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.
See the rest here: If Global Warming Kills Us, Blame the Weatherman
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I would be curious to see a breakdown of ages of the responders. I would not be surprised to see a trend that the younger ones were more likely to believe in AGW and older ones were in the group that were skeptical. (hey I could be wrong but I think there is a testable hypothosis in there somewhere, testable in our lifetimes even)
This site shows how well forecasters are doing at different locations
http://www.forecastadvisor.com/
terry46 (12:32:11) :
> We had snow on the ground in 49 states this February and one of them was Florida.
All 50 states – folks at Mauna Kea went looking fro remnants of a previous storm and found a couple rather sad (but celebrated!) snow patches.
http://www.patricktmarsh.com/snow-shot-of-america/
Steve Goddard said:
“R. Gates (11:51:40) :
Can you name one climatologist who has a good record of prediction?”
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We’ll have to wait another hundred years or so to find out 🙂
Bruce Cobb said:
(regarding climatologists…)
“They don’t have a clue what is happening to our climate, or why.”
————
Ouch…
But somehow the AGW skeptics do, right?
Everyone cares what the weatherman says, no one cares what the climatologist says. Everyone knows who the weathermen/women are no one know/cares who the climatologists are.
Climatologists (and their families) have a 99.999% probability of going to their supermarket (church, job, school, etc.) and not seeing anyone who gives them a lot of static.
Weathermen and women (and their families) have a 99.999% probability of going to the same supermarket (church, job, school, etc.) and seeing someone who gives them a lot of static.
*It probably only seems like 99.999%:-)
Did anybody read the mission statement from the George Mason climate center? Here it is:
“Our mission is to conduct unbiased public engagement research – and to help government agencies, non-profit organizations, and companies apply the results of this research – so that collectively, we can stabilize our planet’s life sustaining climate.”
Sounds to me like they already have their position set. Where’s the unbiased engagement?
Climatologists seem to claim that you can run many GCMs many times, always getting a different result (from the same model even) and average the results and get something that isn’t garbage. LOL!
R. Gates is just a fool and a troll.
When I was a working meteorologist the climate guys were the met guys who managed to avoid shift work. For heavens sakes, it seems some of the heavyweight climate so called scientists nowadays are *geographers*. What kind of science is that?
R. Gates (14:55:41) :
But somehow the AGW skeptics do, right?
Nice subject change trick.
The subject is meteorologists vs model climatolologists.
The meteorologists are the first ones to figure out when things have changed.
The modelologists are the last ones to get it.
We’ll have to wait another hundred years or so to find out 🙂
As long as we are footing the $1T /yr. bill, I don’t think so.
But somehow AGW proponents want us to trust them for 100 years while they ding us for massive truckloads of cash.
I’ll go with skeptics for $2,000.
R. Gates (14:51:23) :
So you are suggesting that after 99 years, temperatures may suddenly increase 6C and sea level may suddenly rise 2 metres?
It is already becoming clear that many projections for climate change are much too high.
R. Gates: “Can you name one climatologist who has a good record of prediction?”
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We’ll have to wait another hundred years or so to find out 🙂
The Met Office have been doing yearly forecasts of global temperature. They have also forecast the global temperature up to 2014. Ever since the IPCC predicted warming it has been cooling.
We already have abundant evidence climate forecasters can’t forecast the climate. We not need to wait 100 years to know the exact outcome of the 100 year forecast, because it will be pretty obvious much much sooner whether the forecast is statistically valid.
We also know that climatic variation is much much greater over longer periods. So, if you can’t forecast short-term global temperature, then because the variation is greater over longer periods, there’s not a hope in hell of getting a long term prediction right.
To put it simply, unless climate forecasters can either prove that they can forecast short-term global temperature with enough accuracy to e.g. predict the decade of cooling we have had, OR they can come up with some good scientific reason why short-term forecasts are more difficult than long-term, then their absolute abysmal failure to predict short-term temperature is all the proof anyone needs to have about their ability to predict long-term temperature.
*geographers*. What kind of science is that?
Well, at least they know the capital of Assyria.
