Journeyman Pictures has created a little 10-minute documentary that describes the perceived disconnect between the beliefs of on-air meteorologists and climatologists. Of specific note are the comments of MIT professor Dr. Kerry Emanuel who sets up the premise of the question (and the documentary as a whole) and swings away (just after 5-minute mark):
PROFESSOR KERRY EMANUEL, CLIMATE SCIENTIST: Why would anybody ask weather forecasters about their opinion on climate? I think it is because there is a hope that I don’t think is justified that ordinary people will confuse weather forecasters with climate scientists.
Narrator: Professor Kerry Emanuel is disparaging about what he perceives to be a lack of knowledge amongst many meteorologists.
PROFESSOR KERRY EMANUEL: Weather forecasters are in a unique position. I mean if they actually did study the problem, if they actually took the time to really understand it rather than just go to the blogosphere to get their favourite views and rebroadcast them, then I think they could do a lot of good in the world and I think there are some who are doing that to be fair.
Also featured is wrestler and full-time Accuweather soothsayer and forecaster Joe Bastardi who is a noted climate change skeptic. Regardless, if you are reading this, you are not doing yourself or the world any good coming to the blogosphere and learning about climate. Move along.
Embedding disabled by the makers of the documentary (only 302 views through midnight 08/24). Here’s the Youtube link.
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Professor Kerry Emanuel is disparaging about what he perceives to be a lack of knowledge amongst many meteorologists.
And I’m disparaging about the lack of knowledge of basic physics and of statistics by “climate scientists”.
Wow! They’re really running scared now aren’t they. Run along little people and let the big grown-ups tell you what’s going on.
3. Oxburgh Inquiry
3.2 Composition of Committee
Kerry Emanuel of MIT was a coauthor with Michael Mann, who was one of the scientists most implicated in the climategate emails and a friend and coauthor with Phil Jones.
http://rossmckitrick.weebly.com/uploads/4/8/0/8/4808045/inquiries_response.pdf
I think most Meteorologists come across as well informed about their subject and pretty straightforward.
So far as the media “weatherman” end of Meteorology is concerned, they must get used to the fact that, no matter how skilled they are and how careful they are with their predictions, there is a good chance that what they forecast for tomorrow will be wrong. That must prevent them getting too hubristic.
On the other hand, the “climate scientists” (with some honourable exceptions) are closetted in their comfortable ivory towers playing on their computer models and believing that their model’s prognostications are so, so much sophisticated and superior to anything a humble Meteorologist might suggest.
I regard the great majority of “climate scientists” (Kerry Emanuel certainly included) as about as genuine – and considerably more dangerous – as a bunch of Homeopaths.
A little less arrogance and a bit more humility in admitting what we still DON’T know would go a long way.
But in some respects the most execrable bunch are the Professional Institutions (the Royal Society and all the rest) who are supposed to keep an eye on standards. They have stood idly by whilst the charlatans have gone on the rampage and have been the first to stand behind the likes of Phil Jones when he refused to release data.
Yesterday I was having a brand new water pump installed in my bush home. After much frustration, the plumber declared that the pump simply did not work, put it back in its box, then took it away to be fixed.
How can a common tradesman dare to make such a saucy pronouncement on the work of qualified engineers? I’d have understood if he had declared his own ignorance and taken the pump away for something called “expert review”.
Now some common sales people are agreeing that the pump does not work and are offering to replace it with a pump which does work!
And, to tell you the truth, even I, a total lay-person in these matters, am starting to think the pump was a dud, basing my opinion on little more than anecdote and observation.
Given that I am now of the opinion that the most over-rated among us are peer reviewed climatologists, and I’d sooner take the opinion of the self-educated corner burger flipper above that of the activist climate wonk, this wonk’s opinion is going nowhere with me. Neither the flipper nor the wonk knows what the climate should be right now, but the burger flipper won’t lie about it.
MIT ?????? Is that not the same barn that houses RUSSEL SEITZ ????
[Seitz is at Harvard.]
Towards the end K. Emanual says:
“..we’ll figure out how to take carbon out of fossil fuels”
Chemistry must not have been one of his strong subjects, among others.
Get twenty years of weather forecasting behind you and, all of a sudden, you might just know something about climate….who would have thunk it?
The climate is a very complex and chaotic system which encompasses many areas of science including physics, mathematics, chemistry and biology.
Predictions should not be attempted by laymen.
