Clearly, I’m not the only TV meteorologist (former) with doubts. Here is a story out of Cleveland that shows how others think about the issues. – Anthony
Cleveland-area TV meteorologists disagree with prevailing attitude about climate change
Posted by Michael Scott/Cleveland Plain Dealer Reporter
December 02, 2008 22:35PM Categories: Environment, Real Time News
They will tell you when the skies might rain or snow in fickle Northeast Ohio, when to bundle up the kids in a cold snap and when to make weekend plans if steady sunshine spans the five-day forecast. They also will tell you that human-caused global warming is hogwash. They’re your local TV meteorologists.
“This cry that ‘We’re all going to die’ is an overreaction and just not good science,” said Andre Bernier, a meteorologist at WJW Channel 8. “I don’t think I personally know any meteorologists — here in Cleveland or anywhere else I’ve worked — who agree with the hype over human-induced warming.”
The local TV weatherscape is indeed populated with on-air personalities who are pushing hard against the prevailing winds of climate science. That prevailing thought — supported by the United Nations’ 1,200-member Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the National Academy of Sciences, the American Meteorological Society and others — is this:
The Earth’s climate overall is warming and the human burning of fossil fuels in cars and industry — which release carbon dioxide — is helping to accelerate that change. Further, climate experts say, there could be dire consequences if humanity doesn’t quickly lessen the accumulation of greenhouse gases and adequately adapt to a warming globe.
The American Meteorological Society has strongly affirmed that stance, but accredits even the on-air meteorologists who rail against it.
“Our stance is pretty clear on this and we’re in agreement with the global warming scenario as set out by the international panel,” said Keith Seitter, AMS executive director.
“Still, we think they should research all that they can,” he said. “And really, there should be less and less skepticism out there as the science improves each year — not more.”
Prime-time doubters
But, there are doubters — all AMS certified — in prominent on-air positions at each of the four Cleveland television stations.
Bernier and Dick Goddard — the patriarch of Cleveland weather forecasters — predict the weather at WJW Channel 8. Both cite natural fluctuations in the Earth’s climate and dismiss the industrialization of the 20th century and the subsequent spike in atmospheric carbon dioxide as the cause for warming.
Goddard compared the current anxiety over warming with the global cooling concerns of the 1970s, which have since dissipated. He and Bernier both point to solar cycles as the key ingredient in climate change. Bernier also said he believes the climate is no longer warming — but, rather, cooling again. “I have a hunch that in 10 years we’re all going to be longing for global warming because it will be so cold,” Bernier said. His Web site, andrebernier.com, links to a Canadian documentary that suggests the same. Others in the skeptic camp include meteorologists Jon Loufman at WOIO Channel 19, Mark Johnson at WEWS Channel 5 and Mark Nolan at WKYC Channel 3. Nolan has since moved to the news desk, but he said he still gets questions about his skeptic’s stance.
“Climate records also show that long before industrialization, the Vikings had settled in Greenland because it was warm enough,” said Loufman, who has taught meteorology courses at both Case Western Reserve University and Lakeland Community College. “I think the jury is still out on this.” So what in the name of the National Weather Service is going on here?
Do the local weather guys know more than an international committee of several thousand climate scientists? Or are they too blinded by lake-effect snow squalls to see the big picture?
Widening rift?
For starters, the drift away from global warming among TV weather forecasters is hardly limited to Cleveland. “This is nationwide,” said Stu Ostro, meteorologist and director of weather communications for the Weather Channel in Atlanta. AMS chief Seitter agreed: “I’ve seen the trend, too,” he said. “But I still don’t understand why there would be more skepticism among the TV meteorologists than in the field overall — but there is.”
The most notable example of dissent among meteorologists has been the Weather Channel’s founder, John Coleman, now a TV forecaster in San Diego. Coleman — whom Seitter quickly points out remained with the Weather Channel for only a year in the early 1980s — has said human-induced warming is “the greatest scam in history.”
There have been others, from the longtime director of the National Hurricane Center to Accu-Weather.com’s long-range forecaster, who told The Plain Dealer that “global warming is being forced down the throats of the public.”
