Gosh, according to many, I’m a far worse person for speaking my mind on the subject. But here is what happened to one TV meteorologist when he put a few notes about “global warming” in his weather forecast. – Anthony
From tampabay.com “The FEED” blog:
Tampa weatherguy Paul Dellegatto named “Worser” person by Keith Olbermann
WTVT-Ch. 13 chief meteorologist Paul Dellegatto is such a mild-mannered guy, it’s hard to imagine him in a televised throw-down with one of cable TV’s most outspoken anchors.
But that’s what happened Wednesday night, when MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann named the Tampa weatherguy to second place in that evening’s “Worst Person in the World” listing, citing a recent statement by Dellegatto during a newscast saying there are some signs that runaway global warming isn’t happening.
In the Tampa Bay area to take in some spring training games, Olbermann dinged Dellegatto for “putting in global warming denial propaganda into the local freaking weather forecast of the local freaking Fox station.” He accused the weatherguy of downplaying “the whole global warming doomsayer theory,” noting sarcastically that global warming can make some areas on the Earth unseasonably cooler as well.
(UPDATE: After trading Facebook messages with Dellegatto earlier today, I had hoped to interview him about Olbermann’s criticisms. But Fox declined to make him available — instead, a spokesman released a two-line statement:
“Nobody cares about Keith Olbermann. He’s irrelevant.”
Judge that for yourself by checking the clip from Wednesday’s show below.
If you would like to send some words of support to WTVT, here is the link to contact them.
There’s no point in complaining to MSNBC about Olberman, this rant is mild compared to his regular fare. The management there has heard worse I’m sure. – Anthony
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Keith who? I admit I have never seen the show, but I am sure that both members of his audience ate it up.
Can anybody explain to me why the AGW industry becomes more irrational and shrill in its findings and demands given the logical arguments that appear to be gradually demolishing their belief and the evidence on the ground? Their intolerant attitude has lost any possible support from me.
I’ve only just stumbled on this site and it is a good source of info to balance the propaganda from the AGW industry. Are there any sites where with forums where it’s possible to rationally discuss the issues?
I’ve tried but I just don’t have the stomach to listen to MSNBC news, either this guy or the woman. What is scary is that they aren’t irrelevant, there is an audience or they’d get replaced. I don’t trust ratings, and it appears that MSNBC is the top place for liberal news slants – and there are a lot of liberals.
Olbermann should have never left ESPN. He was funnier then. Now he’s just pathetic.
Martin Mason. Rationally discuss? No. Have you found a forum where Creationism can be discussed rationally? In all my dealings with forums I’ve found the AGW believers to be so intoxicated on the idea that I’ve been verbally assaulted so many times. Either that or they don’t actually know what they’re talking about and just repeat what they’ve heard on the news. They’re even more infuriating than those who believe AGW! When you discuss anything there are facts. Facts are indisputable. Unfortunately, facts in climate change aren’t necessarily so. For example, you can say that the surface record is factual. But given Anthony’s revelation on monitoring stations, how can we accept the findings from very poor locations? Also, the AGWs will accept computer models. I will not. So there’s another conflict. Look at Antartica. Is it warming or cooling? Depends where you look and how you do an analysis. How about global temperature? Is it rising, or falling? Depends on what timeframe you use! What about the Arctic? That’s been warming recently. So what? It has before, fairly recently – doesn’t mean anything. Sea-level rise? Well it would do! What about ocean-acidification? Nope, just a little less alkaline. It’s hard to talk to people when they deliberately use words meant to deceive. BBC journalists are just great at that.
Q. So what do we actually know about climate change?
A.
World’s Worst Persons talk about cognitive dissonance. I would have thought Osama Bin Ladin would have made the list.
Nice toupée, Keith.
The AGW industry follows Goebbels’ maxim: ‘if you tell a lie often enough and loud enough, eventually people will believe you’.
The Times of London, this week, has moved into much more strident territory. Until now, it has given pretty equal coverage to all viewpoints. This week, it is openly talking of four to six degree temperature rises, without any reference to how likely this is to happen based on science rather than model prognostications.
Given my respect for Mr Murdoch’s sense of how to make a buck, I am beginning to wonder if he has concluded that the political power frameworks now are so entrenched in this dogma that to break it will cause his business to fail?
I hope not. It may just be he is giving blanket coverage to the Copenhagen conference. Perhaps he should have been invited to send journalists/TV anchors to the Heartland Institute conference also?
Martin Mason asked:
“Can anybody explain to me why the AGW industry becomes more irrational and shrill …”
That’s easy. Like the most devoted believers of any religion, they regard any disagreement as apostasy, and do not react well to it. They are especially hostile to a former member who loses the faith.