It is a subject best left to celebrities, rock stars and politicians.
Meteorologist = Practical Climatologist
This kind of propaganda discredits the scientific community. Eric Hoffer penned many wonderful quotations, I will use two here: “The fanatic is not really a stickler to principle. He embraces a cause not primarily because of its justness or holiness but because of his desperate need for something to hold onto.” and “We can be absolutely certain only about things we do not understand.”
Now the true philosopher and the true scientist, both seekers of knowledge, can never be a fanatic or an absolutist. This is in opposition to the “True Believer”. By definition these behaviors are incompatible with that seeking and are logically inconsistent. When this happens they should forfeit the noble title. Don’t hold your breath, it hasn’t happened yet.
When any person of science, in speaking or writing about that science, becomes fanatical, dogmatic or absolute, he forfeits the rights to that title. To paraphrase from my essay, “Man At the Center, Not Man In the Center”, a scientist may be at the center of some research topic or another, he is not the center of it. The philosopher in me will say, we scientists do not understand and do not know, far more then we do know and understand. The only person qualified to use the title Scientist is the one who will admit this fact, to himself and to everyone else.
He might have a point, there are still meteorologists around with a distorted view of the climate change. Those be the ones ringing the alarm bells.
Phrases using ‘skepticism’ in relation to ‘climate change’ and ‘global warming’ are forms of equivocation — the use of ambiguous language with the intention to deceive.
To my mind, climate is just the average of a series of weather events over time. Start off with the weather in the short term, and extrapolate into longer periods. When the predictions don’t come through, find out why, and then post updated predictions based on the new information. Rinse and Repeat. Eventually, once one has made enough mistakes, the predictions get better.
The other way, starting off with this nebulous “climate”, and then trying to build in all the physical variables into a model, because that is the only way it can be done, is only going to work if one knows all the inputs, and their various effects, and that those effects will repeat over time. We don’t know all the inputs, or their effects, therefore starting off from the bottom up is every bit as valid as from the top down.
@ur momisugly mosomo..August 23, 2010 at 11:22 pm… Genius!!!
What a brilliantly simple analogy.
Thank you.
Nice one! The good old “You’re not a climate scientisit therefore your opinion is of no worth!” He is one of those, “you’re not a carpenter therefore you cannot say those window cills are rotten”, “You don’t have a PhD in glazing therefore you cannot say the glass is cracked”, “you’re not a siezmologist therefore you cannot say that was an Earth tremor”, etc etc! The classic put down if ever there was one, unless you think like me, you’re opinion is invalid! This is the trouble with intellectual elitism, they think they know best, as usual, correction, they don’t think they just know!.
Another Enabler has been the mainstream science groupies like Bill Nye and science-fiend organizations like CSICOP.
So Kerry Emanual is upset that some meteorologists are heretics? He should just get them arrested for thought crime along with those annoying geologists, paleontologists and statisticians. Oh, wait, Copenhagen was a total failure. No socialist world government, no army of green shirt thugs. Such a shame. I guess whining about not being able to fool all of the people all of the time on Youtube is all that’s left…
As climate is simply the average of weather events, I’d put my money on meteorologists’ to have the best understanding, rather than a bunch of inept statisticians who call themselves scientists. After all, it was Emanuel himself who was involved in the use low quality distorted data to produce mythical constructs like the ‘hockey stick’ graph.
Much of what passes for climatology is cargo cult science, where belief trumps facts and obfuscation is the watchword. Give me an honest meteorologist like Joe Bastardi any day!
“TV news anchors an reporters couldn’t qualify for the job if it was to only tie shoe laces. The only qualification they need is to be able to communicate on a 4th grade level, as the do.”
Michael J. Norton
What’s the difference between a weather forecaster and a climate forecaster?
You can sack a weather forecaster for a bad forecast!
Any idiot can be a climate forecaster, all it takes is some dumb arsed theory about the climate and a lot of gullible believers who are prepared to wait the decades it takes to prove that it was a dumb arsed theory.
But weather forecasting is real practical science: predictions which are tested day after day, even hour after hour.
“First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they attack you, then…you win.”
Does anyone else get the feeling that we are entering the third phase of this struggle against the hoaxers and alarmists?
The difference between weather forecasters and climatoligists is similar to the difference between astronomers and astrologers.
Take the carbon out of hydrocarbon? Now that will be a trick. I wonder if he has a model that predicts how it can be done?