Source of dissent
So what’s behind all of this? Dick Goddard said the answer is that weather forecasters appreciate better the lack of reliable records. “There’s only one constant, and that’s change,” he said. “We’ve only got accurate weather records back to 1874 and things have been changing back and forth since long before that.” Bernier said local meteorologists “are just more practical” and not swayed by the opportunity for more grant money to do more research proving climate change.
But Seitter, a former skeptic himself, said meteorologists who make daily weather calls have a natural rivalry with climatologists who look at longer-range trends. “Those of us in weather are used to seeing extremes all the time,” he said. “Why should we think that anything is different today just because one day is hot, another day has heavy rains? Meteorologists often see those things as natural variability.” Seitter said many meteorologists also don’t trust models — “because we’ve seen how wrong they can be in predicting weather” — and that most don’t interact with other scientists beyond other meteorologists. “We sort of live in our own world and haven’t been exposed to the same volumes of research that the climatologists have,” he said. “And that can sometimes lead to a rivalry among the two groups — where some meteorologists are defensive and some climatologists might be condescending, or at least come off that way.”
Jay Hobgood, head of the Atmospheric Sciences Department at Ohio State University, agreed. He said the university teaches the IPCC findings on global warming, but allows for debate. “The day-to-day meteorologists are seeing anecdotal evidence, but not the research that goes back thousands of years,” he said. “The two disciplines are very related, but the time span being looked at is very different. “Looking at the daily weather doesn’t necessarily tell you the climate is changing.”
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
I think it is the grants, myself.
If you depend on a “peer”committee to get a grant for your research and to finance your graduate students, you have to tow the line of the peers.
TV meteorologists are payed by the TV and the better people like them, the more secure their job. Thus, if they are influenced, they are influenced by audience feedback. The audience has been there before.
“Looking at the daily weather doesn’t necessarily tell you the climate is changing.”
Let me get this straight, people who don’t look at long term weather trends as part of a paid job are incapable of understanding the nuances of climatology.
Not much hope for a simple aeronautical engineer then is there. I guess I should quit trying.
This other quote is pretty clear about it.
“here some meteorologists are defensive and some climatologists might be condescending, or at least come off that way.””
We need climatologists to tell us what tree rings mean. And the obviously completely unbiased IPCC to sort out what we should believe for us.
Alright Cleveland!!! I got to visit with Andre Bernier for a day in high school. He’s one of the nicest people I’ve ever met. I’m actually quite surprised that he put himself out there with this stance. He must feel quite strongly. I hope he reads this blog!
Come on, let’s get a grip. These are TV presenters, after all — presumably the meteorologists who weren’t smart enough to get the research positions.
All too often, these TV weather types are little more than cheesy toothpaste smiles and inanity-breathing media wannabes. I couldn’t really care less about their ‘scientific’ opinion. Because they clearly don’t have one.
But whatever. Why not rename this blog State of Denial? It would be a lot more accurate in summing up the mentality on show of collecting so many pointless negativities.
Ice falls on Peterborough, UK, as killer wind turbine goes on rampage shock. Well, exactly. That’s the sort of line that comes from the Illegal immigrant ate my hamster school of journalism.
It’s hardly ever below zero in Peterborough, for a start. And frankly, you might as well say power lines should be banned for ever, all across Canada, because occasionally they fall down in ice storms.
State of denial. That really sums it up. Politely.
REPLY: Ice falls on Peterborough, UK, as killer wind turbine goes on rampage shock. Golly! Why must you embellish a title with words that never appeared? No one denies temperature has risen in the last century, but the cause is questioned. As for alternative energy, read my about page (click link) and then look at the links and pictures of my vehicle, home, and local school. I like windmills, but I happen to think they shouldn’t be near people’s homes for reasons illustrated in this newspaper article.
Such anger and labeling over such a simple point, without really bothering to investigate what I really think about alternative energy smacks more of emotionalism than reason. – Anthony
Interesting that we are told short time scale events do not show trends. Yet AGW is mentioned with any news story (together with Climate scientists explanation as to how AGW is to blame) about slightly extreme weather happenings. Should they not just keep quiet and say it is part of the natural variation of weather. Why do the modellers not disown such ignorant commentaries from their colleagues?
