I thought this might be an April fools joke. It isn’t. I therefore preface it with this maxim:
Climate doesn’t kill people, weather does. – Anthony
from BNET By Chris Morrison | Apr 1, 2010
If Global Warming Kills Us, Blame the Weatherman
Who do Americans trust more than any other type of media personality? The weatherman. Sometimes formally trained meteorologists, sometimes not, our news station weathercasters nevertheless command more attention than other journalists; for local news stations, the weather report is very often the most popular segment.
And over the years, the reliability of meteorologists has improved significantly; next-day forecasts, at the very least, are pretty reliable. But a new study says that weathercasters are reaching much further into the future with their reporting. According to George Mason University’s Center for Climate Change Communication, some 87 percent of weathercasters also talk publicly about climate change.
As you might gather from its name, the Center would be happy with that number if weathercasters also generally believed in climate change — specifically, anthropogenically-caused global warming. But for the most part, they don’t. Another majority, 63 percent, told George Mason that global warming mostly stems from natural causes, while 27 percent called the entire theory of global warming a “scam”.
The problem, for George Mason (and me; I should note here that I generally accept AGW) is that modern meteorologists combine two qualities: the first is that they’re one of the most skeptical scientific groups toward climate change, following only oil and gas geologists; the second is that they’re probably America’s most visible scientists, by a long shot.
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What’s the difference between weather and climate?
Weather forecasters get some forecasts right!
The hoax in my opinion hasn’t decreased my respect for the weathercaster/weatherman. Actually it increases in that they have a greater sense of why we are being fed baloney. Yesterday I looked up a set of 2005, 2006, 2007 forecasts of crude prices. The Romm guy that was pushing a singe 2030 forecast couldn’t explain why they said oil today would be 27 dollars instead of 84. Dishonest PHDs for some reason are drawn mageneticaly to equally bogus economic forecasts. I do sense an odor of crude arrogance toward those that didn’t have certain higher education pedigrees.
Chicago’s second best known meteorologist, Jerry Taft, is pictured. Though, no one can touch Tom Skilling(Jeff’s brother) at WGN.
REPLY: ah, the chipmunk. – A
Why would you blame the Weatherman?
They didn’t claim to have power over the wind & rain.
Not like some who are willing to take billions in taxpayer money to do really bad things to the weather in the name of saving the planet. Yes, there are really nutcases out there who not only advocate, but they are willing to enforce ‘nuclear winter’ conditions on the planet to satisfy their curiosity.
The meteorologist is not one of those types of people, even though my local met. in Redding gets irate phone calls if he gets it wrong now & then. As if he had a button to order up the weather in seconds.
I’m interested in hearing your story. How did your career in weather forecasting evolve and what things did you learn along the way.
The weather may not kill, but life expectancy riding in suicide clown cars can kill. Maybe that’s how they get the health care savings.
Our weather caster operates in ‘tourist beach mode’, so getting the forecasts right is strictly an accident. The EPA put out the first ever CO2 rules for cars and trucks, so you see where this is headed. No word on the output of CO2 for bicycle riders — The healthy in shape riders put out more CO2 than the doofus rider.
Climate models are essentially extended weather models + some parameters that vary over long periods of time.
Everyone who works with these models understands that weather models are of very limited value after about three days, due to chaos. So it is astonishing that climate scientists believe these same core models for decades or centuries.
The whole concept of climate feedback is that today’s weather affects tomorrow’s. If you can’t get today right, you definitely won’t get tomorrow right either. This is known as compounding errors.
Maybe it is because in order to understand weather you need to understand climate, and most of them have done the study of how climate affects weather and have come to their own conclusions.
Rather than getting that information from “scientists” with an agenda. And bowing to the pressure to assimilate.
Oh..and their jobs don’t rely on government grants either, so they don’t need to maintain a constancy of alarmism to procure those.
Yeah, what do those stupid weathermen with their crappy little four year degrees know about anything? Chris Morrison, on the other hand, is a stellar example of who we should worship… uh, listen to.
Weather Babes make no bad forecasts, just wrong ones sometimes. 😉
But seriously…
Andrew
This is the important part of the study in my opinion….
“About one-third (31%) reported that global warming is caused mostly by
human activities, while almost two-thirds (63%) reported it is caused mostly by natural changes in
the environment.”
Regards
Michael
Generally, meteorologists make very poor climatologists and visa versa…the first may be able to tell me about tomorrow, or possibly next week, but doesn’t know a thing about the next century, and the other will probably forget to carry their umbrella for the predicted rain tomorrow, but may very well know what the climate for N. Canada will be in 2150…
Earl Grey: “Maybe it is because in order to understand weather you need to understand climate, and most of them have done the study of how climate affects weather and have come to their own conclusions.”
Earl, it is a lot simpler than that. Weather forecasters know they often get forecasts wrong. They are under no delusion that they have some god given ability to predict the climate, and anyone who tries to bs their way to the top by their own proclaimed ability to predict the weather — doesn’t because the real weather shows them to be speaking out the wrong orifice.
Climate forecasters, however can get to the top of their profession without ever getting a forecast right. They don’t have the cold reality of getting their forecasts wrong to give them the conservative instinct not to overstate their forecasts that weather forecasters have.
Also I suspect weather forecasters are far more hands-on. They don’t sit in their bunker in UEA pontificating about the climate – they’re on the screen, getting emails from irate viewers whose picnics were ruined, and they know that some of the measurements they get delivered are highly dubious – they know sensors go wrong, measurements are made up by lazy/ill/holidaying station attendants – and they get it in the ear when these poor measurements lead them into bad forecasts.
But climategate forecasters …. they just sit in their bunker oblivious to the real world where real measurements are made.