And I thought our TV was dumb.
Quite frankly, that TV clip is garbage of the worst kind. I wonder why modern society apparently is trying to make everyone dumb. “Bread and circuses” ?
I agree with MattN–Olbermann should have stayed with what he knows. On my local cable lineup, MSNBC and Fox News happen to be on adjacent channels. Many, many times, I’ve seen O’Reilly on Fox talking about some issue of the day, and when I flipped one channel I’d see Olbermann talking about O’Reilly.
Olberman with his righteous indignation, and Rachel What’s-her-name with her constant smirk are quite a pair. It’s not often you see so much arrogance and condescension with so little justification. What has either one ever done besides criticize people who are out in the real world accomplishing something?
“Can anybody explain to me why the AGW industry becomes more irrational and shrill in its findings and demands… ”
See Festinger and Cognitive Dissonance – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance
“I’ve only just stumbled on this site and it is a good source of info to balance the propaganda from the AGW industry. Are there any sites where with forums where it’s possible to rationally discuss the issues?”
Umm. Global Warming is no longer a rational subject. It is either politics or religion. Do you know of any site where it is possible to ‘rationally discuss’ either of those two subjects?
Steve McIntyre’s site http://www.climateaudit.org/ tries to keep a rigid focus on rationality, but is intensely mathematical, and the discussion will primarily be technical. You might be better off to look here – http://climatedebatedaily.com/ – which gives you the ‘headlines’ from both camps. Good Luck!
The guy should get a job with North Korean State Television.
He shares the “barking” character of the Korean news readers.
With such a mentality you deserve to live under Communist Rule.
Or in a garbage bin.
And CNBC…?
Don’t watch CNBC
Olbermann may have shown his ignorance on this issue, but is still probably one of the best political commentators in the US. He recently attacked Dr Wakefield on the vaccine issue, based on the highly suspect article in the Sunday Times written by Brain Deer. The next day Olbermann effectively apologised to Wakefield after thousands of parents of autistic kids emailed in to point out that the vaccine science is far from settled, and that Brian Deer’s journalistic standards and alterior motives were far from transparent. Indeed, Olbermann then attacked Deer, (and ticked himself off for believeing what he read in a Murdoch owned newspaper). The problem is that Olbermann and his researchers destest Fox (which I don’t have much of an issue with), but Olbermann is a smart guy and it is people like him who realists need to reach out to to have any chance of turning the media around so that they begin the question the AGW mantra.
Blimey, this is worrying. British television slavishly follows American television. In a few years time can we expect our presenters (I always thought an anchor was something used by a ship, but there you go) to become ranters like Mr Olbermann?
Somewhat OT, I thought people might be interested to read an email I received at school recently. I have edited it to protect the identity of the person who sent it to me.
Dear Colleagues,
An important new film about climate change – “The Age of Stupid” – is coming to ****and the *** are offering free tickets to all *****Pupils for the schools showing on ***
The film concerns a man looking back at 2008 from the wastelands of 2055 and asking why society did not stop Climate Change when we had the chance to. The film promises to be the most important environmental film since Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth”. Further details can be found at http://www.takeoneaction.org.uk/Age_of_Stupid.html
After the screening there will be the opportunity for a Q&A session with *****, lead officer on ******** Climate Change strategy and *******, Sustainable Development Education Officer, plus others TBC. There will also be the opportunity for our young people to participate in some Vox Pops to express their thoughts on the film and Climate Change in general. I would encourage you to send some pupils to this event.
I wonder what 3 questions readers of this blog would most want pupils to ask if they attend this film showing.
My question would be: Why are all the predictions made by the AGW alarmists so far into the future that many of us will be long since dead (well I don’t expect live beyond 100) by the time these things are supposed to happen and won’t be able to check if they actually did happen?
Sorry, I live in Spain. Can anyone explain who Keith Olbermann is exactly? From the video I can see he’s an idiot, but who is he?
Love that understated response by Fox; nothing like a little perspective.
OT somewhat, but worth a look. The UK Daily Telegraph, which has been either sceptical or roughly neutral on the issue to date, has come off the fence big time today with its leader http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/4987426/Capitalism-can-lead-the-way-on-climate-change.html“Capitalism can lead the way on climate change”. Having said that, there are some wee glimpses of balance and common sense in the article, but I’m afraid this means the UK MSM is now 100% sold on CO2 being a bad thing. I wonder where they’ll get their wood pulp from when we starve the forests to death?
Sorry, but I trust a meteorologist more than computer modelers.