If that happened we might respect their views more.
“We’ve only got accurate weather records back to 1874 ”
Anthony has been showing us that even this is in question…
Is it just me or does this look like a veiled threat – toe the line or lose your AMS accreditation?
Meteorologists deal with reality; climatologists with climate models. Reality trumps fantasy every day of the week.
REPLY: Before computer models, climatologists dealt mainly with records of past weather. Many still do. -Anthony
Look carefully at what is quoted.
This is not a dismissal that there is any AGW. The quotes condemn the hype and panic mentality that has become the hallmark of an industry seeking more public money.
But any such criticism is taken by journalists in general as “denial” of AGW.
Bad journalism is a more immediate threat to the welfare of humanity than AGW.
What a poorly written article! I’ll bet these weather people are frustrated with how little of their explanations made it into the article. Instead of stupid amateur psychoanalysis, it would have been a better use of news space to discuss some facts. Of course, since the weather guys work for TV news, they aren’t in a position to complain.
I think that anna v nailed it. The publish or perish mentality combined with funding tied to the AGW agenda creates an environment where untenable conclusions are accepted to keep the money flowing.
Sorry to go off topic but i could not resist, it looks like we are all doomed unless we totally shut down the modern world!!!!
From new scientist:
“EVEN if we turn to clean energy to reduce carbon emissions, the planet might carry on warming anyway due to the heat released into the environment by our ever-increasing consumption of energy.”
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20026845.200-heat-we-emit-could-warm-the-earth.html
‘All too often, these TV weather types are little more than cheesy toothpaste smiles and inanity-breathing media wannabes. I couldn’t really care less about their ’scientific’ opinion. Because they clearly don’t have one.”
Wow, that’s a scientific, well-founded argument.
Leon Brozyna (08:27:28) :
Meteorologists deal with reality; climatologists with climate models.
…And I thought computer modelers dealt with computer models and that IPCC politicians told them what the end result should be. You live and learn.
Sarcasm ends…
Money quote for me… ““Still, we think they should research all that they can,” he said. “And really, there should be less and less skepticism out there as the science improves each year — not more.””
You think? Why would that be?
Heh…
How long will the would-be commissariat tolerate such dissent? The apparatchiks at the AMS want to decertify any met who gets out of line. State climatologists with doubts have been harried out of office in Delaware and Oregon. I forget the name of the Oregonian, but it is fitting that he had done, as any Oregonian climate scientist should, significant research on the PDO, and that a few weeks after he was air-brushed out of the picture, NASA issued a Bull declaring regime change in the Pacific.
Interesting article on Climate Progress that seems to be preparing the Faithful for lowered expectations on the prospect of early cap-and-trade legislation under the Obama administration
http://climateprogress.org/2008/12/02/would-no-us-climate-bill-in-2009-mean-a-collapse-in-un-talks/
“[Michael]Oppenheimer[lead co-author of the IPCC 2007 report] said it is most important for U.S. lawmakers to have public support at home for their policy. That, in turn, will lead to a successful treaty.
“In the ideal world, Obama would press this issue immediately after inauguration, and Congress and the public would buy in immediately and settle all the details and pass legislation quickly enough so that the international negotiations could move forward and complete by Copenhagen,” Oppenheimer said. “In the real world, I don’t think this is in the cards.”
How inconvenient it must be for the Anointed , who live in the ‘ideal world’ where the Ignorant do not have to be consulted, that in a democratic political process, real people must be persuaded by rational and truthful presentation of a case. They must, of course, the poor silly dears, acknowledge their own nescience and accept on faith that the ‘consensus’ of the Sacred College of the IPCC is infallibly true, and that dissent is dangerous heresy.
The totalitarian implications of the AGW scam are manifold.
It’s quite a relief that not all public weather prophets have jumped the AGW/Climate Change bandwagon.
This is really nice to hear.
In the mean time there is “Green” Panic at the UN Climate Conference.
The Greens fear the possibility of a collapse of the UN talks because they believe Obama prepares for a climate bill that won’t make it through the Senate.