A “Climatologist” is like a “Historian”. Both look at the past and present and try to make some sense out of where we’ve been and we’re at and, with a flash of magice, where we’re going. Like the Historian, the Climatologist is hindered by several problems:
1. The profession is very much an “art” and NOT a “science”.
2. Unreliable or Missing or Misinterpreted or Misrepresented or Questionable or ‘You-Name-It’ Data.
3. The public doesn’t care.
4. The people who say they care, really don’t care.
5. One feels as though they have sold their soul to the devil and work in a brothel.
6. Only .001% of Climatologists make more than a NYC garbage collector.
7. People think you believe every word that issues forth from the lips of Al “Fat Albert” Gore.
8. People think you are a member of the Communist Party.
9. You can’t “prove” anything, it’s all about scaring the hello out of people.
10. No one listens.
In New Zealand we have flat-chested weathergirls mostly. Not much attitude from any of ’em, altho I admit I rarely look — nothing to look at.
R. Gates (14:55:41),
Skeptics are skeptical when evidence is missing. Why don’t you show us your evidence of catastrophic AGW? You will be the first one to produce any actual evidence.
Until then, CAGW is a hypothesis/conjecture.
The fellow who wrote this article has, obviously, NEVER looked at a typical meteorolgy textbook.
If he had, he’d realize that the daily Weatherman knows about as much about the radiation exchange between the sun, the Earth, the atmosphere and space as the “average” climate “scientist”.
He knows enough (thank you Dr. Elsasser) to know that CO2 is included in the base derivation of the day to day heat up and cool down Elsasser charts. However, the contribution on the Upflux chart is EQUAL to the CO2 contribution on the DOWNFLUX chart, so they cancel.
THUS the day to day balance is based on the WATER VAPOR DISTRIBUTION only.
Maybe THAT is why the mere, puny, “intellectual lightweight” (by the author’s implication) have a profound dis”belief” (it should not be a FAITH matter, Easter is, NOT Atmospheric Science!) in AWG.
And, SURPRISE, it may be the AUTHOR’s general lack of knowlege in the area which is being reflected in HIS judgement upon people far more knowledgeable than he is, rather than THEIR inability to “understand”.
I think Freud called it, “Transference”.
Max
Pascvaks: NYC Garbage collector – $75 K a year.
OT, but this graph keeps looking better every day!!
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_stddev_timeseries.png
evanmjones (15:43:37) : “[re: geographers] Well, at least they know the capital of Assyria.”
Assur-ly you can’t be serious!
That observation about how weak our understanding is about climate change, and the fact that all climate change predictions are next to useless has been recognized as the truth by many leading atmospheric physicists and many other real scientists. What’s most disturbing is the fact that far too many people believe it’s the other way around – that it’s a consensus among leading scientists that we do know most of what there is to know about climate change, and that we can predict it to less than a degree over 50-100 years, which of course is all BS. We can blame much of this on the lack of professionalism of the media, and the many so called climate scientists, who are just career opportunists who bend every rule in the book to peddle their beliefs.
I might be just imagining it but I get the impression that the average TV weatherman/woman (who might or might not also be a meteorologist) not only gets the short term forcast right most of the time, but also has more fun than the average climatologist.
Ref – Max Hugoson (16:04:37) :
“The fellow who wrote this article has, obviously, NEVER looked at a typical meteorolgy textbook…”
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Doubt the article would have been much better if he had.
Ref – Max Hugoson (16:06:31) :
Pascvaks: NYC Garbage collector – $75 K a year.
________________________
Guess I should have said: Manhattan, KS:-)
Ref – Peter of Sydney (16:38:15) :
“…We can blame much of this on the lack of professionalism of the media, and the many so called climate scientists, who are just career opportunists who bend every rule in the book to peddle their beliefs.”
_______________________
There is no honor among thieves.
[There’s a post on that 3 days ago and we have a tips section. Please use it next time. Do not spam up different topic threads, ~ ctm]
Pascvaks (15:59:22) :
Those were some unnecessary slurs against historians. We don’t try to predict the future (unless you are talking about the Marxist variety, which is an unfortunate subset). All we’re trying to do is either explain the present, or try to understand why things fell out the way they did in the past. We know that people don’t care about our discipline – we’ve got the salaries to prove it. Generally, we’re not arrogant – we’re being too thankful that we have a job. (None of these traits apply to hard-line Marxist historians, who probably do merit some of your slurs.) Not in my wildest imaginings would I ever have predicted that anyone could draw parallels between historians and climatologists. What have you got against historians?
Ref – vigilantfish (21:23:09) :
Pascvaks (15:59:22) :
“Those were some unnecessary slurs against historians…”
___________________________
My Better Half gave me a look that indicated something along the same line. Shoulda kept me mouth shut:-)