We may poke fun at meteorologists, when they are wrong, but they are more humble and are constantly confronted by a thing called “Reality.” However when computer modelers project, with a computer model, fifty years into the future, they avoid being confronted by what actually happens, because it is too far in the future.
Yet we can check out how their forecasts have done in the short term, for they have been making their doom and gloom predictions for 20 years. And what we have seen is that, for the first 10 years, their predictions were within the “margin of error,” but in the last ten years their predictions have veered far outside the “margin of error.” In other words, they don’t verify; they are WRONG.
If you take the time to look at where they stated our planet’s average temperature should be by now, and where it actually is, you see that they blew the forecast. If you study the IPCC report you see other errors as well. For example, by now there was suppose to be noticeable heating of the upper atmosphere in the Tropics. Instead it is a hair cooler. They were WRONG.
All Paul Dellagatto did was to point out the obvious. He doesn’t deserve to be smeared.
When meteorologists blow a forecast they blush and admit their mistake, and then often eagerly point out why they were wrong, because their fascination with the weather is greater than their pride.
When climate modelers blow a forecast they blame the public, or the clouds. In this way they resemble psychologists. (When a psychologist is wrong, he blames the patient. This may not be scientific, but it soothes his wounded ego, and protects his professional reputation.)
The question I would ask is why isn’t it happening, surely something classed as a catastrophe should have obvious and defining characteristics? That is the question that I desperately need to get answered.
What I’m worried about is that this thing is approaching critical mass and they could convince politicians to take ridiculous action based on nothing but harridan like rhetoric, bad science and weak theories. What a disaster.
I saw a good debate on the subject from the US on BBC World News (The Intelligence2 debates) and the skeptics wiped the floor with the AGW side. Their arguments were based only on possible future events with no probability attached. I have tried to be as neutral as possible but they disappointed me.
Mike:
You asked:
“Why are all the predictions made by the AGW alarmists so far into the future that many of us will be long since dead (well I don’t expect live beyond 100) by the time these things are supposed to happen and won’t be able to check if they actually did happen?”
IMHO, it is a form of Millenial thinking that is a marker of many religions. It is the opposite of a readily provable proposition.
I would propose an alternative question that will test the objectivity and the statistical acumen of the presenters: How many years of cooling or non-warming will it take for you to question the validity of the current AGW hypothesis? 10 years? 15 years? 44 years?
It would take a contrarian religious-political agenda to make the requisite splash that would show AGW to be all wet…. on thier own level.
Until then, you’ll have to wait for next winter’s cold hard reality to hit with vengeance. And it will get much colder next winter. SC24 is nowhere to be found. It’s not in the flux, it’s not on the MDI, it’s not in the TSI and it certainly isn’t in the hushed solar wind.
Shuddering masses will make one heck of a racket.
Congress shows signs of rebellion on AGW’s demand: Cap & Trade.
Next winter will give much support to that rebellion.
And back to the political front it will go, and there the fight will ensue.
I believe AGW knows it is facing impending cold, and their agenda sees it’s time growing short. Such is the driving reason behind Gore’s astounding statement.
Really, Mr. Gore.
Olbermann says “nothing of value” — and does so obnoxiously. Its his “style”. His views are “irrelevant” to thinking people. But, they do indicate the bias and “low brow” approach of MSNBC.
It is Paul Delgado that I watch for regional weather. His station, FOX 13, always has the most up to date radar system, he is pleasant, speaks comfortably, is easy to understand and is very accurate in his forcasts.
El Sabio (02:54:37) : “Sorry, I live in Spain. Can anyone explain who Keith Olbermann is exactly? From the video I can see he’s an idiot, but who is he?”
Oberman is a failed sports reporter. No one took him serioiusly, he was a clown. Apparently he decided his “career” needed to be taken seriously so he switched to “hard news”. He is a bitter man because MSNBC is a joke and very few watch him or his station.
There’s an easy solution to all of this. Don’t watch TV! Well, at least don’t subscribe to “premium” cable channels (which include MSNBC). I refuse to get any premium cable channels from my cable provider (COMCAST) until they go a la cart, i.e. they allow the purchase of individual channels. It is only a matter of time before this happens – you can already order up movies on demand through NETFLIX. And frankly, I find much of the content on YouTube to be 100% more stimulating than anything on cable!
For some reason, cable TV is still one of the few industries that forces you to buy 90% of a product that you don’t want to get the 10% that you do want. It’s like being forced to subscribe to 20 magazines just to get one!
And I used to think it was worth subscribing to cable just to get the Weather Channel! Well, those days are long gone…