The wild card is held by the Chinese!
The story and the link was published on icecap.us today and the full story can be found here:
http://climateprogress.org/2008/12/02/would-no-us-climate-bill-in-2009-mean-a-collapse-in-un-talks/
Remark:
If the UN talks fail they still win. It won’t take much more time before we meet the 1990 Kyoto Target without spending a single dime. That’s in regard to the 1990 temperatures. Not the 1990 CO2 levels.
But who cares about CO2? It’s just an innocent trace gas not worth the attention nor the money spend on.
And money my friends, money is scarce these days.
“…the United Nations’ 1,200-member Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change…”
It is past the time for examining the credentials of the 1,200 members of the IPCC Panel.
SEPP: IPCC Chairman Says Current Weather Extremes Not Linked to any Global Warming; Claims by Gore, Environmental Activists Cause for Mistrust, Says Bolin
Bolin, chairman of the IPCC for eight years and a respected Swedish meteorologist, raised this point on June 2 in Stockholm, Sweden, during the first of two debates on the global warming issue with University of Virginia atmospheric physicist S. Fred Singer, former director of the U.S. Weather Satellite Service. Speaking before an audience of scientists, journalists, and industry representatives, Bolin remained adamant that there has been some human influence on climate, but conceded that “man-made increases in temperature arc so small as to be barely detectable.”
At one point during the question-and-answer period, Holopainen held the latest IPCC Climate Change Report aloft and said simply, “How can you question this bible?”
http://www.heatisonline.org/contentserver/objecthandlers/index.cfm?id=3649&method=full
The Gorites continue to cling to their computer models and the IPCC bible..
Personally, I am all for alternative sources of energy. I was looking into “off grid” living back in the 1970’s and was particularly interested in methane digesters as there were a considerable number of chicken farms near where I grew up.
But we can’t “make up facts” in order to push technology. In fact, it probably hurts the technology in the long run. If the government were to subsidize solar energy, more would get sold but development would probably suffer. Why? Because if solar is more expensive, people will do a lot of research and development to drive the costs down and efficiencies up. If government makes solar artificially competitive, capital expenditures are shifted from research to production. And when the subsidy ends, the technology is little more competitive than it was before and sales collapse.
Government subsidy of alternative energy isn’t sustainable in the long run. It must be competitive in its own right. When it actually is cheaper to use the alternatives than the conventional without government creating artificial market inefficiencies, the use of them will increase. Now we face a situation in California where many subsidies are expiring and the companies that install end-user systems are crying the blues because the equipment is still not competitive without the subsidy and we are talking about 15 years of subsidies.
So rather than create market inefficiencies, certain people have created an irrational fear using “global warming” to increase the demand for products they themselves are invested in. It is designed to make people willing to pay extra because they are scared or think they are doing some kind of service to the world community. The trouble is that the fear and the rhetoric lie on a foundation of inaccurate information and when people attempt to stand up and announce that “the emperor has no clothes” they are chastised for it. It is coercion and intimidation. Basically it is corruption. Using government to advance certain business entities and research careers based on faulty information provided by the people whose interests are based on that faulty information is criminal. It is stealing.
Yes, climate warmed until the mid 1930’s while recovering from the LIA. Then it cooled until the mid 1970’s. Then it warmed until about 2000, now it is cooling again. Global climate changes and there is little we can do about it.
What we CAN do is change the land use problems that cause local climate changes such as deforestation and ground cover changes, heat islands, etc.
There is no evidence that CO2 is bad for the environment, there is no evidence that on a global atmospheric level that humans are changing the climate in any significant way but there IS ample evidence that the current warming and cooling follow natural decadal cycles and that we ARE changing local microclimates through land use change.
My first advice to someone who really wants to make a difference would be to get a ceramic insulated elastomeric roof coating put on their roof. That white roof would do more to “fight” warming than anything else they could do. If everyone did it, it could lower temperatures in major cities by a degree or two. That one simple thing would result in greater energy savings and reduced local heating than anything else they could do besides maybe making sure their car was always parked in the shade and not acting as a local solar convection heater.
