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.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
jthomas says:
August 24, 2010 at 8:10 am
#1: The only deniers in the debate are those that refuse to debate – like Kerry and you.
#2: The topic is the reputation, not the science. Indeed, most of the articles on this site are about the science and it is debated hotly with those that are not close minded.
#3: The “disparaging” was done by Kerry, not the people on this site (except for you and your childish use of the term denier).
#4: 30 years of being a scientist does not make you an expert in every science. argumentum ad verecundiam does not work, specially when you are not an authority to being with.
Latitude wrote absolute nonsense by writing:
“Dr. Emanuel wants to censor the media/blogosphere, and does not want people going there for information.”
I think Emanuel thinks exactly the opposite.
How is that Emanuel’s own writings and that of all you of you are available to all on the Internet? How insane to make such a claim when his own entire body of work is available on his website: http://wind.mit.edu/~emanuel/home.html? How absolutely silly to make your claim when every poseur like Lord Monckton can blather on nonsensically about subjects he knows nothing about and then threaten to sue those who nail him on the facts?
Your comment here is symptomatic of what happens when politics devolves into mindless denialism. I’m sure Emanuel is quite happy for you to expose yourselves.
I looked at the bibliography of Prof. Emanuel works, and into some of his essays. It seems to be a difficult case. He does not look to me as the worst CAGW guy, so I don’t understand the enmity of attacks on him. He seems to have a reasonable understanding of certain aspects of hydrodynamics, and has invented a reasonable approximation of hurricane mechanics. Unfortunately, from looking at his body of works, it seems obvious that he did not master an understanding of the fundamental difference between inviscous hydrodynamics with phenomenologically incorporated dissipation and native viscous (albeit rather small) dissipative terms in the original Navier-Stokes Equations. As result, I don’t see how he can be qualified to make any judgments on very-long term behavior of atmospheric dynamics called “climate”, and call himself a “climatologists”. So guys, take easy on him.