea that it was funded by some activist campaign. I set the record straight here, including showing my Costco Photo Center receipts: Too Funny! I send Michael Mann a free WUWT calendar as a Christmas gift, and he goes full conspiracy theory. It just goes to show how wrong the perceptions of people who want to paint you as a bad guy can be.
Q. Do you accept paid advertising?
A. Yes, WUWT carries advertising to help pay its costs, and readers who prefer an ad-free experience can become a supporting subscriber. Occasionally WUWT may highlight a product or service of interest, or promote a cause that needs funding, such as the 50 to 1 project, but WUWT takes no portion of those promotions; they are done as a community service.
Q. What about the $44,000 that supposedly came from the Heartland Institute, as written about by document thief Dr. Peter Gleick?
A. First, it didn’t come from Heartland. It came from an independent donor that Heartland helped me find through their networking.
Second, it was specifically for a special project my company was doing to make data from the Climate Reference Network more widely available and easier for the layman to view. At the time, NOAA did not include the state-of-the-art Climate Reference Network data in its monthly State of the Climate reports, even though it is a superior system. More about this here.
The project was to be funded to completion in 2012, but because of Gleick’s interference, the second phase of funding never materialized, and work continued without it. Preliminary output maps were shown on WUWT here, and year-end data for 2012 was announced here.
Q. Aren’t you paid to go to Heartland conferences?
A. Yes, and that’s no different from what any other organization does. Like any invited speaker at a conference, trade show or conclave, Heartland pays a small honorarium and travel expenses for people it invites to speak. For example, Dr. Scott Denning, a scientist on the opposite side of the climate debate from me who has spoken at Heartland conferences, got the same honorarium and travel reimbursement I did. (Update: as of April 4, 2019 I am listed as a “senior fellow” of Heartland, which means I write and contribute op-ed pieces they distribute.)
Q. How much traffic does WUWT get?
A. WUWT gets millions of page views every month, and it passed 150 million total views years ago.
Q. How can I submit a guest essay to WUWT?
A. We welcome submissions in two ways: our Tips and Notes page for news tips, and our Submit a Story page for full articles. Guidelines are on those pages.
Q. Why do a few guest essays have nom de plume names? Aren’t you adamant about people putting their names behind their words?
A. Anyone who publishes on WUWT must be known to the proprietor, and they all are. This requirement is mainly for legal reasons. When running a large enterprise like this, there may be legal challenges to something written, and the writer must be held accountable for his or her own words. On the few occasions when somebody wants to publish on WUWT under a nom de plume, the first requirement is full disclosure before publication, with the communication recorded in case there is ever an issue. Of the more than 40,000 posts on WUWT, only a few were published this way. For good reason, some of those authors fear things like this from activists such as Greenpeace: We know who you are. We know where you live. We know where you work. And we be many, but you be few.
Publishing on WUWT under a nom de plume known to the proprietor is different from anonymous commenters or some of my doppelganger blog children who use the cloak of anonymity to launch personal attacks against me or WUWT contributors. In a U.S. court of law, for example, the accused has the right to face the accuser(s). WUWT’s author policy allows for that if need be. With external attackers who claim self-righteousness under the cloak of anonymity, not so much.
Q. Why are some topics unwelcome at WUWT?
A. WUWT is often bombarded with topics that have a track record of being never-ending tar pits of discussion that often turn ugly. Quite frankly, I don’t have the time or the inclination to play babysitter or umpire for discussions that get out of hand. For that reason, our policy page lists topics we don’t cover.
Q. Why haven’t you responded to (insert some wailing claim about WUWT on somebody’s website)?
A. Never explain – your friends do not need it and your enemies will not believe you anyway. – Elbert Hubbard