Roads, just so I’m clear, all TV meteorologists are circus dropouts with no scientific background. Correct?
“And really, there should be less and less skepticism out there as the science improves each year — not more.”
A statement of faith!
Oh, I’m sure you can help an airplane fly. But there are many more factors than the engineering which affect for how many years the airplane will be flying and how well it flies during all that time. When we are getting on the bird in twenty years we hope that the logbooks truthfully told the flight crew and maintenance staff what has happened, that the maintenance staff has been working on the pieces which exist rather than what their politically correct personuals describe, and that the pilot knows how to move us around actual weather rather than what the weather agencies are aware of.
I agree with “truthsword.” The money quote was by Keith Seitter, AMS executive director. “And really, there should be less and less skepticism out there as the science improves each year — not more.”
As the science improves, there IS more skepticism because of the improving science and knowledge gained based on empirical observations. As time advances, the models from the late 80s and early 90s are proven grotesquely wrong.
Seitter’s enthusiastic support for AGW hints at an agenda outside the realm of rigorous science and invites scrutiny of his motives.
Then there’s Roads’ apple (08:07:44). It appears he doesn’t care for the message, so he attacks the messenger. Apparently, he is the one in a state of denial.
Roads presumably IS an AMS acredited Climatologist; but evidently prefers to anonymously dismiss Meteorologists particularly the ‘TV types’; which is a very safe position to defend.
I know indirectly only one (ex) tv meteor type (well Anthony says he’s one), but I do know personally one very real working Meteorologist; no he’s not a climatologist.
But he most certqainly knows ENSOs and AMOs and PDOs and he most certainly knows how those things affect the weather as well as how they effetc the climate.
And since he is not a “cheesy toothpast smile” type, he can’t get a way, with a five minute prediction of 18 inches of “partly cloudy” to be shovelled up by the overweight TV viewer tomorrow.
He actually works for a living, for people with real money, who really want to know in a big way, what the weather really will be tomorrow, in three days, or maybe two weeks. They have big money riding on what he says; a lot more than just closing down the late night TV news, so he has to know what is really going on out there.
If anybody seems to be avoiding reality, I would say the “climate science” people have more to answer for than the “weather science” people do.
One thing that seems to be a fixed feature of the authoritarian pronouncements of climatologists especially the modellers among them is the omnipresence of a 3:1 fudge factor in their predictions.
In one hundred years the temperature will have risen 3 deg C or maybe it will be 10 deg C, and the oceans will rise 20 feet, or maybe 20 meters, and they never say that the precictions (excuse me; projections) of their models agree with the real world observed data; it is always that the observed data is within the range of their models.
I would like to suggest a simple task that maybe “Roads” might like to tackle. Well any climatologist visiting here might like to try.
Take one of the weirdo official weather stations that Anthony has made famous here; one of the ones for which he published a temperature (anomaly) record.
Now take that graphed data, and create a mathematical function which replicates that data set. No need to beat say 5% error in any data point from its given value; but please give me a function with fewer parameters in it than the number of data points.
Once you have such a funtion explaining that data set, then you might use it to compute the next data point that should appear on that graph.
So I’m not looking for a GCM that explains the whole planet; just a single official weather station will do. That should be easy for Roads to do. TV cheesy Toothpaste types are excused from attempting something that is clearly not in their league.
As an example … what do you think would happen to Hansen’s career or Gore’s career if we were to go into a period of deep significant cooling with CO2 levels continuing to rise as they have been? Do you think they might have a vested personal interest in keeping the charade going? They have staked their reputation on a hypothesis derived from incorrect input data and climate models built by the advocates of the hypothesis (and the model “verified” by temperature data “adjusted” by the builder of the model).
And why is the information that climate cooled when CO2 levels increased at the fastest rate suppressed? And why aren’t people informed that the impact of CO2 is logarithmic and not linear in response in that the initial increase in CO2 has the most impact? You need to have a logarithmic increase in CO2 concentration to create a linear rise in “greenhouse” temperature. That is why when CO2 levels were 20x today’s levels, global temperatures were only about 5C higher than today.