Van Denton who is on WGHP is by far the best in North Carolina.He explains the weather and thing to look for.He doesn’t just go on TV and tell you what NOAA is saying like some i’ve seen.
Joe Bastardi ,with accuweather is the best hands down on forecasting our future trends while looking at our past weather and climate trends.He feels as I and a lot of others that we are entering a period of cooling temps. which could last 20 years or so.It’s all part of the cycle of weather. I know that hard for some to believe but his reports make more sense that you or I controling the weather.Why waste millions or even billions on something we can’t contol or more important that all,part of the cycle .In years to come we will be complaining about it being so cold in winter even in Florida. We had snow on the ground in 49 states this February and one of them was Florida.
Gosh, does this make me a climate scientist?
Northern Canada in 2150 will be bloody cold in winter and warm/hot in summer with lots of flies and mosquitoes.
I am prepared to bet whatever you like on that.
R. Gates (11:51:40) :
Generally, meteorologists make very poor climatologists and visa versa…the first may be able to tell me about tomorrow, or possibly next week, but doesn’t know a thing about the next century, and the other will probably forget to carry their umbrella for the predicted rain tomorrow, but may very well know what the climate for N. Canada will be in 2150…
“R. Gates (11:51:40) :
Generally, meteorologists make very poor climatologists and visa versa…the first may be able to tell me about tomorrow, or possibly next week, but doesn’t know a thing about the next century, and the other will probably forget to carry their umbrella for the predicted rain tomorrow, but may very well know what the climate for N. Canada will be in 2150…”
Again and again the idea pops up that it’s as easy to prognosticate what the entire planet is doing in 100 years than what a certain region will have for weather in 3 days.
I don’t know, i absolutely have no clue whoever had that idea in the first place, and i don’t know by now how it can be defended. I haven’t seen a good defense of this completely unfounded, crazy idea.
R. Gates (11:51:40) :
Generally, meteorologists make very poor climatologists and visa versa…the first may be able to tell me about tomorrow, or possibly next week, but doesn’t know a thing about the next century, and the other will probably forget to carry their umbrella for the predicted rain tomorrow, but may very well know what the climate for N. Canada will be in 2150…
—————————
Reply:
Or not. Trust your civilization to someone who “may very well know”… or to this same person who “may very well NOT know”.
Besides, having worked with intellectuals that couldn’t beat their way out of a paper bag, I’d trust the guy who remembered his umbrella when it rained, not the guy who didn’t/couldn’t/wouldn’t/whatever.
A climatologist is just a meteorologist who can be wrong all the time and not get fired.
R. Gates (11:51:40) :
Can you name one climatologist who has a good record of prediction?
R. Gates,
” and the other will probably forget to carry their umbrella for the predicted rain tomorrow, but may very well know what the climate for N. Canada will be in 2150…”
Yeah, in the world of fantasy.
Good comment, Mike Haseler. You beat me to the punch.
The closer you are to actual data measurement, the more respectful you are of its limitations.
Climate modelers misuse statistical methods to fill-in (make up) data where none exist, or to replace data that don’t fit the model. Their forecasts of distant future (50 years, 100 years) are conveniently stated beyond their retirement ages.
When you point out their projections are out of line with reality after 10 or 20 years (think Hansen, 1988), their defense is “you have to wait 30 years to establish climate trends”. If you can’t test it, it ain’t science.
Meterologists’ predictions get real-world testing every day.
All in all, meteorologists are mindful of the history of the places they forecast for, and have a feel for what is possible and why. You watch them get better as time goes by.
A climate modelologist, on the other hand, has a generated spit-out that can pound square pegs in round holes without leaving any splinters.
The pure modelologist departs from reality as time goes by, riding on thier own trendlines into astronomical divergence via data mangling.
The former relies upon weather & climate history.
The latter finds weather & climate history to be annoyances and sets out to recycle them into different histories.
From Morrison’s article:
“The CJR’s writer, Charles Homans, came to the conclusion that many meteorologists have an earthy confidence in their own intuition. From near the end of his article:
The biggest difference I noticed between the meteorologists who rejected climate science and those who didn’t was not how much they knew about the subject, but how much they knew about how much they knew—how clearly they recognized the limits of their own training.
… when [Fox meteorologist Bob] Breck talked to local schools and Rotaries and Kiwanis clubs about climate change, he presented his own ideas: warming trends were far more dependent on the water vapor in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide, he told them, and the appearance of an uptick in global temperatures was the result of the declining number of weather stations in cold rural areas. These theories were not only contradictory of each other, but had also been considered and rejected by climate researchers years ago. But Breck didn’t read much climate research… bold emphasis mine
That people like Charles Homans can get a pass on what is in bold and have it be taken seriously is a sorry state of affairs. It is obvious who doesn’t read much cliimate research.
R. Gates (11:51:40) :
climatologists…may very well know what the climate for N. Canada will be in 2150… Ha-ha. That’s an April Fools’ joke, right?
Climatologists regard the conjecture of manmade C02-induced climate change as fact. They simply take it on faith. They don’t have a clue what is happening to our climate, or why. But, that doesn’t stop them from prognosticating on it. Chalk that up to astounding hubris, herd syndrome, grant-grubbing, and desire to protect their careers, reputations, and egos.
Meteorologists have no such handicaps, and are better grounded in reality.
The best ever in my opinion was Bill Matheson when he was with CJLH in Lethbridge, Alberta. Their signal beamed across the border. Bill, would get out his whiteboard and grease pencil and explain everything with extreme enthusiasm. When we wanted to know what the weather was going to be on the US side of the border, everyone watched Bill. He was right. The National Weather service couldn’t hold a candle.